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News and Views from the Global South

Updated: 17 hours 45 min ago

Entrepreneurship Blooms in Villages Bordering Pakistan Desert

Tue, 07/12/2022 - 11:56

Villagers living with a desert at their doorstep in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province are finding life more bountiful thanks to recent training on how to use their smartphones to buy, sell and gather information. Nadia Mujeeb, 30, who learned from the training how to access new makeup techniques from popular video websites, is now poised […]

Categories: Africa

The World is Burning. We Need a Renewables Revolution

Tue, 07/12/2022 - 08:31

Solar power stations in plain areas, wind turbines in the distance. Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, China. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By António Guterres
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 12 2022 (IPS)

Nero was famously accused of fiddling while Rome burned. Today, some leaders are doing worse. They are throwing fuel on the fire. Literally.

As the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ripples across the globe, the response of some nations to the growing energy crisis has been to double down on fossil fuels – pouring billions more dollars into the coal, oil and gas that are driving our deepening climate emergency.

Meanwhile all climate indicators continue to break records, forecasting a future of ferocious storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and unlivable temperatures in vast swathes of the planet.

Our world faces climate chaos. New funding for fossil fuel exploration and production infrastructure is delusional. Fossil fuels are not the answer, nor will they ever be.

We can see the damage we are doing to the planet and our societies. It is in the news every day, and no one is immune.

Fossil fuels are the cause of the climate crisis. Renewable energy is the answer – to limit climate disruption and boost energy security. Had we invested earlier and massively in renewable energy, we would not find ourselves once again at the mercy of unstable fossil fuel markets.

Renewables are the peace plan of the 21st century. But the battle for a rapid and just energy transition is not being fought on a level field. Investors are still backing fossil fuels, and governments still hand out billions in subsidies for coal, oil and gas – some US $11 million every minute.

Secretary-General António Guterres

There is a word for favouring short-term relief over long-term well-being. Addiction. We are still addicted to fossil fuels. For the health of our societies and planet, we need to quit. Now.

The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity and a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition.

To that end, I have called on G20 governments to dismantle coal infrastructure, with a full phase-out by 2030 for OECD countries and 2040 for all others.

I have urged financial actors to abandon fossil fuel finance and invest in renewable energy. And I have proposed a five-point plan to boost renewable energy round the world.

Five-point plan

First, we must make renewable energy technology a global public good, including removing intellectual property barriers to technology transfer.

Second, we must improve global access to supply chains for renewable energy technologies components and raw materials.

In 2020, the world installed 5 gigawatts of battery storage. We need 600 gigawatts of storage capacity by 2030. Clearly, we need a global coalition to get there.

Shipping bottlenecks and supply-chain constraints, as well as higher costs for lithium and other battery metals, are hurting deployment of such technologies and materials just as we need them most.

Third, we must cut the red tape that holds up solar and wind projects. We need fast-track approvals and more effort to modernize electricity grids. In the European Union, it takes eight years to approve a wind farm, and 10 years in the United States. In the Republic of Korea, onshore wind projects need 22 permits from eight different ministries.

Fourth, the world must shift energy subsidies from fossil fuels to protect vulnerable people from energy shocks and invest in a just transition to sustainable future.

And fifth, we need to triple investments in renewables. This includes multilateral development banks and development finance institutions, as well as commercial banks. All must step up and dramatically boost investments in renewables.

We need more urgency from all global leaders. We are already perilously close to hitting the 1.5°C limit that science tells us is the maximum level of warming to avoid the worst climate impacts.

To keep 1.5 alive, we must reduce emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by mid-century. But current national commitments will lead to an increase of almost 14 per cent this decade. That spells catastrophe.

The answer lies in renewables – for climate action, for energy security, and for providing clean electricity to the hundreds of millions of people who currently lack it. Renewables are a triple win.

There is no excuse for anyone to reject a renewables revolution. While oil and gas prices have reached record price levels, renewables are getting cheaper all the time.

The cost of solar energy and batteries has plummeted 85 per cent over the past decade. The cost of wind power fell by 55 per cent. And investment in renewables creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels.

Of course, renewables are not the only answer to the climate crisis. Nature-based solutions, such as reversing deforestation and land degradation, are essential. So too are efforts to promote energy efficiency. But a rapid renewable energy transition must be our ambition.

As we wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the benefits will be vast, and not just to the climate. Energy prices will be lower and more predictable, with positive knock-on effects for food and economic security.

When energy prices rise, so do the costs of food and all the goods we rely on. So, let us all agree that a rapid renewables revolution is necessary and stop fiddling while our future burns.

Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, is the Secretary-General of the United Nations

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity and a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition.

Categories: Africa

Aid for Power in New Cold War

Tue, 07/12/2022 - 08:15

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 12 2022 (IPS)

Long a means for powerful nations to influence developing countries, development finance has gained renewed significance in the new Cold War. Unlike during the US-Soviet Cold War, the rivalry now is between mixed market capitalist systems.

Development aid rivalry
After reneging repeatedly on development aid and climate finance promises, the G7 big rich nations dutifully lined up behind US President Biden’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) at their 2022 Summit in Schloss Elmau, Germany.

Anis Chowdhury

With a $200bn US commitment, the G7 promised to mobilize $600bn in public and private funds for infrastructure investments in developing countries to compete with China’s multitrillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The White House denounces BRI, claiming the PGII offers “values driven, high-quality, and sustainable infrastructure”. Hence, G7 funding is more likely to have strings attached, e.g., taking sides in the new Cold War.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman emphasized, “China continues to welcome all initiatives to promote global infrastructure development”, but insisted China is “opposed to pushing forward geopolitical calculations under the pretext of infrastructure construction or smearing the Belt and Road Initiative”.

US national security priority
At the 2021 G7 Summit, Biden had unveiled a similar Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, insisting it would define the G7 alternative to China’s BRI. Based on his domestic Build Back Better (BBB) programme, B3W was soon ‘dead in the water’ when the Senate rejected BBB.

The White House’s claim that with the B3W, the “United States is rallying the world’s democracies to deliver for our people, meet the world’s biggest challenges, and demonstrate our shared values” has also been dropped from PGII.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

With few B3W details forthcoming, the European Union (EU) launched its own Global Gateway for developing countries in December 2021, promising €300bn in infrastructure investments by 2027.

At the EU-African Union Summit in February 2022, the EU announced €150bn financing for the Africa-Europe Investment Package, half the Global Gateway budget.

EU leaders have touted their Global Gateway, suggesting G7 initiatives should be not only complementary, but also mutually reinforcing. But the EU’s African priority is not necessarily shared by other G7 members.

EU funding of €135bn will be from the European Fund for Sustainable Development. The UK Clean Green Initiative, from the 2021 Glasgow Climate Summit, and Japan’s $65bn for regional connectivity may also not be additional.

Acknowledging scepticism about how much is new money, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged G7 members to present their pledges consistently to allay doubts about double-counting and the low grants share viz loans.

When the PGII was announced to replace the B3W, it “created significant confusion”. Making clear its purpose, the White House unequivocally asserted PGII will “advance U.S. national security”.

Far-fetched, risky, conditional
The G7 also urges using public money to leverage private sector funds. But such initiatives have previously failed to mobilize significant private funding – hardly inspiring hope of meeting the trillion-dollar financing gap.

The Economist has found blended finance – mixing public, charitable and private money – “starry-eyed” and “struggling to take off”. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank warn public-private partnerships (PPPs) incur contingent fiscal risks.

Worse, PPPs distort national priorities, favour private investors and worsen debt crises. They have also not improved equity of access, reduced poverty or enhanced sustainability.

Developing country debt crises typically involve commercial loans or private sector money. For example, the 1980s’ Latin American debt crises were triggered by US Fed interest rate hikes to kill inflation.

Private sector loans usually involve higher interest rates and shorter repayment periods than loans from governments and multilateral development banks. Unsurprisingly, they lack equitable restructuring or refinancing mechanisms.

Ignoring yet another UN resolution, powerful nations disregard developing countries’ appeals for fair and orderly multilateral sovereign debt restructuring arrangements. Similarly, the West refuses to fix unfair trade, tax and other rules disadvantaging poorer countries.

Trust deficit
Over half a century ago, rich nations promised 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) as development aid. But total overseas development assistance (ODA) from rich Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) members has barely exceeded half the promised amount.

Worse, the share has actually declined from 0.54% in 1961, with only five nations consistently meeting their 0.7% commitment in many years. Oxfam estimated 50 years of unkept promises meant a $5.7 trillion aid shortfall by 2020!

At the 2005 Gleneagles Summit, G7 leaders pledged to double their aid by 2010, earmarking $50bn yearly for Africa. But actual delivery has been woefully short, with no transparent reporting or accountability.

Most development aid is neither transparent nor predictable. After some earlier progress in untying, aid is increasingly being ‘tied’ again – requiring recipients to implement donor projects or to buy from donor country suppliers – compromising effectiveness.

The US ranked lowest among the G7, giving only 0.18% in 2021. To make things worse, US aid effectiveness is worst among the world’s 27 wealthiest nations. Clearly, besides aid volume shortfalls, quality is also at issue.

The Syrian refugee crisis and Covid-19 pandemic have provided some recent pretexts to cut aid. Some powerful countries have turned to ‘creative accounting’, e.g., counting refugee settlement and ‘peace-keeping’ military operations costs as ODA.

Unsurprisingly, the UN Deputy Secretary-General is “deeply troubled over recent decisions and proposals to markedly cut” ODA to service Ukraine war impacts on refugees.

Controversies over what climate finance is ‘new and additional’ to ODA have not been resolved since the 1992 adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio Earth Summit.

G7 countries also fell far short of rich countries’ 2009 pledge to annually give $100bn in climate finance until 2020 to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate global warming.

The OECD’s reported $79.6bn in climate finance in 2019 was the highest ever. But OECD estimates are much disputed – e.g., for double counting and including non-concessional commercial loans, ‘rolled-over’ loans and private finance.

Cooperation, not conflict
Although China is new to development finance, it is now among the world’s biggest development financiers. Following broken promises and duplicity, even betrayal, China’s significance has increased as OECD donor funding declined relatively.

China is now a bigger player in international development finance than the world’s six major multilateral financial institutions together. Many developing countries have few options but to engage with, if not rely on, China.

Undoubtedly, there are justifiable concerns over China’s development finance and practices. These have included adverse environmental impacts, poor transparency and a high share of commercial loans – even if at concessional rates.

In 2019, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde suggested the new BRI phase would “benefit from increased transparency, open procurement with competitive bidding, and better risk assessment in project selection”.

Lagarde approved of China’s new debt sustainability framework and green investment principles to evaluate BRI projects. She expected “BRI 2.0 … will be guided by a spirit of collaboration, transparency, and a commitment to sustainability that will serve all of its members well, both today and tomorrow”.

The new Cold War may well spur more healthy and peaceful rivalry, inadvertently improving development aid and prospects for developing countries.

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

Decisions Based on Narrow Set of Market Values of Nature Underpin the Global Biodiversity Crisis

Tue, 07/12/2022 - 08:04

By External Source
Jul 12 2022 (IPS-Partners)

The way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is both a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis and a vital opportunity to address it, according to a four-year methodological assessment by 82 top scientists and experts from every region of the world.

Approved on Saturday, by representatives of the 139 member States of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature finds that there is a dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, often excluding the consideration of multiple values of nature in policy decisions.

Economic and political decisions have predominantly prioritised certain values of nature, particularly market-based instrumental values of nature, such as those associated with food produced intensively. Although often privileged in policymaking, these market values do not adequately reflect how changes in nature affect people’s quality of life. Furthermore, policymaking overlooks the many non-market values associated with nature’s contributions to people, such as climate regulation and cultural identity.

“With more than 50 valuation methods and approaches, there is no shortage of ways and tools to make visible the values of nature,” said Prof. Unai Pascual (Spain/Switzerland), who co-chaired the Assessment with Prof. Patricia Balvanera (Mexico), Prof. Mike Christie (UK) and Dr. Brigitte Baptiste (Colombia). “Only 2% of the more than 1,000 studies reviewed consult stakeholders on valuation findings and only 1% of the studies involved stakeholders in every step of the process of valuing nature. What is in short supply is the use of valuation methods to tackle power asymmetries among stakeholders, and to transparently embed the diverse values of nature into policymaking.”

Deeply cross-disciplinary and, based on a large review conducted by experts in social science, economics and the humanities, the Values Assessment draws on more than 13,000 references – including scientific papers and information sources from indigenous and local knowledge. It also builds directly on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment, which identified the role of economic growth as a key driver of nature loss, with 1 million species of plants and animals now at risk of extinction.

To help policymakers better understand the very different ways in which people conceive and value nature, the Report provides a novel and comprehensive typology of nature’s values. The typology highlights how different worldviews and knowledge systems influence the ways people interact with and value nature.

In order to make this typology useful for decision-making, the authors present four general perspectives. These are: living from, with, in and as nature. Living from nature emphasizes nature’s capacity to provide resources for sustaining livelihoods, needs and wants of people, such as food and material goods. Living with nature has a focus on life ‘other than human’ such as the intrinsic right of fish in a river to thrive independently of human needs. Living in nature refers to the importance of nature as the setting for people’s sense of place and identity. Living as nature sees the natural world as a physical, mental and spiritual part of oneself.

The Report finds that the number of studies that value nature has increased on average by more than 10% per year over the last four decades. The most prominent focus of recent (2010-2020) valuation studies has been on improving the condition of nature (65% of valuation studies reviewed) and on improving people’s quality of life (31%), with just 4% focused on improving issues around social justice. 74% of valuation studies focused on instrumental values, with 20% focused on intrinsic values, and just 6% focused on relational values.

“The Values Assessment provides decision-makers with concrete tools and methods to better understand the values that individuals and communities hold about nature,” said Prof. Balvanera. “For example, it highlights five iterative steps to design valuation to fit the needs of different decision-making contexts. The report also provides guidelines on how to enhance the quality of valuation by taking into account relevance, robustness and resource requirements of different valuation methods.”

“Different types of values can be measured using different valuation methods and indicators. For example, a development project can yield economic benefits and jobs, for which instrumental values of nature can assessed, but it can also lead to loss of species, associated with intrinsic values of nature, and the destruction of heritage sites important for cultural identity, thus affecting relational values of nature. The report provides guidance for combining these very diverse values.”

“Valuation is an explicit and intentional process,” said Prof. Christie. “The type and quality of information that valuation studies can produce largely depends on how, why and by whom valuation is designed and applied. This influences whose and which values of nature would be recognized in decisions, and how fairly the benefits and burdens of these decisions would be distributed.”

“Recognizing and respecting the worldviews, values and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities allows policies to be more inclusive, which also translates into better outcomes for people and nature”, said Dr. Baptiste. “Also, recognizing the role of women in the stewardship of nature and overcoming power asymmetries frequently related to gender status, can advance the inclusion of the diversity of values in decisions about nature.”

The Report finds that there are a number of deeply held values that can be aligned with sustainability, emphasizing principles like unity, responsibility, stewardship and justice, both towards other people and towards nature. “Shifting decision-making towards the multiple values of nature is a really important part of the system-wide transformative change needed to address the current global biodiversity crisis,” said Dr. Balvanera. “This entails redefining ‘development’ and ‘good quality of life’ and recognising the multiple ways people relate to each other and to the natural world.”

The authors identify four values-centred ‘leverage points’ that can help create the conditions for the transformative change necessary for more sustainable and just futures:

“Our analysis shows that various pathways can contribute to achieve just and sustainable futures. The report pays specific attention to future pathways related to ‘green economy’, ‘degrowth’, ‘Earth stewardship’, and ‘nature protection’. Although each pathway is underpinned by different values, they share principles aligned with sustainability,” added Prof. Pascual. “Pathways arising from diverse worldviews and knowledge systems, for instance those associated with living well and other philosophies of good living, can also lead towards sustainability.”

Among the other tools offered by the Report to strengthen the consideration of greater diversity of values of nature in decision-making are: an exploration of entry points for valuation across all parts of the policy cycle; six interrelated values-centred guidelines to promote sustainability pathways; an evaluation of the potential of different environmental policy instruments to support transformative change towards more sustainable and just futures by representing diverse values, and a detailed illustration of the required capacities of decision makers to foster the consideration and embedding of the diverse values of nature into decisions.

“Biodiversity is being lost and nature’s contributions to people are being degraded faster now that at any other point in human history,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES. “This is largely because our current approach to political and economic decisions does not sufficiently account for the diversity of nature’s values. The IPBES Values Assessment is being released at an extremely important time – just in advance of the expected agreement later this year by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity on a new global biodiversity framework for the next decade. The information, analysis and tools offered by the Values Assessment make an invaluable contribution to that process, to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and to shifting all decisions towards better values-centred outcomes for people and the rest of nature.”

By the Numbers – Key Statistics and Facts from the Report

• 65%: valuation applications reviewed (2010-2020) in which the most prominent focus has been on improving the status of nature, followed by improving people’s quality of life (31%), and improving social justice (4%)

• 74%: valuation applications among those reviewed in which ‘instrumental values’ (e.g., nature as an economic asset) were elicited (as opposed to relational and intrinsic values)

• 50%: valuation applications among those reviewed in which value indicators of biophysical measures predominate, followed by monetary and socio-cultural indicators

• 72%: reported valuations performed at the sub-national rather than national or global scales (with very few studies dealing with cross-regional or cross-national protected areas, or with explicit reference to indigenous peoples and local communities’ territories)

• 25%: ecological contexts of reviewed valuations with emphasis given to the value of nature’s contributions to people that come from forests vs. cultivated areas (16%) and inland water bodies (11%)

• +/-48,000: studies out of 79,000 (61%) that provided explicit geo-referenced information

• 56%: reviewed valuations that did not attempt to bring different values together, but instead used distinct biophysical, monetary and socio-cultural indicators

• +/-50%: valuation studies reviewed that bring different values together apply methods allowing values to be directly compared; the other half compare bundles of values, or use relative weights based on participants’ or valuation experts’ rankings or deliberation

• <1%: valuation studies reviewed that keep values separate (i.e., treat them in parallel in a deliberative process) • 44%: valuation studies reviewed in which some stakeholder involvement was reported • 1%: valuation studies reviewed that included stakeholder consultation and their involvement in every step of the valuation process • 2%: valuation studies reviewed that reported consultations with stakeholders on findings • 0.6%: valuation studies reviewed that explicitly account for power issues in the valuation process • 5%: valuation studies reviewed that considered equity when aggregating impacts on individuals and social groups with diverse socio-economic conditions in valuation • 53%: of 460 future scenarios reviewed explicitly articulate values, 42% mention values but do not assess them explicitly and 53% perform some kind of valuation without reflecting on underpinning values

Excerpt:

More than 50 Methods & Approaches Exist to Make Visible the Diverse Values of Nature

Categories: Africa

Recalling Shinzo Abe with Respect

Mon, 07/11/2022 - 19:54

By Osamu Kusumoto
TOKYO, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Prime Minister of Japan, has died. It was a murder caused by a personal grudge rather than political terrorism. And it was not a direct grudge against Mr. Abe. A religious group had supported Mr. Abe, and a murderer with a grudge against the religious group killed him. Murders targeting politicians are often related to political messages or claims. This is a very unique case in that the murder was committed out of a personal grudge, not against the individual for what he did, but against the organization that supported the individual.

Osamu Kusumoto

In Japan, guns are strictly regulated and crimes involving guns are extremely rare. The gun used was a homemade gun, not one that is sold on the market. Therefore, it was an extremely difficult case to prevent through institutional efforts such as gun control. In many ways, we believe that a fairly in-depth analysis of the current state of Japanese society is required to understand how this could have happened.

As for Prime Minister Abe’s political achievements, he has just passed away, and I believe that there are many aspects of his life that we can only wait for history to judge.

Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, former prime minister of Japan, understood that Japan’s prewar population growth caused poverty and that poverty and population pressure were major factors in World War II. Together with General Draper, the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense, and others, he worked to stabilize the world’s population problem and established the first bipartisan parliamentary group, the Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP), to address the issue of the population to achieve world peace.

Abe’s father, former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, was also involved in population politics, serving as the third president of the JPFP. Late Shinzo Abe himself attended a meeting of the International Parliamentarians Meeting on Population and Social Development in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1995, when he had just become a member of Parliament, held in conjunction with the World Summit on Social Development.

I was involved in that conference as the Japanese secretariat and worked with Mr. Abe for about a week. I was impressed by Mr. Abe’s cheerful personality and proactive thinking. Mr. Abe is well known for his loving wife, and I saw this in Copenhagen, which made me smile.

As I said at the beginning, we will have to wait for history to judge Mr. Abe’s political achievements. However, in my close contact with him and watching his actions, I felt that he had inherited the political philosophy of his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, from his father, Shintaro Abe.

Japan was defeated in World War II and had to realize the reconstruction of its devastated land. One of those who took charge of this was my grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. For the politicians in charge of politics, the various political decisions of the time can only be said to be the result of the best decisions made under the conditions given at that time. It is the job of historians to weigh the pros and cons of such decisions, but I believe that Mr. Abe witnessed and understood the background of the political decisions that his grandfather and father were forced to make as they ran the country.

Seventy-seven years after its defeat in World War II, Japan has not yet escaped the effects of the war, as evidenced by the application of the UN’s “enemy clause. As a result, from the perspective of international common sense, I think there is room for debate as to whether Japan is in an adequate situation as a nation-state in the international community.

During his tenure as prime minister, Mr. Abe has focused on diplomacy. He actively engaged in what is known as “globe-trotting diplomacy,” traveling around the world and maintaining close contact with world leaders. Although Abe’s political beliefs were often described as right-wing, he also repeatedly communicated closely with the leaders of the former communist bloc.

What is clear from these actions of Mr. Abe is that he wanted to make termination of Japan’s postwar period situation. I understand that this is not a matter of left-wing and right-wing, and conservatism or liberalism, but rather a desire to remove the fetters of defeat and create a normal country.

I feel that he had a passionate desire to create a Japan that is respected by the world, as stipulated in the Constitution.

He lost his life at a very young age as a politician. I believe that he was a rare politician who was able to pursue his political ideals, including the environment in which he was blessed to grow up. I sincerely regret his death and pray for his soul.

Osamu Kusumoto, Ph.D Lecturer, Nihon University
Founder, Global Advisors for Sustainable Development (GAfSD)

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

Narrow Valuation of Nature is Widening Biodiversity Loss

Mon, 07/11/2022 - 18:38

The launch of the IPBES Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature. The report argues that because nature is poorly valued, this is driving biodiversity loss. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

Nature has diverse values for different people, but it is poorly evaluated, and this is driving the global biodiversity crisis, top scientists say in a new report.

Cover of IPBES Summary for Policymakers of Values Assessment. Credit: IPBES

The Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature found that the way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis and, simultaneously, a vital opportunity to address this loss. Nature is valued for its contribution to food, medicines, energy, and cultural significance, among other benefits. Representatives of the 139-member states of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) approved the report on Saturday, July 9, 2022.

IPBES is a global science-policy body tasked with providing scientific evidence to decision-makers for people and nature.

Widening the values of nature

Conducted over four years, the Values Assessment by 82 top scientists and experts highlights a dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, and nature’s often multiple values are ignored in policy decisions. The Values Assessment sought to improve the value of nature, the quality of life, and justice.

“Biodiversity is being lost, and nature’s contributions to people are being degraded faster now than at any other point in human history,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES. “This is largely because our current approach to political and economic decisions does not sufficiently account for the diversity of nature’s values.

The authors note that the release of the IPBES Values Assessment was strategic ahead of the expected agreement in December 2022 by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on a new global biodiversity framework for the next decade. The Values Assessment is also expected to contribute to achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the future post-2020 global biodiversity framework, towards just and sustainable futures.

“Effective policy decisions about nature must be informed by the wide range of values and valuation methods, which makes the IPBES Values Assessment a vital scientific resource for policy and action for nature and human well-being,” Salgar said.

The Values Assessment provides decision-makers with tools and methods to understand the values individuals and communities hold about nature. Credit: IPBES

The Values Assessment flagged unsustainable use of nature, including persistent inequalities between and within countries, as a key driver of the global decline of biodiversity. This resulted from predominant political and economic decisions based on a narrow set of values, such as prioritizing nature’s values as traded in markets and macroeconomic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The specific values of nature include nature as instrumental, intrinsic, and relational. The valuation was applied to habitats, mainly forests, cultivated areas, inland water bodies, and coastal areas.

Embedding values of nature into policymaking

The report notes that nature’s values and valuation approaches can be leveraged in policymaking, which presents opportunities to tackle the global biodiversity crisis.

The authors identified four values-centered ‘leverage points’ that can help create the conditions for the transformative change necessary for more sustainable development. These include recognizing the diverse values of nature, embedding valuation into decision-making, reforming policies and regulations to internalize nature’s values, and shifting underlying societal norms and goals to align with global sustainability and justice objectives.

Baptiste said values are behind our daily decisions and business opportunities and that assessment is helping locate the relations between those values and actions that the different actors in society can develop.

The report said that economic and political decisions have predominantly prioritized certain values of nature, particularly market-based instrumental values of nature, such as those associated with intensive food production.

“With more than 50 valuation methods and approaches, there is no shortage of ways and tools to make visible the values of nature,” said Professor Unai Pascual, Assessment Co-chair. For instance, only two percent of the more than 1,000 studies reviewed consulted stakeholders on valuation findings, and only one percent involved stakeholders in every step of the process of valuing nature.

“What is in short supply is the use of valuation methods to tackle power asymmetries among stakeholders and to transparently embed the diverse values of nature into policymaking,” Pascual urged.

The Value Assessment, which drew on more than 13,000 references – including scientific papers and information sources from indigenous and local knowledge – builds on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment, which identified economic growth as a key driver of nature loss. More than 1 million plants and animals are at risk of extinction.

The report finds that the number of studies that value nature has increased on average by more than 10 percent per year over the last four decades, with the recent valuation studies focusing largely on improving the condition of nature and on improving people’s quality of life.

Co-chair Patricia Balvanera said the Values Assessment provides decision-makers with tools and methods to understand the values individuals and communities hold about nature.

The quality of valuation can be enhanced by considering the relevance, robustness, and resource requirements of different valuation methods. For example, a development project can yield economic benefits and jobs, for which instrumental values of nature can be assessed. However, the same project can also lead to the loss of species associated with intrinsic values of nature, and the destruction of heritage sites important for cultural identity, thus affecting relational values of nature.

Raising the quality of valuing nature

Another Co-chair of the Value Assessment, Mike Christi, said the valuation of nature is intentional. As a result, the type and quality of information that valuation studies can produce largely depends on how, why, and by whom valuation is designed and applied.

“Recognizing and respecting the worldviews, values, and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities allows policies to be more inclusive, which also translates into better outcomes for people and nature,” said Brigitte Baptiste, Co-chair.

“Also, recognizing the role of women in the stewardship of nature and overcoming power asymmetries frequently related to gender status can advance the inclusion of the diversity of values in decisions about nature.”

The report finds that a number of deeply held values can be aligned with sustainability, emphasizing principles like unity, responsibility, stewardship, and justice, both towards other people and towards nature.

“Shifting decision-making towards the multiple values of nature is a really important part of the system-wide transformative change needed to address the current global biodiversity crisis,” said Balvanera. “This entails redefining ‘development’ and ‘good quality of life’ and recognizing the multiple ways people relate to each other and to the natural world.”

The analysis shows that various pathways can contribute to just and sustainable futures through a green economy, degrowth, earth stewardship, and nature protection.

Commending the IPBES Assessment Report on the Values and Valuation of Nature, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Convention on Biological Diversity, Executive Secretary, noted that implementing the goals and targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework, which will complement the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, underpins the knowledge in different types of values of nature as demonstrated by the Values Assessment.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP), described the Values Assessment report as crucial because valuing nature was central to the successful post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework currently under negotiation.

“Nature, in all its diversity, is the greatest asset that humanity could ever ask for,” said Andersen. “Yet, its true value is often left out of decision making. Nature’s life support system has become an externality that doesn’t even make it onto the ledger sheet.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Categories: Africa

What Future for a World of 8 Billion?

Mon, 07/11/2022 - 07:24

School Opens in Weapons Free Zone East of UNMISS”. Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

By John Wilmoth
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

What does a young girl from Juba, in South Sudan, an 8-year-old boy living in the slums of Mumbai, in India, a young mother from the south of Lima, in Peru, and an 83-year-old man enjoying retirement in the suburbs of Stockholm, in Sweden, have in common?

Many things, perhaps, but here is one of the most important: they are all members of the human population, whose size will surpass 8 billion people in mid-November 2022. They are part of a common humanity that aspires to live peacefully and in dignity, that desires access to quality education, adequate living conditions and decent work, and that hopes to enjoy a long, healthy and fulfilling life.

Even though all of them are part of the same humanity, the challenges and opportunities that they face in their daily lives are drastically different.

In 2015, Member States of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At the core of this agenda are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which constitute an ambitious call-for-action to end poverty and hunger, protect the planet and improve the current lives and future prospects of all people everywhere.

Reducing social and economic inequalities is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda. Yet many inequalities persist and are deepening, both within and across countries and regions. Today, the probability of living a long, healthy and fulfilling life, and the challenges and opportunities that people encounter every day, differ vastly around the world.

In countries where deaths outnumber births, the population is increasing very little, if at all. In some cases, it has already started to decline or will do so soon. In some of these countries, immigration helps to counter the population loss due to an excess of deaths over births.

In other countries, emigration is exacerbating the loss of population linked to a low birth rate. As the proportion of the population above age 65 continues to grow, the shifting population places additional fiscal pressure on social security, public pension and health-care systems.

In low-income countries, where economic growth may struggle to keep up with population growth, alleviating poverty and countering high levels of inequality is a major challenge. Lack of access to resources deprives individuals of opportunities and choices.

Inadequate access to family planning services perpetuates high levels of childbearing, often starting early in life, and contributes to rapid population growth. Such growth generates ever-larger cohorts of children and young adults, whose experiences early in life will shape their prospects for success.

A sustained drop in the fertility level can stabilize the number of children and youth in a population, facilitating increased investments per child in health care and education. With such changes, along with measures to ensure access to decent work, a large and youthful population presents an opportunity for accelerated social and economic development—a phenomenon known as demographic dividend.

Today, less than 16 per cent of the global population lives in high-income countries, a percentage that is expected to fall to 13 per cent by 2050. By contrast, low-income and lower-middle-income countries are home to more than half of the world’s population (9 and 43 per cent, respectively).

The proportion of the global population living in these two groups of countries is projected to grow to more than 60 per cent by 2050. Indeed, the future growth of world population will take place mostly in low-income and lower-middle-income countries.

Figure 1. Distribution of the world’s population by income group, 2022, 2030 and 2050
Note: numbers may not add up due to rounding.

The higher rate of population growth in low-income and lower-middle-income countries is fueled by declining mortality, with fertility remaining at comparatively high levels. If the population of these countries continues to grow at the current rate, their combined size will double in about 26 years.

Today, in low-income countries, a woman gives birth to 4.5 children on average over a lifetime. This figure is projected to drop just below 3 births per woman in 2050. By comparison, women in high-income countries currently bear, on average, 1.6 children.

Between 1990 and 2022, improvements in health-care services in low-income countries tripled the survival prospects for children under the age of 5. Nevertheless, a baby born today in a low-income country can expect to live almost 18 years less than a baby born in a high-income country.

Despite a slight convergence that is anticipated over the coming decades, these vast differences are expected to remain largely intact.

Unequal outcomes for people across the globe call for renewed action and investment. Countries and the international community need to redouble their efforts to advance the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and to ensure that no one is left behind. Whether a girl in Juba or a boy in Mumbai will enjoy a long, healthy and fulfilling life depends on the world’s commitment to ensuring that all 8 billion inhabitants of the planet will have genuine opportunities to find success.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

The writer is Director, Population Division of the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Categories: Africa

India & China Continue to Lead –as World Population Projected to Reach 8.0 Billion

Mon, 07/11/2022 - 07:05

Credit: Freepik

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

India and China, two Asian nuclear powers who are also longstanding rivals embroiled in the geo-politics of the Indian Ocean region, have remained two of the world’s most populous nations accounting for over a billion people each.

But as the world’s population reaches the 8.0 billion mark, come November, India is projected to surpass China.

The current numbers stand at 1.44 billion people in China and 1.39 billion in India. But the numbers are expected to change as India races ahead of China. The US ranks third with over 335 million people. By the end of last yar, the world’s total population was approximately 7.9 billion.

According to a report in the New York Times July 9, China is going through a “demographic crisis”. With abortion and reproductive health heavily centered on the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP now wants women to have multiple children abandoning the country’s longstanding one-child policy.

“With China’s birth rate at a historical low, officials have been doling out tax and housing credits, educational benefits and even cash incentives to encourage women to have more children”.

“Yet the perks are available only to married couples, a pre-requisite that is increasingly unappealing to independent women, who in some cases prefer to parent alone.” the Times said.

Currently, about 61 per cent of the global population lives in Asia (4.7 billion), 17 per cent in Africa (1.3 billion), 10 per cent in Europe (750 million), 8 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean (650 million), and the remaining 5 per cent in Northern America (370 million) and Oceania (43 million).

According to World Population Prospects 2022, released July 11, the global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, having fallen under 1.0 per cent in 2020.

The latest projections by the United Nations suggest that the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. It is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100.

More than half of the projected increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania, said the report released by the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).

And countries of sub-Saharan Africa are expected to contribute more than half of the increase anticipated through 2050.

John Wilmoth, Director, Population Division of the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told IPS between 2022 and 2050, the population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to almost double, surpassing 2 billion inhabitants by the late 2040s.

“Today, fertility in sub-Saharan Africa is still high, with 4.6 births per woman on average. By 2050, the average fertility level in the region is projected to remain close to 3 births per woman”.

Coupled with decreasing mortality rates, he said, this comparatively high level of fertility will fuel continuing population increase.

Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to account for more than half of the growth of the world’s population between 2022 and 2050.

In 2022, the population of this region was growing at a rate of 2.5 per cent per year, the highest among major regions and more than three times the global average of 0.8 per cent per year, declared Wilmoth.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant.

“This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” he added.

“At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another,” he added.

According to the UN, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all three components of population change.

Global life expectancy at birth fell to 71.0 years in 2021. In some countries, successive waves of the pandemic may have produced short-term reductions in numbers of pregnancies and births, while for many other countries, there is little evidence of an impact on fertility levels or trends.

The pandemic severely restricted all forms of human mobility, including international migration while it also affected all three components of population change.

Asked about the impact of the three-year-long pandemic, Joseph Chamie, a consulting demographer and former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS: “Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted population growth by increased mortality, reduced fertility in many countries, and lower levels of international migration.

Nevertheless, he pointed out, world population is continuing to grow at close to 1.0 percent annually. Even with the pandemic, world population grew by nearly 80 million per year, he said.

Asked about the impact of the recent US supreme court decision to declare abortion illegal in the US, Chamie said: the Supreme Court decision, striking down the 50-year constitutional right of a women to have an abortion, will have an impact on the births for many women in the United States.

As a result of the court’s decision, the US has become a patchwork of abortion laws with a myriad of enforcement regulations, further legal challenges, and the large majority Americans objecting to the decision.

Despite the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, the US fertility rate, which was 1.64 births per woman in 2020, is likely to remain below the replacement level for the foreseeable future, said Chamie, author of numerous publications on population issues, including his book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters

Chamie also said the growth of world population during the 20th and 21st centuries is absolutely historic and unprecedented.

In less than a century, world population quadrupled, increasing from 2 billion in 1927 to 8 billion in 2022, a growth not likely to occur in the future.

The second half of the 20th century had world population’s highest rate of annual growth of 2.1 percent in the late 1960s and the highest annual increase of 93 million in the late 1980s.

In comparison, today’s growth rate is slightly less than 1 percent and the annual increase is nearly 80 million, he noted.

World population is expected to increase by 25 percent, an additional 2,000,000,000 people, reaching 10 billion by around midcentury.

He also warned that the growth of world population is seriously challenging efforts to address climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and pollution.

Whenever climate change is discussed, written about, or mentioned, the demographic growth of nations can no longer be ignored or dismissed by governments.

The planet with 8 billion humans and continuing to grow must be seriously addressed in climate change negotiations.

The stabilization of human populations is essential for limiting the ever-increasing demographic created demands for energy, water, food, land, resources, housing, heating/cooling, transportation, material goods, etc. (See IPS article: “Climate Change and 8 Billion Humans”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Categories: Africa

Wild Species Central to Human Survival, New IPBES Report Offers Options for their Sustainable Use

Fri, 07/08/2022 - 17:06

The IPBES Sustainable Use of Wild Species report was launched in Bonn, Germany. The report offers insights, analysis and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi and algae worldwide. Credit: IISD Diego Noguera

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

Fifty thousand wild species meet the needs of billions of people worldwide, providing food, cosmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine and inspiration. But now, a million species of plants and animals face extinction with far-reaching consequences, including endangering economies, food security and livelihoods.

Against a backdrop of an ongoing global biodiversity crisis, a new report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on July 8, 2022, offers insights, analysis and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi and algae around the world.

The cover of IPBES Summary for Policymakers of Sustainable Use of Wild Species Assessment. Credit: IPBES

The IPBES Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species builds directly on the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which alerted the world that a million species of plants and animals face extinction, many within decades.

Approved this week by representatives of the 139 member States of IPBES in Bonn, Germany, the report is a result of four years of work by 85 leading experts from every region of the world to help decision-makers address the unsustainable use of wild species.

On the key findings, Professor John Donaldson from South Africa, who co-chaired the Assessment with Dr Jean-Marc Fromentin from France and Dr Marla R Emery (USA/Norway), said “at least 50,000 wild species are used through different practices, including more than 10,000 wild species harvested directly for human food. An estimated 70% of the world’s poor depend directly on wild species.

“One in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for their food and income; 2.4 billion rely on fuel wood for cooking; and about 90% of the 120 million people working in capture fisheries are supported by small-scale fishing.”

The report found that rural people in developing countries are most at risk from unsustainable use, with a lack of complementary alternatives often forcing them to further exploit wild species already at risk.

Overall, wild tree species account for two-thirds of global industrial roundwood. Trade in wild plants, algae and fungi is a billion-dollar industry. Even non-extractive uses of wild species are big business.

Pre-COVID, tourism based on observing wild species was one of the main reasons that protected areas globally received eight billion visitors and generated US$600 billion yearly.

Ana Maria Hernandez Salgar, IPBES Chair, said the report harnesses different knowledge systems to the dialogue on sustainable use of wild species.

“We cannot talk of the intrinsic relationship between people and nature if we do not incorporate sustainable use of wild species as one of the greatest challenges we face. We have to reduce the overexploitation of wild species and their unsustainability,” Salgar says.

In providing the evidence and science needed to ensure sustainability, Fromentin said the report identifies five broad categories of practices in using wild species: fishing, gathering, logging, terrestrial animal harvesting, including hunting and finally, non-extractive practices.

Alongside each practice, the authors then examined specific uses such as food and feed, materials, medicine, energy and recreation, providing a detailed analysis of each trend over the past 20 years.

The examination reveals that, by and large, the use of wild species has increased, but the sustainability of use varies. For instance, global estimates confirm that about 34 percent of marine wild fish stocks are overfished and that 66 percent are fished within biologically sustainable levels.

The survival of an estimated 12 percent of wild tree species is threatened by unsustainable logging. Several plant groups, notably cacti, cycads and orchids, are threatened by mostly unsustainable gathering. Unsustainable hunting is a threat to 1,341 wild mammal species.

Further, Emery said that sustainable use of wild species has and can have an even more significant contribution to the realisation of UN’s SDGs. She singled out 12 SDGs, including ending hunger, sustainable life on the planet, and sustainable life on earth, terrestrial areas and underwater.

Emery highlighted what is currently recognized as the potential role of wild species in meeting SDGs and how it pales in comparison to the substantial contribution that remains untapped.

“Among environmental drivers, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species in particular impact the abundance and distribution of wild species and this, in turn, impacts their sustainability, and in turn their ability to contribute to human well-being,” Emery says.

The report finds that global trade in wild species increases substantially without effective regulation across supply chains – from local to international. Global trade of wild species generally increases pressures on wild species, leading to unsustainable use and sometimes to wild population collapses – such as the shark fin trade.

Illegal trade in wild species represents the third-largest class of all illicit trade, with estimated annual values of up to US$199 billion. Timber and fish make up the largest volumes and value of illegal trade in wild species.

To address a global biodiversity crisis that is growing urgent with every passing day, Fromentin said the report fronts seven key elements with the potential to significantly promote sustainable use of wild species. These include policy options that are inclusive and participatory, that recognize and support multiple forms of knowledge and policy instruments and tools that ensure fair and equitable distribution of costs and benefits.

It further stressed the need for context-specific policies monitoring wild species and practices. These policy instruments should be aligned at international, national, regional, and local levels and maintain coherence and consistency with international obligations while considering customary rules and norms. Robust institutions, including customary institutions, should support them.

In conclusion, the report’s authors examine a range of possible future scenarios for the use of wild species. Confirming that climate change, increasing demand and technological advances, making many extractive practices more efficient, are likely to present significant challenges to sustainable use in the future.

To address identified challenges, the report proposes actions aligned to the five broad practices in the use of wild species. Take fishing, for instance, recommended actions include reducing illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, suppressing harmful financial subsidies and supporting small-scale fisheries.

The timing of the report is crucial as world leaders move closer to agreeing on a new global biodiversity framework at the UN Biodiversity Conference in December 2022, fronted as the road to a bold new agreement for nature.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Categories: Africa

A World of 8 Billion, Yes, But (II): The Unseen, Untold Story of the 50%

Fri, 07/08/2022 - 16:31

"When nearly a third of all women in developing countries are becoming mothers during adolescence, it is clear the world is failing adolescent girls,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. Credit: Michael Duff/UNFPA

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

While women and girls have been so far enjoying some of their due rights in Western high-income countries, the overwhelming majority of teenagers and adult women in the impoverished regions of the current world’s population of 8 billions continue to suffer all kinds of inequalities.

Such a harsh reality does not only impact their basic human rights, like equal treatment, same rights as men in decision-making, working conditions, payment, property, healthcare, staggering poverty and a very long etcetera, but also the pressing need to guarantee their right to protection against all sorts of gender violence, abuse, rape, and the consequences of unwanted, unintended pregnancies in particular among teenagers and child girls.

Almost one third of women in developing countries had their first baby while they were still in their teens, the report shows, with nearly half of those new mothers aged 17 and younger – still children themselves

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) released ahead of the 2022 World Population Day on 11 July, an extensive report titled the Gender and income inequalities driving teenage motherhood in developing countries.

Inequalities, entrenched

Gender-based and income inequalities, adds the report, are highlighted as key in fuelling teen pregnancies by increasing child marriage rates, keeping girls out of school, restricting their career aspirations, and limiting health care and information on safe, consensual sex.

Entrenching these inequalities are climate disasters, COVID-19 and conflict, which are all upending lives around the world, obliterating livelihoods and making it more difficult for girls to afford or even physically reach school and health services.

This leaves tens of millions yet more vulnerable to child marriage and early pregnancy, adds UNFPA.

“When nearly a third of all women in developing countries are becoming mothers during adolescence, it is clear the world is failing adolescent girls,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem.

“The repeat pregnancies we see among adolescent mothers are a glaring signpost that they desperately need sexual and reproductive health information and services.”

Adolescent motherhood

Most births among girls under the age of 18 in 54 developing countries are reported as taking place within a marriage or union. Although more than half of those pregnancies were classified as “intended”, young girls’ ability to decide whether to have children can be severely constrained.

Indeed, the report finds that adolescent pregnancy is often – albeit not always – driven by a lack of meaningful choice, limited agency, and even force or coercion. See, for example: Daughters of a Lesser God: 800 Million Girls Forced to Be Mothers.

Even in contexts where adolescent motherhood is considered acceptable and planned for, it can carry “serious and long-term repercussions, especially when health-care systems fail to ensure accessible sexual and reproductive care and information for this vulnerable age group.”

Complications, deaths

Complications in pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death among girls aged 15 to 19 years, who are also far more likely to suffer a litany of other violations of their human rights, from forced marriage and intimate partner violence to serious mental health impacts of bearing children before they are out of childhood themselves.

Girls who give birth in adolescence also often go on to have more than one baby in quick succession – which can be dangerous both physically and psychologically.

“Among those who first gave birth at age 14 or younger, nearly three quarters had a second baby before they turned 20, and a staggering 40% of those had a third before they left their teens.

Why is child motherhood so high?

Adolescent births now account for 16% of all births in the world, and the report shows women who began childbearing in adolescence had almost five births by the time they reached age 40, warns the report.

“With inequalities and humanitarian crises multiplying and intensifying, we know women and girls are bearing an unequal burden of the consequent physical, psychological and economic turmoil.”

Furthermore…

Also according to the report, in conflict as in climate disasters, schools and health facilities are frequently reduced to rubble and devoid of staff and equipment.

Insecurity and violence render it impossible for people to move around even for basic necessities, including contraception and other critical sexual and reproductive health care.

“Crises and displacement are also known to lead to spikes in gender-based and sexual violence, in turn causing more sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies from rape, and rising rates of forced and child marriages as parents struggle to cope with financial hardship and aching hunger.”

Under these circumstances, access to employment, education and health services is disrupted or suspended entirely, pushing girls out of school, women out of the workforce and leading child marriages and unintended pregnancies to soar.

Seeing the Unseen

UNFPA’s State of World Population Report 2022: Seeing the Unseen highlights the alarming figure that almost half of all pregnancies in the world are unintended and explores the health, human right, humanitarian and socio-economic linkages of unintended pregnancies.

This is including the issue of gender-based violence, the increased barrier women face in accessing reproductive health services in conflict settings and the risks related to unsafe abortions.

In its report on World Population Day: “A world of 8 billion: Towards a resilient future for all – Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all,” for the first time in history, we are seeing extreme diversity in the mean age of countries and the fertility rates of populations.”

While the populations of a growing number of countries are ageing and about 60% of the world’s population live in countries with below-replacement fertility of 2.1 children per woman, other countries have huge youth populations and keep growing pace.

But focus should be on people, not population, highlights the United Nations Population Fund. Reducing people to numbers strips them of their humanity. Instead of making the numbers work for systems, make the systems work for the numbers by promoting the health and well-being of people.

The untold story

Back to the key issue of women and teenagers, UNFPA’s report: Motherhood in Childhood: The Untold Story, features the trends and provides a wide picture of such a shocking problem.

‘World is failing adolescent girls’ warns UNFPA chief, as report shows third of women in developing countries give birth in teen years.

Is this the world that human beings want?

Categories: Africa

Migrant Workers from Mexico, Caught Up in Trafficking, Forced Labor and Exploitation

Fri, 07/08/2022 - 09:57

Mexican workers harvest produce on a farm in the western U.S. state of California. The number of temporary agricultural workers from Mexico has increased in recent years in the United States and with it, human rights violations. CREDIT: Courtesy of Linnaea Mallette

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

Eduardo Reyes, originally from Puebla in central Mexico, was offered a 40-hour workweek contract by his recruiter and his employer in the United States, but ended up performing hundreds of hours of unpaid work that was not authorized because his visa had expired, unbeknownst to him.

Hired by recruiter Vazquez Citrus & Hauling (VCH), Reyes and five other temporary workers reached the United States between May and September 2017, months before starting work for Four Star Greenhouse in the Midwest state of Michigan.

In 2018, they worked more than 60 hours per week, received bad checks, and never obtained a copy of their contract, even though U.S. laws require that they be given one.

When they complained to Four Star and to their recruiter about the exploitative conditions, the latter turned them over to immigration authorities for deportation in July of that year because their visas had expired, which they had not been informed of by their agent.

In December 2017, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) authorized the arrival of 145 workers to the Four Star facilities in Carleton, Michigan. They were to earn 12.75 dollars per hour for 36 hours a week between January and July 2018.

Reyes’ case is set forth in complaint 2:20-CV-11692, seen by IPS, filed in the Southern Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by six Mexican workers against the company and its manager, whom they accuse of wage gouging, forced labor and workplace reprisals.

This story of exploitation has an aggravating factor that shows the shortcomings of the U.S. government’s H-2A temporary agricultural workers program, or H-2A visa program.

The United States created H-2 visas for unskilled temporary foreign workers in 1943 and in the 1980s established H-2A categories for rural workers and 2B for other labor, such as landscaping, construction, and hotel staff.

These visas allow Mexicans, mainly from rural areas, to migrate seasonally to the U.S. to work legally on farms included on a list, with the intermediation of recruiting companies.

In 2016, the US Department of Transportation fined VCH, based in the state of Florida, for 22,000 dollars for a bus accident in which six H-2A workers were killed while returning from Monroe, Michigan to Mexico.

Two years later, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division banned VCH and its owner for three years due to program violations in the state of North Carolina, such as failure to reimburse travel expenses and payroll and workday records. However, both continued to operate in the sector.

The workers’ odyssey begins in Mexico, where they are recruited by individual contractors -workers or former workers of a U.S. employer, colleagues, relatives or friends in their home communities – or by private U.S. agencies.

Structural problem

Reyes’ case illustrates the problems of labor exploitation, forced labor and the risk of human trafficking to which participants in the H-2A program are exposed, without intervention by Mexican or U.S. authorities to prevent human rights violations.

Advocates for the rights of the seasonal workers and experts pointed to worsening working conditions, warned of the threat of human trafficking and forced labor, and complained about the prevailing impunity.

According to Lilián López, representative in Mexico of the U.S.-based Polaris Project, the design and operation of the program result in a high risk of human trafficking and forced labor, due to factors such as the lack of supervision and interference by recruiters.

“Economic vulnerability puts migrants at risk, because many workers go into debt to get to the United States, and that gives the agencies a lot of power. They can set any kind of requirement for people to get the jobs. Sometimes recruiters make offers that look more attractive than they really are. That is fraud,” she told IPS in Mexico City.

The number of calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline operated by Polaris in the US reflects the apparent increase in abuses. Between 2015 and 2017, 800 people on temporary visas, 500 of which were H-2A, called the hotline, compared to 2,890 people between 2018 and 2020 – a 360 percent increase.

Evy Peña, spokesperson for Mexico’s Migrant Rights Center, said temporary labor systems are designed to benefit employers, who have all the control, along with the recruiters.

“From the moment the workers are recruited, there is no transparency. There is a lack of oversight by the DOL, there are parts of recruitment that should be overseen by the Mexican government. There are things that the Mexican government should work out at home,” she told IPS from the northern city of Monterrey.

She said the situation has worsened because of the pandemic.

The United States and Mexico have idealized the H-2A program because it solves the lack of employment in rural areas, foments remittances that provide financial oxygen to those areas, and meets a vital demand in food-producing centers that supply U.S. households.

But the humanitarian costs are high, as the cases reviewed attest. Mexico’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare has 369 labor placement agencies registered in 29 of Mexico’s 33 states. For overseas labor recruitment, seven operate – including four in Mexico City -, a small number compared to the thousands of visas issued in 2021.

For its part, the DOL reports 241 licensed recruiters in the US working for a handful of companies in that country.

The ones authorized in Mexico do not appear on the US list and vice versa, in another example of the scarce exchange of information between the two partners.

The number of H-2A visas for Mexican workers is on the rise, with the U.S. government authorizing 201,123 in 2020, a high number driven by the pandemic. That number grew 22 percent in 2021, to a total of 246,738.

In the first four months of the year, U.S. consulates in Mexico issued 121,516 such visas, 18 percent more than in the same period of 2021, when they granted 102,952.

In 2021, the states with the highest demand for Mexican labor were Florida, Georgia, California, Washington and North Carolina, in activities such as agriculture, the operation of farm equipment and construction.

The United States and Mexico agreed to issue another 150,000 visas for temporary workers in an attempt to mitigate forced migration from the south, which will also include Central American seasonal workers.

Details of the expansion of the program will be announced by Presidents Joe Biden and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at a meeting to be held on Jul. 12 at the White House, with migration as one of the main topics on the agenda.

Mexican farm workers wait to be tested for COVID-19 in 2020 in Immolakee, a town in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida. The pandemic hit H-2A visa holders, who are mainly engaged in temporary agricultural work, hard. CREDIT: Doctors Without Borders

Indifference

Lidia Muñoz, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon in the United States who has studied labor recruitment, stresses that there are no policies on the subject in Mexico, even though the government is aware of the problem.

“There are regulations for recruitment agencies that are not followed to the letter,” she told IPS from Portland, the largest city in the northwestern state of Oregon. “Most recruiters are not registered. The intermediaries are the ones who earn the most. There is no proper oversight.”

Article 28 of Mexico’s Federal Labor Law of 1970 regulates the provision of services by workers hired within Mexico for work abroad, but in practice it is not enforced.

This regulation requires the registration of contracts with the labor authorities and the posting of a bond to guarantee compliance, and makes the foreign contractor responsible for transportation to and from the country, food and immigration expenses, as well as full payment of wages, compensation for occupational hazards and access to adequate housing.

In addition, Mexican workers must be entitled to social security for foreigners in the country where they offer their services.

While the Mexican government could resort to this article to protect the rights of migrants, it has refused to apply it.

Between 2009 and 2019, the Ministry of Labor conducted 91 inspections of labor placement agencies in nine states and imposed 12 fines for about 153,000 dollars, but did not fine any recruiters of seasonal workers. Furthermore, the records of the Federal Court of Conciliation and Arbitration do not contain labor lawsuits for breach of that regulation.

Mexico is a party to the International Labor Organization (ILO) Fee-Charging Employment Agencies Convention, which it apparently violates in the case of temporary workers.

In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) does not know how many H-2A workers it has assisted through consular services. Likewise, it does not know how many complainants it has advised.

The Mexican consulate in Denver, Colorado received three labor complaints, dated Jul. 25, Aug. 12 and Oct. 28, 2021, which it referred to “specialized allies in the matter, who provided the relevant advice to the interested parties,” according to an SRE response to a request for information from IPS.

The consulate in Washington received “anonymous verbal reports” on labor issues, which it passed on to civil society organizations so that “the relevant support could be provided.”

Consular teams were active in some parts of the US in 2021. For example, Mexican officials visited eight corporations between May and September 2021 in Denver, Colorado.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania they visited 12 companies between April and August, 2021. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin they visited 26 companies between June 2021 and April of this year, and in Washington, DC six workplaces were visited between August and October 2021. However, the results of these visits are unknown.

Mexico, meanwhile, is in non-compliance with the ILO’s “General principles and operational guidelines for fair recruitment” of 2016.

These guidelines stipulate that hiring must be done in accordance with human rights, through voluntary agreements, free from deception or coercion, and with specific, verifiable and understandable conditions of employment, with no attached charges or job immobility.

Ariel Ruiz, an analyst with the U.S.-based Migration Policy Institute, is concerned about the expansion of the H-2A visa program without improvements in rights.

“There are labour rights violations before the workers arrive in the US, in recruitment there are often illegal payments, and we keep hearing reports of employers intimidating workers,” he told IPS from Washington.

“There are also problems in access to health services and legal representation” in case of abuse, added the analyst from the non-governmental institute.

Judicialization

In the last decade, at least 12 lawsuits have been filed in US courts by program workers against employers.

Muñoz, the expert from Oregon, said the trials can help reform the system.

“There have been cases that have resulted in visas for trafficking victims. But it is difficult to see changes in the United States. They may be possible in oversight. Legal changes have arisen because of wage theft from workers,” she said.

López, of Polaris, said the lawsuits were a good thing, but clarified that they did not solve the systemic problems. “What is needed is a root-and-branch reform of the system,” she said.

The United States has made trade union freedom in Mexico a priority. Peña asked that it also address the H-2A visa situation.

“If they’re serious about improving labor rights, they can’t ignore the responsibility they have for migrant workers. It’s like creating a double standard,” she said.

With regard to the expansion of the temporary visa program to Central Americans, the experts consulted expressed concern that it would lead to an increase in abuses.

This article was produced with support from the organizations Dignificando el Trabajo and the Avina Foundation’s Arropa Initiative in Mexico.

Categories: Africa

Intersecting Crises are Impeding the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Threatening Peace & Security

Fri, 07/08/2022 - 06:59

By Stefan Shweinfest
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

This week marks the mid-way point to the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and with it the release of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022.

While we would like to trumpet success stories and report that we are on track in eradicating poverty and hunger and improving health and education in this report, the reality is, we cannot.

Instead, the data show that cascading and intersecting global crises are creating spin-off impacts on food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, and peace and security, presenting existential threats to the planet, and have already undone some of the initial accomplishments towards the SDGs.

In fact, the results of the report reflect a deepening and impending climate catastrophe; a war that is sparking one of the largest refugee crises of modern time; shows the impacts of the pandemic through increased child labour, child marriage, and violence against women; as well as food supply disruptions that threaten global food security; and a health pandemic that has interrupted the education of millions of students.

The report sounds an alarm that people and the planet are in serious challenges, rather than reading as the successful story of progress that we would have hoped for when launching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.

The COVID-19 pandemic has halted or reversed years of development progress. As of end of 2021, nearly 15 million people worldwide had died directly or indirectly due to COVID-19. More than four years of progress in alleviating extreme poverty have been wiped out, and 150 million more people facing hunger in 2021 than in 2019.

An estimated 147 million children missed more than half of their in-person instruction over the past two years. The pandemic severely disrupted essential health services. Immunization coverage dropped for the first time in a decade and deaths from tuberculosis and malaria increased.

Stefan Schweinfest

As grim as the scenario sounds, we shall set a course for achieving the implementation of the 2030 Agenda through recovery and response: enact new ways of thinking and open up new possibilities.

During COVID-19, responses sped up the adoption of digital technologies and innovative approaches. There are some examples of positive trends coming out of the report: There has been a surge in the number of internet users due to the pandemic, increasing by 782 million people to reach 4.9 billion people in 2021, up from 4.1 billion in 2019.

Global manufacturing production grew by 7.2 per cent in 2021, surpassing its pre-pandemic level. Higher-technology manufacturing industries fared better than lower-tech industries during the pandemic, and therefore recovered faster.

In addition, before the pandemic, progress was being made in many important SDGs, such as reducing poverty, improving maternal and child health, increasing access to electricity, improving access to water and sanitation, and advancing gender equality.

War in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is creating one of the largest refugee crises we have seen in modern time, which pushed the already record-high global refugee number even higher. As of May 2022, over 100 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their homes.

The crisis has caused food, fuel and fertilizer prices to skyrocket, further disrupted supply chains and global trade, roiled financial markets, and threatened global food security and aid flows.

Projected global economic growth for 2022 was cut by 0.9 percentage point, due to the war in Ukraine and potential new waves of the pandemic.

The world’s most vulnerable countries and population groups are disproportionately impacted by the multiple and interlinked crises. Developing countries are battling record inflation, rising interest rates and looming debt burdens.

With competing priorities and limited fiscal space, many are finding it harder than ever to recover economically. In least developed countries, economic growth remains sluggish and the unemployment rate is worsening.

Women have suffered a greater share of job losses combined with increased care work at home. Exiting evidence suggests that violence against women has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Anxiety and depression among adolescents and young people have increased significantly.

Climate Emergency

Low-carbon, resilient and inclusive development pathways will reduce carbon emissions, conserve natural resources, transform our food systems, create better jobs and advance the transition to a greener, more inclusive and just economy.

The world is on the verge of a climate catastrophe where billions of people are already feeling the consequences. Energy-related CO2 emissions for 2021 rose by 6 per cent, reaching their highest level ever and completely wiping out pandemic-related declines.

To avoid the worst effects of climate change, as set out in the Paris Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions will need to peak before 2025 and then decline by 43 per cent by 2030 from 2010 level, falling to net zero by 2050.

Instead, under current voluntary national commitments to climate action, greenhouse gas emissions will rise by nearly 14 per cent by 2030.

A Road Map out of Crises

The road map laid out in establishing the Sustainable Development Goals has always been clear. Just as the impact of crises is compounded when they are linked, so are the solutions.

In taking action to strengthen social protection systems, improve public services and invest in clean energy, we address the root causes of increasing inequality, environmental degradation and climate change.

We have a valuable tool in the release of The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 to understand our current state of affairs. What’s more, in order to understand where we are and where we are headed, significant investment in our data and information infrastructure is required.

Policies, programmes and resources aimed at protecting people during this most challenging time will inevitably fall short without the evidence needed to focus interventions.

Timely, high-quality and disaggregated data can help trigger more targeted responses, anticipate future needs, and hone the design of urgently needed actions. To emerge stronger from the crisis and prepare for unknown challenges ahead, funding statistical development must be a priority for national governments and the international community.

As the SDG Report 2022 underscores the severity and magnitude of the challenges before us, this requires accelerated global-scale action that is committed to and follows the SDG roadmap.

We know the solutions and we have the roadmap to guide us in weathering the storm and coming out stronger and better together.

Stefan Schweinfest is Director of the Statistics Division in the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). Under his leadership, the Division compiles and disseminates global statistical information, develops standards and norms for statistical activities including the integration of geospatial, statistical and other information, and supports countries’ efforts to strengthen their national statistical and geospatial systems.

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

A World of 8 Billion, Yes, But Only a Few Are Seen as Human Beings

Thu, 07/07/2022 - 18:14

Since the middle of the 20th century, the world has experienced unprecedented population growth. The world’s population more than tripled in size between 1950 and 2020.. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jul 7 2022 (IPS)

Far-right Brazilian president, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, was quoted a year ago or so as saying to a small group of indogenous people that they “now look a bit more like humans.”

Tragically, a vast majority of this year’s record world population of 8 millions is harshly neglected and seen as just disturbing numbers, if ever treated as such humans.

The world’s population has been growing too fast and, with it, the wave of staggering inequalities, human rights abuses and shockingly growing violence.

During the period from 2000 to 2020, even though the global population grew at an average annual rate of 1.2%, 48 countries or areas grew at least twice as fast: these included 33 countries or areas in Africa and 12 in Asia

The facts about such a high speed population growth speak for themselves: for instance, it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population to grow to 1 billion – then in just another 200 years or so, it grew sevenfold.

According to 2022 World Population Day (July 11), in 2011, the global population reached the 7 billion mark, it stood at almost 7.9 billion in 2021, and it’s expected to grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.9 billion in 2100.

In short: the world’s population more than tripled in size in barely half a century, between 1950 and 2020.

This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanisation and accelerating migration, explains the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come.

A good number of demographers may marvel at the advancements in health that have extended lifespans, reduced maternal mortality and child mortality and given rise to vaccine development in record time.

Others will tout technological innovations that have eased our lives and connected us more than ever. Still others will herald gains in gender equality, says the UN.

Inequality, discrimination, harassment, violence…

“But progress is not universal, throwing inequality into razor-sharp relief.”

The same concerns and challenges raised 11 years ago remain or have worsened: climate change, violence, discrimination, warns the World Population Day.

“The world reached a particularly grim milestone in May: More than 100 million forcibly displaced worldwide.”

In an ideal world, 8 billion people means 8 billion opportunities for healthier societies empowered by rights and choices.

But the playing field is not and has never been even. Based on gender, ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation, disability and origin, among other factors, too many are still exposed to discrimination, harassment and violence, warns the United Nations.

The wider picture

In fact, world’s politicians and media, in particular those of the heavily industrialised countries, have long been ignoring the other side of the coin. See for example:

The richest 1% pollutes more than the poorest 50%. In fact, the Group of 20 major economies (G20) accounts for 78% of global greenhouse gas emissions.In contrast, in the specific case of Africa –54 countries home to 1.4 billion humans– causes a negligible 2% to 3% of all global greenhouse emissions, however it falls victim to more than 80% of the world’s climate catastrophes;
Five more planets earth urgently needed if the current depletion of natural resources continues as expected;
The risk of turning Planet Earth into a giant desert
At the same time, alongside the causes of climate emergency, such a voracious profit-making business has been also leading to a fast growing land degradation and desertification.

Who is behind the destruction of biodiversity? Obviously, those who have been making voracious profits by exploiting the essential infrastructure of all kinds of life on Earth, through their industrial intensive agriculture, the collection of genetic resources of flora and fauna to register them as their own “property”, the production of genetically modified food, and the over-use of chemicals.

They are also the big timber business destroying forests, inducing the waste of huge amounts of agriculture and livestock products to keep their prices the most profitable possible, and a long, very long etcetera.

Meanwhile, Big business depletes Nature and supplants it with synthetic food. In fact, the fast increasing impact of such depletion, alongside conflicts and climate crises, have pushed millions of humans to flee their homes and migrate.

But in addition to dying in their migration journeys, they also fall easy prey to human trafficking and smuggling. See for example: Slave Markets Open 24/7: Refugee Babies, Boys, Girls, Women, Men…

Simultaneously,nuclear-armed powers continue to squander $156.000 per minute on their MAD Policy

One consequence is that right now there are new world records: more weapons than ever. And a hunger crisis like no other

Fertility rates, life expectancy, urbanisation…

Now back to the issue of population growth. The recent past has seen enormous changes in fertility rates and life expectancy. In the early 1970s, women had on average 4.5 children each; by 2015, total fertility for the world had fallen to below 2.5 children per woman.

Meanwhile, average global life spans have risen, from 64.6 years in the early 1990s to 72.6 years in 2019, according to this year’s World Population Day.

In addition, the world is seeing high levels of urbanisation and accelerating migration. 2007 was the first year in which more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas, and by 2050 about 66% of the world population will be living in cities.”

These megatrends have far-reaching implications. They affect economic development, employment, income distribution, poverty and social protections. They also affect efforts to ensure universal access to health care, education, housing, sanitation, water, food and energy.

More facts and figures

On the occasion of World Population Day, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) reported the following:

Since the middle of the 20th century, the world has experienced unprecedented population growth. The world’s population more than tripled in size between 1950 and 2020.
The growth rate of the world’s population reached a peak between 1965 and 1970, when human numbers were increasing by an average of 2.1% per year.
During the period from 2000 to 2020, even though the global population grew at an average annual rate of 1.2%, 48 countries or areas grew at least twice as fast: these included 33 countries or areas in Africa and 12 in Asia.
The life span of adults in the developed world has increased since the middle of the 20th century – the number of people reaching the age of 100 years has never been greater than it is today.

Now that you have the two sides of today’s world before your eyes, please always consider the “human” face of the numbers.

Categories: Africa

Indigenous Peoples Must Continue To Challenge Human Rights Violations: PODCAST

Thu, 07/07/2022 - 11:51

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jul 7 2022 (IPS)

Today we are starting a new series focused on human rights. For people working to create a more sustainable and just world – as we are – a human rights based approach makes sense as it starts from the premise that only by recognizing and protecting the dignity inherent in all people can we attain those goals.

Today’s guest, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, has immense experience in human rights. She is the founder and executive director of Tebtebba Foundation, which works to improve the lives of Indigenous peoples in the Philippines, her home country, and beyond. She was the Chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples from 2005 To 2010, and UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 2014 to 2020.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode — from Vicky’s analysis of her time as special rapporteur to recent rhetoric around ‘building back better’, the circular economy and other touted economic reforms, versus the reality on the ground. Indigenous communities are facing growing pressure from both states and the private sector to extract the natural resources that they are trying to protect. This dichotomy between the words and deeds of these powerful actors must be continually exposed and challenged by Indigenous peoples, says Vicky.

Asked whether governments of poorer countries are doing enough to protect human rights, without hesitating Vicky answers no. But she also points out that these countries are themselves pressured by international agreements, brokered largely by rich countries, that leave them with few options but to exploit natural resources.

She also tells me about an exciting project — the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, a body of 23 global experts, is creating a General Recommendation on Indigenous women and girls. Among other things, it recognize the individual and collective rights of Indigenous women, the latter including respect for their rights to land, languages and other culture. Vicki says it is the first time that a UN treaty body is developing a recommendation focussed on Indigenous women.

Resources

Tebtebba Foundation

UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples

UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigneous Peoples

IPS Coverage About Indigenous Peoples Rights

Categories: Africa

Sanctions Are a Boomerang

Thu, 07/07/2022 - 09:04

The "bodegones" are Venezuela's new commercial boom. They sell imported products, mostly from the United States despite the sanctions, and have spread into middle and lower-middle class neighborhoods in Caracas and other cities, to attract consumers who receive remittances of foreign currency from the millions of Venezuelans who have migrated in recent years. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 7 2022 (IPS)

Economic sanctions against countries whose behavior is reproached by the West operate as punishment although they fail in their declared political objectives, and in cases such as Venezuela the contrast is clearly on display in the windows of high-end stores that sell imported goods.

“Experience has shown that sanctions are an instrument that does not achieve the supposed objective, political change, as in the cases of Cuba and now also in Venezuela,” Luis Oliveros, professor of economics at the Metropolitan and Central universities of Venezuela, told IPS.

"There is a club of sanctioned countries, they feed off each other, share information and mechanisms to circumvent sanctions, and they cooperate with each other, such as Russia with China or Iran, or Cuba and Iran with Venezuela, even obtaining support from third party countries such as Turkey." -- Luis Oliveros
Moreover, “there is a club of sanctioned countries, they feed off each other, share information and mechanisms to circumvent sanctions, and they cooperate with each other, such as Russia with China or Iran, or Cuba and Iran with Venezuela, even obtaining support from third party countries such as Turkey,” said Oliveros.

The most commonly used sanctions are bans on exports and imports, financial transactions, obtaining technology, spare parts and weapons, and travel and trade; the freezing of assets; the withdrawal of visas; bans on entering the sanctioning country; the expulsion of undesirable individuals; and the blocking of bank accounts.

Russia became embroiled in a thick web of sanctions since its troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and measures against its products, operations, institutions and authorities, which numbered 2,754 before the conflict, according to the private organization Statista, have now climbed to 10,536 and counting.

Following Russia on that list of punishments of various kinds are Iran, which faces 3,616 sanctions, Syria (2,608), North Korea (2,077), Venezuela (651), Myanmar (510), and Cuba (208).

The major sanctioners are the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan, Israel and Switzerland.

In the case of Iran and North Korea, sanctions have mainly punished their nuclear development programs. Pyongyang has not stopped its missile tests and Tehran flips the switch on its nuclear program according to the vagaries of Washington’s international policy.

A pro-government march in Caracas against the sanctions imposed by the United States on civilian and military officials and several public companies, as a measure of pressure against the government of President Nicolás Maduro. The president blames the sanctions for all the country’s problems, which have driven 6.1 million people to migrate since he first took office. CREDIT: VTV

The Russian impact

Like a boomerang, sanctions sometimes hurt their proponents, and in the case of Russia their effects are felt in every corner of the planet.

Chinese President Xi Jinping warned on Jun. 23 that sanctions “are becoming a weapon in the world economy.”

“Economic sanctions deliver bigger global shocks than ever before and are easier to evade,” observed Nicholas Mulder, author of “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War.”

Mulder, an assistant professor in the history department of Cornell University in the U.S. state of New York, argues that “not since the 1930s has an economy the size of Russia’s been placed under such a wide array of commercial restrictions as those imposed in response to its invasion of Ukraine.” He was referring to measures against Italy and Japan after the invasions of Ethiopia and China.

The difference is that “Russia today is a major exporter of oil, grain, and other key commodities, and the global economy is far more integrated. As a result, today’s sanctions have global economic effects far greater than anything seen before,” says Mulder.

Industrialized economies in Europe and North America have been impacted by energy price hikes, and as sanctions remove Russian raw materials from global supply chains, prices are rising and affecting the cost of imports and the finances of less developed countries, says the author.

In Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, there are fears of increased food insecurity as supplies of grain, cooking oil and fertilizers from Ukraine and Russia have been disrupted and the costs have been driven up.

“The result of these changes is that today’s sanctions can cause graver commercial losses than ever before, but they can also be weakened in new ways through trade diversion and evasion,” Mulder warned in a paper released in June by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Nazanin Armanian, an Iranian political scientist exiled in Spain, argues that “the tactic of shocking the economy of rivals and enemies suffers from two problems: neglecting the risk of radicalization of those who feel humiliated and ignoring the network of connections in a world that is a village.”

She cites the example of Iran, which has found multiple ways to export its oil. That is also the case of Cuba, which has endured and circumvented U.S. sanctions for more than 60 years.

With respect to Cuba, it was then President Barack Obama (2009-2017) who said on Dec. 17, 2014 that “It is clear that decades of U.S. isolation of Cuba have failed to accomplish our enduring objective of promoting the emergence of a democratic, prosperous, and stable Cuba.”

The U.S. sanctions against Venezuela do not prevent luxurious commercial establishments in Caracas and other Venezuelan cities from selling U.S. and European products for consumption by a minority with ample access to foreign currency, benefited by the tax exemption on remittances. Meanwhile, four-fifths of the population are immersed in poverty. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS

The case of Venezuela

It was also Obama who on Mar. 15, 2015 declared in an executive order the government of Venezuela as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” and that year sanctions were initiated against Venezuelan authorities, companies and public institutions.

Since then, Washington has sanctioned with a range of measures dozens of officials and their families, military commanders, government leaders, businesspersons who negotiate with the government and some one hundred companies, both public and private.

The EU also adopted sanctions, as did Canada and Panama, and U.S. sanctions also affect third country companies that do business with the Venezuelan government.

When the United States stopped buying Venezuelan crude oil and banned the sale of supplies to produce gasoline, Caracas appealed with some success to Iran, which has also sent equipment and personnel to refurbish Venezuela’s rundown refineries.

But the most visible demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the sanctions is that imported products are displayed and sold in hundreds of stores in Caracas and other cities and towns, even if only a minority can afford to buy them regularly.

There has been a proliferation of “bodegones” – up to 800 have been counted in Caracas, a crowded city of 3.5 million people located in a valley surrounded by mountains – the name given to new or quickly refurbished stores to give them a sophisticated appearance and satisfy tastes or the need to acquire imported foodstuffs and other perishable products, after years of widespread shortages.

The bodegones, as well as appliance stores and a handful of high-end restaurants and bars, have been the battering ram of the de facto dollarization that reigns in Venezuela, alongside the disdain for the bolivar as currency and the use of the Brazilian real and the Colombian peso in the border areas with those two countries.

Washington allows the export of food, agricultural, medicinal and hygiene products, while U.S. brands or imitations are imported from Asia, as well as household appliances, telephone and computer equipment and accessories. Wines, liquors and cosmetics arrive without major problems from Europe.

An apparent “bonanza bubble” has arisen, limited to trade and consumption by a minority, fed with income from the State – which sells minerals and other resources with a total lack of transparency -, and with remittances from the millions of Venezuelans who have migrated to escape the crisis over the last eight years.

In that period, poverty has expanded until reaching four-fifths of the country’s 28 million inhabitants and they have also suffered three years of hyperinflation. For this crisis, the government of President Nicolás Maduro tirelessly and systematically blames the sanctions from abroad.

The sanctions “have been an excellent business for the Maduro administration, because not only did it unify its forces based on a common external objective, but it forgot about paying the foreign debt and, under a state of emergency, exports without transparency or accountability, in a black market,” said Oliveros.
.
In addition, “a good part of the opposition put all its eggs in the sanctions basket and forgot about doing political work, and that is why the public, after so many years of difficulties, are questioning the results of that strategy,” he added.

In short, “instead of helping to bring about political change, what the sanctions have done is to keep Maduro in power,” said Oliveros.

In the cases of Venezuela and Iran, Washington and its European partners are interested in obtaining gestures of change – in the Venezuelan case, resumption of dialogue with the opposition – that would justify a relaxation of sanctions, which in turn would lead to an increase in oil supplies, now that Russian oil is facing restrictions.

Meanwhile, with respect to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, as well as countries opposed by the West on other continents, sanctions continue to function, in the eyes of public opinion in the countries that impose them, as a sign of political will to punish governments considered enemies, troublemakers or outlaws.

Categories: Africa

Myths Fuel Xenophobic Sentiment in South Africa

Thu, 07/07/2022 - 08:27

Around the world, from Syria to Libya, from Bangladesh to Ukraine, millions have become refugees in foreign lands due to war, famine, or political and economic instability in their countries. After South Africa gained freedom in 1994, Africa’s powerhouse became a magnet for migrants from politically and economically unstable African and Asian countries. But in […]

Categories: Africa

UN Predicts 68 Percent of World’s Population will be Living in Urban Areas by 2050

Thu, 07/07/2022 - 07:35

A residential building in Nairobi, Kenya. According to UN estimates, by 2050 about 68 per cent of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. Credit: UN-Habitat/Kirsten Milhahn

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jul 7 2022 (IPS)

When we think of urbanization we often end up referring to the increasing number of megalopolises that are sprawling around the world.

Yet less thoughts are given on the fact that the future patterns of urbanization will be centered on secondary cities or semi urban spaces, now becoming extensions of these gigantic cities.

It means that the world will continue to urbanize even though the world share of population living in this new urban continuum is forecasted to slow down, reaching 58 per cent in the next fifty years according to data from UN Habitat.

Yet, especially in the developing world, such reduction will still bring in a whopping increase of 76% of the number of cities in low income nations that in practically terms will mean a rise of 2.2 billion residents mostly in Africa and Asia.

These are some of the key findings of the World Cities Report 2022, the flagship publication of UN Habitat that was recently launched in occasion of the 11th World Urban Forum, the biannual event that was held last week in Poland, bringing together top policy makers, experts and activists working in the area of urbanization.

The insights and discussions enabled by these publications and events are indispensable to activate the so called New Urban Agenda, a strategically important though overlooked agenda to rethink sustainability from the perspectives of those living in the cities.

Unfortunately there is still so much to be done here and unsurprisingly there are huge constraints in terms of funding to implement this vision even though more recently, several financial commitments have been done, including a massive boost in resilient infrastructures during the recently held G7.

The international community should be indeed worried and not only in terms of bridging the resource gap for a sustainable urbanization.

Global leaders need to seize the opportunity and reconsider the ways cities are governed.

While it remains paramount to think in terms of the future of the millions of people living in big cities, the trends and patterns are pointing to the urgency of systematically thinking about governing urban spaces in terms of multilevel governance.

It means we need to work on a future system of policy making and decision making that is able to function and deliver beyond a single administrative jurisdiction.

Such a model must be capable to address the needs of the people living within and in the peripheries from three key dimension, spatial, social and economic.

The opportunity here is not only about re-thinking the existing boundaries, merging existing administrative units, creating bigger and more extended centers of power with the tools and resources of governing entire metropolitan regions.

This, in itself, would be a mammoth task because it will eat away power to different, often overlapping and certainly inadequate local bodies of governance now in existence.

The real chance we need to seize is to re-think, holistically, the way local governance works and take action on the general ineffectiveness of local bodies in terms of social inclusion.

Securing stronger and more resilient cities, able to withstand the more frequent shocks and hazards, will require a new social compact, a re-distribution of powers between local governments in charge of urban spaces and the citizenry, especially those left behind.

This latter group is at the core of the recommendations World Cities Report 2022, highlighting how vulnerable citizens must shift from being “passive victims” of current patterns of urbanization to “active urban change agents”.

Such pivot towards the downtrodden can be successful if we go beyond the traditional recipe made only by stronger social policies.

This is a formula that tends to largely be centered around, on the one hand, more sophisticated and generous social protection schemes like universal basic income and, on the other, around health coverage and housing.

These three social areas of interventions, together with quality and affordable education, are extremely important but we need to imagine a new social contract in terms of participation and engagement.

Indeed, according to the so called Urban Resilience Principles, the guiding pillars for a different vision for the future of cities, it is essential to ensure a meaningful participation of the people, especially those disadvantaged, in the planning and governance of any future urban governance system.

“With ever larger cities, the distance between governments and their citizens has increased” explains the World Cities Report 2022 report.

“Effective communication, meaningful participation opportunities and accountability structures built into integrated governance relationships are all necessary responses for addressing the trust equation”.

The document goes even further, calling for new forms of collaborative governance that involve different stakeholders joining the decision making process.

That’s why deliberative democracy, often at the fringes of the political science studies, is now being rediscovered as a possible remedy to the distance between traditional decision makers and citizens.

Obviously there is one particular group that, not only has huge stakes in the future of urban spaces but also can play a vital role to re-animate the debate about more bottom up, participatory forms of democratic decision making: the youths.

Some attempts are being made in this direction.

Over the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting held on the 27th of April to review the progress taken so far in implementing the New Urban Agenda, the Youth 2030 Cities initiative brought together youths from Ecuador, Colombia and Ghana to discuss about their role and their contributions for a better urban future.

The event was a culmination of trainings and discussions in six different countries around the world, an exercise that led to the preparation of “DeclarACTIONS”, roadmaps and at the same time real blueprints for youths driven changes around sustainable urbanization.

These are not just aspirational documents but they contain concrete and practical proposals, result of a long raging series of interventions supported by UN Habitat and the Foundation Botnar.

The Youth 2030 Cities program is an example of how it is possible to enable youth to convene and discuss.

Potentially, it can be seen, as a bold attempt at expanding the decision making process at local level.

The challenge will be on how to shift from pilot mode to an approach that systematically includes all citizens, including the youth, in the policy and decision making processes.

An institution like UN-Habitat has a very important mandate to mainstream participatory processes across the developing and emerging world, enabling new transformative ways for people to be involved and engaged.

System ways partnerships, starting from within the UN System, can harness the potential shown when youths are allowed to discuss and debate.

The dynamics facilitated by Youth 2030 Cities, can truly bring transformative changes but with them, we need bold and farsighted vision from the world leaders.

Let’s not forget that, real change will happen when people, especially the youths, are empowered, not just to be consulted and be able to express their opinion, but when are enabled to take binding decisions.

The fact that also the World Urban Forum 11 saw the same Youth 2030 Cities youth to gather for a global “DeclarAction”, is promising but the road ahead is still indeed very steep.

Simone Galimberti is co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

Differently-Abled Farmers Integrate Digital Technology, Aim To Set Example For Others

Wed, 07/06/2022 - 18:43

Hidden in Pathumthaini province just outside of Bangkok, 0.24 hectares of land adjacent to Seangsan temple has been turned into an urban vegetable farm managed by members of the Association of the Physically handicapped of Pathumthani. ‘Farm Samart, Khon Sama’ consists of a large open greenhouse that sits at the back of the land. In […]

Categories: Africa

Tap Into Indigenous Knowledge To Preserve Our Forests

Wed, 07/06/2022 - 11:51

Sylvie Djacbou, Exchanging with indigenous communities and somes civil societies around the Impact of Cameroon growth and employment strategy through structural projects like Agro-industries on Indigenous communities. @inside their sacred forest, Assok/Mintom, South Region Cameroon

By Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue
YAOUNDÉ, Jul 6 2022 (IPS)

A few years ago, I found myself in the Baka indigenous sacred forest in Assok, in Cameroon in the course of my work in supporting them to preserve their forest against land grabbers. We were building a forest hut using only leaves and the knowledge of our indigenous partners.

I was skeptical when we started. “What about rain,” I thought. But the leaves were placed in a way that the rain simply flowed down the sides. Inside was warm and dry.

Indigenous forest peoples are recognized as the first inhabitants of the forests around the world. For millennia Indigenous People have lived symbiotically with nature – gathering fruits and insects; hunting, and protecting the environment they rely upon.

I’ve seen the power of Indigenous Peoples’ ancestral knowledge and wisdom about forest and biodiversity sustainable management. If we embrace this expertise we will be taking the most cost-effective ways to reduce poverty, preserve biodiversity, halt deforestation and contribute to reducing the harmful effects of climate change

In the Congo Basin, around 50 million Indigenous Peoples depend on forests yet they are the most vulnerable, the most marginalized and the poorest inhabitants of a region that stretches across some five countries including Cameroon, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I have interacted with various indigenous people over the last decade as part of my work as an environmental advocate. In Cameroon, where I live, the Indigenous World 2022 Report estimates Baka, Bagyeli and Bedzang peoples represent 0.4% of the total population while the Mbororo pastoralists make up 12%. These interactions include numerous field visits to their ancestral land where I have admired their solidarity and harmony in living with nature.

Over the generations, Indigenous People have developed their own codes of forest conservation, including preventing overhunting with methods that include rotational hunting and harvesting. For instance, the Baka don’t hunt in sacred sites, at a place where a newborn has been circumcised and nor do they hunt large mammals. They eat only fresh meat so hunt only that which can be consumed.

I am amazed by their extensive knowledge of forest medicinal plants and their uses. Prior to the expropriation of their ancestral land by logging and Agribusiness companies, they hardly went to the hospital. While COVID-19 and deforestation have changed that, we still have much to learn from them. For them, forest conservation is not an isolated, compartmentalized concept but an integrated part of their lives.

Yet their very rich traditional culture-and often their lives are at risk: experts say up to 10 indigenous linguistic identities are at risk of disappearing. Embedded in that language is identity and their cultural knowledge, which will also disappear.

When we mark International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9, we can expect politicians to invite them for photo ops and public appearances. But we have to ask what will be done to really prevent them and their language and expertise from disappearing?

Globally, this is a powerful path forward for responding to climate change, improving the environmental, and advancing justice. Indigenous Peoples make up about 6.2% of the world’s population, but they safeguard 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. Their sophisticated knowledge of the natural forest – documented by scientific research worldwide – allows forests and biodiversity to flourish. Their sustainable land use fights climate change and builds resilience to natural disasters and pandemic.

Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue

Among the recommendations made by Indigenous leaders at the last COP 26 global climate conference, was the recognition of the rights and land tenure of Indigenous Peoples’ to land, forest and water and that Indigenous Peoples, as knowledge holders, should be able to participate directly with their own voices in the UN process to ensure that their “rights, cultures, lands and ways of life” be respected. US$1.7 billion was announced during the last COP 26 to help Indigenous and local communities protect the biodiversity of tropical forests that are vital to protecting the planet from climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemic risk.

Little has changed on the ground, despite another recent paper further confirming that traditional ways of using and managing biodiversity are grounded in progressive principles of sustainability. In short, indigenous knowledge and management systems represent critical yet frequently untapped resources in global conservation efforts.

Despite this evidence and policy recommendations, it is business as usual where conflict, insecurity, lack of recognition of Indigenous Peoples land rights, expropriation, lack of inclusion and participation in the decision-making process continues.

COP27 will take place in Egypt, an African country, this year. It is my hope that a delegation from the Congo Basin will not only be there but will influence climate change policies and decisions.

Indigenous Forest Peoples cannot assume the burden of global conservation and climate mitigation challenges without our support.

My question to the global climate leaders and government authorities is this: what has happened to the COP 26 IPLC forest tenure Joint Donor Statement that pledged for support indigenous people’s land tenure rights and guardianship of the world’s forests?

Business as usual will not save us. If we don’t act to preserve our forest guardians and their knowledge and properly involve them in our conservation effort, we will lose their rich wisdom and knowledge.

Without healthy, thriving forests, we will never see the sustainable future we are aiming for.

Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue is a 2022 New Voices Fellow, Co-Founder of Youth in Action (YouAct) and Greenpeace Africa forest Campaigner. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Categories: Africa

Recovering Edible Food from Waste Provides Environmental and Social Solutions in Argentina

Wed, 07/06/2022 - 09:43

Tomasa Chávez, bundled up against the cold of the southern hemisphere winter, works at the Central Market in Buenos Aires, where she was hired in 2021 to separate edible waste that can be recovered. Until then, she went there daily on her own for 30 years to look for food and other recyclable materials among the waste that has now been given new value. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 6 2022 (IPS)

For 30 years, Tomasa Chávez visited the Central Market of Buenos Aires and rummaged through the tons of fruits and vegetables that the stallholders discarded, in search of food. Today she continues to do so, but there is a difference: since 2021 she has been one of the workers hired to recover food as part of a formal program launched by the Central Market.

“Before, I used to come almost every day and collect whatever was edible and whatever could be sold in my neighborhood. Food, cardboard, wood… Now I still come to separate edible food, but I work from 7:00 to 15:00 and I get paid some money,” the short, good-natured woman told IPS.

The Central Market of the Argentine capital is a universe that seems vast and unfathomable to those who venture into it for the first time.

Covering 550 hectares in the municipality of La Matanza, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, it is full of life; to describe it merely as a central market that supplies fruits and vegetables to a metropolis of 15 million inhabitants would be an oversimplification.

In the market there are large companies and small businesses, streets, avenues, warehouses, buildings and even areas taken over by homeless people and a rehabilitation center for people with substance abuse problems. In some places people are crowded among crates of fruit and the noise is overwhelming, but there are also large empty areas where everything is quiet.

Nearly 1,000 trucks enter the Central Market every day to pick up fresh food that is sold in the stores of the city and Greater Buenos Aires. Every month, 106,000 tons of fruits and vegetables are sold, according to official data.

There is also a retail market with food of all kinds, attended by thousands of people from all over the city, in search of better prices than in their neighborhoods, in a context of inflation that does not stop growing – it already exceeds 60 percent annually – and which is destroying the buying power of the middle class and the poor.

View of one of the 12 bays where the fruits and vegetables that supply the 15 million inhabitants of the Greater Buenos Aires region are sold wholesale. The activity begins at 2:00 a.m. and every day some 1,000 trucks enter the market and some 10,000 people work there. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

As a reflection of the social situation in Argentina, where even before the COVID-19 pandemic the poverty rate exceeded 40 percent, a common image of the Market has been that of hundreds of people like Chávez rummaging through the waste, looking for something to eat or to sell.

But since August 2021, much of that energy has been poured into the Waste Reduction and Recovery Program, which is based on two main ideas: to use food fit for consumption for social assistance and the rest for the production of compost or organic fertilizer to promote agroecology.

“There was a social and environmental problem that needed to be addressed. Today we have fewer losses, we provide social assistance and create jobs,” Marisol Troya, quality and transparency manager at the Central Market, told IPS.

Coping with the crisis

The 12 gigantic bays where fruits and vegetables are sold wholesale are the heart of the Central Market, which employs 800 people and where a total of 10,000 people work every day.

At 2:00 a.m. the activity begins every day in the market with frenetic movement of crates containing local products from all over Argentina and neighboring countries, which are a festival of colors. Each bay has 55 stalls.

Three people look for food in a container of discarded products at the Central Market of Buenos Aires, where more than 100,000 tons of fruits and vegetables are sold every month to supply retail stores in the Argentine capital and its suburbs. With the recovery program, the Market seeks to provide environmental and social solutions. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“The search for food among the Market’s waste was spurred by the economic crisis and the pandemic,” said Marcelo Pascal, a consultant to the management. “We realized very quickly that there was a lot of merchandise in good condition that was discarded for commercial reasons but could be recuperated.

“There were even small stands that used vegetables found in the garbage. A lot of edible products were recovered, but the process was disorderly, so an effort was made to organize it,” he told IPS.

From August 2021 to June 2022, 1,891 tons of food were recovered for social aid, while 3,276 tons have been used to make compost, according to official figures from the Central Market, which is run by a board of directors made up of representatives of the central, provincial and city governments.

“We have reduced by 48 percent the amount of garbage that the Market was sending to landfills for final disposal, which was 50 tons a day,” agronomist Fabián Rainoldi, head of the Waste Reduction Program, told IPS.

Fabián Rainoldi, head of the Waste Reduction and Recovery Program of the Central Market of Buenos Aires, stands in front of one of the mountains of organic waste that are used to produce compost, which serves as fertilizer for agroecological enterprises. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Orderly recovery of edible products

Justo Gregorio Ayala is working in an esplanade next to one of the wholesale bays. In front of him he has a crate of bruised tomatoes, impossible to sell at a store, but many of which are ripe and edible. His task is to separate the edible ones from the waste.

“I live here in the Market, in the Hogar de Cristo San Cayetano, and six months ago I got this job,” Ayala said, referring to the rehab center for addicts that opened in 2020 inside the Market itself.

“There were always a lot of products to recover in the Market, but now we do it better,” added Ayala, who is one of the workers hired for the Program.

He clarified, however, that the scenario varies depending on the temperature. “In summertime, because of the heat, the fruits and vegetables last much less time and the stallholders throw away more products. Now in winter we don’t find so much.”

The workers work in eight of the market’s 12 bays. There are a total of 24 workers, divided into groups of three, who separate the merchandise that the stallholders are asked to leave in the center of the bay.

The recovered goods are loaded onto trucks that are taken to a huge warehouse in the Community Action section of the Market, where they are prepared for use in social aid projects.

Justo Gregorio Ayala is one of the 24 workers who select edible fruits and vegetables discarded by vendors at the Buenos Aires Central Market. Since August last year, almost 19,000 tons of food fit for human consumption have been recovered and have gone to soup kitchens and other kinds of social assistance. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“We deliver food to 700 soup kitchens, according to a weekly schedule: about 130 per day,” said Martin Romero, head of the Community Action section, where 22 workers perform their duties, as the first vehicles begin to arrive to pick up their cargo.

“We also put together eight-kilo bags, with whatever we have available, which we deliver to 130 families,” he added to IPS.

What is not fit for human consumption ends up in the composting yard, a plot of land covering almost three hectares, where the process of decomposition of organic matter takes about four months.

“The organic waste is mixed with wood chips made from the crates, which absorb water and reduce the leachate that contaminates the soil. The organic compost is donated to agroecological gardens which use it for fertilization and the recovery of degraded soils,” explained Rainoldi.

The goal is a Central Market that makes use of everything and does not send waste to the dump. It’s a long road that has just begun.

Categories: Africa

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