Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Rosi Orozco
MEXICO CITY, Mar 26 2021 (IPS)

In March 2014, Noemi N. took her own life inside a refuge camp in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, where up until now there are no specialized shelters for victims of human trafficking.

Noemi N hung herself with a shower curtain around her neck after being rescued from a migrant smuggler who took her to be sold in the US without any personal documents. She was only 8 years old.

Rosi Orozco

Her death started a news wave about the victim shelters in Mexico where the most conservative figures indicate 120,000 new human exploitation victims each year, mainly girls and women.

The Mexican criminals who lead this racketeering are as varied as they are dangerous. They compose of 47 groups, ranging from entire families dedicated to sexual exploitation to the most powerful cartel in the world, Jalisco Nueva Generación, considered as the most important touristic destinations encouraging sexual tourism.

The criminals create a spike in victims, while the country suffers a shortage of safe places where the victims can be protected, can seek justice and start a new life. Only four Mexican states have a government specialized shelter.

These government buildings often run with a limited budget and reduced staff capacity who work extra hours to attend to the 1% of victims who manage to flee from their captors and survive to tell their story.

The rest of the Mexican shelters —about 10— are administrated by non-governmental organizations that go to enormous lengths to keep them open and staffed through donations and lotteries.

Comisión Unidos Vs Trata and Fundación Camino a Casa are pioneering civil organizations in the creation of these safe spaces. Their shelters have housed more than 300 survivors since 2007 and they do not rely on governmental funds.

In Mexico, the last three federal administrations have been held by three different political parties: the conservative Acción Nacional, the centrist Revolucionario Institucional, and the leftist Morena.

Due to these political changes, an economic model that requires money from the government would make shelters dependent on each election campaign.

Only the independence of political power guarantees that these safe spaces remain open every day of every year, regardless of any events including the elections.

However, that freedom has its costs. Sometimes very high costs. For example, human rights defenders who run shelters never know exactly how much they will be able to raise each year and whether that money will be enough to cover the basic needs.

Each survivor requires an investment of about $ 900 per month for food, clothing, legal services, medical and psychological fees, school assistance and some recreation or fun.

Also, other costs vary according to each victim: Comisión Unidos Vs. Trata and the NGO Alas Abiertas have arranged free reconstructive surgeries for Zunduri, tortured at a dry cleaners; the purchase of two vehicles so that Erika and Estrella, forced into prostitution, could have an income by driving taxis; or the salary for one of the best activists in the world, Karla, who survived more than 43 thousand rapes since she was 12 years old.

And, of course, there is the safety issue. A shelter is the last barrier between a victim and a perpetrator. It is where a victim recovers, gets healthy, empowered, speaks up and decides to start a judicial investigation against her perpetrator.

That is why shelters are targeted by organized crime. Criminals locate the houses, watch over them, stalk those who go in and come out of there, chase up to the courts and send death threats expecting that the walls that protect their victims are pulled down or demolished.

The risk also extends to the legal field of those who manage the shelters. These are places where users have a high chance of committing suicide, physically assaulting the staff who care for them… even sexually assaulting other survivors.

These are complex, but also wonderful spaces. Without the shelters, it would be impossible to have more than a thousand sentences against human traffickers, especially in Mexico City and the State of Mexico, where authorities have done an extraordinary job keeping shelters open, despite the difficulties and repeated violence.

This month, the Secretary of the Interior of the Mexican government, Olga Sánchez Cordero, made a historic announcement: the current government will seek greater ties with civil society shelters to advance in the defense of human rights.

The frequent visits from the government to oversee the daily operations of these shelters give hope and open a new chapter in the cooperation between authorities and activists.

For this reason, millions of us dream of opening a shelter in each entity of the country, due to its incalculable value for a country that yearns for peace and justice.

The author is a human rights activist who opened the first shelter for girls and teenagers rescued from sexual commercial exploitation in Mexico. She has published five books on preventing human trafficking; she is the elected Representative of GSN Global Sustainability Network in Latin America.

 

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A day in the life of a coffee grower during harvest season. Credit: Those Coffee People

By Jennifer Poole*
MEDELLIN, Colombia, Mar 26 2021 (IPS)

It’s been just over a year since the Colombian government launched its landmark price stabilization fund. With a budget of $64 million, the fund was designed to provide a hedge against low prices by subsidizing farmers during periods when prices dropped below production costs.

The reason for its introduction was due to the torrid times the nation’s producers had been through during the latter half of the last decade, where wholesale prices regularly dropped below the cost of production. So the fact the fund launched just as COVID-19 was beginning its stranglehold on the global economy was pure luck. But as luck goes, a government underwriting your industry just as the economy comes to a grinding halt is pretty fortunate.

However, far from the stabilization fund needing to be triggered almost as soon as it was launched, in order to mitigate the fallout of COVID-19 – the last 12 months have been a bumper year for Colombian coffee producers. The reasons for this are paradoxically partly due to COVID and partly due to other unforeseen circumstances.

The Coffee Price Stabilization Fund in Context

Although Colombia is the world’s third-biggest coffee producer, production is extremely fragmented. The traditional family-owned smallholdings, known as fincas, have remained virtually intact since the birth of the industry. This has resulted in more than half a million privately owned coffee-producing fincas in the country, with approximately four million Colombians relying on these for their livelihoods.

Most of these fincas don’t produce enough to sell directly to buyers, so they instead sell their beans to the growers-union, the Federacion Nacional de Cafereros de Colombia (FNC). The FNC offer growers a floating internal buy-rate, determined by global wholesale prices, and then sell the produce on international markets.

The problem has been that the floating buy rate offered by the FNC dropped below the cost of production numerous times between 2016 and 2019, with prices falling to their lowest in nearly a decade in the 2018-19 harvest. This meant growers were selling at a loss, with many abandoning the industry altogether.

The Internal Buy Rate Since the Onset of the Pandemic

The FNC floating buy rate had been trending upwards since the middle of 2019 as price recovery took hold after the nadir of the 2018-19 harvest. However, as the below graph shows, the buy rate exploded in March 2020, just as the pandemic took hold, with the price increasing to COP 1,143,193 (USD $319), a 29% increase versus January 2020. And while the price has fluctuated since then, it’s remained extremely buoyant.

To put this into a broader context, the value of coffee production in 2020 was USD $2.52 billion, which equates to a 25% increase on the 2019 figure of USD $2.01 billion.

Graph data courtesy of the FNC’s “coffee prices, area and production” report

The price spike was partly due to the complete collapse in demand for oil in March 2020. With Colombia being an oil-producing nation, the Colombian peso suffered a near 20% drop in value versus the dollar. And with the FNC collecting payments from buyers in dollars, it was able to arbitrage this difference and pass on much of the increased value to growers.

To add to this, Colombia also gained an advantage against its nearby coffee-producing competitors, such as Brazil, which suffered from excessive rain and little solar light in the first trimester of 2020, meaning the country’s coffee harvest was badly affected. There were also fewer coffee exports from Central America due to low manual labor availability. All of these factors created a supply squeeze, both real and feared, which helped to sustain higher prices.

Production and Export Volumes

Colombia wasn’t completely spared some of the inclement weather suffered by its neighbors over the last 12 months. Delayed starts to the rainy seasons as well as the ever-present danger of the broca bettle made a bit of a dent in total production, being 4% down YoY.

Graph data courtesy of the FNC’s “coffee prices, area and production” report

However, a more noticeable impact has been the reduction in export volume over the last 12 months, as global demand reduced slightly during the pandemic. According to the FNC, Colombian coffee exports fell by 8% last year, dropping from 13.7 million 60kg bags in 2019 to 12.5 million 60kg bags in 2020.

Within this context, the fact the value of coffee production grew by 25% YoY in 2020, in spite of the fact export volume fell by 8%, shows just how significant this price rally has been for the nation’s smallholders.

Looking Ahead

Despite the historically high FNC buy rate, this is no reason for producers to become complacent. A unique once-in-a-generation set of circumstances conspired to push prices up to new highs, and for the time being, at least, keep them there.

A worry is that this unexpected bonanza being enjoyed by growers could disincentivize many from making the switch to higher-value specialty crops, which is a key development objective of the FNC. Switching from commercial grade to specialty comes with plenty of risks, which are compounded during a pandemic. And all the while, the FNC is offering record prices for regular commercial-grade crops.

So while it’s impossible to predict when prices may fall to below production costs, recent history tells us we shouldn’t write this off at any point. Add to that the unpredictability of climate change and the longtail impact of COVID which will impact markets in ways not yet foreseen.

And when it comes to the growers themselves, there are still barriers to their economic security in rural areas of Colombia to take into account — such as a lack of connectivity and food insecurity — which mean that if the market situation changes in the near future, they have very little to fall back on, and the price stabilization fund will be needed. But with this novel mechanism remaining untested, its ability to provide a much-needed safety need remains unproven.

*Based in Medellin, Colombia, Jennifer Poole spends her time traveling to remote towns and villages in search of the best specialty coffee the country has to offer. She is an international economist with work experience in North America, South America, East Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East. She received her MBA from IDRAC Ecole Superieure de Commerce in Lyon, France and is heading Those Coffee People’s international business development.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is the co-founder of Colombian specialty green coffee supplier Those Coffee People.

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World Food Programme Deputy Executive Director Amir Abdullah says that no matter how much improvement is made in food production, it will all be futile unless the issue of water security is addressed. He said humanitarian and food aid can never be enough to manage cascading climate shocks. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 2021 (IPS)

The intersection of crisis, climate change and COVID-19 has resulted in a “rapid rise in hunger”, according to United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Deputy Executive Director Amir Abdullah.

He was speaking at the “Building Food and Water Security in an Era of Climate Shocks” event organised by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). The meeting featured representatives from other UN bodies, farmers’ associations and startups working on water security and agriculture around the world.

Abdullah highlighted the numerous disasters that hit globally last year while the world was in the middle of the pandemic: destructive heat waves, wildfires, floods, storms, and locust outbreaks.

“Humanitarian aid can never be enough to manage these cascading shocks that keep breaking down food systems and pushing people into food and water crises,” he said.

He added that no matter how much improvement is made in food production, it will all be futile unless the issue of water security is addressed.

“We can deliver food assistance but if farmers don’t have adequate access to water resources for food production, people will just continue being hungry,” he said. “And if people don’t have access to clean water, they can’t retain the nutrition they need even if we provide them with food assistance.”

Betty Chinyamunyamu, CEO of the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi, said the past decade has witnessed an “onset of weather crises” which have made it extremely difficult for farmers to plan their sales.

“Increased incidences of new pests, diseases and unpredictable weather patterns make it more difficult for farmers to plan their farm enterprises. So when they’re not sure whether they are going to have a flood or whether they are going to have drought, it becomes very difficult to engage in initiatives that would otherwise be very rewarding for them,” Chinyamunyamu said. 

“That unpredictability of weather is really making agriculture less profitable for the farmers,” she added.

Cherrie Atilano, CEO and President of AGREA, which works to ensure fair trade in sustainable agriculture in the Philippines, brought up the importance of collaboration between the private and public sector. She pointed to an example that worked in the Philippines at the beginning of the pandemic.

Just a few days after the first lockdown, many farmers were left wondering where to take their produce, as their mobility had suddenly been restricted, she said. At the same time, in Manila, the country’s capital with a population of more than 12 million, people scrambled for groceries as supermarkets shelves were empty.

Her team addressed this by contacting the agriculture ministry asking for farmers’ access to work to be restored so long as they maintained COVID-19 protocols.

Meanwhile, Chinyamunyamu shared the role that digital platforms and innovative technology played during the crisis, especially in giving access to marginalised groups.

The lockdown was especially disruptive for the farmers in Malawi, because it came at a time which was the “only marketing season” for them, she said. Chinyamunyamu explained that farmers were able to address this challenge through innovative approaches, including using digital technology such as mobile phones

Farmers were able to share information with each other on markets, as well as developments about COVID-19 by communicating via mobile phone. This was especially important for marginalised groups because it established an important way to reach vulnerable communities.

“Even though women still have less access than men to mobile phones, if a woman has a mobile phone, it’s theirs — they have control over the usage,” she said. “So if you pass on information to women through mobile phones, that’s information that goes directly to them.”

However, concerns remain about what lies ahead.

“In the coming decades, many regions around the world are expected to experience increased water scarcity driven by climate change and exacerbated by increasing competition for water resources,” Abdullah said. 

“The battle for water will be one of the next ‘great challenges,’” he added.

Samir Ibrahim, co-founder of SunCulture, a startup for solar-powered generators and water pumps in Africa, shared his experience working with innovative technology on the continent.

He pointed out that new ways for the allocation of funds was crucial for the sustenance of such projects.

“What is important for the ‘newness’ is not necessarily new technologies,” he said. “What we’ve seen is that emerging markets were solving problems that have been solved in other parts of the world.”

He said that while their company did not invent solar irrigation, it was “the first to commercialise in Africa”.

“While technology is incredibly important, we had to do a lot of innovation on battery storage,” he added.

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By External Source
Mar 25 2021 (IPS-Partners)

This short video explores the experiences of COVID-19 in Fiji’s capital, Suva, by University students. The participants reflect on the impact of the virus in the Pacific nation, where themes such as the emotional implications of COVID as well as its effects on the economy, food security, resilience and more are discussed.

They remind us that despite all the negativity that the virus has brought, one has to be hopeful and resilient about the future.

The participants, all students at the University of the South Pacific, are Salote Nasolo (postgraduate student in climate change), Ratu Simione Matanitobua (undergraduate student in land management) and Peni Turagabaleti (postgraduate student in land management).

The video was shot and edited by Tom Vierus / Pacific Media House, and the interviews were conducted by Gregoire Randin.

www.pacificmediahouse.com
www.tomvierus.com

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

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Credit: Temilade Adelaja via Communication for Development Ltd/CGAP, Washington DC

By Elisabeth Rhyne* and Eric Duflos*
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 25 2021 (IPS)

Imagine it is 2025 and that, unfortunately, another pandemic is sweeping the world. Much like in the 2020 crisis, borrowers have seen their livelihoods upended and are struggling to repay loans.

One of the questions before policy makers amid this new crisis is whether to extend moratoria to distressed borrowers. In search of answers, they reflect on the world’s experience with the COVID-19 pandemic and whether moratoria were part of the solution. These policy makers conclude that they did some things right in 2020.

Just days into COVID-19 lockdowns, bank regulators in more than 115 countries granted special permission for financial services providers (FSPs) to extend moratoria to millions of borrowers, especially those with small business and consumer loans. These moratoria were the next best thing to cash in the wallet for borrowers who had lost their jobs or seen their business revenue plummet.

For lower-income countries, whose governments could ill afford welfare payments, moratoria became an important form of economic relief. And by relaxing provisioning on paused loans, these special moratoria also shored up FSPs’ balance sheets and prevented panic in financial systems.

Through the moratoria, the world’s economies put the shock-absorbing capacity of financial systems to good use.

But these policy makers also see that moratoria could have worked better in some respects. So, in 2025, as the world once again turns to moratoria, they are determined to learn the lessons of the past and make moratoria work even better. What do they do differently?

Fair burden sharing

As public health authorities shutter the economy to stop the new pandemic, advocates for lower-income people are already calling on policy makers to spread the economic burden among those better able to bear it.

Policy makers know that moratoria on small loans (as well as evictions and mortgages) will shift some economic pain from lower-income families and small businesses onto banks and landlords — at least, temporarily.

But they recall that, in 2020, FSPs shifted the pain back to small borrowers by allowing interest to accrue and compound during moratoria. Ultimately, borrowers paid to pause their loans – often dearly.

Back in 2020, policy makers debated whether to shift some of the long-term burden of accrued and compounding interest away from borrowers, but it was difficult for them to find a workable solution.

In India, after much debate in the Supreme Court over who should pay this additional interest, the government found a remedy when it agreed to pay banks the compounding portion of borrowers’ interest incurred during moratoria. Implicitly, this decision made moratoria part of the government’s overall pandemic response while affirming the right of the banks to charge fully for delayed payments.

Fortunately, in 2025, several governments have included special provisions in their catastrophe protocols that pledge government funding for a portion of the interest that small loans accrue during moratoria.

This pledge helps to ensure policies intended to help low-income people don’t end up harming them. It has the added benefit of providing banks with a small amount of liquidity during the moratoria period.

Moratoria will also be fairer this time around because policy makers have universally agreed that borrowers should have the right to choose whether to accept or reject a moratorium offer. This was not always the case in 2020.

In some countries, regulators — anxious to prevent panic — and FSPs — wishing to avoid tedious case-by-case administration — promulgated blanket moratoria, even before obtaining agreement from borrowers.

However, some borrowers preferred to keep paying to avoid extra interest charges. In response to push back from borrowers on unilateral moratoria, authorities in Peru affirmed consumers’ right to unwind unwanted moratoria. Today, following this example, regulators the world over require FSPs to notify borrowers of moratoria offers and present them with the option to refuse.

Policy makers have also anticipated the challenge of maintaining borrowers’ standing with credit bureaus. When borrowers accept moratoria during a national emergency, it should not hurt their creditworthiness.

In 2020, there was confusion over how banks should report restructured loans to credit bureaus, how credit bureaus were to incorporate these loans into credit scores, and how new lenders were to use the information.

In India, FSPs simply didn’t report many loans for several months. Eventually, those problems were sorted out. Now, in 2025, credit bureaus follow well-understood protocols for handling loans in moratoria during emergencies.

Preparedness

The emergency protocols that the world’s banking authorities and FSPs put in place after the COVID-19 pandemic also address operational continuity and communications.

Back in 2020, economic lockdowns prevented in-person interactions between lenders and borrowers and often led to breakdowns in communication. In Uganda, loan officers could not meet with customers in the field, and transport restrictions prevented adequate staffing of branches and even call centers. FSPs transacting mainly in cash were caught especially flat-footed.

Thankfully, this problem is behind us now. The pandemic accelerated FSPs’ digitization plans across the world, and record numbers of borrowers started using mobile technology. FSPs serving lower-income customers now routinely communicate and transact digitally.

They have also upgraded their internal systems to handle the irregular schedules of loans in moratoria. And the expansion of digital infrastructure during and after COVID-19 now allows staff to work from home.

Consumer protection

As financial regulators and supervisors prepare for the new moratoria in 2025, they are better equipped to mitigate some of the consumer risks that appeared in 2020. They now use market monitoring tools, such as suptech, consumer phone surveys and mystery shopping, to assess consumer risks in real time. They can quickly spot issues such as abusive collections practices.

Nevertheless, both financial authorities and FSPs have learned from the previous crisis that ensuring good communication and transparency will be challenging. Moratoria are unfamiliar concepts, and the math is complicated.

Learning from 2020, when poor communication led to misunderstandings, mistakes and abuse, regulators have already issued consumer protection rules to ensure the public fully understands moratoria offers and their consequences.

Additionally, communications now flow not just to customers, but also from them. Policy makers are widely using tools that give consumers a collective voice and reveal what they are experiencing.

Several regulators have put consultative bodies in place to have a regular dialogue with consumers, and consumer associations regularly convey issues to them. Such tools proved useful in 2020.

In Peru, for example, the consumer protection agency INDECOPI listened systematically to customers and alerted regulators and FSPs to emerging abuses so that they could respond quickly.

Agility

The COVID-19 pandemic lasted much longer than anyone foresaw, and unanticipated implementation challenges arose. If policy makers learned one thing, was is that you can never anticipate all the ways an emergency will unfold.

Accordingly, the countries that were best prepared for the next pandemic were those that had established channels for authorities and FSPs to work together to respond to evolving conditions.

Source: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) is a global partnership of more than 30 leading development organizations that works to advance the lives of poor people through financial inclusion.

*Elisabeth is the former managing director of the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion. She is a visiting fellow at the Financial Access Initiative and a consultant at CGAP.

*Eric Duflos, Senior Financial Sector Specialist, leads CGAP’s work on consumer protection, from policy, industry and customer perspectives, ensuring that financial services have positive outcomes for customers.

 

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COVID-19 has amplified the omission of disabled people. Credit: Bigstock

By Shubha Nagesh and Sara Rotenberg
DEHRADUN, India/OXFORD, UK, Mar 24 2021 (IPS)

2020 will be remembered as the year that changed the world, as COVID-19 spared no country, no community, and no person. As the pandemic continues in 2021, there is recognition that some groups are impacted more than others, not just by the virus itself, but also by the socio-economic and access inequities exacerbated by global shutdowns. Globally, countries, and organisations are seeking to build back better and address inequities.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, highlighted that we have ignored inequality for too long, putting the poor at greater risk during the pandemic.

UK-based studies corroborate this: people in affluent areas are 50x less likely to die from COVID-19, while people of black ethnicity and disabled people are 4 and 3 times more likely to die from COVID 19, respectively.

Only 0.5% of international development funding goes towards disability-inclusive programs.  despite the fact that people with disabilities make up 15% of the world’s population

A third of 18-24 year olds have lost their job–twice the rate of working age adults. The disproportionate impacts on women include reduced reproductive health rights; increased unpaid care responsibilities; more domestic violence; and a record decrease in women leaving the workforce. Together, these trends threaten global gains on equity and inclusion.

India exemplifies the challenges and inequities so many in low- and middle-income countries faced during the pandemic. India’s poor have been hit the hardest in everything from the disease itself to the economic and social impacts of national lockdowns.

Scores of migrants walked hundreds of kilometres to their villages, exemplifying how people in the informal sector lost their jobs, livelihood, and homes. Public and private healthcare facilities tried to support COVID-19 patients, but reports question the accessibility and equity of the services for the poor. Economically, experts expect that millions of people in India will become impoverished due to the pandemic.

For global health more broadly, the pandemic has threatened to drive back progress made in recent decades and highlighted how we neglected calls for health systems strengthening in recent years. Yet, we see opportunities and calls to ‘build back better’, the global health community must first ask itself “What is wrong with Global Health?” so we avoid these systemic issues and build a more inclusive world.

The reality is that many things went wrong within global health prior to 2020. To date, we have seen certain groups forgotten in the global health space. For instance, only 0.5% of international development funding goes towards disability-inclusive programs.  Even less of this goes directly to global health, despite the fact that people with disabilities make up 15% of the world’s population. COVID-19 has amplified the omission of disabled people.

For example, India’s COVID-19 tracker, Aarogya Setu App, public health guidance, and testing sites have remained inaccessible for disabled people. In lockdowns, disabled people also had difficulties accessing essential food, information, medicines, and supplies.

We suggest three ways to address access inequalities in Global Health:

1. Underrepresented and marginalized groups need better, authentic representation. Global health organizations must continually ask themselves who is not represented or reached in their programs, and actively take steps to fix it. Involving advocates and activists from the very beginning will include the needs of at-risk populations and enhancing acceptance, inclusion and belonging.

2. Global health needs better, timely, factual, and accessible communication. Creating accessible and acceptable communication strategies and messages that are deployed to reach even the most remote areas is key to ensuring global health connects everyone.

3. Act in solidarity. Governments, civil society, and international organisations need to come together to distribute resources proportionately to need. Distributive justice can ensure greater security for all–whether that is for health, income, employment–which ultimately impacts our collective ability to weather catastrophes, like pandemics.

 

COVID-19 has been a pivotal moment and offers a unique opportunity to build back a better, more equitable, healthier world. However, without an explicit focus on inequity, we risk leaving out those who global health has forgotten, despite our moral obligation and duty to protect.

In 2020, we showed that anything is possible with political will, dedicated funding, and global action. In 2021, we need a paradigm shift in our approach to global health so that it captures those who most need it. We must apply what we have learned from collective action for COVID-19 to the greatest challenges facing our society: inequity. By addressing this, we ensure that global health is truly accessible to all.

All views expressed are personal reflections

Shubha Nagesh is a medical doctor and a global health consultant based in Dehradun, India. She strives to make Childhood Disability a global health priority.

Sara Rotenberg is a Rhodes Scholar and DPhil Student in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.

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By IPS Correspondent
DHAKA , Mar 24 2021 (IPS)

The building that was once the largest health centre in the Kutupalong refugee camp, serving some 55,000 Rohingya refugees 24/7, is now a burnt, distorted shell after a massive fire spread through the Cox’s Bazar camp in Bangladesh this week.

And as the tens of thousands of affected Rohingya return to the empty pieces of land that where once their homes, the need to rebuild — both the health facility and their homes — has added impetus because of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the coming monsoon season.

At least 11 people were killed and more than 45,000 Rohingya refugees were been displaced by a massive fire that caused “catastrophic damage” as it spread through the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, the largest refugee camp in the world.

“Tragically, reports from the camps indicate that at least 11 people are said to have lost their lives in the fire and more than 500 others have been injured. Around 400 people are unaccounted for,” the Inter Sector Coordination Group, a group of humanitarian partners said in a statement.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), more than 10,000 shelters were damaged in the fire and the agency’s largest health centre in the camp was destroyed.

“The loss of the 24/7 health centre, which served more than 55,000 people in the last year, now further complicates the challenge of responding to COVID-19,” IOM said in a statement.

It is not clear how the fire started, but according to a World Food Programme report the massive fire broke out in the Kutupalong mega camp on Monday around 3pm local time and spread to three neighbouring camps. 

“The fire that raged through the camps only slowed once it reached the main roads, slopes, canals and rice fields. It has since subsided, but not before consuming essential facilities, shelters and the personal belongings of tens of thousands of people,” IOM said.

IOM, which managed 3 of the affected sites, noted that “the fire affected at least 66 percent of the populations the four affected camps”.

 

With the monsoon season approaching, IOM says it is critical to rebuild the shelters as quickly as possible. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

More than 10,000 refugee shelters were damaged when a devastating fire broke out in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camp, Bangladesh. Some 45,000 Rohingya refugees have been displaced as a result. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

The building that was once the largest health centre in the Kutupalong refugee camp, serving some 55,000 Rohingya refugees 24/7 is now a burnt, distorted shell after a massive fire spread through the Cox’s Bazar camp on Monday, Mar. 22. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

 

Emergency shelter kits that included blankets and other essentials that were distributed by aid agencies to Rohingya refugees. The WFP said it provided 62,000 hot lunches and hot dinners on Tuesday, Mar. 23. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

 

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The UN says global temperature rise could lead to more frequent and more intense extreme weather events, such as prolonged droughts or devastating floods. Nations are “nowhere close” to the level of action needed to fight global warming, according to a UN climate action report released February 2021. The study urged countries to adopt stronger and more ambitious plans to reach the Paris Agreement goals, and limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, by the end of the century. Credit: WFP/Matteo Cosorich

By Naomi Goodman
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Mar 24 2021 (IPS)

We should be well on the way to solving the climate crisis by now.

According to the Paris Agreement, last year should have been the year that all countries presented their commitments to cut carbon emissions for limiting global climate heating to within 1.5oC of pre-industrial levels.

A quarter of the way into 2021, we’ve well and truly passed the original Paris Agreement deadline. We are still awaiting submission of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from some of the most politically and scientifically significant global emitters, climate action further delayed by a devastating global pandemic.

It’s a crisis on top of a crisis. The impacts of the climate crisis are already being felt, and the most vulnerable are the nations that also lack the resilience to weather the storm. Millions of people have already lost their lives to the climate emergency, and it’s mostly happening in the global south.

The picture is incredibly grim. The most recent UNFCCC synthesis report concluded that the contributions presented in 2020, from countries representing around 30% of global emissions, would amount to just a 1% reduction of CO2, instead of the minimal 15% needed from these countries by 2030 to get 1.5oC aligned.

70% of the world’s emissions will be addressed in NDCs yet to be presented ahead of the Glasgow COP26 in November, and we have little idea what we can expect to see.

The two biggest emitters, China and the US, are set to share their NDC targets in the coming months. Their ambition, or lack of ambition, will directly impact our wellbeing for decades to come. What we really need is for these two players to work together with a common purpose, leveraging their diplomatic influence in support of a strong and inclusive multilateral process.

There is always room for hope. China already took the world by surprise with its 2060 carbon neutrality target announcement on the occasion of the UNGA in New York last September, and a promise to peak emissions before 2030. Biden came to power with a strong climate mandate and has pledged that the US will become carbon neutral by 2050.

Solar panels in Tahala – Documentation of a solar energy project in the remote southern village of Tahala, Souss-Massa-Drâa region, Morocco. Credit: Zakaria Wakrim / Greenpeace

But why not hope further? It’s not enough to have long term international pledges without short term domestic measures. China’s NDC could also define the necessary constraints on fossil fuel-based GDP growth. A halt on all new coal infrastructure would enable Beijing to bring that emissions peak forward to 2025, aligning with the 1.5oC Paris goals.

China’s latest five-year plans did not indicate such a concrete decarbonisation pathway, but it could still be achieved. The US would also need to deliver hard policy measures in support of the clean energy transition rhetoric.

In reality, we need to see a 70% emission reduction target from the US by 2030, against 2005 levels, with some observers indicating a figure of 63% or more would be feasible in the context of Biden’s razor thin majority. Whatever the headline number, a credible set of short term domestic measures, executive orders and policy proposals must be offered in support.

We need to see substantial action on the ground from both China and the US, prioritising absolute emission reductions at source, with a meaningful timeline for the managed decline of fossil fuel production alongside a just transition for workers and communities both at home and abroad.

This is a global emergency, it is not just about the US and China, in fact, all countries need to up their ambition. Japan, South Korea and New Zealand need to improve upon the inadequate pledges they’ve so far offered. We are especially calling out Brazil with deforestation rates at their highest in a decade and ever worsening devastation from Amazon forest fires, effectively reducing the ambition of its previous commitment from five years ago, and Australia, whose NDC demonstrated a flatlining of ambition despite multiple of its major ecosystems facing collapse including the Great Barrier Reef.

One of the fundamental values of the UN system is that it has put nations on an equal footing irrespective of their standing; one country, one vote, allows vulnerable nations to be equally heard.

The Paris Agreement cemented the notion of shared responsibility across all nations, but the fact remains that those who had the biggest hand in causing the climate emergency are the countries who need to step up now and deliver the most to solve it.

Many global south countries are suffering the toughest economic consequences from the pandemic, and so we need even stronger leadership from governments that can afford to show ambition.

The EU and the UK, whose NDCs are upgraded but still underwhelming, need to leverage their diplomatic weight and set the example with greater ambition. What is pledged now will either lead us to a future of relative security, or set us on a pathway to uncertainty and danger, where the combination of ecosystem degradation and increasingly damaging weather cycles will have devastating impacts well beyond our conceivable capacity to cope.

Big emitting countries must recognise the significance of this moment and open up space for genuine, long-lasting cooperation, delivering on the spirit of equity as well as the substance of the Paris Agreement: support for finance and adaptation, as well as substantial, improved emission reduction targets which tackle real problems and transformational industrial shifts in good faith.

Every person on this planet deserves a healthy future, clean air and water, food security, and sustainable resilient cities. We need COP26 to give business a clear direction and a level playing field for bringing about the change that needs to happen now to protect our planet for the safety and future of all generations. If governments do not act to solve this crisis their citizens will make them act.

We are calling on leaders to follow the numbers and recognise the urgency of the climate crisis. The world is already at 1.06-1.25oC of climate heating; every decimal point of avoided heating now is critical to our survival on this planet. We’re in a desperate existential emergency but there is still hope.

 

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The post Hope & Numbers: What will it take to Tip the Scales on Climate Action? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is International Climate Political Advisor at Greenpeace International

The post Hope & Numbers: What will it take to Tip the Scales on Climate Action? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

New research suggests that socio-emotional and digital skills are linked to the increased agribusiness skills of youth. Photo: CC by 2.0/iHub

By Abdulrahman Olagunju
IBADAAN, Nigeria, Mar 23 2021 (IPS)

Saheed Babajide, a young animal production graduate and a manager at a national milk production company in Iseyin, Nigeria, is a beneficiary of the government’s youth agriculture intervention programme. But he feels he received almost no training during the three years he participated. 

“We thought we will go through rigorous trainings in our various fields in agriculture, but to our surprise we were just given a training manual merely containing little or nothing about specific agricultural training as a training guide throughout the three years of engagement,” says Babajide of his time during the “N-power AGRO programme”.

The “N-power AGRO programme” was launched in 2016 as a national social investment programme designed to create jobs and empower Nigerians aged 18 to 35.

“Relatively no training was given about our fields, talk less of trainings on critical skills needed to thrive in the 21st Century [such as digital skill and socio-emotional skills]. After our first meeting, many people left to continue their hustle and bustle while they receive their salaries,” he added.

The government pays participating youths salaries during their training. But because of the poor monitoring system, those beneficiaries who left their place of assignment before the programme ended still received these salaries. Babajide admitted that the same happened when he left his place of assignment before the programme ended.

Nigeria, with over 200 million people, is Africa’s most populous country with the continent’s largest youth population. And about 34 percent of its total population is in need of employment.

But to Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), developing agriculture is key to addressing the urgent challenges of food insecurity, poverty and youth unemployment on the continent.

“Developing agriculture is key to addressing these challenges. Youth brings energy and innovation to the mix, but these qualities can be best channelled by young Africans themselves carrying out results-based research in agribusiness and rural development involving young people. Youth engagement is key,” Sanginga said in an opinion editorial.  

According to Nigerian Bureau of Statistics(NBS) Q2 report 2020, “about 55.4 percent of the employable youths are still unemployed”. It is uncertain how  the COVID-19 pandemic affects these figures.

While the government has set up various initiatives to address the issue of unemployment and food security, one study into the N-power AGRO programme showed that over the years the impact or performance of the programme was minimal.

Dr Khadijat Amolegbe, a lecturer at Department of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management, University of Ilorin, Nigeria, conducted a study into another government programme exploring the skills needed to motivate youth to participate in the agricultural sector.

Amolegbe conducted a randomised controlled experiment on Nigerian youth enrolled in the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) — a programme set up by the Nigerian government in 1973 to involve graduates in nation building and development. She measured the youth’s motivation to engage in the agricultural sector by evaluating the following;

• their intention to start an agribusiness venture;
• their intention to register a business name; and
• their intention to save towards starting an agribusiness venture.

Amolegbe is a an awardee of the Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE) In Policy for Youth Engagement in Agribusiness and Rural Economic Activities in Africa project, funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and implemented by IITA.

Amolegbe’s IITA-CARE study revealed that the youth need training beyond basic agricultural skills. According to the research study, “socio-emotional and digital skills, also known as the 21st Century skills are indispensable, not only to motivate youths into agriculture but also help them thrive and survive the new and emerging challenges”.

“We realised that efforts made to motivate youths to participate in the agricultural sector have not yielded tangible results because they focus on basic agribusiness skills. However, youths need other skills that can help them strive the new and emerging challenges because of the risks and uncertainties in the agricultural sector and the changing nature of work around the world,” Amolegbe told IPS.

Sami Hassan is a recent graduate who is currently part of the NYSC. During the service year, graduates are engaged in various programmes designed to facilitate self-reliance among youth and to reduce unemployment.

“We were introduced to the basic skills involved in any field of our choice, but we’re expected to go into the nitty gritty of the technical skill ourselves,” Hassan said. He explained that while digital skills was offered as a course, its application in specific fields such as agriculture were not expanded upon. 

Amolegbe told IPS that although the effect of digital skills in motivating youth engagement in agriculture is still ambiguous, youth with high socio-emotional and digital skills have high agribusiness test scores. This, she said, suggests that socio-emotional and digital skills are linked to increased agribusiness skills.

“With basic knowledge of agribusiness, individuals that receive socio-emotional skills training have positive significant probability of engaging in the agricultural sector than individuals that have receive both socio-emotional skills and digital skills training,” she said.

Among other recommendations, Amolegbe suggested that socio-emotional and digital skills training should be included in interventions targeted at motivating youth to participate in the agricultural sector.

“This will stimulate innovation, increase productivity and also help them prepare to counter the new and emerging challenges along the agricultural value chain,” she added.

The IFAD-sponsored study, which is part of several others carried out by young researchers under the CARE project in 10 countries across Africa, proposed that there should be an investment in digitalising the agricultural sector in Nigeria to enable youth with digital skills engage the sector.

“Input supplies should go beyond basic inputs like seeds and fertilisers, we should also encourage the use of digital tools across the agricultural value chain,” Amolegbe added.

Veronica Valentine, the Executive Director of FarmAgric Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that seeks to empower farmers and efficiently equip them with all the necessary tools to thrive in an evolving society, said the findings from the study gave a great insight into the challenges the youth have entering agriculture.

“Although our training modules at FarmAgric (which we give young farmers) are designed to sort of accommodate digital skills in order to help them in their agribusiness, especially in a digitalised world of today, we find the study very useful and hope government could implement this into their training modules in order to meet the demands of young people looking forward to venture into agriculture,” she said.

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 23 2021 (IPS)

At least 85 poor countries will not have significant access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023. Unfortunately, a year’s delay will cause an estimated 2.5 million avoidable deaths in low and lower-middle income countries. As the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General has put it, the world is at the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.

Anis Chowdhury

Vaccine apartheid
The EU, US, UK, Switzerland, Canada and their allies continue to block the developing country proposal to temporarily suspend the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to enable greatly increased, affordable supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, drugs, tests and equipment.

Meanwhile, 6.4 billion of the 12.5 billion vaccine doses the main producers plan to produce in 2021 have already been pre-ordered, mostly by these countries, with 13% of the global population.

Thirty two European and other rich countries also have options to order more, while Australia and Canada have already secured supplies enough for five times their populations. Poor countries, often charged higher prices, simply cannot compete.

Big Pharma has also refused to join the voluntary knowledge sharing and patent pooling COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) initiative under WHO auspices. Thomas Cueni, International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) Director General, snubbed the launch, claiming he was “too busy”.

Pfizer’s CEO dismissed C-TAP as “nonsense” and “dangerous”, while the AstraZeneca CEO insisted, “IP is a fundamental part of our industry”. Such attitudes help explain some problems of alternative vaccine distribution arrangements such as COVAX. According to its own board, there is a high chance that COVAX could fail.

Suppressing vaccine access
Despite knowing that many developing countries have much idle capacity, Cueni falsely claims the waiver “would do nothing to expand access to vaccines or to boost global manufacturing capacity”, and would jeopardise innovation and vaccine research.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Big Pharma claims manufacturing vaccines via compulsory licensing or a TRIPS waiver “would undermine innovation and raise the risk of unsafe viruses”. US Big Pharma representatives wrote to President Biden earlier this month claiming likewise.

Both Salk and Sabin made their polio vaccine discoveries patent-free, while many contemporary vaccine researchers are against Big Pharma’s greedy conduct only rewarding IP holders regardless of the varied, but crucial contributions of others.

Big Pharma’s price gouging
Vaccine companies require contract prices be kept secret. In return for discounts, the EU agreed to keep prices confidential. Nonetheless, some negotiated prices were inadvertently revealed, with a UNICEF chart listing prices from various sources.

Reputedly the cheapest vaccine available, Oxford-Astra Zeneca’s is sold to EU members for around US$2 each. Although trials were done in South Africa, it still pays more than twice as much, while Uganda, even poorer, pays over four times as much!

US negotiated bulk prices, for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, are much higher, at US$15.25–19.50 per dose in several contracts, yielding 60–80% profit margins! Moderna will charge the rest of the world US$25–37 per dose.

Hypocrisy
Quite understandably, most developed countries opposing temporary TRIPS suspension have provisions in their own IP laws to suspend patent protection in the national interest and for public health emergencies.

Canada, Germany, France and others have recently strengthened their patent laws to issue compulsory licences for COVID-19 vaccines and drugs. European Council President Charles Michel announced that the EU could adopt “urgent measures” by invoking emergency provisions in its treaties.

Similarly, in the US, 28 US Code sec. 1498 (a) allows the government to make or use any invention without the patentee’s permission. To handle emergencies, the 1977 UK Patents Act (section 55) allows the government to sell a patented product, including specific drugs, medicines or medical devices, without the patentee’s consent.

When avian flu threatened early this century, the US was the only country in the world to issue compulsory licences to US manufacturers to produce Tamiflu to protect its entire population of over 300 million. The drugs were not used as the virus was not brought over either Pacific or Atlantic Oceans.

Biden must act
By helping developing countries expand vaccine manufacturing capacity and access existing capacity, US President Biden can earn much world appreciation overnight. US law and precedence enables such a unilateral initiative.

The Bayh-Dole Act allows the US government to require the owner or exclusive licensee of a patent, created with federal funding, to grant a third party a licence to an invention. Moderna received about US$2.5 billion from Operation Warp Speed, which dispensed over US$10 billion.

Moderna was founded in 2010 by university researchers with support from a venture capitalist. It has focused on mRNA technology, building on earlier work by University of Pennsylvania scientists with National Institutes for Health (NIH) funding.

The vaccine developer also used technology for previous coronavirus vaccines developed by the NIH. The NIH also provided extensive logistical support, overseeing clinical trials for tens of thousands. Moderna has already announced it will not enforce its patents during the pandemic.

Thus, POTUS has the needed leverage. The Bayh-Dole Act applies to Moderna’s vaccine, enabling the Biden administration to act independently and decisively against vaccine apartheid.

Sharing knowledge crucial
Developing countries not only need to have the right to produce vaccines, but also the requisite technical knowledge and information. Hence, the Biden administration should also support C-TAP, as recommended by Dr Anthony Fauci.

When the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) was in similar trouble, the Obama administration came forward to put US-owned patents into the pool while encouraging drug companies to help improve developing countries’ access to medicines.

President Biden knows that early US support was critical for the MPP’s eventual success. It dramatically increased production and lowered prices of medicines for HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis C and other infectious diseases in developing countries.

 

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By External Source
Mar 22 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The post Reduce Water Use Withouth Giving up the Pleasure of Food appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Lack of access to safe drinking water is still not a possibility for millions and this has only been further complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22 2021 (IPS)

Prioritising water governance and ensuring data collection and investment in groundwater use around the world are some of the key issues that need to be addressed with regards to achieving development goals.

“If we do not make water governance a priority, we do feel and state that we would probably not reach the Sustainable Development Goals,” Sareen Malik, the executive secretary of the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW), said during a high level meeting on water-related goals at the United Nations on Thursday.

Malik spoke alongside heads of state and civil society leaders at the “Implementation of the Water-related Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda”.

Lack of access to safe drinking water is still not a possibility for millions and this has only been further complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, according to speakers.

“Today, 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water, 4.2 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation, and 3 billion lack basic hand washing facilities,” Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said during the talk.

“Water affects every aspect of life, we can see that in our present fight against COVID-19,” Rutte said. “Hand washing with soap and water is a key first line of defence against human-to-human transmission of viruses.”

Henrietta Fore, executive director of the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), pointed out that there was a large discrepancy between data on management of groundwater and that of surface water.

With groundwater providing water for 50 percent of the global population, this lack of data can prove problematic, said Dr. David Kramer, a hydrology professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He detailed the various negative effects of lack of data investments in the studying of groundwater.

“Groundwater is a hidden vulnerable resource and not physically visible, which can make it difficult for the general population and decision makers to connect up with this challenging resource,” he said.

“The need for having sustainable groundwater is a key element – in global resilience to climate change, [as a] shield against ecosystem loss and a defence against human deprivation and poverty,” he said. 

He added that approximately 2.5 billion people around the world depend solely on groundwater for their basic water needs, and the “lack of systemic communication on data information on ground water is one of the most significant impediments to its sound management and governance”.

“There are 153 countries with transboundary groundwater systems and this lack of groundwater progress does not support future international stability,” he added.

He also pointed out the many ways surface water is affected by groundwater.

“Many decision makers don’t know that in drylands, slight changes in ground water level due to over-pumping or climate change can diminish or eradicate springs and wells that have been dependent on for millennia by both people and groundwater dependent ecosystems,” he said.

This lack of knowledge about groundwater, especially of poor quality groundwater, could translate to serious effects on the health of those using it.

“I cannot tell you the recurring sad scene I see in economically developing countries where a woman with a water container trudges past a broken well she thought was going to provide hope, only to walk many kilometres to collect the water from a distance source,” he said poignantly.

Malik of ANEW said her organisation represents African women and girls who spent 200 million hours collecting water.

“Their daughters and daughters’ daughters will be locked in life of ill health and poverty if we don’t address the water crisis,” Malik said, adding that it affects women in different ways, such as posing challenges in their menstrual hygiene management.

Political prioritisation and commitment “from the top”, is key to solving this issue, she said, alongside putting people at the core of the solutions.

“Governance-based solutions? Yes, but also putting people-based solutions,” Malik said. “The right water and sanitation in governance is about challenging the power dynamics, putting people at the centre, and ensuring that the policies and practices stem from there.”

She highlighted the importance of including women and the youth in these solutions.

Meanwhile Rutte said that the global acceleration framework on the Sustainable Development Goals 6: Water and Sanitation is an important step in the right direction. “We need to develop and strengthen capacity. We need to optimise and scale our finances, to improve mainstream data and to foster and replicate innovation,” he said.

 

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Protests against military coup in Kayin State, Myanmar on Feb. 9. Protestors have taken to the streets of Myanmar since a Feb. 1 coup by the military. Journalists covering the anti-junta protests have been particularly at risk of being detained, after the military amended Section 505(a) of the country’s penal code to include offences that include knowingly spreading ‘fake news’. Courtesy: Ninjastrikers/(CC BY-SA 4.0)

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22 2021 (IPS)

Two human rights groups have called on the military in Myanmar to release journalists arbitrarily jailed and allow them to work without harassment and prosecution.

Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IPS that they will double down on those demands until all journalists are released and the operating licenses of newsgroups are restored.

“From revoking media licenses and raiding newsrooms to arbitrarily arresting and prosecuting media workers covering the current human rights crisis in the country, the Myanmar military is desperately trying to hide from the world the appalling crimes it is committing against its own people every day,” Emerlynne Gil, Deputy Regional Director at Amnesty International, told IPS.

The calls follow a briefing by the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights Ravina Shamdasani who said that ‘deeply distressing reports of torture in custody’ were adding to the crisis unfolding in the country.

Protestors have taken to the streets of Myanmar since a Feb. 1 coup by the military. Journalists covering the anti-junta protests have been particularly at risk of being detained, after the military amended Section 505(a) of the country’s penal code to include offences that include knowingly spreading ‘fake news’. The amendments give the military increased latitude to arrest journalists.

“The death toll has soared over the past week in Myanmar, where security forces have been using lethal force increasingly aggressively against peaceful protesters, and continue to arbitrarily arrest and detain people throughout the country,” Shamdasani said last week.

Shamdasani told the press that hundreds of illegally detained people are unaccounted for and ‘this amounts to enforced disappearances’.

Representatives of press rights group CPJ told IPS that journalists in Myanmar are living in fear.

“They are scared that the crackdown will become more targeted against media and that the junta intends to establish a new censorship regime, similar to the harsh measures imposed on the media by previous military governments,” CPJ’s Southeast Asia Representative Shawn Crispin told IPS, adding that “at least 5 independent news organisations have already had their operating licenses revoked for arbitrary and vague reasons. Other groups fear they could be next.”

Reports of press censorship by authorities in Myanmar are not new. In 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights assessed press freedom and high-profile journalist prosecutions through 5 individual cases. The ensuing report, ‘The Invisible Boundary – Criminal prosecutions of journalism in Myanmar’, cited harrowing experiences by the targeted journalists and stated that the unlawful arrests and prosecutions created ‘an invisible boundary for media personnel, that they cross at their peril’. It concluded that freedom of expression and press freedom were under attack.

Earlier this month, the UN Security Council said it was deeply concerned about developments in Myanmar. According to the UN, at least 37 journalists have been arrested in Myanmar since Feb. 1, with 19 still unlawfully detained.

“The Security Council strongly condemns the violence against peaceful protestors, including against women, youth and children. It expresses deep concern at restrictions on medical personnel, civil society, labor union members, journalists and media workers, and calls for the immediate release of all those detained arbitrarily,” a statement from the President said.

Amnesty International says a free press in Myanmar is more important than ever.

“It is all the more urgent now to ensure access to information in Myanmar amid escalating violent repression of peaceful protesters and severe internet restrictions, and all attempts to hamper the right to seek, receive and impart information must cease immediately,” Gil told IPS.

Six journalists have been charged under Article 505(a) of Myanmar’s penal code.

“We are also calling on the regime to refrain from imposing any new laws or measures that would restrict media freedoms,” Crispin told IPS.

A Human Rights Council Resolution of Mar. 12  consists of 9 recommendations of the Government of Myanmar, meant to protect journalists, freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

Among other measures, the Council wants the authorities to decriminalise defamation and amend the country’s media law to ensure that the Myanmar Press Council can mediate in disputes with media outlets and journalists.

The Council also wants the immediate and unconditional release of all journalists in detention, an end to all current cases against journalists for exercising their right to freedom of expression and ensure access to restitution for the journalists who have been arrested and persecuted. 

 

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Excerpt:

Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists say Myanmar’s military has intensified its assault on freedom of expression by closing media outlets and arbitrarily detaining journalists

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At a critical juncture on the road to the UN Food Systems Summit, three UN rights experts warn that it will fail to be a 'people's summit' unless it is urgently rethought.

By Michael Fakhri, Hilal Elver and Olivier De Schutter
NEW YORK, Mar 22 2021 (IPS)

Global food systems have been failing most people for a long time, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made a critical situation even worse. 265 million people are threatened by famine, up 50% on last year; 700 million suffer from chronic hunger; and 2 billion more from malnutrition, with obesity and associated diet-related diseases increasing in all world regions.

Michael Fakhri

Everyone agrees that we need urgent solutions and action. The convening of this year’s UN Food Systems Summit by Secretary General António Guterres was therefore welcome. However, as we move towards critical junctures on the road to the Summit, we remain deeply concerned that this ‘people’s summit’ will fail the people it claims to be serving.

After more than a year of deliberations, the Summit participants will meet this October in New York to present “principles to guide governments and other stakeholders looking to leverage their food systems” to support the Sustainable Development Goals. We will be told that the outcomes have been endorsed by the civil society groups who took part, with ‘solutions’ crowd-sourced from tens of thousands of people around the world. And if other solutions are not there, we will be told that this is because their proponents refused to come to the table.

But coming to the table to discuss ‘solutions’ is not as simple as it sounds. What if the table is already set, the seating plan non-negotiable, the menu highly limited? And what if the real conversation is actually happening at a different table?

These concerns are still as pressing today as they were on day one.

First, the Summit initially bypassed the bodies already doing the very hard work of governing global food systems. The UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) already has the structure that the Summit organizers have been hastily reconstructing: a space for discussing the future of food systems, a comprehensive commitment to the right to food, mechanisms for involving civil society and the private sector on their own terms, and a panel of experts regularly providing cutting-edge reports. In other words, everyone is already at the table. The Summit has flagrantly – and perhaps deliberately – shifted governments’ attention away from the CFS.

Hilal Elver

Second, the Summit’s rules of engagement were determined by a small set of actors. The private sector, organizations serving the private sector (notably the World Economic Forum), scientists, and economists initiated the process. The table was set with their perspectives, knowledge, interests and biases. Investors and entrepreneurs working in partnership with scientists framed the agenda, and governments and civil society actors were invited to work within those parameters. Inevitably, that has meant a focus on what the small group saw as scalable, investment-friendly, ‘game-changing’ solutions – the bread and butter of Davos. Reading between the lines, this means AI-controlled farming systems, gene editing, and other high-tech solutions geared towards large-scale agriculture.

As a result, the ideas that should have been the starting point for a ‘people’s summit’ have effectively been shut out. For over a decade, farmers, fishers, pastoralists, and food workers have been demanding a food system transformation rooted in food sovereignty and agroecology. This vision is based on redesigning, re-diversifying, and re-localizing farming systems. It requires that economic assumptions be questioned, human rights be protected, and power be rebalanced.

Some concessions have been made on the road to the Summit. But these changes have been too late, or too cosmetic, to impact meaningfully the process. Only in November was the CFS added to the Summit’s Advisory Committee. And only this month was the FAO’s Right to Food office invited to participate (with a limited mandate). Presumably there will be further changes at the margins: human rights will be mentioned in general terms, agroecology will be included as one of many solutions.

Olivier De Schutter

But this will not be enough to make the Summit outcomes legitimate for those of us — inside and outside the process — who remain skeptical. Having all served as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, we have witnessed first-hand the importance of improving accountability and democracy in food systems, and the value of people’s local and traditional knowledge. It is deeply concerning that we had to spend a year persuading the convenors that human rights matter for this UN Secretary General’s Food Systems Summit. It is also highly problematic that issues of power, participation, and accountability (i.e. how and by whom will the outcomes be delivered) remain unresolved.

Those of us who came to the Summit table did so in the hope that we could fundamentally change the course. As the end-game approaches, we still hope that this is possible. But radical change is needed:

● The right to food must be central to all aspects of the Summit, with attention on holding those with power accountable;
● Agroecology should be recognized as a paradigm (if not the paradigm) for transforming food systems, alongside actionable recommendations to support agroecological transition;
● The CFS should be designated as the home of the Summit outcomes, and the place where it is discussed and implemented, using its inclusive participation mechanisms.

In other words, to make this a people’s summit, the table needs to be urgently re-set.

Michael Fakhri is the current UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
Hilal Elver served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2014-2020.
Olivier De Schutter served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2008-2014, and is the current UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, and co-chair of IPES-Food.

 

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The post The UN Food Systems Summit: How Not to Respond to the Urgency of Reform appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

At a critical juncture on the road to the UN Food Systems Summit, three UN rights experts warn that it will fail to be a 'people's summit' unless it is urgently rethought.

The post The UN Food Systems Summit: How Not to Respond to the Urgency of Reform appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Pinaki Roy and Dipankar Roy
Mar 22 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Roksana Khatun moves aside dirt and floating leaves from a pond, slowly lowers her earthen pitcher into it and fills it with around 20 litres of water.

Collecting the water, she carefully climbs the muddy, steep stairs of the pond and walks around 45 minutes to return home. She holds the heavy pitcher against her waist or on her head the entire time.

Only to fetch water for her family, she does this arduous task every day, twice, throughout the year, except for a few months when it rains and she can store some drinking water, she told The Daily Star, while on her way home from the pond recently.

“I’ve a tubewell, but it does not work. I’ve no other option … I need water for my family of six. I’ve been doing this for years,” Roksana, aged over 50, said, wiping sweat off her face with her left hand.

Despite all these hard work, Roksana’s family, which lives in Madarbaria village of Khulna’s Koyra upazila, gets to drink saline water. Their consolation is the water of the pond is a bit less saline than what many others get.

Sushama Sarkar, 53, of Hatiardanga village of Koyra, travels to a pond, which is two kilometres away from her home. Carrying the heavy pitcher, she suffers from back pain frequently.

“Some buy water but we can’t afford it … It also hasn’t rained in the last several months,” she said.
A recent UNDP survey has highlighted the plight of the country’s coastal people regarding safe drinking water. It said 73 percent of the people living in five coastal upazilas — Koyra, Dacope, Paikgachha of Khulna and Assasuni and Shyamnagar of Satkhira — have to drink unsafe saline water.

Though the permissible salinity level in drinking water is 1,000mg per litre, those people, on average, consume water with salinity level between 1,427mg and 2,406mg per litre, reveals the survey.

In the dry season or winter, the salinity level of tubewell water in Shyamnagar goes up to 6,600mg per litre, more than six times the permissible limit.

The survey was carried out on 66,234 households of 271,464 people living in 39 unions of the five coastal upazilas, under a project, titled “Gender-responsive Coastal Adaptation (GCA)”.

The study, which ended in February, also found that 63 percent of the people face difficulties even in getting that water as they have no other source of drinking water.

In 74 percent households surveyed, women are solely responsible for collecting the drinking water while in 10 percent households males take on the responsibility. The task is shared by the male and female members of the families in rest of the households.

Many spend more than two hours daily to collect drinking water. Sometimes, they need to go more than a kilometre to fetch the water, either from a tubewell or a pond.

People in more than 16 percent households surveyed said they have to walk even more.

The study also found that among the people’s available drinking water sources, the salinity level of 52 percent ponds was higher than the salinity level of ponds elsewhere in the country. It was the same for 77 percent tubewells in the coastal region.

On average, the salinity level of tubewell water is 2,406mg in Dacope, 1,453mg in Koyra, 1,510mg in Paikgachha, 998mg in Assasuni and 1,683mg in Shyamnagar.

For ponds, it is on average 650mg in Dacope, 1,024mg in Koyra, 1,581mg in Paikgachha, 1,203mg in Assasuni and 1,184mg in Shyamnagar.

Also people living there have to spend more than those in the capital for drinking water, the survey revealed.

It converted the time spent for fetching the water into monetary value based on the wages of the government programme of Kajer Binimoye Khaddo (Food for Work), and said when people spend one hour for the task, it actually costs them Tk 1,875 a month. If it is more than two hours, the cost rises to Tk 2,463.

On the contrary, Dhaka Wasa charges each household Tk 200 monthly for water.

Asked what interventions were required to improve the situation in the coastal area, Alamgir Hossain, coordinator of the survey project, funded by the Green Climate Fund and the Bangladesh government, said they support climate resilient drinking water supply through rainwater harvesting.

Replying to a query on the health impact caused by consuming the saline water, he said they would assess the impact at a later part of the project.

However, there has already been notable health impacts, including high blood pressure, skin diseases, indigestion, diarrhoea, he added.

As river water started to became saline nearly three decades ago, people living in these coastal upazilas mainly depend on ponds and tubewells for drinking water.

Many freshwater ponds were damaged at least four decades ago due to saltwater shrimp farming in some areas.

Due to cyclone Aila in 2009, many ponds became full of salt water. Most have remained so for even more than a decade. Cyclone Amphan caused a similar havoc.

Lately, salt water is being found in different tiers of the ground there, Alamgir added.

Pritish Mondal, an engineer of Public Health Engineering Department, said, “There is no shortage of water in the upazilas. But all the water is saline water,” he said.

Akmol Hosen, executive engineer of DPHE told The Daily Star that around 35 percent people of Khulna district get safe drinking water. Rest of them depend on ponds or other sources.

Shahidul Islam, the director of NGO Uttaran and a native of Sathkhira, said, “As you travel around the villages in most of the upazilas of the district, you will see there are many deep-tube wells that have been set up to ensure drinking water for the villagers, but they simply don’t work.”

Dilip Kumar Datta, professor of Khulna University, said the impact of brackish water has always been in the south-west of the country. Gradually, the salinity level is increasing in rivers, ponds and other water bodies, he said.

When asked how the salinity problem could be resolved, Ainun Nishat, Professor Emeritus of Brac university, said, “You need to build the Ganges barrage.

“It is also the number one project of the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100. The government could build the Ganges barrage in collaboration with India.”

He also said, “As far as I know, India is very keen on supporting Bangladesh on this. Because India has realised that the Ganges barrage is very important to save the Sundarbans and the reduce salinity in this region.”

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post World Water Day: Cry for Water in the South appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Safe drinking water a distant dream for 73pc people in five salinity-prone upazilas in Khulna-Satkhira region

The post World Water Day: Cry for Water in the South appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Skyline of the City of London, United Kingdom. Credit: Unsplash/Ali Yaqub

By Ian Richards
GENEVA, Mar 22 2021 (IPS)

It’s now almost three months since the United Kingdom entered into a new trade agreement with the European Union.

During that time, we’ve seen traders struggle to get to grips with the new arrangements. From lorry drivers having their sandwiches confiscated by Dutch customs officers to estimates of additional paperwork costs of $7 billion a year, and pig breeders watching their meat rot on the quayside for want of the correct forms.

It has been a difficult start for a trading relationship once valued at $930 billion, and one that has shown the importance of providing traders in the UK and Europe with clear and simple information of the kind that was not required within the single market.

It was with this in mind that the WTO passed the Bali Trade Facilitation Agreement in 2014.

Although 30 pages long, its most important paragraph is its opening one, which requires each country or customs union to publish information on trade rules and procedures.

As the UK left the European Union it did just that. The day before the new arrangements came into place, it published an online step-by-step guide with instructions on the paperwork required to export everything, from sparkling wine to luxury handbags.

As other landmark trade agreements come on tap, albeit with the purpose of increasing trade, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, these step-by-step guides have become essential.

The ACFTA is estimated to cover 1.2 billion people with a combined GDP of $3 trillion. The UN Economic Commission for Africa believes it has the potential to boost intra-African trade by half if it eliminates import duties, but to double trade if other obstacles, known as non-tariff barriers, are also reduced. The International Trade Centre (ITC) reckons this will help companies invest in manufacturing across the continent.

To make all this work, it’s important for traders to have access to the right information. As with the UK, a number of African governments have been hard at work.

In 2018, Rwanda unveiled its trade information portal. Using a software platform called eregulations from the UN Conference on Trade (UNCTAD), it features rules for importers, exporters and those transiting through the country, as well as market analysis tools, information specific to each border crossing (Rwanda has many) and a helpdesk.

East Africa’s Freight Logistics magazine called it a “game changer”.

Theoneste Sikubwabo, a chicken exporter, told the local media, “we were saved of the unnecessary costs we used to incur while moving to and from places to inquire about some trade information or gain various certifications”. He said he could now do this “from the comfort of our seats, thanks to the portal.”

Using the same platform, Kenya’s trade agency, Kentrade, also created a portal, which receives 10,000 visitors a month.

But it went a step further. Since last year it has been using the portal to battle red tape, simplifying 48 different export procedures by checking each procedure against the law to see what paperwork really is needed.

For one procedure, requiring food and coffee exporters to register with the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service, it reduced the steps involved from 10 to 5 and the total time from fourteen days to six.

Kentrade then calculated that slashing red tape for this procedure alone would save companies $230 each. They would no longer have to pay secretaries to type up so many letters and forms, directors to check and sign them, nor drivers to take them to government offices and queue up.

It is now looking at all other procedures that agricultural exporters must deal with. The savings in time and money could be considerable.

Indeed, a study by the World Economic Forum noted that actions such as these could contribute even more to trade growth than the traditional route of simply reducing tariffs. For SMEs, for whom the red tape involved with trading can make up a large part of their costs, cross-border sales could increase by between 60 and 80 percent.

The same has been happening outside Africa.

Sri Lanka, known for exporting Ralph Lauren polo shirts, Victoria’s Secret bras and tea, recently unveiled its trilingual trade information portal, which the EU ambassador in Colombo said would help make it easier to export to Europe, and by extension, because the EU’s requirements are particularly stringent, to other countries too.

Meanwhile, Tajikistan’s portal, which covers 1,500 goods and products, was the highest-cited in Asia in terms of maturity by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

In all 18 developing countries now have top-of-the-range trade information portals from UNCTAD and ITC, many of them as advanced, if not more so, than those installed in developed countries.

Trade information portals are the lubricant that keeps trade flowing. They allow small companies to export and grow, countries to attract manufacturing investment and governments to slash red tape. Without them, as we saw with Brexit, trade can quite literally grind to a halt on a distant quayside.

 

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The post Brexit Shows Why Traders Need Reliable Information But Many Are Ahead of the Game appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is an economist at the UN working on digital government and investment.

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Credit: UN Water

By Catarina de Albuquerque
LISBON, Mar 21 2021 (IPS)

This World Water Day, we celebrate the value of water, which at first might be a given: after all, water is the basis of all life. Without water we have no health, wealth, equality, or education.

But, do governments adequately prioritize and invest in clean water? The answer, in far too many parts of the world, is a resounding no. As an international community, we are too often blind to the huge cost of failing to serve so many people with the most basic but crucial of services.

Globally, there are still 2.2 billion people without access to safe drinking water and 4.2 billion who don’t have a safe place to go the toilet. Reaching all these people needs three times the current levels of investment, according to the World Bank — to meet the scale of the challenge. However, this is not a plea for charity, this is a wake-up call.

The current global water and sanitation crisis is a story of colossal, rapidly increasing, unmet demand leading to colossal, rapidly increasing costs. Meeting Sustainable Development Goal 6 – water and sanitation for all by 2030 – is not a burden but a massive opportunity.

To find concrete solutions to the financing gap, the partnership Sanitation and Water for All – a global platform for achieving the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)-related targets — is working with Finance Ministers across the globe to focus on the opportunity for economic growth and sustainable development, through the expansion of water and sanitation services.

With the right level of investment, benefits could include an estimated 1.5% growth in gross domestic product, and a $4.30 return for every dollar invested. This is due to the likely reduced health care costs and potential for increased productivity. That’s a rate of return that any investor would wish for.

The benefits of investing are clear and examples abound. In 1961, only 17% of South Korea had access to basic drinking water but by 2012, water coverage stood at 98% – a remarkable turnaround. High-level political leadership was key, as part of a wider push towards nation-building, common well-being and modernity.

Bolivian Girls Washing Hands. Credit: UNICEF

The cost of not investing

Affordable, reliable, easily accessible water and sanitation services prevent thousands of children from preventable diseases, such as diarrhea and cholera. Healthier children absorb nutrients properly, develop stronger brains and bodies, get better school results, and end up making a fuller contribution to society. And we have seen how quickly a pandemic like COVID-19 can spread when people are not able to wash their hands with water and soap.

Without further investment, girls and women are forced to continue the time-consuming, back-breaking work of fetching water, and are left exposed to the indignity and dangers of going to the toilet in fields and streets. Water and sanitation services in schools and workplaces have the power to ensure girls and women can manage their personal hygiene while not missing out on obtaining an education or earning an income.

Adequate investment would reduce disease burden and epidemic risks, and slow down fast-moving killers such as cholera. Improved hygiene — through water and soap — is critical in the fight against COVID-19, for example. Yet one in four — 24% — of health care facilities lack basic water services, one in ten — 10% — have no sanitation service, and one in three — 32% — lack hand hygiene facilities at points of care. Data has shown that even where there is adequate WASH facilities, frontline health care workers can be 12-times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 compared with individuals in the general community.

Unless further investments are made, the level of workforce productivity will be capped. An estimated three out of four jobs that make up the global workforce are either heavily or moderately dependent on water. But, access to water and sanitation can also free up time that would otherwise be spent collecting water. UN-Water estimates that improved sanitation gives every household an additional 1,000 hours a year to work, study, care for children, and so on. Women’s productivity is particularly affected, as they are the main caretakers and manager and users of water.

The bottom line is that economic growth rests on improving educational achievement and public health — two things that are impossible without access to water.

The role of finance decision-makers

None of this is news. Since the early days of the industrial revolution, we have known the transformative economic and social benefits of access to water, and the horrific consequences of inaction.

If governments fail to help prioritize water and sanitation, the consequences could affect societies for generations. Financial decision-makers must create an enabling environment by investing in institutions and people, and mobilizing new sources of finance, such as taxes, tariffs, transfers, or repayable finance.

In the end, well-resourced, well-run water systems are catalysts for progress in every sector from gender, food, and education, to health, industry, and the environment.

Governments must use evidence to make smart decisions that will help their countries flourish. In the case of water and sanitation, the evidence is clear: continuing to neglect these services will only continue to stunt the growth of our economies, populations, and societies.

 

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The post Why Water & Sanitation Systems are Vital for the Economy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is Chief Executive Officer, Sanitation and Water for All partnership

 
The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.

The post Why Water & Sanitation Systems are Vital for the Economy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In northern Ghana some 50% of people lack access to safe drinking water. Credit: UNDP Ghana

By Lyla Mehta and Alan Nicol*
EAST SUSSEX, UK, Mar 20 2021 (IPS)

In the midst of a global pandemic, when the presence of water in our lives has never seemed more important, its future availability has also never been more uncertain.

Water scarcity is now such a threat that it is even possible to trade in ‘water futures’ – joining commodities like gold and oil on Wall Street, with traders hedging against future water availability.

So, while farmers and pastoralists struggle to know when the next rainfall will come, and women and children walk for hours to collect water from distant water points, further commodification and financialization of water has arrived, with huge implications for basic rights to water.

Our future water safety and security will only be guaranteed if we work to reflect water’s multiple values in coming years – including social and cultural as well as economic and financial.

Globally, we seem almost inured to the fact that across the world women and girls spend up to 200 million hours every day walking an average of six km to collect water. These depressing facts flash up in our news feeds across the same screens that now make it possible to trade in ‘water futures’ on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Between these ‘two screens’ lies an almost perverse linkage between global policy seeking to achieve the SDG targets under Goal 6 and a global financial world seeking investment gains under new financial instruments.

Today of all days is a good time to pause and take stock.

Every 22 March since 1993 the international community has marked ‘World Water Day’ and this year’s theme is valuing water. Our own personal valuing of the resource has been starkly demonstrated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Those of us with taps have diligently increased our handwashing with soap and water, while 2.5 billion people globally continue to struggle even to access a basic daily quantity.

Eleven years ago, the UN recognised access to safe drinking-water and sanitation as a human right, and yet for many poor households their basic rights – and their health – remain jeopardised during this pandemic.

And it’s not just about domestic use. Multiplicities of values attached to water converge around farming households in, for instance, rural Africa. To a young female farmer staring up at the clouds in Eastern Tanzania unpredictable rainfall under an uncertain climate directly affects her family’s food security as well as her cash income for school fees derived from the sale of sorghum to the local brewing industry.

The value of rainfall is therefore multiple and multi-scale – to her crops and income, to the groundwater recharge for domestic supplies, and, more widely, to an agricultural value chain supporting an important part of the economy.

Domestic and international investors, encouraged by national policies focussing on foreign direct investment, often seek to ‘grab’ this land, having implications for both this farmer’s land and water rights as well as environmental sustainability.

Despite general recognition that the value of water is much more than its nominal price in different contexts, since the landmark Dublin conference of 1992 economic and financial values have tended to prevail over values embedded in culture and society.

These have led to policies embracing privatization, full cost recovery and “efficient” uses of water, often leadings to prepaid meters and controversial cut-offs especially in poor urban localities. Moreover, we live in an age when engineering and economic principles can override environmentalists’ concerns as well as local and affected people’s values attached to land, river and forests.

The controversies of large dams on India’s Narmada River, for example, illustrate the huge environmental, human and social costs that have been ignored by dam-builders and the State in the name of ‘development’ despite research disputing these claims.

At the heart of all such contestations is a politics of value determination in which, very often, the least powerful and most marginalised lose out. This essentially governance problem remains a global challenge – and not just in the Global South.

The concerns and complaints around water contamination of poor black residents in Flint, for example, were routinely ignored, leading to a major water crisis in the city, linked to systemic biases around race and class. And in parts of the UK water companies continue to allow raw sewage to flood our rivers – affecting their ecological and amenity values.

For the future, therefore, we need to recognize how a hierarchy of water values needs a process of deliberative governance with which to encapsulate all our human wellbeing, dignity and ecological sustainability priorities.

It also needs to avoid over-objectifying the resource in remote financial and other instruments and recognise how consumption patterns and values of the rich and powerful can undermine poor people’s values and basic rights to water.

So, on World Water Day 2021, when we next wash our hands for another 20 seconds, let’s champion the often hidden and overlooked values of water security worldwide.

*Lyla Mehta is with the Institute of Development Studies and Alan Nicol at the International Water Management Institute

 

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The post The Value of Water Goes Far Beyond its Stock Price appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.

The post The Value of Water Goes Far Beyond its Stock Price appeared first on Inter Press Service.

COVID precautions at Safe Water Network iJal Station in India. Credit: Safe Water Network

By Nathan Yardy
NEW YORK, Mar 20 2021 (IPS)

The global community is celebrating World Water Day 2021. In the COVID-19 pandemic era, the importance and value of water for all people has never been clearer. Access to safe water is essential for public health and thriving communities.

Before COVID, we knew that 4 billion people, or about two-thirds of the world’s population, face severe water scarcity at least one month every year. One of the most important defenses against the coronavirus, washing hands with soap and water, is out of reach for 2 out of 5 people worldwide simply because they do not have access to basic handwashing facilities.

As we reflect on World Water Day 2021’s theme of “valuing water,” we know that water is an essential part of human life and is experienced and valued in different ways across different cultures and communities.

One of the easiest ways to think about the value of water is by simply looking at the prices people are willing to pay for access and consumption. This market determination can be an effective reference point for understanding the value of any natural resource in a quantifiable metric.

Governments, national and local, place a related market value on water often by committing to various levels of subsidization to ensure their constituents have affordable access. Socially-conscious water organizations, like Safe Water Network, invest in optimization and ways to increase efficiency to drive down costs to keep water accessible at prices that enable communities to thrive.

Recent moves by governments to mandate free access to water during the COVID crisis have challenged the sustainability of the water sector.

New household connection customer in Nobewam, Ghana. Credit: Safe Water Network

Consumer demand is critical to the financial viability and longevity of a water system. Sustainable safe water has a price, and investing in markets within local communities to manage and distribute water drives a strong sense of ownership and encourages self-sufficiency over the long term.

Safe Water Network’s oldest running small water enterprise in India, the Nizampally iJal Station, recently celebrated 10 years of operation. Over the last decade, it has served as a template for the hundreds of additional iJal Stations that have been launched in the state of Telangana since. Its longevity is a testament to Nizampally’s desire and capability for community management.

Small business owners, restaurateurs, and beverage producers place their own value on water when they are able to build trust with their customers by using clean water in the food and drinks they produce.

When these business owners are able to locate their operations near a reliable source of safe water, they are also able to cut costs when they can avoid hiring people to fetch water from a distance. For example, restaurant operator Martha Kumi of Asikuma, Ghana, used to hire individual water vendors to fetch up to 2000 liters of water a day from a hand dug well 3 kilometers away for food preparation and cleaning—a major business expense.

With safe water available 24/7 at her place of business, she is able to hold onto more revenue and increase her profits.

Water is valuable to a community in a myriad of other ways beyond market prices and business practices. Equitable access to safe water ensures that people are able to expend energy on other priorities in their lives beyond meeting this essential human need.

Clean water is crucial in the areas of health service and public health. Doctors and other health professionals are able to deliver better and more efficient health service to their communities.

During the COVID crisis, soap and water have been a core pillar of effective disease prevention practices and essential for essential health workers to maintain sanitary working conditions and their personal protection routines.

When a healthcare facility has a reliable source of safe water, patients can trust that proper cleaning practices are in place and are able to receive care without bringing their own water. This trust is particularly important for major medical procedures when access to clean water is vital for cleanliness and better health outcomes, including for pregnant women who would otherwise need to transport their own water to delivery.

Martha Kumi, restaurant owner. Credit: Safe Water Network

Access to clean water is valuable for all communities, but in the COVID-19 pandemic era, direct connections and automated water ATMs allow for convenient and safe use of water while maintaining necessary social distancing. In one community in Ghana’s Ashanti region, 500 households have been connected by Safe Water Network since the start of the pandemic, with many families willing to pay small upfront connection fee if it meant they could reduce their risk to COVID-19 exposure outside of the house.

Household connections to safe water also provide value for education, when both teachers and students are able to access water conveniently at home or at school, saving time otherwise spent fetching water from a distant source, enabling more regular attendance of classes and effective engagement in teaching and learning.

An August 2020 joint report by UNICEF and the WHO revealed that 1 in 3 schools around the world had either limited drinking water service or none at all before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During COVID-19, the value of water has become strikingly obvious for public health. But water is valuable to all of us for many reasons and sustainable access to safe water is necessary for communities to thrive. Safe Water Network is working to bring a proven model of small water enterprises to millions of people in India and Ghana.

On this World Water Day 2021, let’s recommit to meeting the vision of Sustainable Development Goal 6 of ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030. We have a long way to go before achieving this ambitious goal, but we must prioritize and invest in sustainable water models.

 

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The post Access to Safe Water Never Loses Value appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is Communications Manager at Safe Water Network

 
The UN will be commemorating World Water Day on Monday March 22.

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Photo by Bekky Bekks on Unsplash

By Adekemi Adeniyan
EKITI, Nigeria, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

The mouth is a barometer of social inequities — it reflects the injustices in our society. As George Cuvier, an 18th century naturalist said: “Show me your teeth, and I will tell you who you are”. To me, as a dentist, the mouth is like a microscope that reveals more than just tooth decay. It exposes us to a world where people lack access to water, health, quality education and live on low income.

So, when the FDI World Dental Federation unveils a “Be Proud of Your Mouth” campaign for World Oral Health Day (WOHD) 2021 celebrated on March 20, it needs to go beyond encouraging individuals to adopt good oral health routines such as brushing and flossing. It also needs to urge countries, leaders, policymakers and communities to tackle the social inequities that affect the mouth. It starts from addressing the social determinants of oral health.

70% of the Nigerian population have a form of periodontal disease and untreated cavities. This is a whopping 140 million people, more than the entire population of the United Kingdom and France combined

Research by the World Health Organization shows that the social conditions in which people live have a great influence on their health and has linked increases in oral health diseases to social determinants such as education, income, food, race, and geographical location.

As a rural dentist working with vulnerable and underserved communities in Nigeria, I’ve had first-hand experience working with children at risk of oral health diseases, such as dental caries, Noma, and dental fluorosis. Most of them brush their teeth daily, but they lack access to clean water, nutritious food, and dental care facilities. Their teeth pay the price.

Studies show that 70% of the Nigerian population have a form of periodontal disease and untreated cavities. This is a whopping 140 million people, more than the entire population of the United Kingdom and France combined.

In the heavily populated northwest part of Nigeria, NOMA, a face disfiguring disease often caused by malnutrition, is one of the most prevalent oral health diseases. Between 2011 and 2017, The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control recorded over 37,646 cases. This is a public health crisis for a disease with 90% mortality rate.

Yet, only 15.5 % of the people living in rural parts of Nigeria have access to a dental facility. There is a lack of dental workforce which is an essential component of oral health access for vulnerable and underserved populations. In 2018, only about 850 out of the 4,358 registered dentists in Nigeria work in rural areas.

One patient, a young girl I worked with, had two of her teeth removed due to a defect caused by a vitamin deficiency. She comes from a village with no access to clean water and her family lives on less than US $1 per day. To complicate matters, the nearest dental facility was a two hour walk from where she lived. This is more than the experience of one girl; it is the experience of many living in communities saddled with social inequities.

What then is the way forward for a country like Nigeria? Clearly, there is a need for innovations, commitment of resources, and full engagement to improve oral health.

The Nigerian dental health system is badly underfunded by the government, which is currently just 0.41% of the country’s health budget. Service delivery is left largely to private markets; with health insurance not covering essential oral healthcare services. This needs to change.

We need the government to allocate more resources to building and equipping dental clinics in rural areas with community support to then train community health workers and dental technicians to take over many where there is no dentist available.

Task shifting, an act of assigning tasks to non-specialists who have received the necessary training in communities where there is shortage of specialists, has been a major success in healthcare for countries like Rwanda and Mozambique. Nigeria can learn from these countries.

Mobile dental clinics are another innovative way to provide oral health services to vulnerable and underserved communities, reaching patients who live far from conventional clinics. This may not totally eradicate the problem of access but it is a start.

Educators and dental professionals should work together to develop an oral health curriculum for primary schools that is both competent yet culturally sensitive to raise awareness on oral health at an early age. They also need to ensure that we have food policies that guarantee healthy food in schools.

Some may say it’s cheaper and better for resource-strapped countries like Nigeria to improve oral health by emphasizing personal responsibility for brushing, while the government focuses on more life-threatening diseases like COVID-19, HIV, cancer, Lassa fever, and tuberculosis.

Even though oral diseases are not usually seen as life-threatening, they are strongly associated with mortality.  A recent study shows that people who suffer from poor oral health have a higher risk of cancer, heart diseases and complications from COVID-19. Poor oral health is a major factor that exacerbates these diseases.

I am not saying addressing oral health inequities is an easy task. However, these inequities shape people’s choices and decisions. Brushing and flossing alone is not enough to have a healthy mouth. By tackling inequity we can raise a generation of people who are proud of their mouths and productive in society.

 

Dr Adekemi Adeniyan is a rural dentist breaking down barriers to oral health for underserved communities to ensure equitable access for all in Nigeria.

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