Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Digital technologies are changing agriculture and food systems. It is important to bridge the digital gap in this sector so that family farmers in developing countries are not left behind as food security depends on them. Credit: FAO.

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Nov 27 2020 (IPS)

Overcoming the digital gap to face food insecurity with the use of artificial intelligence practices in agriculture is part of a growing debate that seeks to simultaneously safeguard natural resources and address the difficulties generated by climate change and the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In recent times, multinational high-tech companies, such as IBM and Microsoft from the U.S., international institutions, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and ethical and spiritual references, such as the Pontifical Academy for Life, have devoted their efforts and work towards this objective.

Artificial intelligence technologies can play an important role in transforming food systems by performing tasks that are otherwise conducted by people such as planting and harvesting. This can help to increase productivity, improve working conditions and use natural resources more efficiently with better knowledge and planning management.

These technologies are beginning to be applied in areas of agricultural robotics, soil and crop monitoring, and predictive analytics, to name a few.

In the context of climate change, population growth and the depletion of natural resources, this technological advance can also contribute to the preservation of soils and water, a fact that gains greater relevance in the attempt to achieve food security in a sustainable way.

“I am convinced that we will continue to transform our food systems to feed the world thanks to digital agriculture,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu, while stressing that digital technologies “must be accessible to all.”

The ethical value of technological development has received strong attention from Pope Francis. Moreover, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, argued that “we must feed all people, but not necessarily all should eat the same.”

He added that the protection of biological diversity (human, vegetal and animal), “should occupy the center of our attention and should guide the entire process, from the ethical phase of design to the ways in which they are proposed and disseminated in different social and cultural contexts.”

Mario Lubetkin. Credit: FAO

According to the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, “technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning tools will be especially useful as we work to address the issues of hunger and food insecurity, especially in a world that must face climate change, as they can foresee problems and respond with critical resources that help prevent future famines and save lives.”

In this regard, according to figures published by FAO, there are currently 690 million people who are going hungry, and by the end of 2020, as a result of the effects of COVID-19, the figure could increase by 130 million.

IBM´s vice president, John Kelly, recalled that “only if we put people, their interests and their values at the center of our thinking about the future of technology can we emerge stronger in the face of global challenges such as the pandemic and food security.”

In February, the Pontifical Academy for Life, in collaboration with FAO, Microsoft, IBM and the Italian government, among others, launched a call to build the ethics of artificial intelligence based on principles such as transparency and inclusion.

The purpose of this, is that these systems can be easily explained. They can take into account human beings, while providing the best possible conditions to express themselves and develop impartially, thus avoiding that only a few benefit from them.

To achieve this, the current digital gap must be overcome. At present, 6 billion people do not have a broadband connection, 4 billion cannot access the internet, 2 billion do not have mobile phones and 400 million do not have a digital signal at all.

The use of artificial intelligence tools is part of the action promoted by an important group of countries for the establishment of an International Platform for Digital Food and Agriculture, a forum of multiple parties interested in identifying and defining the possible benefits and risks of digitization of the food and agriculture sector.

In January 2020, 71 Ministers of Agriculture from different countries formally promoted this initiative, which encourages the combination of forums that are dedicated to agriculture with those that focus their attention on the digital economy. In turn, the initiative proposes to support governments in the development of voluntary practices and guidelines for the application of digital technologies in agriculture.

In a similar direction, FAO and Google recently launched a new big data tool for rural producers and other figures in the agriculture sector. It enables the transmission of images from a satellite in quasi-real time, with analytical functionality and on a planetary basis, in order to allow the detection, quantification and monitoring of changes and trends in the land surface, thus simplifying access to relevant information for small producers.

 

The post Overcoming the Digital Gap and Food Insecurity: a Complementary Target appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mario Lubetkin is Assistant Director General at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

The post Overcoming the Digital Gap and Food Insecurity: a Complementary Target appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, Nov 26 2020 (IPS)

As India continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing number of deaths, farmers here have been fighting a battle of their own against volatile pricing, uncertain demand and lack of access to the market. But in the midst of all this uncertainty, one farming couple in a village near Hyderabad are working towards a food-secure future for themselves using eco-friendly farming techniques.

The couple, Anjaneyalu and Padma Amma, are among a growing community of  smallholder farmers who have been trained by the local government in farming without the use of synthetic inputs, including fertilisers and pesticide. The farmers receive free training under a special government programme that aims to increase soil fertility and boost yield through sustainable measures to avoid any possible food crisis caused by the pandemic.

This comes ahead of a Dec. 1 online event by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition, which explores how everyone has a role to play in re-aligning the global food system with human needs and within planetary boundaries. The event will be co-hosted in partnership with the Food Tank and aims to create a multi-stakeholder platform to “offer solutions and environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty”. It comes ahead of the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit.

In this interview with IPS, the Ammas explain how they turned a previously uncultivable land into a source of sustenance through applying eco-friendly techniques.

 

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Oil pump jack pumping crude out of the ground in Neuquen, Argentina (Image Alamy/Diálogo Chino)

By Fermín Koop
BUENOS AIRES, Nov 26 2020 (IPS)

As the world’s leading economies direct trillions of dollars towards Covid-19 recovery packages, a significant proportion is going to fossil fuel industries without climate stipulations, according to the 2020 edition of the Climate Transparency Report – which has assessed the climate performance of G20 countries.

Up until the middle of October, the G20 spent US$393 billion on support to the energy sector, with 53.5% going to fossil fuels ($175 billion to oil and gas, and $16.2 billion to coal). Of this, 86% has been provided without conditions for improved environmental action or performance.

The report shows that at least 19 of the G20 countries have provided financial support to their domestic oil, coal and gas sectors, including Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. If they continue along this path, governments risk reversing, instead of locking in, positive pre-Covid trends such as a stable expansion of renewable energy.

At least 19 of the G20 countries have provided financial support to their domestic oil, coal and gas sectors, including Argentina, Brazil and Mexico

“The recovery packages can solve the climate crisis or make it worse,” says Charlene Watson of the Overseas Development Institute. “Some G20 members like the EU, France, or Germany are setting mostly a good example. Others direct too much support to fossil fuels, putting at risk positive recent developments.”

G20 economies represent more than 80% of global GDP and three-quarters of global trade. The group is also responsible for 75% of global emissions and therefore has a major role in fulfilling the goal of the Paris Agreement to avoid a temperature increase of more than 2C, or ideally 1.5C, above the pre-industrial norm.

However, existing G20 commitments are insufficient to accomplish that goal, and would lead the world to a temperature 2.7C higher by the end of the century, according to the report. Countries are expected to update their climate pledges in 2020 and 2021 ahead of the COP26 climate summit.

 

Challenging previous progress

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the results of climate action in G20 countries were becoming visible in key areas. Energy-related CO2 emissions decreased by 0.1% in 2019 – a remarkable departure from the 1.9% increase in 2018 and a longer-term annual average growth rate of 1.4% between 2005 and 2017.

This was largely due to the expansion of renewable energy. The share of renewables in power generation increased in 19 of the G20 countries last year, accounting for 27% of power generation in the group. It’s projected to continue increasing in all G20 countries and to make up almost 28% of the power generation this year.

“Before the pandemic hit, results of climate action were coming to fruition in some energy-related sectors and the crisis consolidated those trends in the majority of the G20 countries,” said Jorge Villarreal of Iniciativa Climática de México. “But without further climate action, these effects will be temporary.”

Looking back on 2019, the report notes that despite a decrease in coal consumption, fossil fuels still accounted for 81.5% of primary energy supply, because of increases in oil (+1%) and gas (+3%) consumption. Also in 2019, countries provided US$130 billion in subsidies to fossil fuels, up from US$117 billion in 2018, despite their goal to eliminate them.

Progress in the transport, building and industrial sectors is also lagging and many G20 members are still losing tree cover, diminishing critical carbon sinks. CO2 emissions from the transport sector grew by 1.5%, followed by a 1.2% increase in the industry sector and a 0.9% growth in the building sector.

No G20 countries have targets for reaching zero deforestation in the 2020s, which would be needed to meet the Paris Agreement 1.5C goal. Although China, the EU and Mexico have targets for net-zero deforestation for further down the line. This is especially worrying in Latin America, considering the forest fires and illegal logging in Argentina and Brazil.

 

The scenario for Latin America

G20 members Brazil, Argentina and Mexico were found to be off-track to meet the 1.5C goal. Argentina is the only one of the three to emit more than the G20 average, having increased its emissions 35% since 1990.

Amid the pandemic, Brazil has provided economic support to the industrial and transport sectors without attaching any environmental conditions. Meanwhile, deregulation in land use in the Amazon is likely to increase logging, mining, agriculture and forestry activities, leading to further deforestation.

The Bolsonaro administration cut the budget for key forest protection monitoring and enforcement and has rolled back numerous environmental protection policies. Rates of illegal deforestation are continuing to rise, with over a third of deforestation in 2019 taking place on public lands.

“From 2012 to 2019 the level of deforestation in Brazil grew by 122%. If deforestation gets out of control, NDC goals won’t be met. The country should urgently reinstate and strengthen policies on monitoring and preventing illegal deforestation,” said William Willis, from CentroClima NGO in Brazil.

In Mexico, a large proportion of the stimulus package has been directed towards infrastructure investments, including a flagship oil refinery and airport expansion, plus tax breaks for Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil company. Furthermore, barriers were placed to the wind and solar energy dispatch, prioritising oil-fired power plants.

The country called oil a strategic resource and seeks to increase its use for electricity generation, increasing investment in fossil fuel exploration and extraction. Instead it should reopen further renewable energy auctioning rounds, the report argued.

There is a similar scenario in Argentina. During the pandemic, the Fernández administration introduced measures to increase commodity exports and fossil fuels. The government artificially fixed the domestic oil barrel price to offset the sharp fall in international oil prices.

Fossil fuels still make up 86% of Argentina’s energy mix. Despite the increase in renewable energy over the last two decades, the carbon intensity of the energy mix has barely changed. The share of fossil fuels in the global primary 1.5C energy mix needs to fall to 67% by 2030 and to 33% by 2050.

“The government didn’t introduce any ‘green’ measures in its recovery stimulus plans. On the contrary, it continues to strongly subsidise fossil fuels, such as gas. In order to ensure a sustainable recovery, the focus needs to be put on green energy infrastructure,” said Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, senior adviser on climate change at FARN, an Argentine NGO.

 

Looking ahead

There is growing recognition that a fundamental, structural shift is required among G20 countries, the report argued. As such, in 2019 and 2020 many countries have started to set net-zero emissions goals to decarbonize their economies by mid-century, with likely more to come over the next few months.

In June 2019, France and the UK set net-zero targets for 2050, and by the end of the year, the EU and Germany had made similar announcements. In 2020, Canada, China, South Africa, South Korea, and Japan joined in, with China aiming to be carbon-neutral before 2060. Cities and companies in G20 countries have announced similar goals.

Representatives from G20 countries met virtually on Friday and Saturday, November 20-21 for the bloc’s annual summit under the presidency of Saudi Arabia. It will be largely focused on addressing the implications of the coronavirus pandemic, future health care plans and steps for reviving the global economy.

“We urgently need more ambition and leadership from the world’s biggest economies – and emitters – at the upcoming G20 Summit and next year’s UN Climate Conference” said Catrina Godinho from the Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform. “The US election result offers some hope for international climate politics.”

 

This article was originally published by Dialogo Chino

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Batara slum in a Dhaka suburb. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Nov 26 2020 (IPS)

The recent meeting of the G20 – scheduled to take place in Riyadh but held virtually due to the Coronavirus pandemic – has been an eloquent example of how the world is drifting, in a crisis of leadership.

It was, in a sense, a showcase. Everybody had to accept the view that the host of the meeting, the ailing King Salman of Saudi Arabia, was accompanied on TV screens by his apparent heir, Prince Mohamed bin Salman, who is clearly the mastermind of the brutal assassination, dismembering and disappearance of the body of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Roberto Savio

Mohamed bin Salman got away with it, also because of the support of Donald Trump who, in his video intervention said, among other pearls, that nobody in US history had done as much as he had for the environment (like when he said that nobody since Abraham Lincoln had done as much as he had for black Americans). After that, Trump promptly left for his golf course, and ignored the debate.

Raison d’état, realpolitik, diplomatic constraints have always been part of history. The fact that the G20 was virtual, can partly hide a fact: that politicians now accept the most preposterous statements without blinking, because everything has become acceptable and legitimate. In Saudi Arabia, Prince bin Salman is highly popular and in the US, those who live in the parallel world of Trumpland follow blindly.

Biden will have a very difficult life. At least one-third of Americans believe that a massive fraud has deprived their idol of the presidency. He has a Supreme Court staffed by his nominee. And unless the Democrats win the two seats for the Senate in Georgia on January 5th, it will remain in the hands of Mitch McConnell, who will block every single Biden project that needs Senate approval.

Add to this a Trump permanent electoral campaign during the next four years, probably with his own TV channel, and it is difficult to predict that Biden’s vice-president, a woman and black, will repeat his feat in 2024.

There are plenty of solutions if there was only political will. For instance, Oxfam estimates that just an increase of 0.5% over ten years on the taxes paid by 1% of the richest (a negligible increase) would suffice to create 117 million jobs in strategic sectors like health, education, and assistance to the elderly

I apologise for this diversion. The real goal of this article is to show the stunning lack of responsibility of the leaders who met virtually, and besides making totally ritual declarations about the pandemic and climate change, when faced with the issue of the impact of Covid-19 on the poor of the world, simply decided to extend the moratorium on the interest of the external debt of the poorest countries for another year. This is a debt which, in many cases, has been amply repaid with the payment of cumulative interests.

Now, it is certainly difficult to believe that the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, India, China and Canada, and the President of the European Council, and the President of the European Union – leaving aside the United States – ignore the impacting data on the increase of poverty provided by all the international organisations.

The creation of the G7 and the G20 has been the most visible attempt of the great powers to displace substantial debates and decisions from the United Nations. It was certainly not due to lack of information that they ignored the appeal of the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, who implored action in his intervention against the unfolding drama of the poor of all over the world, which is nullifying all progress achieved in the last two decades.

The data that the G20 ignored all converge on two conclusions: the impact of the Covid-19 virus is stronger than expected, and it will bring about a global social imbalance that will have a lasting impact on several millions of people – in fact, about 300 million people.

This comes on top of an already dire situation. According to the World Bank, 720 million people will be living in extreme poverty (less than 1.90 dollars a day). Of those, 114 million are the direct result of Covid-19: that is 9.4% of the world’s population. According to the UN World Food Programme, more than 265 million are already starving, and many will die. And according to the International Labour Organization 200 million will lose their job.

Let us not forget that half of the world’s population – 3.2 billion people – live on less than 5.50 dollars a day. These are in the global South, as well as those in rich countries who are close to the conditions of the poor countries. The scale of this condition is much greater than we normally think. In the United States, according to the US Census Bureau, 11.1% of the population (49 million people) can be classified as poor; but Covid-19 will probably add another 8 million people.

A staggering 16.1 million children live in food precarity, while more than 47 million citizens depend on food banks. The National Center on Family Homelessness estimates that in 2013, 2.5 million US children experienced some form of homelessness. Finally, the US Health Affairs journal affirms that in 2016, the United States had the largest rate of children mortality in the 20 countries belonging to the OECD, while according to the US Census Bureau, life expectation has shrunk by three years.

In Europe thanks to a culture of welfare (absent in the US), things are going somewhat better. Eurostat estimates that in 2017, 11.8 million people lived in a household “at risk of poverty or social exclusion”. And Save the Children estimates that 28% of those under 18 are at risk of poverty and social exclusion.

We do not have estimates of the impact of Covid-19 in Europe, but the European Union estimates that poverty may increase by 47% if the pandemic lasts until next summer. This excludes the impact of the expected third wave in the winter of 2021. Caritas Italy estimates that at the end of the year there will be at least one million more poor children.

The leaders of the G20 cannot ignore that in April UNCTAD issued an alert: we need to find at least 2.5 billion dollars to attenuate the coming social crisis. They cannot ignore that the ILO has stated that in the poorest countries of the world, like Haiti, Ethiopia or Malawi, the average income of informal workers has fallen by 82%.

They cannot ignore the political consequences of this social crisis, and how Covid-19 is putting a brake on the world economy. But the poor, for many reasons, is not a priority in political choices. Suffice it to note that in the EU’s unprecedented and brilliant Recovery Plan for Europe there are no special provisions for the poor. They are part of the general population, and of those who have suffered because of Covid-19: people working in the tourism sector, in restaurants bar, in shops, and so on.

Yet, we have all the data to know that they suffer specific problems, problems that differ from those of who have lost their jobs. Structural poverty is a cage which does not let out those who are inside it. We have no space here to analyse why poverty needs a specific action. There are tons of studies on the subject, on the relations between poverty and education, poverty and democracy, poverty and social movements, and the list goes on.

What we want to stress is that there are plenty of solutions if there was only political will. For instance, Oxfam estimates that just an increase of 0.5% over ten years on the taxes paid by 1% of the richest (a negligible increase) would suffice to create 117 million jobs in strategic sectors like health, education, and assistance to the elderly.

Repatriating 10% of the capital hidden in fiscal paradises would obtain the same result. But we have been following Ronald Reagan’s mantra that the poor bring poverty and the rich bring wealth, so the rich should be left to create wealth. This may seem like a joke, but the OECD indicates that the average taxation on companies fell from 28% in 2000 to 20.6% in 2020.

This occurred despite the rise of the wealth of large companies, which has been accompanied by a notable decline of the middle class, not to speak of workers and the proliferation of precarious and informal jobs. According to the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, between March 18 and June 4, the wealth of the richest Americans increased by 19.1% – a monumental 565 million dollars. Now, the richest Americans own 3.5 billion dollars.

Just 10% of that would be enough to bail out the 46.2 million fellow citizens who ask for unemployment subsidies. Another solution would be to reduce subsidies to the fossil industry, which the International Institute for Renewable Energy estimates at 3.1 trillion dollars – 19 times those for renewables – in spite of the imminent climatic tragedy.

The same imbalance is happening with the pandemic. It is clear that until vaccination becomes universal, Covid-19 is here to stay. It recognises no borders and global problems cannot have an assorted collection of local answers.

Yet, to date, pharmaceutical companies have received 13.1 billion dollars to develop a vaccine: a fantastic business, as they will now make more money on the market, with their costs already having been paid by governments. A central discussion would be whether markets should make profit on common goods like water, air and humans, but we have no space for this debate.

This aside, the situation today is that again according to Oxfam, the rich countries have 13.5%of the world population, Yet they have bought in advance 51% of the doses that pharmaceutical companies will produce – in 2021, 86.5 % of the world will have to make do with the remaining 49%. A consortium of public and private enterprises, COVAX, has been established to deal with the most fragile parts of the world population. Over 185 countries are involved, but it is still very far from gathering the necessary funds.

What is the lesson we can draw from this incomplete analysis? That we are far from having a political class able to face global issues. On the contrary, nationalism and xenophobia are on their way back. The attitude of nationalist leaders to Covid-19 has been similar to that for the threat of climate change: it is a left-wing idea from globalists. So, wearing a mask has become a political declaration.

Trump lost re-election in a great measure due to his attitude on the virus. We can only have a dim hope that this lesson will have some impact. When it comes to the poor, the terms social justice and solidarity are out of fashion, but we are creating imbalances and tensions that we will probably pay dearly for. The French Revolution was not done by a political party, but by an impoverished Third State, or the poor, who revolted against the nobility and the clergy. That is a lesson that the richest 1% would do well not to forget.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti-neoliberal global governance. Director for international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development. Adviser to INPS-IDN and to the Global Cooperation Council. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

 

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The annual commemoration of Africa Industrialization Day commemorated through a weeklong event, November 16-20 2020, was held virtually through a series of webinars covering a range of topics and themes relevant to Africa’s industrialization agenda. Credit: UNIDO

By Jenny Larsen
VIENNA, Nov 26 2020 (IPS)

Industrialization and development go hand in hand. There is hardly a country in the world that has developed without building a strong manufacturing base. But for Africa – sometimes referred to as the continent of the future – the fruits of industrialization have often seemed just out of reach.

The continent’s development progress ground to a halt in the 1980s as war, disease, famine and poor governance overtook the political and social landscape. A debt crisis, ill-designed structural adjustment policies and a crash in commodity prices left Africa poorer at the end of the decade than at the beginning.

Many of the same problems persisted for much of the 1990s. By the start of this millennium, the Economist magazine had dubbed Africa the “hopeless continent”. Over two lost decades, collective efforts to push industrial development achieved little.

The first Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA), launched in 1980 by regional organizations and supported by UNIDO, ended in failure, suffering from insufficient national buy-in and funds. The second decade came at a time of dwindling commodity prices, and though it saw more private-sector and grassroots involvement, progress was negligible. (Lessons learnt, Making It magazine)

Industrialization was pushed to the sidelines. Although the impetus from policymakers and governments grew throughout the 2000s, it wasn’t until 2016 that coordinated action was once again launched under the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III).

Now, half-way through IDDA III, is there hope of success where previous initiatives failed? Both the domestic and international context have changed radically over the past two decades. The goals of IDDA III are not only supported by UNIDO and the African Union (AU) but by other UN agencies, by African governments at the highest level, by the private sector, development organizations and financial institutions.

These goals are linked to the AU’s 2063 agenda to drive development in Africa and embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 9 on industrialization, infrastructure and innovation.

There has also been a turnaround in support for industrial development policy, which is now recognized as playing a key part in achieving economic development and social goals on health, education and well-being,as well as a fresh approach to its implementation through the creation of new business models and an innovation drive.

This scale of commitment brings dynamism and funding that were previously lacking, leading to a step-up in the number of technical assistance projects and programmes by UNIDO and other partners.

From two Programmes for Country Partnership in Africa in 2015, UNIDO now runs eight, each with greater levels of engagement and funding than before. In Ethiopia, for example, four new agro-industrial parks were completed in 2020, and over $600 million has been earmarked by a variety of partners to increase government resources.

Despite ongoing challenges and a levelling off in GDP growth since 2017, many countries have made significant strides in boosting their industrial and agro-processing sectors, notably in food and beverages, leather, textiles, automotive and heavy machinery. The diversity needed to allow manufacturing to really take off has not yet taken root, but there are pockets of success.

Ghana, for example, has made progress through its adoption of a clear industrialization strategy, focusing on improving the business environment and the development of special export zones (SEZs). In the three years to 2019, the industrial sector was a major component in the country’s growth, rising by over 10 per cent a year. (AfDB Ghana Economic Outlook 2019)

Uganda’s industrial sector jumped in 2019 from 20 per cent of GDP to closer to 30 per cent as a result of strong investment in manufacturing. Around 80 per cent of foreign direct investment into Ethiopia in recent years has been destined for the manufacturing sector, through the development of industrial parks (ODI).

The result has been a rapid rise in growth, jobs and exports of horticulture products, textiles and clothing, with this last jumping tenfold since the early 2000s.

There is also a thriving entrepreneurial sector in many countries – often missed in industrial statistics because of small company size and the large number of firms still operating in the informal economy.

Although many of these enterprises cannot be classed as industrialized, they form part of a groundswell of business dynamism that is helping to raise incomes and develop locally supplied domestic consumer markets as workers move increasingly from the land to a variety of jobs in the city.

The past five years have also seen a huge rise in investment in African start-ups, including e-start-ups, with South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt leading recipients of the $1 billion invested in the region in 2019.

In addition, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), worth $2.5 trillion, comes into operation in early 2021. Although trade between African countries, at 17 per cent of exports, is far below levels seen in Europe (67 per cent) and Asia (60 per cent), almost half of that trade is in manufactured goods – considerably higher than in other regions.

Developing economies of scale by providing continent-wide access for people and goods across 54 countries, AfCFTA should improve allocation of resources, raise competition, boost competitiveness and contribute to more sustainable growth in the long run.

If successful, it could provide an environment for local industry to grow at a time when the pandemic has further subdued demand in Africa’s traditional export markets, while offering an African counterpoint to the growing global trend for market regionalization (most recently seen in the signing of the world’s largest trade area in Asia, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership).

These developments will also be supported by Africa’s rising middle class of consumers, defined by the African Development Bank as those who can spend between $2 and $20 a day. By the middle of the century, it expects this middle class to reach around 40 per cent of the population, which, by then, will mean over one billion people. Nevertheless, while many of the building blocks for success are in place in a way they weren’t two decades ago, old obstacles persist.

Africa is still the world’s least industrialized region. Its share of global manufacturing value added (MVA) remains tiny at around 1.8 per cent and has even edged downwards since 2014. Its MVA as a share of GDP, taken as a measure of industrialization, has stagnated over the past 10 years.

In 2018, the latest year for which data are available, it stood at 10.5 per cent compared to more than 16 per cent at the beginning of the 1980s – a sharp contrast to MVA/GDP of over 25 per cent reached in recent years by developing Asia.

Some have argued that the continent may have already missed its chance. Competition from more developed markets, especially East Asia, shifts in demand and rapid technological change, all make it harder for the majority of still resource-dependent African economies, where business costs are high and productivity low, to follow a traditional route to industrialization.

A new threat – and the path ahead

There is also a major new threat to African economies: the COVID-19 pandemic looks certain to hit them hard, despite the fact that the health crisis has been less severe there than in other regions.

The region is facing its first major recession in 25 years. The World Bank estimates losses in GDP could amount to between $37 billion and $79 billion in 2020. Disruption to trade and supply chains and an ongoing drop in demand, especially from Africa’s biggest trading partner, China, is hitting growth, and investment flows have stalled.

UNCTAD says Africa’s merchandise exports could fall by as much as 17 per cent this year, squeezing tax receipts and cramping governments’ ability to maintain public spending and invest in the policies needed to boost industrialization.

Manufacturing is expected to suffer heavy losses, especially in the automotive, airline, energy and basic materials sectors. A large number of African policymakers expect overall industrial revenue to drop by at least 25 per cent in 2020, according to a new UNIDO survey.

The crisis threatens to cut jobs, intensify migration, increase poverty and hinder the fight against climate change. These challenges make it all the more urgent to build resilience and sustainability, further strengthening the case for industrialization.

To get there, Africa must see the pandemic as an opportunity to drive change, to invest in new business models, support innovation and diversify its products. The post-COVID-19 change in global markets gives added importance to developing local and regional supply chains to take advantage of a growing domestic market.

This will mean giving full support to the new AfCFTA. Additionally, it will require concentrated measures to support manufacturing sector businesses, including services in technology upgrading, quality compliance capacity development, product development, marketing and investment promotion.

Infrastructure development needs to be a priority too, driven by the state with private-sector support. Poor-quality roads and unreliable transport contribute to the high cost of doing business in many countries, harming competitiveness. For example, in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa the cost (per unit distance) of transporting goods could be up to five times higher than in developed countries.

At the same time, more investment in internet connectivity is needed to prepare for a digital future, as well as improvements to the continent’s energy infrastructure, building on green technologies such as hydro and wind power.

Africa also needs to invest more in education and skills, making science and technology a priority to take advantage of the ongoing digital revolution.

But economies must get the basics right as well. This means focusing on upgrading less high-tech sectors such as food and beverages, garments and paper in local and regional markets. And with 60 per cent of the working population still employed in agriculture, investing more in agribusiness will help to boost incomes and provide new jobs.

The pandemic has shown the need for self-reliance and resilience, and the reforms needed to transform African economies must build both. But it has also demonstrated the importance of partnership and cooperation.

Despite the challenges, Africa has transformed both its political and economic landscape in the past two decades. This transformation and commitment to change at both national and international level mean the goals of IDDA III are now more achievable than at any time in the past.

By working together, the African future may finally be within grasp.

 

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The post Can Africa’s Third Industrial Development Decade Deliver? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Jenny Larsen is Communications Expert, Directorate of External Relations and Policy Research at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), a specialized agency of the United Nations that promotes industrial development for poverty reduction, inclusive globalization and environmental sustainability.

 
Industrial development in Africa has been sluggish for some decades. Now, as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic kick in, hopes for better progress, at least in the short term, appear to be fading. But if countries grasp the right opportunities, the next decade can deliver the industrial change needed to meet the challenges ahead.

The post Can Africa’s Third Industrial Development Decade Deliver? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The development of a 5-star hotel on ancestral lands of the Mro indigenous community in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh could destroy their traditional way of life, activists warn. Courtesy: CC-BY-SA-3.0/Md.Kabirul Islam

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2020 (IPS)

The construction of a five-star hotel in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, could lead to the forced eviction of the Mro indigenous community from their ancestral lands and destroy “the social, economic, traditional and cultural fabric of the community”, warns Amnesty International.

But local activist Reng Young Mro told IPS that the international community must rally behind the Mro indigenous community to halt the construction.

The hotel is expected to be built collaboratively by a welfare organisation and a local conglomerate. It is expected to affect six villages directly and about a hundred villages indirectly, according to local news.

Young, a masters student who has been protesting against the hotel, says the Mro indigenous community is living in fear of being evicted after the hotel is built. They are also concerned the construction will affect their livelihoods, potentially taking away some of their sources of income.

Many local activists from the Mro indigenous community have been organising for weeks against the project, which would spread over a thousand acres on the indigenous land in the Bandarban area in southern Bangladesh.

On Monday, Nov. 23, Amnesty International issued a statement calling for authorities in Bangladesh to listen to, and comply with, the indigenous leaders’ demands.

“The construction of a five-star hotel under these circumstances would violate the Bangladeshi authorities’ responsibility and commitment to protect and promote the rights of the indigenous peoples, rather than providing the indigenous community with the necessary support to realise their own development plans, for example by improving access to education and electricity,” read a part of the statement, calling for the project to be immediately abandoned.

A representative of the conglomerate building the hotel told the news media that the local government has an 8 percent share in the project. However, local leaders denied this, stating they do not have any such arrangement.

Young said those building the hotel must understand that the Mro indigenous community doesn’t want promises of “improvement” forced upon them as they prefer development on their own terms.

“They are completely cheating us to build this project, which will only generate profit for them, while the locals are deprived of these benefits,” Young told IPS in Bengali.

Excerpts below from the full interview follow.

Inter Press Service (IPS): Tell us a bit about your concerns about the hotel.

Reng Young Mro (RY): The locals here have a lot of complaints about the hotel that’s being built and are living in fear about it.

Their concerns are about a range of issues: they’re having to witness construction on their ancient land. The project is [is to be developed over] a large area, where the locals have created a holy space for themselves, built graveyards and created a community. Many bank on this land to earn their living.

Meanwhile, the hotel’s project management has made a lot of plans for different kinds of entertainments such as a cable car between hills.

IPS: What are your specific concerns about facilities such as that?

RY: If there are cable cars between the hills, where the tourists are going back and forth, we are concerned about the kind of interruption this will cause in the life of the locals. There are also fears that the locals might be evicted. But the Mro community really likes to live ordinary lives in solitude, which would be hampered by this.

But it looks like roads are being dug through the villages, across the vast expanses of this area. If tourists end up frequenting these places, it will disrupt the privacy of the local people. As a result, many will either leave themselves, or they will eventually be asked to move — that is the fear. 

And for an area with very little education, for a people to whom the idea of an “improved” life is rather foreign, what good will a five-star hotel do?

IPS: Do you have any fears about the protests the Mro indigenous community are organising against this project?

RY: Yes of course, we have many fears. First of all, they didn’t take any initiative to have any discussions with us. That’s why we asked for very simple conciliation, explaining that we just want to hold on to our culture, we want to continue living our normal lives.

That’s what we’re protesting for: we don’t want a 5-star hotel. And the protests will definitely affect the interests of those who are building this hotel, and so we live in fear of retaliation.

IPS: How do you respond to the justification behind building the hotel?

RY: The project building council says they’ve discussed the project with local leaders. Yes, they did speak a bit but they now targeted more places than they initially discussed. Even if they take 20 acres and build hotels, they need to discuss this with us. To the international community, our request is that this building needs to stop.

The process through which they’ve initiated to establish this is also problematic. According to any kind of legal process — whether it’s national, or local, or specific to the indigenous community — an institution is required to work in collaboration with local leaders and with their permission. None of that is happening.

The post Q&A: Mro Indigenous Community Plea for Halt of Construction of 5-Star Hotel appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Whitehouse.Gov

By Nikolaos Gavalakis
BERLIN, Nov 25 2020 (IPS)

Donald Trump will have to leave the White House in January. Although there will be a few skirmishes in the US courts in the coming weeks to sort out whether some votes were legitimate or not, the outcome won’t change.

No sooner had the main US broadcasters declared Joe Biden the winner than some experts began writing the epitaph of the entire populist right. Sociologist Ivan Krastev spoke of a ‘devastating blow for Europe’s populists’. And former EU Council President Donald Tusk exulted that ‘Trump’s defeat can be the beginning of the end of the triumph of right-wing populism in Europe too.’

But not so fast. First of all, a look at the political map reveals a few sobering facts. In France, Marine Le Pen is already on the starting blocks for the 2022 presidential elections. In Great Britain Boris Johnson’s chaotic government is still heading for a No-Deal Brexit.

In Italy Matteo Salvini’s nationalist Lega Nord is ahead in the polls. In Poland the ruling PiS (with the support of the constitutional court) recently restricted women’s abortion rights. And in Hungary Viktor Orbán continues to wreak havoc unhindered.

Things don’t look much better outside Europe either. Despite his catastrophic handling of the corona crisis and over 150,000 deaths, Jair Bolsonaro is, according to polls from September, more popular in Brazil than ever before.

There is no denying that right-wing populists have achieved unprecedented success over the past decade and have made it into the highest offices. With the election of Donald Trump as the world’s most powerful man, this phenomenon probably reached its peak in 2016. Four years later, Trump has been defeated; but what lessons can be drawn from the election for the battle against right-wing populism?

Trumpism is here to stay

After an initial fright, as the vote count progressed, the following narrative crystallised among many in the media and on the centre-left spectrum. Never before has a candidate in the US presidential election received as many votes as Joe Biden.

His nationwide lead over Donald Trump is more than six million votes. Nor is the lead in the electoral college a narrow one. The tyrant is defeated. So, everything is fine, right?

No; there are also downsides. Donald Trump got over ten million more votes in this election than four years earlier. Just how close the election was in the decisive swing states can be seen from the following: according to the latest count, in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the share of the vote that went to the Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen was bigger than Biden’s lead over Trump. If a few thousand of these votes had gone to Trump, he could have been in charge for another four years.

Although the pain and anxiety caused by Trump’s relatively strong performance is quite understandable, an explanation based solely on racist structures seems insufficiently complex.

The sobering and, for many, shocking observation remains that, despite a pandemic with well over 200,000 dead because of the Trump government’s mismanagement, his abundantly documented lies and chaotic administration, his cruel migration policy and his destructive behaviour following the death of George Floyd, the voters have not turned away in droves from the Republicans after four years of Trump.

On the contrary, he was able to win over millions of people who in 2016 voted for another candidate or did not go to the polls.

It’s not just racism

How could this happen? MSNBC presenter Joy Reid put the election results down to ‘a great amount of racism and anti-blackness’. Charles M. Blow took the same line in his article, citing the ‘strength of the white patriarchy’ as the reason for the outcome.

The idea of the backward white Trump voter is however not accurate, as a look at the structure of the electorate reveals. The President succeeded in significantly broadening the Republican voter base.

Since 1960, no Republican presidential candidate has been able to win a higher share of non-white voters (one in four voted for him). Among Afro-American men, it was almost one in five, and among African American women, Trump was able to double his share of voters from four to eight percent.

He gained ground among Latino voters and white women, more than a third of Asian Americans put their cross next to Trump’s name, and he was also much more successful among the LGBTQ community (28 per cent) than four years ago (14 per cent). Even people of colour are not immune to the lure of right-wing populism.

Although the pain and anxiety caused by Trump’s relatively strong performance is quite understandable, an explanation based solely on racist structures seems insufficiently complex. After all, it is only eight years since Barack Obama scored a landslide victory over Mitt Romney.

The idea that almost 74 million Americans are supposed to be racist, or at least willing to swear unquestioning blind allegiance to a thoroughly racist system, is in any event a very bold argument. There are four aspects that offer a better explanation.

Social democracy is popular among Americans

First, it is often assumed that members of minorities who have personal experience of discrimination automatically vote for left-wing parties. However, the reasons for individual voting decisions are much more complex.

Latinos often have very conservative views on issues such as the right to abortion. Demographic groups cannot be regarded as monolithic. ‘Despite what many progressives seem to think, minorities don’t just sit there stewing in their Otherness all day,’ writes Antonio García Martínez.

Voters are individuals with different views and attitudes, not mere representatives of the population group they have been ascribed to. And they make decisions based on the political choices available and their personal preferences.

The critique of identity politics is here explicitly not directed at attempts to improve the situation of disadvantaged people, but rather at a world view that sees social developments and conflicts primarily through the lens of group identity.

In the battle against right-wing populism, sweeping generalisations about electoral groups are not helpful; what matters is to address people’s actual, and not their presumed, interests.

After both Trump elections, one thing is now finally clear: the demonisation of right-wing populists in purely moral terms (‘If You Vote for Trump, You’re a Racist’) doesn’t work.

Second, there is a common misconception regarding the reasons for people’s voting decisions. The term ‘demagogue’, which is often used for right-wing populists, implies that the voters support them out of ignorance. However, this paternalistic view fails to take into account that there are often rational grounds for their voting choices. For example, the PiS in Poland improved living standards for millions of people with an unprecedented welfare state programme.

In their short essay, Eszter Kováts and Weronika Grzebalska set out with impressive clarity the reasons why women in particular, perhaps surprisingly, support the Polish and Hungarian right-wing populists. And there are also rational grounds for Trump’s election: for example, during his term of office, the unemployment rate fell to a 50 year low – which particularly benefited those without a high school diploma.

In the US, it is classic social democratic issues that are popular with voters. According to exit polls conducted by Fox News – not a source suspected of pushing a left-liberal agenda – 72 per cent want a public health plan, also known as Medicare for All.

Democratic Party candidates for the House of Representatives who support Medicare for All did significantly better in the elections than their party colleagues who oppose it. In Florida, a state Trump won, 60 per cent of the citizens voted for a phased increase in the minimum wage to USD 15 per hour.

Colorado voted for paid leave for childbirth and family emergencies. This should come as no surprise: measures that secure or improve people’s standard of living are widely supported.

Demonisation doesn’t work

Third, it is clear that even Trump’s unbelievably poor handling of the pandemic did not seem to make much difference. In a country with hardly any effective social security, many citizens have more profound urgent existential needs than dealing with the coronavirus.

With them, Trump’s promise to avoid a lockdown and to keep the economy running at all costs was effective. 82 per cent of Republican voters surveyed cited the economy as their chief concern.

Here it is helpful to think of the economy not as an abstract term, but as the backbone of prosperity and job security. Robert Misik already stated at the Vienna state elections that ‘social Democrats and other progressive parties will only win at this time if they are seen to embody people’s need for security’.

Similar developments can also be observed in Great Britain. The reform course initiated by Keir Starmer – turning away from ideological identity politics pursued under Jeremy Corbyn, emphasising security and a left-wing economic policy – is beginning to bear fruit. According to recent polls (hopefully more accurate than those in the US), Labour stands fully five percentage points ahead of the Conservatives.

Fourth, the relationship between social elites and the general population is striking. There are millions of people in the US who are fed up with the moral entreaties of the coastal elites with their preachy political jargon. Especially in the interior of the country, people feel patronised and culturally scorned by the liberals.

‘Political correctness is thinking you’re better than somebody else—it’s correcting someone,’ says Elissa Slotkin, who represents the Democrats in the House of Representatives. ‘People do feel looked down upon.’ The simple language of populists like Trump is closer to the reality of many people’s lives. For 80 per cent of the American population, political correctness is a problem.

After both Trump elections, one thing is now finally clear: the demonisation of right-wing populists in purely moral terms (‘If You Vote for Trump, You’re a Racist’) doesn’t work. Similar approaches failed already when Boris Johnson was elected Prime Minister and against right-wing parties like the AfD in 2017 in Germany’s federal elections. Of course, right-wing populists must be criticised.

If you want to win the battle against them, however, rather than stigmatising voters and pushing leftist wishful thinking in the form of identity politics you need concrete policies that will measurably improve people’s lives: decent wages, compensation schemes for short-time working, unemployment and health insurance, affordable housing and so on.

Especially when it comes to social policy, centre-left parties surely have a variety of tools in the policy box.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES)

 

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The post Not all 74 million Trump Voters Can be Racists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nikolaos Gavalakis heads the editorial office of the Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft IPG-Journal. Previously, he was head of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's regional office 'Dialogue Eastern Europe' in Kiev.

 
Trumpism isn’t just going away after the US elections. And we finally need to understand why

The post Not all 74 million Trump Voters Can be Racists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A journalist from Radio Bundelkhand in India conducts an interview. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By External Source
Nov 25 2020 (IPS)

The insidious problem of online violence against women journalists is increasingly spilling offline with potentially deadly consequences, a new global survey suggests.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of female respondents to our survey – taken by 1210 international media workers – said they had experienced online abuse, harassment, threats and attacks. And 20% of the women surveyed reported being targeted with offline abuse and attacks that they believe were connected with online violence they had experienced. The survey, which concluded this month, was fielded by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Online violence is the new frontline in journalism safety – and it’s particularly dangerous for women. In the digital environment, we’ve seen an exponential increase in attacks on women journalists in the course of their work, particularly at the intersection of hate speech and disinformation – where harassment, assault and abuse are used to try to shut them up.

Misogyny and online violence are a real threat to women’s participation in journalism and public communication in the digital age. It’s both a genuine gender equality struggle and a freedom of expression crisis that needs to be taken very seriously by all actors involved.

Our survey provides disturbing new evidence that online violence against women journalists is jumping offline. Frequently associated with orchestrated attacks designed to chill critical journalism, it migrates into the physical world – sometimes with deadly impacts.

In 2017, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that in at least 40% of cases, journalists who were murdered had received threats, including online, before they were killed. The same year, two women journalists on opposite sides of the world were murdered for their work within six weeks of one another: celebrated Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and prominent Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh. Both had been the targets of prolific, gendered online attacks before they were killed.

Parallels between patterns of online violence associated with Caruana Galizia’s death and that being experienced by another high-profile target – Filippino-American journalist Maria Ressa – were so striking that when digital attacks against Ressa escalated earlier this year, the murdered journalist’s sons issued a public statement expressing their fears for Ressa’s safety..

Likewise, the death of Lankesh, which was associated with online violence propelled by right-wing extremism, also drew international attention to the risks faced by another Indian journalist who is openly critical of her government: Rana Ayyub. She has faced mass circulation of rape and death threats online alongside false information designed to counter her critical reporting, discredit her, and place her at greater physical risk.

 

The grim reality of journalism for many women. UNESCO, Author provided

 

Pointing to the emergence of a pattern, the targeting of Ayyub led five United Nations special rapporteurs to intervene in her defence. Their statement drew parallels with Lankesh’s case and called on India’s political leaders to act to protect Ayyub, stating: “We are highly concerned that the life of Rana Ayyub is at serious risk following these graphic and disturbing threats.”

 

‘Shadow pandemic’

Physical violence against women has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, in what is called the “shadow pandemic”. At the same time, online violence against women journalists also appears to be on the rise. In another global survey, conducted earlier this year by ICFJ and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University as part of the Journalism and Pandemic Project, 16% of women respondents said online abuse and harassment was “much worse than normal”.

This finding likely reflects the escalating levels of hostility and violence towards journalists seen during the pandemic – fuelled by populist and authoritarian politicians who have frequently doubled as disinformation peddlers.

 

Online attacks often spill over into the real world. UNESCO, Author provided

 

Significantly, one in ten English language respondents to the ICFJ-Tow Center’s Journalism and the Pandemic survey indicated that they had been abused – on or offline – by a politician or elected official during the first three months of the pandemic. Another relevant factor is that the “socially distanced” reporting methods necessitated by coronavirus have caused journalists to rely more heavily on social media channels for both newsgathering and audience engagement purposes. And these increasingly toxic spaces are the main enablers of viral online violence against women journalists.

Since 2016, several studies have concluded that some women journalists are withdrawing from frontline reporting, removing themselves from public online conversations, quitting their jobs, and even abandoning journalism in response to their experience of online violence. But there have also been numerous cases of women journalists fighting back against online violence, refusing to retreat or be silenced, even when speaking up has made them bigger targets.

 

What can be done?

We know that physical attacks on women journalists are frequently preceded by online threats made against them. These can include threats of physical or sexual assault and murder, as well as digital security attacks designed to expose them to greater risk. And such threats – even without being followed by physical assault – often involve very real psychological impacts and injuries.

So, when a woman journalist is threatened with violence online, this should be taken very seriously. She should be provided with both physical safety support (including increased security when necessary), psychological support (including access to counselling services), and digital security triage and training (including cybersecurity and privacy measures). But she should also be properly supported by her editorial managers, who need to signal to staff that these issues are serious and will be responded to decisively, including with legal and law enforcement intervention where appropriate.

We should be very cautious about suggesting that women journalists need to build resilience or “grow a thicker skin” in order to survive this work-related threat to their safety. They’re being attacked for daring to speak. For daring to report. For doing their jobs. The onus shouldn’t be on women journalists to “just put up with it” any more than we would suggest in 2020 that physical harassment or sexual assault are acceptable career risks for women, or risks which they should take responsibility for preventing.

The solutions lie in structural changes to the information ecosystem designed to combat online toxicity generally and in particular, exponential attacks against journalists. This will require rich and powerful social media companies living up to their responsibilities in dealing decisively, transparently and appropriately with disinformation and hate speech on the platforms as it affects journalists.

This will likely mean that these companies need to accept their function as publishers of news. In doing so, they would inherit an obligation to improve their audience curation, fact-checking and anti-hate speech standards.

Ultimately, collaboration and cooperation that spans big tech, newsrooms, civil society organisations, research entities, policymakers and the legal and judicial communities will be required. Only then can concrete action be pursued.

Julie Posetti, Global Director of Research, International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and Research Associate, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ), University of Oxford; Jackie Harrison, Professor of Public Communication, University of Sheffield, and Silvio Waisbord, Director and Professor School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Mothers and their children gather at a community nutrition centre in the little village of Rantolava, Madagascar, to learn more about a healthy diet. Credit: Alain Rakotondravony/IPS

By Gabriele Riccardi
NAPLES, Italy, Nov 25 2020 (IPS)

The risks factors contributing to the dramatic rise in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in recent decades have been known for a long time but the Covid-19 pandemic has brutally exposed our collective failure to deal with them.

Reporting on the findings of the latest Global Burden of Disease Study, The Lancet warns of a “perfect storm” created by the interaction of the highly infectious Covid-19 virus with the continued rise in chronic illness and associated risk factors, such as obesity and high blood sugar.

The mounting dangers posed by NCDs are highlighted in Good Health and Well-Being, the third of the 17 interlinked Sustainable Development Goals, which targets the reduction of premature mortality from NCDs through prevention and treatment by one third by 2030.

Yet NCDs are projected to account for 52 million deaths in 2030, representing some 75% of all deaths, up from 63% in 2013 and 71% in 2016. Worldwide life expectancy gains could be reaching a turning point.

Cardiovascular diseases account for most deaths from NCDs, followed by cancers. Diabetes is also a major killer. Deaths from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are also seen to be rising dramatically – partly because people in richer countries are living longer but also because of improved diagnosis and reporting on death certificates, as seen in the UK where it is now the leading cause of death for women, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Gabriele Riccardi

Many — but not all — of the risk factors leading to these NCDs are preventable and treatable through changes in unhealthy behaviours. Tackling them will bring us enormous social and economic benefits.

Good nutrition is the common key in reducing the risk of NCDs, even Alzheimer’s for which there is no cure. Recent studies cited by the World Health Organisation indicate that people can lower the risk of dementia by eating a healthy diet, as well as by taking regular exercise, not smoking and avoiding harmful use of alcohol.

Obesity has become a global epidemic, not just in wealthier countries. It is on the rise in low and middle income countries, coexisting with undernutrition and stunting. One in nine people worldwide are hungry or undernourished. One in three people are overweight or obese, according to the Global Nutrition Report 2020.

Over 650 million people across the world were classified obese in 2016, exposing themselves to a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes and at least 12 types of cancer.

But as noted by Agnes Kalibata, Special Envoy for the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit, addressing the challenges of nutrition are more complicated than those of hunger or food security because they go beyond food to cover issues of quality, access and affordability.

And so it is with obesity, a highly complex aspect of malnutrition. Policies and best practices range from the development of eating guidelines and new educational programmes to the imposition of taxes that discourage unhealthy consumption patterns.

Studies have shown that taxes increase prices, decrease purchases and reduce consumption of unhealthy food and drink. Tax policies can also influence positive change by leading to the reformulation of products to remove some of the sugar, salt, fat or calories. Norway has had a tax on added sugar since 1922.

Research into NCDs must touch many bases. The Food Sustainability Index, developed by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) in partnership with the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranks 67 countries across three categories. The US comes 34th out of 35 high-income countries in the nutritional challenges pillar, characterized by diets high in sugar, meat, saturated fat and sodium. Japan tops the nutritional ranking, while Greece and India perform best in their income categories for the quality of their policy responses to dietary patterns.

In the European Union, around 550,000 people of working age die prematurely from NCDs. As the leading cause of mortality, they are estimated to cost EU economies 115 billion euros a year, or 0.8% of GDP. More than 20% of people are obese, while about 10% of those aged 25 years and over have diabetes.

Inequities in food systems, from production to consumption, must be confronted to deal with the surge in diet-related NCDs. The vast majority of people cannot access or afford a healthy diet. Sales of cheap but highly processed foods are soaring in rich countries but also growing fast in the developing world.

The importance of nutrition and the role of food as prevention will be key themes of Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork, a conference hosted by BCFN in partnership with Food Tank on December 1 to formulate recommendations for the 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Just as there is no single silver bullet to prevent or treat obesity, so we have to deal with an array of social inequalities — including poverty, race and housing — that interact with NCDs to increase the risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19.

NCDs have been critical in driving the death toll from the virus, which has killed more than 1.2 million people so far. And in a vicious circle, Covid-19-related lockdowns are exacerbating poverty, forcing more people to resort to food banks and aid deliveries to feed their families. The need to address nutritional challenges through food systems has never been so critical.

Gabriele Riccardi is Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases, University of Naples “Federico II”; former President, Italian Society of Diabetology – SID; member, Board of the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Advisory, Italy

 

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By Victor Manyong and Kanayo F. Nwanze
IBADAN, Nigeria, Nov 25 2020 (IPS)

Often cited as Africa’s greatest asset, its youth are also among the most vulnerable and volatile.

A large and growing population of talented young people has the potential to drive economic growth and well-being of societies across the continent but, as the African Development Bank warns, current conditions of severe unemployment are translating into poorer living conditions, higher flows of migration, and greater risks of conflict – in short, a social disaster in the making.

Victor Manyong

Africa’s population of 420 million or so young people aged 15 to 35 is expected to nearly double by 2050. But while 10 to 12 million more enter the workforce each year, only just over 3 million new jobs are being created.

At present two-thirds of non-student youth are defined as unemployed, underemployed, discouraged, or marginally employed. Moreover, unemployment cuts across different social categories: educated and less so, female and male, rural and urban.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also fuelling unemployment in the hardest hit sectors such as tourism and hospitality, retail and trade and agriculture, particularly in Southern Africa, the region with the highest jobless rates.

Under the Bank’s Jobs for Youth in Africa investment plan launched in 2016, agriculture – including on-farm production and off-farm processing – is targeted to create 41 million jobs over 10 years. Even taking into account that smallholder farmers make up more than 60 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa, this is an ambitious target that calls for effective and comprehensive policies in contrast to the piecemeal measures of the past.

While young people commonly bring their enthusiasm, energy, and ambition as well as greater capacity and knowledge in IT systems than the older generation, they however, face enormous obstacles in starting careers in agribusiness, lacking resources of land, capital, assets and access to financial opportunities. Young women are often more disadvantaged than young men.

Kanayo F. Nwanze

In the months before the coronavirus surfaced, the non-profit International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) launched a three-year project in sub-Saharan Africa that aims to build our understanding of poverty reduction, employment impact, and factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness, and rural farm and non-farm economies.

Known as CARE (Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence), and funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), IITA launched 80 research fellowships for young African scholars, with an emphasis on young female professionals and students aiming to acquire a master’s or doctoral degree. Grantees are offered training on research methodology, data management, science communication and scientific writing, and the production of research evidence for policymaking in line with IITA’s mandate to generate agricultural innovations to meet Africa’s most pressing challenges.

Through CARE, young and authoritative voices are being brought to the policy-making table. Unafraid to challenge assumptions, youth-on-youth research is highlighting ways forward to break the vicious circle in which youths are trapped.

Dadirai P. Mkombe, a female researcher in Malawi, investigated the role direct investment plays on youth employment in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, concluding that macroeconomic policies to encourage long-term growth, even leveraged by external debt, are necessary. Foreign direct investment is essential for job creation, she says, while cautioning that more greenfield investments are needed than mergers and acquisitions.

From Benin, Rodrigue Kaki investigated what motivates agribusiness entrepreneurship among graduates from faculties and universities of agriculture. Finding that few students can opt for self-employment in agribusiness, he recommends start-them-early programs (STEP) in post-secondary education with actions that incentivize students towards self-employment, such as setting up agribusiness entrepreneurship clubs in agricultural faculties and universities.

Motivation was also a theme for Cynthia Mkong researching university students who choose agriculture in Cameroon. Among her findings is the need for a change in mindsets, starting at school where educators and mentors should highlight positive trends and emerging opportunities in the sector. In addition, building and implementing effective policies to improve education levels for girls and household income at all levels would help revamp declining youth interest in agriculture. Her findings indicate that agriculture will rise in stature both as a field of study and occupation.

Also in Cameroon, Djomo Choumbou Raoul Fani focused his research on the contributions and competitiveness of young female grain farmers, and on rural un- and underemployment, especially among young women. Among his recommendations are the need for gender-blind policies and gender-positive information to ensure that public investment in agricultural credit, food marketing, roads, and schools be put to constructive use for young female farmers.

These few examples of policy briefs among many others produced to date illustrate how the researchers, with young female professionals well represented, are ready to challenge assumptions and stereotypes to show the way forward. In its report IFAD (https://www.ifad.org/en/youth) also emphasized that shaping the rural economies of tomorrow should involve the youths to succeed.

With the youngest and fastest-growing population in the world, Africa’s still overwhelmingly rural communities will continue to grow, even as cities do. IITA’s drive to enhance the perception of agribusiness will enable young people to see a future there. The CARE project is already yielding the evidence-based research needed by African communities to build food security and resilience. Policymakers cannot operate in a vacuum. Youth engagement is key.

Victor Manyong, Agricultural Economist, R4D Director for Eastern Africa, and Leader of the social science research group, IITA

Kanayo F. Nwanze, CGIAR Special Representative to the UN Food Systems Summit and former IFAD President

 

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Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is most vulnerable to climate variability and change with drought and flooding being the biggest climate challenges. This dated photo show displaced children fetching water following 2008 floods in Sudan. Courtesy: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

By Reem Abbas
KHARTOUM, Nov 24 2020 (IPS)

Earlier this year, when heavy rains caused massive flooding in Sudan, a three-month state of emergency was declared in September. The floods which began in July, were the worst the country experienced in the last three decades and affected some 830,000 people, including 125,000 refugees and internally displaced people.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the Nile had reached a level of over 17 metres, bursting it banks and leaving thousands “homeless and in desperate need of humanitarian support”.

Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is most vulnerable to climate variability and change.

“Drought and flooding are the biggest climate challenges in Sudan and we have seen this recently,” Rehab Abdelmajeed Osman, a researcher and the National Determined Contributions (NDCs) coordinator at Sudan’s Higher Council for Environment and Natural Resources (HCENR), told IPS, referring to the recent floods.

NDCs outline the plans by countries to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. As agreed by the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries review these plans every 5 years.

Support to submit enhanced NDCs

With support from the Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP), an initiative of the NDC Partnership, Sudan is one of 63 countries that have been given financial and technical assistance to submit enhanced NDCs and fast track their implementation. CAEP has brought together member countries and 40 partners that include International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the World Resources Institute, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the U.N and the Nature Conservancy. In Sudan, the support is being implemented through the HCENR.

Abdelmajeed Osman and Areeg Gafaar, the coordinator for the NDC Partnership, are rushing to finish the plan by next year.

Sudan’s NDCs prioritise mitigation and adaptation as strategies. 

“By looking at mitigation, we look at the problems we have in Sudan through this lens. Sudan is facing increasing floods and droughts and this will affect food security and also in some places, rainfall is decreasing and people have to adapt accordingly,” Gafaar told IPS.

Food security also remains among the key issues of concern for people. An assessment after the floods noted that more than 2 million hectares of farmland had been affected. 

And in August, the U.N. World Food Programme noted that 1.4 million people in Khartoum alone “are experiencing high levels of food insecurity through September due to economic decline, inflation and food price hikes exacerbated by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic”. 

“In agriculture, we have to adapt to climate vulnerabilities and in this regard, our adaptation projects are critical and they provide services such as improved seeds and working on improving our micro-forecast systems,” added Gafaar.

The environment takes a backseat to conflict

The challenges Sudan faces to develop and implement the NDCs are not only linked to external factors, such as access to funding, but also to internal ones, which include the chaotic structure in which Sudan’s environmental entities operate, as well as conflict.

“Conflict is the biggest threat to the environment because it is a result of, as well as a source of, competition over scarce resources. Peace makes sure that conflict over resources is lessened,” said Abdelmajeed Osman.

In April 2019, Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled for 30 years, was ousted from power after four months of sustained protests. A war between the transitional government and rebel groups from the western region of Darfur and the southern states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, ended in October after an historic peace agreement between the transitional government and armed groups was signed.

Over the past 15 years, Sudan developed two national communications as part of its obligations to the climate convention and now a third communication is underway.

“The communication is just a communication but not a strategy. Sudan had a national action plan and it was developed as per the commitments to the convention to help countries pursue a climate friendly system. But due to political issues, Sudan couldn’t access many funding pools and as a result, a few pilot projects were implemented, but they were not mainstreamed,” said Gafaar.

Reasons for this include Sudan’s inclusion on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list for 27 years (Sudan was removed from the list this month by United States President Donald Trump) and the U.S. having imposed sanctions on the country since 1998.

Another reason is the chaotic department structure created by Sudan’s previous government.

“There were many different institutions such as the [HCENR] where we work, but also a national council for the environment as well as the national council on deforestation and the new government created a law that merged those councils and put us under the Council of Ministers,” said Abdelmajeed Osman.

Under Al-Bashir’s government, the same entities found themselves under the former presidency as well the short-lived Ministry for the Environment. The ministry essentially had the same departments as the HCENR, which resulted in a duplication of efforts and a lack of coordination that led to antagonism towards the HCENR. 

A new structure in place

“Now because we are under the Council of Minister, our budget will increase and the decisions are made quicker because of the direct channel,” said Abdelmajeed Osman.

Sudan’s constitutional declaration for the transitional period prioritises environment protection as a mandate of the government, stating the government will “work on maintaining a clean environment and biodiversity in the country and protecting and developing it in a manner that guarantees the future of generations”.

This commitment from the top-tiers of the government is essential as the NDCs are described by the higher council as a government paper that requires implementation by it.

Gafaar, who has years of experience working in this field, told IPS that some of the mitigation options that the government can focus on include renewable energy, forest management and waste management.

“This process gave us access to partners. We will have access to mitigation options by an international expert company and we will work on power and nature with IRENA,” said Gafaar.

 

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Nov 24 2020 (IPS)

On 10 December, representatives for the World Food Programme (WFP) will in Norway receive the Nobel Peace Prize at the Oslo City Hall. This is taking place while the COVID-19 pandemic is causing lock-downs and suffering all over world, limiting agricultural production and disrupting supply chains.

The World Food Programme focuses on hunger and food security. It supports 100 million people in approximately 90 countries. Two-thirds of WFP´s activities are carried out in conflict zones, where the organization provides food assistance to people who otherwise would have been fatally affected by undernutrition and starvation.

It is in particular the world´s poorest households that suffer from acute hunger, and their situation is worsening. In 2019, 135 million people were categorized as ”critically food-insecure” and the numbers are constantly increasing. This is not only due to the ravages of COVID-19, the current food crisis is furthermore aggravated by weather extremes, economic shocks, sociopolitical crises, lack of employment, increasing food prices, as well an endemic lack of adequate nutrition and food diversity, safe water, sanitation and health care. In several areas, protracted armed conflicts are adding to the suffering. An estimated 79 million people are currently displaced – 44 million internally, while 20 million refugees are under UNHCR´s mandate. Being deprived of their livelihoods a vast amount of these desolate individuals are constantly threatened by starvation.

Considering the above, you could assume that most people reckon that WFP´s Nobel Prize is well-deserved. Nevertheless, the World Food Programme and its mandate have often been questioned. Some have even demanded the organisation´s demise, referring to a general debate about the net effectiveness of aid. Among other arguments it has been stated that some nations have become overly reliant on foreign aid and it thus has to cease. Politicians, journalists and even some aid workers have pointed out that food support to starving people may worsen an already catastrophic situation by prolonging conflicts, creating and stimulating corruption, strengthening predatory regimes, supporting warring fractions and fostering black markets. Furthermore, it has been indicated that an apparent inefficiency of huge, UN supported and global organizations like WFP, motivates their defunding.

During assignments as consultant to WFP´s Headquarters in Rome I have listened to people telling me about their experiences from being confronted with thousands of starving people, especially undernourished, sick and dying children. This while they were putting their own lives at risk, being surrounded by murderous armies, bandits and militias. I was also told about their discomfort at being forced to cooperate with politicians who used starving people as pawns in their cynical power games. When asked if they believed in WFP´s mandate and right to exist, they answered that if you have been confronted with the suffering of severely undernourished fellow human beings, you could not even imagine a justification for not trying to help them. “To witness someone dying due to undernourishment is horrible. How can your conscience endure the knowledge that you did nothing about it, while realizing that you could have saved the one who died.”

The people I talked to were well aware that the organisation they served had its shortcomings, but they were also eager to amend them. They told me they felt privileged for having been provided with a possibility to ease the suffering of others. While passing through the foyer of WFP, I could not avoid a glance at a wall covered with bronze plaques paying homage to WFP staff who had been killed in the field while trying to help starving people. Last time I saw the wall, sometime in 2018, there were 98 names.

Like any other UN organisation, WFP is not a self-sufficient entity, it depends on voluntary donations, principally from governments. Accordingly, WFP consists of its member states and criticizing WFP means that you actually need to question your own government´s engagement in the running of the organization. Amending WFP´s flaws does not mean cutting off its financial support, it would be far better if more people became informed about the organization´s impressive achievements and tried to rectify assumed deficiencies by working through their own representatives within WFP.

Why should we terminate an experienced, global organization, which keeps track on human suffering around the world, while trying to amend it? Why allow suffering, when it can be mitigated? We all depend on each other. The suffering of others is a warning to you and me, as Hillel stated in the quote above – if I chose not to help someone, how can I then demand help from others when I find myself in peril?

Many of us live within an absurd paradise of reckless consumption, depleting the resources of our planet, destroying the very prerequisites for our existence and well-being. Just the packaging of everything we consume threatens to asphyxiate the Earth. The cost of supporting WFP and it efforts to amend world hunger is a minuscule fraction of what is spent on luxurious, unnecessary and even harmful luxury production – not talking about the arms industry. To accord a Nobel Peace Prize to an organization like WFP constitutes an acknowledgment of the responsibility we all have for each other.

In times when every inhabitant on Planet Earth is overshadowed by COVID-19, a Nobel Peace Prize to WFP reminds us how precious we are to each other. When people are confronted with a disease that so far cannot be controlled by drugs and efficient health care it makes us realize the importance of ignoring petty chauvinism, narcissism, power games and egoism. It is high time to increase international cooperation and realizing that the Earth is an enclosed, biological sphere, where we for our own survival have to join forces to save both our planet and humanity. No nation can single-handedly combat a pandemic, neither can starvation and pollution be amended without international organisations.

So let us rejoice in WFP´s Peace Prize and hope the world´s wealthy nations realize the urgency of supporting the organisation and replenish its funds. Their contributions have so far been insufficient for covering the identified needs of food-insecure populations and WFP´s funding gap is currently USD 4.1 billion and steadily increasing.

Source: Global Network Against Food Crisis (2020) 2020 Global Report on Food Crises: Joint analysis for better decisions. Rome: WFP

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

 

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Excerpt:

”If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? And if not now, when? That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow [...] go and learn.”
                                                                                                Hillel the Elder, active during the first century BCE

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Credit: UN Conference on Trade Development (UNCTAD), Geneva

By Ian Richards
GENEVA, Nov 24 2020 (IPS)

Until recently, Benin was best known for its cotton exports and its vibrant clothing designs. Since this year it is also the fastest place in the world to start a company. By providing a full online service, the government helped entrepreneurs create businesses and jobs during the pandemic. A third of Benin’s new entrepreneurs are women.

Earlier this year Sandra Idossou, a Beninese entrepreneur who had earlier run a media business, decided she wanted to open a handicrafts shop in the country’s bustling commercial capital, Cotonou. Having found a shop space, her next step was to obtain a permit to operate the business.

With Covid restrictions in place and enforced by the authorities, she logged into monentreprise.bj (in English, mybusiness), Benin’s new business registration website. Within ten minutes on her smartphone she had entered her information, photographed and uploaded her identity documents and paid by credit card. Two hours later, an email arrived with her certificates of incorporation, and her business was officially created.

Sandra benefited from a UN digital government platform, called eRegistrations, which now places Benin, jointly with Estonia, as the fastest in the world in which to start a company, jumping ahead of New Zealand, Georgia and Hong Kong, China. The EU average is three days, in New York it is seven days.

ERegistrations operates in seven other developing countries (Argentina, Cameroon, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Lesotho and Mali) with installation underway in two more (Bhutan and Cuba). The aim of the UN’s platform is not to beat world records, but to make official procedures more accessible and transparent, particularly for small businesses.

Laurent Gangbes, who runs Benin’s investment and export Promotion agency (APIEx), which operates monentreprise.bj, implemented with the help of Dutch funding, is proud of what it has achieved.

“Entrepreneurs and foreign investors told me they wanted to set up a business from their mobile phone so as to avoid unnecessary travel. We brought together several government services and worked to simplify forms and cut procedures to the strict minimum required.”

“This shows that when it comes to digital government, African countries are leapfrogging ahead of the rest of the world to be the best,” he added.

Paper-based administrative procedures are characterized around the world by long queues outside government offices, rude staff, frustrated users and the thump of rubber stamps.

But the reality can be worse, with the need to visit many different government departments, a bewildering array of forms mostly asking the same information, repeated demands for certified copies of identity documents, long waits for procedures that could be automatic, and occasionally requests for bribes.

Credit: UNCTAD, Geneva

The time taken and the cost to pay an agent to deal with the paperwork can at best deter and at worst put creating a legal business out of reach. This results in many developing country SMEs and workers left in the informal economy, unable to access loans or insurance, lacking legal protections, and contributing neither taxes nor social security.

But it can also lead to political instability. A World Bank study after the Tunisian revolution, which was in part driven by youth unemployment, found that one-third of young entrepreneurs in the country had had difficulties accessing finance because of the administrative burdens associated with company creation.

Administrative barriers are not limited to developing countries. A report by the US Office of Management and Budget calculated that in 2015, Americans spent 9.78 billion hours on federal paperwork.

And when a global pandemic hits, closing government offices and sending staff home, reliance on paper forms can also prevent marriages, land sales and passport renewals.

In Benin, the online platform was launched just before the Covid crisis. But the investment proved its worth. The number of companies created through the platform tripled between February and July, reaching 3,600 applications a month.

One-third of entrepreneurs were women, half were under 30 and half were based outside Cotonou. Government officials were able to check documents and approve company applications from their home, keeping to the two-hour benchmark.

Mr. Gangbes of APIEx is pleased with the results so far.

“During the pandemic the platform also helped those who had lost other sources of family income, as well as vulnerable rural populations, to set up their own business. I am confident this will contribute to Benin’s post-covid economic recovery.” He also thinks the platform is changing the way government works.

“My staff now spend more time advising clients and less time pushing paper. They are happier and more productive. And we are collecting a lot of data on the private sector that will help shape our economic policy.” The next step for the platform is to add new procedures, such as renewing business and trading licenses.

Frank Grozel, who leads the eRegistration programme at UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) thinks the possibilities for the digital government platform are limitless.

“The platform can also be used for land registries, civil registries, social security systems, immigration services. In El Salvador we are using it to help the government fight crime.”

He added that the pandemic had forced governments to accelerate the migration of their services online. “We are seeing huge interest in this area. As with business, the future for governments is digital.”

 

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Excerpt:

Ian Richards is an economist at the UN working on development finance and digital government.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Nov 24 2020 (IPS)

The World Bank has been leading other multilateral development banks (MDBs) and international financial institutions to press developing country governments to ‘de-risk’ infrastructure and other private, especially foreign investments.

They promote public-private partnerships (PPPs) supposedly to mobilize more private finance to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. PPP advocacy has been stepped up after developing countries’ pleas for better international tax cooperation were blocked at the third United Nations’ Financing for Development conference (FfD3) in Addis Ababa in mid-2015.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Official support for infrastructure PPPs seems stronger than ever. The Bank’s Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) was set up to coordinate MDBs, private investors and governments promoting PPPs. Meanwhile, the G20 has been trying to modify the mandates of national and international development banks to enable them to initiate infrastructure PPPs with the private sector.

De-risking?
The World Bank’s latest Guidance on PPP Contractual Provisions measures progress in terms of “successfully procured PPP transactions”. The Bank explicitly recommends ‘de-risking’ PPPs, effectively involving ‘socializing’ risks and privatizing profits.

But the term ‘de-risking’ is misleading as some risk is inherent in all project investments. After all, projects may encounter problems due to planning mistakes, poor implementation or unexpected developments. Hence, Bank advice does not really seek to reduce, let alone eliminate risk, but simply to make governments bear and absorb it.

Thus, ‘de-risking’ really means shifting risk from private investors to governments for more contingencies, including design, planning or implementation failures by private partners. This ignores the Bank’s Growth Commission’s concern that “In too many cases, the division of labor has put profits in private hands, and risks in the public lap”.

Off the books, out of sight
Both World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) research has found many governments using PPPs and other similar arrangements to keep such projects ‘off the books’ of official central government accounts, effectively reducing transparency and accountability, while compromising governance.

Anis Chowdhury

Such project financing typically involves government-guaranteed – rather than direct government – liabilities. Not booked as government development or capital expenditure, it is also not counted as part of sovereign or government debt, e.g., for parliamentary reporting and accountability.

Instead, project costs are supposed to be paid for, over time, by direct user fees or government operational or current expenditure. Hence, most governments do not extend their normal accountability procedures to cover such expenditure and related debt.

The Fund has even warned of likely abuse of such seemingly ‘easy’ or ‘free’ money, emphasising the dangers of taking more government debt and risk ‘off the books’. This is very significant as the IMF rarely criticises Bank recommendations and advice, even indirectly.

Shifting responsibility
PPP financing is typically booked as government-guaranteed liabilities, rather than as sovereign debt per se. Being ‘off the books’, governments face fewer constraints to taking on ever more debt and risk. With such commitments, they also become much more vulnerable to ‘unforeseen’ costs.

Such contractual arrangements, typically set by private partners in most PPPs, do little to improve governance and accountability. To be sure, normal government budgetary accounting and audit procedures for PPPs may not meaningfully improve transparency and accountability.

As such financing arrangements are typically long-term, related government risks are correspondingly long-term, lasting decades in many cases. This tempts ‘short-termist’ governments ‘of the day’ to make long-term commitments they are unlikely to be held personally accountable for in the near to medium-term.

Moral hazard
World Bank guidance is clear that even a private partner who fails to deliver as contracted must be compensated for work done before a government can terminate a contract. Whether private partners actually deliver as promised does not seem to matter to the Bank which provides no guidance for addressing their failures to meet contractual obligations.

The Bank thus contributes to ‘moral hazard’ in PPPs: the less likely the private partner stands to lose from poor performance, the less incentive it has to meet contractual obligations. Guaranteeing cost recovery, revenue and profit erodes the motive to deliver as promised and to consider project risks.

Enthusiastic PPP promotion – by the Bank, other MDBs and donors urging developing country governments to bear more risk – is not only encouraging ‘moral hazard’, but also creating more opportunities for the corruption and abuse they profess to lament.

Instead, private partners have greater incentives to try gouging rents from government partners, e.g., by renegotiating existing contracts to their advantage. Conversely, governments have to choose between bearing the costs of failed projects, and paying even more to save problematic ones in the hope of cutting losses.

Faced with such choices, governments have little choice but to accede to their private partners’ demands. Bank guidance has thus further undermined governments in their dealings with private partners, who are now better able to demand improved contractual conditions for themselves, at the expense of their government partners.

Ignoring evidence
Many governments can undertake large infrastructure projects themselves, or alternatively, make much better procurement arrangements. IMF research has also found, “In many countries, PPPs have not always performed better than public procurement”.

Ironically, Bank research has shown that “well-run public firms tend to match the performance of private firms in regulated sectors”, concluding, “There is no ‘killer’ rationale for public-private partnerships”.

Even the Bank’s Research Observer has published a summary of “some of the most compelling examples of this kind of emerging critique” of infrastructure PPPs in telecoms, transport, water and sanitation, waste management and electricity.

Yet, the Bank continues to promote PPPs as the preferred mode of infrastructure financing, trying to shift more risk to governments, ostensibly to attract more private investment. Meanwhile, Bank guidance typically fails to warn governments of the risks involved and their implications.

Prejudiced guidance
Bank and other PPP advocates dismiss criticisms as ‘ideological’ despite growing empirical evidence. Such damning findings have had little impact on their PPP advocacy. Instead, the new fad is for more ‘blended finance’ to PPPs, using official concessional finance to subsidise and attract more private investment.

However, as The Economist has found, “blended finance has struggled to grow” as MDBs mobilise less than US$1 of private capital for every public dollar. It concluded, “early hopes may simply have been too starry-eyed. A trillion-dollar market seems well out of reach. Even making it to the hundreds of billions a year may be a stretch”.

Unsurprisingly, despite Bank, donor and other efforts, PPPs have only generated 15~20% of developing countries’ infrastructure investments, according to the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group, while remaining negligible in the poorest countries.

 

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Residents of the small rural community of Amatlán, in the municipality of Zoquiapan in the state of Puebla, oversee the operation of photovoltaic panels installed by the Mexican cooperative Onergia. CREDIT: Courtesy of Onergia

By Tania Miranda
NEW YORK, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

The alarms warning against climate inaction have sounded for years. Almost a year into the hardest pandemic and maybe the worst economic recession my generation has seen, expert voices everywhere are claiming this to be the golden opportunity to do something to right our course and even find a silver lining in this unfortunate situation, by funding the economic recovery of COVID-19 with a green stimulus package.

This approach could help move humanity into more sustainable economic growth and towards a slightly more attainable path towards the 1.5°C goal.

As a worried citizen of the world, and more particularly, as a Mexican national who understands climate change and is concerned for my country, I ponder how Mexico should face its own economic recovery.

Most experts today agree that a green stimulus package can boost the economic recovery while tackling climate change. This boost can be attributed to many of those projects being low-hanging fruits of the energy transition, and also to technology

When it comes to Mexico, one argument suggests that given its poverty rate around 40 percent (and about 9 million more citizens possibly pushed into poverty due to the COVID-19 crisis), and the economic collapse estimated at 8-10 percent in 2020, the country cannot afford to think of climate change when drafting its recovery plans; it must worry first about how to get out of the ditch.

Governments can choose to spend recovery package funds in multiple ways and this will depend upon each country’s specific circumstances. Yet, it is fair to say that regardless of those, governments should aim towards packages that spur further economic activity and create jobs, for instance, large infrastructure and mass-transit projects.

Fortunately for humanity, and for our environment, “green energy and infrastructure development can be particularly effective at addressing depressed demand because they can create a relatively high amount of jobs and lay the foundations for sustainable long-term growth”, explains Stéphane Hallegatte, lead economist of the World Bank’s Climate Change Group. In fact, World Bank data shows that green projects like energy efficiency and renewable energy are much more effective at job creation than fossil fuel projects.

Most experts today agree that a green stimulus package can boost the economic recovery while tackling climate change. This boost can be attributed to many of those projects being low-hanging fruits of the energy transition, and also to technology which, contrary to what was true in past recessions, has brought down green energy costs to the point where, an IRENA study found, more than half of the renewable power capacity added in 2019 was cheaper than that produced by fossil-fuel sources.

A Bloomberg paper also found that Photovoltaic Solar power or Onshore Wind energy is now the cheapest source of new bulk electricity generation in countries that make up for two thirds of the world’s population and 85 percent of power demand. It also discovered that the cost of storing electricity is now half of what it was only two years ago. Furthermore, we know today that investing in renewable energy creates around 2.5 times more jobs per dollar than fossil fuel projects.

 

 

Therefore, the perceived dilemma of going green vs economic development is, today, a false dichotomy.

Nations around the world have already committed large amounts of their recovery packages toward the energy transition. According to the Energy Policy Tracker, an initiative launched by six leading energy research organizations, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic the G20 group has committed at least $346 billion USD to supporting different energy projects through new or amended policies.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, the government committed at least 3 billion USD to energy projects of which all are in the oil and gas sector. Furthermore, the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (also known as AMLO) is betting on the Mayan Train and the Dos Bocas refinery projects to spur employment and growth as a way out of the economic downturn.

So far, the only green-related unconditional policy was proposed by the Mexico City government, which committed to the expansion of the so-called “ciclo-pistas” (or bike-dedicated lanes). More recently, on October 2020, the government announced an economic recovery plan comprised of 39 infrastructure projects to be developed jointly with the private sector, out of which only 5 are energy-related and not one involves renewables.

In fact, Mexico seems committed to turning back time instead of taking part in the energy revolution when, only a few years back, it was at the forefront of the fight against climate change, both internationally and at home. In late July, AMLO stated in a written memorandum that his government has the goal of increasing crude oil production to 2.2 million barrels per day by 2024; building and revamping electrical plants in Mexico’s southeast, and; increasing hydroelectric power generation while capping the private sector’s participation in electricity generation at 46 percent. Bloomberg described the President’s wishes accurately: “the higher goal of his administration is to recover Mexico’s (the government’s) control over its oil and electricity industries, including state-owned utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE)”.

CFE was founded 83 years ago and its generation fleet has an average age of 33 years and 42 percent of its power is generated through high-cost, highly polluting technologies, like fuel-oil and gas.

CFE’s thermoelectric plant in Tula, near Mexico City, and one of the four largest power plants it owns and operates, has violated the allowed limits of sulfur and sulfur dioxide in the fuel-oil it burns during four years straight. These are extremely harmful contaminants for the environment and for human health that are generally regulated by governments, as they can lead to chronic respiratory diseases, cancer and premature death.

Unfortunately, the government shows no intention of reversing its course. To this, chemistry Nobel-winning Mexican José Mario Molina said in an August 2020 Reuters interview not long before he died that, “Mexico is going backwards, back to the previous century or the one before, at a time when all the experts on the planet are in total agreement that we’re in a climate crisis”.

Furthermore, CFE generation plants average a cost per megawatt-hour (MWh) of $1,127 MXN, while independent power producers average $913 pesos per MWh and the ones signed through long-term electricity auctions —mostly wind and solar plants— run at about $423 pesos per MWh, according to data published by the state energy regulator (Comisión Reguladora de Energía, or CRE). In fact, modernizing the state-run utility and its fleet would require investments in the order of $9 billion USD, according to analysts.

Left axis: Number of electricity plants. Right axis: Generation capacity in MW. Source: ITESM, retrieved from Expansión.

 

Early in his administration, AMLO halted the long-term electricity auctions. Later, in May 2020, the Mexican Official Gazette received a request for publication of a public policy proposal by the Energy Ministry that would effectively bar new renewable projects to be connected to the electric grid, claiming that a higher volume of this type of electricity generation that is considered as “intermittent,” would endangered its reliability.

These measures were met with deep concern from the private sector, as they would endanger thousands of the renewable sector’s jobs and close to $30 billion USD in investments. The measures were immediately challenged in court and in August 2020, the Mexican Center for Environmental Law and Greenpeace obtained a definitive suspension. As a result of this ruling, preapproved renewable energy projects will be allowed to continue construction and operation.

Measures to give back monopolistic power and market-share to CFE have also been rolled-out in benefit of Pemex, such as disappearing strategic alliances with third parties; halting indefinitely oil rounds for private participation in oil and gas exploration and production projects, and; extensive fiscal incentives to weather the tough times brought by the COVID-19 oil price crash.

The government is betting its economic recovery partly on the new U.S.–Mexico–Canada trade agreement, which is a solid bet. Yet it is also relying on two state-owned companies that had their glory days in the middle of the twentieth century and the construction of what are considered white elephant —or at least financially suspect— projects: an oil refinery in AMLO’s home-state and a train that increases connectivity between the Mayan regions in southern Mexico with the rest of the world.

Mexico should pay attention to what multiple other nations are doing in order to kickstart the economy post-COVID-19 and adopt solutions to its needs. A large number of those will likely be related to energy efficiency, renewable power and distributed generation, green infrastructure and climate adaptation projects.

Including these measures in its policy toolkit would benefit Mexico greatly in the short -and medium- term economically, and in the large scheme of things would help us avoid lagging behind the next big global energy revolution.

It should also work on initiatives like the recent issuance of a Sovereign Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Bond by Mexico’s Finance Ministry, in hand with the United Nations Development Programme, which was a first of its kind.

This move should increase Mexico’s earmarked spending for sustainable development programs engulfed by the UN’s 2030 agenda, which includes sustainable development and mitigation of climate-related risks.

More importantly, we need to stop championing the old ways: the fossil fuel economy and state-run inefficient monopolies. We should instead be looking towards the technologies of the future, towards space and the oceans (instead of the ground), and, on our way, put our grain of salt towards that 1.5°C goal, which, by the way, is perhaps one of the few band-wagons it is worth jumping on today.

 

Tania Miranda is an Economist with a Master’s degree in energy policy, and has worked for over 6 years in the public sector, on trade and investment promotion as well as on public diplomacy and international relations. She was born and raised in Mexico City and strives to promote stronger climate action in her home-country and abroad. She’s based in NYC.

The post Green Recovery in Mexico – A Citizen’s Plea appeared first on Inter Press Service.

President Donald Trump at a press conference. Credit: White House

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

The 2020 election has revealed a deeply divided nation, perhaps at its most divided since the Civil War. Many Americans are still uncertain about how the transition to the new administration will be achieved with a minimum of disruption and perhaps even violence. However, the split between pro and anti-Trump voters is not based on two sets of facts, but on facts and “alternative facts” or falsehoods. 

By all accounts, it is clear that President Trump has lost his bid for re-election, but many of his supporters still continue to claim that he has won. More than two weeks after the election when courts have dismissed claims of vote rigging, and a majority of world leaders have congratulated the incoming President Biden, Trump’s attempts to undo the election result have been a farce. 

In recent days, the courts have again dealt a series of deadly blows to Trump’s claims of a stolen election. On November 20th, Georgia finished its statewide audit of the votes, confirming that President-elect Joe Biden had defeated President Trump by 12,284.

Trump introduced a new level of crudeness and vulgarity to US politics and made use of terms that belong in the gutter, not in a serious presidential campaign.

In an unusual move, Trump invited Republican Michigan lawmakers to the White House, presumably to influence the outcome of the certification of votes. On Saturday 21 Nov, the Michigan Republican Party and Republican National Committee sent a letter to the State Board of Canvassers asking them to delay certification for 14 days. But the Michigan Department of State said delays and audits were not permitted by law, and confirmed that Biden had won by more than 154,000 votes in the state.

In Pennsylvania, Trump’s lawyers sought to invalidate millions of mail-in votes where Biden has a margin of more than 81,000 votes in the state, but Federal Judge Matthew Brann of the US District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, a well-known Republican, dismissed the lawsuit saying “like Frankenstein’s Monster” it had been “haphazardly stitched together”. Brann added: “… this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.” 

In the face of compelling evidence that Trump has lost the election, many experts see his continued refusal to concede as setting a dangerous precedent and posing a threat to democracy. Some have argued that “Trump has never been more dangerous than he is now”.

“On his darkest day, Richard Nixon would never have attacked democracy the way Donald Trump has now done,” John Dean, who served as White House counsel for Nixon, told AP. “At the potential of losing, Trump has shamed himself and soiled the American presidency. God save us when he actually loses.”

The Republican Senator Mit Romney put it best in a tweet: “Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the president has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by any sitting American president.”

Before some members of Trump’s base start feeling nostalgic about Trump’s period in office, it is important to remind ourselves of some of the main characteristics of that era and what it represented domestically and internationally.

Trump conducted his 2016 presidential campaign by using very insulting terms in describing his rivals, something which he continued to do after being elected president. In fact, it can be argued that he never stopped campaigning, and his behavior in office was practically a long campaign for re-election. 

In the entire US history, no president has ever insulted his opponents, including the leading members of his own party, in the way that Trump has done. These are just some of the terms that he used frequently to refer to some leading US politicians: Sleepy Creepy Joe, Cheating Obama, Crooked Hillary, Nervous Nancy, Wild Bill, Crazy Bernie, Little Rubio, Lying Cruise, Little Bloomberg, Leaking Sneaky Dianne Feinstein, Wacko John Bolton, Low Energy Jeb, Jeff Flakey, Leaking Comey, Al Frankenstein, Pocahontas, Corrupt Kaine, etc. 

These were not meant as terms of endearment or jokes, but as deliberate insults to demean, belittle, bully and intimidate his opponents and incite violence against them. During his debates with 2016 Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton the crowd often chanted “lock her up”, and Trump cheered them on.

I wonder if Trump has ever bothered to think what people in other countries might think of US politicians when a US president describes his colleagues in those unflattering ways. No wonder that the US reputation in the world has plummeted under Trump.

Trump repeated the same disgusting pattern of behavior during the 2020 election campaign towards former Vice-President Joe Biden and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris. Harris is the first black woman and the first South Asian American woman to be chosen as vice-president. She has had a distinguished career as a senator and Attorney General of California, and is highly educated. Yet, Trump insulted Harris’s intelligence by saying that her presidency would be “an insult to our country.”  

Not only did he attack her policies, but also used personal, racist and sexist insults against her. Apart from claiming that she would be “a big slasher of funds for our military”, Trump repeatedly accused her of being “disrespectful and nasty”. During an interview on 8 October 2020, Trump falsely said that Harris was a communist and twice referred to her as “a monster”.

He slammed Harris’s treatment of Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing for his nomination to the US Supreme Court, saying “That was a horrible event. I thought it was terrible for her. I thought it was terrible for our nation. I thought she was the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate.” During the election campaign he said of her: “Kamala Harris is really Bernie Sanders with a skirt”, describing her as “shameless” and “clearly willing to do anything for power.” This is reminiscent of the way that Trump often speaks of women and people of color.

At a rally in New Hampshire in late August, the President asserted that Harris wasn’t competent to be a US president in waiting, adding: “You know, I want to see the first woman president also, but I don’t want to see a woman president get into that position the way she’d do it — and she’s not competent. She’s not competent. They’re all saying, ‘We want Ivanka.’ I don’t blame you.”    

In fact, shortly after winning the presidency, Trump appointed his daughter and son-in-law to senior political positions without any obvious merit or qualifications on their part. This can only be regarded as an extreme act of nepotism, almost unprecedented under former administrations. 

It is remarkable that all his campaign speeches consisted mainly of slogans and insults and were almost totally lacking in any policies or visions for the future.

The language that Trump has adopted to refer to his rivals and even colleagues is not the kind of language that a US president or indeed any decent person should use in reference to distinguished people.

Trump introduced a new level of crudeness and vulgarity to US politics and made use of terms that belong in the gutter, not in a serious presidential campaign. He has demeaned the office of the US president, something that may take a long time to overcome.

 

Farhang Jahanpour is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard. He has also taught at Cambridge and Oxford universities. He also served as Editor for Middle East and North Africa at the BBC Monitoring from 1979-2001.

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Wai Wai Nu continues her activism Rohingya, women and human rights.

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

Instead of being cowed by her seven-year imprisonment, Wai Wai Nu, emerged stronger and more determined to fight for the rights of all people, including the Rohingya in her native Myanmar.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Wai Wai says her prison experience made her all the more aware of the need for human rights activism. What kept her going during her prison years was the desire to help other women inmates to ‘have a dream’.

“I feel I was privileged when I compare myself to the other young girls and women that I interacted with while I was in prison,” Wai Wai says.

“Most of them were unaware of how corrupt the political system was. I had a dream, a vision, whether or not I could achieve it because of my imprisonment was secondary. I felt I could help them have a dream.”

The youngest of three siblings, Wai Wai (33), spent seven years as a political prisoner with her family. Imprisoned at only 18, she was forced to give up her education, her everyday life. Still, she came out of prison undeterred and today is an inspiration to many women and activists fighting for human rights and dignity of their communities and beyond.

Her family is Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar which has been facing continued persecution and marginalisation by state and non-state actors alike.

It was her father’s activism that led to her imprisonment. Her father, who was elected to parliament in 1990, received a 47-year prison sentence, which was politically motivated. The family was released in 2012.

Wai Wai has received many awards for her activism including the N-Peace award in 2014. She was named as one of the Top 100 women by BBC the same year and the Time magazine named her one of the Next Generation Leaders in 2017.

However, she considers her most outstanding achievement to be the ability to emerge as a woman leader from her community and inspire many like her to be changemakers.

“I started my activism when I was 25-years-old. Apart from the many challenges, I was faced with patriarchy from within my community initially as there were close no women in leadership roles. Now I see an acceptance from the same community, and I am proud to have been able to break this stereotype”.

An achievement that Wai Wai sees as imperative though not tangible is being able to bridge the gap between the Rohingya in Myanmar, who are extremely marginalised and isolated from mainstream Myanmar, and the rest of Myanmar and society at large.

“I speak Burmese fluently, I grew up in the city, and I think, through my activism, I have been able to break the stereotypes created in part by the media and address the Islamophobia around my community, which is seen by so many as alien,” Wai Wai says.

“We (Rohingya) have played an important role in Burmese history, in its independence, and I want to remind the world of this too. Today a lot of young people see me as someone who did not give up and tell me how my story inspires them to continue to achieve. I value this more than any achievement or award that I have ever received.”

Wai Wai recalls that she realised she needed to help women prisoners because of the stigma they faced during and after their incarceration.

She says she needed to help these women because they suffered a double burden: they faced the direct consequences of being imprisoned, and beyond the prison walls, their suffering continued.

Once they had finished serving their prison time, most were not accepted back into their families, those married were abandoned by their husbands and had to start their lives all over again.

The fact that most came from impoverished economic backgrounds only worsened their situation.

“I felt I could help fix this.”’

Wai Wai founded the Women’s Peace Network in 2012.

She says her father continues to fight for human rights and draws inspiration from religion despite suffering and facing the consequences of his activism, Wai Wai says he feels “he has the duty towards helping those who need support.” He told her that he would have to face Allah when he dies and wants to walk on the path of justice “I draw inspiration from his strength and beliefs in justice and equality,” she says.

Wai Wai has been an open advocate for democracy and human rights for all.

While referring to Myanmar’s transition to democracy, she says that it concerns her that the world celebrates a flawed democracy like Myanmar for its own geopolitical or economic gains. Here millions of people still live in a Genocide-like situation, and the effect is to legitimise a flawed democracy and help prolong atrocities and crimes against the most marginalised in the country.

“When we talk of democracy, we need to ensure that human rights of all are protected, that there is political participation by all, freedom of expression and assembly are upheld,” Wai Wai says.

“When a state has marginalised an entire community and made them outsiders … Where the military has used this transition to democracy as a means to maintain its power: To accept and celebrate this as a successful transition to democracy is like rewarding a State that has not even met the benchmark of basic democratic criterion.”

Of the many challenges that Wai Wai has faced, one that she has to continue to fight is that of others stereotyping her and manipulating her into limiting her work and her activism.

‘There are many who only want me to talk about the human rights of my community and want to limit my ability to contribute to other issues. Yes, I have the responsibility towards my community and my people, but that does not stop me from advocating for universal principles like democracy, empowerment of youth and justice and peace in society.”

Wai Wai Nu is the founder and director of Women’s Peace Network and is currently serving as a fellow at the centre for the prevention of Genocide, US Holocaust Museum.

Mariya Salim is a fellow at IPS UN Bureau

 

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Despite global commitments from a growing number of governments, companies and financial institutions, the money and effort being directed towards damaging development far exceeds the efforts being made to support sustainable livelihoods. We have not, as a global community managed to put the brakes on the juggernaut of unsustainable economic development. Credit: United Nations

By Sarah Rogerson
OXFORD, UK, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

At the beginning of 2020, there were hopes that this would be a ’super year for nature’. It has not turned out that way. Tropical forests, so crucial for biodiversity, the climate and the indigenous communities who live in them, have continued to be destroyed at alarming rates. In fact, despite the shutdown of large parts of the global economy, rates of deforestation globally have increased since last year.

The market forces driving deforestation are baked deep into the system of global trade. Agricultural expansion for commodities such as soy and palm oil accounts for two thirds of the problem worldwide. And forests are also being cleared to make way for mining, and for infrastructure to link once remote areas to the global markets they supply.

Coal mining is estimated to affect 1.74 million hectares of forest in Indonesia alone, with as much as nine percent of the country’s remaining forests at risk from permits for new mines. And the threat to forests from road building is significant, with 25 million kilometres of roads likely to be built by 2050, mainly in developing countries.

Underpinning these industries is over a trillion dollars a year in financing from financial institutions around the world. This investment and lending is the fuel that keeps the deforestation fires alight.

Six years ago, governments, companies and civil society signed the New York Declaration on Forests, setting a goal to end global deforestation by 2030. Each year, an independent civil society network led by Climate Focus and including Global Canopy provides a progress assessment. This year, it focuses on the NYDF goals of reducing deforestation from mining and infrastructure by 2020 (goal 3), and supporting alternatives to deforestation for subsistence needs (goal 4).

The findings are an urgent wake-up call. The threat to forests worldwide from these activities is growing, and indigenous people and local communities continue to bear a devastating cost.

But the report also highlights opportunities for progress. A growing number of governments are facing up to this issue and some companies are waking up to the risks of inaction. The same is true of the finance sector, which could become a driver of transformational change.

The opportunity for finance

Financial institutions do not, it must be recognised, have a great track record on these issues. Global Canopy’s annual Forest 500 assessment of the most influential financial institutions in agricultural and timber forest-risk supply chains has consistently found that the majority do not publicly recognise a need to engage on the issue of deforestation.

Fewer still publish clear information about how they will deal with deforestation risks identified in their portfolios, and none of the 150 financial institutions assessed in 2019 had policies across all relevant human rights issues. As a result, investment and lending has largely continued to flow to companies linked to land grabs and deforestation.

Nearly 87% of indigenous territories in the Amazon are recognised in Brazilian law, yet government concessions for mining and oil extraction overlap nearly 24% of recognised territories. This infringement of the communities’ rights is being overlooked by the companies involved, and by the financial institutions that finance them.

Yet there are signs of change. In June this year a group of 29 investors requested meetings with the Brazilian government because of concerns about the fires raging in the Amazon. Some, including BlackRock, have said they will engage with the companies they finance on deforestation risks. And some have gone further, with Citigroup, Standard Chartered, and Rabobank disinvesting from Indonesian food giant Indofood following concerns about deforestation linked to palm oil, and Nordea Asset Management dropped investments in Brazilian meat giant, JBS.

There is also support for the Equator Principles, which provide a framework for banks and investors to assess and manage social and environmental risks in project finance. Companies in the mining and extractive sectors are among the 110 financial institutions to have signed up, although reporting on implementation is voluntary and patchy.

There is also growing recognition that biodiversity loss represents a risk to investments. More than 30 financial institutions have joined an informal working group to develop a Task Force for Nature-related Disclosure (TNFD), intended to help financial institutions shift finance away from destructive activities such as deforestation. Some within the sector are developing new impact investment products designed to support poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

And there are also signs of a shift in development banks – whose finance plays such a critical role in so many development projects in the Global South. Just this month, public development banks from around the world made a joint declaration to “support the transformation of the global economy and societies toward sustainable and resilient development”.

No silver bullets

It is of course one thing to recognise the problem, another to solve it. Transforming the finance sector so that money is moved away from mining or agricultural projects linked to deforestation, and invested in sustainable alternatives that benefit local communities is an enormous challenge – made all the more difficult by the lack of transparency that currently engulfs these sectors.

For while the banks and investors funding deforestation activities are all too often invisible to the local communities and indigenous groups on the ground, those communities, and the impacts of financial investments on their land and livelihoods are similarly invisible or ignored.

But these links are increasingly being brought into the light, and new tools and technologies are bringing a new level of transparency and accountability. The new Trase Finance tool is a great example, it maps the deforestation risks for investors linked to Brazilian soy and beef, and Indonesian palm oil, and aims to extend coverage to include half of major forest-risk commodities by next year. Bringing about a new era of radical transparency could be the key for moving beyond recognition and into real solutions.

Increased transparency brings with it greater accountability, creating an opportunity for local communities to identify the financial institutions involved, and a reputational risk for financial institutions linked to infringements of land rights.

Grassroots movements can play an important role in demanding accountability from the companies and financial institutions involved where land rights are affected. Campaigns can raise awareness with the wider public, creating a reputational risk for the companies involved, and for the financial institutions that finance them. Campaigners have targeted BlackRock for its investments in JBS, for example, pushing for greater action from the investor.

Governments in consumer countries are also increasingly looking at how they can reduce their exposure to deforestation in imported products, with both the European Union and UK proposing mandatory due diligence for companies, requiring far greater transparency from all involved. These measures should be strengthened to include due diligence on human rights.

A global problem

We are all implicated in tropical deforestation – as consumers, as pension-fund holders, as citizens. In the Global North, economies rely on commodities produced in developing and emerging economies, enabled by production practices linked with deforestation.

Despite global commitments from a growing number of governments, companies and financial institutions, the money and effort being directed towards damaging development far exceeds the efforts being made to support sustainable livelihoods. We have not, as a global community managed to put the brakes on the juggernaut of unsustainable economic development.

To meet the NYDF goal of ending deforestation by 2030, as well as climate goals under the Paris Agreement, this must change urgently, and the finance sector is crucial to making this happen.

 

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Excerpt:

Sarah Rogerson is a researcher at Global Canopy. Prior to Global Canopy, she has worked on corporate environmental transparency with both CDP and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, and on domestic recycling and engagement with Keep Britain Tidy. She has a degree in Natural Sciences (Zoology) from the University of Cambridge

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Women farmers clearing farmland in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Danielle Nierenberg
NEW YORK, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

Wealthier countries struggling to contain the widening COVID-19 pandemic amid protests over lockdowns and restrictions risk ignoring an even greater danger out there – a looming global food emergency.

Even before the virus surfaced nearly a year ago, an estimated 690 million people around the world were undernourished, 144 million or 21 per cent of children under five-years-old were stunted, and about 57 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia could not afford a healthy diet.

The ranks of the chronically food insecure are rising dramatically in 2020 as the pandemic adds to the miseries of communities already labouring under conflict, the climate crisis, economic slowdowns and, in east Africa, desert locusts. Every percentage drop in global GDP means 700,000 more stunted children, according to UN estimates.

All this means the world is dangerously off track in its efforts to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, with food systems underpinning all 17 of those targets.

Yet we do produce enough food for the world’s 7.8 billion people. It’s our food systems that are broken. Hunger is rising even as the world wastes and loses more than one billion tonnes of food every year.

About one third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, with consumers in rich countries wasting almost as much food as the entire net production of sub-Saharan Africa.

Danielle Nierenberg

With agriculture and the current food system responsible for around 21 to 37 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, our food choices matter not just for health and social justice, but also for their impact on the climate and bio-diversity. The true impact of food production and consumption needs a far better understanding and cost accounting.

Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork, a virtual event hosted on December 1 by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition in partnership with Food Tank, will help set the stage for the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Experts will present concrete, practical solutions to re-align food systems with human needs and planetary boundaries to become more resilient, inclusive and sustainable in the aftermath of the pandemic and beyond.

The conference will highlight the important role of smallholders and women who make up a sizeable proportion of the agricultural workforce – 43 percent on average in developing countries, according to FAO, the UN food agency.

Women are tending to bear the brunt of hunger, but as farmers, innovators and decision-makers, they need to be involved for real change to happen. They are the backbone of the rural economy, especially in poorer countries, but receive only a fraction of the land, credit, inputs such as improved seeds and fertilizers, agricultural training and information compared to men.

Africa is a huge net importer of food but 75 per cent of crops grown in sub-Saharan Africa are produced by smallholder farms, with family farms estimated to number over 100 million. Women do the bulk of weeding work while three-quarters of children aged 5 to 14 are forced to leave school and do farm labour at peak times.

Sixty percent of Africa’s total population are below 25 year, yet countries are struggling to keep young people involved in agriculture and agribusiness.

Our challenge is to transform food systems so that people are no longer food insecure and can afford a healthy diet while at the same time ensuring environmental sustainability. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for countries, and policy-makers lack reliable data on the whole spectrum of food production.

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition has a 10-point action plan for fixing the global food system, and improving standards, terminology and measurement are among those priorities. Its Food Sustainability Index, developed with the Economist Intelligence Unit, uses the three pillars of nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and food loss and waste to provide a tool that can shed light on the progress countries are making on the path to a more sustainable food system.

The COVID-19 pandemic may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world this year alone, depending on the scale of the economic slowdown, according to preliminary assessments.

Disruptions have raised food costs, made it more difficult for farmers to access seeds, animal feed and fertilisers, and resulted in higher post-harvest losses as food rots uncollected on farms.

In the words of UN Special Envoy Agnes Kalibata: “Countries face an agonizing trade-off between saving lives or livelihoods or, in a worst-case scenario, saving people from COVID-19 to have them die from hunger.”

The problems facing our food systems for years have been highlighted by this crisis, as have the numerous frailties of global supply chains and the state of national health systems.

Let us seize this opportunity presented by the pandemic and shape a resilient food system that is sustainable, fairer, and healthier for all people and the planet.

Podcast: “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg“ I chat with the most important folks in the food system about the most important food news.

 

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Excerpt:

Danielle Nierenberg is President and Founder Food Tank: Highlighting stories of hope and success in the food system

The post Farmers Will (Again) Feed the World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov 20 2020 (IPS)

Japan should step up and play a role as a global facilitator for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, Dr Daisaku Higashi said at a recent Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP) study meeting.

The country should use the credibility developed in the post-Second World War era as a country with expertise in peacebuilding to ensure that developing countries are included in the vaccines’ rollout.

Higashi, a renowned commentator from Sophia University, warned that only an international effort could solve the problems caused by COVID-19

“Even if Japan succeeds in containing COVID-19 somehow, as long as the pandemic continues elsewhere in the world, there could always be a resurgence as soon as our border is opened to large numbers of foreign visitors,” he said. “The global economy overall will shrink if the global pandemic were to persist, dealing a major blow to corporate profitability and employment in Japan.”

“As close to half of Japan’s trading partners are developing countries, it is in Japan’s interest to contain the disease globally. Because the COVID-19 pandemic is a global threat that no one country can fend it off on its own – it is a human security issue,” Higashi said.

Dr Daisaku Higashi of Sophia University calls for Japan to play an increasing role in health international politics.

His comments are particularly pertinent because in November Pfizer and a German company, BioNTech, presented presenting preliminary data indicating that their coronavirus vaccine was over 90 percent effective. A week later Moderna reported similar findings that its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective.

Higashi said all countries should be encouraged to join COVAX – a facility for the pooled procurement of safe vaccines.

COVAX which operates under the auspicious of ACT Accelerator, which aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.

Higashi welcomed the Government of Japan’s decision to join the facilities and pledge as much as about $500 million in advance market contributions that will allow developing countries to have access to the vaccines under the COVAX Facility.

“This is truly the moment when Japan should play its role as a “global facilitator” to promote dialogue for the development of global solutions for COVID-19 with Japan as the host country and with ideas coming from participating member states, international organisations, experts, and NGOs,” he said.

Japan should use its influence to persuade the United States, China, and Russia, which are not participating in COVAX to join, Higashi said.

Dr Kayo Takuma of Tokyo Metropolitan University has called for Japanese support of COVAX aimed at ensuring an equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

International health and politics expert, Dr Kayo Takuma of Tokyo Metropolitan University, addressed the challenges of global health cooperation that were laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Takuma said while several other global health issues had resulted in international cooperation in the fields of health9 and infection control, this has floundered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Serious challenges emerged because the spread of the coronavirus had broad implications not only on health but also on the global economy and growing uncertainty brought about by poverty.

This created “greater room, for good or ill, for the politicisation of the pandemic,” Takuma said.

“The U.S.-China cooperation against SARS, World Health Organisation (WHO)-U.S. cooperation against H1N1 influenza, and U.S. leadership against AIDS and Ebola are some examples of good practices in international cooperation in the field of health, particularly infection control,” he said.

However, Trump against the backdrop of U.S.-China tensions criticised WHO for being China-centric and not fulfilling its basic responsibilities and withdrew from the WHO.

While President-elect Joe Biden has said he would return to the WHO, the continued concern is that the international health body could remain underfunded and in need of reform.

“As the history of the U.S. initiative in founding WHO and its leadership in global health shows, the loss from the U.S. withdrawal will be felt not only in funding. There is also a wide range of other areas (that will be affected), including human talent, medicines, and the U.S.’s standing in the world,” Takuma said. He reminded the audience that U.S. contributions accounted for 12% of WHO’s budget.

He said China played an increasing role in its promotion of global health as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. However, the realities are that “even though China is promoting its vaccine and mask diplomacy, it is not near replacing the U.S. either in terms of funding or ability to supply drugs, as evidenced by lack of trust in the quality of China’s vaccines and masks.”

There were also other calls for WHO reform – with Germany and France wishing to strengthen WHO’s authority in initial responses to health crises.

Takuma, like Higashi, called for Japan to actively promote in COVAX and other frameworks for fair distribution of vaccines around the world.

“The country could strengthen cooperation with the U.S. and China as Japan has good relations with both countries and focusing on cooperation with Asian countries through such initiatives as ASEAN Center for Infectious Diseases,” he concluded.

 

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