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By Kaveh Zahedi and Van Nguyen
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 4 2020 (IPS)

After decades of impressive growth, for the first time, Southeast Asia is experiencing a drop in measured human development. The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will likely take months to reveal itself and years to put right. Yet, a legacy of mobilizing under constraints is leading Southeast Asia’s pandemic response.

During the first two months of COVID-19 lockdown, the once bustling streets of Bangkok were unusually quiet. In the alley nested between two high-end shopping malls in downtown Bangkok, an elderly couple were not at their usual rice cart. Their regulars, motorbike taxi drivers and shop assistants, were absent. The couple have not returned now that things have eased. A Thai blind massage team shared, in our recent dialogue, that for them, no tourism equals no clients and no income.

Similar tales of woe can be heard in many other poor communities across Southeast Asia. Garbage pickers in the slums outside Manila; temporary workers living outside industrial zones in Ho Chi Minh city; undocumented migrants and refugees living along the borders of Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand. They are among the 177 million people (below the $5.5 poverty line) that the World Bank now estimates will slip into poverty.

Southeast Asian communities are no strangers to calamities. In those times, they could probably turn to a relative, a friend or a neighbor for help. Or work extra to make up for the lost income. But the usual informal safety net only works if some are spared from the disaster. The COVID-19 pandemic does the exact opposite, striking everyone down at the same time. Closed restaurants need no kitchen hands; street hawkers and motorbike taxis are idle when all stay at home; empty hotels need no cleaning. The new brief by the Secretary General shows that Southeast Asia’s GDP is estimated to contract on average by 0.1 per cent in 2020 with 218 million informal workers having their livelihoods at risk.

The informality of work means that they are not protected by any formal social safety nets. Even before the crisis, our analysis shows that 60 per cent of the population in Asia and the Pacific had no protection when they become sick, disabled or unemployed. Many are so invisible that they would not even figure in the statistics. The prolonged drought in much of Southeast Asia and the looming monsoons in the coming months may risk sweeping away the few assets they have left. Their hopes for the future, investment in their children’s education, look grim. Poor children without internet access, computers and smart phones cannot readily jump into remote learning during school closures. Without safety nets, either formal or informal, to fall back on, many will inevitably slide into poverty with no clear respite in sight.

Yet good news has come from Southeast Asia. The region was among the first to be hit by the pandemic and contains some of the countries with the greatest success in curbing it, including Viet Nam and Thailand. Governments have been quick to roll out fiscal packages to help affected businesses and households. Our review of COVID-19 responses reveals a diverse mix of relief packages including support for health responders, subsidies for small and medium-sized enterprises, wage subsidies and direct cash transfers for vulnerable populations.

A myriad of local initiatives are another source of great hope. In Thailand, local voluntary groups have quickly come together to locate and provide essential packages to the most in-need communities, including those unregistered. New ways of providing health support have emerged such as teleconsultation for rehabilitation in Singapore and targeted telehealth services for children with disabilities in Malaysia. These good practices were shared in our recent dialogue for protecting and empowering persons with disabilities. Permeating these practices is a strong sense of coming together from both the public and private sector.

The crisis has also shown that limited fiscal space and resources have not stopped countries from supporting their people. Measures that once were thought to be expensive such as establishing universal health care and broadening social protection coverage are now rightly seen as essential investments in people. Measures that were seen as luxuries such as securing internet for all are now recognized as a lifeline especially for poor and vulnerable communities including refugees and migrants. Measures that would help us respond faster to crises such as providing people with basic legal identity are now a must.

Southeast Asia’s long road to recovery has started. Time will tell if the emergency measures can be “locked in” to help address the region’s deep inequalities and put it on a green recovery path as advocated by the United Nations Secretary General in his recent brief on COVID-19 in Southeast Asia. Only then will the people of Southeast Asia be more resilient in any future crisis.

Kaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Van Nguyen, Sustainable Development Officer, Environment and Development Division, ESCAP

 

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The post The New Poor Post-pandemic: Time for Cushioning the Most Vulnerable in Southeast Asia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Fiona Lambe / SEI.

By Eco Matser
AMSTERDAM, Aug 4 2020 (IPS)

The Sustainable Development goals on energy speak clear: universal access energy and clean cooking by 2030 (SDG7). But the current efforts are still lagging several steps behind the specific needs of the communities and are not enough to achieve energy access for all, especially clean cooking solutions.

Numerous studies have been done and plans have been developed how to do this, but most of them have overlooked people and their needs. The energy transition affects daily lives and we cannot ignore those who are potentially on the receiving end of these interventions.

We know that people can provide better guidance on how to move forward. This can be achieved by asking people themselves how they see this transition to clean cooking, how this would affect their habits and traditions, who can drive this change, and how they can actively promote it

We see a big gap between the sustainable objectives and the reality on the ground, and we know that people can provide better guidance on how to move forward. This can be achieved by asking people themselves how they see this transition to clean cooking, how this would affect their habits and traditions, who can drive this change, and how they can actively promote it. And this inclusive process should start now. 

Indeed, despite the progress and the essential role of clean energy services to spur socio-economic development, approximately 2.8 billion people lack access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking.

Access to clean cooking solutions remains particularly challenging in Sub-Saharan Africa, where progress has barely kept pace with population increase. Almost four million of people die every year for causes attributable to indoor air pollution, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), and most of them use traditional cooking fuels like firewood, charcoal and kerosene.

The COVID19 pandemic has stressed the fragility of the current socio-economic system, revealing the profound existing inequalities and questioning the pace of the efforts in achieving universal clean cooking access. 

 

Empower small communities 

Electric cooking has proven to be a cost-effective and feasible alternative, but a long-term successful energy transition must also address social impacts, behavioral and cultural factors.

These factors may be a barrier to the cooking transition, which should be dynamic and supported by other collateral needs, such as wider electrification in the communities. Scaling up these technologies requires a strong political will, targeted investments and policies, but also a better understanding of the socio-cultural aspects of cooking, such as taste, cooking practices, cultural norms, and gender roles. 

In Kenya, a group of people who currently do not have access to clean cooking technologies has been asked to plan a transition to clean and 100% electric cooking. The group explored ways to reach this.

During work sessions, the villagers use “backcasting” as methodology to explore possible pathways. In their view, the transition to electric cooking would not change food habits but would improve family safety and health.

It is also seen to leverage changes in the gender roles by relieving women of some of the household burdens, reducing the amount of time required for collecting fuels and doing chores, and allowing them to pursue income-generating opportunities, such as selling cakes and cookies.

The community envisions this change to be linked with access to a broader range of electrical appliances associated with modern living, and most of all they consider the community itself as a driver of change. 

The backcasting research with the Kenyan community showed once again that the clean cooking transition should start by empowering villagers, by supporting early saving and working with early adapters, and by building the know-how and confidence to engage with  government entities to access key services.

NGOs can play a crucial role in introducing new cooking transition technologies, demonstrating mini grids and training communities, but the community and specifically the early adopters of these technologies are those who can make this change real.

Governments and development partners, in turn, are called upon to spur progress on multiple levels, from public services and large-scale infrastructure to full electrification, to improved education and health facilities. All these sectors are profoundly interlinked and require cross-sectoral cooperation. 

 

Next steps 

Our study in Kenya with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) shows that people can imagine, envision and plan for a clean cooking future beyond fire. Once set goals, and given the technologies, fuels and finance availability, we have to make sure that investments are channeled into well-targeted measures that enable people in driving this change and make it happen. 

Our study is an initial step towards stressing the need of building a knowledge on the behavioral and cultural aspects of transitions to cooking with electricity.

Governments and donors must consider the household and community perspective, how the transition to electric cooking is perceived locally, and take actions based on the role and responsibilities of various actors engaged in the system, from the household to civil society. 

The post Clean Cooking Transition: Pathways as Seen by Kenyan Villagers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Eco Matser is Program Manager at Hivos

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Religions for Peace Interreligious Council of Albania distributing Covid relief supplies from the Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund. Credit: Erzen Carja

By Prof. Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Aug 4 2020 (IPS)

— I have never been interested in religion or spirituality before, but I found myself tuning in to all sorts of on-line religion and spirituality related forums “in search of something.”

These are the words of a 30-something single young, middle class man (born into a Protestant-Catholic family background) in a European country.

The latter is known more for turning several churches into museums or shopping centers, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. When people are afraid, lonely and alone – they tend to seek “something” beyond science.

A quarter of Americans say their faith has become stronger because of the pandemic, according to a Pew survey conducted during April 20-26, 2020, of 10,139 U.S. adults.

But this is to be contrasted with the experiences of those from an older generation (60+) in the southern hemisphere, like my own 85-year old Muslim father, who lives to pray. For him, the mosque has, over the last decade since my mother’s death, become both his spiritual hub and social club.

His cohort is differing ages of retirees, who, in spite of very different political perspectives in a Middle Eastern country reflecting the now normal of intense polarization, treasure their prayerful community spaces. This middle class (an endangered species to be sure) of retirees, share a sense of deep faith informing their social and political convictions.

For many of them, the lockdown was experienced primarily s an inability to go to the mosque, and thus as almost physically painful. None of them countenanced the idea of on-line prayers, that doesn’t make any sense, they maintained. Their sense of depression was almost palpable throughout the lockdown period, as was their joy at the reopening of some mosques.

The coronavirus presents barriers to caring for the sick and to performing certain death and burial rites which are core religious practices, and especially needed in a pandemic that has already claimed nearly hundreds of thousands of lives.

In Sri Lanka for example, public health measures for safe burial practices have already challenged traditional rites, wherein authorities mandated cremations for Covid-19-linked deaths, despite the fact that cremation is supposed to be forbidden in Islam.

Covid-19 also complicates Jewish and Muslim burial practices of washing and cloaking bodies before burial, given concerns about transmission. Innovative religious responses seeking to reconcile public health policies with traditional burial practices have been taking place.

In Israel, for example, bodies are wrapped in plastic before burial, and before that, ritual washing is completed while wearing full protective gear. Some Islamic scholars are providing exegesis and guidance on how the ritual of washing the body prior to burials, could be conducted safely whilst following Islamic principles.

Religions for Peace Interreligious Council of Albania distributing Covid relief supplies from the Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund. Credit: Erzen Carja

This echoes what occurred during the Ebola crisis in West Africa. In fact, while COVID-19 differs from HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis, and Ebola, there are nevertheless some important similarities.

In cases of dealing with diseases where transmission affects large numbers of people, and vaccines and medication remain relatively hard to find and/or provide to all affected, beyond the health inequities which are underscored during such times, there are critical lapses by national and international authorities in acknowledging and supporting the role of religious leaders.

In fact, during previous outbreaks of HIV/AIDS (around the world), and of Ebola in Central and West Africa, the strengths of religious communities were rarely incorporated into public policy – until national and international secular authorities lose the plot.

In Religions for Peace (the only multi religious organization representing all religious institutions and communities around the world with 90 national and 6 regional Inter-Religious Councils/IRCs), a founding mantra is that caring for the most vulnerable is deeply embedded in all faith traditions.

As a result, religious institutions, communities, and faith-inspired/based NGOs (or FBOs as they are often referred to), have historically served as the original providers of essential social services. In fact, FBOs are the first responders in most humanitarian emergencies. Their work includes providing spiritual sustenance for sure, but also hunger relief, heath care, and shelter.

This is not only a feature of the developing world. Samaritan’s Purse set up a health center at the height of the pandemic in Central Park – an icon of New York city. Caritas, at one point, was feeding 5,000 people a day, in Geneva, Switzerland.

For 50 years, Religions for Peace worked to equip its IRCs (through the respective religious institutions and services) to seek peace through advocating for human rights (including the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as women, religious minorities, the disabled, elderly, and youth), mediating conflicts, providing emergency humanitarian relief, and contributing to sustainable development efforts (including health, nutrition, sanitation, education and environmental sustainability).

The defining feature of Religions for Peace IRCs is multi-religious collaboration. The main principles of this collaboration are representativity and subsidiarity. In the case of the former, each IRC earns Religions for Peace affiliation by ensuring its governance represents each and all of the nations religious institutions, and communities. In return, each IRC is guaranteed its independence to determine its national/regional priorities, and its modus operandi.

Half a century of collaboration with several United Nations entities at different moments in time, provides a comparative context to enable an assessment of how the UN works with some religious actors.

At the very least, this historical time-line of partnership efforts on peace and security, sustainable development and human rights, provides a learning context. It is with that in mind that we can say that UN efforts in seeking partnerships with faith-based NGOs in facing the Covid-19 implications, are noticeably on the increase relative to pre-Covid dynamics.

Entities like UNHCR, UNICEF, UNAIDS, WHO, and even non-operational entities like the Secretary-General’s own office, as well as UN Office of Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect, have, respectively, issued statements specifically calling on religious leaders and actors to uphold their unique influences (noted above), sought religious input on and in Covid Guidance documents, and (are) hosting multiple consultations to strengthen myriad joint responses.

Working with multiple stakeholders, Religions for Peace research is revealing that while some religious charities are struggling to find resources to continue their services for communities, other FBOs are able to raise more resources for pandemic relief, than anticipated.

This is particularly the case for Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist organisations in countries in Asia, but also Muslim and Christian charities in Africa and the Middle East.

Almost 90% of Religions for Peace IRCs reported a 100% increase in engagement (asks) of their advocacy and messaging efforts from/by national governments, particularly as of May and June 2020 – as compared to this time last year.

This is evidenced through national campaigns during religious occasions and holidays, as well as local awareness raising efforts by religious leaders in particular, as opposed to faith-based NGOs.

Out of the Covid response efforts tracked by 25 Religions for Peace IRCs in 4 regions, thanks to the Multi-Religious Humanitarian Fund administered by RfP, multi-religious efforts are, on average, much harder to encourage than efforts administered by Ecumenical or single religion organisations.

A rough estimate shows that out of the nearly 100 humanitarian assistance projects being tracked by RfP in 40 countries in parts of Africa and Asia, only 1 percent involve multi-religious efforts. Several IRCs have also reported finding it harder to even advocate for multi religious collaboration to provide pandemic assistance (food and medicine packages) in conflict impacted countries (i.e. more than it normally is to seek to mediate some of the conflicts and/or work with governments in mediation efforts).

While it is now almost a cliche to call for more partnerships with religious, or faith-based actors, this is simply not good enough. FBOs, like many NGOs fully immersed in relief efforts, are finding several (good) excuses not to work together.

Faced with a global pandemic, even the FBOs – ostensibly inspired by religious calls for serving all, including the most vulnerable – are less keen on collaborating across their multiple differences (institutional, theological, structural, financial and political), as they continue to serve millions.

Is it enough to serve all who need regardless of religious affiliation (the current bar against which religious NGOs are often measured by the UN and other international entities), or should a pandemic inspire more, and better collaboration among multi-religious partners?

One can but wonder what the relative lack of religious NGO collaboration may foretell for social coexistence after the pandemic, not to mention what this lack of collaboration spells for the legitimacy of the so-called prophetic voice many of them speak of.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 4 2020 (IPS)

The 2020 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization and its United Nations partners in mid-July, reports that chronic hunger continued to increase to 690 million worldwide in 2019, 60 million more than in 2014.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Some two billion people worldwide were already experiencing some food insecurity during 2019, a number likely to spike upward due to Covid-19. Although headline hunger numbers have been significantly revised down retrospectively with better official data, the uptrend remains alarming.

The 2020 UN report continues to expand its coverage of malnutrition, going beyond the old narrow focus on dietary energy or caloric undernourishment. With its cost estimates for healthy diets much higher than for energy-based diets, as many as three billion people in the world cannot afford nutritious diets.

Another false start in Africa
Even progress in addressing dietary energy undernourishment in the world has been uneven, with Africa projected to overtake South Asia in a decade as the region with the most hungry people, rising to 433 million in 2030 from a quarter billion.

The report False Promises argues that despite improved understanding of malnutrition, a narrow focus on increasing caloric supply, at the expense of both crop and dietary diversity, is being promoted by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

AGRA promised to double productivity and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households while halving food insecurity by 2020 in the 11 remaining focus countries using high-yielding commercial seeds, fertilizers and pesticides.

Launched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006, AGRA has spent almost US$1 billion promoting such practices. The report shows problematic outcomes, with AGRA “failing on its own terms”.

Who gains from subsidies?
As most farmers cannot afford AGRA’s expensive recommended commercial seeds and fertilizers, African governments subsidise them at the cost of about US$1 billion annually.

Subsidies for commercial seeds and fertilizers have mainly promoted ‘starchy’ crops, such as maize and rice, resulting in much more land planted with such subsidized crops, often replacing more climate-resilient, nutritious crops such as sweet potato and millet.

However, the promised productivity surge has not happened, only rising modestly, with net incomes barely increasing, if at all, despite the subsidies. Meanwhile, the number of hungry people in AGRA focus countries has increased by 30% since 2006!

Maize production rose 87%, mainly due to more land being planted with it, while millet fell 24%, with yields falling 21% in AGRA countries. Staple root crops, including sweet potato and cassava, saw a 7% yield decline under AGRA.

As it reaches its own 2020 deadline, neither AGRA nor the Gates Foundation has published any overall evaluation of its impacts on the yields, incomes, food security and nutritional status of the smallholder households reached.

Food systems for healthy diets
Most African farmers are believed to be poor, growing crops for both subsistence and sale. But diverse, healthy diets for them are now less affordable as nutritious, climate-resilient, ‘traditional’ crops have been displaced by AGRA-promoted crops such as maize and rice.

Such Green Revolution programmes have thus undermined sustainable crop diversity supportive of dietary diversity. These generally include more plant-based diets, considered better for both human health and the environment.

Sustainable farming should instead promote nutritious, affordable diets for all, especially the world’s half billion small-scale farmers who, along with their families, comprise many of the world’s hungry.

By contrast, nearly 300 large ‘ecological agriculture’ projects in more than fifty poor countries apparently averaged a 79% productivity increase, with declining costs and increasing incomes, more impressive than AGRA, and with superior nutrition outcomes.

Rwanda’s AGRA record
Rwanda’s purported success as an AGRA focus country elevated Rwandan Agriculture Minister Agnes Kalibata to AGRA’s leadership in September 2014. In late 2019, she was named to lead preparations for the UN Secretary-General’s World Food Systems Summit in 2021.

Rwanda’s maize production grew four-fold, with a 66% yield rise due to fertilizers and high-yielding seeds, with the rest presumably due to 146% more land under the crop. Rice output nearly doubled under AGRA, as planted rice land rose 147% as yields fell 19%.

But this boom has come at the expense of more nutritious and diverse small-scale agriculture, with the AGRA package imposed with a heavy hand, and the government reportedly banning cultivation of some other staple crops in some areas.

Sorghum, cassava, sweet potato, and other roots and tubers were more important food crops than maize before AGRA, providing dietary diversity and benefits to the soil. Land under cassava fell 16%, while that under sorghum declined 17%.

One step forward, two steps back
Dr Kalibata claims to have raised per capita calorie production from 1,700 to 2,700 daily. But Tim Wise’s Staple Yield Index suggests a more modest overall net yield increase of 24% after 12 years of AGRA-influenced policy.

Although maize output rose four-fold as rice harvested doubled, chronic hunger increased by over 40% between 2006 and 2019 as the number of undernourished rose by 1.3 million to 4.4 million according to the UN report.

Meanwhile, Rwandan poverty, which had fallen by half a million in the dozen years before AGRA, rose by half a million under AGRA.

The Rwandan government campaign was resisted by many farmers, eventually forcing it to relax some crop restrictions, to allow more diversity, as President Paul Kagame sought re-election in 2017. Nonetheless, maize and other favoured crops remain heavily subsidized and supported.

The AGRA model imposed on previously relatively diverse Rwanda farming almost certainly undermined its more nutritious and sustainable traditional agricultural cropping patterns, which are not easily measured using money-metric indices.

Replacing hunger with malnutrition
A popular and persistent misconception is that it is necessary to first overcome dietary energy undernourishment before addressing malnutrition. Dr Kalibata has argued that “poor, hungry countries can’t think about diet diversity, it’s a luxury”.

While traditional and subsistence food production and consumption undoubtedly had problems, food access and dietary diversity were generally better. ‘Hidden hunger’ is best addressed by dietary diversity, supported by crop diversity in farming, rather than the Green Revolution’s exclusive focus on raising caloric intake.

Thus, seemingly paradoxically, ‘dirt-poor’ subsistence farmers’ children may have better diets than those of richer mono-cropping farmers. Monoculture’s damaging impacts on biodiversity, natural resources and ecosystems are also well-known.

With growing recognition of the many problems of health, human development and wellbeing due to malnutrition, including maternal, infant and child malnutrition, it would be a major step back to singularly focus on dietary energy intake.

Food systems against malnutrition
At the mid-point of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition since 2016, it is crucial that the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit ensures that food systems do not leave anyone behind in the ongoing struggle against malnutrition.

This could happen if micronutrient deficiencies and other health problems are ignored in singular pursuit of increasing caloric output, which may not even reduce hunger, as in Rwanda.

Clearly, progress will not be achieved by either a nostalgic return to tradition or subsistence in very changed circumstances, or blind faith in corporate profit-driven technological change, insensitive to the needs of resource and ecological sustainability, social justice, farmer welfare, food safety, human nutrition and health.

Progressively transform food systems
The July UN report, subtitled Transforming Food Systems for Affordable Healthy Diets, suggests how food systems need to be changed to enable affordable, nutritious diets for the billions who cannot afford them, thus building on the 2014 second International Conference on Nutrition.

The report recognises the fundamental importance of both the ‘hidden hunger’ of micronutrient deficiencies and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Most fruits, vegetables and other nutrient dense foods are now beyond the reach of low-income households.

The challenge is compounded by poor food consumption habits and bad dietary behaviour due to other influences such as advertising, markets, convenience and changing lifestyles. Policies to reduce costs and improve access to healthy diets for all clearly need urgent attention.

As developing countries reconsider food supply chains after recent disruptions due to unexpected Covid-19 contagion, containment and relief measures, the vulnerable must be prioritized, with up to 130 million more projected to go hungry due to lost incomes.

 

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Riverbed mining in Arin, which flows into the Jhelum river via Wular Lake in Kashmir. Courtesy: ThirdPole.net/Athar Parvaiz

By Athar Parvaiz
Aug 3 2020 (IPS)

Going against its own orders, the government in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has ordered the fast-tracking of environmental clearances despite manifest evidence of illegal sand mining.

A few months after the Jammu and Kashmir government auctioned hundreds of stretches of riverbeds for mineral extraction, companies that won the bids are mining the riverbeds despite the lack of environmental clearance. This makes the mining illegal. But instead of stopping that, on July 30 the government ordered “fast-tracking of environmental clearance”.

What is happening in Jammu and Kashmir is part of widespread illegal riverbed mining all over South Asia, which flourishes despite reports by officials, independent experts and the media. Three journalists reporting illegal riverbed mining have been killed over the past five years in India; many others have been injured and threatened.

The mining is mostly for sand and rocks used to build houses, roads and so on.

In June, the government’s own Jammu and Kashmir Expert Appraisal Committee (JKEAC) pointed out that illegal riverbed mining was going on. Taking note of it, the Jammu and Kashmir Environment Impact Assessment Authority (JKEIAA) – again the government’s own – sought immediate steps to stop illegal mining.

Instead, within a week, the government ordered that environmental clearances be sped up.

JKEAC is an eight-member group of experts set up by the central government in consultation with the regional government. It assists the three-member JKEIAA set up directly by the central government. Both were set up in August last year.

Plans rejected, data absent

Since the auctions, JKEAC has either rejected environmental clearance for 80 riverbed mining plans (and 40 brick kilns) or asked for more information. “This, despite a lot of pressure from top government officials to grant environmental clearances to such projects. They are telling us these approvals are needed promptly as there is dearth of construction material such as sand and gravel for infrastructure,” a member of JKEAC told this correspondent, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“But we are trying our best not to clear mining projects in haste. There can be a huge environmental catastrophe if we fail to do our duty,” he said. “In a recent meeting, we informed the government that it should either let us work as we are supposed to work by taking the required time for reviewing these proposals or not ask us to review them at all.”

In a meeting held over video on July 23, JKEIAA said, “JKEAC has also expressed concern on the non-availability of any authentic replenishment data, sketchy district survey reports as well as various other issues. Accordingly, JKEIAA accepts following recommendations of JKEAC: 1. Issuance of strict advisories to the Director, Geology & Mining, J&K to check illegal mining without valid EC [environmental clearance] at appropriate level. 2. The Director, Geology & Mining, J&K to conduct replenishment studies of all basins across UT [union territory] proposed for extraction of minor minerals. 3. The Director, Geology & Mining, J&K should complete comprehensive EIA [environmental impact assessment] studies on catchment basis at the earliest.”

Government goes against its own

Instead, on July 30, the Jammu and Kashmir government issued an order for “fast-tracking of environmental clearance process” for mining operations. It cited “Acute and unprecedented shortage of key material for development works and challenging COVID-19 pandemic” as the reasons for its order.

Local residents had expressed concern before the July 30 order was issued. “This is an environmental catastrophe in the making,” said Ashiq, who lives close to the Farozpora river, in the Tangmarg area of Baramulla district in north Kashmir. “In our area, they are operating without any environmental clearances just because they have emerged successful during the bidding process.”

The rule says if a company wants to mine more than five hectares in a riverbed, the authorities are supposed to hold public hearings before clearing the plan. Over 70% of the blocks auctioned are over five hectares, but hardly any public hearings have taken place. Delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, JKEAC is still processing the applications. But the mining is going on; in fact it has accelerated in the lockdown caused by the pandemic, because few officials are on the ground to check.

Permits to mine sand, boulders and gravel from the beds of the Jhelum river and its tributaries have been auctioned for five years by Jammu and Kashmir’s geology and mining department. This year, bids were invited from outside Jammu and Kashmir as well, following New Delhi’s decision to scrap the semi-autonomous status of the region on August 5, 2019. Among other things, it means people from outside Jammu and Kashmir are now eligible to buy land and property and do business based on the region’s resources. Most of the mineral blocks auctioned this year have been bought by companies based outside Jammu and Kashmir.

“We had advised the government during a meeting in December last year that no mining should be allowed in Jhelum and other rivers till there is a basin-wise scientific mining plan as to which areas should be declared feasible for mining and which areas should be declared as river sanctuaries. It should not be done in a hotchpotch manner,” the JKEAC member said. “Any mining has to be done in a way that it doesn’t cause problems in flood management or functionality of water bodies.”

In recent years, Kashmir has faced many floods, notably the devastating floods in 2014 which killed hundreds of people.

Illegal mining in South Asia

In South Asia, especially in India, there are reports galore about illegal mining in riverbeds and some reports about killing of law enforcement officers, journalists and environmental activists.

A petition filed in India’s National Green Tribunal (NGT) said that due to the lockdown forced by Covid-19, illegal sand mining was going on even in officially protected areas in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. On June 30, the NGT set up a panel to prepare a report on it.

Kiran Pereira, founder of the London-based website Sand Stories, has been working on sand mining since 2010. She said illegal sand mining in South Asia is particularly serious because of the nexus between builders, politicians and the “sand mafia”.

Adding that there are lots of claims from governments that enough is being done in terms of legislation, Pereira added, “Legislation is of no use unless it is implemented. Monitoring and enforcement need to be strengthened.”

The United Nations Environment Programme, Pereira said, has called this problem “one of the major sustainability challenges of the 21st century”. Sand is a non-renewable resource and fundamental to create concrete and glass, both of which are used in great quantities wherever construction is high on the agenda.

Activists have been trying to stop the practice. GD Agarwal, the doyen of India’s river experts, died in 2019 after a 111-day hunger strike – one of his demands was to put a stop to illegal riverbed mining.

In 2017, the Uttarakhand High Court declared Ganga and Yamuna “juristic/legal persons/living entities having the status of a legal person” and banned mining in their beds. The government went to the Supreme Court against the order. The Supreme Court set aside the High Court’s order, deeming it unimplementable.

A UN report in 2019 said, “Sand extraction operations in emerging and developing economies are not in line with extractives and environmental management regulations. Resulting social and environmental impacts have been reported in India, China, and other locations across Asia, Africa and South America.”

The impact

Sand mining is linked to many changes in ecological structure, processes and biodiversity of freshwater systems, including habitat loss and degradation, reduction and changes to the diversity and abundance of macro invertebrate and fish populations, increased viability of invasive species, changes to food web dynamics, reductions in water quality and groundwater levels, and alterations to riparian processes.

According to research published by the Centre of Mining Environment, at the Indian Institute of Technology in Dhanbad, the large-scale extraction of streambed materials, mining and dredging below the existing streambed, and the alteration of channel-bed form and shape lead to several impacts such as the erosion of channel bed and banks, increase in channel slope, and change in channel morphology.

The solution

The 2019 UN report said, “Large-scale multipronged actions are urgently needed to implement technical and institutional innovations designed at the scale of regional infrastructure projects, large river basins and their downstream connections to deltas and coasts and global construction materials markets.” This, it said, “will need to involve a wide range of players – public, private and civil society organisations – from local to global levels.”

The report emphasised identifying sand sources that may be harvested at a sustainable level and according to guidelines, and with the support of agreed standards, best practices and decision-support tools, that are developed with inputs from all stakeholders.

This story was originally published on thirdpole.net and can be found here.

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Kenyan youth at the Kasarani stadium in Kenya's capital Nairobi. PHOTO-Nation media

By Ruth Kagia and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 3 2020 (IPS)

Africa’s demographic boom has been hailed as its biggest promise for transforming the continent’s economic and social outcomes, but only if the right investments are made to prepare its youthful population for tomorrow’s world.

Consider this. Every 24 hours, nearly 33,000 youth across Africa join the search for employment. About 60% will be joining the army of the unemployed. Africa’s youth population is growing rapidly and is expected to reach over 830 million by 2050. Whether this spells promise or peril depends on how the continent manages its “youth bulge”.

President Kenyatta once said that “The crisis of mass youth unemployment is a threat to the stability and prosperity of Africa, and it can amount to a fundamental and existential threat”.

Investing in young people especially so that they are prepared for the world of work is the main mission of Generation Unlimited (GenU), a global multi-sector partnership established to meet the urgent need for expanded education, training and employment opportunities for young people aged 10 to 24.

On 05 August 2020, Kenya will launch the Generation Unlimited initiative. This initiative will bring together key actors from the public and private sector as well as development partners to help put into a higher gear this defining agenda of our time to ensure that we have prepared our children for a prosperous future by giving them the education, training and job opportunities that fully harnesses their potential. With a median age of 18, Kenya’s youthful population represents a real potential to reap a demographic dividend and accelerate its economic progress.

Kenya has one of the youngest populations in the world. With the right investment in their talents, skills, and entrepreneurial spirit, young people present an extraordinary opportunity for transformation, growth, and change.

Three quarters Kenya’s population is under the age of 35. Across Africa there are 200 million people between the ages of 15 and 24, a demographic that is expected to double by 2045.

One of the greatest challenges facing governments and policymakers in Africa is how to provide opportunities for the continent’s youth, in order to provide them with decent lives and allow them to contribute to the economic development of their countries. As things stand, around 70% of Africa’s young people live below the poverty line.

In Kenya, the pillars for achieving GenU objectives are in place, with various initiatives for instance to strengthen education system through the recently-launched competency based curriculum and government promotion of programmes to enhance technical and digital skills.

The fruits of such initiatives can be seen through numerous youthful innovations from Kenya that continue to receive international attention. For instance, inspired by his great urge to communicate with his 6-year-old niece who was born deaf, Roy Allela, a 25-year-old Kenyan invented Sign-10, a pair of smart gloves with flex sensors to aid his cousin’s communication with the other members of the family.

The flex sensors stitched to each finger aid in quantifying the letters formed from the curve of each finger of the glove’s wearer. The gloves are then connected through Bluetooth to a mobile phone application that vocalizes the hand movements. This innovation won him the Trailblazer Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Gen U’s solution is to forge innovative collaborations with young people themselves. Since launching in 2018, the movement has brought onboard leaders from governments, foundations, and the private sector around the world. Its launch in Kenya underscores its government’s commitment to engage young people in pursuit of the Big 4 Development Agenda as well as Vision 2030.

President Uhuru Kenyatta is a global leader for the Generation Unlimited initiative. In Kenya, Gen U’s activities are coordinated by the Office of the President and the United Nations.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres were unanimously endorsed by world leaders to champion a new UN intervention on youth education, training, and employment at the UN General Assembly in 2018. Photo/PSCU

Shifts in today’s global economy demand that young people acquire skills aligned with dynamic labour needs, but local education systems have been slow to adapt. In many countries in Africa, school enrolment is up, but learning outcomes for young people remain poor. Most leave school without the skills the contemporary job market needs, and are ill-prepared for a world in which low-skilled jobs are increasingly automated.

A million young people join the workforce every year in Kenya, applying for jobs in a formal sector that can only absorb one in five of them. Some, however, find work at least intermittently in Kenya’s vibrant informal sector, which accounts for more than 80% of the country’s economy according to the World Bank.

Rather than focusing on opportunities in the formal sector, partners in the Gen U movement will look at strategies for supporting the informal sector with better infrastructure and an improved business environment. In doing so, it is hoped that it will be transformed into a recognised and legitimate sector.

Such initiatives have the full support of the recently launched Kenya Youth Development Policy, which seeks to underscore issues affecting young people. Technology will play a central role, and sector-based strategies will be central to the government’s approach.

The Kenya Youth Agribusiness Strategy, for example, will enable Kenya’s youth to access information technology for various value-addition ventures in Africa’s agribusiness sector set to be worth $1 trillion by 2030.

The Coronavirus pandemic has seen countries face changes in entire social and economic systems. Key industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, public services, retail, transportation, food supply, tourism, media and entertainment have been hard hit by the pandemic. The pandemic is an inflection point that is giving the old system a nudge. The post-COVID-19 world will be founded on a tech-savvy workforce that will inevitably comprise young people.

Calling on urgent action for young people, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called on governments to “do far more to tap their talents as we tackle the pandemic and chart a recovery that leads to a more peaceful, sustainable and equitable future for all”.

In the run-up to the end of the SDGs era, we must ramp up the current level of investment in young people’s economic and social potential. As the vision of Generation Unlimited states, if the largest generation of young people in history is prepared for the transition to work, the potential for global progress is unlimited.

As President Kenyatta has noted, “the current generation of young people has the potential of expanding Africa’s productive workforce, promoting entrepreneurship and becoming genuine instruments of change to reverse the devastation caused by climate change.”

Ruth Kagia is the Deputy Chief of Staff to President Kenyatta. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya. Mrs Kagia and Mr Chatterjee co-chair the Generation Unlimited Steering Committee in Kenya.

This article was first published in Forbes Africa

 

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Unless we make bold changes in the way we produce our food and manage our land, we will not be able to cut emissions sufficiently and keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Credit: UNDP Afghanistan

By Haoliang Xu
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 2020 (IPS)

The theme of this year’s High-Level Political Forum, where governments reviewed progress on the Sustainable Development Goals was “Accelerated action and transformative pathways: realizing the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.”

Throughout this forum, which took place 7-16 July, one major theme emerged: how to use Covid-19 as an opportunity to reset national and global ambition.

Perhaps no goal lends itself to accelerating global ambition more than Goals 14 and 15. These two nature-related goals, covering ‘life below water,’ and ‘life above land,’ are foundations for many other Sustainable Development Goals and their targets, especially those related to the issues of food and water security, disaster risk reduction, sustainable livelihoods and climate mitigation. In fact, implementing nature-based solutions is a fast-track path for accelerated action across more than half of the SDG targets.

We know from recent reports, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystems (IPBES), that biodiversity is in rapid decline; we have wiped out 83% of all wild mammals, and a million species may go extinct by mid-Century. Our window to bend the curve on nature loss is closing, and Covid-19 provides a rare window of opportunity to act now.

The cost-benefit calculus for implementing nature-based solutions is compelling. Protecting 30 percent of the planet would cost 16 percent of global GDP, and is less than three percent of the cost of fossil fuel subsidies. Yet the benefits of protecting the planet are enormous – more than 5 to 1, with benefits primarily flowing to the more than 2.5 billion people who depend directly on forestry, farming of fisheries for their survival.

The cost of inaction is equally compelling – nearly half of all Gross Domestic Product globally is at risk from nature’s loss. Furthermore, as biodiversity and ecosystems unravel, we will face new global pandemics, new water crises, famine, new ecosystem collapses and forest fires and more.

And the cost of inaction has already become untenable. Clearly the time for accelerating progress on the SDGs through nature-based solutions is now. At UNDP we see three major pathways for taking action.

Credit: UNDP Peru

Three pathways for accelerated action and transformative pathways

First, we must invest in national nature-based safety nets. Although countries have committed to protecting 17% terrestrial area and 10% marine areas through the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and have committed to restoring 100 million hectares of land by 2020 through the Bonn Challenge, these targets are likely insufficient to tackle our planetary emergency.

By setting and implementing bold measures for protecting and restoring biodiversity, countries can realize multiple benefits. One of the more important of these is climate mitigation – protecting and restoring nature can provide up to a third of our climate mitigation needs.

Second, we can use the opportunity afforded by Covid-19 to implement fiscal stimulus and financial aid packages for nature-positive and climate-aligned recovery plans that accelerate the transition to a fair and green economy.

For example, UNDP’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) provides support for developing national biodiversity finance plans. One result is that 14 countries are looking at debt-for-nature swaps to accelerate the protection of nature. Similarly, we can see how to use public works programs to create green jobs, while also achieving multiple societal benefits.

For example, Pakistan is hiring unemployed workers to plant trees and South Africa has shown that ‘Working for Water’ and other programs can achieve multiple benefits while providing jobs.

Third, we can accelerate the pioneering and innovative use of technologies that can accelerate a green recovery. For example, the GCash Forest Platform, a mobile wallet is a UNDP-supported app in the Philippines, enables people to sign up and gather points for sustainable activities such as walking, forfeiting paper bills or buying organic produce while creating a virtual tree in the app.

Once this tree has fully grown, a real tree is planted somewhere in the Philippines. More than 2 million people already signed up for the app since it was launched one year ago, and over US$ 500,000 was invested in tree planting.

The outlook from the High-Level Political Forum is sobering; we are not on track to meet the goals of the 2030 Agenda. Moreover, Covid-19 is likely to further dampen our progress across many of the SDG goals and targets.

However, we can and must take bold action now. Nature-based solutions are one of our brightest hopes to build back better, and to accelerate action through transformation.

 

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Excerpt:

Haoliang Xu is UN Assistant Secretary General and Director of UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Programme Support

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The COVID-19 crisis has unleashed a plastic pandemic, reversing the achievement of a decade of activism against single-use plastic worldwide, including Nepal. Credit: BIKRAM RAI

By Sonia Awale and Ramesh Kumar
KATHMANDU, Aug 3 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic was a respite for nature everywhere. The air was cleaner, trekking trails were pristine, the summit of Mt Everest was deserted, and worldwide carbon emission dipped by -26%.

However, there are dark clouds in that silver lining. The COVID-19 crisis has unleashed a plastic pandemic, reversing the achievement of a decade of activism against single-use plastic worldwide, including Nepal.

Personal protective gear (PPE) like disposable gowns are made from polyester or polyethalene. Surgical masks and N95 respirators are made from non-woven polypropylene fibre. Face shields and visors use polycarbonate or polyvinyl choloride. Coveralls are made with high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Most of these are single-use plastic.

The United States is projected to generate an entire year’s worth of medical waste in just two months dealing with COVID-19

During the peak of the outbreak, hospitals in Wuhan produced more than 240 tons of waste per day against 40 tons normally – with most of the waste being plastic PPEs. The United States is projected to generate an entire year’s worth of medical waste in just two months dealing with COVID-19, according to Frost & Sullivan.  The Thai government has reported an increase in plastic and styrofoam waste from 1,500 tons a day to 6,300 tons daily due to soaring home deliveries of food.

In Nepal, there are no exact figures but evidence suggests there has been a big increase in plastic waste from provision stores, relief distribution to the destitute during the lockdown, and quarantine centres. For lack of better alternatives, aid workers use plastic plates and utensils for meal distribution and well as polythene bags and thin single-use plastic for relief packaging.

“From a humanitarian angle the use of plastic for medical purposes and in relief is important, but it has long term environmental impact. Which is why we need a replacement for cheap and easily accessible single-use plastic,” says Shilshila Acharya of the Himalayan Climate Initiative.

She adds, “Another emerging problem is the improper disposal of face masks. These are made of polypropylene and are even worse than plastic because they are even more difficult to recycle and reuse.”

Across South Asia, cities are experiencing worse floods because of waterways choked by plastic waste. Plastic pollution in Nepal has been known to worsen the impact of floods during the monsoon by clogging up drains and rivers, as happened in Bhaktapur and Thimi in 2018 after a sudden squall.

Bhaktapur Mayor Sunil Prajapati says Hanumante River in his municipality invariably bursts its banks even through it is not a big river because of blocked drainage.  He told Nepali Times: “The river is like a gutter. It gets flooded every year because waste materials block the outlets and drainage.”

A three-year regional study by ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development)’s  SANDEE (South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics) shows that 12.7% Bharatpur and 22.3% of Sylhet in Bangladesh cities are at the risk of flooding in lack of proper solid waste management system. Unblocking drains would limit flooding to 5.5% in Bharatpur, the report says.

Mani Nepal, who worked on the study says: “Solid waste, including plastic, must be properly managed to reduce the risk of long-term flooding in cities. Just building sewers will not solve the problem. Plastic pollution is already a major cause of floods, it can be disastrous in future.”

More than a million plastic bags are used once and thrown away in Kathmandu Valley every day, and it now forms more than 16% of the city’s garbage. Of the 204 tons of plastic waste generated in Nepal every day, 131 tons end up in the streets, drains, rivers and some of it makes it to landfill sites.

Plastics, being petroleum based, take at least 500 years to biodegrade, killing aquatic and land animals, and microplastics have found their way into the human food chain. Harmful chemicals can alter hormones and chromosomes in the human body, leading to cancer and damage to the reproductive system.

The Nepal government has repeatedly tried to enforce a ban on single-use plastics, but industrialists enjoying political protection have sabotaged all previous attempts.

Former Environment Minister Ganesh Shah tried but failed to implement a plastic ban he introduced in 2008. Plastic Bag Regulation and Control Guideline introduced in 2011 was not effective either in discouraging plastic use. A Gazette notice on 14 April 2015 announced a ban on bags thinner than 30 microns, but it was overshadowed by the earthquake only 10 days later.

The ICIMOD study also revealed that the state of garbage disposal significantly affects real estate prices which are on an average 25% higher and up to 57% higher in areas with proper solid waste management system. Similarly, the price of a house with a blocked sewer is at least 11% lower.

An estimated 70% of the daily domestic waste in Nepal’s cities are biodegradable, but it is not customary to segregate garbage. Often, organic and non-perishable waste are disposed together in plastic bags. Garbage collectors also do not sort the waste, which is why they end up directly at the landfill in Sisdole which is fast becoming a plastic mountain.

Sorting garbage at home has been shown to significantly reduce the volume of waste, allowing households to make their own compost, recycle and reduce as well as reduce the cost of garbage collection. Pre-determining time and day and placing for communal garbage collection and placing trash cans for pedestrians are other ways to prevent haphazard disposal of solid waste.

Bharatpur residents pay Rs30-100 a month for garbage collection and say they are willing to pay up to 30% more for proper waste management. This is an additional Rs5 million more than what the municipality has been charging for waste management. “This means local governments could better manage the problem of solid waste without too much effort, this requires only the will to implement,” says Mani Nepal.

Ward 10 of Bharatpur has been trying to reduce waste at source by buying plastic waste from households at Rs9 per kg, which it then sells to plastic recycling industries. The municipality also provides subsidy to those who want to turn their organic waste into biogas.

Bharatpur has shown that if there is political will, plastic waste can be reduced. And by not dumping plastic in drains and rivers, it is also protecting wildlife along the Narayani River in Chitwan National Park directly downstream.

The good news is that the global movement against the use of plastic is also having an effect in parts of Kathmandu. Polythene are being replaced by re-usable bags in shopping malls, restaurants and hotels discourage straws and plastic wrappings, and paper plates have replaced Styrofoam at some party venues.

While plastic-based PPEs have been vital in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 and are life savers for frontline health workers, if the SARS-CoV-2 persists longer there may have to be a move towards paper packaging and materials.

Says Shilshila Acharya: “The prolonged lockdown has meant that people are purchasing less, and are using fewer plastic items. We can build on this momentum to reduce plastic pollution in future.”

 

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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A bigger free trade area will not only boost intra-regional trade, it will also hasten the development of regional supply chains. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS.

By External Source
Aug 2 2020 (IPS)

Most economists see structural transformation as one of the main routes to Africa’s sustainable development. What it means is changing the share of agriculture, manufacturing and services in an economy. It is a central aim of the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

With this aim in mind, economists and policymakers need to know what determines structural transformation. They have flagged factors like demand for goods and services, trade policies, financial development, institutional quality and economic integration.

But researchers haven’t closely examined the way economic integration through trade and finance influences structural transformation.

Balancing the potential benefits and dangers of integration is a pressing policy issue now that African countries have signed the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement, which aims to foster integration

I therefore set out to study African countries’ integration with the rest of the world and the effect of that integration on their structural transformation. This study provides fresh evidence about whether integration is good for Africa. It also unearths the right levels of integration necessary to increase structural transformation.

Trade and financial integration are both about countries exporting to and importing from each other. The two are often referred to as economic integration. Opening national borders to trade has a number of potential benefits which can promote development.

For example it creates comparative advantage, access to external finance and opportunities for risk sharing. It also enables technology transfer. Local firms serving larger foreign and domestic corporations can acquire knowledge and skills and transfer them to the rest of the economy.

All these benefits are essential for structural transformation. But excessive openness and integration may also come at a cost, largely from distortions around trade policy.

For instance, if certain local industries have been protected, local firms may not be fit enough to compete with foreign counterparts. Opening these industries to competition may harm them.

Balancing the potential benefits and dangers of integration is a pressing policy issue now that African countries have signed the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement, which aims to foster integration.

Policy makers need to know whether there is an ideal level of trade and financial integration that will
change economies in the desired ways.

 

The study: findings and implications

With this background, I examined the effects of economic integration on structural transformation in 32 African countries from 1985 to 2015. The time period and choice of countries were based on data availability.

I created an index of structural transformation that incorporates changes in sectoral value addition and demographic characteristics. The index ranges between 0 (low transformation) and 1 (high transformation). I found that structural transformation on the continent was low, with an average value of 0.419, but varied across countries.

The majority of the countries’ indices were lower, suggesting that structural transformation is only just beginning.

I also found that African countries were less integrated in terms of trade and finance than other developing economies.

I measured trade integration as the ratio of countries’ imports and exports to GDP. This shows the degree of openness. I found that the optimal level for trade integration was 73.29% of GDP. By this I mean the level of trade integration that produces an improved effect on structural transformation.

The data suggested that trade integration encourages the reallocation of resources to more productive sectors.

To measure financial integration, I used the ratio of countries’ total foreign liabilities and assets to GDP. This shows the degree of restriction of capital flows. The optimal level for financial integration was 137.5% of GDP. Ten African countries were above these levels and 22 were below.

The 10 countries that are above this financial integration threshold are Botswana, Congo Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania, Mauritius, Seychelles, Sudan and Togo. Similarly, the 10 countries above the trade integration threshold are Botswana, Congo Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mauritania, Mauritius, Seychelles, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Togo and Tunisia.

I observed that structural transformation increases more in countries that are below these levels of integration compared to countries that are above the thresholds. Integration increases structural transformation, but too much integration slows that process, producing undesired effects.

The positive effect of integration on transformation occurs through enhanced efficiency, comparative advantage, external finance and risk diversification. Countries can have these features despite being less integrated and operating below the thresholds. The benefits of integration come from efficiency of integration rather than unbridled integration.

A key implication is that efficiency in both trade and financial integration is critical to driving structural transformation in Africa. This explains the urgent need for African countries to simultaneously deepen trade and financial integration. Economies that embark on economic integration along both lines can expect to have improved transformation for sustainable development.

 

The role of the free trade area

The study shows that Africa has opportunities to integrate further. The African free trade area has the potential to defragment the continent and bring its economies into the global economy.

The free trade area aims to progressively eliminate tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade in goods and to liberalise trade in services. It will establish a single continental market for goods and services: a bigger and more competitive market.

A bigger free trade area will not only boost intra-regional trade, it will also hasten the development of regional supply chains. These have driven structural transformation in other regions, for example Asia. It is also necessary for policy to address the non-tariff barriers to trade. Among these are poor logistics and infrastructure (such as roads, rail, ports, power and digital connectivity).

Countries should be focusing on removing such bottlenecks. The African Union, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank should get the free trade area working as soon as possible.

It has the potential to make a big difference to structural transformation and could be the game-changer for Africa.

 

Muazu Ibrahim, Lecturer, Department of Banking and Finance, University for Development Studies

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

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By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jul 31 2020 (IPS)

In the cinematic context of the death of the Italian and universal composer, Ennio Morricone, author of the background music of more than four hundred films, as an indirect tribute, Europe took a solid step.

The European Union’s (EU) forceful ban on accepting travelers from the rest of the world has been decided simultaneously with a collective option: an internal opening that covers the entire territory of the Schengen Agreement, an enlarged EU that includes some special non-members (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and the microstates).

Furthermore, the EU seems to favor some countries that belong to its protection ring of its immediate neighborhood: Algeria, Georgia, Tunisia and Morocco. It also gives a vote of confidence to the candidates for the immediate enlargement: Serbia and Montenegro.

In Asia and Africa, Europe recognizes the goodness of Rwanda and Thailand. The EU is pleased, once again, to show a solid portrait.

Joaquín Roy

The novelty of the ban is that the EU, replicating the title of a Sergio Leone film, among the most famous works with Morriconi’s musical dressing, sent an unwelcome message to the “ugly”, some heavyweights (Russia, Brazil ).

But the EU flatly pointed out to the “ugly” classic, the United States, that has earned that aesthetic distinction thanks to the showcase appearance of Donald Trump. As a further ignominy, Brussels admits important mutual allies and peers of the United States: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan and South Korea.

In the Latin American subcontinent, Europe reserved to award an impressive individual medal, as if it were a Nobel Prize, to the new “good”: the small Uruguay.

Even protected in the hope of his hasty visit to Trump, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) could not escape being labeled “bad.” Noticeable is the everlasting contrast with Canada: Mexico is still “so far from God and so close to the United States”, just as Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz cursed more than a century ago. Ottawa is just as close to Washington, but it’s not affected by the neighborhood.

On this occasion, the EU leadership did not miss a golden opportunity to show a solid collective face, very often absent, becoming the object of internal criticism and external disdain

Observers from the Latin American scene have been quick to give some explanation to this seemingly shocking global decision. The key for the contrastive assessment, on the one hand, recognition and reaction, on the other, is very simple and, at the same time, complex.

On the one hand, the internal framework of the EU itself must be considered. On this occasion, the EU leadership did not miss a golden opportunity to show a solid collective face, very often absent, becoming the object of internal criticism and external disdain. It is always very difficult to find where the “phone” for Europe resides, as Henry Kissinger once claimed.

Therefore, Europe closes its doors to the most prominent competitors. But, hypocritically, gives a conditioned welcome to none other than China. There is no question of making the Asian giant uncomfortable, leaving the door ajar. Europe notes that Wuhan is the source of the virus (but not as blatantly as Trump repeats), but Brussels acknowledges Beijing’s dictatorial power in controlling the effects.

The result of Washington’s treatment will be that Brussels will become a new renewed object of irritation by Trump, if that tantrum is already something new. Meanwhile, the US Democrats led by Biden will certainly be happy to remind the President of his failed strategy against Covid 19. At the same time, the selection of little Uruguay, champion of the “good”, can boast of the successful control of the pandemic.

In contrast, the awarding of diplomas will highlight the ridicule of ominous giant Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, the tropical Trump. Even Chile, the country that, led by Sebastián Piñera, initially seemed to show a positive strategy, has remained in the “bad” group.

Without needing to say it explicitly, two “bad guys” are equally qualified by Europe and the United States: Cuba and Venezuela. They have no hope. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is already controlled by Colombia. Cuba excludes itself for its insularity, geographical and political.

Despite all this panorama, the European Union, always so stingy and sinuous, has reserved a special “right of admission”.

Fulfilling its privilege of being fundamentally intergovernmental in its external relations, while border control is a taboo subject, it will review every 14 days (as if it were a quarantine) the composition of the distribution of prizes and sticks. It would not be surprising if some “bad” ones reappear as “good”. But the “ugly” par excellence should put on the mask.

It remains open, finally, to ask about the scenario of winners and losers due to the application of this measure, especially shocking in the American continent.

Firstly, Europe may be harmed by the closure to North American travelers, so much in need of tourism. Export businesses and airlines will take the hit, if the ban is upheld.

In Latin America the losers will be “the underdogs”, to continue remembering the novel by Mariano Azuela. They will see their traditional escapes in emigration diminished and the consequent benefit of remittances.

Argentina, Brazil and Mexico will recall their weak position in a global network that only recognizes them as giants with feet of clay.

But the EU has self-imposed an expansion of the “bad” ones: the United Kingdom, France and Germany have restricted travel to Spain, causing the collapse of tourism.

Joaquín Roy is Professor Jean Monnet and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami jroy@miami.edu

 

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Nicolas de Rivière, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Great Lakes region. New York, 3 October 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

By Nicolas de Rivière
NEW YORK, Jul 31 2020 (IPS)

“Reconciling the requirements of the ideal with the possibilities of the real”: this is how Georges Bidault, Minister for Foreign Affairs and head of the French delegation to the San Francisco Conference, summed up the objective pursued by the drafters of the Charter of the United Nations. On the still living ashes of the Second World War, the fathers of an Organization charged with developing friendly relations between nations, promoting human rights and economic and social progress were less utopian than visionary. They understood that the community of States should have a common constitution. It has been tested by conflict, crisis and upheaval, but its resilience and strength have shaped the very structure of contemporary international relations.

The Charter brings us together. It defines the United Nations as “a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations”, where each member is treated as an equal across social, economic or political differences. With the quadrupling of the number of contracting parties since its inception, the Charter, which has become universal, truly expresses the values and aspirations of humanity. That is why France attaches so much importance to ensuring that diversity—cultural, legal and linguistic—is duly reflected within the Organization, in its staff and in the way it operates: the United Nations has the heavy but noble task of ensuring the participation of all peoples in international discussion. As revealed by the major consultation under way in the context of the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary, 95 per cent of our contemporaries believe that only international cooperation will make it possible to respond to the challenges of today and tomorrow. But it must also reflect their voice.

The Charter is the summit of an international order based on law: Article 103 gives it primacy over other international legal instruments. In the most difficult negotiations, it remains the frame of reference, and the precious Blue Booklet is never far away. It binds States as well as the principal organs of the United Nations. The Security Council thus exercises its responsibility as guarantor of the maintenance of international peace and security within the strict framework of the Charter, when deciding on measures to combat arms proliferation, establishing peacekeeping operations, authorizing the delivery of cross-border humanitarian aid to Syria or referring situations to the International Criminal Court. These decisions must be respected by all Member States in accordance with Article 25 of the Charter.

The Charter protects us. The COVID-19 pandemic is a wake-up call for multilateralism, because the virus knows no borders, and no one is spared. The global and cross-cutting nature of the health crisis logically points to the United Nations as the only truly universal and multisector forum for responding to it.

It is France’s profound conviction that whenever we accept that the resolution of international crises takes place outside the multilateral framework, chaos threatens to prevail. That is particularly true today in the Middle East, where the risk of conflagration has never been greater. At a time when civilian populations have already suffered too much from the scourge of war and terrorism, we need more than ever to prevent a military spiral and to put an end to the serious human rights violations and humanitarian disasters that continue to take place, in this region as in other parts of the world.

Joseph Paul-Boncour, former Prime Minister and member of the delegation from France, signing the UN Charter at the Veterans’ War Memorial Building, San Francisco, United States, 26 June 1945. Credit: UN Photo/McCreary

As President Macron said in his address to the General Assembly on 24 September 2019, in a world that has become multipolar, we must reinvent “strong multilateralism”, as opposed to the temptation of national withdrawal. It was on the basis of that conviction that last year France, together with Germany, launched an Alliance for Multilateralism, a flexible framework bringing together countries of good will that wish to promote both the multilateral method and concrete initiatives in various areas that illustrate its importance.

To be strong, the multilateralism that we embody here in New York must be effective. It must address without delay the greatest challenges of our time, all of which are global: climate change, health and food security, the protection of biodiversity, terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, inequalities, migration, massive violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, and the new challenges posed by technology. The Charter, in its profound modernity, set the goal, 75 years ago, of achieving international cooperation in solving international problems in all these areas. France has taken the initiative to mobilize the international community on these issues, whether by launching the One Planet Summit with the United Nations and the World Bank, or by co-organizing the Generation Equality Forum in the near future, 25 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. In the face of global challenges, international cooperation is the only possible way forward; if we do not move forward, we will retreat.

The Charter is the foundation of our collective action. It offers a method, rules and tools. It enshrines negotiation as the main way forward. The principles it lays down, and in particular the universality of human rights, are non-negotiable. It provides several means of action, including peacekeeping operations and international sanctions. The specific prerogatives that it confers on certain members should not be received as licenses but as responsibilities. That is why France, together with Mexico, has, since 2013, called for the suspension of the veto in the event of mass atrocities in the form of a political, voluntary and collective commitment by the five permanent members of the Security Council. To date, 105 Member States have joined this initiative.

The Charter in no way prevents the necessary modernization of the Organization, which, on the contrary, has been constantly reinventing itself. The decompartmentalization of the various pillars and components of the United Nations galaxy, as reflected in the vision of “Delivering as One”, is necessary for the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda. The efforts undertaken in that regard, in particular the triple reform undertaken by the Secretary-General (reform of the peace and security architecture, development reform and management reform), must be supported. Each of the principal organs must play its part by optimizing its work.

Like a robust building that has stood the test of time, the Charter can be amended to better reflect the realities of the contemporary world. In that regard, France would like the Security Council to be expanded, as it was for the first time in 1963, to take into account the emergence of new Powers and to allow for a stronger presence on the African continent.

For 75 years, the Charter has been our highest common denominator. Its relevance remains unaltered. Sometimes a home, sometimes a bulwark, it allows the pursuit of an ideal of peace and prosperity towards which we must strive, with modesty but also with courage. It is incumbent upon us to pass on its values and promises to future generations.

This article was first published by the UN Chronicle on 26 June 2020.

 

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The post The Charter of the United Nations: Ideals for Shaping Our Reality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nicolas de Rivière is President of the Security Council for the month of June 2020 and Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations.

The post The Charter of the United Nations: Ideals for Shaping Our Reality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Credit: V.V. Krishnan, the Hindu

By Prasad Kariyawasam
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jul 31 2020 (IPS)

The unique India-Sri Lanka relationship, de jure, is between equals as sovereign nations. But it’s asymmetric in terms of geographic size, population, military and economic power, on the one hand, and social indicators and geographical location, on the other. It is steeped in myth and legend, and influenced by religious, cultural and social affinities.

This is an opportune time for Sri Lanka and India to nourish the roots of the relationship using modern toolkits, but leveraging age-old wisdom and experience.

Historical ties

History reveals that the advent of Buddhism to Sri Lanka during the time of Emperor Ashoka was the result of cross-border discourse. For many centuries in the first millennia, the ancient capital city of Anuradhapura housed an international community which included traders from India, China, Rome, Arabia and Persia.

Later, Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka travelled to India, China, Cambodia and Java leaving behind inscriptions. Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka, to this day, contain shrines for Hindu deities. The colonial expansion of European maritime nations reshaped the Sri Lankan economy. Labour from south India was brought to Sri Lanka to work in plantations.

The Indian freedom struggle had its influence on Sri Lanka as well. There was cross-border support for the revival of culture, tradition, local languages, spiritual practices and philosophies, and education. Both countries transformed into modern nations with constitutional and institutionalised governance under colonial rule.

Most aspects of today’s globalisation existed in a different form in the pre-colonial era with free exchange of ideas, trade and intellectual discourse. However, process engineering by colonial powers for identification and categorisation of people was a factor in the emergence of separatist ideologies based on ethnicity, language and religion.

This mindset is now ingrained and accentuated in politics. Episodic instances of communal hostility are referenced often to suit tactical political gain. Around the world today, and not just in South Asia, policies and thinking are becoming communally exclusive, localised and inward-looking.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world against this backdrop, allowing some leaders an opportunity to double down on insular thinking, ostensibly for providing local communities with better economic and social prospects, and security.

Meanwhile, governance models favoured by nations keep vacillating between fundamental freedoms-based democratic systems and quasi democratic, socialist authoritarian systems.

In this regard, the people of Sri Lanka and India have been served well by long years of uninterrupted democratic governance. This has provided long-term stability for both countries and must not be vitiated.

Sri Lanka’s strategic location makes it apparent that not only economic fortunes but the security of both countries are inextricably linked. Therefore, it is heartening that India and Sri Lanka constantly strive for excellence in neighbourly relations, recognising that a calamity in one country can adversely impact the other.

Though robust partnerships with other countries must be sought in line with the non-alliance foreign policies of both countries, such efforts must be bounded by an atmosphere needed for peace, prosperity and stability.

Among others, freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific together with a rules-based international order and peaceful settlement of disputes are of common interest. While avoiding advocacy of zero-sum solutions on crucial issues, both countries must seek to harmonise strategic and other interests in line with common values and socioeconomic compulsions.

Addressing issues and imbalances

The socioeconomic development of Sri Lanka has remained linked to India. But there are many options available to address issues of imbalance and asymmetries. For instance, Sri Lanka can encourage Indian entrepreneurs to make Colombo another business hub for them, as logistical capacities and facilities for rest and recreation keep improving in Sri Lanka.

Integrating the two economies but with special and differential treatment for Sri Lanka due to economic asymmetries can be fast-tracked for this purpose. There is immense potential to accentuate or create complementariness, using locational and human resource potential, for harnessing benefits in the modern value chains.

Robust partnerships across the economic and social spectrum can promote people-to-people bonhomie. And engagement of legislatures is essential for promoting multiparty support.

With many countries receding into cocoons due to the pandemic, this is an opportunity for both countries to focus on the renewal and revitalisation of partnerships.

This article was originally published in the Hindu, the English-language daily owned by The Hindu Group and headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/modern-tools-age-old-wisdom/article32206425.ece

 

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The post Modern Tools, Age-old Wisdom: on India-Sri Lanka Relations appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Prasad Kariyawasam was Sri Lanka's one-time Foreign Secretary and High Commissioner to India

The post Modern Tools, Age-old Wisdom: on India-Sri Lanka Relations appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A boat on Pasig River in the Philippines. The Philippines has the highest mortality rate from the coronavirus in Southeast Asia. Credit:Kara Santos/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2020 (IPS)

Southeast Asia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been efficient, but some areas such as data privacy, measures to go back to normalcy after lockdown is lifted, and resources for migrant or transient populations will need addressing. 

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said while the pandemic has introduced new challenges in the region, including threats to peace and security, “containment measures have spared Southeast Asia the degree of suffering and upheaval seen elsewhere”. 

Speaking at the launch of a U.N. policy brief exploring the impact of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia on Thursday, Jul. 30, Guterres lauded the efficient methods adapted by leaders in the region, while highlighting the ways in which the region has fallen short in its response to the pandemic. 

“Already, hate speech has increased and political processes have stalled, leaving several long-running conflicts to stagnate and fester,” Guterres said during a video call marking the launch. He noted that while governments in Southeast Asia had supported his appeal for a global ceasefire, the region had much work to do, “but has formidable capacities at its disposal”.

• According to the think-tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Philippines has the highest mortality rate from the coronavirus in the region, followed closely by Indonesia.   
• The U.N. policy brief noted that Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Timor Leste and Vietnam had recorded zero fatalities at the time of its publication.

COVID-19 worsening weak systems

As in most regions, COVID-19 has affected the most vulnerable communities and worsened pre-existing concerns. In Southeast Asia, the report identified some of the most pressing issues: weak healthcare systems, conflict in areas such as Myanmar, as well as the plight of migrant workers. 

The Asia and Pacific region hosts about 20 percent of the world’s 163.8 million migrant workers globally, according to a 2017 report by the International Labour Organisation. 

The U.N. policy brief raises alarms that migrant and transient workers in some Southeast Asian countries have been left out of the host country’s pandemic response. For many migrant workers, living in close quarters leaves them little option to maintain social distancing or other protective measures. With concerns over the spread of the virus, some governments have also capitalised on this fear to deny entry to asylum seekers, according to the U.N. brief. 

“Non-nationals are at particular risk of exclusion from public health responses due to legal or practical barriers. This creates a systemic vulnerability for disease control in the subregion,” the brief notes.

The pandemic, as in all other regions, is disproportionately affecting women, in part because of limited access to sexual and reproductive health services as well as due to increased hours of domestic labour — the burden of which falls on women in the region. This is especially prevalent in the Philippines and Thailand, says the policy brief, claiming that women in these countries “are more likely to face increased unpaid domestic and unpaid care work because of COVID-19, exacerbating mental and emotional health concerns”. 

Meanwhile, illegal drug smuggling has not decreased in the region despite the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, while human smuggling has actually increased at the Bay of Bengal, the policy brief claims. 

The pandemic response, while prompt, was further exacerbated by an already weak healthcare system in the region. 

“More than half of the subregion’s countries are vulnerable because of weak health systems, including Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, the Philippines and Timor Leste,” says the brief. This, added with other social issues; such as temporarily stopping measles vaccination campaigns in the Philippines, as well as other limited humanitarian assistance due to the lockdown, has only added to the layers of the crisis. 

Challenges brought upon by measures

There are also concerns raised by the measures introduced by governments in the region to contain the virus. 

“Vaguely worded provisions without necessary safeguards and limitations have the potential to restrict the rights to information, privacy, and freedom of movement, expression, association, peaceful assembly and asylum,” the policy brief claims. 

At the core of these concerns is the issue of personal freedom, and experts are already raising alarms that some of the responses have the hallmarks of authoritarianism.

A June analysis by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) claims there are concerns of Southeast Asian countries inching towards authoritarianism as governments use the pandemic as an excuse to enforce strict measures and to attack opponents.

The analysis also points out some might be associating the success of containing the virus with authoritarian ruling. 

“There is a perception that authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia have better managed the pandemic than the region’s democracies, a narrative buoyed by China’s diplomatic efforts to propagate its own accomplishments despite even greater success stories in South Korea and Taiwan,” says the analysis. 

Regional cooperation

Despite some of the challenges, the countries within the region have supported each other. According to CSIS, many of the Southeast Asian countries have exchanged, provided and accepted donations from and to each other. China has faced criticism from countries outside the region for attempts to start a “mask diplomacy” which caused countries in Europe to be cynical of her donation offers, but her neighbours accepted them. 

The Chinese government, as well as private entities such as Alibaba and Jack Ma foundations, has provided neighbouring countries between 75,000 to two million masks, among other services such as test kits, according to CSIS. 

The Secretary-General applauded the regional cooperation during this time of crisis. 

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The post Southeast Asia Has a Chance to Build Back Better Post-Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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

By Sabine Saliba
BEIRUT, Jul 31 2020 (IPS)

The Covid-19 pandemic seems to have spared children from the direct health effects of the virus but the crisis has affected their social and economic rights directly and indirectly beyond what we could have foreseen. And there’s no doubt that children who come from more vulnerable backgrounds will feel the long-term impact of the pandemic and the measures taken to prevent its spread the hardest.

Social and economic rights are crucial to ensure the fulfilment of basic rights like sustenance, housing, food, education, health, employment and freedom from discrimination. The enforcement of these rights is instrumental to properly respond to any economic crisis. But what are the challenges today to the fulfilment of these rights for children, and how can they be met during and after a pandemic?

 

Looking at the long-term risk

Masses of funding have been made available at national and international levels to recover from the economic crisis the Covid-19 pandemic has created, but how can they be allocated so that we don’t repeat the failures of past crises?

The Covid-19 pandemic has already exposed how things like unemployment, poverty and missing education can all give rise to other problems. For instance, recent estimates show that millions of children under 5 years of age risk suffering from wasting as a result of the socio-economic impact of the pandemic.

Migrant and displaced children are also a particularly vulnerable group during this crisis as they live in deprived urban areas or slums, overcrowded camps, settlements, makeshift shelters or reception centres, where they lack adequate access to health services, clean water, sanitation and access to nutrition.

According to UNICEF, 91 percent of the world’s children are also seeing their education interrupted, with girls and those relying on school-based nutrition programmes less likely to return when classrooms reopen.

Explaining why, Human Rights Watch says that “widespread job and income loss and economic insecurity among families are likely to increase rates of child labour, sexual exploitation, teenage pregnancy, and child marriage. […] As the global death toll from Covid-19 increases, large numbers of children will be orphaned and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.”

The impact of unemployment should not be underestimated. Millions of parents are already struggling to maintain their livelihoods, with the International Labour Organization estimating that 25 million people may lose their jobs and that youth, older workers, women and migrants will bear a disproportionate burden of the job crisis.

We’ve seen these issues before in the aftermath of events that led to higher unemployment and poverty, but the fact that they’re happening again this time around raises the question of whether structural reform can help.

Today more than ever, any action to end child poverty should look at the structures that create poverty. Masses of funding have been made available at national and international levels to recover from the economic crisis the Covid-19 pandemic has created, but how can they be allocated so that we don’t repeat the failures of past crises?

 

Bailouts: saving the economy through corporations

Government and corporation bailouts seem to be the go-to solution for the crisis, with the focus being on saving the economy instead of finding solutions to poverty and financial hardship.

Countries around the world have approved more than US$11 trillion worth of emergency measures, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and big businesses and multinational corporations are receiving the largest share of the bailouts.

Human rights groups say that this approach has put concerns for human rights in the shadows and replicated the responses to the 2008 financial crisis, weakening “labour protections…buil[ding] regressive tax systems and impos[ing] austerity on the majority while providing subsidised prosperity for the elite few.”

The Center for Economic and Social Rights has also highlighted that, as many governments are focusing on bailing out for-profit corporations, there’s a major risk that the crisis will even be used by commercial companies as an opportunity to expand their markets and profits, including in sectors like education, where major global IT players are positioning themselves.

In fact, we’re already seeing how privatisation and commercialisation of education have increased during the 2020 pandemic. With mass school closures, commercial online educational tools have sprung up as “emergency respondents”.

So what kind of bailout could have social justice and human rights at its core? And is there room for children and young people in it?

 

Cash transfers: a people’s bailout

From a human rights perspective, the ultimate measure of any economic system or policy is its impact on people, particularly the most vulnerable. The rising critics of corporate bailouts have brought an old debate back to the table: Universal Basic Income (UBI).

UBI is a regular government payment that each member of society receives equally, to guarantee basic costs of living and financial security for everyone. The supporters of this model go way back; for instance in 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. supported “a guaranteed income” as a means of abolishing poverty.

A similar model has also been brought to the table: Universal Basic Services (UBS). Under this approach everyone receives free and unconditional access to basic services such as health care, education and transport, while other services like basic housing and nutritional programmes would only be accessible through an application process and restricted to those who need it the most.

But rather than being substitutes for one another, experts argue that UBS and UBI are both beneficial as “there is no contradiction between having some public quasi-universal basic services and a basic income”.

But these systems still face much opposition, especially towards UBI, on the basis that it would be too costly. In response to those who oppose UBI for this reason, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) explains that “the alternative will result in a greater surge in inequality, increasing social tensions that would cost governments even more and open countries to heightened risk of societal conflict”.

The UN agency also adds that “a new social contract needs to emerge from this [Covid-19] crisis that rebalances deep inequalities that are prevalent across societies [and] UBI promises to be a useful element of such a framework.”

 

Cash transfers for under-18s

Even though the UBI model is based on the individual rather than the household, children are rarely expected to be beneficiaries of a regular payment. Almaz Zelleke, a political science professor at NYU Shanghai, believes in including children as recipients because “only basic income that goes to children, as well as adults, can actually eliminate the poverty of families with only a single parent, or a single earner.”

In other words, if more members of a family beyond just the breadwinner receive a regular income, it can make the family more resilient to economic crises and the threat of job loss.

Similarly in a discussion with CRIN, Argentinian sociologist and teacher Santiago Morales explained the importance of giving children an income and the “recognition of the social contribution children make […] by having an income they can manage themselves”.

However, adults rarely give children’s capacities enough credit and the first argument against giving an income to children would probably be that they would waste it. According to Morales, this is a “typical adultist argument” because it’s based on the presumption that children lack capacity.

But, he explains, “we need to distinguish between capacity and know-how… If children don’t know how to manage money, it’s because they haven’t been taught.”

The post Corporate Bailout or Cash Transfers for All, including Children? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sabine Saliba is Regional Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa at the Child Rights International Network (CRIN)

The post Corporate Bailout or Cash Transfers for All, including Children? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Jul 30 2020 (IPS-Partners)

In the IPBES Global Assessment report, we learnt that to safeguard all life on Earth, we need transformative change. So what does that mean? How can we make it happen? This week’s guest is Kai Chan. He is a professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the Coordinating Lead Authors of the Global Assessment. To find out more about IPBES, head to www.ipbes.net or follow us on social media @IPBES.

 

Episode 3

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Unless diversity is accepted and inclusion becomes everyone’s business, it will be impossible to achieve the goal of universal health coverage because 15% of the global population who have some form of disability will be left behind. Credit: Bigstock.

By Shubha Nagesh and Ifeanyi Nsofor
Jul 30 2020 (IPS)

Over the next seven years, Google will invest a whopping $10 billion in India to improve technology, health and education, according to CEO Sundar Pichai. This is unprecedented and could be a game changer that could improve health, education and economic empowerment. 

While Google should be commended for such foresight, it is also pertinent to note that there was no mention of how this investment would benefit India’s 26 million persons living with disabilities. Without a doubt, investments in the Indian economy must be all-inclusive. This means including persons living with disabilities, particularly women and children.

For long, disability has been neglected to the detriment of millions of Indians who live with various forms of it. The plight of persons living with disabilities in India is not unique. In the global south, efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of persons with disabilities are usually led by individuals with disabilities, civil society and disabled persons organisations.

In the global south, efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of persons with disabilities are usually led by individuals with disabilities, civil society and disabled persons organisations

Unless diversity is accepted and inclusion becomes everyone’s business, it will be impossible to achieve the goal of universal health coverage because 15% of the global population who have some form of disability will be left behind.

Indeed,  inequities faced by persons living with disabilities have been magnified at this time of COVID-19. These challenges include unprecedented number of deaths, lack of access to finances, people-centered healthcare, home–based caregivers etc. Furthermore, closure of intervention centres and special schools, have postponed assessments and therapy sessions for children with developmental disabilities.

Education is also a major challenge as most schools turned online, without working on accessibility and barriers to inclusion, and so left out thousands of children.

There are many non-profits and government organisations in India that provide services to persons with disabilities, and most have been closed since April 2020, but staff are working overtime to provide the best services through online mediums thereby avoiding disruption of services and ensuring continued developmental progress in children.

So far, feedback from families are varied: from increased involvement of parents to no progress because such parents do not have access to digital technology.

This is the time to build a new era with accessibility as its key feature in India. However, to realise this, the private sector must play a key role as a funder and incubator of ideas.

These are five ways Google could ensure that its $10 billion investment in India is inclusive of persons living with disabilities.

First, involve persons living with disabilities in any plans to discuss the investment. This involvement must be from the beginning when plans are developed to when impact is evaluated. New initiatives must actively seek inputs from persons living with disabilities with different kinds of impairment. If this diverse representation is pursued, the inputs would be inclusive and could mitigate some challenges that may arise.

Second, ensure at least 20% of all roles are reserved for persons living with disabilities, to be well distributed along gender and age groups. Women are needed in leadership positions as the impact they make are phenomenal, with valuable indices like empathy, wellbeing and happiness. Also, children living with disabilities should not be left out.

Third, improve healthcare delivery by training health workers on providing care that is respectful and meets the needs of persons living with disabilities. Health facilities must be obligated to provide services without discrimination.

To achieve this, the investment should include partnerships with schools where health workers are trained to make the curriculum disability-friendly. Health workers already in service should also be trained and retrained on disability-centered care. Disability competencies for health professionals adopted by medical schools in India, should be used to train students, as well as train and retrain health professionals.

Fourth, ensure provision of social determinants of health such access to education, economic empowerment, access to clean water and sanitation for persons living with disabilities. For instance, access to clean water and sanitation helps reduce the incidence of infectious diseases.

Indeed, one of the most important public health interventions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is frequent hand washing with soap under running water. Moreover, the more educated people are, the better their health-seeking behaviours.

Also, providing economic empowerment interventions would empower persons living with disabilities to pay for their healthcare themselves when the need arises.

Lastly, such a huge investment requires regular monitoring and evaluation. Persons living with disabilities should be included in monitoring teams. No one better than persons living with disabilities can evaluate the impact and the influence of programs that create change and transformation to improve the quality of life of members of the community. Also, lessons learnt can help others know how to cater for the needs of persons living with disabilities.

To be sure, Google is a private business and is entitled to deploy its corporate social responsibility however it deems fit. However, as one of its biggest markets, India is deserving of this investment.

It would amount to perpetuating gross inequities in India if persons living with disabilities are left behind again.

 

Dr Shubha Nagesh is a medical doctor and works with the Latika Roy Foundation, Dehradun India

Dr. Ifeanyi M. Nsofor, is a medical doctor, a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the CEO of EpiAFRIC and Director of Policy and Advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch. He is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University, a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a 2006 International Ford Fellow. 

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By External Source
Jul 30 2020 (IPS-Partners)

In order to help captains onboard longline fishing vessels and port samplers collect data, SPC has developed two digital apps, Onboard and Offshore. Let’s travel to Nuku’alofa, capital of the Kingdom of Tonga, to see innovation in action!
For further information, please contact SPC: spc@spc.int


 

Source: Pacific Community SPC

The post The Pacific Community launches the Pacific Healthy Recipe Contest appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Jul 30 2020 (IPS-Partners)

In order to help captains onboard longline fishing vessels and port samplers collect data, SPC has developed two digital apps, Onboard and Offshore. Let’s travel to Nuku’alofa, capital of the Kingdom of Tonga, to see innovation in action!
For further information, please contact SPC: spc@spc.int


 

Source: Pacific Community SPC

The post Pacific Tuna Fisheries: Electronic reporting in Tonga appeared first on Inter Press Service.

But critics say Sierra Leone’s new media law gives the government the powers to shut down media houses and ban individual journalists from practicing their professions. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Mohamed Fofanah
FREETOWN, Jul 30 2020 (IPS)

Last week, Sierra Leone’s parliament voted to repeal the country’s 55-year-old libel law, which criminalised the publication of information that was deemed defamatory or seditious, and which had been used by successive governments to target and imprison media practitioners and silence dissenting views. But not everyone is convinced it was in the best interest of media freedom.

On Jul. 23, in an unanimous vote, Sierra Leone’s parliament repealed Part V of the 1965 Public Order Act (POA), which criminalised  libel. It was replaced with the Independent Media Commission (IMC) Act 2020, which was also approved unanimously.

But critics say the IMC Act 2020 gives the Sierra Leone government the power to shut down media houses and ban journalists from practicing their professions.

Sylvia Blyden, who served as a minister of the main opposition All People’s Congress, and is currently editor of the local newspaper, Awareness Times, told IPS that she was against the repeal of all of the provisions in the POA.

Blyden, a prominent journalist and activist, is presently facing charges brought by the government for defamatory libel, publishing false news and seditious libel — charges that existed under the repealed Part V of the POA.
But Blyden told IPS that there are many protective caveats of that act, which made it not as bad as some people believed it to be. She added that the importance of the criminal libel laws went far beyond the practice of journalism and politics.

“It is sad for poor citizens who cannot afford the money to pay lawyers to institute civil libel litigation to protect their names and good reputations as there is no more punitive deterrent in place.
“I am not speaking of journalists, I am speaking of citizens assaulting other citizen’s reputation. We still have our laws to protect against physical assault on us but we have removed the laws that protect us against assault on our good names. Not much thinking went into this process of repeal,” she argued.

Others have noted that the IMC Act 2020 will serve only to “undermine media pluralism and completely eliminate the registration of newspapers as a ‘Sole Proprietorship’ business, and only provides for registration under the Partnership Act 1890 and the Companies Act 2009”.

Lawrence Williams, writing for the Sierra Leone Telegraph, said, “It’s important to note that many newspapers in Sierra Leone are registered under ‘Sole Proprietorship’ as one among several options provided for under the current IMC Act”.

He said the elimination of newspapers registered under sole proprietorship could lead to the closure of many independent publications, and could therefore “end media scrutiny of government institutions and public officials; and inevitably result to ending governance accountability and transparency in Sierra Leone”.

Amin Kef Sesay, writing in the Calabash Newspaper, said that the IMC Act 2020 would allow the government to “tie the hands of citizens from freely investing in the media and heading those institutions as editors, publishers, etc”.

But Sierra Leone’s information and communication minister Mohamed Rahman Swaray told IPS that the POA had been in violation of 12 international human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that government had to comply with international standards.

He said that the IMC Act would enable the mitigation against sedition and libel against private citizens. He added that the Independent Media Commission, the regulatory body of the media, had been given quasi-judicial functions under the IMC Act 2020, and had powers of the high court to hear civil matters of sedition and libel.

• When the act is signed into law, the commission will be able to monitor and regulate the media, its content, ensure that a minimum wage $60 is paid to media practitioners, and to ensure that only qualified and trained media personnel are employed as editors/station managers etc.

Swaray also argued that the IMC Act 2020 was not government exercising further rights over the media. “We discussed the draft bill with the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) and they all agreed to the contents of the draft which was then sent to parliament so there was endorsement of the contents of the bill by SLAJ,” he said.

Swaray told IPS that government was very concerned about improving the media landscape in this West African nation as the old law meant the country’s brightest and best brains shied away from the profession because they could face criminal charges. “Women also were refusing to practice,” he added.

He is confident that the recent decriminalisation of the libel law will now see more women taking up the profession.
“Now the best minds and women will come on board and we will make the media and journalism a professional, lucrative and serious institution in the country,” Swaray told IPS.

Speaker of parliament Dr. Abass Bundu said at the time that parliament had restored the dignity of the media and he hoped that, going forward, responsible and professional journalism would hold sway.

Hassan Samba Yarjah, a commissioner of the Human Rights Commission in Sierra Leone, told IPS that the commission had called for Part V of the POA to be repealed every year for the last 10 years in its annual ‘State of Human Rights Report in Sierra Leone’.

He said that as a commission they could not emphasise the importance of the passing of the IMC Act 2020. Yarjah told IPS that the press and citizens would now have greater freedom to express their views, speak out, challenge government on issues affecting them, constructively criticise and speak truth to power without being arrested and branded a criminal.

He said that this return of power to the people was a big development for democracy here, adding that this would change the landscape of journalism and develop the media. “The commission will, however, continue to monitor these freedoms and also ensure that the Media and everyone enjoy this freedom with greater responsibility,” Yarjah told IPS.

Both the repeal of the POA and the passing of the IMC Act 2020 have been sent to President Julius Maada Bio for his signature.

 

 

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The post Sierra Leone – Why Everyone is Not Celebrating the New Media Law appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 30 2020 (IPS)

Covid-19 threatens economic life the world over. The most urgent and important need is for governments, businesses and families to survive. Governments must revive economies and livelihoods to prevent Covid-19 recessions from becoming protracted depressions.

The Covid-19 crisis is clearly a ‘black swan event’, threatening both public health and livelihoods. Both the pandemic and containment efforts are not due to business operations and decisions, but nonetheless have compelling consequences for them.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Covid-19 contagion contractionary, costly
In East Asia and a few other societies, successful early precautionary and preventive measures, as well as testing, tracking and treatment of the infected, plus sufficient physical distancing, isolation and quarantine measures have been enough to contain the contagion so far.

When such measures were not taken, inadequate or failed, ‘stay in shelter’ lockdowns became necessary as contagion spread. Nationwide lockdowns have been imposed in many countries. Such preventive and other precautionary measures have reduced economic activity and demand in many sectors.

But trying to maintain aggregate demand as if there is no pandemic does not make sense. No matter what governments do, some output losses are unavoidable. So, the main challenge in addressing Covid-19 recessions is to avoid protracted recessions or depressions.

Due to the continued need for physical distancing and other precautionary measures, likely to remain for some time to come, vaccine or no vaccine, some business disruptions may be more lasting than others, i.e., more likely to be medium, if not long-term.

No ‘one size fits all’
Economies are neither monolithic nor homogenous, and no single inflexible policy can possibly be suitable for all. As recessions are uneven in impact, different sectors, industries, services and businesses are affected differently. Covid-19 recessions are also unlike other past recessions.

Many businesses may not be able to survive major stoppages and demand shortfalls, however temporary. Such businesses could go bankrupt, severely affecting workers’ families, related businesses and those directly and indirectly employed.

Much has to be learnt quickly from other experiences, and from learning by doing. Some businesses and sectors may not be able to survive, and options should include business redeployment, infrastructure and facility repurposing as well as staff retraining.

Strict verification and correction can take place later, even after the lockdown is over. Conditions should be strict enough to deter abuse, but not participation. For example, government grants or subsidies, later found to be ‘excessive’, can be converted into low interest loans that governments recover later, rather than treated as criminal fraud.

Business disruptions threaten livelihoods
Business disruption has broader implications, threatening the entire economy with long-term costs. If relations — including trust among entrepreneurs, workers and customers — are disrupted, they will need to be rebuilt, requiring time and expense.

Conventional economics ignores ‘transactions costs’ incurred in recruiting workers, seeking and keeping clients and customers, obtaining credit and investing capital, building trust, and other relations, and thus is a poor guide to policy.

The adverse effects of livelihood disruption should be minimised. Income maintenance policies need to help fired workers and others whose livelihoods have been greatly diminished. Hence, extraordinary and novel social protection measures are needed.

Helping businesses survive enforced idleness or hibernation due to such measures, and protecting livelihoods are both needed. Businesses, especially smaller ones with fewer reserves, will need help to keep their workers and to avoid liquidating their businesses.

Simple payment systems help. Idle workers should immediately receive special social protection, while staying formally employed. Such measures will minimise rehiring costs when they return to work, but should not excessively burden their employers with debt.

Only governments can help
Governments may not be able to stop, let alone reverse or fully compensate for the effects of public health measures. But they can certainly help alleviate economic hardship due to the epidemic, and minimise lasting damage to the economy.

Crucially, timely government interventions can prevent unavoidable, potentially brief recessions from becoming longer lasting stagnations or depressions. Without appropriate government measures, output losses due to work disruption will cause large business losses leading to mass layoffs.

Even when no longer operating, rent, lease, infrastructure, utility and other such payments vital for business maintenance and employees’ welfare, such as health protection for employees, need to be made or absorbed. Some, mainly developed countries have acted promptly and appropriately to minimise layoffs, business destruction and worker welfare.

Governments can also act more boldly to subordinate unproductive rentier claims, based on asset ownerhip or property rights, to much more essential operating costs — not unlike how US bankruptcy law enables businesses to continue operating to work themselves out of their predicaments.

Current support often inappropriate
Many governments have provided liquidity — e.g., usually by offering low-interest or interest-free loans — to help businesses and workers survive the crisis. But such measures only ‘smoothen’ debt burdens over longer periods, ‘postponing the pain’, without reimbursing or compensating victims for their income losses.

Temporary and partial compensation for income losses enables businesses to quickly resume operations after lockdowns end, rather than having to also contend with additional debt burdens. Many businesses need help to survive, and aid can be provided conditionally, e.g., on avoiding or minimising employee retrenchments.

Postponing tax payments also helps, but tend to benefit the better-off, liable for more tax, rather than those most adversely affected or needy.

Direct payments undoubtedly help. But without some ‘easy’ targeting, especially for businesses, often, too little is available for those in greatest need, while benefiting some who are not.

Although policymakers typically insist on means-testing for anti-poverty programmes, they rarely demand targeting for businesses, reducing the efficacy of government relief.

An already existing, developed social protection system makes it easier to ‘compensate’ idle workers, but is rarely available in developing and transition economies.

Lowly-paid and casual workers and many self-employed typically have debt, more than savings. Not able to survive temporary losses, they are more likely to be displaced by lockdowns, and less likely to work from home. Government ‘unemployment benefits’ can easily be made progressive, with a higher fraction of previous earnings for the poorest.

Government ‘payer of last resort’
In March, French economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, both at Berkeley, proposed that governments help ease pain and disruption with payer-of-last-resort programmes, with adversely affected businesses reporting unavoidable monthly overhead and maintenance costs to qualify for government aid.

A government ‘payer-of-last-resort’ during lockdowns can thus help ‘suspended’ or ‘hibernating’ businesses to continue paying unavoidable maintenance bills to avoid insolvency on condition of keeping their involuntarily idle workers, instead of firing them.

Such a payer-of-last-resort programme would reduce hardship for workers and businesses. It could enable businesses to temporarily suspend or scale down operations, to limit haemorrhage and avoid insolvency, and to pick up quickly as conditions improve.

It would maintain ‘cash flow’ for families and businesses, minimising Covid-19 shocks’ adverse secondary impacts on demand (e.g., due to fired workers spending less on consumption), while enabling more rapid recovery as demand resumes.

Payer-of-last-resort programmes can be affordable if well complemented by effective contagion containment measures, enabling early resumption of business operations. While unavoidably high for lockdowns, government spending, typically financed by sovereign debt, can remain manageable.

The post Only Governments Can Prevent Covid-19 Recessions Becoming Depressions appeared first on Inter Press Service.