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By GGGI
SEOUL, Republic of Korea, Aug 13 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(GGGI) – In June, the Global Green Growth Institute’s (GGGI) staff members and country offices around the world committed to living and promoting sustainable lifestyles. To further this initiative, GGGI published GREENISM Vol. 2, an online magazine featuring stories of GGGI’s Green Office Month events and activities across the organization to spread ideas on how to lead green lives.

GGGI’s Green Office Month is a campaign to promote sustainable living practices and office operations throughout the month of June. As this year’s World Environment Day theme was Beat Air Pollution, GGGI offices around the world contributed efforts towards living a green lifestyle, including hosting a gardening class at the Seoul HQ and by participating in an organization-wide competition titled the “GGGI June Eco-Challenge” to promote sustainable living practices. This volume of GREENISM also features GGGI stories from around the globe, GGGI’s Green Office, and ways to fight air pollution.

 

 

Many individual actions can make a difference in our communities. Therefore, a large part of the GGGI Eco-Challenge was to commit to making changes toward a sustainable lifestyle and to spread the word for others to join in to protect our planet. In Burkina Faso, participants encouraged each other to ride bikes or walk to reduce air pollution that would have been caused by taking cars. In Cambodia, GGGI staff members made individual pledges to commit to a sustainable lifestyle, such as using reusable bottles or composting.

 

 

It’s now more important than ever that we collaborate to preserve the planet, as air pollution is becoming a severe threat to our health and well-being. Exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution is estimated to cause 7 million deaths per year according to the World Health Organization. It’s time for all of us to start lowering this amount and reducing air pollution levels to limits below the WHO’s guidelines, to improve both our environment and health.

Join us in the fight against air pollution and start making a difference today! To discover sustainable home and office ideas, read GGGI’s Greenism Vol. 2 here: http://online.anyflip.com/asvh/wdhw/mobile/index.html

 

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Credit: Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

We live in different worlds. The ones of friends, family and work colleagues. Worlds which are overshadowed by other, much bigger ones. Global spheres of international finance, politics, climate change, etc., contexts that might threaten our smaller circle of relationships; our family, our income, our general wellbeing, in short – our entire existence. However, even at those levels there exist small circles of acquaintances and associates able to make decisions that affect the entire humankind. Let me take one example – the regimes of U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, which are menacing our global natural habitat.

Ten years ago, I flew across the Amazon Jungle, amazed by its immensity though also alarmed by scares where thick greenery had been cleared away and substituted by dismal remains of dead trees, or dry cattle pastures and soy plantations. Logging and mining are the greatest dangers to Amazonia since its exposed soil is generally old, weathered, acidic, infertile, and subject to compaction from intense solar radiation.

Within the framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thousands of scientists and other experts write and review reports informing the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an endevour involving the governments of more than 120 countries. The IPCC, which in 2007 was rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was established in 1988. The U.S. Government was the main force for making the IPCC an autonomous intergovernmental body supporting a consensus between the participating nations.

At regular intervals, the IPCC presents comprehensive assessments on climate change and its impact on ecology, human society, and food production. In 2013, one of its reports declared that:

Climate change is occurring, it is caused largely by human activities and poses significant risks for – and in many cases is already affecting – a broad range of human and natural systems. […] Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Human influence on the climate system is clear. 1

Nevertheless, several influential world leaders and their sycophants refuse to accept unequivocal findings and warnings issued by the IPCC, among them the U.S. president, who continues to make badly informed, even mind-numbing statements, like:

My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years, Dr. John Trump, and I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject [climate change], but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture. […] Everything I want and everything I have is clean. Clean is very important — water, air. I want absolutely crystal clear water and I want the cleanest air on the planet and our air now is cleaner than it’s ever been. Very important to me. What I’m not willing to do is sacrifice the economic well-being of our country for something that nobody really knows. 2

While speaking about any scientific issue he does not know much about it is common that President Trump refers to ”Uncle John”, to whom he quite obviously did not speak about climate change, since Dr. Trump was a professor of engineering at a time when the phenomenon was hardly spoken of outside limited expert groups. 3 Donald Trump likes to refer to John Trump, who died in 1985, arguing that ”Dr John Trump at MIT, good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart”. The current U.S. president assumes he has superior genes as well:

I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff. […] I’m a gene believer. Do you believe in the gene thing? I mean I do. I have great genes and all that stuff, which I’m a believer in. 4

On 8 August this year, the IPCC launched a 1,200-page Special Report of Climate Change and Land, highlighting that human activities directly affect more than 70 percent of earth´s ice-free land. A quarter of this land is already severely degraded. Five hundred million people are currently living in areas experiencing desertification, while agriculture continous to use 70 percent of the earth´s freshwater. Our planet´s vegetation currently absorbs 30 percent of CO2 emissions, which contribute to global warming, but the ongoing clearing of forests increases average world temperature at an alarming speed, while access to freshwater is constantly decreasing. During the last decades, the average temperature has increased by 1,53 oC. 5 This critical situation could probably be reversed if agricultural and forestry methods are drastically changed from a present state of overexploitation, characterized by excessive use of pesticides, nitrogenous fertilizers, mechanization, wasteful irrigation and other harmful practicies favoured by large-scale agricultural producers.

Let me return to Jair Messias Bolsonaro and his acolytes. The world’s largest tropical rainforest is currently under a lethal threat from President Bolsonaro, a powerful supporter of large-scale agribusiness he is complaining about foreign pressure to safeguard Amazonia. Bolsonaro is following in Trump´s footsteps, for example by threatening to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. His Minister of Foreign Affairs has called global warming a plot by “cultural Marxists”, while Bolsonaro declares that ”Amazonas is ours and ours alone”, accusing ”foreign NGOs” of intending to steal natural resources of its rainforest from Brazil and hand it over to European exploiters. Furthermore, he accuses indigenous groups of keeping Amazonia away from the Brazilian people, trying to maintain it ”at a prehistoric level”. Accordingly, Bolsonaro has withdrawn governmental support to FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation, which up until now has carried out policies related to indigenous people. He has also eliminated the Climate Change Division of the Ministry of Environment, as well as two departments that dealt with climate change mitigation and deforestation.

On 6 August this year, the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reported that 4,700 km2 of the jungle had been cleared since Bolsonaro´s inauguration on January 1st and in June alone, deforestation had been 278 percent more than for the same month in 2018. Bolsonaro immediately fired INPE´s director, Ricardo Galvao, accusing him of being in the service of ”some NGO´s” and that he himself would not fall victim to any ”environmental psychosis”. 6

Bolsonaro appears to belong to the same breed as President Trump. He behaves like a narcissist obsessed by his own worth and righteousness. Bolsonaro´s regime is already after half a year threatening not only Brazil with a moral and ecological meltdown, but the entire world as well. On March 28th The Economist described Bolsanero´s government as being in a state of monumental confusion. Apart from the economic team, it is a warring assortment of retired generals, mid-ranking politicians, evangelical Protestants and far right ideologues. “Nobody knows where he´s going, what´s the course he´s setting,” says Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former president, of Mr Bolsanaro. “He goes forward then back, all the time.” 7

Despots like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong have proved that a single man and his acolytes can bring death, hardship, and devastation to millions of people. Remembering men like those and learning about the views, aspirations, and actions of people like Trump and Bolsonaro make it imperative for all of us to become aware of the craziness of these two leaders and the fatal consequences of their actions. All humanity must now join forces to support national and global efforts to save our planet.

1 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
2 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/17read-transcript-of-aps-interview-with-president-trump.html
3 Davidson Sorkin, Amy (2016) ”Donald Trump´s Nuclear Uncle”, The New Yorker, April 8.
4 Collins, Eliza (2016) “Trump: I consult myself on foreign policy”, Politico, March 16, and Mortimer, Caroline (2016) “Donald Trump believes he has superior genes, biographer claims.” The Independent, September 30.
5 https://www.ipcc.ch/2019/08/08/land-is-a-critical-resource_srccl/
6 Gatinois, Claire (2019) ”Déforestation record au Brésil, le jeu dangereux de Jair Bolsonaro”, Le Monde, August 9.
7 Bello, Andrés (2019) ”Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil´s apprentice president”, The Economist, March 28.

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

The post Are Jair Messias Bolsonaro and Donald John Trump a Menace to the Planet? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Hiring women as financial intermediaries can serve the dual purpose of increasing women’s usage of bank accounts, and their employment | Photo courtesy: Pixabay

By Renana Jhabvala, Sonal Sharma, and Soumya Kapoor Mehta
Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

Women comprise a very small proportion of the financial industry workforce, and this has implications on the way female clients use and benefit from financial services.

The Indian financial landscape is undergoing a dramatic change. India witnessed a surge in bank account ownership during the 2011-2017 period: 80 percent of Indians owned a bank account in 2017–an increase of 45 percentage points since 2011. This surge is primarily attributed to the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMDJY).

However, this push for financial inclusion has not achieved its true objective, which is to ensure that all citizens not only have access to bank accounts, but avail other facilities that come with it–formal credit, insurance, and overdraft, to name a few.

According to the Global Findex database released by the World Bank, roughly one out of two bank accounts in India remain inactive, about twice the average of other developing economies. Worse, the gender gap in these inactive accounts is notable: 54 percent of women account holders report not using their account, as opposed to 43 percent male account holders.

It is clear that hiring women as financial intermediaries can serve the dual purpose of increasing women’s usage of bank accounts on one hand, and their employment on the other


This gap needs to be considered against the more general narrative on outcomes for women in India, and progress therein. While there has been a big shift in girls’ education in the last decade or so–with more girls enrolling in higher secondary and college education–India’s abominably low female labour force participation rates mean that many girls, despite their aspirations, are passing out of schools with no employment prospects.

The debate on low female labour force participation and the reasons for it are intensive, and have sparked an entire research industry. However a study 1 we at SEWA commissioned as part of the World Bank’s Skill India Mission Operation (SIMO) focuses on the possible solutions, one of which is identifying work opportunities available for women in India’s financial sector.

Can the financial industry be a prospective employer for the many, now more educated women, seeking work outside their homes?

Why is this a matter of interest? Because evidence shows that women tend to use their bank accounts and save and borrow more if they are served by female bankers and financial intermediaries.

 

So, what did we find?

First, female staff comprise a very small proportion of the financial industry workforce. The Bharat Microfinance Report 2017 by Sa-Dhan reveals that the total microfinance workforce in 2017 stood at 89,785 workers. Women comprised only 12 percent of the total workforce and 11 percent of the total field staff.

Our primary study confirmed these dismal numbers on women’s employment in the financial sector. Most of the field agents and employees of the financial institutions we interviewed were male. Perhaps the most dramatic example was that of microfinance institutions where we found that while all the clients were women, all the officers in the field were male.

Second, SEWA’s own studies suggest that women tend to save and borrow more when they are served by female financial intermediaries.

A basic income pilot conducted by SEWA in the state of Madhya Pradesh in 2011-12 compared the extent of financial inclusion in villages where SEWA operated through its network of vitya saathis (female banking correspondents) and villages where SEWA was not present.

It was found that in non-SEWA villages where no basic income was transferred, women held only 24 percent of their savings in financial institutions such as banks and cooperatives (figure 1). In comparison, in SEWA villages, 64 percent of women’s savings were in formal financial institutions.

Other internal studies of SEWA in Bihar and Uttarakhand also show a positive impact of financial intermediaries on women’s savings, and livelihoods.

 

More women put savings in financial institutions in Madhya Pradesh when in touch with a female banking correspondent | Courtesy: SEWA

 

Putting these two facts together, it is clear that hiring women as financial intermediaries can serve the dual purpose of increasing women’s usage of bank accounts on one hand, and their employment on the other.

 

The job opportunity for financial intermediaries is tremendous

According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), of the nearly 460 million basic saving accounts opened in scheduled commercial banks between March 2010 and March 2018, nearly one in every two was opened through business correspondence agents or financial intermediaries. Such is the importance of these agents that the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) estimates 3.7 million incremental jobs for financial intermediaries between 2016 and 2022.

This leads to three important policy insights:

• Financial intermediaries are capable of carrying out financial functions and are perhaps better than a brick-and-mortar financial institution in reaching out to remote areas owing to their mobility.
• There is ample opportunity for mobile agents to act as representatives of financial institutions.
• The potential for hiring women as such agents is high.

Yet, a report by the Helix Institute of Digital Finance (2015) on the Indian financial agent network finds that of the 2,682 active financial agents surveyed across rural and urban locations, only about 10 percent were women.

If these levels were raised to 30 percent, then of the 3.7 million projected jobs, 1.1 million could be taken up by women financial intermediaries, benefitting women account holders in the process.

Women face barriers to entering the financial workforce

• Women are not aware of jobs in the financial sector. There are few counselling centres in schools and colleges that expose girls to jobs in this sector.
• Not many girls and women think of financial institutions as possible employers, and if they do, the government ones are the most coveted.
• Women also feel that they do not have the skills required to make a career in finance; some fear the pressure of targets.
• Constraints on mobility and security present further restrictions as does the hesitation of seeing no female peers among existing staff.
• A male culture in the sector also serves as a barrier, with male staff often socializing over a drink, late after office hours; bonding events that tend to exclude women.
• Managers, on their part, are reluctant to hire women. When asked why there were almost no female staff in his bank, a bank manager emphasised “daudne wala sales officer chahiye” (we need sales officers who are capable of running).

 

It is clear that most of the obstacles cited above seem to be related to the socially determined roles that women have been traditionally assigned. Both men and women view women’s abilities and aspirations through these lenses. This determines why women are either unaware of the opportunities, or are hesitant to enter the field. It also illuminates why managers fail to encourage women to apply, or when they do apply, only assign women back office jobs.

These barriers call for more awareness campaigns in communities about the importance of employment for women. Equally, some supply side shifts are needed.

 

They may include:

• Employing more female financial intermediaries
• Raising awareness about these jobs, knowledge building and career counselling
• Raising awareness among potential employers about the advantages of employing women and what they need to do to attract and retain them
• Providing financial support to buy laptops, point-of-sale machines, and two-wheeler vehicles for women who wish to become intermediaries
• Enabling access to technology
• Examining existing training modules and re-orienting them towards training women as financial intermediaries.

At the policy level it requires partnerships between organizations like the NSDC, the Sector Skill Councils and the Association of Banks to create an ecosystem that works towards employing more women as financial intermediaries.

It also requires collection of gender disaggregated data by financial institutions on employees, agents, banking correspondents, customer service providers and other financial intermediaries and making these figures publicly available to track gender discrepancies in the sector.

*Sanchita Mitra was a contributing author to the larger study that this article draws on.

 

Footnotes

1. Between August and September 2017, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India, which has been working for decades to empower women in the informal sector, commissioned a study as part of the World Bank’s Skill India Mission Operation (SIMO) to identify work opportunities available for women in India’s financial sector. The study drew on primary interviews with staff of financial institutions and technology service providers (TSPs) to banks as well as women themselves  across four states in India: Delhi, Bihar, Maharashtra and Punjab.  These were buttressed with desk reviews of other reports, and insights from many small areas studies that SEWA has been conducting on the obstacles women face to opening, using bank accounts and to accessing funds should they want to finance any entrepreneurial venture.

 

 

Renana Jhabvala is an economist, with a 40 year long association with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), known for her writings on informal women workers. She served as the Chancellor of Gandhigram Rural University from 2012-2017. She was a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, and has also been honoured with the FICCI Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1990, she was awarded a Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Sonal Sharma is an urban development practitioner who works on issues of informality, gender and land rights. She currently leads monitoring, evaluation, and learning for an urban land rights project for women workers in the informal economy at SEWA Bharat. Previously, she has worked with SEWA’s affordable housing finance company and researched on the issue of manual scavenging. She was an Urban Fellow at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and has completed her MA in Development Studies from Ambedkar University.

Soumya Kapoor Mehta is a development economist who has been writing on issues of poverty, social inclusion, social protection, and female labour force participation for the past 15 years. Formerly with the World Bank, she has several articles, World Bank and UN reports, and two books to her credit including one on the potential of basic income as a policy for India. Soumya holds degrees in economics from the University of Cambridge and St Stephen’s College, Delhi.

 

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

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By Renata Avelar Giannini
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

Every year, over 12,000 women are killed in Latin America. The region is plagued by extremely high levels of violence, and a vacuum of state power persists. Public face of this violence is caused by paramilitary, guerrilla, gangs and armed groups. 

But there is an interrelated side of domestic violence that plays out in the private domain. The relationship between these two are yet to be understood, as is the potential of the Women, Peace and Security agenda (WPS) as a fundamental ingredient to sustainable peace and a life free from violence and fear.

The WPS agenda is a United Nations invention. Amid the increasing recognition of women’s and girls’ rights since the creation of the organization in 1945, it was only in the year 2000 that the organization recognized that conflicts affect women and girls, men and boys differently.

Notwithstanding the considerable expansion of engagement with the agenda globally, there is a persistent gap in Latin America. The engagement of local women’s organizations has been limited, while governments are yet to fully grasp the central importance of the agenda in terms of promoting sustainable peace.

Women are systematically excluded from conversations concerning peace and security in the region, rarely included in peace negotiations and are the minority in police and military forces. The WPS agenda has an enormous potential do recognize and address some of these issues

Only six countries in the region launched National Action Plans (NAP) to implement the agenda, and with the exception of El Salvador and Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay mostly focus on their missions carried out abroad.

Ultimately, the gruesome reality of local women living in areas dominated by organized crime, or those that have joined these groups is yet to be understood or recognized by local governments.

There is little evidence on how women’s lives are affected by the extremely high levels of violence that plagues the region. Not only data is limited, only few policies dedicated to addressing violence against women are evidence based.

To make matters worse, there is a normative gap when it comes to addressing these challenges. While NAPs do not recognize these challenges, national legislation focuses on domestic forms of violence. The interplay between private and public violence as well as the direct and indirect effects of organized violence on women in the region are mostly ignored.

To illustrate, 38% of the world’s homicides occur within the region, which makes up only 8% of the global population. 43 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are located in Latin America.

Urban violence has particularly impacted women, who are not only targeted by organized groups, but also at home, where gender-based violence has spiked. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean (ECLAC), 40% of women in the region have been victims of physical violence and another 60% suffered emotional violence at some point in their lives.

Women also consist the primary victims of human trafficking and are often caught up in the crossfire of armed groups, when they are not directly target due to their relationship to members of different groups or gangs.

Violence affects their ability to access formal education, achieve economic independence and even political participation. It also bears the brunt of indirect forms of violence that are rarely recognized, including caring for the injured, emotional trauma among many others.

In Brazil, literally thousands of mothers have lost their sons in marginalized communities, where they are murdered on a daily basis.

Throughout the Americas, women have also joined armed groups and organized crime, serving in various types of roles from combat to support. This is particularly apparent in Colombia, where women made up 44% of the fighting force for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP).

However, even when women take part in these groups, they are often in less powerful and more vulnerable positions. The increased incarceration of women in the region is strong evidence of that. And what is worst, organized crime is born within prison, and that is where we are putting them.

Women are systematically excluded from conversations concerning peace and security in the region, rarely included in peace negotiations and are the minority in police and military forces. The WPS agenda has an enormous potential do recognize and address some of these issues.

However, countries in the region must recognize their high levels of violence and implement NAPs that are adequate to the reality of women living within boundaries. In times where political turbulence may disrupt the women’s rights agenda in many parts of the world, it is increasingly important to build evidence to inform policies and strengthen civil society groups who are in a unique position to remind governments of their commitments to women’s rights and their physical integrity.

 

The post Promoting Women’s Safety in Latin America appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Renata Avelar Giannini is Public Security and Justice Coordinator at Instituto Igarape based in Brazil

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By Zhengian Huang and Daniel Jeong-Dae Lee
BANGKOK, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

The Asia-Pacific region is at a crossroads. The traditional export-oriented, manufacturing-driven growth is facing headwinds from sluggish external demand and rising protectionist trade measures. 

New technologies have increased the likelihood of labour-intensive jobs in the region becoming automated. Meanwhile, many countries have witnessed widening income and opportunity inequalities. Rising environmental risks and climatic disasters add further burdens to the future development agenda.

There is an alternative scenario in which China pursues a holistic approach to structural reforms that achieves innovative, inclusive and sustainable development growth paths simultaneously

Now the questions that most developing countries in the region face are: Can they achieve economic convergence by following the traditional growth path? How can they balance economic growth with social inclusiveness and environmental sustainability?

This article addresses these questions by using China as an example.

China’s economic development is outstanding in terms of pace and scale. Over the last four decades, China’s economy has become the largest in the region, and has transformed from a predominantly agricultural one to an industrial powerhouse, and is now increasingly service-oriented.

However, strains from rapid structural changes have become clearer. Prominent among these are the country’s slowing population growth and labour force expansion, its decelerating productivity growth as available technologies approach the technological frontier, distributional tensions resulting from rising inequality and strains on the carrying capacity of the natural environment.

Economic simulations through 2030 suggest that under the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, GDP growth would hold up at a rate of around 6 per cent in the short-term but would experience a sharp drop by 2030 as economic efficiency declines. At the same time, urban-rural income gaps as well as inequality within urban and rural areas would remain wide, leaving pockets of poverty.

China’s energy consumption and carbon emissions would continue to rise, failing to meet its commitment to the Paris Agreement (see BAU scenario in figure A, B and C).

 

Figure: Alternative scenarios for China in 2030
Source: ESCAP, based on DRC-CGE model.
Note: BAU = baseline scenario; ING = innovative growth scenario; ICG = inclusive growth scenario; SSG = sustainable growth scenario; and ALL = innovative, inclusive and sustainable growth scenario.

 

 

However, there is an alternative scenario in which China pursues a holistic approach to structural reforms that achieves innovative, inclusive and sustainable development growth paths simultaneously.

Under this scenario, the country could maintain relatively high rates of economic growth, even as external demand remains sluggish, the labour force shrinks, and capital accumulation slows.

Accelerated urbanization, a rising “middle-class” population and increasing government transfers to optimize the social protection system could narrow rural and urban income disparities.

China’s total energy consumption and carbon emissions could peak in 2025, five years ahead of the timeline for the Paris Agreement, if a new carbon tax is implemented and non-fossil fuel energy assumes a greater share of the energy mix (see ALL scenario in figure A, B and C).

Recent policies and measures show that China is giving more weight to the quality of growth. First, China is pursuing supply-side reforms, focusing on technology and innovation. The country has established objectives to become an “international innovation leader” by 2030.

Second, actions are underway to improve the inclusiveness of economic growth. China has established objectives for eliminating absolute poverty by 2020.

Fiscal transfers to enhance social protection have been increased, while more funds have been deployed for rural infrastructure, agricultural subsidies and discounted loans.

Third, China has taken serious steps to curb pollution while speeding up the transition to clean energy. China aims to get 20 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2030. In late 2017, a carbon emissions trading system was launched in the country.

Such policies should be pursued in an integrated manner in order to reduce trade-offs and maximize synergies. In the Chinese example, policy priorities on technology and innovation could boost growth in GDP but might worsen income inequality, given technology’s effect of favouring capital over labour and favouring skilled over unskilled labour (BAU and ING scenarios in figure A and B).

Policies to reduce carbon emissions would be more effective if combined with new technologies and innovation which improves resource efficiency (SSG and ALL scenarios in figure C).

Scenarios on China’s potential policy paths towards a sustainable future shed some light for other developing countries. While a country’s economic growth may inevitably trend down as it matures, the quality of growth will differ significantly depending on the policy choices made.

It’s highly important and urgent for policymakers to switch their mindsets to prioritize policies that support people and the planet. This is not an easy process. Continuous policy efforts are required to balance development between the social, environmental and economic dimensions to ensure long-term prosperity.

 

This article is based on a recent ESCAP report China’s Economic Transformation: Impacts on Asia and the Pacific. Please click here to view it.

 

The post Towards a Sustainable Future: Case of China’s Economic Transformation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Zhenqian Huang is Associate Economics Affairs Officer, Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Daniel Jeong-Dae Lee is Economics Affairs Officer, Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division, ESCAP

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Credit: UN

By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

Being fluent in a world language is a desirable skill in modern day society. However, some languages are suffering and in danger of extinction — namely those of the indigenous peoples.

“There are between 6,000 and 7,000 world languages in the world today,” Brian Keane, rapporteur of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said in his keynote speech last week, revealing that half of them are expected to go extinct by 2100. As a result, more than 50% of the worlds indigenous peoples are in danger of losing their language.

“You can’t preserve or protect or revitalize indigenous languages in a vacuum- they’re related to all of the other rights of indigenous peoples, principally the right to self-determination,” Keane told IPS, adding that the Permanent Forum tries to highlight all of these rights, citing several branches to assist indigenous rights.

Asked what role the Forum will play, he said: “Our role is trying to move countries forward when implementing rights and outlining declarations.” Keane said, stressing that only when indigenous peoples are able to practice self-determination, and be able to live on their ancestral territories, “can we truly protect the languages”.

The annual commemoration of World Indigenous Peoples Day took place August 9 and was organized by the Indigenous Peoples and Development Branch of the Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The event  featured two panels, guest speakers, and performances.

Today, there are about 370 million indigenous peoples worldwide, making up about 5% of the population. However, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has predicted that, by the end of this century, between 50-90% of indigenous languages will perish.

 

Credit: UN

 

Indigenous language is fading as a result of land seizures, forced assimilation, conflicts, climate change, development projects, and a critical gap of the language being passed on to the next generation, attributed to a sense of fear or shame.

It has been noted that at least one indigenous language has been dying every 2 weeks and will continue to do so, if action is not taken.

It is an issue so concerning that it is reaching all corners of the world.

There are between 6,000 and 7,000 world languages in the world today, half of them are expected to go extinct by 2100. As a result, more than 50% of the worlds indigenous peoples are in danger of losing their language

Brian Keane, rapporteur of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

“We need to create reading materials, compile tales, stories and myths from the indigenous peoples.” María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the UN General Assembly declared, adding that languages are alive “as long as we speak them”.

“With every language that disappears, the world loses a wealth of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage.”  UN Secretary General António Guterres declared in an official statement, adding that education has a pivotal role to play in ensuring that indigenous peoples can enjoy and preserve their culture and identity, and that intercultural and multi-lingual education will be necessary to prevent irreparable loss.

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada concluded in his official statement:  “On behalf of the Government of Canada, I encourage everyone to learn more about the cultures and languages of Indigenous peoples, here in Canada and around the world,”

However, there are several initiatives in place to help foster indigenous language, such as the use of digital technology.

“Over the last 5 or 6 years we’ve really seen a boom in seeing indigenous languages online,” Eddie Avila, Director of Rising Voices said in his keynote speech, highlighting Wikipedia, emoticons, and users tweeting on Twitter in their native tongue.

“It’s really a message of do it yourself,” he added, but pointed out that it is ultimately the young people behind the tools who are critical, as well as academic researchers and policymakers.

Avila described designated spaces for young indigenous peoples to gather and engage in discussions.

“I think the non- indigenous youth can kind of encourage their classmates and other friends who may speak an indigenous language that it is okay to be multilingual, bilingual” Avila told IPS.

He said things are slowly changing compared to the past where there was a sense of shame to speak an indigenous language. He also stressed the importance of celebrating those differences but also recognizing the value of maintaining those roots.

He went on to note that in a city like New York, it is very easy to see the diversity and celebrate that, but added it is not always that way around the world, again tracing back to the importance of using language online, such as Duolingo and social media.

“And I think Rising Voices, we’re trying to support communities of indigenous languages, and we want to leverage technology to encourage new speakers, to promote the language, and to show that it is very functional on something as modern as the Internet, Avila declared.

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Credit: UN

By Ian Williams
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

An old adage passed on by veteran U.N. staff to younger recruits is, “Do nothing whenever possible. It’s safer.” For a junior officer that might indeed be career-enhancing. 

But—in the face of persistent hostility from the U.S. and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s friends around the world—for the secretary-general of the U.N., or even the commissioner general of UNRWA, it is a recipe for disaster.

And sometimes doing a little is even worse.

Antonio Guterres announced the appointment of Christian Saunders as deputy commissioner general of UNRWA but the U.N secretary-general failed to explain what had happened to Saunders’ predecessor,  Sandra Mitchell, let alone the chain of circumstances that led to her departure.

Saunders is experienced and well-respected, but making him deputy commissioner general while leaving Pierre Krähenbühl, the person primarily responsible for the scandal, as commissioner-general for UNRWA is like throwing a sardine into a school of sharks. It has, predictably, just whetted the appetites of UNWRA’s enemies—but has not provided sustenance for its friends.

The secretary-general is presumably aware that after Al Jazeera (and the Washington Report) began its investigation into the UNRWA Ethics Office’s report on Krähenbühl’s management (see Aug./Sept. 2019 Washington Report, p. 17), Krähenbühl in quick succession lost three senior staff members, including both his chef de cabinet and deputy commissioner.

Major donors, not least, Krähenbühl’s own Swiss government pulled their funding because of the Report, which called for his immediate dismissal.

All those countries have been loyal friends of the U.N. and of UNRWA, and their defunding shows clearly that the Ethics Office report made a compelling case to them. It is also clear that the governments concerned are trying to send signals to the U.N., whose response to the crisis has been a textbook case of complacent bureaucratic ineptitude.

After this writer’s report on UNWRA corruption came out in Al Jazeera, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki R. Haley wrote on Twitter, “This is Exactly [sic] why we stopped their funding.”

In fact, that was an outright lie. The Trump administration only did as Israel asked and pulled its contribution to UNRWA for malicious reasons having nothing to do with Commissioner General Krähenbüh’s love life or travel arrangements.

 

Credit: UN

 

Instead it was because UNRWA’s continuing existence is a persistent institutional reminder of U.S. complicity in Israel’s dispossession of some six million Palestinians. Admittedly, it was also because a particular subset of ambitious Republicans looks for large campaign donations from a coterie of very rich right-wing donors who consistently display their disdain for Palestinian rights by helping fund Jewish-only settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

There is no need for the secretary-general to take advice from countries whose oft-condemned actions created and perpetuated so many decades of misery for the Palestinians

However, knowing that both Washington and Tel Aviv entertain such sentiments makes the insouciance of both Secretary-General Guterres and Krähenbühl even more egregious.  The ethics report detailing the managerial failings and turpitude in UNRWA was delivered to the secretary-general’s office back in December 2018.

The UNRWA staff who had contributed to it fretted that no action was being taken after many of them had risked their livelihoods and pensions.

They were amazed that such a compelling dossier from the organization’s own Ethics Department would be ignored, and it was only after months had passed that some of them leaked it to me, in the hope that media inquiries about the report would prompt pre-emptive action by the U.N., and that the commissioner general would lance the boil before the pustulent Trump/Netanyahu axis began to fester on it.

Ambassadors and senior U.N. officials were approached to press the secretary-general’s office for the action necessary, but to no avail.

Faced with such a damning indictment from his own ethics office, Krähenbühl could have, and should have, resigned or stepped aside for the good of the organization.  The secretary-general could have suspended or fired him and announced a genuinely independent inquiry, enlisting donors and others concerned with the welfare of UNRWA and the Palestinians.

Predictably, the failures of the commissioner general and U.N. headquarters to take action—of any kind—has set off a feeding frenzy among the enemies of the Palestinians and UNRWA, who want to punish refugees for the ethical failings of bureaucrats foisted on them by an international community that oversaw their dispossession. 

An unannounced internal investigation by the U.N.’s own Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)—whose reputation is far from stellar even inside the U.N.—is a politically disastrous course of action. It took repeated questioning before we even discovered the investigation was under way—at a time when the secretary-general’s office denied it had even seen the report.

It was conceivable that, without media publicity, the OIOS report could have been a bland procedural whitewash, as have been too many about recent scandals involving senior U.N. staff.

But the media exposure means that Krähenbühl has little or no support from his present and recent senior staff, and certainly not from the donors.  His rigor mortis-like grip on office is profoundly damaging to UNWRA, to the U.N., and to the more than five million Palestinians it serves.

In any case, confronted with such a manifest managerial failure, a traditional international civil servant should have accepted responsibility and resigned: by clinging to office Krähenbühl is giving succour to his agency’s enemies.

One could add that the scandal reflects an erosion of the concept of an ethical international service under a constant corrosive drip of short-term contracts and outsourcing urged by those experts who brought us the 2008 financial crisis.    

Even so, Secretary-General Guterres can still ameliorate the crisis—first, of course, by inviting Krähenbühl’s immediate departure, but then by a resounding public declaration of how essential UNRWA’s work is.

Persuading a senior diplomat or U.N. figure to take over from Krähenbühl is a bit like fitting someone for a crown of thorns, but there are people out there who care enough about the Palestinians and who are prepared to stand up to the barrage of bile from worldwide Friends of Likud.

Above all, there is no need for the secretary-general to take advice from countries whose oft-condemned actions created and perpetuated so many decades of misery for the Palestinians.

He would, however, do well to invite donors and other humanitarian organizations to examine the agency and recommend much needed managerial and structural reforms, without pandering to those whose solution to the refugee problem is to leave them homeless and hungry while declaring them no longer to be refugees.

The original story appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 

The post Five Million Palestinians Deserve Better! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ian Williams is a former President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA) and author of "UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War

The post Five Million Palestinians Deserve Better! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

The harmful effects of falling corporate tax rates have been acknowledged in a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) research paper. This trend, since the early 1980s, has been especially detrimental for developing countries, which rely on direct taxation much more than developed economies.

Acknowledging that existing international corporate tax rules are unfair, set by developed country governments scantly considering their effects on poor countries, IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, called for a new system earlier this year.

 

BWIs and corporate tax rates

However, neither the IMF research nor Lagarde say anything about why corporate tax rates have been falling across all country groups for over three decades.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The neo-liberal ‘counter-revolution’ against Keynesian and development economics saw the brief popularity of ‘supply side’ economics during the early 1980s. The Washington Consensus of the US Treasury Department and the two Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) – the IMF and the World Bank (WB) – ensured its global impact.

All serious empirical research has discredited Chicago Professor Arthur Laffer’s claim that lowering corporate tax rates boosts investment and growth rates. Significantly, this included work by US President Ronald Reagan’s first Council of Economic Advisers chair, Martin Feldstein, and Doug Elmendorf, his Congressional Budget Office Director.

Instead, most growth during the Reagan era was due to expansionary monetary policy, as lower interest rates helped the economy rebound from the severe recession in 1982. Likewise, the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts also failed to spur growth, according to Andrew Samwick, chief economist to his Council of Economic Advisers.

All serious empirical research has discredited Chicago Professor Arthur Laffer’s claim that lowering corporate tax rates boosts investment and growth rates

Despite their dubious premises, the Laffer curve and similar claims have re-emerged under the Trump presidency, which has already brought corporate tax rates to new lows.

 

Beggar thy neighbour

To qualify for BWI support, developing country governments were expected to undertake tax reforms, by lowering typically progressive direct tax rates in favour of regressive indirect taxation, such as value-added taxation (VAT), often dubbed the goods and services tax (GST).

A review of IMF tax policy recommendations to Sub-Saharan African countries during 1998-2008 confirmed that in typical ‘one-size-fits-all’ fashion, they invariably included reducing corporate and even, personal income tax rates as well as both export and import taxation, besides introducing or expanding VAT.

As an IMF paper concluded about the ostensible justification for its advice, “The complete abolition of corporate income tax would be the most direct application of the theoretical result that small open economies should not tax capital income.”

Vito Tanzi and Howell Zee, of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, even recommended taxing labour, instead of capital. They argued that “small countries should not levy source-based taxes on capital income” because, compared to labour, capital was highly mobile and could escape such taxes.

The WB’s controversial Doing Business Report (DBR) argues likewise; paying taxes was one of 11 criteria DBR 2017 used to rank a country’s business environment although the WB’s enterprise survey found tax incentives not critical among factors affecting foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows.

 

Policy advocacy despite evidence

Thus, BWI advice, ostensibly to encourage investment, particularly FDI, led to the harmful competition that has lowered corporate tax rates since the 1980s. Earlier IMF research found that such ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ tax competition has caused unnecessary loss of revenue for many developing countries.

Anis Chowdhury

OECD research found that direct tax concessions barely diverted, let alone attracted international investment flows. The Economist also found the relationship between tax rates and investment as well as growth rates to be weak.

A G20 report noted, “Tax incentives generally rank low in investment climate surveys in low-income countries, and there are many examples in which … investment would have been undertaken even without them. And their fiscal cost can be high, reducing opportunities for much-needed public spending …, or requiring higher taxes on other activities.”

 

Regressive tax incidence

Corporate tax rate declines over recent decades have contributed to overall tax incidence becoming more regressive as direct taxes have declined, and indirect taxes, such as VAT, have risen. VAT adoption has been central to BWI tax policy advice to developing countries.

A study of IMF advice on tax matters in 54 IMF Article IV reports between 2005 and 2008 to 10 low-income countries and 10 middle-income countries found that, “VAT was recommended or endorsed by the IMF in 90 per cent of the overall sample…”

An IMF paper found that the BWIs presume that tax is distortionary, and the tax system should focus on raising revenue while minimizing associated distortions. This precluded using taxation for other purposes, e.g., progressive redistribution. Recent IMF research shows that reduced tax progressivity has contributed to growing inequality since the 1980s.

 

Quo vadis?

Recognition of taxation’s potential for both resource mobilization and reducing inequality can still bring about fundamental changes in BWI conditionalities, advice and technical assistance for developing countries. Greater developing country engagement in designing international reforms to reduce tax avoidance and evasion by transnational corporations will be crucial.

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The marginal farmer who depends solely on rain irrigation needs water, agricultural and energy innovations the most. Three farmer families help each other to plough their small farms and seed them as monsoon arrives in Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh. Credit: Manipadma Jena / IPS

By Manipadma Jena
NEW DELHI, Aug 12 2019 (IPS)

“The Perfect Storm” was a dire prediction that by 2030 food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources together with climate change would threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration from worst-affected regions.

It is a term coined a decade back in 2009 by Sir John Beddington, the United Kingdom’s then Chief Scientific Adviser. But in 2019 the prediction seems to be a real possibility—particularly for developing countries.

The current drive for a food- and nutrition-secure world, as well as the vision of feeding an estimated global population of 10 billion in 2050, is held hostage today by the unsustainable nexus between agriculture, water and energy. This is all further exacerbated by the climate emergency upon us.

“We have, over the years, tended to overuse both water and energy in agricultural operations, practices that are now at odds with the challenges due to the emerging changes in hydrology and the increasing global concentration of greenhouse gases,” says Ajay Mathur, Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute, India.

“Those of us who work on water issues in (the global) South understand that there have been decades of mismanagement of our land, water, energy and ecosystems due to poor policies, whose effects are now being compounded due to climate change,” adds Aditi Mukherji, Principal Researcher at the International Water Management Institute.

India’s alarming water shortages are now real as are the prolonged droughts in its central region and on-going apocalyptic flooding in several states. Each disaster leaves its own damaging impact on food production back to back.

Problems in each of the farm, water, and energy sectors are being addressed in India through policies, schemes and innovations but there is a need for greater focus on their interconnectedness to solve real world water, energy and food issues, according to Mukherji who is the coordinating lead author of the water chapter of the 6th Assessment Report team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Policies for reducing water distress in agriculture, for example, have to focus on all fronts –ensuring that food procurement policies are revised to incentivise low water consuming crops, that agricultural energy policies are tweaked to provide smarter incentives for lower groundwater extraction, and that water policies encourage decentralised solutions like water harvesting and water efficient agriculture,” she says.

And again “solutions for groundwater overexploitation problems are often found in the regions’ energy policies, including in the ever-increasing potential of renewable energy,” Mukherji says.

In India and other middle and low income economies, women are stewards of family food security. Increasingly, off- grid solar power is helping them provide better. A tribal woman feeds a 2 horsepower miller run by rooftop solar at Male Mahadeshwara Hills in Southern Karnataka. Courtesy: SELCO India

Clean energy to the rescue of food producers 

Ravi Naik’s tiny two-acre farm is in Shattigerahalli village in the Western Ghats of India’s southern Karnataka State. If any of his relatives come to visit, they trek through two kilometres of dense forests. Come monsoon, they’d find a formidable hill stream in fierce flow, barring their way. Grid electricity has not reached this remoteness, and the 56-year-old small farmer had no choice but to grow the Areca nut which requires less water but also fetches low prices at market.

Naik wanted to grow the remunerative banana but there was no way he could afford the extra irrigation with his kerosene-fed pump which already cost him over seven dollars a month.

But one day he encountered a solar technician from SELCO India, a local solar energy enterprise in Karnataka, who was installing an inverter. Naik narrated his woe. SELCO scouted and found a perennial pond close enough for a small ½ horsepower solar-powered pump to sufficiently draw irrigation for Naik’s banana plants.

Not only did Naik’s income double, thus easing his pump loan payments, the nutritious fruit always grows in abundance and has become his three-year-old grandson’s favourite snack. 

His farm is self sufficient and “clean” now. He no longer dreads the fossil fuel price swings on the black market, where he previously was forced to purchase fuel from.

To break the nexus Mathur suggests, “the promotion of energy efficient solar pumps, together with the purchase of excess electricity by the grid (from mini-grids), provides an opportunity to install micro-irrigation facilities, to mitigate climate emissions and provides a revenue stream for farmers to invest further in technology …energy efficiency is the first-step in ensuring that solar-based electrification is cost effective”. Mathur was recently appointed to the new International Energy Agency’s Commission for Urgent Action on Energy Efficiency.

While science and innovation have much to offer for water, energy and food security, these must be backed by institutional policies and political leadership to identify pathways to overcome a plethora of inter-connected challenges, according to Mukherji.

A 10 mega watt solar power plant set atop irrigation canals in Vodadara, Gujarat provides clean energy to thousands of farmers in the western Indian state. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Dire consequences already on us 

The World Resources Institute‘s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas released last week clearly indicates that India’s policies are not geared for current challenges it is already facing. The Atlas ranks India 13 among 17 countries that are facing “extremely high” water stress, almost close to Day Zero conditions. The research warns that potentially dire consequences can be triggered more often in India even during short dry shocks when demand outstrips supply, owing to its population which is three times that of the remaining 16 countries on the stressed list.

“South Asia is one of the world’s most highly populated regions with high levels of poverty and malnutrition alongside its rapid economic development. It is also a global hotspot due to huge demands for food, water and energy in a context of severe climate change impacts,” says Jim Woodhill of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

“From experience we know that food (and water) insecurity can be a trigger to societal unrest and even revolution. In such a populous region (as South Asia) it is critical that socially just and environmentally sustainable solutions are found to the challenge that the water, food, energy and climate nexus presents,” says Woodhill, who is the Food Systems Advisor for South Asia Sustainable Development Investment Portfolio at DFAT. 

Woodhill’s stand on South Asia was backed by United Nations findings in 2014. The U.N. had warned the Indian sub-continent may face the brunt of the water crisis where India would be at the centre of this conflict due to its unique geographical position in South Asia. It indicated shared river basins in the region may pit India against Pakistan, China and Bangladesh over the issue of water sharing by 2050. Indus River, Ganges and Brahmaputra basins are crucial for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.

Already river water sharing between several Indian States is seeing prolonged disputes both legal and political.

“Systems of weak governance are at the heart of the problem. A focus on generating and distributing wealth is no longer enough – we must add the dimension of how to respond to climate change. Science, new forms of decision making, and citizen engagement must go hand in hand,” says Woodhill adding, “Experience worldwide is showing how competition for land and water resources is intensifying, driven by increased demand from agriculture, the energy sector and industry. In South Asia the potential scale of the human tragedy of not moving fast enough down a path of sustainability and climate resilience, is immense.” 

Australia’s Crawford Fund annual conference in Canberra over Aug. 12-13 examines the available evidence as to whether the “storm” is still on track to happen. Or whether scientific, engineering and agricultural innovation the world over, and progress in the farmer’s field in India and in other vulnerable countries, have indeed lessened or delayed the impact of the unsustainable nexus between agriculture, water, energy and climate change.

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An eight-month-old boy is examined by a doctor at Amana Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. While women are increasingly using contraceptives to plan their families, there are still too many who lack access to critical reproductive health services. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Aug 10 2019 (IPS)

Khadija Zuberi, 23, from Ruaha Mbuyuni village in Tanzania’s central highlands, is a single mother to her four-year-old son, Hashim.

It has been a financial struggle for Zuberi—who has completed high school, but has no further qualifications—to raise her son. While she is still in a relationship with Hashim’s father and he reportedly supports them, he doesn’t live in Ruaha Mbuyuni village, located in Iringa.

Zuberi has worked all sorts of jobs to provide for her son. She remembers her first job as a helper at a local food outlet. She was paid the equivalent of a dollar a day for a job that started at 5am and ended 14 hours later.

“You find yourself working so hard and when you get paid you can’t even meet your basics needs,” she told IPS.

Last March, Zuberi became a recipient of a project called Malkia wetu, Swahili for ‘Our Queens’. It is a programme run by Kilimo Kan, a local agribusiness that supports the development of smallholder farmers in Iringa. Malkia wetu specifically targets young women between the ages of 14 and 24 from Ruaha Mbuyuni village. After training the young women, they are each allocated a piece of land and agricultural inputs with the agreement that the produce will be sold back to Malkia wetu.

“The programme facilitates young women to use agribusiness to avoid risky livelihood options such as early marriage and pregnancy or prostitution and instead become financially literate, entrepreneurial leaders generating income from farming,” the company says on a Facebook post.

Now Zuberi runs her own small food business, selling soup to villagers in the morning and evening and also farming tomotoes. 

Many don’t have access to critical reproductive health services

Young women like Zuberi aren’t an exception here. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), one in four Tanzanian adolescents aged 15-19 have already begun having children and the fertility rate is five children for every women in a country of just over 57 million people.

While women are increasingly using contraceptives to plan their families, UNFPA states “there are still too many who lack agency, education, and access to critical reproductive health services. The unmet need for family planning for married women (aged 15 to 49) stands at 32 percent”.  

A Department for International Development (DFID) study titled “Barriers to Women’s Economic Inclusion in Tanzania” lists these barriers as time poverty (because women spend significant time on household chores); lack of education; and even reproductive health pressures.

While Tanzania remains one of the African nations to experience sustained economic growth, according to USAID this is limited by a high population growth: “High population growth and low productivity in labour-intensive sectors like agriculture, which employs 75 percent of the population, limit broad-based economic growth. ”

African and Asian Parliamentarians met in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania from Aug. 5 to 8 to address what needs to be done ahead of the summit on the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD25).

The Nairobi Summit on ICPD25

With less than 100 days to go before the Nairobi Summit on the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD25), African and Asian Parliamentarians met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from Aug. 5 to 8 to address what needs to be done ahead of the November summit.

• ICPD25 refers to a 1994 meeting in Cairo, Egypt, where world governments adopted a plan of action, calling for women’s reproductive health and rights to take centre stage in national and global development efforts.
• Titled the “African and Asian Parliamentarians’ Meeting on Population and Development for ICPD+25”, the Tanzania meeting this week aimed to provide a platform for deepening regional parliamentarians’ understanding of the significance of UNFPA’s work and equipping parliamentarians with knowledge and skills to take concrete measures to advance the implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action and Sustainable Development Goals.
• The Programme of Action recognises “that reproductive health and rights, as well as women’s empowerment and gender equality, are cornerstones of population and development programmes,” according to UNFPA. The meeting was organised by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA). While parliamentarians recognised that progress had been made since Cairo, considerable gaps remain within certain countries.

Tanzania’s Speaker of parliament, Job Ndugai, said that his country was committed to the ICPD Programme of Action. He also urged Tanzanians to limit the size of their families relation to their economic status so that parents could provide their children with the basic necessities.

“We should look at this on a family level. You and your family…the children that you are [having] do they reflect your financial status? The important thing here is the amount of people we have should relate with our economic [status],’’ said Ndugai.

Sinichi Goto, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Tanzania, said African countries were making efforts to achieve the SDG’s. While Asia currently has more than half of the world’s population, Africa is estimated to account for more than 90 percent of the increase in the global population between 2020-2100.

Empowering women means empowering communities

Nenita Dalde, from the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation said that African and Asian governments have to ensure that women benefitted equally and participate directly in development programmes and projects.

The gains of this would be far-reaching. “When you empower women you heighten employee morale and it inspires them to give back,” she told IPS.

Helen Kuyembeh, a former member of parliament from Sierra Leone told IPS that communities experienced positive impacts when women are empowered.

“The benefits start in the household when [a woman’s] income increases,” she said, explaining that it will impact what the family ate, their health and the children’s education.

She added that when women were empowered to start they are own businesses they usually would employ other women and provide inspiration to them.

She has seen this first hand.

“When I was an MP, I created programmes to support women in my village to become more self-sufficient and this programme has uplifted a lot of women from my village and now they are not lonely and unhappy,” Kuyembeh said.

Zuberi, is more certainly a case study for this.

She earned 450 dollars from selling her first harvest of tomatoes, and makes over 300 dollars a month in a country where the mean monthly income for men is 117 dollars a month and 71 dollars a month for women, according to the DFID study. Women’s salaries are on average 63 percent lower than those paid men here, according to USAID.

But not Zuberi. With the money she earns she can pay her own rent and is able to support her son.

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By Stella Paul
KORCHI/GADCHIROLI, India, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

Kumaribai Jamkatan, 51, has been fighting for women’s land rights since 1987.
Though the constitution of India grants equal rights to men and women, women first started to stake their claim for formal ownership of land only after 2005–the year the government accorded legal rights to daughters to be co-owners of family-owned land.
For the Indigenous communities, it was the Forest Rights Act 2006 which allowed women to own land.
The struggle has been long and hard with social, financial and legal challenges, Jamkatan says.

“In the beginning, nobody even believed in the individual land rights of women. Some saw it as a huge work burden as the land is usually in the name of the patriarch of the family and granting ownership to women would mean distributing the land to individual family members.”
About 3,000 women are reported to have received land rights since local Indigenous villages in Gadchiroli district grouped together to assist one another.
Jamkatan is pursuing a personal goal of helping 1,000 women get land rights this year.

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The post How India’s Indigenous Female Forest Dwellers Feel about Owning Their Own Land appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Jam Bai (in red sari), a member of the Indigenous 'Kawar' community, sows rice saplings in her paddy field as her relatives and neighbours help her. After years of struggle she now officially owns the land she farms on. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
KORCHI/GADCHIROLI, India, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

Jam Bai, an Indigenous farmer from Korchi village in western India, is a woman in hurry. After two months of waiting, the rains have finally come and the rice saplings for her paddy fields must be sown this week while the land is still soft.

But on Saturday Aug. 3, a day before IPS visited the village, government security forces shot dead seven armed rebels belonging to a far left, radical communist group called the ‘Maoists’ or ‘Naxals’ in a village 40 km from here.

Located roughly 750 km east of Mumbai in Maharashtra state’s Gadchiroli district, which has one of the India’s thickest teakwood forests, the area is often in the news for the violent incidents such as landmine blasts, killing, gunfire, arrests and protests that occur here. Maoists have been waging war against the government for over a decade here as they demand a classless society.

Since the incident, there has been an unofficial shutdown around Korchi. As tension and fear spreads, Bai could not find a single labourer to hire. But the 53-year-old will not give up: not sowing the fields this season is not an option.

Her reasons are not only financial but also emotional.

After years of struggle she now officially owns the land.

So today Bai has called on several of her women relatives and friends from the village. With saris pulled up over their knees and heels dug into the muddy water, they bend in a row, holding a bundle of saplings in one hand, while sowing a small bunch with the other.

“I have five acres of land. So far we have finished sowing about one acre. There are four more to go, but we will surely finish the rest in two to three days,” says Bai. The women laugh and cheer for her.

• The village of Korchi consists of just over 3,000 people, most of whom are small and marginal farmers belonging to Gondi and Kawar Indigenous communities, who recognised by the country’s constitution as ‘Schedule Tribes’—the official term for Indigenous peoples in the country.
• The area may be conflict-ridden but studies show that the district stands as being the first in all of India to grant land rights to Indigenous people. Much of this is credited to local Indigenous women like Bai who have been leading a ground movement for years for formal ownership of both the farming land and the forest land.

The paddy fields that Bai owns are located at the edge of a her village, beyond which lies a forest. For generations, Bai’s family has sustained itself both by farming on the land and collecting fruit, tree bark, vegetables and herbs that grow in the forest, just like other members of their Indigenous communities.

But they never possessed official rights over either of the land areas.

It was only after the government started to implement the Forest Rights Acts 2006—a new law which recognised the rights of the Indigenous peoples living in the forest—that Bai applied for formal ownership to the land her family held. Finally, after nearly a decade’s struggle, she received her land rights last year.

“Before me, my mother in law and her mother in law also sowed rice in this land. But 15-20 years ago, everyone started to say, ‘this land belongs to government, you are only occupying it’. That is when we realised that we need formal rights and ownership. After the new forest law came, along with others, I also applied in 2008 for my rights. Finally, last year I received my Patta (ownership certificate),” she says. 

A woman shows an application for individual landrights and the documents that are required. This includes maps and receipts of the land tax paid to the district government by the family for past three generations, multiple signatures of the applicant, their family members, the village chief, and senior government officials at the Land and Revenue department etc., several rounds of verification by village and district level officials. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Land ownership for women: a complex story

Kumaribai Jamkatan, 51, is one of those leaders who have been fighting for women’s land rights since 1987.

• Though the constitution of India grants equal rights to men and women, women first started to stake their claim for formal ownership of land only after 2005–the year the government accorded legal rights to daughters to be co-owners of family-owned land.
• For the Indigenous communities, it was the Forest Rights Act 2006 which allowed women to own land.
• Presently, the Indigenous people here in Korchi have two kinds of land rights:
  • The rights of an individual over farmland in their village, and
  • A collective right over a specific area in the forest for hunting-gathering – which was made possible in 2006 under a special forest law (The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act).

Under this law, the entire community shares the forest resources of barks, seeds, fruit and vegetables, which include; gooseberries, blackberries, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, soap nuts, and various herbs and shrubs. All of these have been part of the Indigenous communities’ diets and source of their livelihood for generations.

• The land allotted to a village community is typically decided by the size of the village population. However, it usually falls between four to 10 acres.
• But their struggle for land rights started decades ago and continues today as many women are still waiting to receive land rights due to slow pace of implementation of Forest Rights Act and lack of awareness in their communities. According to India’s Agriculture Census 2010-2011, nationally, women own only 10.34 percent of land.

The struggle has been long and hard with social, financial and legal challenges, Jamkatan says.

“In the beginning, nobody even believed in the individual land rights of women. Some saw it as a huge work burden as the land is usually in the name of the patriarch of the family and granting ownership to women would mean distributing the land to individual family members.

“Then there are legal challenges: the application needs several documents, including maps and receipts of the land tax paid to the district government by the family for past three generations, multiple signatures of the applicant, family members, the village chief, and senior government officials at the Land and Revenue department etc., several rounds of verification by the village and the district level officials and goes through several government agencies all of which take a long time,” says Jamkatan.

In 2017, locals, supported by a local NGO, Amhi Amchya Arogyasathi (We for our own health in Marathi), formed the Maha Gram Sabha (the Great Village Assembly). The assembly is a community-based organisation with members from 90 Indigenous villages of the district’s 125 villages. Gadchiroli district is at least nine times the size of London, with a total population of about 1.7 million.

The Great Village Assembly has not only spearheaded the land rights movement of women in a collective manner, but also asserted their rights to the forests and its resources. About 3,000 women are reported to have received land rights since the assembly was formed.

The assembly believes that Indigenous people have the first right to land and forest. When this is ensured, the community has a better life and the forest also flourishes, Nand Kishore Wairagade, a former village chief and now an advisor to the assembly, tells IPS.

Wairagade says the formation of the Great Village Assembly helped revolutionise people’s rights over the land: “There are 90 villages in this assembly who meet regularly and decide on everything from applying for land rights to collecting forest resources like Tendu leaves (a significant source of income for the forest peoples which is used to make hand-rolled cigarettes), gooseberry, mushroom etc. The assembly also oversees the sale of Tendu leaves, negotiates its price with the buyers and ensures that the money is paid directly to bank accounts of the women sellers.”

These have all been hard-won gains.

“We have taken to the road many times. Since 2012, when the government first decided to grant us the collective rights, we have held protest rallies, sit-in demonstrations, road blockades and strikes. Finally, last year they started to distribute the certificates again. Now, people in 77 villages (out of the 90 villages that are part of the assembly) have land ownership but people in 13 villages are yet to receive theirs,” says Jamkatan who is pursuing a personal goal of helping 1,000 women get land rights this year.

Indigenous people’s land–what experts say

Global experts have emphasised how land use by Indigenous peoples plays a role in conserving the environment and mitigating climate change. A special report on Land and Climate Change released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Thursday, Aug. 8, highlights how indigenous and traditional ways of managing land can help reverse land degradation and mitigate climate change in the process.

Commenting on the report, Andrea Takua Fernandes, frontline organiser for Indigenous communities at 350.org, tells IPS the leadership of the Indigenous people is key to addressing both the climate crisis and deforestation. “The biodiversity defended by Indigenous people will be essential to cracking the code of how to respond sustainably and fairly to the climate breakdown.”

In Korchi village, Wairagade shares an example of how Indigenous people use land in a sustainable manner: “the community here knows exactly how much to take from the forest. Their need is not driven by market and profits, but meeting the need of the family. When they harvest bamboo shoots, they take only a few to feed themselves and leave enough in the wild, so that the forest can be regenerated. So, sustainability is in our culture.”

No land rights, no empowerment of women
Sarajaulabai Ganesh Sonar, a smallholder farmer in Korchi who owns three acres of land which she was officially awarded the title deed to last year, believes that without land ownership, women’s empowerment is incomplete.

She tells IPS that previously women were too scared to demand their share of land.

“Now they see it as a fight for their own identity. [A woman] can also earn a living from her own land. In the forest also, before we had collective rights, we used to be scared of the forest guards and think ‘what if he caught us and beat us etc’. Now we don’t have to sneak in and hide. So, for us, land is our real source of empowerment.”

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• India’s Indigenous Women Assert their Land Rights

The post In the Midst of Conflict, India’s Indigenous Female Forest Dwellers Own their Land appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

On the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, IPS correspondent Stella Paul speaks to indigenous women in Korchi village in western India, about what it means to own their own land.

The post In the Midst of Conflict, India’s Indigenous Female Forest Dwellers Own their Land appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Sharan Burrow
BRUSSELS, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

The World Bank claims poverty is decreasing around the world but UN research shows it depends on what you measure. If we are serious about reducing poverty, we need to start by properly identifying it.

The World Bank has repeatedly claimed that extreme poverty is on the decline. In its Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report, it states that ’the world has made tremendous progress in reducing extreme poverty. The percentage of people living in extreme poverty globally fell to a new low of 10 percent in 2015 — the latest number available — down from 11 percent in 2013, reflecting continued but slowing progress. The number of people living on less than $1.90 a day fell during this period by 68 million to 736 million.’

 

What are we measuring?

The World Bank’s extreme poverty line of US$1.90 a day is in fact not based on real estimates of people’s cost of living within countries. This explains why it fails to capture the desperation experienced by so many.

As soon as we focus on people’s lived experience, the picture becomes more stark. At a most intuitive level, we know that poverty is determined by a person’s inability to meet their material needs. Perhaps the most basic of these needs is food. The UN’s 2018 figures on hunger show that it is on the rise globally.  It estimates that 821 million people are currently going hungry. It is striking then that the World Bank considers millions of those living in hunger as living above its poverty line.

While the World Bank estimates that 400 million people live in extreme poverty in the Asia-Pacific Region, a 2018 report from the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific highlights that 520 million people in the region are undernourished, and 1.2 billion people lack access to basic sanitation

Regional snapshots also contradict the World Bank’s poverty findings. While the World Bank estimates that 400 million people live in extreme poverty in the Asia-Pacific Region, a 2018 report from the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific highlights that 520 million people in the region are undernourished, and 1.2 billion people lack access to basic sanitation.

The World Bank also estimates extreme poverty in Latin America, at 4.1%, to be low, and suggests it has been declining over the last years. Meanwhile, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s (ECLAC) 2018 figures indicate that both poverty (29.6%) and extreme poverty (10.2%) have been increasing since 2012.

ECLAC defines its poverty and extreme poverty lines based on the costs of food and other essential goods and services. While the World Bank claims that extreme poverty has nearly been eradicated in the region, ECLAC figures show that nearly a third of people in Latin America are unable to cover the costs of basic goods and services, and one in 10 cannot even afford the basic costs of food.

So what is the World Bank’s poverty line based on? The US$1 a day indicator was set out in the World Bank’s 1990 World Development Report. While the ‘dollar a day marker’ was easily understandable to the public, it was primarily symbolic and not based on any estimate of the income people would need to live on. The poverty line has since been updated according to inflation and changes to the consumer price index, and it currently stands at US$1.90 for the poorest countries. The Bank did develop additional poverty lines for lower-middle and upper-middle income countries, at US$3.20 and US$5.50 a day, largely to reflect higher prices in those countries.

 

If it is broken, fix it

The  arbitrary nature of the Bank’s approach to poverty measurement has critics abound and many have identified the need to move towards a basic needs approach. This would define the amount of money needed to cover food, housing, and other essential goods and services, including health and education.

It is estimated that if the Bank were to measure poverty on the basis of needs, international poverty rates would be considerably higher. The Bank has resisted such a call, arguing that the US$1.90 poverty line is valid and meaningful as it corresponds to the median of the national poverty lines of the world’s poorest countries.

What’s really happening is the World Bank validates its poverty line largely on that basis of other World Bank-developed national poverty lines, a flagrant case of partiality and circular logic. Research by Professor Sanjay Reddy showed only 9 of the 87 national poverty lines cited by the Bank have been derived independently.

The Atkinson Commission on Global Poverty, which was set up to advise the Bank on global poverty measurement, set out several recommendations to improve its poverty monitoring and measurement. It recommended that the World Bank partner with other agencies to construct a basic needs estimate of poverty. This is entirely feasible and some regional agencies are already successfully doing it. Nevertheless the Bank argued against it, putting the onus for adopting a more accurate approach on individual countries and preventing the development of internationally comparable estimates.

The Bank’s own Acting Director for Research Francisco Ferreira recently conceded, ‘there is significant room for arbitrary decision making’ in setting the World Bank’s international poverty estimates. He went on to argue that correcting against such arbitrary consequences is unfeasible as the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) poverty reduction target is based on World Bank poverty measures. For an international institution to argue that an inaccurate measure should be maintained because the international community is using it, highlights a profound lack of ambition and responsibility-taking.

The World Bank, and the greater international community, should not fear changing a measure that is not working. In fact, it is necessary in order to achieve the Bank’s stated goal of poverty reduction.

Under-reporting poverty does not make it go away. Rather, inaccurate indicators make it harder to identify the policies that truly address it, such as raising wages, reducing precarious work, extending social protection coverage and enhancing access to essential public services such as health and education.

It is high time the World Bank moves away from an arbitrary indicator towards one that captures the cost of living, based on the real needs of people.

 

Sharan Burrow is General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which brings together 331 national trade union centres, and represents 207 million members. The ITUC is a regular interlocutor of the World Bank’s and Ms. Burrow has been on numerous high level panels with the World Bank.

The post The World Bank Needs to Understand Poverty and What it Actually Costs a Family to Live on appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sharan Burrow is General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)

The post The World Bank Needs to Understand Poverty and What it Actually Costs a Family to Live on appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stella Paul
KORCHI, India, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

Korchi a village of 3,256 people, most of whom are small and marginal farmers belonging to Gondi and Kawar indigenous communities, lies about 750 kilometres east of Mumbai, India. Here, women like Jam Bai, a 53-year-old indigenous farmer, have been leading a ground movement for years to own land.

On the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, IPS correspondent Stella Paul speaks to Kumaribai Jamkatan about what it means for Indigenous women to own their land. Paul joins Bai and several of women relatives and friends who have joined together to help Bai sow the saplings for her rice field.

 

 

The post India’s Indigenous Women Assert their Land Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

On the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, IPS correspondent Stella Paul speaks to Kumaribai Jamkatan, 51, one of the leaders who have been fighting for women’s land rights and Indigenous People's land rights since 1987.

The post India’s Indigenous Women Assert their Land Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Communities living on the foothills of Mount Kenya believe that burning forests will result in rain. A new United Nations report states that deforestation is one of the major drivers of climate change. Credit: CC By 2.0/Regina Hart

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

The villagers living on the foothills of Mount Kenya have a belief: If they burn the forest, the rains will come.

“Generally, we believe that the sky is covered by a thick layer of ice and only a forest fire can rise high enough to melt this ice and give us rainfall,” Njoroge Mungai, a resident from Kiamungo village, Kirinyaga County, which is located on the foothills of Mount Kenya, tells IPS.

It is little wonder then that Kirinyaga is one of the counties most affected by wild fires, according to the Kenya Forest Services (KFS).

During the first two months of this year, at least 114 forest fires were recorded across Kenya with at least five major forests being adversely affected, according to KFS. In just a matter of days in February, a wild fire ravaged an estimated 80,000 acres of Mount Kenya’s forest moorlands. Forest and wildlife experts are adamant that communities living around these forested areas are responsible for the fires.

Such significant loss of forest cover is not a unique occurrence across Africa. And yet deforestation is one of the major drivers of climate change, according to a new report.

Scientists on the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have noted that the world is staring at a climate catastrophe.

These warnings are contained in a new IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) released yesterday, Aug. 8, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Co-authored by 107 scientists, almost half of whom are from developing nations and 40 percent of whom are female, the report resoundingly places land management at the very centre of the raging war to combat climate change, stating that effective strategies to address global warming must place sustainable land use systems at their core.

The Mijikenda community in southern Kenya carefully tends to the outskirts of kaya forests, which also serve as the ancient burial grounds of their ancestors, nurturing a diverse ecosystem that is home to rare plant and bird species. A new United Nations report states that effective strategies to address global warming must place sustainable land use systems at their core. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

“IPCC’s newly released report focuses on the link between global warming and land use. At the core of this report is the nexus between climate change and unsustainable land use, including unsustainable global food systems,” Richard Munang, the sub-programme coordinator on climate change at U.N. Environment’s Africa Office, tells IPS.

Munang says that this nexus “is already coming to the fore in Africa especially now that the continent is losing forest cover at a rate that is much higher than the global average.”

He further explains that globally, Africa bears the second-highest cost of land degradation—estimated at 65 billion dollars per year—and that this has put a strain on economic growth.

“While average losses resulting from land degradation in most countries are estimated at nine percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), some of the worst afflicted countries are in Africa and lose a staggering 40 percent of their GDP,” he says.

The IPCC report emphasises that while climate change itself can increase land degradation through increases in rainfall intensity, flooding, drought intensity, heat stress and dry spells, it is land management practices that has tipped the balance of increased land degradation. The report noted that agriculture, food production, and deforestation are the major drivers of climate change.

According to the report, land is a critical resource and also part of the solution to climate change. However, as more land becomes degraded, it becomes less productive and at the same time reducing the soil’s ability to absorb carbon. This in turn exacerbates climate change.

As a result of significant land use changes, grazing pressures and substantial reduction in soil fertility, U.N. researchers now say that one-third of total carbon emissions come from land.

Dr. Wilfred Subbo, a lecturer in natural resources at the University of Nairobi, notes the findings with concerns: “Land is under a huge amount of pressure and we are increasingly witnessing how human-induced environmental changes contribute to catastrophic carbon emissions.”

“We are indeed heading straight into a climate disaster and this report has highlighted how damaged land is no longer serving as that large sink that absorbs harmful carbon dioxide emissions,” he tells IPS.

Coordinated action to address climate change can simultaneously improve land, food security and nutrition, and help to end hunger, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a statement. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

The report also noted “global warming and urbanisation can enhance warming in cities and their surroundings, especially during heat related events, including heat waves”.

“Last year the United Nations Development Programme indicated that Africa’s urban transition is unprecedented in terms of scale and speed and that the continent is 40 percent urban today,” Subbo says.

Coordinated action to address climate change can simultaneously improve land, food security and nutrition, and help to end hunger, the IPCC said in a statement. The report highlights that climate change is affecting all four pillars of food security: availability (yield and production), access (prices and ability to obtain food), utilisation (nutrition and cooking), and stability (disruptions to availability).

“Food security will be increasingly affected by future climate change through yield declines – especially in the tropics – increased prices, reduced nutrient quality, and supply chain disruptions,” said Priyadarshi Shukla, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III, in the statement.

“We will see different effects in different countries, but there will be more drastic impacts on low-income countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said.

Munang nonetheless points out that all is not lost: “Over 90 percent of countries in Africa have ratified their commitments to accelerate climate action towards achieving the 2015 Paris agreement.”

This agreement seeks to achieve a sustainable low carbon future. Munang emphasises that such climate goals calls for countries to embrace ambitious eco-friendly practices such as agro-forestry, the use of organic fertiliser and clean energy, among others.

He says that a number of African countries are on track. “Ethiopia has done very well and set a new unofficial world record of planting over 350 million trees in just 12 hours.”

Kenya aims to run entirely on green energy by 2020 and is on record as having the largest wind farm in Africa, as is Morocco with the largest solar farm in the world.

“The key going forward is to change perspective and to look at these actions within the broader goal of building globally competitive enterprises with climate action co-benefits,” Munang says.

Meanwhile, back on the foothills of Mount Kenya, Mungai says that there are efforts to educate the community about forest fires and the effect it has on both the land and climate.

“This belief will take time to change because it was passed down from our grandfathers. But the County government is focused on addressing these problems so future generations will learn to do things directly.”

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• Extreme Floods, the Key to Climate Change Adaptation in Africa’s Drylands

The post Burning Forests for Rain, and Other Climate Catastrophes appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Ibrahim Thiaw
BONN, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

We have known for over 25 years that poor land use and management are major drivers of climate change, but have never mustered the political will to act.

With the release of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on climate change and land, which makes the consequences of inaction crystal clear, we have no excuse for further delay.

We cannot head off the worst ravages of climate change without action on land degradation. The knowledge and technologies to manage our lands sustainably already exist.

All we need is the will to use them to draw down carbon from the atmosphere, protect vital ecosystems and meet the challenge of feeding a growing global population. We must harness the enormous positive potential of our lands and make them part of the climate solution.

With the help of our scientists, I will ensure the issues in this report that are within the scope of the Convention are presented to ministers for strong and decisive action when they meet at the world’s largest intergovernmental forum where decisions on land use and management are made, the 14th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD, taking place in New Delhi, India, in three weeks’ time.

The IPCC report is one of four major assessments released over the last two years that show the wide-ranging impacts of land degradation. It is not just the climate that suffers when land quality declines.

Land degradation jeopardizes our ability to feed the world, threatens the survival of over a million species, destroys ecosystems and drives resource-related conflicts that demand costly international interventions.

These problems are no longer local problems. The report underlines that the increasingly global flows of consumption and production means that what we eat in one country can impact land in another. In the wake of land degradation and drought, communities are breaking down due to the swift and devastating loss of life and livelihoods.

Faced with these life-changing consequences, the UNCCD has developed a robust policy framework that can enable countries to avoid further land degradation and recover land that has become virtually unusable.

Change is happening, but not fast enough. In the last four years, 122 of the 169 countries affected by desertification, land degradation or drought have embarked on setting national targets to halt future degradation and rehabilitate degrading land to ensure the amount of healthy and productive land available in 2015 does not decline by 2030 and beyond.

Last year, these countries submitted baseline date to verify this achievement. And in just three years, close to 70 countries have set up national drought management plans to reduce community and ecosystem vulnerability to droughts, which the IPCC says will become stronger, more frequent and more widespread.

This shows that commitment to reversing land degradation is growing, even though much work remains. More than two billion hectares of land are degraded. Initiatives to restore land on a national or landscape level are not only vital in reversing the process.

They are critical for helping the global community mitigate and adapt to climate change in the short term, using soil and vegetations through methods that do not harm the Earth.

When the ministers meet in September (at the UN in New York), I expect the IPCC report to have a strong influence not only on the policy decisions they will debate, but the will to take them home for appropriate action.

Science can help politicians develop informed policies that will support ordinary people to prepare, act and create more positive pathways to the future.

The post Land Degradation Jeopardizes Ability to Feed the World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ibrahim Thiaw is UN Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification

The post Land Degradation Jeopardizes Ability to Feed the World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Drone visual of the area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration of the land that was taken in 2015. Years later the community restored the land by planting trees. A new United Nations report has described farming, land degradation and desertification as critical frontlines in the battle to keep the global rise in temperatures below the benchmark figure of 2 degrees Celsius. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

A new United Nations report has described farming, land degradation and desertification as critical frontlines in the battle to keep the global rise in temperatures below the benchmark figure of 2 degrees Celsius.

The 43-page study from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released this week says better management of land can help combat global warming and limit the release of greenhouse gases.

“Climate change poses a major risk to the world’s food supply, and while better land management can help to combat global warming, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors is essential,” U.N. spokesman Stefan Dujarric told reporters Thursday.

The report offered “compelling evidence” for redoubling global efforts and shows that while “food security is already at risk from climate change, there are many nature-based solutions that can be taken,” added Dujarric.

Among the IPCC’s recommendations were calls for vigorous action to halt soil damage and desertification and for people globally to throw less food into trash cans, whether in private homes or out the back of supermarkets and factories.

Instead, scrap food can be used to feed farm animals, in some cases. Alternatively, food waste can be donated to charities so that homeless people and others in need get much-needed meals.

Controversially, the IPCC also noted that more people could be fed using less land if individuals cut down on eating meat and switched up their diets by consuming more “plant-based foods”.

“Some dietary choices require more land and water, and cause more emissions of heat-trapping gases than others,” said Debra Roberts, co-chair of an IPCC working group.

“Balanced diets featuring plant-based foods, such as coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, and animal-sourced food produced sustainably in low greenhouse gas emission systems, present major opportunities for adaptation to and limiting climate change.”

The report was co-authored by 107 scientists and was finalised this week at talks in Geneva, Switzerland.

It is called “Climate Change and Land, an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems”.

The report’s findings would be key at the Conference of Parties of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in New Delhi, India, in September and at other confabs over the coming months, said Dujarric.

Some 500 million people live in areas facing desertification, IPCC scientists said. These regions are more vulnerable to climate change and such extreme weather events as droughts, heatwaves, and dust storms. 

Once land is degraded, it becomes less productive and unsuitable for some crops. It also becomes less effective at absorbing carbon, which drives a vicious cycle of rising temperatures degrading soils even more.

“Land plays an important role in the climate system,” Jim Skea, co-chair of an IPCC working group, said in a statement accompanying the document.

“Agriculture, forestry and other types of land use account for 23 percent of human greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time natural land processes absorb carbon dioxide equivalent to almost a third of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry.”

Under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, governments pledged to limit the rise in average global temperatures to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial times, and ideally to 1.5°C. The world has already heated up by about 1°C.

Droughts and heatwaves are getting worse, according to the UNCCD. By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two thirds of the world will be “water-stressed”.

Though droughts are complex and develop slowly, they cause more deaths than other types of disasters, the UNCCD warns. By 2045, droughts will have forced as many as 135 million people from their homes.

But there is hope. By managing water sources, forests, livestock and farming, soil erosion can be reduced and degraded land can be revived, a process that can also help tackle climate change.

“The choices we make about sustainable land management can help reduce and in some cases reverse these adverse impacts,” said Kiyoto Tanabe, co-chair of an IPCC task force on greenhouse gasses.

“In a future with more intensive rainfall the risk of soil erosion on croplands increases, and sustainable land management is a way to protect communities from the detrimental impacts of this soil erosion and landslides.”

The post Desertification a Frontline Against Climate Change: IPCC appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Lakshi De Vass Gunawardena
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

There are several initiatives in place to foster sustainable development– and the Global Geodetic Reference governance frame is one that has proved effective.

“This proposed governance framework, the establishment of a Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence (GGCE), will strengthen all Member States – as global geodesy is fundamental to sustainable development,” Anne Jørgensen, Senior Strategic Communications Advisor for the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM), told IPS.

“Global warming is the defining issue of our time,” Anne Gueguen, Deputy Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations said at a panel discussion August 6 organized by the UN-GGIM and the Subcommittee on Geodesy.

“We are in a race against time for the survival of human life on the planet as we know it, and that this global challenge can only be met by universal global efforts.”

Since its inception, the UN-GGIM has recognized the growing demand for more precise positioning services, the economic importance of a global geodetic reference frame and the need to improve the global cooperation within geodesy, according to its website.

UN-GGIM created a Working Group for a Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF), which formulated and facilitated a draft resolution for a Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF), adopted by UN-GGIM in July 2014 and the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in November 2014.

On 26 February 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Global Geodetic Reference Frame for Sustainable Development that was led by the Republic of Fiji.

The Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF) is a generic term describing the framework which allows users to precisely determine and express locations on the Earth, as well as to quantify changes of the Earth in space and time

Data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Gravity Recovery and Climate revealed that Greenland alone lost an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year between the years 1993 and 2016, while Antarctica lost about 127 billion tons of ice per year during the same time frame, and that the rate of Antarctica ice mass loss has tripled in the last decade.

Record high temperatures, mass rainfall, and rising sea levels are occurring at unparalleled rates as well.

The Geodetic framework seeks to support the increasing demand for positioning, navigation, timing, mapping, and geoscience applications, and thus is an irreplaceable asset for reliable information on changes on Earth such as natural disaster management, rising sea levels, climate change, and information for decision-makers.

The UN- GGIM hopes to establish a Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence as well, in order to support the frame and cites that it will “act as a GGRF operational hub” that will support the objectives of the UN- GGIM – to enhance global cooperation, provide technical assistance and capacity building.

However, there are challenges surrounding the framework itself, such as degradation, a lack of open data sharing, and halted development and maintenance due to a lack of global coordination.

“Open data sharing is fundamental to science applications and also alignment to the global reference frame,” Zuheir Altamimi, Researcher at the Institut National de l’Information Géographique et Forestière (IGN) said during the panel discussion, pointing to a map that highlighted data gaps in Africa, East and South East Asia, and South America.

“It means that data is not shared,” Altamimi noted, concluding “we need to share data in order to maintain the global geodetic framework.”

“Global geodesy lacks global coordination.” Laila Løvhøiden, Deputy Director at Kartverket added. To tackle this, the UN GGIM and Subcommittee has proposed solutions, including a revised position paper and the Geodetic Centre.

“The Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence would provide the coordinating role that is key to creating synergy,” Francisco Javier Medina Parra, Director of the Geodetic Framework at National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) added.

People at home can also help sustain the framework. “There’s also a need for the broader community to communicate to policymakers and the political class how much we actually rely on these things in our day to day lives,”

Gary Johnston, Co- Chair of the UN- GGIM Subcommittee on Geodesy told IPS, that no one country can do this alone, and that we need all countries and member states to contribute “in any way that they can, and concluded that everyone has a role and everyone can benefit from it.”

The post Global Geodetic Framework Helps Monitor Natural Disasters & Rising Sea Levels appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Joseph Chamie
NEW YORK, Aug 9 2019 (IPS)

What if current fertility rates of countries remain constant for the rest of the 21st century? Under this assumption, the populations of high fertility countries skyrocket while those of most low fertility countries plummet and world population nearly triples in size by the century’s close. 

If fertility rates do not change, today’s world population of 7.7 billion increases to 21.6 billion by the end of the 21st century. That projected figure is double the commonly cited United Nations medium fertility projection of 10.9 billion for world population in 2100.

The United Nations medium fertility projection assumes that the rates of high fertility countries decline to near replacement levels of 2.1 births per woman by the century’s end. It also assumes that today’s below replacement fertility rates of countries increase slightly over the coming eight decades.

Assuming fertility rates remain at their current levels, eighteen countries, all in sub-Saharan Africa, experience the most rapid demographic growth. Each of their populations leaps more than tenfold by the end of the century.

The fastest demographic growth occurs in Niger, which has a fertility rate of 7 births per woman. Niger’s population surges thirtyfold over the century assuming constant fertility, from 23 million to 695 million.

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

The most populous country in Africa, Nigeria, experiences an elevenfold increase in the size of its current population if its fertility rate of 5.4 births per woman remains constant, leaping from today’s 201 million to 2.3 billion by the year 2100. Similarly, assuming its fertility rate of 6 births per woman remains unchanged, the population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo increases eighteenfold, surging from 87 million to 1.6 billion at the century’s close.

Without immigration the current populations of Australia, United States, United Kingdom and Canada are smaller by the century’s close, -7%, -9%, -15 and -29, respectively
Together those eighteen sub-Saharan African countries contribute an additional 8 billion people to the world’s population by 2100 if their fertility rates remain unchanged.

However, if their high fertility rates decline to near replacement levels by the end of the century, as assumed by the United Nations medium fertility projection, the eighteen countries contribute 2 billion additional people to world population, or 6 billion less than the constant fertility projection.

Nigeria’s population, for example, reaches 733 million by 2100 in the medium fertility projection rather than 2.3 billion in the constant fertility projection. Niger’s population increases sevenfold by 2100 in the medium fertility projection instead of thirtyfold if fertility remains unchanged. Also instead of growing to 1.6 billion assuming constant fertility, the population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is 362 million in medium fertility projection at the century’s close.

In addition to rapid population increase, the population age structures of the sub-Saharan African countries stay relatively young if their high fertility rates continue. Today’s proportions of children (below 15 years), for example, remain basically unchanged at around 43% of the population by 2100 in the constant fertility projection. However, if fertility rates decline as assumed in the medium fertility projection, those proportions are halved to approximately 22%.

In striking contrast to sub-Saharan African countries, the populations of 50 countries with below replacement fertility rates decline during this century if fertility levels remain constant. Even if their below replacement fertility rates increase slightly as assumed in the United Nations medium fertility projection, those countries still experience population decline but to a lesser extent.

The current populations of a dozen countries, including Japan, Poland and South Korea with current fertility rates of 1.4, 1.4 and 1.1 births per woman, respectively, decline by about 50 percent by the end of the century if fertility rates remain unchanged (Figure 2). Significant declines in population size also occur by 2100 in Italy (-40%), Hungary (-39%) China (-30%) and Germany (-17%) and Russia (-15%).

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

In addition to population decline, the age structures of those countries with below replacement fertility are markedly older in 2100 if their fertility rates remain constant. The proportions of elderly persons aged 65 years and older in those countries increase to unprecedented high levels, the highest being more than 40 percent in Italy, Greece, Japan, Portugal, South Korea and Spain. During the 20th century the proportion elderly in countries never reached higher than 17 percent.

Furthermore, in many countries the number in the working ages of 15 to 64 years per person aged 65 years and older, the potential support ratio (PSR), falls below two. In Japan, Italy, South Korea and Spain, for example, constant fertility rates lead to PSRs that are to close to one by the end of the century.

The populations of some countries with below replacement fertility continue to increase due to immigration. Without immigration, however, the population sizes of those countries also decline over the coming decades. For example, without immigration the current populations of Australia, United States, United Kingdom and Canada are smaller by the century’s close, -7%, -9%, -15 and -29, respectively (Figure 3).

 

Source: United Nations Population Division.

 

Among the forces keeping fertility rates below the replacement level are urbanization, survival of children, widespread education, improvements in status of women including increased employment and economic independence, the costs of childrearing, delayed childbearing, voluntary childlessness and reproductive health services, including modern contraceptives. Given that those forces are continuing, it is unlikely that low fertility rates will return to replacement levels in the foreseeable future.

Countries with below replacement fertility need to anticipate and plan for the near certain consequences of population decline and aging. While smaller and older populations can certainly lead to considerable societal, individual and environmental benefits, those changes also pose challenges for economic growth, retirement, pensions, healthcare and caregiving.

If the high fertility rates of countries remain unchanged, the projected future growth of those populations, which are among poorest in the world, is extraordinary. Such enormous demographic growth not only overwhelms the development goals of those countries, but also poses serious challenges to countries worldwide as well as to the planet’s flora, fauna and ecosystems.

A variety of long-term development efforts, including education for girls and boys, employment and vocational training, lower mortality and improved healthcare, contribute to the transition from high fertility rates to near replacement levels. The invaluable contribution of reproductive health information and services in reducing high fertility levels, however, can be made available now.

The costs for providing reproductive health services, including modern methods of contraception, are small compared to the considerable benefits for families and society. In addition to permitting women and men to choose the desired number and spacing of their children, reproductive health services constitute a vital component of socio-economic development and environmental sustainability.

Governments, including those of the wealthier nations, international agencies and donor organizations need to follow through on their commitments on the provision of reproductive health services. Increased efforts are needed to ensure that all women and men have access to sexual and reproductive health care services, including modern methods of family planning.

Those efforts are especially vital in the high fertility countries of sub-Saharan Africa where usage of modern methods of family planning is relatively low. Only about half of women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years), for example, have their need for family planning met with modern contraceptive methods.

It is clearly in interests of all to facilitate the transition from high to low fertility rates, especially in sub-Saharan African countries, as has already been realized throughout much of the world.

To do otherwise makes it enormously more difficult to address the critical issues and development challenges facing humanity, including shortages of food, water and housing, poverty, unemployment, gender equality, climate change, environmental degradation, emigration and displacement, civil conflict and peace and security.

 

The post If Fertility Rates Remain Constant appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Dr. Ida Odinga, EGH
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 8 2019 (IPS)

In 2019 a female scientist created an algorithm that gave the world the first ever images of a black hole. Working with a team of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, a young woman led the development of a computer program that in her own words enabled them to “achieve something once thought impossible.”

Photo: Heshimi Kenya

During this same year, over 200 million women in developing countries will not have access to effective methods of contraception to delay or avoid pregnancy. Approximately 830 women a day will die during pregnancy or childbirth from preventable causes. And sexual and gender based violence including harmful practices like early marriage and female genital mutilation, will still plague millions of girls and young women. Girls and women denied basic human rights and robbed of their potential to achieve the impossible.

In 1994, the visionary Programme of Action was agreed to by 179 governments at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt. The Programme of Action recognized that reproductive health and rights, as well as women’s empowerment and gender equality, are cornerstones of healthy robust societies that promote the well-being of populations and economic and social development of nations. Since ICPD, governments, civil society, youth networks have all worked towards decreasing maternal deaths, eliminating harmful practices and promoting gender equality.

The global community is now gearing up to mark 25 years since the historic ICPD through the Nairobi Summit on the International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD25 which will be held from 12-14 November 2019 under the theme “Accelerating the Promise”.

I am proud that my country Kenya, will be hosting this important Summit, which is aimed at mobilizing the political will, financial commitment and community support we need to fully realize the ICPD Programme of Action.

Indeed, by the time we leave Nairobi, we must ensure that everyone has agreed to play their part in reaching zero unmet need for family planning information and services, zero preventable maternal deaths, and zero sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices against girls and women. Evidence shows that the benefits that would accrue from fulfilling the ICDP agenda would be far reaching in transforming lives and improving the wellbeing of families, communities, and nations.

Dr. Ida Odinga, EGH

In Kenya, significant progress in health care has been made with Universal Health Coverage(UHC) a top priority for the Government. Thanks to the leadership, passion and commitment of the First Lady of Kenya, Ms Margret Kenyatta through her Beyond Zero campaign there has been a significant drop in maternal and child mortality. We have to now go for zero deaths. Reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health is key to achieving UHC.

High rates of teenage pregnancy, take girls out of school and compromises their health. Young people face stark challenges in employment as 1,000,000 people enter a labor force that can only absorb 150,000 new entrants. Access to health services and information, school retention and quality education will help these young girls stay in school and lead healthy lives. These are among the issues that the Summit will address.

However, in order for the Nairobi Summit to be a game changer, we need to speak for those that can’t speak, speak for those who are not heard and to add our voices to those who continue to work for sexual and reproductive rights for all. We must reaffirm our commitments to the ICPD goals and Agenda 2030. We must absorb the lessons learned over the last 25 years and do better.

For Kenya, the Nairobi Summit provides a platform to showcase our Big Four Development Agenda aimed at accelerating socioeconomic transformation and economic growth by intensifying investments and programme actions on: affordable housing, food security, universal healthcare and manufacturing.

I am delighted that my country is partnering with UNFPA and the Government of Denmark to host the Nairobi Summit and reaffirm the global commitment to ICPD. This is a watershed moment as we are a mere 10 years away from our commitment to fulfill the SDGs.

I look forward to seeing all the participants in Nairobi and hope everyone will follow the proceedings of the Nairobi Summit and learn how we can all play a role in bringing about change and keeping the promise of ICPD. Ensuring that all women and girls can reach for the stars and achieve the impossible.

Dr. Ida Odinga, EGH is spouse of Rt Hon. (Eng.) Raila Odinga and a passionate campaigner of women’s rights.

The post The Nairobi Summit – Towards a Watershed Moment appeared first on Inter Press Service.