Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Indigenous leader and activist Vanda Witoto poses at her home in Manaus, Brazil, in October 2022. Credit: Michael Dantas/United Nations Foundation

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
BRASÍLIA, Oct 5 2023 (IPS)

Raffaello Nava, a youth and student activist, has fled his home at the peak of the global Coronavirus pandemic after receiving death threats from multinational companies that invaded his ancestral lands in the Amazon rainforest.

The 22-year-old, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, is seeking refuge in Manaus, a gateway city to the Amazon tropical rainforest.

“They killed two of my friends. I had to run away,” he says while speaking in Portuguese through a translator.

The powerful companies are linked to former President Jair Bolsonaro. He was succeeded by 67-year-old Lula da Silva, a Latin American leftist and a veteran in Brazil’s politics who won in the October 2022 elections.

Nava’s tribe is resisting the invasions from these companies who are cutting down trees for timber and clearing land for agriculture.

“Our territory is wanted by these people. Cattle ranchers have already taken thousands of hectares. My people are receiving threats,” he says. “I am here on the frontline. Fighting to protect our land and that of Brazil, I do not even know if I will go back home or not. I fear for my life.”

Over the years, the lives of indigenous community activists and leaders have been at stake throughout the Amazon.

In 2020 alone, more than 260 human rights defenders were murdered in Latin America, 202 of which occurred in countries of the Amazon Basin, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia, representing 77 percent of the cases, according to a report by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (Coica).

About 69 percent of these murders in 2020 were against leaders working to defend territory, the environment, and the rights of indigenous peoples.

A boat on the shores of Rio Negro in Brazil. Credit: Michael Dantas/United Nations Foundation

Brazil holds 60 percent of the Amazon, the biggest tropical rainforest in the world, with the other portion shared by nine South American nations, including Peru and Colombia.

Brazil and Bolivia have about 90 percent of deforestation and degradation in the Amazon, shows data from research titled Amazonia Against the Clock, which covers nine countries sharing the tropical rainforest released in September last year by scientists from the Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-environmental Information (RAISG) in collaboration with Coica.

Indigenous organisations from the Amazonas are calling for a global pact for the permanent protection of 80 percent of the Amazon forest by 2025.

In the Amazon, land grabbers have been invading the land of indigenous communities to pave the way for mining and agriculture.

Agriculture is responsible for 84 percent of deforestation in the Amazon forest, and the amount of land given over to farming has tripled since 1985, according to the report.

The Amazon forest plays a significant role in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thus reducing the effects of climate change caused by gas emissions worldwide.

There are over 390 billion trees in the Amazon, helping it to retain some 123 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

But over the years, increasing deforestation and land degradation have been reducing the ability of the Amazon forest to absorb carbon dioxide and instead contributing to global warming through both human-caused and natural fires.

The tropical rainforest has also been experiencing droughts and floods, signs human activities are causing climate change.

During his campaign days, Lula promised to combat deforestation in the Amazon forest, which had worsened under Bolsonaro, who was President since 2019.

Bolsonaro backed farm and ranching expansion in the region due to his links to some of Brazil’s powerful agricultural industry leaders.

Another activist based in Manaus, whose life is in danger from powerful people, says deforestation in the Amazon worsened under Bolsonaro.

An aerial view of a scientific research station, Camp 41, in the Amazon in Brazil. Credit: Michael Dantas/United Nations Foundation

“His policies are of less protection. He also reduced the number of protected areas in the Amazon. He made laws that should protect the forest weaker,” he says in an interview in Manaus in October 2022 during Brazil’s elections.

He says during Bolsonaro’s era, there was an increase in the loss of vegetation due to deforestation, reduced biodiversity and a rise in cases of invasions of indigenous communities in the Amazon.

The activist says agro-businesses and those in the extractive industries use pesticides and chemicals that pollute and contaminate water bodies in the Amazon forest, putting many people and animals in danger.

Vanda Witoto, a Brazilian indigenous leader, says multinational companies and agro-businesses were funding illegal operations such as logging in the Amazon during the Bolsonaro era.

“I visited some communities in the Amazon. There was illegal gold mining. Sadly, there is less reporting because the locals are being threatened. Big companies are investing a lot in illegal mining and deforestation in the southern part of the Amazon,” Witoto says, toning down her voice and holding back her tears during an interview at her home in the neighbourhood of Parque das Tribos just outside of Manaus in October last year.

“I saw this with my own eyes. Some indigenous people work for these companies, pushed by poverty and unemployment. We are against this. We have always been fighting to stop it.”

Adriano Karipuna, an indigenous leader, during an interview in October last year, said law enforcement agents in the Bolsonaro government were ineffective in arresting people committing crimes against his people.

“Our people have been struggling with deforestation. We have been reporting for the past years. But it worsened under Bolsonaro,” says Karipuna, who represents the Karipuna people, an indigenous group who have inhabited the Amazon rainforest for centuries.

“We have been receiving threats. Bolsonaro’s government has been taking our land and donating it to the invaders. Environmental criminals are going unpunished.”

Lula has just hit the ground running with his appointment of a veteran environmentalist, Marina Silva, as the Environment and Climate Change minister.

The 64-year-old Silva’s task is to rebuild Brazil’s environmental protection agencies and stanch the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Under Lula’s Presidency, Joenia Wapichana, the first-ever Indigenous woman elected to Brazil’s Congress, has been appointed leader of the country’s Indigenous affairs agency, the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples, popularly known as Funai.

This is a huge achievement for the Brazilian indigenous communities whose role was suppressed under Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro had to cut some of Funai’s budget, authority and number of staff, a move that crippled the agency when he assumed Presidency in 2019.

Witoto says she is hopeful that the predicament of indigenous people will change under Lula’s regime.

“We have to elect a person who respects the rights of indigenous people,” she says, speaking to IPS before Lula’s successful election. She added her people lived in fear from the violence perpetrated by Bolsonaro supporters for merely wearing Lula regalia during the election period in October.

A recent joint analysis by researchers at the University of Oxford, the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) and the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) shows deforestation could fall by 89 percent by 2030 under Lula if he reinstates the policies introduced during his first term in office, saving 28,957 square miles of the Amazon rainforest.

Note: Reporting for this story was supported by the United Nations Foundation.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Zimbabwean Farmers Turn to Agroecology to Feed Their Families
• In Zimbabwe, Golf Is Giving Cyclone Idai Survivors Hope
• In Zimbabwe, Economic Crisis Pushes Underaged Girls to Sex Work

Communities across Cuba have participated in the UN “ACTNOW” campaign designed to inspire action for the Sustainable Development Goals. Credit: ONU Cuba

By Francisco Pichon
HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 5 2023 (IPS)

In 2015, 193 countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as “a shared plan for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.”

We are now halfway towards the target date for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and while the world has made some progress over the past seven years, many challenges remain.

The UN’s annual SDG Progress Report, which was published in July, triggered serious alarm bells. Of the 140 targets for Agenda 2030 for which data is readily available, 30% have remained static or even seen some backsliding.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC estimates that two-thirds of the SDG targets require urgent policy action.

Boosting partnerships for the goals

In Cuba, where I have served as the UN Resident Coordinator over the last nine months, our team has been working closely with the Government and other development partners to close the remaining gaps in the country’s SDG targets.

Underpinning these efforts was the recent launch of Cuba’s first Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF); a system which brings together and aligns different sources of financing to boost sustainable development in the country.

Credit: ONU Cuba

The INFF, which was jointly prepared by five Cuban economic and financial institutions, together with the UN country team, offers a roadmap for development financing in Cuba through public policy recommendations, analytical tools, opportunities for new partnerships and strengthened capacities among key development partners.

Despite the challenging circumstances – including Cuba’s exclusion from international financial mechanisms and the severe external restrictions imposed on its economy– the INFF is bringing innovative ideas and creating space for meaningful engagement between government actors, academics and other national and international experts to make informed policy decisions.

In fact, our joint efforts to support Cuba’s INFF process recently received the ‘UN SIDS Partnerships Award’, which recognizes initiatives that boost partnerships for sustainable development in Small Island Developing States.

Next, we need to address complex development challenges in the most open and participative way possible. This also means developing innovative thinking and cultivating political will in the decision-making sphere.

This vision for the future of global cooperation was firmly set out by the UN Secretary-General in the ‘Our Common Agenda’ report launched last year. The report highlights the role of science, technology and innovation in overcoming development challenges, and delivering transformative change in the fields of renewable energy, green economies and inclusive education systems.

As head of the Group of 77+China over the past year, Cuba has actively contributed to giving voice to this kind of transformative vision. The countries in the Group represent two-thirds of the United Nations membership and 80% of the world’s population.

As such, they have found an epicenter in Havana for consensus-building in key areas such as education, culture and the environment. Last month, Cuba hosted the G-77+China summit– a milestone moment to address the central issue of bridging the North-South development gap, including through technology and innovation.

Soon after this meeting, all eyes turned to the SDG Summit at the UN General Assembly in New York in September, which offered a rallying point for Cuba, and the rest of the world to accelerate joint action to reach the targets of the 2030 Agenda.

Our UN team in Cuba is part of this movement; standing side by side with the national authorities and partners to advance the SDGs across the country. It is in this context that the process to start formulating Cuba’s new UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework– the roadmap which guides the UN’s joint development planning in the country over a five-year period- is about to begin.

The second half of the journey towards achieving the 2030 Agenda represents a decisive hour for sustainable development in Cuba and around the world. Our UN team is committed to supporting Cuba over this finish line.

Francisco Pichon is the UN Resident Coordinator in Cuba. This article was adapted from a version originally published in Prensa Latina.

Source: UN Development Coordination Office

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The estimated number of foreign-born residents in the United States as of September 2023 is at a historic high of nearly 50 million. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

America’s immigration has reached record-breaking levels having weighty consequences domestically and internationally.

Based on the Census Bureau’s 2023 Current Population Survey, the estimated number of foreign-born residents in the United States as of September 2023 is at a historic high of nearly 50 million.

The U.S., with 4 percent of the global population of 8 billion, is also the home to the largest number of immigrants in the world. Approximately 17 percent of the world’s total number of immigrants reside in America, followed by Germany at 5 percent, or about 15 million immigrants.

The current number of the foreign-born residing in America is substantially higher than the 44 million estimated at the time of its 2020 population census. Today’s figure is also five times larger than the number of immigrants residing in the country in 1965 when America passed the far-reaching Immigration and Nationality Act.

That Act created a new system that prioritized highly skilled immigrants and those who already had family living in the country. The legislation paved the way for millions of non-European immigrants to come to the United States.

In 1960 the five largest immigrant groups in America were from Italy followed by Germany, Canada, Great Britain and Poland. About a half century later, the five largest immigrant groups were from Mexico and then at considerably lower levels India, China, the Philippines and El Salvador (Figure 1).

 

Source: U.S. American Community Survey, 2021 and Census Bureau, 1960.

 

With a U.S. total population of 335 million, the estimated proportion of foreign-born residents in America stands at 14.9 percent, breaking the previous records of 14.8 percent in 1890 and 14.7 percent in 1910. In contrast, immigrants in 1970 comprised a record low of 4.7 percent of America’s resident population (Figure 2).

 

Source: Migration Policy Institute.

 

The number of foreign-born workers in America also reached a record high of 29.8 million in 2022, or 18.1 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force, up from 17.4 percent in 2021. In addition, the Biden administration in September granted nearly a half a million Venezuelan migrants an opportunity to work and live in the U.S. legally for at least the next 18 months under Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Among the 50 million foreign-born residents in America, 38 million entered the country legally. The estimated remaining number of foreign-born, approximately 12 million, again a record high, consists of unauthorized or undocumented migrants.

It is noteworthy that during the past ten years, visa overstayers in the U.S. have outnumbered unlawful border crossings by a ratio of about two to one. In addition to the increasingly large numbers of people visiting America who choose to overstay their temporary visas, migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border are reported to be on track to break all-time records.

During the past two and a half years, Border Patrol reported unprecedented levels of migrant apprehensions, including 2.76 million in FY 2022 breaking the previous annual record by more than 1 million. That high level of migrant apprehensions is on track to be matched in FY 2023. The surge in undocumented migrants crossing the U.S. southern border seeking asylum has created a humanitarian crisis.

The number of migrant encounters in September is record-setting, exceeding 260 thousand, and notably higher than the previous record monthly high of 252 thousand in December of 2022. Also in September, border agents processed more than 200 thousand migrants who crossed the U.S. southern border unlawfully, the highest level in 2023.

Record numbers of migrant families from various countries are streaming from Mexico into the United States. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested a record-breaking number of 91 thousand migrants who crossed the border as part of a family group in August, substantially exceeding the prior one-month record of 84 thousand set in May 2019.

The increase in migration to the United States is happening across the Western Hemisphere. Record numbers of people are on their way north to the U.S. across Central and South America and many then riding on the top of freight trains through Mexico. In August alone, more than 80,000 people crossed Panama’s treacherous Darién Gap, a monthly record high for a major migration crossroads for hundreds of thousands of migrants hoping to reach the United States.

Also, unprecedented numbers of migrants entering Mexico are coming from other continents, as the journey to the U.S.-Mexico border has become the largest migration corridor in the world. For example, the number of African migrants registered by Mexican authorities so far this year is already three times as high as during all of 2022.

Since President Biden took office the average monthly growth of America’s foreign-born population has been about 143 thousand. That figure is significantly higher than the 76,000 per month during Obama’s second term, and the 42,000 per month under Trump before Covid-19 pandemic began in March 2020.

The U.S. lacks the capacity to detain and process the growing numbers of unauthorized migrants at its southern border. Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world are crossing the Rio Grande with U.S. Border Patrol agents now encountering between 10,000 to 11,000 migrants each day.

The recent dramatic spikes in the numbers of unauthorized migration have further strained federal services and overwhelmed local resources. In some areas of Arizona, California and Texas, the U.S. Border Patrol recently released unmanageable large numbers of migrants into communities to prevent overcrowding in federal facilities.

The mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas, recently issued a disaster declaration, citing the record-breaking daily arrival of thousands of undocumented migrants to the city. Similarly, the mayor of El Paso said that the city was at the breaking point amid the dramatic jump in migration of more than 2,000 people per day.

Far from America’s southern border, the recent arrival of more than 100,000 migrants in New York City has overwhelmed shelters, services and local resources and fueled anti-immigration sentiment.

Also in other U.S. cities, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia and Portland (Maine), the arrivals of the large numbers of asylum seekers have swamped local government facilities and budgets as well as stressed volunteer groups.

It is also worth noting that the proportions foreign-born vary considerably across America’s states. California has the highest proportion with more than a quarter of its population being foreign-born. It is followed by New Jersey, New York, Florida and Hawaii with approximately a fifth of their populations being foreign-born. In contrast, less than four percent of the population is foreign-born in West Virginia, Mississippi, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota (Figure 3).

 

Source: World Population Review.

 

The increases in unauthorized border crossings are creating political challenges across the country. In particular, the increases pose re-election issues for the Biden administration whose policies aimed at slowing down the unauthorized migrant flows.

Nearly 75 percent of Americans say the government is doing a bad job dealing with the large numbers seeking asylum. Also, a slight majority, 52 percent, indicate that it is very important to require people to apply for asylum before they travel to the U.S. southern border.

In addition, close to half of Americans consider illegal immigration to be a very big problem for the country. That view varies considerably by political party affiliation. Whereas 70 percent of Republicans consider illegal immigration to be a very big problem for the country, the corresponding figure among Democrats is 25 percent.

Over the coming four decades, America is expected to receive slightly more than one million authorized immigrants annually. If those levels continue as expected, the projected number of foreign-born residing in America in 2060 is about 69 million, or about 17 percent of the population.

However, that projected number of foreign-born does not take into account visa overstayers and unauthorized immigrants entering the U.S. southern border. If the projection took into account unauthorized migrants, the foreign-born population in 2060 is likely to be closer to 80 million, or about a fifth of America’s projected population.

In sum, America’s immigration has reached record-breaking levels and over the coming decades, those levels are expected to be even higher. As has been the case throughout its history, America’s immigration levels continue to have profound demographic, economic, social and political consequences domestically as well as internationally.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

Credit: UNESCO / Teacher Task Force

By Heike Kuhn
BONN, Germany, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

Once a year, on October 5, we celebrate World Teachers’ Day. Why is it so important to have a closer look on the teaching profession? What is so special about being a teacher nowadays?

World Teachers’ Day is an international day which was established to attract public attention on the work of teachers. The day was established in 1994, in commemora-tion the signing of the “ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers” in 1966, which focused on “appreciating, assessing and improving the ed-ucators of the world” and on providing a global opportunity to consider issues related to teachers and teaching (see Wikipedia, The Free Encycopledia, World Teachers’ Day).

With benchmarks regarding teacher’s rights and responsibilities, standards for their preparation when starting the profession as well as their ongoing training and em-ployment their profession got international attention. This is due to the fact that teaching and learning conditions are most important for the development of pupils and students everywhere.

Dr. Heike Kuhn

Education is also at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with a stand-alone goal: SDG 4 demands inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. With a special target, SDG focuses on teachers, stating that by 2030, there is a need to substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in develop-ing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing states (SDG 4c). The 2030 Agenda was signed in 2015 in New York, but was has happened up to now in order to reach this goal?

Special attention was given to teachers during the UN Transforming Education Summit on September 19, 2022, with relevant recommendations stating that teaching should be an attractive and recognised profession, taking into account that teachers need autonomy, decent working conditions, support and lifelong learning opportunities.

However, a year later, reality is quite disillusioning as we can see from the theme for World Teachers’ Day 2023: “The teachers we need for the education we want: The global imperative to reverse the teacher shortage”.

How come that this profession has suffered from attrition? For decades, the educa-tion sector has been chronically underfunded. Already in 2016, data analysis from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) estimated that in order to meet the targets of the SDGs by 2030, nearly 69 million more teachers were needed. Most recent estimates by UNESCO and the Teacher Task Force (TTF) confirm this number today, revealing that in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia alone, an additional 24 million teachers are required.

So what are the root causes and what should be done? Starting with the most im-portant reasons: The COVID 19 pandemic and its long school closures have even worsened an already dire situation. Becoming a teacher is simply no longer attrac-tive: teaching many pupils, put together in crowded classes in not adequately main-tained buildings and not being reasonably paid for the often exhaustive pedagogic work does not come along with incentives for this ambitious profession.

Credit: Education Cannot Wait

Disillusioned by these working conditions, teachers leave their countries for better paid teaching jobs in other regions (e.g. Caribbean teachers move to the US) or – even worse – quit being teachers in order to pursue other jobs.

With children dropping out of schools due to wars, conflicts or the ongoing climate crisis, teachers face new challenges all the time, their mental health is as endan-gered as the mental health of their pupils. And how can a child traumatized by war and escape, living in overcrowded refugee camps concentrate on school subjects? And what a challenge for teachers who might have made similar experiences but nonetheless try to convey hope and structure as well as a bit or normal life to the children in their lessons.

So what is teaching all about? It is about learning and changing your mind-set. Teachers can empower children of all sexes, can open perspectives for lives and therefore ignite change in millions of young pupils. Female teachers are often role models for girls, conveying self-esteem, questioning harmful gender norms. Teachers can educate green skills needed so much nowadays when we are taking the first steps, sometimes stumbling on our way to a green economy, no longer exploiting our planet.

Let me ask you: Do you remember when a teacher empowered you, believing in you? Hopefully you do and hopefully you could experience the power and the impact on your life.

This is exactly why we need qualified teachers so urgently, everywhere. Education is a human right that shall no longer be a privilege for few people, but an opportunity for all – including the possibilities of digitization and AI. All children and learners deserve it. And we need teachers to inspire all human beings, letting them thrive in order to restore and save the planet.

In my country, Germany, there is a saying: A teacher is much more important than two books. I firmly believe this is true.

Dr. Heike Kuhn is Head of Division, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Bonn, Germany
Co-Chair of the Teacher Task Force (with South Africa), https://teachertaskforce.org/
Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of ECW (with Norway), https://educationcannotwait.org/

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The students from Dalton Tokyo Junior assist with cooking and serving Watashi kitchen at Karuizawa. The students found that in Japan, many children and adults don’t get enough food to eat.

By Momoko Harada, Rei Sato and Shunki Sometaya
TOKYO, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

Picture this: It’s the scorching days of summer, and kids are flocking to the nearby mall, eager to bask in the cool air and hang out with friends. But among the laughter and chatter, one girl stands alone in the food court.

It’s a scene we’ve heard of or, maybe, read about in an article, but it’s not until we meet R, a mother in her 30s from the northern Kanto region, that the stark reality hits. “At home, we don’t have air conditioning,” she explains. “So, when I head to work, my kids head out. They spend their days at the library or the local children’s center, keeping each other company until around 7 p.m. They play games, immerse themselves in comics, and for lunch, they share a 100 yen stick bread I bought from Daiso. Drinks? Well, they help themselves to the facility’s water cooler.”

Did you know that a staggering 20 million people in Japan struggle to put enough rice on their tables? Astonishingly, many are unaware of this stark reality, an issue often shrouded in the term hidden poverty, which has quietly become a significant problem in Japan. Furthermore, a troubling statistic reveals that 1 in 7 children in the country currently can’t enjoy three square meals of rice. When we hear “child poverty,” our minds might drift to images of undernourished youngsters in developing nations facing “absolute poverty” without homes or daily sustenance.

However, the poverty we discuss here is “relative poverty,” affecting children in households with less than half the median income. The implications of this kind of poverty often go unnoticed. While they might not go to bed hungry, these children frequently struggle to enjoy a balanced diet. Meat and vegetables become rare luxuries, and carbohydrate-heavy meals, like cheap instant noodles, become the norm. Some can’t even afford basics like school uniforms, bags, or gym clothes, making their lives considerably tougher.

Eight students from Dalton Tokyo Junior visited Foodbank Karuizawa and interviewed Yoko Komiyama at the Watashi Kitchen.

The students from Dalton Tokyo Junior prepare to assist with cooking and serving in the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

A Dalton Tokyo Junior student assisted with cooking at the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

A student from Dalton Tokyo Junior assists with serving at the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

Dalton Tokyo Junior School students interview Yuki Mitsuhara, the president of the NPO Keep Moms Smiling.

The students organized food bank donations.

Among these children, those from single-mother families face the harshest realities, with a surprising 50 percent of such households struggling in this way. The root cause can be traced to the wage gap between men and women, making it exceedingly difficult for single-mother families to make ends meet. Even when educational backgrounds match, a persistent gender pay gap persists, growing more pronounced with time. Shockingly, the annual income of female university graduates often parallels that of male high school graduates.”

Japan grapples with a substantial gender wage gap compared to other prominent OECD countries.

In 2021, the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare reported that 78.6% of men held regular employment, whereas only 46.8% of women enjoyed the same status. This stark disparity contributes to children in single-mother households often going without enough food. It’s natural to assume that Japan, as a prosperous nation, wouldn’t face such pressing issues with childhood hunger.

Yet, parallel to this, there’s been growing concern over food wastage, encompassing the squandering of edible items and supermarket discards due to approaching expiration dates. Reflecting on these issues, we pondered how to utilize surplus food effectively.

Why toss something when others can eat it? We decided to visit Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa, a facility that uses food from food banks to provide free, delicious meals to children. In an interview with Yoko Komiyama, she shared, “Some Japanese children rely on school lunches, but during extended school holidays, some only eat two meals a day. We’re here to support them.”

Additionally, there’s Kodomo-Shokudo, which backs children’s cafeterias offering free or low-cost meals. These cafeterias are for everyone, not just underprivileged children, ensuring that no one feels embarrassed to use them. Thus, we envisioned a welcoming kitchen where anyone could gather, much like their own home kitchens. It’s become a vital community hub, bringing together low-income families, children, working adults, seniors, and solitary diners to share meals and conversations.

On July 22, 2023, we visited the Watashi Kitchen, which operates on the third Saturday of every month, to assist with cooking and serving. We even brought along a team-supplied collection of sweets for the children. The experience was incredibly rewarding. Witnessing people stand for three hours, cooking for 150 individuals, washing dishes, and relishing meals brought immense joy. With around 30 volunteers, all visibly enjoying their tasks, it dawned on me that lending a hand to others truly warms our hearts.

During the school year, children on welfare receive assistance for school lunches. However, when school’s out for holidays, a significant gap emerges, and it’s heartbreaking to hear stories of children returning to school after a break, visibly underfed and having lost weight. We couldn’t help but empathize with parents in these situations, the anguish they must feel as they struggle to provide nourishment for their children while longing to share in their happiness over a meal we often take for granted.

A survey conducted by the NPO Kidsdoor, focusing on disadvantaged households, reveals alarming findings. A staggering 49% of respondents reported cutting back on their own meals to ensure their children could eat. In fact, 17% of parents admitted to eating only one meal a day, while 47% managed just two. These statistics poignantly illustrate how parents prioritize their children’s well-being.

In light of this disparity, where some have the luxury of discarding food they could eat while others struggle daily to put enough on the table, we initiated a food collection drive. We reached out to schools, community members, and those with food items still within a month of their expiration date but likely to go unused. This food, once collected, is then directed to those who need it most.

As part of the Dalton team, in our quest to find a suitable food bank to contribute to, we encountered a non-profit organization called Keep Moms Smiling, doing exceptional work. Keep Moms Smiling is an organization that focuses on providing meals to parents with sick children who often find it impossible to sleep or eat while caring for their hospitalized little ones. Additionally, they collect surplus items from companies and restaurants, redirecting them to parents who find themselves in dire need.

According to Yuki Mitsuhara, the president of Keep Moms Smiling, “Parents don’t need to be at the hospital with their sick children, but due to the shortage of nursing staff, they often have to take on caregiving roles. While hospitals provide meals for patients, they don’t offer such provisions to caregivers, including beds or showers. Consequently, many parents fall ill themselves due to lack of rest and often lose their jobs as they stay long-term at the hospital.” Mitsuhara, drawing from personal experience, added, “I vividly recall the warmth of having a hot meal while my child was hospitalized for an extended period. I want to offer these parents a moment of joy through a good meal, one that renews their strength to continue caring for their children. With this mission, our restaurant chefs join hands to prepare and provide these much-needed, delicious meals to parents of sick children.”

In today’s world, it’s clear that the divide between abundance and scarcity is stark. We, as youth, aspire to be that bridge, connecting those who wish to prevent waste, extend a hand of hope, and share joy with organizations like ‘Keep Moms Smiling.’

We yearn for you to understand the potential that resides in each one of us. Together, we can spark a chain reaction of goodwill and empathy, proving that the youth can be formidable allies in tackling global issues. So, here’s our question: What will you do today to make tomorrow brighter for someone else?

Note: Shunki Sometaya was the team leader

Edited by Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Sharing Minds Can Change the World
• Korean Slums: The Shadows of Society, or the New Light for the Future?
• Why We Need a Digital Safe Space for LGBTQ Youth – Thoughts from Asian Teens

Excerpt:

Did you know that a staggering 20 million people in Japan struggle to put enough rice on their tables? Hidden poverty is a growing issue in Japan. In this latest article from IPS' Youth Thought Leaders they call on people to spark a chain reaction of goodwill and empathy and help them prove that youth are formidable allies in tackling global issues.

This 14-year-old Ugandan girl was forced into marriage by her parents at 8 years old. Credit: UNICEF/Stuart Tibaweswa
 
According to the United Nations, at least 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18 every year, and more than 650 million women alive today were married as children. Around 257 million women globally face unintended pregnancies due to lack of access to contraception, abortion care, and counseling.

By Nandita Bajaj
ST PAUL, Minnesota, USA, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

There’s an insidious new tactic emerging for selling right-wing ideology to wider audiences, evident in last month’s Budapest Demographic Summit for “family-friendly thinkers and decision-makers,” the upcoming pro-birth Natal conference in Austin, Texas, and the recent film “Birthgap.”

They all peddle pronatalism, a set of norms and policies that exhorts and often coerces women to have more children to raise fertility rates, often coupled with alarmism over alleged “population collapse.”

Pronatalism is on the rise to counter the growing push for gender equality, contraceptive access, and women’s educational and economic empowerment. It is connected to totalitarian policies dictating reproductive choices, the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, the religious anti-abortion movement, tech elite futurism.

Elon Musk, for example, is an avowed pronatalist who donated $10 million to population collapse “research” and liked the idea of denying voting rights to childless people. He wanted to attend the Budapest summit, but couldn’t make it so he met last week in Texas with Hungary’s President Novák instead to draw attention to the “demographic crisis.”

Lately, pronatalists are trying to pull a more appealing game face. The Budapest Summit says it wants to support the “psychological health and security of families,” so they can “plan for a secure future.” The Natal conference claims it “has no political or ideological goal other than a world in which our children can have grandchildren.”

The “Birthgap” film purports to help cure an epidemic of “unplanned childlessness” and proposes “re-engineer[ing] our societies to reduce [it so] many more people would go on to have…children just like parents naturally do.” It conducts tearful interviews with regretful women who lament that their natural drive to have children was thwarted by society, and now it’s too late.

Who could object to standing up for families’ health and security, and for the right of people who want children to have them? Yet behind this innocuous-seeming family-friendly rhetoric lurk unsavory connections to right-wing propaganda, manipulation, and straight-up lies.

The Budapest summit touts Hungary’s achievement of the “highest rates of marriage and childbearing in Europe, while divorce and abortion rates are falling,” a nice way of saying that its right-wing populist leader Viktor Orbán adopted and implemented the Great Replacement ideology, which motivated mass-shooters in the U.S., as state policy. “We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children,” he said. “In our minds, immigration means surrender.”

The Natal conference has demonstrable links to far-right eugenicists and racists. “Birthgap” filmmaker Stephen Shaw is feted by right-wing talk show hosts like Jordan Peterson, Neil Oliver, and Chris Williamson, and presented as a “renowned demographer” despite having no credentials in demography. Shaw and Peterson both gave keynotes at the Budapest summit.

But ad hominem objections to the people behind the conferences and the film aside, the assertions they make are discreditable and counterfactual. Decrying imminent “population collapse” while the global population grows by 80 million each year and is projected to hit 10.4 billion in the 2080s is absurd.

To make depopulation seem like a threat, “Birthgap” resorts to lying about data on the reasons for declining birth rates. It cites a 2010 study (which it calls a “meta-analysis”) by Prof. Renska Keizer which the film says indicates that just 10% of women chose not to have children and 10% can’t have them for medical reasons, which “leaves a whopping 80% of women without children childless by circumstance” as opposed to by choice.

But that’s not at all what Keizer’s research says. The 2010 study Birthgap cites is not a meta-analysis, not quantitative, and does not indicate 80% of childless women didn’t choose to be so. In fact a 2011 study by Keizer et al. analyzed a 2006 dataset surveying women in the Netherlands who were childless at age 45, and found that 55% of them were childless voluntarily, while 45% were childless due to medical or other reasons.

Other studies found similar results: 56% of those without children were voluntarily childless according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 72% according to the CDC National Survey of Family Growth, and 74% according to a 2022 Michigan State University study. Researchers working on my organization’s fact-checking project Birthgap Facts found no credible data supporting the film’s claim that 80% of childless women were “childless by circumstance” as opposed to by choice.

What the data does show is that women exercising their right to choose if and when to have children results in delaying childbirth, smaller families, and a decline in teen pregnancy. Those outcomes are beneficial and should be celebrated, not stigmatized.

According to the United Nations, at least 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18 every year, and more than 650 million women alive today were married as children. Around 257 million women globally face unintended pregnancies due to lack of access to contraception, abortion care, and counseling.

At current levels of consumption, today’s population of eight billion is driving resource depletion, soil erosion, water shortages, species extinctions, and climate catastrophe. Over a billion children are already at “extremely high risk” from climate change.

High fertility rates and population growth undermine climate resilience and complicate efforts to end poverty and hunger and ensure basic services and infrastructure.

These are the real threats to the future, not some imagined conspiracy to stigmatize reproductive choices and hold fertility rates down. They make Shaw’s proposal of “social engineering” to reverse the imaginary threat of depopulation all the more reprehensible.

By distorting and lying about childlessness, he’s trying to manipulate young people and their governments into prioritizing procreation over education and career. This purports to avoid a dystopian future, yet it would actually usher one in.

Rather than manufacturing a crisis whose remedy entails “social engineering” to roll back progress on human rights and women’s control over their own lives, we should focus on the real crisis fueled by pronatalist pressures from family, religion, and governments that force millions into motherhood against their wishes, often by means of coercion and sexual violence.

The rhetoric of the Budapest summit, Natal, “Birthgap” and their ilk claiming they’re simply trying to help families and alleviate the heartbreak of “unplanned childlessness” is insidious, and we should recognize and call it out for what it is: another arrow in the pronatalist quiver, another weapon wielded against hard-fought gains in gender equality and reproductive autonomy.

Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of the NGO Population Balance and an adjunct lecturer at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University. Her research and advocacy work focuses on the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

The UN’s high-level appointments have mostly been on the basis of “equitable geographical rotation”—with Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean taking turns.

But a proposal for future appointments and for candidates for elective office-– based on gender rotation—is gaining ground against a world body which is mostly male-oriented even at its highest echelons, with nine all-male Secretaries-General (UNSG) and only 4 women out of 78 presidents of the General Assembly.

In an interview with IPS, Natalie Samarasinghe, Global Director for Advocacy, Open Society Foundations and co-founder of the 1-for-7 Billion campaign “for a more open and inclusive UNSG selection process”, said so-called temporary special measures have proven successful in transforming the landscape for women across sectors, from national politics to company boards and senior UN positions.

But these measures can only go so far, as it is governments who nominate and appoint candidates to posts such as the Secretary-General (SG), President of the General Assembly (PGA) and heads of multiple UN agencies.

She pointed out that decades have shown that warm words aren’t enough. As the Group of Women Leaders has shown, 13 international organizations have never had a female leader, including the United Nations, International Labour Organization and the World Bank.

A further five have only had one, including the UN Refugee Agency and UN Development Programme. And of the 78 presidents of the General Assembly, only four have been women.

“Gender rotation of the GA presidency is not a complex reform: it would require only a simple resolution and mean that states would have to put forward qualified female candidates (of which there are plenty) at least every other year, instead of just talking about it. This is something that could be considered for other senior positions too,” she said.

For the appointment of the Secretary-General, she said, it seems states are finally waking up. In 2021, the GA noted for the first time that “there is yet to be a woman Secretary-General” and invited states “to bear this in mind in the future, when nominating candidates”.

But even this tame language provoked pushback, especially from the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council. While the focus was on objections by Russia, UN watchers have noted that all permanent members worked to undermine the language on gender, albeit with more sophisticated arguments, she noted

“During the last SG selection process, I deliberately called for the “best possible person” to be appointed, noting how many women would more than fit the bill. That was because saying it had to be a woman sat uneasily with disrupting regional pre-emption”.

“Today, when the normative functions of the UN may well be its strongest, and most needed, I have no qualms in calling for Madam Secretary-General,” Samarasinghe declared.

Susana Malcorra, President, Global Women Leaders (GWL), told IPS “GWL Voices is actively advocating for better gender representation in all organizations of the System, both in the institutions and in their governing bodies.”

“Our Flagship Report: Numbers Matter, launched in March, shows how under-represented women have been in the history of the 33 multilateral organizations”.

“After that, we have launched two campaigns: “Mme. Secretary-General” (to ensure that a woman succeeds Antonio Guterres) and #GenderAlternationUNPGA. We have launched the latter through this OpEd that I authored in Devex”.

Some Presidents, at the request of GWL Voices, Malcorra said, raised these questions in their statements at the High Level week in September:

President of Slovenia: https://x.com/mfespinosaEC/status/1704318856909426781?s=20
President of Spain: https://x.com/GWLvoices/status/1704649522192724357?s=20
President of Botswarna: https://x.com/GWLvoices/status/1704646411390783751?s=20

Joseph Chamie, a consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS: First, it is unfortunately the case that Goal 5 of the SDGs to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls by 2030 is unlikely to be met.

Second, given that the United Nations has the long-standing tradition for geographical and regional rotations on most senior appointments and elections, it seems both reasonable and desirable to be guided by gender rotations for each region.

Third, if gender rotations are adopted as a guideline by the United Nations for appointments and elections, including the Security Council, the rotations need to be applied for each and every major region, said Chamie who has worked in various regions of the world and is the author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”

Finally, while gender rotation by region for UN appointments and elections would be desirable, clearly much more needs to be done, especially by some countries, to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls.

“Countries blatantly denying women and girls their basic human rights should be highlighted and strongly encouraged to end their discriminatory policies”, declared Chamie.

Antonia Kirkland, Global Lead on Legal Equality & Access to Justice at Equality Now, told IPS the majority of countries are failing to meet Sustainable Development Goal 5 – achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls – and 54% have no laws on key issues of gender equality, such as marriage and divorce rights.

For example, only 14 countries, just .07%, have full legal equality between men and women, she pointed out.

“Sexual harassment and sexual exploitation by UN staff within and outside the UN still persists, with cases going unreported for fear of retaliation and stigma. And while parity has been achieved within the senior management level of the UN, it has not yet been reached within the executive heads of UN agencies nor the general staff ranks.

“In addition to further strengthening policy and legal frameworks within the UN around the world, a feminist woman Secretary-General is needed to lead and encourage a culture of equality and inclusivity based on fundamental human rights standards.

“Beyond reaffirming previous resolutions referring to “gender balance.” and strongly encouraging member states to bear in mind there have only been male Secretary-Generals – as the General Assembly did in a September resolution – the UN should fully endorse a gender rotation, or gender alternation as GWL Voices and others are calling for.

“Building on previous campaigns for a woman Secretary-General, UNA-UK, a co-founder of the 1-for-8 Billion (formerly the 1-for-7 Billion) campaign has clearly called on UN Member States to consider only nominating women candidates and undertake other important reforms to make the selection process as transparent and inclusive as possible.”

While gender equality is everyone’s responsibility, Kirkland said, representation is important because women have been excluded from decision-making roles for far too long.

“However, it is important to be represented by women who are progressive, feminist, and work for substantive gender equality for everyone, everywhere, including further marginalized communities.”

Meanwhile, the notion of geographic distribution remains firmly embedded in the UN system, according to civil society organizations (CSOs).

When it comes to state representation in bodies such as ECOSOC or the Human Rights Council, it is sacrosanct, baked into the Charter, resolutions and rules of procedure.

When it comes to staff appointments, it is a matter of principle and reflected in several resolutions and processes (e.g. A/41/206 which affirms “the principle of equitable geographic distribution, and the need for rotation in the composition of the upper echelons of the secretariat”)

The idea of ‘rotation’ between regions is handled differently depending on the post. For the President of the General Assembly, rotation through the regional groups is stipulated (GA rules of procedure, rule 30). That has been followed since 1966.

For the Secretary-General, the idea gathered steam after Waldheim – the third, and not particularly effective, postholder from WEOG, and again when Boutros-Ghali was not appointed to a second term (African diplomats argued that their region had ‘lost out’).

In 2015, Eastern European countries fielded a number of candidates, with the region saying that it had never occupied the post and some were resentful of the push that year – within the UN and outside through the 1-for-7 Billion campaign (now 1-for-8 Billion: https://1for8billion.org/) – for the emphasis to be on merit first.

But in practice every appointment process has featured candidates from different regions, and the postholder is not, of course, supposed to represent any one region.

For several other senior appointments, the big issue is not so much rotation but breaking the stranglehold that particular states have on these posts.

Between 1995 and 2022, just five states – the permanent members of the Security Council – were appointed to over 20% of senior posts (https://cic.nyu.edu/data/un-senior-appointments-dashboard/)

Despite the GA’s position that no national of a state should succeed another national of that state (e.g. GA resolution 46/232), certain nationalities dominate posts such as DPO, OCHA, DPPA, DESA etc.

The last non-French person appointed to head UN peace operations was Kofi Annan in 1993. OCHA has been headed by Brits for 16 years.

On gender, several references refer to the need for equal and fair distribution based on gender as well as geographic balance (e.g. GA res 69/321). There is no reference to rotation, nor has this principle been applied in practice.

There has been progress on gender parity on other senior posts (USGs, heads and deputy heads of peace operations and resident coordinators).

This has been the result of a concerted effort: a clear vision championed at the highest levels and translated into a systemwide strategy with targets and so-called ‘temporary special measures’ (e.g. parity on shortlists, or an explanation as to why this was not possible)

Currently, the UN has five regional groups – the Asia-Pacific states, the African states, the East European States (even though Eastern Europe has ceased to exist after the end of the Cold War), the Latin American and Caribbean states and the Western European and Other States (includes Australia and New Zealand).

The US does not belong to any regional groups but is designated as an “observer” in the Western European and Other States Group.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

Ajay Banga was anointed World Bank president for promoting financial inclusion. Thanks to its success and interest rate hikes, more poor people are drowning in debt as consumer prices rise.

Meritocratic leadership?
Since the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were set up by the United Nations Conference at Bretton Woods in 1944, the US president’s nominee has been automatically appointed Bank president. By convention then, the Bank president is a US citizen, while the IMF head is European.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The official IMF historian noted US authorities believed “the Bank would have to be headed by a US citizen in order to win the confidence of the banking community, and that it would be impracticable to appoint US citizens to head both the Bank and the Fund.”

Banga went to the World Bank in Washington, DC from the business world. He had spent his entire career in transnational corporations, moving from Nestlé in India to Citigroup’s microfinance division, and then Mastercard. In 2020, he became chair of the International Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1919.

For over a decade, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Mastercard, which he denies is a credit card company. He gave shareholders a cumulative total return of 1,581% – almost five times the S&P500 market average! By 2020, it was the 21st most valuable corporation in the world, having risen from 256th when he took over.

Like most US appointees to head the Bank, Banga had no experience or earlier interest in development finance. Now, he is obliged to pursue US interests and agendas. He has already announced he will rely on the private sector for funds and ideas.

South African laboratory
Long the world’s most unequal society, South Africa (SA) became a laboratory for financial experimentation from the 1990s, from commercial microcredit to mass collateralization of welfare payments.

Leading microcredit authority Milford Bateman has shown how the SA microcredit business enriched a small white elite while economically dividing and undermining poor urban and rural black communities.

In the 1990s, male senior managers of SA financial institutions abused ‘seniority’ for their own private short-term financial gains to defraud customers, shareholders, governments and the general public.

Usurious debt promotion
Bateman, Patrick Bond, Lena Lavinas and Erin Torkelson have shown how Banga’s SA ‘financial inclusion’ initiative involved ‘predatory financing’. As CEO, he mobilized MasterCard to promote and profit from it.

Over a decade ago, Banga pioneered a major ‘fintech’ (financial technology) partnership with Net1, a data services firm in SA. Later, in 2016, the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) bought 22%, its single largest share.

The IFC bought into Net1 to extend ‘tested’ financial services to the poor. Although Net1 was already known to be very problematic, the IFC was keen to promote private fintech platforms regardless of their consequences for the poor.

Of SA’s 60 million people, over 40% receive small monthly grants for unemployment relief, child support, retirement pensions and disability. With Mastercard’s ‘cashless’ electronic payment services appreciated for convenience and efficiency, Banga admitted, “If these guys use their card, I’m going to make money”.

Once card expenses exceed grant income, Net1 charges ‘service fees’, including a usurious 5% monthly interest rate! By 2015-17, it was earning more from financial inclusion than from distributing government grants. Thus, Net1’s shadow banking system remained unregulated.

Net1 lost its contract after bad publicity about its actual impact on the SA poor. Later, it was found to be sabotaging the state-owned post office (PO) asked to take over. Long under-funded and struggling to manage, the SAPO may soon lose the contract to another private fintech provider.

Welfare payments as debt collateral
While its digital payment services delivered monthly payments to all welfare recipients, these transfer streams effectively guaranteed credit extended. Thus, despite usurious credit terms, it faced little risk of default.

This de-risking strategy turned government welfare benefit payment commitments into debt collateral. Thus, regular cash transfers monetizing poverty relief and mitigating deprivation also served to service usurious debt.

Despite dubious evidence, World Bank staff claimed billions would escape poverty through greater access to digitalized microfinance services – small loans, savings opportunities, money transfer payments and technology, debit orders, etc. – run by ‘profit-seeking’ fintech platforms.

Much better access to such services had been enabled over a decade earlier by endorsing and celebrating microfinance and increasingly widespread credit/debit card access. But even ex-cheerleaders now agree microfinance has not reduced poverty.

Previously celebrated early fintech platforms have become quite problematic, and are now widely seen as exploitive of users. Even the Paypal CEO admits financial inclusion is essentially a buzzword for incorporating more into the financial system.

Innovation for exploitation
Two ostensible development programmes – cash transfers and financial inclusion – were very profitably integrated by Banga in SA. The public-private partnership between the government cash transfer programme and the private fintech payment-cum-credit services has become a usurious techno-financial monopoly.

Cash transfers and other services are increasingly delivered using financial inclusion technologies. With such technologies disbursing cash transfers, government-funded poverty relief programmes have been used to expand such credit facilities.

This link has enabled offering credit to cash transferees. As Erin Torkelson has shown, the Net1’s involvement in the SA cash transfer programme enabled a financial monopoly based on proprietary technology.

Government-funded cash transfers have thus provide security for more borrowing by the poor, virtually eliminating risk for the creditor. As all risk is borne by the borrowers, technologies bundling cash transfer payments with easy credit facilities ensure they cannot default.

Such bundling ensured the poor could not default, while encouraging recipients to borrow. By making the monthly government grants serve as collateral for credit, the programmes have ensured nearly risk-free profit for usurious creditors while deepening the indebtedness of the poor.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

A view of Caracas from the south side of the narrow valley where it sits, dotted with houses and residential buildings where full occupancy was the norm until a few years ago. As a result of the massive migration of young people and adults, more and more homes are left unoccupied or inhabited only by the elderly and young children. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

Gladys swore she would not cry in front of her small children, but she still had to wipe away a couple of tears when she turned her head and looked, perhaps for the last time, at her dream house on Margarita Island in Venezuela, from where she migrated, driven by a lack of income and by fear.

“It hurts to leave your own home, the most precious material asset for a family like ours (she works in administration, her husband is a mechanic, and they have two boys), but we lost our jobs and were robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. That led us to decide to emigrate,” she told IPS from Miami, Florida in the U.S.

Due to the economic, social and political crisis, which gave rise to a complex humanitarian emergency, 7.7 million Venezuelans, according to United Nations agencies, have migrated from this country, the vast majority in the last decade, and the flow is not slowing down, especially to other countries in the region."It hurts to leave your own home, the most precious material asset for a family like ours, but we lost our jobs and were robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. That led us to decide to emigrate." -- Gladys

The family of Gladys, who like other people who talked to IPS preferred not to give her last name, tried their luck in Colombia, Panama and Spain, before finally settling in the United States, “and the worry about the house followed us like a shadow, but fortunately we made a deal with an enterprising young man who takes care of it, improves it and pays a modest rent.”

There are thousands like her. Migrants try not to leave their homes empty and abandoned, because they could lose them. For this reason, since most migrants are adults in their most productive age and young people, relatives of other ages remain in the homes, giving Venezuela the appearance of being a country of elderly people and children.

“I have to close up my home,” said Juan Manuel Flores, from San Antonio de Los Altos, a satellite city of Caracas with many middle class houses. “The neighbors will take care of it. It took us more than five years to build it and it cost between 150,000 and 200,000 dollars. Now I can’t get more than 60,000 dollars for it. We are not just going to give it away for that price.”

Flores, a teacher at a school where he earns less than 200 dollars a month, is preparing to travel to Spain, where his wife and adult daughters have gone ahead of him. “I will return to Venezuela when the country and its economy improve, and housing prices will rise again,” he told IPS, although without much conviction.

Solitude eats away at houses and buildings even in sought-after areas of the residential and commercial municipality of Chacao, in eastern Caracas. The real estate and construction market is suffering in Venezuela from the general economic crisis and in particular from the oversupply of housing created by those leaving the country. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Why not rent out their house? “Because the laws and the authorities always favor the tenant, and if they have children it is impossible to get them out when the lease is up, whether they pay the rent or not, and they end up staying in the house for years,” said Nancy, a pastry chef, also from San Antonio, who left a niece in charge of her apartment when she moved to Brazil last year.

A survey of migrants in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, released in October 2022 by the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants in Venezuela (R4V), led by United Nations agencies, showed that only 23 percent considered the homes they left behind in their country to be safe.

Selling is also not an option in most cases, because the magnitude of the exodus over the last decade has so depressed demand that the most that can be obtained for a property is 15 or 20 percent of the value it had 15 years ago, if you are lucky. So selling a home even if you want to is a long, difficult process that provides meager results.

Those who have no other choice say that they are not selling their home but “giving it away” for whatever they can get, with great regret, mostly to internal migrants from other parts of the country, who “take refuge” in Caracas because outside the capital there are recurrent power outages, and scarcity of water and fuel, in addition to other shortages.

“Real estate deteriorates, ceases to serve those who need it and remains an important asset that produces nothing for the owner, for example a migrant who needs to pay rent as soon as they arrive in another country,” Roberto Orta, president of the Venezuelan Real Estate Chamber, told IPS.

The businessman said “this is an issue that, we have proposed, should be addressed with political will in order to reform the laws that constrain the real estate market, to benefit both landlords and tenants. Up to 250,000 homes could be freed up in five years.”

A view of the working-class neighborhood of 23 de Enero on the west side of Caracas. In low-income barrios, closed, empty houses are almost non-existent, as those who decide to emigrate look for relatives to move in, to avoid the risk of the homes being invaded or robbed. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

A trade is born

In the residential buildings located in Caracas and other cities, closing up an apartment and moving outside the country is not the same as leaving a house abandoned to solitude and neglect, because the neighbors, for their own safety and in order to pay the common expenses, keep watch and take care to prevent strangers from occupying the empty apartments.

But houses, especially middle-class homes, are an attractive and easy target for crime and even for people who want to occupy them by de facto means. That is why a new profession has appeared: the home caretaker.

“I have taken care of three houses in housing developments in the southeast (of Caracas), it’s the way I make ends meet,” said Daniel, who also works as a self-employed gardener. “I would go to one house twice a week, three times a week to another, and every day to another.”

He explains that in the last house “the owners were Portuguese business owners who went away and left three dogs. I would go to a pet food store to pick up the food, feed the dogs, check around the house and that was it.”

Family friends of the owners have now taken charge of the dogs and Daniel no longer receives payment for taking care of them. “I don’t have an account in dollars, I was paid through a restaurant friend of the owners, who does have an offshore account,” he said.

To pay for caretakers from abroad, intermediaries are indispensable, since in Venezuela, whose currency has been made nearly worthless by the economic crisis, there is a de facto dollarization, without agreement from the U.S. authorities, who also use sanctions to block the transactions of government bodies.

Daniel is saving up to join one of the groups forming in Antímano, the working-class neighborhood where he lives in the southwest of the capital, to migrate as well. He said that “I didn’t leave a few weeks ago because I hadn’t sold my motorcycle yet, otherwise right now I would be in the Darien,” the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama that thousands of migrants cross every day.

A more successful caretaker is Arturo, who is in charge of two houses with large living rooms, corridors, yards, a swimming pool and parking area. He is paid a modest fee to care for and maintain the homes, but is authorized to rent them out for social gatherings and parties.

“In both cases the owners are people with good incomes, they left with their children to study abroad and plan to return in a few years if conditions in the country change. They would like to find their homes as they left them,” he said.

When he rents out the property for a day or a night, guests can use the yards, swimming pool and even awnings, tables and chairs. But Arturo closes off access to the more private parts of the house and hires assistants to watch out for damages or disturbances. “I live well, I keep up the houses and each one brings me about 3,000 dollars in profits per month,” Arturo said.

President Nicolás Maduro delivers a batch of houses in the northwestern state of Falcón, which form part of the 4.6 million homes that the government claims to have built and provided to Venezuelan families since 2013. The figure is questioned by organizations dedicated to monitoring economic and social rights. CREDIT: Minhvi

No empty houses in the shantytowns

In the shantytowns of the cities and towns of this country – which has a population of 33.7 million according to government figures and 28 million according to university studies – the situation is different and there are hardly any empty or unoccupied houses.

“In the shantytowns, no house is left empty. The very next day someone can invade it, occupy it, or take what is left inside by those who left, furniture or household goods. Someone stays in charge, the grandfather or in-laws, a trusted neighbor, or a relative is brought from the interior of the country,” explained Alejandra, from the Gramoven area.

She lives in a shantytown of informally constructed dwellings in the northwest of Caracas, similar to the ones that cover most of the many hills and hollows occupied by the capital’s most disadvantaged inhabitants.

“Many people leave, the young people emigrate, my children want to leave through the Darien jungle. But nobody leaves their house empty. If you do, you lose it,” Alejandra said.

In Santa Bárbara del Zulia, on the hot plains south of western Lake Maracaibo, “the situation is the same,” Julio, a bricklayer who migrated to Colombia for four years and has returned to care for his elderly parents, told IPS.

“You can’t leave your house alone in these towns,” said Julio. “When my parents went to Maracaibo and Caracas for medical treatment, they went and came back quickly, because the Community Council warned them not to leave their house empty for too long, because they would not be able to ward off people who wanted to occupy it.”

The Community Councils are committees set up by the government to represent and manage community affairs – such as the distribution of bags of subsidized food to poor families – and they channel decisions by the government.

“But people are leaving anyway. It’s something that won’t stop as long as people here earn only a pittance and can’t even eat properly (the minimum wage and official pensions in Venezuela are equivalent to four dollars a month). People care about their houses, but food has to come first,” said Julio.

View of a row of houses practically abandoned by most of their inhabitants in a town in eastern Venezuela. Migration from the countryside and small towns to large cities and oil producing areas marked the 20th century in Venezuela. And today, migration from this country mainly to other Latin American nations has become a regional crisis. CREDIT: VV

A matter for the government and the business community

While the plight of people leaving their homes continues to drag on, the government of President Nicolás Maduro announces more or less twice a year the construction of hundreds of thousands of new homes, in a program initiated by his late predecessor Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), called “Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission”.

According to official figures, since 2011, 4.6 million homes have been built and delivered by the Mission, mostly residential complexes to which the president goes to personally hand over the keys of one or more houses to their new inhabitants.

In accordance with the Mission, the occupants are tenants, not owners, so they cannot sell the homes. If they leave, the home can be reassigned to new tenants. To avoid this, those who choose to move to another city or country first look for relatives who can move into the house, and thus keep it.

However, the official figures on the number of homes built is not borne out by anecdotal evidence, to judge by the myriad of informal self-built houses still occupied in the slums, and by reports from business and civil society organizations.

The Chamber of Construction reports that the sector has decreased 96 percent in the last 10 years, and that its members employ 20,000 workers, down from 1.2 million in better times, while cement companies are working at 10 percent of their capacity and the steel industry at seven percent.

The civil society organization Provea, which specializes in the study of economic, social and cultural rights, has compared and contrasted the figures of the Housing Mission – which have not been audited, according to Provea – with independent studies, and reached the conclusion that the government has built and delivered only 130,856 housing units in 10 years.

In 1955 the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva (1908-1985) published his famous novel “Casas Muertas” (Dead Houses), describing the decline of Ortiz, a town in the central plains, caused by the loss of its population due to malaria and emigration to the big cities and oil production centers.

The flow of Venezuelan emigration in this century has not been enough to turn this into a country of dead houses. But its many closed doors bear witness to a collapse that has pushed millions of its inhabitants abroad, as do the small number of lights that are lit at night in the buildings of Caracas and other cities.

Kalkani Choolburra, Aboriginal Programs Coordinator at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, showing the many uses of native plants. Here, she is weaving with a Lomandra leaf. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Oct 3 2023 (IPS)

Growing up in Sydney, Kalkani Choolburra, a Girramay, Kuku Yalanji, Kalkadoon and Pitta Pitta woman from Far North Queensland, would frequently travel with her family up and down Australia’s eastern seaboard. Her grandfathers and uncles would bring fresh catch of dugong, her favourite bush food, and she would go hunting for the short-necked turtle with her aunties and female cousins.

The traditional or subsistence hunting of dugongs and turtles has been an important part of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) people’s social and cultural lives. Its meat has been a vital source of protein for these communities, who have sustained themselves on the native flora and fauna for thousands of years.

Now, national and international chefs are incorporating some of these native Indigenous produce – notably Kakadu plum, Davidson plum, lemon myrtle, wattle seed, quandong, finger lime, bush tomato, muntries, mountain pepper, saltbush – into their dishes ranging from sushi and samosa, pizza and pies to cakes and muffins.

These quintessentially native Indigenous ingredients are also being used in condiments, relishes, sauces, and marmalades and infused into chocolates, teas and beverages for their unique flavours and textures.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest and recognition of the nutritive and medicinal properties of native Indigenous plants and fruits. Professor Yasmina Sultanbawa, Director of the ARC Training Centre for Uniquely Australian Foods at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, recalls taking lemon myrtle to her lectures a decade ago. She would crush the leaves and ask her students to smell and identify them.

“They didn’t know what it was back then, but now they immediately recognise it as lemon myrtle,” Sultanbawa tells IPS. “The market for native Indigenous foods is growing because it is rich in nutrients. For example, the vitamin C content in Kakadu plum is about 75 times more than in an orange; folates (a natural form of vitamin B9 or folic acid) and fibre in green plum is much higher than in a mango; and kangaroo meat has only 2 per cent fat and a high concentration of conjugated linoleic acid and omega 3.”

In a study co-authored with Dharini Sivakumar, Sultanbawa argues that including native Indigenous foods in the diet could help reduce malnutrition.

“Legumes like wattle seed are low in carbohydrates and have a very high content of protein, fibre, zinc and iron comparable to chickpeas. Wattle seed is also a great functional ingredient for adding value to other foods; for example, it can be incorporated into breads made with wheat flour. What makes native Indigenous foods attractive is that you don’t have to add a lot of it to get the nutritional benefit,” she adds.

A 2019-20 market study of Australia’s native foods and botanicals industry by researchers at The University of Sydney, supported by Australian Native Foods and Botanicals (ANFAB), forecasted the native food sector would grow to 40 million Australian dollars (about USD 25,2m) in farm gate value, A$100m (about USD 63,1m) in middle market value and A$160m (about USD 101m) in total retail value by 2025.

A spread of Lilly Pilly, Davidson Plum, Finger Lime marmalade and traditional Aboriginal bread, Damper, which is made by crushing a variety of native seeds into flour and then baking the dough in the ashes of a fire. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

Besides being used in traditional and modern cuisine, many of these native Indigenous botanicals are being used in cosmetics, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. For example, the vitamin C-rich, pink-red native Lilly Pilly fruit has good astringent properties that boosts collagen production within the skin. It is used today in a variety of anti-ageing skincare products.

The COVID-19 pandemic craze for superfoods and television cooking shows, such as Australian MasterChef, has also contributed to the increasing popularity of native Indigenous foods.

They can now be found on grocery superstore shelves. According to a spokesperson for Coles Group Ltd., a leading Australian retailer, “We currently work with nine Indigenous-run businesses that sell products with native ingredients, including Kurrajong Kitchen Oaklees original crackers, Yaru still mineral water and Seven Season Green Ant gin, on our shelves.”

Recently, The Coles Nurture Fund awarded Indigenous-owned family business Walaja Raw Bush Honey a grant of A$330,000 (about USD 208,470) to create a new, medicinal grade, premium Melaleuca honey that is sustainably made in the West Kimberley region on Yawuru Country (Country is a term used by Indigenous Australians to describe the lands, waterways and seas to which they are connected through ancestral ties and family origins).

Although the demand is growing, supply is limited because much of the native Indigenous produce is currently wild-harvested.

“Native foods have never been cultivated to be mass produced. They grow now as they’ve grown since the beginning of their time, culturally and sustainably. It’s best left like that,” says Choolburra, who is the Aboriginal Programs Coordinator at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney.

As Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Joe Morrison says, “Bush foods (food native to Australia and historically eaten by Indigenous Australians) are a fundamental part of Indigenous identity and our traditions that span thousands of years of connection to Country.”

But climate change presents a growing challenge with extreme weather conditions, including frequent storms, soil erosion, salinity in fresh water and ocean acidification threatening the ecosystems supporting native flora and fauna.

Choolburra says, “We (Indigenous Australians) are adapting our sustainability practices to meet the challenges of climate change, which is impacting everything in various ways. For example, many areas now facilitate cultural burns (Indigenous fire practice) in order to manage land and provide nutrients. In many cases, the production or harvesting of native foods is left to local communities in order to sustain the amount of quality produce.”

She occasionally leads the Aboriginal Bush Tucker Tour, which provides visitors from across the world an opportunity to learn about the traditional knowledge and cultural significance of native Indigenous flora and its many innovative uses.

On a cool, wet Sydney day, as we walk along the rich foliage in the Botanic Gardens, she plucks the long, flat green leaf from the native Lomandra plant, a vital source of food and survival and referred to as the ‘corner shop’ in some Indigenous Australians’ cultures and shows us how it can be woven to make baskets.

Pointing at the Dianella bush, she relates the old practice when children were told to hide in it – if they got lost. The Dianella’s sharp-edged leaves would repel snakes, and the children could attract attention by blowing in the hollow base of the leaf to make a whistling sound. The edible blue-purple berries, with tiny, nutty seeds from some of the Dianella species, are rich in vitamin C.

However, she warns that like anything consumed in large quantities, some of the popular nutritious plants, such as warrigal greens, used as a substitute for common spinach, and the sandpaper fig could cause diarrhoea or vomiting if eaten too much.

As the native Indigenous food industry grows, experts say, there is a need to enhance Indigenous communities’ participation to ensure they reap the benefits. “Australia needs to brand and market native Indigenous foods as its authentic cuisine. This will foster cultural knowledge about our Indigenous heritage and biodiversity,” Sultanbawa tells IPS.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Pacific Island Countries To Develop Advanced Warning System for Tuna Migration

Credit: IOM/Gema Cortés
 
In a world characterised by economic crises, conflicts, and natural disasters, the uptick in migration is proving to be one of the most important geopolitical phenomena of the century. The adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation are increasingly driving people from their homes--IOM

By Lansana Gberie
GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct 3 2023 (IPS)

On 14 June, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued his flagship annual report, Global Trends: Forced Displacement 2022. It states that by the end of 2022, the number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuse had dramatically increased by 19.1 million — the biggest increase on record — reaching a total of 108.4 million.

This record-breaking displacement resulted mainly from the war in Ukraine and the eruption of conflict in Sudan. Ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, in Africa’s Sahel region and elsewhere also contributed, as did prominent natural disasters related to climate change.

Rush to conflict, slow to solution

In the report, High Commissioner Filippo Grandi was right to blame this tragedy on people who “are far too quick to rush to conflict, and way too slow to find solutions,” leading to such “devastation, displacement and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes.”

On Monday 15 May 2023, the Member States of IOM elected Ms. Amy Pope as its new Director General.

Yet, to blame the perpetrators of such conflicts is not to absolve the rest of the world for responding so appallingly to such displacements. This is inevitably irregular or illegal migration. On the day that the UN report was released, as many as 600 men, women and children perished needlessly when a human smuggler’s boat, Adriana, capsized off the coast of Greece.

In the following month of July, news photographs showed 27 bodies of African migrants along with dozens of inebriated figures stranded along the Libya-Tunisia border. A few weeks later on 21 August, Human Rights Watch reported that border guards of an important Middle Eastern country had carried out “widespread and systematic” abuse of hundreds of African migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross its border between March 2022 and June 2023.

That country has rejected the allegation as false. If the evidence proves otherwise, then we could consider this an extreme example of “a kind of grim and tragic monotony,” the phrase used by the American Quaker humanitarian Louis W. Schneider in 1954 to characterize the world’s aggressive attitude toward unwanted migrants.

Lansana Gberie

Secure borders, safe passages

Perhaps more pernicious, because more subtle and more easily replicable elsewhere, is the growing practice by wealthy countries of providing training, logistical coordination and other high-tech support to poorer countries so that those poorer countries can forcibly prevent migration to the rich ones.

Linked to such pernicious support and coordination is the recent migrant boat tragedy off the coast of West Africa, after patrol boats chased a fishing boat carrying migrants. Maneuvering in pitch darkness to escape, the migrant boat lost its way and struck rocks off a popular beachfront in Dakar, Senegal, killing at least 16 people.

No doubt those countries have legitimate, and probably even humane, reasons for their robust efforts to stop this kind of irregular and dangerous migration: thousands of young Africans have died over the years trying this perilous route. And state sovereignty requires secure borders.

Still, it is hard to shake off the impression that staunching illegal migrant flows is a greater priority than helping desperate young people — often displaced by conflict and ecological disasters — to more secure and prosperous destinations.

The issue is not just a matter of moral consideration. It is a hugely complex problem, clearly one of the great global challenges of our unequal world, and one without an easy fix. Even so, the world must find a more humane and effective way of addressing it.

Humane management of migration

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was founded in 1951 to “help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people.”

The vision is ennobling, and IOM takes its mission seriously. The organization is currently made up of 175 member states, operating in 180 countries around the world (including my own, Sierra Leone). It employs thousands of people from diverse backgrounds in fulfilling this mission.

In March this year, as chair of the governing council of IOM, I visited two African countries where IOM has a significant presence. My first stop was Morocco — Rabat and Casablanca — where, during two days in March this year, I met with migrants, staff of IOM, senior government officials, diplomats and civil society organizations working with migrants.

Morocco is a critical migration hub — a source country, a transit point, and increasingly, a destination country for migrants. It combines border security arrangements with richer countries to its north with its own efforts to accommodate migrants, though perhaps with a lopsided provision of resources between the two.

Because of Morocco’s strategic location, the African Union in 2020 established the African Migration Observatory (AMO) in Rabat. Headed by an Egyptian diplomat, Ambassador Amira Elfadi, the observatory could potentially assist in monitoring events such as the tragedy at the Tunisia-Libya border. But when I met Ms. Elfadi, she had no staff yet. The AMO needs support for operations as extensive and energetic as those in Kenya.

The most effective combination

I had wide-ranging conversations with IOM staff in both countries, in town halls organised by local IOM leaders. Passion for the work of the organisation was very strong. Passion combined with strong technical knowledge and an eagerness to engage with migrant communities and local authorities at all levels — which I found stronger in Kenya — makes for greater effectiveness.

In May, by resounding vote and unanimous acclamation, IOM elected Amy Pope as its director general. She is a resourceful and energetic American who embodies this combination of passion, knowledge, and enthusiasm for engaging with staff at all levels, with all governments and local authorities, and with migrant communities.

A veteran migrant defender, Ms. Pope is the first woman to head this important organization since its founding 72 years ago. In her vision statement, she committed to a “people-centred” approach, defining this as a commitment to “the migrants, vulnerable people, and the communities IOM serves, IOM’s member states and its workforce.”

Since becoming deputy director of IOM over two years ago, Ms. Pope has consistently pursued this vision with a passion rare in the staid corridors of Geneva power offices. She is now one of a handful of pioneering women to lead important international organizations in Geneva, which hosts a few dozen. All of them assumed their positions within the past four years. It has been a refreshing change.

A novel leadership of a global organization grappling with a large global challenge tends to come with high expectations. It is both the attraction and a pitfall of progressive change. Either way, it will not detract from Ms. Pope’s commitment to posit that she will be as successful only in so far as the world wants her to succeed.

With the extraordinarily grim developments heralding her tenure, the world must embrace her “people-centred” approach. A failure to do so could mean unending calamities like the ones described above.

Dr. Lansana Gberie is Sierra Leone’s Permanent Representative in Geneva. He is Chair of the Governing Council of International Organization for Migration.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Cecilia Erzuah was awarded the United Nations’ 2023 Military Gender Advocate of the Year. Credit: UN

By Abigail Van Neely
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

Cecilia Erzuah was torn between two opposite career paths at the end of university. The week she was supposed to begin military training, her professor offered her a position as a lecturer.

Erzuah had worked as a teacher before and thought she was pretty good at it. She’d also been in Ghanaian youth cadet programs throughout school. But she’d never seen the military as a viable career before.

“I’m going into the military,” Erzuah decided. She remembers telling her professor she could still lecture, even while serving.

In a way, she did. Years later, Erzuah would host discussions on domestic violence and gender equality as the commander of a Ghanaian engagement platoon with the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei. She was awarded the United Nations’ 2023 Military Gender Advocate of the Year award for her service.

The UN Police Division aims to increase the number of women serving in military contingents to 15% by 2028 from the 10% it last reported in 2016. While Ghana is the largest contributor of women military peacekeepers, Erzuah was the first to receive the award, the UN reports.

Abyei is a contested area between Sudan and South Sudan. Recently, violence in Sudan has “worsened dramatically,” the former UN special envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, said. Perthes resigned last week, warning that the “conflict between Sudan’s rival military leaders’ could be morphing into a full-scale civil war’,” AP reported. According to UN humanitarian representative Edem Worsornu, millions of Sudanese people are at risk of famine. Cases of sexual violence have been driven to “distressing levels.”

Erzuah’s experiences working with local communities in the region are a reminder of the everyday people still relying on support. When villages are attacked, “you see nursing mothers [and] parents carrying their children with one hand trying to salvage the few clothing they have and running for their lives,” she says. Peacekeepers help these internally displaced people get to safety.

“The most valuable thing we have in life is our life, and then the peace we enjoy- because how much can you carry with you when you’re running for your life?” Erzuah asked.

In Abyei, Erzuah was charged with maintaining engagement with local leaders and organizations as a liaison between her battalion and the community. “If you don’t engage the community as a peacekeeper, you will be doing things they don’t need,” Erzuah says. “You will exert your energy for nothing.” Local people also share critical knowledge. For instance, they can help UN personnel predict when and where attacks will occur.

But it wasn’t easy to get community members to open up. Many women are wary of men – who they have seen perpetuate the crimes around them, Erzuah explains. Over time, though, Erzuah’s platoon, which consisted of an equal number of men and women, gained the trust of the people they were meant to serve. They had a particular impact on women who were encouraged by the presence of other women in a typically male-dominated field. “When the woman smiles, you feel it is more genuine than the man,” Erzuah jokes. More women have joined community protection committees thanks to the platoon’s outreach efforts.

“On every front, Captain Erzuah’s work has set the standard for ensuring that the needs and concerns of women are reflected across our peacekeeping operations,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at her award ceremony. “The mixed patrols are…boosting the confidence of community members to go about daily activities safely,” Deng Paul Mankuol, a traditional chief in Majbong, said.

Erzuah smiles when she remembers learning about her physiology alongside local women during a breast cancer awareness event last year. “You realize that we are different but the same.”

Still, it’s not easy to be a woman in the military. All peacekeepers must adapt to unfamiliar environments and remain constantly on alert. Erzuah points out that women must also adapt to being on long patrols in areas without infrastructure to support their unique needs, like access to menstruation products.

Peacekeepers must adapt to unfamiliar environments and remain alert. UN Peacekeeping celebrated its 75th anniversary this year. Credit: UN

Ultimately, Erzuah chose her path because she’s never been afraid of a challenge. Growing up, Erzuah aspired to accomplish something that would demand her to be extraordinary. She relishes her current opportunity to show that women can be equally capable: “You feel you’re having the most impact when you will even see admiration in people’s faces.”

When people ask her if she’s afraid, Erzuah says they just want to know what motivates her. She sees the questions as a chance to explain that she struggled to get where she is now but that if she did it, they can, too.

Erzuah designs almost everything she wears – besides her uniform in her free time. She may still just be an “amateur fashion designer,” but she thinks that if she ever wants to be a professional, she can. It’s her belief that a person can be outstanding in any field they set their mind to.
IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Nature Doesn’t Know Borders: Collaboration for Conservation in Cyprus
• Barriers to Movement are the Never Ending Normal for Palestinians
• The Case for Afghan Women and Girls: How an International Criminal Court Investigation Could Expand Human Rights

President Michel giving voice to the cause of small island states at the UN conference in Samoa in 2014. (Photo from the personal collection of James Michel)

By James Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

Everyone knows that small island states are on the frontline of global warming. Rising sea levels, acidification destroying fisheries and coral reefs, and changing patterns of rainfall are just some of the challenges. Some low-lying islands have already been lost to the ocean.

These challenges are real and can hardly be understated. Yet there is another side to the story, too: one that tells of a creative response and new opportunities. The fact is that small island states are on the frontline of the Blue Economy.

Several years ago, in 2016, I wrote a book (Rethinking the Oceans: Towards the Blue Economy) to show why urgent action was needed. The interconnected seas cover most of our planet and yet we have always treated them as second best, as if the riches that are found there will last forever. Instead, I have for long argued that our approach must be sustainable. It must serve not only today’s needs but also tomorrow’s generations.

A decade ago, the idea of the Blue Economy was poorly understood. Why, people would ask, is it any different from how the sea has always been used? Things have changed since then and the question is no longer ‘why’ but ‘how’. In my second book on the subject, Revisiting the Ocean: Living the Blue Economy, I show what progress has been made and where we can find some of the most important changes.

There is a great deal more to be done, not least of all in stemming the relentless flow of harmful practices. But there are already signs of progress. To show this, I look to local communities and business startups, to visionaries and philanthropists, as well as international bodies. Go to remote beaches to see how communities (often led by women) are taking matters into their own hands. Or to the workshops of inventive young entrepreneurs who are finding ways to do things better. I am a realist but also an optimist and in my new book, I try to balance a pervasive sense of impending doom with a strong message of hope.

Kentaste is a local company reviving the coconut industry along the Kenya coast. (Photo courtesy of Joanne Muchai)

COP28 will bring together the great and the good, drawn by the prospect of a new approach. But it will also attract those who are not so enamoured with a sustainable approach to the ocean. Fast-growing nations with, literally, billions of mouths to feed will not so easily be persuaded that sustainability is the right approach. Nor will commercial and other interests which are poised to scrape the ocean floor for rich mineral reserves. Yet, if we are not to destroy our planet, restraint has to win the day. In the crowded rooms of the upcoming event in Dubai, we must lose no opportunity to press the case.

My own nation, Seychelles, has one of the world’s smallest populations and yet, surrounded by a vast stretch of ocean, we have pioneered new ways to sensibly manage this immense gift of nature. Planning our marine space in a rational way is how we are making progress and I commend the lessons to other small island nations. We have also been innovative in attracting funds and the ways we have done this, too, is a shared resource.

Under the auspices of the European Union, Seychelles last year hosted an event where African entrepreneurs displayed their exciting ideas and projects. Fabrics produced from leaves and fish skin gathered locally, natural fertilisers from seaweed, productive ways to recycle fishing nets, and desalination units using renewable energy. With the help of large funding bodies like the UN and EU, much more can be done to unleash creative energy. Revolutions invariably start in small ways and nothing short of an ocean revolution is needed. Urgently!

I look forward to COP28 and I know that the host nation, the United Arab Emirates, will do all that it can to lead by example. Let us go to the conference with enthusiasm, welcoming every new initiative. I will be there, along with friends from other small island states and it is up to us all to make our voice heard.

Copies of my new book will be available at the event (as well as direct from https://www.jamesmichelfoundation.org) and I hope I can share with you some of my own ideas and a record of the wonderful efforts being made around the world to save our precious ocean.

James Michel is a former president of the Republic of Seychelles and a leading international advocate of the Blue Economy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Excerpt:

The Mbeubeus dumpsite in Dakar, Senegal, where Practical Action, an international organisation is helping the communities phase out open burning of waste. Credit: Practical Action.

By Robert Kibet
NAIROBI, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

With the African continent recycling less than 11 percent of its waste, COP28 provided leaders on the African continent to consider integrated waste systems that include informal waste workers.

Akinyi Walender, Africa Director at Practical Action, an innovative international development group, says the informal waste workers are rarely involved. She was speaking recently at the inaugural Africa Climate Summit.

“For us to tackle the issue of waste, we really have to look at how we can have a more integrated system in place, which means we need to bring everybody along,” she told a session on open burning of waste on the sideline of the summit.

Coming ahead of the upcoming Cop28 summit, Wandeler says it provided an opportunity for the African continent to think concretely about what it wants to achieve on climate issues.

“The situation on climate is so dire that we do need to really act. We should already begin to look at opportunities within the continent and make those good while we wait for the funding that is supposed to come on adaptation,” Walender told IPS in an interview.

Over 90 percent of waste generated in Africa is disposed of at uncontrolled dumpsites and landfills, often with associated open burning. Nineteen of the world’s 50 biggest dumpsites are located in Africa, all in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The African Union set an ambitious target for African cities to recycle at least half of their waste by 2023, but many are still far from achieving this.

According to the UN Environment Programme, the goal can be met and even surpassed with a shift of organic waste to composting and bioenergy recovery, along with the refurbishment, repair, reuse, and recycling of the waste.

In 2016, Sub-Saharan Africa alone generated around nine percent of global waste or 180 million tonnes, of which about two-thirds is dropped in landfills and open dump sites, left to pollute the nearby environment and global climate. This is projected to quadruple by 2050.

Last year, environment ministers from 54 African countries met in Dakar, Senegal, at the 18th session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), committing to achieve a 60 percent reduction of open waste burning by 2030 and fully phase out open burning of waste by 2040.

It is an ambitious target, which Walender says, “With the much wider UN 2030 Agenda on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in place, many countries have so much that they need to grapple with”.

Akinyi Walender, the Director of Practical Action Africa, speaking during a session on open burning of waste at the sideline of the recent Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

“We have many policies in place, but most are hardly implemented. The whole topic on open burning of waste and its 2040 timeline is very short. Many have yet to even put in place those policies that govern the open burning of waste. I feel that this timeline is actually very short,” Walender told IPS in an interview.

Sam Dindi, director for training and community mobilization at Mazingira Yetu, a Kenyan-based environment organization, says if countries embrace a green and circular economy in which waste is reused, it has the potential to create job opportunities for the youth.

“Open burning of waste is a quick way of addressing a problem, but again, it brings an even bigger problem that we may not be able to solve both as a country and as a continent,” he told IPS in an interview.

Last year, Kenya passed the Solid Waste Management Act 2022, dubbed Sustainable Solid Waste Management Act 2022, which requires the closure of all open dumpsites and transit to landfills, a controlled form of dumpsite.

“Kenya is making progress. Last year, Kenya passed the Solid Waste Management Act 2022, which transforms how we manage waste from the previous linear economy and promotes a circular economy in which waste is given a new lease of life. It is either upcycled or recycled,” says Dindi.

According to Dindi, the implementation of the policies in place remains a barrier to the efforts of various stakeholders.

“Implementation of the policies is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we lack the political goodwill because perhaps implementing these policies is perceived to affect some businesses, policymakers, or other interested parties,” Dindi told IPS.

Dumping of waste, according to stakeholders who spoke at the session, agreed that the open burning of waste heavily impacts the impoverished and marginalized communities.

A 2021 report by Practical Action dubbed Managing Our Waste indicates that nearly two billion people on the planet live without any form of waste collection, with Sub-Saharan Africa experiencing some of the lowest waste collection coverage.

The report recommends monitoring waste management as a people-centred service, integrating the voice of those most affected and improving informal waste workers’ lives and working conditions.

“At all levels, waste policies need to focus not only on environmental benefits but also on improving the lives of the poorest communities and workers. Their voices need to be heard in all key decision-making processes,” reads the report.

In Senegal, Practical Action is working with local communities and government agencies to reduce the open burning of waste at two major dumping sites, namely, the infamous Mbeubeus site in Dakar and a second one in Thiès.

“While it is generally seen as a responsibility of the local government, the community and the private sector need to be involved. If you look at the whole circular economy, there is the ability to reuse, recycle the waste, and reorient it in terms of packaging,” Walender told IPS.

 

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

 

Related Articles

• Frankincense and Myrrh Have New Economic Resonance for Women in Kenya’s Arid North
• UN Meets on Effective Responses to Loss and Damage Ahead of COP28

Artist and farmer Chavely Casimiro and her daughter Leah Amanda Díaz feed one of the biodigesters at Finca del Medio, a farm in central Cuba. The biodigester produces about seven meters of biogas per day, enough energy for cooking, baking and dehydrating food. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Luis Brizuela
TAGUASCO, Cuba, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

Combining technologies and innovations to take advantage of solar, wind, hydro and biomass potential has made the Finca del Medio farm an example in Cuba in the use of clean energies, which are the basis of its agroecological and environmental sanitation practices.

Renewable energy sources are used in many everyday processes such as electricity generation, lighting, water supply, irrigation and water heating, as well as in cooking, dehydrating, drying, baking and refrigeration of foodstuffs.

“We started out with windmills on artesian wells and hydraulic rams to pump water. That gave us an awareness of the amount of energy we needed and of how to expand its use,” said farmer José Antonio Casimiro, 65, owner of this agroecological family farm located in the center of this long Caribbean island nation."More incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life." -- José Antonio Casimiro

The farmer expressed his appreciation of the help of his son, 41, also named Antonio Casimiro, in the installation of the two mills at Finca del Medio, during the days in which IPS visited the farm and shared in activities with the family.

“There was no one to assemble or repair them. We both had to study a great deal, and we learned to do a lot of construction things as we went along and perfected the techniques,” said Casimiro junior, referring to the equipment that is now inactive, but is capable of extracting some 4,000 liters of water daily from the water table.

When rainfall is abundant and the volume of the 55,000-cubic-meter-capacity reservoir rises, the hydraulic ram comes to life. The device diverts about 20,000 liters of water to a 45,000-liter tank, 400 meters away and 18 meters above the level of the reservoir.

“The only energy the rams use is the water pressure itself. Placing it on the highest part of the land makes it easier to use the slope for gravity irrigation, or to fill the animals’ water troughs,” explained Chavely Casimiro, 28, the youngest daughter of José Antonio and Mileidy Rodríguez, also 65.

An artist who also inherited the family’s “farming gene”, Chavely highlighted some twenty innovations made by her father to the hydraulic ram, in order to optimize water collection.

Other inventions speed up the assembly and disassembly of the windmills for maintenance, or in the event of tropical cyclones.

“We have been replacing the water supply with solar panels, which are more efficient. They can be removed faster (than the windmill blades) if a hurricane is coming. You can incorporate batteries and store the energy,” said Casimiro.

“Let’s say a windmill costs about 2,000 dollars. With that amount you can buy four 350-watt panels. That would be more than a kilowatt hour (kWh) of power. You buy a couple of batteries for 250 dollars each, and with that amount of kWh you can pump the equivalent of the water of about 10 windmills,” he said.

But the farmer said the windmills are more important than the energy they generate. “It would be nice if every farm had at least one windmill. For me it is very symbolic to see them pumping up water,” he said.

 

Lorenzo Díaz, the husband of Chavely Casimiro, uses a solar oven to cook food. In the background can be seen a windmill and a solar heater, other technologies that take advantage of the potential for renewable energies on the Finca del Medio farm in central Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Innovations

Located in the municipality of Taguasco, in the central province of Sancti Spíritus, some 350 kilometers east of Havana, Finca del Medio follows a family farm model including permaculture, agroecology and agricultural production based on the use of clean energy.

In 1993, Casimiro and Rodríguez with their children Leidy and José Antonio – a year later, Chavely was born – decided to settle on the 13-hectare farm of their paternal grandparents, with the aim of reversing its deterioration and soil erosion and installing perimeter fences.

The erosion of the land was due to the fact that in the past the farm was dedicated to the cultivation of tobacco, which depleted the soil, and later it had fallen into abandonment, as well as the house.

The older daughter is the only one who does not live and work on the farm, although she does spend time there, and a total of ten family members live there, including four grandchildren. All the adults either work on the farm or help out with different tasks.

With the help of technological innovations adapted to the local ecosystem, and empirical and scientific knowledge, the family has become self-sufficient in rice, beans, tubers, vegetables, milk, eggs, honey, meat, fish and more than 30 varieties of fruit. The only basic foodstuffs not produced on the farm are sugar and salt.

They sell all surplus production, including cow’s milk, for which they have specific contracts, and they are also promoting agrotourism, for which they are making further improvements to the facilities.

At Finca del Medio, a system of channels and ditches allows the infiltration of rainwater, reduces erosion of the topsoil and conserves as much water as possible for subsequent irrigation.

These innovations also benefit neighboring communities by mitigating flooding and replenishing the water table, which has brought water back to formerly dry wells.

The construction of the house is also an offshoot of technological solutions to the scarcity of resources such as steel, which led to the design of dome-shaped roofs made of mud bricks and cement.

The design aids in rainwater harvesting, improves hurricane protection, and boosts ventilation, creating cooler spaces, which reduces the need for air conditioning equipment and bolsters savings.

Along with food production, the new generations and members of the Casimiro-Rodriguez family engage in educational activities to raise awareness about good agricultural and environmental practices.

Students from nearby schools come to the farm to learn about these practices, as well as specialists in agroecology and people from different parts of the world, interested in sharing the experience. Meanwhile, several members of the family have traveled abroad to give workshops on agroecology and permaculture.

 

Farmers José Antonio Casimiro (R) and his son of the same name talk in the mechanical workshop at their Finca del Medio farm. Both have come up with innovations for the use of windmills, the hydraulic ram and biodigesters, as well as agricultural tools. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Solar and biogas potential

On one of the side roofs of the house are 28 photovoltaic panels that provide about eight kWh, connected to batteries. The stored energy covers the household’s needs during power outages that affect the island due to fuel shortages and breakdowns and problems in maintenance of its aging thermoelectric plants.

In addition, the household has three solar water heaters with a capacity of 380 liters.

Next to the kitchen, two fixed-dome biodigesters produce another renewable fuel, biogas, composed mainly of methane and carbon dioxide from the anaerobic decomposition of animal manure, crop waste and “even sewage from the house, which we channel so that the waste does not contaminate the environment,” said Casimiro.

Due to the current shortage of manure as the number of cows has been reduced, only one of the biodigesters is now operational, producing about seven meters of biogas per day, sufficient for cooking, baking and dehydration of foodstuffs.

The innovative family devised a mechanism to extract – without emptying the pond of water or stopping biogas production – from the bottom the solids used as biofertilizers, as well as hundreds of liters of effluent for fertigation (a combination of organic fertilizers and water) of the crops, by gravity.

The installation of the biodigesters, the solar panels and one of the solar heaters was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Cosude) and the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station of Pastures and Forages through its Biomass-Cuba project, Casimiro said.

He also expressed gratitude for the link with other scientific institutions such as the Integrated Center for Appropriate Technologies, based in the central province of Camagüey, which is focused on offering solutions to the needs of water supply and environmental sanitation, and played an essential role in the installation of the hydraulic ram.

The farmer said the farm produces the equivalent of about 20 kWh from the combination of renewable energies, and if only conventional electricity were used, the cost would be around 83 dollars a month.

 

Lorenzo Díaz feeds firewood into an innovative stove that allows the Finca del Medio farm to efficiently cook food, dehydrate or dry fruits and spices, heat water and preserve meat, among other functions. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Efficient stove

In the large, functional kitchen, the stove covered with white tiles and a chimney has been remodeled 16 times to make it more efficient and turn it into another source of pride at the farm.

Fueled by firewood, coconut shells and other waste, “the stove makes it possible to cook food, dehydrate fruits and spices, heat water and preserve meat, among other tasks,” Rodríguez told IPS as she listed some of the advantages of this other offshoot of the family’s ingenuity that helps her as a skilled cook and pastry chef.

She pointed out that by extracting all the smoke, “the design makes better use of the heat, which will be used in a sauna” being built next to the kitchen, for the enjoyment of the family and potential tourists.

Casimiro is in favor of incorporating clean energy into agricultural processes, but he said that “more incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life.”

Since 2014, Cuba has had a policy for the development of renewable energy sources and their efficient use.

A substantial modification of the national energy mix, which is highly dependent on the import of fossil fuels and hit by cyclical energy deficits, is a matter of national security

However, regulations with certain customs exemptions and other incentives to increase the production of solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric energies in this Caribbean island nation still seem insufficient in view of the high prices of these technologies, the domestic economic crisis and the meager purchasing power of most Cuban families.

Clean sources account for only five percent of the island’s electricity generation, a scenario that the government wants to radically transform, with an ambitious goal of a 37 percent proportion by 2030, which is increasingly difficult to achieve.

Related Articles

• Biogas and Biomethane Will Fuel Development in Cuban Municipality
• Cuban Innovator Uses Sunlight to Create a Model Sustainable Space
• Biogas Production Awaits Greater Incentives in Cuba
• Sowing Water: A Cuban Farm’s Bid for Sustainability

UN peacekeepers on patrol in Mutwanga in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: UN Photo/Michael Ali

By Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

The world is moving away from fossil fuels towards so-called “green” energies as a solution to the climate crisis, which has increased the demand for strategic minerals such as cobalt, copper and lithium.

As a human rights lawyer in the Democratic Republic of Congo – which has the world’s largest cobalt reserves and among the largest copper reserves – I represent communities and ecosystems in Virunga, Kahuzi Biega, Okapi and elsewhere that have suffered numerous human rights violations as a result of the extraction of these minerals.

Home to the second-largest tropical forest in the world and vast mineral wealth, the DRC has exceptional natural resources. However, the country has faced a complex humanitarian crisis since 1994; plagued by war and violence in the eastern regions which has led to conflict, poverty, malnutrition and recurring epidemics.

The people I represent have been forcibly evicted from their land due to mining operations by extractive companies; major human rights violations and violence that accompany the mining process; and loss of clean air, soil and water because of destructive mining practices. Certain companies exploit land in protected areas in violation of national laws, and fail to respect due diligence standards in place for businesses.

Corruption is rampant – Chinese and Canadian companies, among others, wield influence on public institutions to cut corners and avoid living up to their obligations. In many cases, no impact assessments are carried out; when they are carried out, it is often to formalise the exploitation process and not to safeguard the climate, let alone to provide social protection for the communities most affected.

In short, thousands of farmers, their villages, their means of survival and their cultural values are impacted by the exploitation of cobalt, copper and other strategic minerals in the DRC.

This panorama poses a number of major challenges. In the pursuit of their interests, multinationals extracting minerals from the DRC have no respect for the rights of peasants, national laws, climate emergency needs or social safeguards.

People living in areas surrounding mining operations suffer endemic poverty and health crises amid wider energy and climate injustice. Children are not able to attend school, there are widespread land evictions and expropriations, rivers are polluted, and women and children are exploited.

State institutions are often weaponised against ordinary people – the justice system and certain military officers and/or armed groups are co-opted for security, to protect business interests against local people.

It shouldn’t have to be this way for communities living in resource-rich countries like DRC. There should be some minimum guidelines in place to safeguard against such violations.

States in the Global North and Global South should set up a major strategic coalition to ensure compliance with due diligence standards and strengthen the corporate social responsibility of extractive companies. Such a coalition should:

• Ensure the monitoring and evaluation of national and international mechanisms for mining investment;
• Reinforce local communities’ knowledge of international laws and best practices in the field of human rights and investment;
• Provide legal support for victims of land and environmental injustice caused by mining operations;
• Build the capacities of civil society organisations in terms of technical and scientific expertise in impact monitoring and evaluation;
• End investments in fossil fuels which negatively impact people’s livelihoods, biodiversity and land, and instead invest in sustainable alternatives;
• Strengthen legal reforms to better uphold climate and social safeguards, prohibit the exploitation of certain more devastating natural resources, develop community guidelines on rights and legal means against investments;
• and decolonise energy narratives.

Over 13 kg of cobalt are needed to produce the battery for an average electric vehicle, and around seven grams are required for a cell phone. Demand for cobalt, which has tripled since 2010, is expected to reach 222,000 tonnes by 2025.

Without a major shift to put in place safeguards in the supply chain, extractive industries will continue to ride roughshod over the rights of local communities, and we will sadly see an escalation of human rights violations.

We need to act fast to stop this. We need a global monitoring programme and far-reaching legal reforms for a fair energy transition that prioritises the human rights of local communities.

Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke, from Goma, eastern DRC, is described as a leader among environmental and land defenders in the country and one of the most trusted advocates on behalf of communities impacted by land grabs, trafficking, and illegal resource extraction activities. He was the Africa regional winner of Front Line Defenders’ 2023 Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

When addressing food insecurity, it's clear that insufficient food production isn't the problem. According to FAO estimates, Latin America and the Caribbean could feed over 1.3 billion people, twice their population. Credit: Riccardo De Luca / FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
SANTIAGO, Sep 29 2023 (IPS)

In recent years, the population of Latin America and the Caribbean has seen a worrying increase in hunger figures, especially among the poorest in the region.

When we talk about food insecurity in our region, as in the rest of the world, we realize that this problem does not stem from deficient food production. According to FAO estimates, Latin America and the Caribbean could feed more than 1.3 billion people, twice its population.

Thus, where does this problem arise? A relevant factor in this matter is food loss and waste, which prevention is fundamental in the development of agri-food systems.

13% of the world's food is lost in the supply chain, from post-harvest to retail, and a further 17% is wasted in households, food services, and retail. The highest levels of losses occur in nutrient-rich foods such as fruit and vegetables (32%), meat, and fish (12.4%)

In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly first established 29 September as International Food Loss and Waste Awareness Day, recognizing the positive impact of reversing FLW can have on people’s food and nutrition security.

Four years after the declaration of this day, we must take stock of what we have achieved, look ahead and take immediate action to reverse a complex scenario with economic, social, environmental, and moral costs.

According to FAO figures, 13% of the world’s food is lost in the supply chain, from post-harvest to retail, and a further 17% is wasted in households, food services, and retail. The highest levels of losses occur in nutrient-rich foods such as fruit and vegetables (32%), meat, and fish (12.4%).

Inefficiencies along the food chain and in consumption also have a significantly impact on the environment. Therefore, preventing food loss and waste can help to combat hunger and the consequences of climate change through greenhouse gas emissions.

Current scientific evidence points to innovative solutions that support family farming, distribution and supply systems, drive circular bio-economy actions, and target investments and funding to develop monitoring and early warning systems to prevent FLWs, as well as comprehensive legal frameworks aimed at prevention. But it is still not enough.

At the end of August, the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean organized a discussion on how to prevent and reduce food losses and waste in the context of food security and nutrition, with the participation of the Holy See, representatives of the Chilean government, and FAO.

This conversation explored ideas and solutions to move from reflection to action and to understand that ending the phenomenon of food loss and waste has a direct impact on the lives of individuals and society as a whole.

The way forward is clear: to address this situation it is imperative to work in a coordinated and multi-sectoral way to achieve results quickly. Governments, businesses, civil society and academia must join forces, to generate evidence, investments in infrastructure and technology, and other measures to address this situation.

Much needs to be done. Food loss and waste must be addressed from an ethical, political and scientific perspective. We are all responsible for this challenge.

 

Excerpt:

Mario Lubetkin is FAO Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean

Carbon credits in Africa can be generated by projects that curb emissions with a major focus on switching to renewable sources such as solar energy. Nasho solar power plant in Eastern Rwanda. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
NAIROBI, Sep 29 2023 (IPS)

With current efforts to boost Africa’s carbon credit production by 2030, experts believe the commitments will require Governments to switch from a voluntary to a compliance market by generating renewable energy for a portion of national and regional electricity supplies.

The compliance market in Africa, according to experts, is critical for countries to establish a carbon price through regulations to control the supply of allowances that are then distributed by national and regional regimes.

“It is all about getting the business model right (…) the capability of African Governments is there very central to having the right kind of information and investing in local business models,” Mahua Acharya, the Chief Executive Officer of C-Quest Capital (CQC), one of the world-leading carbon finance company told IPS.

Currently, African leaders are pushing market-based financing instruments, such as carbon credits which can be generated by projects that curb emissions with a major focus on switching to renewable energy sources.

Carbon market initiative allows polluters to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by investing in development or initiatives such as tree-planting or renewable energies. Nevertheless, experts point out that they are still cheaper to purchase in Africa due to poor regulations and weak policies.

Renewable energy was at the heart of discussions at the 2023 Africa Climate Summit (ACS) in Nairobi, Kenya, and shifting away from centralized fossil fuel energy towards people-centred green energy sources is now seen as the single most effective way to expand the continent’s participation in voluntary carbon markets.

The African initiative’s goal is to produce 300 million new carbon credits annually by 2030, comparable to the number of credits issued globally in voluntary carbon offset markets in 2021.

Mahua Acharya, the Chief Executive Officer of C-Quest Capital, recommends Innovative business models for African Governments to unlock carbon markets.

“This is a very ambitious target and a fantastic opportunity for Africa to set the course,” Mahua said in an exclusive interview.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement’s rulebook governing carbon markets gives countries a right to emit carbon dioxide at an agreed price per tonne, but one of the major challenges facing most African countries is the lack of appropriate strategies to earn money on these carbon markets.

The latest report on carbon markets and climate finance by the Eastern Africa Alliance shows that Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda are currently scaling up carbon credit production via voluntary carbon market activation plans.

Under the new move, internationally traded credits between governments and private sector players are acceptable under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

For example, Rwanda, as one of the few countries that expressed willingness to begin trading in voluntary carbon markets, is currently exploring key strategic sectors in which projects that reduce carbon emissions can be designed to sell credits on the carbon market. Officials emphasize that the major focus will be on renewable energy, the country leveraging on the carbon market as the source of climate finance.

However, some experts point out that such projects and programs need to be “authorized” to avoid the same carbon credit being sold twice.

“Voluntary approach is vulnerable to the decisions of corporate entities to meet their net zero goals – which is fine, but shaky if you think that countries should be basing economic planning decisions around this,” Acharya said.

Carbon finance – the revenue from the sale of carbon emission reduction linked with mitigation activities – is a green growth opportunity for many developing and emerging economy countries.

On the sidelines of the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi earlier this month, some activists rejected carbon markets, describing them as “false solutions and narratives that undermine African communities’ rights, interests and sovereignty.”

The Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Mithika Mwenda, told IPS that he was disappointed that the principle of shared responsibility was a missing point.

“The initiative [of carbon market] seems to be promoted by powerful interests who benefit from maintaining the status quo of fossil fuel dependence,” he said.

While Mithika is convinced that, in most cases, these carbon market investments do not serve the climate justice imperatives for Africa, Acharya points out that different African countries are at different stages of preparedness and clarity towards putting carbon markets to work.

“These carbon finance transactions are very precious to many African countries because they are forex-based and provide a good degree of risk mitigation,” Acharya said.

The latest Africa Environment Outlook for Business by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) shows that Africa could become a trailblazer in renewable energy solutions, with abundant solar, wind, hydro, biomass, and geothermal resources that may contribute to a 6.4 per cent increase in GDP from 2021 to 2050.

Businesses in the energy efficiency sector can provide products and services, such as lighting systems, smart buildings, and efficient industrial processes on the continent, it said.

While Carbon markets are seen as an incredible opportunity to unlock billions for the climate finance needs of African economies while expanding energy access, some carbon credit experts stress the need for the African Union (AU) as a continental body to position itself economically on equal footings with other major economic blocks.

“There are thousands of billions of dollars are being allocated as loans on high-interest terms to poor countries seeking help to cope with climate change impacts,” said Adhel Kaboub, Associate Professor of economics at Denison University in Ohio, USA, and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

“Through these schemes, Africa cannot continue to play the role of source of cheap raw materials while serving as a large consumer market for the Global North,” he said.

Rwanda is among the countries planning to use carbon markets to meet their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCS) to the Paris Agreement.

Currently, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) are the two operational mechanisms allowing the country to earn carbon credit units by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

 

Related Articles

• African Startups Mull Home-Grown Solutions to Combat Climate Change
• New Machine Learning-Based Model Boosting Africa’s Preparedness and Response to Climate Change

Creating resilience is crucial to climate change justice. In Bijbehara, a hamlet south of Kashmir's capital, Srinagar, lavender farming has meant farmers grappling with unseasonal rains, prolonged heat waves, and severe water scarcity have found a new means of survival.
 

Transport barges navigate one of the branches of the Paraná River in Argentina's Santa Fe province. The Paraná, the second longest river in South America, has been turned into a major waterway through which a large part of Paraguay's and Argentina's agricultural exports are shipped out of the region. CREDIT: Fundación Humedales

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 29 2023 (IPS)

In addition to being a majestic river – the second longest in South America after the Amazon – the Paraná River is the waterway through which a large part of the area’s primary goods are exported. Today, its economic importance has sparked an unexpected diplomatic conflict between Argentina and the countries with which it shares the basin.

Argentina’s decision to charge tolls to vessels on its stretch of the river led to a formal complaint from Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Bolivia, which argue that the river corridor agreement signed by the five countries in 1994 stipulated that no taxes or tariffs could be imposed without the approval of all parties.

The Paraguay-Paraná Waterway River Transport Agreement created an Intergovernmental Committee as the political body that would ensure its operation and maintain it as a motor for the development of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), established by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay in 1991 and later joined by Bolivia.

Tension reached unprecedented levels with Paraguay, a landlocked country that owns a gigantic fleet of ships that carry millions of tons of soybeans and beef, the engines of its economy, to the Atlantic Ocean and often return with fuels, essential to supply a nation that produces no oil or gas.

“What is happening is very serious. Paraguay has invested three billion dollars in the last 10 years and has 2,500 transport barges, one of the largest fleets in the world,” Andrea Guadalupe, vice-president in Argentina of the Mercosur-Southeast Asia Chamber of Commerce, which groups export companies from different countries, told IPS.

“It is not wrong for Argentina to charge a toll, because it carries out dredging and beaconing works that allow large ships to pass through the Paraná. But what is wrong is that it has not consulted the other countries and has taken a unilateral decision,” she argued.

Paraguayan Pesident Santiago Peña announced that he would resort to international arbitration, saying that his country’s sovereignty was at stake, and stating: “Paraguay has no future without the free navigability of the rivers.”

Although Peña denied that it was a reprisal, Paraguay announced this September that it would keep half of the electricity from the Yacyretá power plant located on the border between the two countries, on the Paraná River, which has an installed capacity of 3,200 megawatts.

Traditionally, although it is entitled to 40 percent, Paraguay has kept only 15 percent of Yacyretá’s energy and ceded the remaining 85 percent to Argentina, a country with a population of 46 million inhabitants, six times larger than Paraguay’s, which means it obviously consumes more energy.

The Rio de la Plata, seen from Buenos Aires, is at the mouth of the Paraná River and leads to the Atlantic Ocean, allowing the transportation to the export markets of a large part of the agricultural products of one of the most productive areas of South America. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman / IPS

 

Argentina says it invests between 20 million and 25 million dollars a year in dredging work on the Paraná, which in recent years has become more necessary due to a persistent drop in the water level, which has forced barges to carry less cargo and has increased the companies’ logistical costs.

“The situation is affecting the relationship between two countries that are brothers. Argentina’s attitude is not in line with the agreements, and Paraguay is a landlocked country that needs the river to connect with the world,” Héctor Cristaldo, president of the Union of Production Chambers (UGP), which groups Paraguayan agricultural business chambers, told IPS.

Cristaldo said the main impact for Paraguay is in the supply of fuels used for agriculture and livestock and also for land transportation. “Paraguay has no trains; everything moves on wheels,” he said.

The toll crisis escalated into open friction in early September, when a Paraguayan flagged barge heading north with 30 million liters of fuel was held up for several days by Argentine authorities who released it when it agreed to pay some 27,000 dollars in tolls.

The rate for vessels put into effect in January 2023 is 1.47 dollars per ton transported. It was set by the General Administration of Ports (AGP), the government agency that controls the Argentine section of the waterway.

The new toll drew a statement from the governments of Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay, which expressed “special concern because it is a restriction on the freedom of transit” and asked Argentina to collaborate “to facilitate commercial transport, favoring the development and efficiency of navigation.”

 

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña (L) is greeted by his Argentine counterpart Alberto Fernández on Aug. 15, when he took office in Asunción. Relations between the two countries later deteriorated over navigation rights in the Paraná River basin. CREDIT: Presidency of Argentina

 

From Mato Grosso to the sea

The Paraná River, together with its tributary, the Paraguay River, form a waterway stretching almost 3,500 kilometers from Mato Grosso in west-central Brazil to its mouth in the Río de la Plata, which in turn flows into the Atlantic. The basin covers almost 20 percent of South America’s territory, and has an enormous biodiversity and a remarkable productive capacity.
The lower section, from the central Argentine city of Rosario to the mouth of the river, has been dredged to allow trans-oceanic vessels to pass through, carrying millions of tons of agricultural products for export each year. In total, some 100 million tons of goods are transported through the waterway every year.

The work began in 1995, when Argentina granted its section under concession to a consortium formed by the Belgian maritime infrastructure giant Jan de Nul and the Argentine Grupo Emepa, to be in charge of dredging and signaling. Thus, the river was deepened from its natural 22 feet to 34 feet from Rosario – the country’s main agro-industrial center – to the mouth.

Further north, the waterway is only 12 feet deep, which only allows the navigation of barges, with which Paraguay and Bolivia export a major part of their soybean production, which is transferred to larger ships in Rosario.

The following year, the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture authorized the cultivation of transgenic soybeans, which would lead to a major expansion of the agricultural frontier and great pressure from agribusiness to deepen the dredging of the Paraná, which crosses the most productive area of Argentina, so that larger ships could enter.

 

Map of the Paraguay-Parana waterway. CREDIT: Afip

 

Low cost transportation

“The Paraná was transformed into a waterway that began to fulfill a function analogous to the one played by the railroad until the first third of the 20th century: to facilitate the expansion of the productive frontier and to be a low-cost transit route,” wrote geographer Álvaro Álvarez, vice-director of the Geographic Research Center of the public Universidad Nacional del Centro.

Álvarez maintains that the Paraná today is “a key infrastructure in the insertion of the region as a supplier of commodities into the international economy, a process through which industrial agriculture, mega-mining and hydrocarbon exploitation have been degrading ecosystems for decades, expelling populations from territories and affecting the health of communities.”

One of the main questions about the waterway is that there are no studies of the environmental impact generated by the modification of the river and the constant traffic of large vessels.

Last year, the Argentine Association of Environmesntal Lawyers filed an injunction demanding environmental impact assessments, which is now being studied by the Supreme Court of Justice.

“The State presented a 30-year-old environmental impact study in the file. Since then there has been and there continues to be removal of thousands of tons of sediment from the riverbed, which in many areas is contaminated with agro-toxins from industrial agriculture, and it is not known how that impacts the contamination and the dynamics of the river,” Lucas Micheloud, a member of the Association, told IPS.

“It is not a matter of adapting the river to the size of the ships, but of the ships adapting to the river,” said Ariel Ocantos, a graduate in International Relations and member of the Ecologist Workshop of Rosario, one of the environmental organizations demanding greater citizen participation in the interventions carried out in the Paraná River.

“We made several requests for information to the government because we want to know if they are conducting environmental impact studies. There is very little information and we are demanding citizen participation, which is absolutely necessary,” he said.