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The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Young Agriprenuer Programme is promoting youth participation in agribusiness with hands on skills training in farming and entrepreneurship. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

In Rwanda, Benimana Uwera Gilberthe, a scholar and pepper producer, experienced first-hand the challenges of breaking into agribusiness.

While in Nigeria, Ayoola Adewale is trying to understand if poultry egg farming will prove a profitable and viable business opportunity to the youth of the continent’s most populous nation. Also in Nigeria, Esther Alleluyanatha is understanding the link between young people leaving their villages for larger cities, the remittances they send home, and the implications on rural livelihoods and agriculture productivity.

In understanding this, these three young researchers are in fact providing answers to greater questions about agriculture on the continent. Like:

• What will it take to attract more African youth into agriculture — a sector the World Bank says could be worth $1 trillion in the next 10 years?
• And what supportive polices and investments are needed to develop this sector?

Adewale, Alleluyanatha  and Gilberthe are just three of the 80 young African scholars that are tackling the business of agriculture through the innovativeness and freshness that comes with youth — while obtaining their masters or doctoral degrees in the process.

They are awardees of the Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE), a three-year project that was launched in 2018 by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), with funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

The project aims “to build an understanding of poverty reduction, employment impact, and factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness, and rural farm and non-farm economies,” according to IITA Director General Nteranya Sanginga.

“Grantees were offered training on research methodology, data management, scientific writing, and the production of research evidence for policymaking. They are mentored by IITA scientists and experts on a research topic of their choice and produce science articles and policy briefs about their work,” Sanginga explained.

He has long championed the idea that developing agriculture is key to addressing the urgent challenges of food insecurity, poverty and youth unemployment on the continent.

• Indeed, according to IFAD, agriculture makes business sense because it has high returns per dollar invested. An IFAD study, The Economics Advantage: Assessing the value of climate change actions in agriculture, states that for every dollar invested through one of its smallholder programmes, farmers could earn between $1.40 and $2.60 over a 20-year period by applying climate change adaptation practices. 

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

Young farmers and brothers Prosper and Prince Chikwara are using precision farming techniques at their horticulture farm, outside Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/ IPS

Commercial agriculture the answer to youth unemployment?

Adewale, a PhD candidate at the University of Ibadan, works as a technical assistant at the Federal Operation Coordinating Unit for Youth Employment and Social Operation (FOCU-YESSO) in Abuja.  

YESSO is tasked with providing access to work opportunities for Nigeria’s poor and vulnerable youth. 

• Nigeria, which has a population of over 180 million, had 19.58 percent youth unemployment in 2019, according to estimates by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

“Commercialised agriculture holds immense potential as a way out of poverty,” Adewale told IPS. 

• Nigeria is also a net food importer, spending an average of $22 billion annually. The country imports rice, fish, wheat and poultry products with milk and tomato paste accounting for more than $1,4 billion of the food import bill.

“Youth involvement in commercialised agriculture is growing and seems to be the way out of the current unemployment rate. However, government and private sector support is required if youths will compete favourably, thrive sustainably and raise coming generation of commercial agriculture entrepreneurs,” Adewale said.

For her research topic she wants to understand if poultry egg production is a profitable and  technically efficient venture for youth farmers,  specifically assessing the impact of the Commercial Agriculture Development project (CADP).

• CADP is a World Bank-assisted project targeted at strengthening agricultural production systems and facilitating access to market for targeted value chains among small and medium scale commercial farmers in Cross River, Enugu, Lagos, Kaduna and Kano states. 

“Commercial agriculture, across all value chains, holds potential to boost productivity, profitability and economic growth of Nigeria and indeed Africa,” she said. “The study will provide insight into how commercial agriculture programmes are sustainable as well as provide direction into how commercial agriculture can be harnessed for African agriculture.”

Money in agriculture

Alleluyanatha, also from Nigeria, is also concerned about the high rate of unemployment among youth — particularly in urban areas.

“There is a need, therefore, to discourage the exodus of youths from rural to urban areas and to encourage them to go into agriculture, which is known to be the major source of livelihood in the rural areas,” Alleluyanatha said. 

She is researching youth migration and remittances and the implications on rural livelihood and agriculture productivity in Africa. She aims to do this by comparing households with youth migrants and those without. 

In Rwanda, Gilberthe  and his under-graduate classmates started growing pepper for export after securing a contract with the country’s National Agricultural Export Development Board. 

“The venture was successful and we gave youth in my areas the idea on how agribusiness can be a decent job if you do it professionally and invest in it,” Gilberthe told IPS. “I used to have at least $210 each time we sold our product.”

Youth aged between 14 and 35 years make up 39 percent of Rwanda’s population but, according to Gilberthe, many are not participating in agribusiness owing to limited agribusiness skills, lack of start-up capital, limited access to land, and information on agribusiness opportunities.

• Indeed it is a issue across the continent. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) notes that Africa needs targeted interventions focused on making agriculture a viable employment option for Africa’s youth who are held back from joining it by lack of land, credit, quality farm inputs, machinery and skills.

Gilberthe is researching how being part of financing schemes impact the incomes of youth agripreneurs.

He believes policies for youth engagement in agribusiness should also include trainings about running such businesses. In addition, he believes such policies should also make provisions for more agribusiness financing schemes.

“In Rwanda, youth engaged in agribusiness have a problem of not owning land and most of them use their parent’s land but their income is limited and they need access to credit,” he said.

• Rwanda, one of Africa’s smaller countries per square kilometre, has a land area of just under 27,000 square kilometres. About 69 percent of the land is used for agriculture, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

“I think differently about agriculture now,” says Gilberthe. “As a young researcher I have discovered the opportunities and barriers for youth engaged in agribusiness and this research is giving me a chance to contribute toward policy formulation about youth engagement in agribusiness.

“Through my findings I will be able to prove wrong youth who take agriculture as the work for old and village people and other people who still think that agriculture cannot improve your income.”

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• Creating Opportunities to Nurture Agripreneurship among Africa’s Youth
• Q&A: Africa Must Innovate its Food Systems in Order to Beat Hunger and Poverty

The post Africa’s Youth Scholars Harvest Ideas on the Business of Agriculture appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

80 young African scholars are tackling the business of agriculture through the innovativeness and freshness that comes with youth — while obtaining their masters or doctoral degrees in the process.

The post Africa’s Youth Scholars Harvest Ideas on the Business of Agriculture appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Primary School in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS.

By Manssour Bin Mussallam
GENEVA, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

An invisible adversary has thrown the world – Global South and Global North alike – into disarray. The psychosocial and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis will remain with us long after it has been overcome. There will be no anti-viral return to the pre-coronavirus status quo, nor can we afford to idly wait for a viral transformation of our world. The future is not inevitable, abstract promise – it will depend on our collective readiness to forge it, or to be forged by it.

Manssour Bin Mussallam

Although it has been claimed that no one could have foreseen that in 2020, over 1.5 billion students would be forced to stay at home because of a virus, experts worldwide have repeatedly signified that just such a crisis was indeed conceivable.

For the prevailing short-sighted, boom-and-bust economic system, excessively geared towards short-term profits, has left no margin for societies to address social emergencies.

Even now, the same analysts and international actors who, in the name of economic efficiency, have undermined our common public goods for years, are promising us new global solutions. Our global challenges, however, do not require global solutions.

They require a shared vision, underpinned by contextual policies and supported by efficient, solidarity-based mechanisms of international cooperation and coordination.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed, and exacerbated, the social and economic divides between, and within, societies. But it did not cause them.

To argue that the laissez-faire policy prescriptions enforced by our international institutions have fuelled this crisis would, in fact, make for a better case. And as we now wage an absolute war to contain the virus and mitigate its consequences, we must be willing to learn the lessons being taught to us by this crisis, if we are to reconstruct – and not merely reproduce – our international and national systems.

From underfunded and understaffed healthcare systems to the estimated 154 million people who find themselves homeless and unable to self-isolate, passing by the professionals living pay-check to pay-check for whom self-isolation protects life but endangers livelihood, and the 1.5 billion out-of-school students worldwide with unequal access to e-learning portals, the injustices which devastate our societies are more than a mere moral concern: they are threats to our common future.

The development models emanating from the Global North having failed, it is now long overdue for the assumptions permeating our international institutions to be challenged, and for a third, alternative, inclusive way of development to be constructed from the Global South
Several initiatives have already been announced to mitigate the effects of this crisis: recalling retired health professionals, providing safe-spaces for self-isolation, suspending foreclosures and evictions, and commitments by technology giants to provide software and equipment free-of-charge.

These measures, amongst others, are necessary. But they are also insufficient. If we are to overcome, once and for all, crises such as the current pandemic, we must be unwavering in our determination to address the injustices it has exposed.

We must, therefore, protect the right to free, quality universal healthcare; enshrine dignified, affordable housing as an unalienable right; ensure material and immaterial security for the peoples of the world; protect the right to paid sick and holiday leave as well as a living wage for all workers; and bridge the techno-digital divide.

This requires an unprecedented mobilisation of intellectual, human, technical and financial resources. It also calls for our initiatives to emancipate themselves from stale concepts so as to construct authentic, effective alternatives.

Free, quality universal healthcare and dignified, affordable housing will not be achieved as long as we continue dismantling them as private commodities from which to profiteer, rather than investing in them as common public goods which ought to be protected.

Material and immaterial security, living wages, and socially conscious labour laws will not be realised without an international system which consecrates human dignity and contributes to the implementation of holistic, humanistic, and progressive social policies.

The techno-digital divide will not be bridged by relying on expensive, imported technologies – often ill-suited to national and local contexts – nor by generating nationwide technical dependency on private multinational companies, when such technologies are donated.

We must develop local, endogenous technologies – more affordable, sustainable, and contextually relevant – which harness the creative potential of communities and stimulate national economies.

In a world in which the collective wealth of 6.9 billion people constitutes less than half of the wealth amassed by the richest 1%, and the market capitalisation of a single company such as Apple Inc. surpasses the GDP value of entire economies – including those of countries in the Global North, such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and Sweden – , the feasibility of such measures does not seem any more outlandish than the sustainability of this present state of affairs seems preposterous.

This does require, however, international platforms of solidarity-based cooperation acting as instruments and catalysts for a sustainable, prosperous and equitable development, that is inclusive of the perspectives, priorities, and needs of the majority of the world’s population.

If ad-hoc multilateralism and lack of global solidarity continue to administer the international system, which seems more preoccupied by its own survival than by achieving our collective aspirations, the current COVID-19 pandemic will only be a preview of future crises to come.

And it is highly unlikely for those who have institutionally enabled such an international system to also be those who will reshape it – good intentions notwithstanding. The development models emanating from the Global North having failed, it is now long overdue for the assumptions permeating our international institutions to be challenged, and for a third, alternative, inclusive way of development to be constructed from the Global South.

It is with this motivation that African, Arab, Asian, Latin American and Pacific Island countries, as well as international civil society organisations, founded the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC) to “contribute to the equitable, just, and prosperous social transformation of societies by promoting balanced and inclusive education, in order to attain the fundamental rights to liberty, justice, dignity, sustainability, social cohesion, and material and immaterial security for the peoples of the world”.

The OEC is not, accordingly, an international organisation for education, but rather an international organisation for development through education, since true development cannot be compartmentalised, and the transformative power of education is only true insofar as it is itself transformed.

This new, proactive, multilateral framework of cooperation which we are constructing places the concerns and aspirations of countries and peoples at the centre of global policymaking and at the forefront of development efforts, respecting and adapting to national priorities, local aspirations, and socio-cultural contexts.

The COVID-19 pandemic is both a tragedy and a test in crisis management for the entire world. It is also a reminder of the importance of renewing and reinventing the spirit of true solidarity and multilateralism in the 21st century. The time has come for new, innovative international mechanisms and platforms, not only designed to keep the peace, but also achieve the justice of which peace is the fruit.

Armed with a sense of duty, an impulse of solidarity and an intransigent determination, it is now our historic responsibility to heed the warning of this crisis and give ourselves the means to collectively forge the future to which we aspire, and which we deserve.

——

Sheikh Manssour Bin Mussallam is the Secretary General-elect of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC), an international governmental organisation established on 29 January 2020 at the International Summit on Balanced and Inclusive Education by African, Arab, Asian, Latin American and Pacific Island countries and civil society organisations from across the Global South. He has previously served as the President of the Education Relief Foundation.

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• FEATURED TRANSLATION – FRENCH

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Excerpt:

Manssour Bin Mussallam, is Secretary General-elect of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC)

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

For some time Wuhan in China and Lombardy in Italy were epicentres of the COVID-19 virus, something that has changed when the contagion is spreading fast in the US. A Lombardy in the grip of a deadly epidemic might among several Italians give rise to memories of their school days. For almost a century, Alessando Manzoni’s massive novel The Betrothed (I promessi sposi) from 1842 has been obligatory reading for all Italians during their last primary school year. A quite impressive endeavour considering that the novel is more than 700 pages long.

I assume almost every adult Italian is familiar with the Divine Comedy, Pinocchio and, of course The Betrothed. No Italian novel has been the object of so much veneration, scrutiny and intense scholarship. I have been told by Italian friends that they are surprised that The Betrothed is not more known and appreciated outside of Italy and to my discredit I have often been forced to admit that I had not read it.

While being quarantined in Rome I picked up The Betrothed, thinking ”it´s now or never”. It proved to be an interesting acquaintance. Taking as its point of departure a small Lombardian community during the 17th century the novel described how poor, defenceless people experienced war, pestilence, foreign occupation, poverty, famine, power abuse, religious fanaticism, mafia rule, legal injustice and manipulative, corrupt authorities. These are common themes in other literary works as well, though what made The Betrothed a pleasure to read was Manzoni’s use of language. For being such an old novel it felt amazingly fresh. Alessandro Manzoni made use of a literary device by retelling a story while stating it had been written by another author. This enabled him to keep an ironic distance to his tale and being free to interpose witty comments about events and protagonists. Manzoni also occasionally reminded his readers that his story evolved within a well-documented, historical reality.

With mounting expectations I reached the last and third part of the novel – its famous description of the plague in Milan. Here Manzoni offers a description of a wide variety of reactions to a calamity that befalls an entire society: ”In any public misfortune, in any long disturbance of whatever may be the normal order of things, we always find a growth, a heightening of human virtue; but unfortunatly it is always accompanied by an increase in human wickedness.” 1

In 1628, the Holy Roman Empire included Lombardy, which became the scene of bloodshed and looting while French troops battled mostly German mercenaries, remunerated by the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs. Soldiers carried with them the bubonic plague. In Milan, the centre of Lombardian industry and commerce, authorities were implementing effective public health measures. However, relaxed regulations during the carnival season in 1630 caused a major outbreak of the plague and by the same time the following year, an even deadlier wave of the plague engulfed the city. Overall, Milan suffered approximately 60,000 fatalities out of a total population of 130,000.

Milan counted upon a Commission of Public Health with far-reaching authority. It consisted of one president, four magistrates and two doctors of medicine. Its decrees were effectively enforced by the police. Milan also counted upon a lazaretto, a quaratine hospital with 288 rooms, founded in 1489, where suspected plague victims were brought for observation and treatment.

Rumours about plague victims in surrounding villages reached Milan in October 1628. The Commission immediately dispatched medical doctors to the village of Lecco. However, they came back reporting that the outbreak of disease had probably been caused by vapours from surrounding swamps. Nevertheless, during the following weeks more plague reports came in from villages even closer to Milan. Two commissioners were sent out and came back with alarming reports that plague deaths now occurred all over the countryside and people were panicking. Milan’s city gates were closed and outsiders allowed in only under extraordinary circumstances, all incoming goods were stored and checked for vermin. In mid-November a patient No. 1 was traced, a certain Pier Paolo Locati had returned home dressed in German military clothing, probably taken from a corpse. Just a few days after his arrival, Locati had fallen down dead in a market square. All persons he had been in close contact with were tracked down and quaratined in the lazaretto, while their former living quarters were sealed off. The health commissioners visited the Spanish governor asking for taxes to be waived and economic assistance offered to shop keepers and others who were making a loss due to the enforced quarantine. The lazaretto also had to be enforced with doctors, surgeons, medicins, food and eqiupment. The governor declared he was desolated by the news, but since a war was waged against the French he could neither lower taxes, nor release any funds and he recommended opening the city for business again, regardless of the risks.

Probably due to efforts by the Commission of Public Health, Milan had so far not been much affected by the plague and people demanded that the quarantine had to be lifted. The City’s Chief Physician, eighty years old Lodovico Settala who had lived through another plague and constantly pleaded for even harsher measures, was almost lynched by an angry mob. When carnival celebrations were planned for 1630 a majority of Milan’s citizens pleaded with the City Council that restrictions had to be lifted. The town authorities gave in. Outsiders were allowed to enter, shops and restaurants were kept open. The commissioners of public health protested and even had a carriage with naked, plagued stricken corpses taken from the lazaretto and driven through the city as a warning of what could happen if people did not stay indoors.

Nevertheless, the Milanese went along with their carnival. A few days later the plague was completely out of control. Soon tens of thousands of plague victims were amassed within the lazaretto. However, most people continued to neglect the Commission’s decrees about social distancing. Instead, rumours were spread that the plague was not a common plague at all, but caused by a French manufactured substance intended to kill Lombardians, vanquish the Spaniards and take control over Europe. The substance was said to have been smeared on walls and doors by French agents, or spread among crowds in the form of a powder. People began to see so called anointers everywhere. Innocent people were lynched being accused of being anointers, even the authorities convicted and executed inculpable persons as anointers, just to prove they were taking measures to halt the plague.”Good sense was not lacking, but it was hiding from the violence of public opinion.” 2

Authorities and medical doctors, who assumed their prestige were dependent on people’s appreciation, adapted their ”expertise” to general perceptions. ”From the inventions of the crowd, educated men borrowed all they could reconcile with their own ideas; from the inventions of the educated, the crowd borrowed as much as they could understand […]. Out of all this emerged a confused and terrifying accumulation of public folly.” 3 The more fanciful these opinions were, the more unreservedly they were accepted: ”poisionous arts, diabolical operations, conspiracies of people spreading the plague by contagious venoms or black magic.” 4 Manzoni provided several examples of how ”educated” people to cover up their deficient knowledge of how a pandemic functioned and above all to avoid recommending the unpopular solution of social distancing, invented notions that the plague could not be stopped since it arose from ”cosmological phenomena”, or that it was caused by malevolent ”foreigners” who wanted to gain control over Milan. To combat the plague they recommended worthless medicines and remedies, anything but the unwanted quarantine.

It was Italian city states, depending on international trade, like Venice, Milan and Genoa, which were among the first to realize that the most efficient way to stop epidemics were to quarantine people. The word quarantena means ”forty days”, i.e. the designated period that crew and passengers suspected of being plague carriers onboard ships anchoring in Venice were required to be isolated for, before they were allowed ashore. The Venetian Senate had just in time before the arrival of the Black Death, in 1340 appointed three guardians of public health to control incoming ships and establish whether they carried the plague, or not. In 1403, Venice founded a lazaretto, an asylum for suspected plague victims on a lagoon island housing a monastery called Santa Maria di Nazareth (Nazaretto), which later came to be known as Lazaretto.

Officially supported installations and regulations eventually became a system of state controlled Public Health, of which Milan’s Commission of Public Health was one example. Trough such state entities the science of epidemiology gradually emerged. Viruses and bacteria were still unknown. However, Italian plague doctors like Girolamo Fracastoro (1483-1553) were 300 years before Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch speculating that contagious diseases could be caused by rapidly multiplying ”seed” transmitted by direct contact, through the air, or on contaminated clothing and linens. Such insights meant that lazzarettos and communes as a remedy against infectious diseases fostered health control and general cleanliness. It was agreed that such measures were effective only if implemented by a public heath system, free of charge.

The Betrothed described how common sense propagated by state supported commissions were impaired by populist community leaders. If something could be learned from a fascinating old novel like The Betrothed it is that even four hundred years ago trust in medical experience could have impeded a deadly pandemic. However, in 17th century Milan, leaders responsible for the well-being and security of their fellow citizens had apparently not learned from earlier mistakes. They ignored the dire warnings of the city’s Commission of Public Health and minimized the treats of an epidemic killer with disastrous consequences. Let us only hope that the current cataclysm is not globally repeated to the same horrific extent as in Milan 1630-1631.

1 Manzoni, Allesandro (1972) The Betrothed. Penguin Classics: Bungay, Suffolk, p.596.
2 Ibid., p. 603.
3 Ibid., pp. 600-601.
4 Ibid., p. 578.

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

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Jay Collins speaks at the informal virtual meeting of the 2020 ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development follow-up: "Financing Sustainable Development in the Context of COVID-19". Credit: United Nations

By Jay Collins
NEW YORK, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

We are today in a time of crisis—a time when our shared choices will shape the way history tells our story and the paradigm shift it has so forcefully provoked.

The difference between the historical path of promise or peril will be defined, not just by the urgency and manner of our response, but also by our shared vision of recovery and renewal.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has struck the planet with scant concern for human suffering, and with vast economic destruction and financial cost. But more than that, it has dealt a blow to our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) , and we must urgently address how we will recover from it.

The global community can be proud, thus far, of the size and speed of the multi-trillion-dollar mobilization of capital in response to COVID-19. We have demonstrated that we are capable of radical and forceful societal response in the developed world.

However, we have only just begun to fight COVID-19’s wrath in the developing world. As the pandemic shows little respect for national boundaries, we must embrace the opportunity to re-enforce, re-purpose and re-invigorate the multilateral cooperation mechanisms and organizations of the Bretton Woods era if we are to meet the developing world’s challenges.

As the COVID-19 crisis continues, we should urge that massive stimulus efforts be affected sustainably: targeted and aligned to the SDGs and compatible with the Paris Agreement trajectory.

Climate change and global pandemics both epitomize Michele Wucker’s “Gray Rhino” concept—that is, neglect of the highly probable, high impact, global threats. Yes, many had in fact told us that a pandemic was coming, and we did not responsibly prepare.

As Mark Carney has so aptly pointed out, climate change also imbeds within it “the tragedy of commons,” in which the cost of inaction today is felt by future generations, well beyond humanity’s traditional economic and political time horizons.

Let us not permit that our grandchildren look back on climate change as humanity’s worst “Gray Rhino moment,” but use this COVID-19 crisis to re-galvanize our resolve against it.

We must embrace an intense dialogue with policy makers, regulators and the private sector, not only about funding and incentivizing the glide path of energy transition, but also about how to manage the new headwinds that low oil prices, pandemic-strained budgets and drained capital coffers represent.

We must meet the potential COVID-19 setback to the SDG agenda with defiance and with Churchillian resolve, unafraid to pivot as the virus moves our targets tragically further out of reach and makes our Goals even more ambitious in their aims.

Let us be resolved not to let a temporary corporate and investor focus on liquidity and volatility alter the pre-crisis momentum toward bold public private partnerships, stakeholder- driven corporate leadership and ESG investor commitment to achieving the SDGs.

Let us also not underestimate the plight of the poorest countries through this crisis. If the human price is not enough to inspire action, contemplate the global political consequences of an inability to respond to social crises in the developing world and of social unrest.

These challenges can develop quickly and can be as systemically destabilizing as methane bubbling through the permafrost.

Today, it is fair to say that the “S” in “ESG” now has a double line underscoring it as investors and securities issuers alike fund COVID-19 health and social spending. The social SDGs have moved to the forefront of our battle.

There are already silver linings in the COVID-19 ESG momentum. Let me name a few:

• ESG funds are outperforming their non-ESG market benchmarks;
• Risk models are being re-considered, supercharging concepts like “climate value at risk;”
• We are witnessing lowered ESG scores for poor corporate behavior in response to COVID-19;
• We have also seen a move from “negative screening” for ESG funds to a desire to see coronavirus-response “additionality objectives;” and finally,
• We are seeing an expression of social values absorbed into investor paradigms, underpinned by the Gen Z and Millennials’ view that this is a defining moment for their generations.

Despite these rays of hope, COVID-19 has made our funding challenges greater, and the call to use capital markets and creative funding mechanisms more urgent. The debt quagmire in the poorest of the emerging market economies has been and will continue to worsen through this crisis.

The Secretary-General and, in parallel, his Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance, have recognized the challenges of debt to our agenda; we cannot help but acknowledge the fallacy that increasing indebtedness to fund the SDGs represents for many of the world’s poorest countries.

While instinctively we already know that the pandemic has shifted our goal posts, we must invest heavily and speedily in the technology and processes for SDG and ESG metrics alike, embracing Big Data solution-sets.

Rearview mirror, macroeconomic data is insufficient for the challenges ahead and lacks the precision to measure future success.

As we face head-on the consequences of the potential exponentiality of the COVID-19 infection curves in the developing world, so too must we embrace the exponential characteristics of beneficial technological solutions applied aggressively to Sustainability challenges.

While guarding against its pitfalls, applied technology and innovation, if funded at scale, can lower the cost and speed of attainment of our Goals.

The 193 UN member states are taking decisive action to arrest the fallout from COVID- 19, and we must not forget the importance to the developing world of maintaining open and functioning capital markets.

These allow the broadest possible access to funds for our response. Simultaneously, the development bank community must continue its urgent search for out-of-the-box, accelerated and modified risk-sharing mechanisms, leveraging and catalyzing private sector credit where possible, surgically mitigating risk where necessary, and fully absorbing risk where systemically vital.

Lest we forget, in radical juxtaposition to the Global Financial Crisis, the global banking system today is strong and will continue to constructively support solutions to the pandemic and its social and economic consequences.

As we search for temporary reprieve mechanisms to address the weakest credit sovereigns, let us avoid contagious defaults that can shock the financial system, further restrict existing credit extension mechanisms, or slow the capital formation process of recovery.

This will be no easy feat. In some cases, it will require us to engage the market in voluntary standstill mechanisms that are closely coordinated with the official sector and move us toward orderly debt re-profiling strategies once the present fog lifts and the path to debt sustainability can be seen more clearly.

As Shakespeare wrote, “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” This cannot be “the end of normal,” but must be an historical starting point for the creation of a better normal.

We have the potential to re-imagine capitalism in a post-COVID world, to embrace long- termism and multi-stakeholder corporate behavior and to use COVID-19 adversity to reinvigorate our commitment to addressing the greatest social, environmental and economic challenges of our time.

*Citigroup is one of the 30 investor, corporate and bank members of the GISD Alliance. Jay Collins is a member of GISD’s Strategy Group, and delivered a version of these remarks at the UN ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development on 23 April 2020.

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Excerpt:

Jay Collins is Vice Chairman Banking, Capital Markets and Advisory, Citigroup*

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Students learn with tablets in a school in South Africa. Credit: AMO/Jackie Clausen

By External Source
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

South Africa’s education system is complex, with historical inequalities dating back to apartheid. Most of the country’s pupils come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Language is an issue; most pupils do not speak English as a mother tongue, yet English dominates in many classrooms. And, as the COVID-19 crisis has showed, there’s a huge digital divide at play.

The ongoing effects of the virus have kept pupils and teachers at home. This has necessitated a move to e-learning. In theory, this could be an important step towards a fairer education system. Digital platforms enable equitable access for learners to digital books, simulated science labs and related innovative learning resources.

Electronic and mobile learning can thus be seen as an additional learning resource that can also help enhance access to learning tools. Access to e-learning is not a panacea to the challenges in South African education. But it does provide an opportunity to make access to learning resources for all children more equitable.

COVID-19 has shown that technology is no longer a luxury but an important component of the education process. In presenting solutions, a wide range of factors must be considered. These range from access to computers, to teacher training, to the social and economic challenges faced by teachers, pupils and schools in their communities

But the reality in South Africa, as in most developing countries, is very different. Teachers have varying digital skills. Many families and teachers also cannot afford the data necessary to sustain some online learning activities.

COVID-19 has shown that technology is no longer a luxury but an important component of the education process. In presenting solutions, a wide range of factors must be considered. These range from access to computers, to teacher training, to the social and economic challenges faced by teachers, pupils and schools in their communities.

 

National focus

There are already some strategic policies and resources in place to help schools and teachers use technology as part of the teaching and learning process.

Information and Communications Technology is also taught as a school subject. But the government needs to consider an additional range of issues if it’s going to solidify a commitment towards e-learning. This includes policies and strategies surrounding connectivity, data costs, skills development, hardware access as well as contextual multilingual digital learning content.

Many schools have little or no technology facilities. Some have tablets and only a few have advanced computing laboratories. Formal training in applied technology skills is provided for teachers who want to teach a technology specialist subject in schools.

But all this needs to be extended. Adequate digital skills training should become a mandatory component of all teacher training programmes in universities, universities of technology and colleges. While there have been several digital training programmes for both in-service and trainee teachers in some provinces, it is time for a concerted national programme to ensure all teachers are skilled in digital teaching and technology.

Several studies have reflected on the innovative use of mobile phones and related applications to support learning in South Africa.

But South Africa has some of the highest data costs on the continent. This means that pupils can’t always easily access information on their mobile phones.

In the wake of South Africa’s first COVID-19 cases, as schools closed, several educational sites were zero rated; this means they are now free to use.

This should be extended to support home schooling and any future returns to school, so that data costs don’t keep schools in poorer communities from accessing these resources. Policies to enable such beyond the pandemic should be considered.

 

Projects that work

As an educator who focuses on Education Technology research, I know there is enormous enthusiasm among teachers and pupils to become more digitally savvy. I have worked with a number of under-resourced schools, supporting the teaching of Science, Technology and Maths subjects through basic software applications, learning management systems and other free-to-use cloud-based education platforms.

When pupils and teachers receive the right support for digital learning, the response is often remarkable. I have met many teachers who willingly dedicate their weekends and school holidays to digital learning and teaching, with no financial incentives but a passion to equip pupils with digital skills.

I am particularly proud of a collaboration between computing students from the University of the Western Cape with teachers in a high school in an underprivileged part of Cape Town. Their work together has cultivated computing skills and sparked learners’ interest in other subjects like chemistry and astronomy.

A similar collaboration has been expanded to the North West province and convinces me that there are thousands of teachers who are keen to retrain to prepare their pupils for the digital era.

The COVID-19 crisis offers a unique opportunity to harness this enthusiasm. With the right support and training, digital teaching and learning can become ubiquitous even in resource-strapped environments.

 

Mmaki Jantjies, Associate professor in Information Systems, University of the Western Cape

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

The post How South Africa can Address Digital Inequalities in E-learning appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

Wearing an orange jacket and face mask, Li Zehua, a Chinese freelance journalist, can be seen filming himself in a car. He is sure that state security agents have been pursuing him since he began documenting events in Hubei’s capital Wuhan, the first epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic. A second YouTube video, circulating widely since he launched his appeal, ends abruptly when two men knock at his apartment. He has just reappeared online after two months, saying police interrogated him and put him in quarantine and that he was well looked after during this period.

Other ‘citizen journalists’ like Li have also seemingly vanished after reporting and sharing images of the Coronavirus outbreak in China – inside hospital wards, in the crematorium, on the street. “The censorship is very strict and people’s accounts are being closed down if they share my content,” lawyer-journalist Chen Qiushi told the BBC in February. He is still missing.

Human Rights Watch says Chinese authorities are putting the same effort into trying to contain the virus as in suppressing criticism. In March, the Chinese government expelled 13 journalists working for three US publications.

Farhana Haque Rahman

World Press Freedom Day on May 3 reminds us that the media is facing crises on multiple fronts, exacerbated by the pandemic. Releasing the 2020 World Press Freedom Index on April 21, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) notes that the Coronavirus is being used by authoritarian governments to implement ‘shock doctrine’ measures that would be impossible in normal times.

The index, RSF says, shows a “clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and a country’s ranking in the Index” of 180 countries and territories. China (177) and Iran (down 3 at 173) censored their coronavirus outbreaks extensively. Iraq (down 6 at 162) punished Reuters for an article that questioned official coronavirus figures, and Hungary (down 2 at 89) has passed a coercive ‘coronavirus’ law.

The danger and long-term risks of suppressing press freedoms have been strikingly exposed by the pandemic. As the global death toll mounts amidst an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, China stands accused of acting too late in warning the world about the timing and extent of the threat.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chungying followed up by questioning about the speed of the U.S.’s response to the virus after banning arrivals from China on February 2. Promoting transparent and free reporting in an interconnected world is a global necessity.

This is indeed not the problem of just one country. The World Press Freedom Index illustrates the oppression of journalists from the North to the South in what appears like a pandemic in its own right, regardless of the causes and of the political system.

Even the president of the world’s most powerful democracy, Donald Trump, has described the press as “the enemy of the American people.”

Yet it’s where institutions are more fragile or conflict is rife that the dislike of governments to be held accountable takes shape in typically authoritarian ways.

In Myanmar, eNay Myo Lin was arrested on March 31 charged with terrorism for interviewing a representative of the Arakan Army, a rebel group fighting for autonomy in Rakhine state. Bangladesh, on the other side of the border is seeing increasing violence against journalists.

Democracy is not enough to guarantee media freedom either. In India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi the press “is not so free, writes the New York Times. According to non-profit Pen America, “harassing critical writers and journalists not just in India but globally is a disturbing new low for Modi’s government that’s already put Indian democracy on its heels”.

But it’s not just governments making threats. Organised crime, corrupted officials and terrorism are also constant dangers. April 18 marked the anniversary of the killing of journalist Lyra McKee by a republican paramilitary activist during rioting in Northern Ireland.

So how do we challenge this kind of oppression and abuse in a world where, as Thomas Jefferson said, “the only security of all is in a free press”?

Ultimately, just as in a pandemic, the freedom of the press can only be guaranteed by a coordinated global effort and a focus on the long-term advantages of a more critical world. This means pressure to reinforce legal frameworks, including prosecuting harassers and killers, perhaps just as the international community would persecute war criminals, while offering a global protection for journalists. Finding and promoting innovative ways of subsidizing independent media, as well as getting big tech companies to pay for the content they share, is also crucial to help a free press to thrive.

Albert Camus, writer and author of The Plague, was also a journalist. As he once noted: “A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”

The post Press Freedom Needs Protection from Pandemic too appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The post Press Freedom Needs Protection from Pandemic too appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

The world is at risk of widespread famines caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The devastating economic impact of Covid-19 is seeing a huge rise globally in the number of hungry people.

Hamida Begum, a domestic worker in Bangladesh who is now out of work said, “We only have forty Taka at home (translates to approximately US 50 cents). We have to drink poison to end life if we cannot go out for work. Who will save us from hunger?” The sufferings of some 7 million slum dwellers around Dhaka, the capital city, are multiplying due to lost earnings and price hike of consumer goods.

Most slum dwellers living in different parts of the capital city no longer worry about the virus but worry more about hunger as they cannot go out to work. They do not have any food reserves. Whatever little they have cannot save them from starvation and hunger in coming days.

Hamida Begum, 37, works as a house maid. She and her husband, a daily labourer are now jobless. The little food they have won’t feed their five member family. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Kulsum Begum, 30, is struggling to feed her three children since her husband died last year. After the lock down she lost her job as a housemaid . She Does notbhave any relatives in the city that she can turn to for to survive. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Shipli Rani Shiuli, 35, is the sole breadwinner of the family. Her husband left her and she takes care of her two sons alone. After the lockdown she lost her job and does not know she will bring food to the table. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Textile worker Helena Begum was laid off last month. She, along her five year old daughter Shakiba and elderly mother, are living on half the amount of food they normally had before the lockdown. Helena who is 35 says that her husband left the family after she gave birth to a daughter. She does not know anyone who could help her to seek a loan. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Aklima, 35, is standing with her one and half year-old daughter Suborna in their one room slum house. She has sent off her three children to the village as they are unable to manage food for themselves in Dhaka city. Aklima says that she and her her rickshaw puller husband can only manage one meal a day and drink water to kill hunger pangs. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Kohinoor Begum and her security guard husband Abul Kashem are now staying at home due to the lockdown Kohinoor lost her job as a housemaid. The only house they had in their village has been swallowed up by the river. During their three years stay in Dhaka city, they never faced such poverty and hardship before the lockdown. With no food at home and no cash, their five family members fear starvation in coming days. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Khadiza Begum, 38, with her two year daughter Sumaiya. She and her husband sold pickles on Dhaka streets. After the lockdown, they paid 4000 Taka (approximately $ 50 ) as rent and now have no money to buy food. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The post Amid Covid-19 Hunger Fear Mounts in Bangladesh appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Employees work on the solar panels of the El Romero plant, with a capacity of 196 megawatts, in the desert region of Atacama in northern Chile, a country that has set out to develop its solar power potential. CREDIT: Acciona

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

The oil slump, global recession and uncertainty about the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic will fuel the appetite for cheaper fossil fuel energy and delay investments in renewables, affecting the targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The countries of the developing South, and in particular oil exporters, will be affected as suppliers to shrinking economies and as seekers of investment in clean energy, in a world that will compete fiercely for low-cost recovery, warned experts consulted by IPS.

The crises, “in view of the abundance and low prices of oil, far from accelerating a change of era that would leave behind fossil fuels and embrace renewable energies, will postpone for a long time that aim, outlined in the SDGs,” said Venezuelan oil expert Elie Habalián.

One of the targets of SDG 7, which calls for affordable clean energy, is to “increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix” by 2030.

This is in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed in 2015, which enters into force at the end of this year. The accord includes energy transition measures: national contributions to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb the increase in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

These commitments are undermined by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which will cause a severe recession, with the global economy projected to shrink three percent this year and six percent in large countries in the North like the United States and in the South like Brazil.

With that forecast, “it seems that the efforts of governments will tend to sustain and deepen the extractivist model, including hydrocarbons,” said researcher María Marta di Paola, of Argentina’s Environment and Natural Resources Foundation.

In 2018, according to British oil giant BP, global consumption of primary energy (the energy embodied in natural resources before undergoing any human-made conversions or transformations) was 13,865 million tons of oil equivalent (Mtoe), with a predominance of fossil fuels: oil 33.6 percent, coal 27.2 percent and gas 23.8 percent.

Hydroelectricity represented 6.8 percent and sources strictly considered renewable (solar, wind, geothermal, marine, biomass) contributed just 561 Mtoe, or 4.04 percent.

The Paris Agreement, aimed at adapting to and mitigating the climate emergency, establishes that developing countries will take longer to comply with the agreement and that the reductions to which they commit will be made on the basis of equity and in the context of their fight against poverty and for sustainable development.

But in the face of the crises caused by the pandemic, many of the 196 signatory countries, “seeking to take advantage of their installed capacity and regulate impacts on employment and consumption, will relax environmental standards and miss the opportunity to begin a clean, fair and inclusive energy transition,” said Di Paola.

Lisa Viscidi of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue said that “although rates of return are currently higher for renewables than for fossil fuels, there are indications that it will be difficult to attract investment in solar or wind energy before demand recovers.”

View of a gas plant in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, a major oil exporter. The outlook of abundant oil and lower prices in the midst of the crisis points to intense demand for and use of fossil fuels in the short and even medium term. CREDIT: ADNOC

She cited “the plunge in demand for electricity due to the self-isolation (to curb the spread of COVID-19), which strongly impacts the auctions of renewables, leading to their cancellation” – a reference to the mechanism for buying and selling electricity between suppliers and distributors.

With the collapse of oil prices, governments like those of Latin America “will not be inclined towards renewable energy for now, calculating that it could have higher costs,” said Viscidi, head of the energy area in her organisation.

But also when the current world health crisis ends, “the post-pandemic economy will pose insurmountable obstacles for many countries in the global South to achieve a transformation of their energy mix,” said Alejandro López-González, an expert in sustainability from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain.

This, he argued, is because “the transformation of the energy mix in countries of the South depends on trade in commodities with industrialised countries,” that is, on securing good markets and prices for their products, which provide revenue with which to adopt cleaner energy sources.

Throughout the developing South, the global recession will result in fewer exports, business closures, job losses, lower tax revenues and reduced investment, according to projections by multilateral bodies, leaving capital- and technology-intensive initiatives, such as solar or wind farms, without resources.

Currently, in the developing South, only India, with solar and wind energy plants, and Brazil (wind and biomass) are attempting to keep up with the giants that possess large non-conventional clean energy installations: China, the United States, Germany and Japan.

In 2018, renewable energies represented only 9.3 percent, or 2,480 of the 26,615 terawatts (1 Tw = 1 billion kilowatts) of electricity generation in the world, versus 10,100 Tw contributed by coal, 6,189 by gas and 4,193 by water sources.

Peter Fox-Penner, head of Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, said in an article distributed by The Conversation that “Economy-driven demand reductions, which are likely worldwide, will hurt new renewable installations.

“Utilities will tighten their budgets and defer building new plants. Companies that make solar cells, wind turbines, and other green energy technologies will shelve their growth plans and adopt austerity measures,” in the context of the global recession, he wrote.

But “Countervailing factors will partly offset this decline, at least in wealthy countries,” Fox-Penner said. “Many renewable plants are being installed for reasons other than demand growth, such as clean power targets in state laws and regulations,” and public pressure that forces utilities to close down coal-fired power plants, he added.

The outlook for oil

Along these lines, Venezuelan economist José Manuel Puente predicted that “the energy transition will happen, there are more and more regulations, electric and hybrid cars, and the problem for Venezuela, Nigeria or Mexico is that we will remain poor countries with deposits of black sludge underground.”

López-González is also in favour of countries like Venezuela – with an enormous potential for wind energy due to the strong, constant trade winds that blow in the northwest – fully exploiting their hydrocarbon resources in order to finance changes in their energy mix.

But these strategies were suspended for members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and for other crude oil producers, when oil prices collapsed to the point that on Apr. 20 they reached negative values, for the first time in history.

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate was quoted that day on the New York futures market at -37 dollars per barrel, 50 dollars below its opening price that day of 13 dollars.

The prices plunged because, as stockpiles overwhelmed storage facilities, buyers did not want to be forced to receive agreed shipments for delivery on that “Black Monday”, and preferred to assume the cost of getting out of the commitment.

That day illustrated the decline in demand that had already started before the arrival of coronavirus in Europe and the Americas, and which gave rise in March to a supply reduction agreement between the 11 OPEC partners and 10 other exporters.

The recession triggered by COVID-19 will mean that the world will consume 30 percent less this year: 70 million barrels a day of oil, down from 100 million in 2019.

This oil crisis “brings very bad news for producers in the Gulf, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela and others: it is the end of absolute income, and the extreme minimisation of the differential income of oil,” said Habalián, a former Venezuelan ambassador to OPEC.

For years, oil exporting nations benefited from setting reference prices for oil before it reached the markets. And in addition, due to the wide gap between costs and prices, they piled up profits that are being pulverised by the current crisis.

Also affected are dozens of companies facing bankruptcy since the growing demand and strong oil prices had allowed them to extract, mainly in the United States, shale oil and gas by means of fracking (hydraulic fracturing), an environmentally questionable technique.

Finally, the energy landscape will be impacted by the behaviors that consumers adopt in the wake of the pandemic – such as their use of energy or demand for travel – or by changes in labour relations after the extensive experiment in off-site work as a result of the COVID-19 self-isolation.

The post The Crises of 2020 Will Delay the Transition to Clean Energy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Aldo Caliari
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

On April 17, the Alberto Ángel Fernández administration in Argentina officially unveiled its offer for debt restructuring on USD 66 billion foreign currency-denominated bonds. Starting on that date, the offer is valid for 20 days, a period during which difficult negotiations with bondholders are expected to take place. Based on the first reactions from some of creditor groups, one could well get the sense that the offer is “dead on arrival.”

Aldo Caliari

Those who watched Argentina’s last debt restructuring will inevitably feel a sense of déjà-vu. In 2001, Argentina defaulted on debt amounting to about USD 80 bn. Sovereign debt restructurings were concluded in 2005 and 2010 obtaining cumulative adherence by more than 92 percent of creditors. The protracted legal battle by the minority holdout creditors to get paid the full amount of their credits plus interest was called by many the “trial of the century.” It did not end well for Argentina, which ultimately, in 2016, had to abide by the US courts’ decision and pay about USD 10 bn.

Then, as now, Argentina asserted that significant debt reductions were necessary to restore the economy to a situation of growth and debt sustainability which improves chances of repayment in the future. Then, as now, creditors would refer to Argentina’s behavior as “unreasonable” and “unilateral,” accusing it of failing to engage in dialogue with the creditors and lacking good faith.

In any situation of insolvency, it is perhaps inevitable that the views of debtor and creditors about the haircut that creditors should take will differ. In the domestic context, the institution of bankruptcy was created precisely to provide a rules-based, predictable framework to address and sort out such differences. It is unfortunate that, in the international context, a similar institution does not exist. That means that Argentina and its creditors go into this process against, with a few variations, the same stark “law of the jungle” institutional backdrop that was there almost two decades ago.

In a bargain whose outcome is left to the sheer strength of the parties, some amount of initial posturing seems hardly avoidable. The fact that the previous restructuring has left scars on both the country and the creditor community does not help. However, amidst the déjà-vu, three important differences between the previous restructuring and the current one should, arguably, merit close attention.

First, Argentina’s claim about the extent of restructuring needed to place the economy again on a growth track is, this time, supported by the International Monetary Fund. Back in February, the IMF characterized Argentina’s debt as unsustainable, estimating that restructuring needs would amount to USD 55-85 billion over the next ten years and that there is no room for foreign currency payments in the next few years.

Argentina has crafted an offer that prudently stays within the lower range of these estimates while combining debt interest and principal cuts in a way consistent with the IMF’s projections. Additionally, the IMF Managing Director recently expressed that Argentina is acting in good faith. This is quite a different situation from that in the early 2000s, when the IMF labelled Argentina’s negotiations with creditors as not being carried out in “good faith.”

Second, this offer comes against the dramatic backdrop of a Covid 19-induced economic crisis with unprecedented features such as the combination of both a supply and demand shock and previously unseen falls in commodity prices. Forecasts for the world show the worst contraction since the Great Depression, at least 3 percentage points, in the next year.

Forecasts for the South America region are even gloomier, with indicators showing a 5.3 % contraction is likely. This scenario amounts to dramatically different external and internal conditions than the demand and commodities boom that Argentina and the region were experiencing in the early 2000s. At that time, one could understand investors fighting tooth and nail to share on what could be foreseen as a high growth story to come. But current conditions suggest contractionary measures could only deepen a vicious cycle of lower spending and recession. In fact, had the IMF assessment of Argentina’s debt sustainability been conducted a couple of months later, it probably would have had to advise significant bigger haircuts.

Third, perhaps most important, there is no denying that saving lives and dealing with the health emergency should come as a first priority for the Argentinian government. This is not only the right thing to do for humane reasons, but also because that is a necessary condition for limiting the economic harm.

On this count, in terms of per capita cases and of acceleration rate, Argentina’s performance in flattening the curve stands out when compared with those in the region and in similar conditions. It actually ranks ahead of countries with significantly more resources. But this came at the cost of resolute action to shut down the economy, with the inevitable damage to revenues. It also put an additional burden on public spending to ensure lockdown measures could be followed by all and mitigate impacts on the most vulnerable. In turn, when the health crisis recedes, a speedy and robust recovery will only be possible to the extent that company and job losses have been averted. This will also call for significant stimulus spending.

Bondholders’ initial reactions seem to be driven by longstanding instincts developed in a different scenario. It will be in everybody’s best interest if they can recognize that the current debt restructuring represents a dramatically different situation.

The post Argentina’s Debt Restructuring “Groundhog Day”… or Maybe Not? Three Key Points appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Heike Kuhn
BONN, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

Do you recognize this man? You do, of course. It is the silhouette of Beethoven, the famous composer and pianist‎, well known all over the world. The year 2020 marks his 250th anniversary and the UN city of Bonn, Germany is very proud of its famous son, born here, next to the river Rhine. The calendar for 2020 shows many festivals, musical events, and exhibitions, attracting tourists and people appreciating classic music from all around the globe. We all immediately recognize his famous Fifth Symphony with the sound known worldwide of ‘da-da-da-daaaa’. As Europeans we honor his Ninth Symphony, this having been chosen as the European anthem.

Whoever is driving through the city of Bonn can see the profile of Beethoven on traffic lights as they turn green. Everyone understands that the message of a green traffic light is “Go ahead, you are free to drive”. For me, seeing the green traffic light connected to the silhouette of Beethoven, I have special reflections I would like to share with you. In a nutshell: Beethoven, being a great composer, becoming slowly deaf, but nevertheless not stopping his composing of masterpieces – a great attitude!

What caused this idea in me? For several years now I have done work in development policy on the rights of persons with disabilities. Persons with disabilities are the biggest majority in the world as about one billion people are counted as living with a disability, with a rising tendency due to longevity. Today we count 80 per cent of persons with disabilities as inhabitants of developing countries, where life is often much harder for vulnerable groups. Since 2006, persons with disabilities are protected by a special UN treaty, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, signed by 163 countries and the European Union. However, in many places they still have to fight or appeal for their rights. This has to change and all of us have to be part of this cultural alteration – the sooner, the better.

Getting back to Beethoven: His pieces of music are famous, on all continents. His extraordinary musical talent became obvious at an early age and he was intensively taught by his father. Born in 1770 in Bonn, he moved to Vienna at the age of 21, spending the rest of his professional life there. In Vienna, he worked together with Haydn, soon establishing a reputation in the Austrian capital, performing in the salons of the Viennese nobility which offered him financial support. However, when the 19th century started, his hearing began to deteriorate, turning him almost completely deaf by 1814, when he gave up performing and appearing in public.

But his deafness did not prevent him from continuing his work: The famous Ninth Symphony, one of the first examples of a choral symphony, was created by him from 1822 to 1824. This masterpiece is regarded by many musicologists as Beethoven’s greatest work and considered as one of the supreme achievements in the history of western music. The words derive from a poem written by the German poet Friedrich Schiller, the famous “Ode to Joy” with some text additions by the composer himself. This musical masterpiece stands as one of the most often performed symphonies of the world. At an early stage of European integration the Ninth Symphony was chosen as the anthem of Europe. A great choice!

Try imagining – a deaf composer is able to create a symphony this valuable, using nothing else but his existing knowledge of the sound of music and the pure imagination of vocal and instrumental tones. Not allowing deafness to hold up your great talent, but pursuing your way with all your power, creativity and verve, is fantastic!

This is why I have always been impressed by Beethoven. And I am even more impressed these days, when the Ninth Symphony in March 2020 rang out during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in Italy, Spain and Germany. Women and men, sang out from their balconies, sending out a signal of hope to the world. The choice of this symphony reminds us, in times of crisis, what is most relevant: fellowship and solidarity. Music acts as an effective remedy against despair and loneliness, to counter the crisis. So put on the music and enjoy, despite everything, playing tribute to a talented deaf composer showing us the way out of desperation, simply by staying active and motivated.

So when the green traffic light appears, just take note of the lesson: Whatever occurs in your life, keep on going ahead, as no disability will ever be strong enough to limit your special talent.

The post Remembering Beethoven – a Genius with a Disability appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Nteranya Sanginga

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

Africa’s frailties have been brutally exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. The virus has reached nearly every country on this continent of 1.3 billion people and the World Health Organization warns there could be 10 million cases within six months. Ten countries have no ventilators at all.

Governments are fighting the pandemic with weak health systems where lockdowns are especially punitive in the absence of a welfare state. Many people subsist on daily earnings, living off the informal economy in densely crowded living conditions that make a mockery of ‘social distancing’. Collapsing commodity prices in international markets and capital outflows from emerging markets are hitting economies.

But so too Africa’s strengths are on display. Valuable lessons have been learned from past epidemics, such as the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and governments are responding with strict measures. Far from the stereotyped image of the Third World calling for help from richer countries, people are demonstrating their resilience, generosity, civic spirit and boundless ingenuity.

Africa’s young population gives hope too. With a median age of less than 20 years, the continent may suffer relatively fewer fatalities than other nations with more ageing populations. The pandemic is underscoring what many have cautioned for years – that Africa’s economies need to depend less on exporting raw materials and do more to tackle the urgent issues of food insecurity, youth unemployment and poverty.

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

As a research-for-development non-profit, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) works with various partners across sub-Saharan Africa to facilitate agricultural solutions to hunger, poverty and natural resource degradation. IITA improves livelihoods, enhances food and nutrition security and increases employment as one of 15 research centres in CGIAR, a global partnership for a food secure future.

Throughout the pandemic, IITA is helping sub-Saharan food systems by monitoring food prices and strengthening access to agricultural technologies and markets..

Before the coronavirus surfaced, IITA had launched a three-year project known as CARE (Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence) to build an understanding of poverty reduction, employment impact, and factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness, and rural farm and non-farm economies. The project was funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and provided 80 research fellowships for young African scholars, with an emphasis on young female professionals and students aiming to acquire a master’s or doctoral degree.

Grantees were offered training on research methodology, data management, scientific writing, and the production of research evidence for policymaking. They are mentored by IITA scientists and experts on a research topic of their choice and produce science articles and policy briefs about their work.

How is Africa going to feed a population set to double by 2050? As CGIAR says: we are at a crossroads in the world’s food system and cannot continue our current trajectory of consuming too little, too much, or the wrong types of food at an unsustainable cost to natural resources, the environment and human health.

Here in sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture contributes to nearly a quarter of GDP and smallholder farmers make up more than 60 percent of the population. Young people are finding careers in agribusiness and IITA aims to strengthen their capacity to inform future action plans for local communities and up to national governments, the business sector and international community.

Dolapo Adeyanju, a IITA grantee, illustrates how Africa is capable of generating more youth engagement in policy research, whether on policy, start-ups, agribusiness, development initiatives or leadership. A Nigerian national, Ms Adeyanju is a master’s student at the University of Nairobi working in collaboration with the University of Pretoria, focusing on the impact of agricultural programs on youth agripreneurship in Nigeria.

“Policymakers cannot operate in a vacuum,” she says, stressing the need for appropriate policies to be based on relevant evidence derived from research results and recommendations.

Development of effective policies will enable African young people who are already taking advantage of agricultural research to make a life out of farming. IITA’s CARE project will help make up for the deficit of youth-specific research, and the support of IFAD ensures that young Africans will have a voice in how they can contribute to this effort.

Africa was not well prepared for a crisis of this magnitude in COVID-19. Universities have been closed, borders shut, and trade has plummeted. The pandemic has exposed decades-long underinvestment in vital sectors, as well as demonstrating the importance of scientific and educational collaboration. The immediate focus will naturally be on the direct response to the disease in terms of medical research, equipment and health care. But as the pandemic pushes through, Africa must keep its eye on long-term development needs. IITA will play its role in equipping the next generation to advance agriculture and feed the people of Africa.

 

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Excerpt:

Nteranya Sanginga is Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

The post Pandemic Lays Bare Africa’s Deficits, but Youth Will Grow the Future appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: SIPRI

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

China and India, which went to war back in 1962 largely over a disputed Himalayan border– and continue a longstanding battle for military supremacy in Asia– have set a new record in arms spending.

For the first time, the world’s two most populous nations, accounting for a total of over 2.7 billion people, are now among the top three military spenders, ranking behind the United States.

In its latest report on global military expenditures, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) says the five largest spenders in 2019, accounting for 62 per cent of expenditures, were the United States, China, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in descending order.

China’s military expenditure reached $261 billion in 2019, a 5.1 per cent increase compared with 2018, while India’s grew by 6.8 per cent to $71.1 billion.

Total global military expenditure rose to $1.9 trillion in 2019, representing an increase of 3.6 per cent from 2018 and the largest annual growth in spending since 2010.

“These numbers would be staggering in any context, but in the middle of a global pandemic we have even more reason to be alarmed,” said Tori Bateman, Policy Advocacy Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee.

“Instead of spending trillions on preparing for destructive wars, the United States and other countries across the globe should be protecting and providing for their people by investing in public health,” he noted.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Full Professor with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS military spending by China and India likely reflects both their mutual rivalry within the region and their individual quests for power in the global context.

The two countries also faced a border standoff in 2017.

She pointed out that the SIPRI data indicate the extent to which many countries, especially the United States, have profoundly misplaced budget priorities.

Unfortunately, many national leaders seem to see military spending as an indicator of national prestige, said Dr Goldring, who is a Visiting Professor of the Practice in Duke University’s Washington DC program and also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

“From the perspective of those of us who support decreasing military spending, heads of state bragging about their countries’ military prowess often reflects toxic masculinity”.

President Trump is a prominent example of this phenomenon, she declared.

Credit: SIPRI

Asked about the record spending by the two Asian giants, Siemon Wezeman, Senior Researcher at SIPRI’s Arms and Military Expenditure Programme, told IPS: “The main reasons are: perception or even reality of threats.”

China, he pointed out, looks with suspicion and worry at its surroundings and its interests further away (including resources on which China is dependent from the Middle East and Africa; markets and protection of export transport lines on which it is also dependent).

This includes a worry about US power and intentions.

India, at war with Pakistan, has internal conflicts and fears a big and growing China hovering at the contested Chinese-Indian border, he noted.

China, being allied with Pakistan, friendly with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, also sees India’s unhealthy interest in the Indian Ocean, said Wezeman.

“They both think of themselves as major powers, and China even as a superpower.

And both seem to believe that any major or superpower status is partly based on military might,” he noted.

So, both are building up significant military forces not only for home defence but also for potential operations away from the homeland, armed with high-tech weapons from an expanding local arms industry – all expensive, said Wezeman.

Certainly for China, he argued, the military and the People’s Armed Police, (which we count as enough military-trained and equipped to be included in our estimate of China’s military spending) are a cornerstone of government control over the population.

According to SIPRI, the United States once again dominates the rest of the world in its military spending, accounting for 38 percent of global military spending in 2019, more than the next nine countries combined.

Reacting to the latest SIPRI report, 39 U.S.-based think-tanks, non-profits, and faith-based organizations released a statement calling on the U.S. government to reduce military spending, according to the American Friends Service Committee.

Meanwhile, China accounted for 14 percent of the global total military expenditures in 2019. India (3.7 percent), Russia (3.4 percent), and Saudi Arabia (estimated at 3.2 percent) were closely bunched in third, fourth, and fifth places.

Global military expenditure was 7.2 per cent higher in 2019 than it was in 2010, showing a trend that military spending growth has accelerated in recent years,’ said Dr Nan Tian, SIPRI Researcher.

‘This is the highest level of spending since the 2008 global financial crisis and probably represents a peak in expenditure.’

Asked about the negative impact of the coronavirus crisis on future military spending, Dr Goldring told IPS no one knows what the full consequences of the coronavirus will be.

She said economists warn of the prospect of a global depression, while also arguing that many countries are already experiencing recession.

The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently warned that the coronavirus is likely to return in the fall, and that it may be even more difficult to manage than is currently the case.

“It’s time for countries to reevaluate their priorities. Otherwise, although military spending and arms transfers may decrease as a result of the economic effects of the coronavirus, these decreases are likely to only be temporary.”

“The coronavirus tests countries’ willingness to put their people’s needs first. Unfortunately, we’ll only be able to determine in retrospect whether that has happened, as we examine the extent to which countries reallocate funds from military spending to meet people’s critical needs, including their needs for food, water, shelter, health care, and physical safety.”

“This is no time for business as usual,” said Dr Goldring

Wezeman said: “We don’t like to predict the future. Everyone agrees now that the covid-19 crisis will result in a severe economic crisis already this year”.

He said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects gross domestic product (GDP) to go down in many states or at least grow much less than expected just a few months ago.

“This will impact on government income and on spending priorities – while health care, social spending, investments to get the economy going again are probably in many states going to be a higher priority than defence.”

That is what happened, he said, in recent economic crises such as in 2008-2009 and the late-1990. In some states, cuts have already been made (e.g. Thailand, Malaysia).

However, military spending does not only depend on the economy — other issues are part of the decision on how much to spend, especially threat perceptions, that may be found in some states are more important than other government spending posts, he noted.

While some funds in military spending are more flexible (mainly on acquisitions of equipment) that can be cut fast, mostly spending is quite fixed (salaries and pensions make up a very large part of military spending in most states) and thus the cuts or reduced growth in military spending can only be implemented over a few years, Wezeman declared.

*Thalif Deen is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services (DMS);
a Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; and military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group.

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By Josef Benedict
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

May 3rd marks World Press Freedom Day around the world. During this COVID-19 pandemic, a robust media environment is critical: access to life-saving information is key in the fight against the virus. As governments impose a range of restrictions in attempts to curb the pandemic, journalists help hold authorities to account by providing analysis, engaging in debate about government actions, and creating a space for dialogue about the future we all hope to see.

However, civic freedoms are under assault across the world. Data released by the CIVICUS Monitor in its People Power Under Attack report — which rates and tracks respect for fundamental freedoms in 196 countries — shows that compared to the previous year, twice as many people are living in countries where the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, and expression are being violated.

In Asia, the percentage of people living in countries with closed, repressed or obstructed civic space is now at 95 percent. There has been growing intolerance for dissent in this region and states are increasingly using restrictive laws or intimidation tactics to muzzle activists and critics. In the past year, numerous Asian governments – from Pakistan to Hong Kong – used excessive force to disrupt protests, while civil society organisations critical of the authorities faced smear campaigns or were forced to shut down.

This has made the Asian region an extremely repressive and dangerous place for journalists and media outlets to operate. Many seeking to expose human rights violations and corruption by those in power, or who try to amplify voices critical of the state, often put themselves in harm’s way.

Journalists are also being criminalised in many countries in Asia for their reporting. In the Philippines, Maria Ressa, executive editor of news website Rappler, which has published extensively on abuses in President Duterte’s ‘war on drugs,’ has faced baseless cases of tax evasion and libel. In Myanmar, authorities have repeatedly targeted journalists, while in Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen has attempted to silence the few remaining independent journalists and media outlets in the country. Cambodian Radio Free Asia journalists, Yeang Sothearin and Uon Chhin, continue to face fabricated espionage charges since 2017 for their reporting, despite the lack of any credible evidence against them.

Even in a country like India, where the press has played a crucial role in protecting the country’s democracy since its independence, journalists now feel under attack. Kishorechandra Wangkhem, a journalist from Manipur, spent a year in prison under the draconian National Security Act for posting a video on social media criticising the ruling party.

Governments are also increasing the use of censorship to block the flow of news in the Asian region.

The Chinese Communist Party is the main perpetrator as it continues to expand its censorship regime, blocking critical media outlets and social media sites. In Bangladesh, the authorities have blocked Al Jazeera and numerous other news portals and websites critical of the state. While in countries like Singapore, the authorities have targeted independent news websites such as The Online Citizen, to suppress its critical reporting. States also have used internet shutdowns to block reporting, for example, in places like Indian-administered Kashmir, in Chin and Rakhine states in Myanmar, and in West Papua in Indonesia.

Across Asia, journalists are also facing physical attacks, threats and intimidation from the authorities and other non-state actors. Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Dozens of journalists have been attacked by security forces and members of armed groups. Ten journalists were shot dead in 2019 by unknown gunmen and some were abducted by armed groups.

In the Philippines there is a culture of impunity around attacks and killing of journalists, with perpetrators rarely held to account. In 2019, radio journalist Eduardo Dizon, who often reported on corruption, was shot dead while on his way home in Kidapawan City after hosting a daily news commentary show. He sustained five gunshot wounds when two gunmen on a motorcycle stopped beside his car at a corner and shot him.

Journalists are also going missing. Shafiqul Islam Kajol, a leading Bangladeshi photojournalist and newspaper editor, is believed to have been forcibly disappeared on 10 March, a day after defamation charges were filed against him by an influential ruling party lawmaker.

These threats to press freedom are being exacerbated as we combat the COVID-19 pandemic. As governments attempt to control the narrative, combat misinformation and silence criticism, journalists are in the firing line.

In February, Chinese freelance journalist Li Zehua went missing. He had traveled to Wuhan from Beijing to report on the COVID-19 outbreak and had posted a video saying that a local neighbourhood committee had not carried out the basic countermeasures promised by authorities and had also tried to cover up information about infected cases in the community.

In the Philippines, two journalists were charged in early April for spreading “false information” about the country’s COVID-19 crisis. While in Cambodia, police arrested a journalist, Sovann Rithy, for quoting the country’s prime minister who spoke about the economic consequences of COVID-19. The authorities also revoked the license for Rithy’s news site.

Most recently, in a blatant attempt to use the pandemic to intimidate a leading media outlet in India, Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, was charged for reporting on a government minister violating the country’s coronavirus lockdown. These cases highlight a worrying trend that must be checked before it deteriorates further.

Therefore, it is crucial now more than ever for us to push back on these attacks and restrictions to press freedom. Individuals and their communities cannot protect themselves against disease when information is denied to them. The protection of the media is a protection of the public’s right to information. As we mark this important day for press freedom, we must ensure that journalism thrives and plays its essential role of informing the public and holding officials accountable.

• Josef Benedict is a Civic Space Researcher with CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance. He covers Asia-Pacific.

The post World Press Freedom Day: The Assault on Media Freedom in Asia Worsens During COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

MEDIA WORLDWIDE is facing crises on multiple fronts, exacerbated by the COVID19 pandemic. Reporters without Borders released its 2020 World Press Freedom Index on April 21st, noting that the Coronavirus is being used by authoritarian governments to implement “shock doctrine” measures that would be impossible in normal times.

The index shows a “clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, and a country’s ranking in the Index.” Of the 180 countries and territories in the index, Iran (ranked at 173) censored their Coronavirus outbreaks extensively. Iraq, at 162, punished Reuters for an article that questioned official pandemic figures, and Hungary (ranked at 89) has just passed a coercive Coronavirus Law.

The long-term risks of suppressing press freedoms have been exposed by the pandemic. As the death toll mounts amidst an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, promoting transparent reporting is a global necessity. Yet, several countries stand accused of acting too late in warning the world about the timing and extent of the threat.

The World Press Freedom Index illustrates the oppression of journalists from North to South and a pandemic in its own right seems to have fomented.

 

 

In Myanmar, Voice of Myanmar’s editor was arrested recently and charged with terrorism for interviewing a representative of the Arakan Army, a rebel group fighting for regional autonomy.

Even the president of the world’s most powerful democracy has described the press as “the enemy of the people.”

Ultimately, the freedom of the press can only be guaranteed by a coordinated global effort, public awareness and a focus on the long-term advantages of a more critical world.

This year’s World Press Freedom Day aims to do just that, under the theme of “Journalism Without Fear or Favour.” It calls for awareness on specific issues about the safety of journalists, their independence from political or commercial influence, and gender equality in all aspects of the media.

In the words of Albert Camus, “…without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”

 

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Andrés Chambouleyron is non-resident fellow at the Institute of the Americas

By Andrés Chambouleyron
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 28 2020 (IPS)

Electricity demand normally depends on such variables as retail electricity rates, daytime temperature, time and day of the week, economic activity and consumer type (i.e. residential, commercial, industrial, etc.).

During the period of the COVID-19 pandemic however, there have been dramatic quarantine policies enacted aimed at controlling the virus but with dire economic impacts. The extent of those economic impacts on energy have been widely reported in terms of fossil fuel consumption but what about the electric sector? Has there been a similar reduction in demand and consumption? Moreover, will it be permanent or more temporary?

A residential user will normally consume electricity between 6 pm when they come home after work and 8 am when they leave again peaking at 8 – 10 pm during dinner time. Commercial or industrial electricity demand by contrast will follow the economic activity of each sector during the hours of a typical business day.

The daily aggregate demand curve of both types of users will normally show a two-hump shape with peaks during noon and the evening hours when users go back home after their workday. Also, weekly demand curves will show peaks during weekdays and valleys during weekends reflecting high (low) business activity.

By adding up average daily consumption during a month one should see a curve with ups and downs reflecting high activity during weekdays and low activity during weekends as reflected in the graph below.

This shows total (daily) electricity consumption in Argentina between March 1 and April 22 in 2019 (grey backdrop behind) in contrast with total consumption during the same period in 2020 and broken down by distributors (blue curve) and large users (yellow curve) before and after the mandatory lockdown imposed by Argentina’s government on March 20, 2020.

The lockdown included all economic sectors with very few exceptions: manufacturing and sales of food and basic consumer goods and services.

 

 

From the simple observation of the graph above one can see that electricity consumption for both distributors and large users fell after the lockdown imposed on March 20, 2020. More precisely, by taking the difference between the average daily demand of the 10 working days after and those before lockdown, consumption by distribution companies fell by 18.2% and for large users by 32.4% (-20% totally). This reduction is starker after breaking down consumption by large users into 3 groups: food, retail sales and services, manufacturing and oil, gas and mining as shown in the following graph:

 

 

The difference between the average daily consumption of the 10 working days after and 10 before lockdown shows manufacturing demand falling by 50.6%, Food, Retail Sales and Services by 15.3% and Oil, Gas & Mining by 3.8%.

By taking the difference in consumption of the same number of (only) working days before and after lockdown we control for several variables. On the one hand retail rates, and on the other economic activity for we know that the latter takes on different values between working days and weekends.

Also, by using a relatively reduced number of working days (10 before and after) we control for another important variable that affects electricity demand: temperature. One can safely assume that temperature did not substantially change in the 20 days that we take as sample to assess the impact of lockdown on electricity demand. Indeed, the average temperature in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area fell from 21.6°C during the 10 days before lockdown to only 21.5°C after lockdown (-0.1°C).

Having now controlled for temperature, retail rates, economic activity and working days can we safely conclude that the mandatory lockdown caused a reduction in electricity consumption of the magnitudes already shown? Not yet.

The analysis is still incomplete because we need to know the trend that electricity consumption had before the 20 days under study. In other words, if electricity consumption was already falling at a rate of 10% before our 20 – day sample and continued falling at 10% after lockdown, can we conclude that lockdown caused that fall?

The answer is obviously not, absent the lockdown consumption still would have fallen by 10% and therefore lockdown would have had no impact on it whatsoever. To take that effect into consideration we need a control sample. Ideally, the control sample should show the exact same underlying variables that our test sample but – for the lockdown.

There are two possible ways of doing this, one is to project counterfactual consumption values beyond March 20, 2020 assuming no lockdown but with the same underlying variables (temperature, retail rates, economic activity, working days, etc.) as in reality. The other (much simpler) is to use the difference in consumption of the 10 working days after and before March 20,2019 and compare it with the actual reduction in 2020.

For the sake of simplicity, herewith the latter approach whose results that are shown as follows:

 

 

The table shows the actual 2020 reduction in electricity consumption but adjusted for what happened the same 20 days in 2019. For instance, after lockdown we observe a reduction in consumption by Distribution companies of 18,2% however this consumption was already falling by 1,7% during the same days the year before so the net impact of lockdown is the difference, –18,2% – (– 1,7%) = – 16,5% and the same for the rest of the sectors.

This approach should work well as long as there are no substantial differences in temperature and retail rates during both periods, which is the case.

In sum, after controlling for several relevant variables, the impact of mandatory lockdown in the consumption of electricity in Argentina was substantial, ranging from -48,4% in manufacturing to -32,5% in large-scale users to only -8% in Oil, Gas and Mining.

How much of that reduction will be permanent and how much of a more temporary nature? It’s hard to say however most of activities that do not involve the gathering or crowds will go back to normal as soon as the lockdown is lifted, the others (i.e. movies, concerts, restaurants and bars) may see a permanent reduction due to the change in social habits and norms.

 

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Excerpt:

Andrés Chambouleyron is non-resident fellow at the Institute of the Americas

The post Electricity Demand During Lockdown: Evidence from Argentina appeared first on Inter Press Service.

For many people agriculture is the only means of survival, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Marco V. Sánchez Cantillo
ROME, Apr 28 2020 (IPS)

Many uncertainties haunt the world’s campaign to counter the COVID-19 pandemic, but one thing is now sure: Global economic activity will suffer greatly, with large-scale consequences for the incomes and welfare of all, but especially for the most vulnerable food import-dependent countries.

In the absence of timely and effective policy responses, this will exacerbate an already unwelcome increase in the number of people who don’t have enough to eat.

Last year The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, the SDG2 monitoring report that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) produces in collaboration with other UN partners, warned that economic slowdowns and downturns helped explain rising undernourishment levels in 65 of the 77 countries that recorded such rises between 2011 and 2017. The International Monetary Fund has just slashed its global gross domestic product forecast by a huge 6.3 percentage points, making FAO’s analysis all the more relevant as part of a worldwide toolkit to prevent the health crisis from triggering starvation.

In January, the IMF anticipated global GDP would expand by 3.3 percent, but in April, when much of the world was shutting down to contain contagion, it issued a new forecast of minus 3.0 percent. Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that is home to the world’s highest hunger rates and where the average age is around 20 years, must now brace for its first recession in a quarter of a century.

Analyzing data of food supply since 1995, linked to FAO’s statistical development of the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) indicator, and correlating them to past local economic trends in countries that are net food importers, we find that millions of people are likely to join the ranks of the hungry as a result of the COVID-19-triggered recession.

That number will vary according to the severity of GDP growth contractions, ranging from 14.4 million to 80.3 million depending on the scenario, with the latter figure a truly devastating contraction of 10 percentage points in all 101 net food-importing countries’ GDP growth.

The actual outcome could be worse if current inequalities in access to food are worsened – something that absolutely should not be allowed to happen.

The world is not facing food shortages, which is why FAO has from the pandemic’s outset advocated that all countries must do their best to keep food supply chains alive. With the new estimates emerging from a strictly economic analysis – based on food supply and availability and not other central pillars of food security – FAO is emphasizing that all countries must also foster measures to protect people’s ability to access food that is locally, regionally and globally available.

The nexus between undernourishment and economic performance was already driving the world away from the goal of eradicating hunger by 2030. FAO’s global PoU number has been rising since 2015, albeit slowly, ending decades of decline. It is now around where it was in 2010, and undernutrition affects one in nine people globally, with much higher rates in large swathes of Africa and Asia.

Governments are rolling out unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus to conserve economic capital and support safety nets for the newly unemployed. Many countries lack the tools to deploy such liquidity injections and public spending commitments. The international community must facilitate their capacity to act, while these countries must exert fiscal responsibility and objectivity to reallocate their own resources along with assistance to the most urgent needs that the COVID-19 pandemic has created. Health is the first priority, but sufficient and healthy food is a central part of the health response to the pandemic. Inadequate action will also severely weaken vulnerable populations for years to come. This would make prospect of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals all the more difficult.

So not only must efforts focus on keeping food supply chains alive, but it’s imperative to focus on food accessibility for all. Governments have an opportunity to tackle this issue head on by targeting the required official stimulus packages to the poorest and undernourished. Tools such as cash and in-kind transfers, new credit lines, safety nets, food banks, keeping school-lunch programmes alive can be useful.

Keep in mind that emphatically focusing on “have nots” will have a doubly positive effect, both helping those most in need and maximizing the impact of public resource outlays on maintaining the dynamism of demand.

There could be a third positive effect as well: Minimizing outright hunger in ways that avoid food insecurity and malnutrition will reduce the long-term scars inflicted by the recession, fostering more vitality and less dependence in the future. Indeed, insofar as possible stimulus measures that tackle the current menace to food access should be designed with a view to start building the resilience of food systems to safeguard them against economic slowdowns and downturns in the future.

The post Understanding the Hunger Surge Caused by the COVID-19 Recession to Mitigate It Before It Is Too Late appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Marco V. Sánchez Cantillo Deputy-Director, Agricultural Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

The post Understanding the Hunger Surge Caused by the COVID-19 Recession to Mitigate It Before It Is Too Late appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Khetsiwe Tofile a small-scale vegetable farmer in her garden in Malkerns, Eswatini. Even during the COVID-19 lockdown she has been able to get her produce to market and continues to earn an income. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MALKERNS, Eswatini, Apr 28 2020 (IPS)

Nobukhosi Cebekhulu (68) and Khetsiwe Tofile (64) are small-scale vegetable farmers who are producing from their permaculture home gardens in Malkerns, Eswatini.

Proud that they are able to make a small contribution towards a healthy nation during the COVID19 pandemic, both women say they are happy that they can still continue to produce and sell vegetables without leaving their homes.

IPS found them waiting for transport outside Tofile’s home with basins of lettuce to be collected by the Guba Permaculture Training Centre.

“We don’t go to the shop to buy inputs but we use seedlings that we produce and share among ourselves,” Cebekhulu told IPS adding: “Our produce is collected from our homes and taken to the market.”

According to Cebekhulu, they are part of the Guba programme which introduced them to skills of producing food in a way that is rebuilding and strengthening the physical ecology around them. Guba is based in Malkerns – a small bustling town of farmland nestled at the heart of Eswatini’s middleveld – and promotes a regenerative lifestyle.

Run on a 100-percent solar system, Guba harvests rainwater for sanitation and irrigation, produces its own compost and seedlings. Guba runs a 12-month permaculture training programme building practical skills and knowledge for improving homestead food security and crop resilience.

Cebekhulu and Tofile were part of the 2014 class of 25 farmers who learnt to build a fence using scrap material and alien evasive plants. They were also taught to produce their own seeds, make compost and pesticides (they make the latter by mixing wild garlic, chillies, onion, soap and warm water) that are not harmful to the environment.  

“This doesn’t kill the pests but it chases them away,” Cebekhulu said. “Pesticides aren’t good for our health and the environment. They’re also expensive.”

While Guba initially supported the farmers to produce enough for their families, Tofile told IPS the centre later trained them on business management so that they could sell and generate an income. The farmers come from 10 chiefdoms within a radius of 20 kilometres from the centre.

“Guba collects the produce and sells it on our behalf,” Tofile said. “That’s why we don’t have to worry about leaving home during this period (COVID19 partial lockdown).”

Guba director, Sam Hodgson, said the year-long permaculture adult training programme is a response to the nutrition and poverty challenges in Eswatini. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

Eswatini’s nutritional challenges

According to Guba director, Sam Hodgson, the year-long permaculture adult training programme is a response to the nutrition and poverty challenges in Eswatini.

Although 20 percent of Eswatini’s rural population experienced severe and acute food insecurity according to the 2019 Vulnerability Assessment Committee Report,  the country is making progress in meeting its nutritional needs. According to Musa Dlamini, the monitoring and evaluation officer at Eswatini Nutrition Council, children under five years old with stunting stands at 25.5 percent.

“This is still high because we have to be less than 20 percent in terms of the WHO [World Health Organisation] standards,” Dlamini told IPS. “We’ve made progress though because the figure dropped from around 30 percent in previous years.”

In the same age group, children with wasting are at about 2 percent and underweights are at 5 percent, which is acceptable in terms of WHO standards.

“We use children under 5 to measure nutrition in the country,” said Dlamini.

He said COVID19 might reverse progress though following the fact that people might lose their source of income during the partial lockdown period. Already, 63 percent of the total population of 1.3 million are poor, according to the United Nations World Food Programme.

Guba participants spend two to three days a month at the centre after which they apply what they have learnt at their homes. They acquire skills to harvest water, make compost, mulching, plant perennial species of trees and design their production cycle according to the four seasons. 

“We encourage the farmers to use material that they already have at home,” Hodgson told IPS. “That’s why we don’t expect them to buy new fencing material or tools. We’re adding value to the agriculture they’re already practising.”

Adapting to climate change

Hodgson said this programme is helping farmers acquire skills to cope with erratic rainfall as an adaptation strategy to climate change.

According to Dr. Deepa Pullanikkatil, a consultant based at the Coordinating Assembly of NGOs (CANGO) and co-director at Sustainable Futures in Africa, permaculture helps farmers to adapt to changing climate using sustainable farming practises which mimic nature.

“The practise produces healthy organic crops which can improve their incomes thereby enhancing their adaptive capacity,” Pullanikkatil told IPS.

She said, in permaculture, farmers harvest and conserve water, which is an adaptation strategy particularly because the country is experiencing erratic rainfall patterns due to climate change. Farmers also use low or no tillage methods and composting which are all great for soil fertility. Low tillage frees up time and it is less costly than hiring labour or tractors.

“This also has co-benefits to climate mitigation because of permanent crops, trees grown in the farm and low tillage practices contribute to carbon sequestration,” she said.

Garden farming equates healthy nutrition

Guba also supports the farmers with eating habits that promote a healthy lifestyle such as cooking that retains nutrients and adjusting the composition of the plate according to the right amount of starch, protein and vegetables.

The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) also promotes healthy and sustainable dietary patterns and sustainable ways of producing food. According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the BCFN and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), sub-Saharan Africa is home to the world’s hungriest populations. It also states that when it comes to countries addressing nutritional challenges “best practices might be found in smart regulation, whether that means educating consumers on healthy eating, discouraging unhealthy consumption patterns or requiring foods to contain certain vitamins and minerals”.

“What we’ve learnt about our farmers is that after participating in our programme, they visit the clinic less often because of the health benefits from the food they eat and how they eat it,” said Hodgson.

From garden to market

Guba also realised that one of the farmers’ challenges was money to pay school fees for their children and cater for other needs. Therefore, the centre decided to train some of the interested farmers to produce for the market. Hodgson described Guba as “an ethical middle-man” that supports the farmers to produce high-quality organic vegetables and sells it on their behalf to surrounding restaurants.

“We collect, repack and deliver,” said Hodgson. “This area (Malkerns) has a large middle-class population and many restaurants who buy the fresh produce that is delivered on the same day of harvest.”

This project earned about $1,100 from the sale of vegetables. Each farmer makes about $200 per month.

During the COVID-19 partial lockdown, which the Government introduced in March, all Guba restaurant customers had to close overnight. In response to this sudden loss of market, Guba opened a farm stall at the centre.

“After four weeks of operating the farm stall, three days a week. We’re doing well. Sales are increasing and customer feedback is very positive,” said Hodgson. 

This means Guba continues to buy produce from the farmers even during the COVID19 period thus keeping their income stream open and, at the same time, supplying fresh produce to the local community. 

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The post COVID-19 – How Eswatini’s Garden Farmers are Keeping the Vegetable Supply Flowing appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

During the COVID-19 partial lockdown in Eswatini, garden farmers say they are proud that they are able to make a small contribution towards a healthy nation during the pandemic.

The post COVID-19 – How Eswatini’s Garden Farmers are Keeping the Vegetable Supply Flowing appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By N Chandra Mohan
NEW DELHI, Apr 28 2020 (IPS)

The defining images of South Asia’s battle against Covid-19 are hundreds of thousands of migrants, many with children on their shoulders, trudging from New Delhi, Kathmandu or Dhaka to their far-flung villages. They are daily wage earners engaged in construction, small enterprises, plying rickshaws or street selling in the informal sector. With lockdowns and economic activity shut down to combat the virus, these migrants lost their low-paying jobs and were forced to flee to their rural homes. Those who remained in these cities face food insecurity, rising joblessness and risk falling deeper into poverty.

South Asia faces a major livelihoods crisis as the bulk of migrant employment in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh is informal. India has roughly 80% of its people or 200-odd million workers in the informal sector engaged in non-agricultural activities. This is the third disruptive shock faced by the informal sector after currency notes were suddenly withdrawn from circulation in November 2016 and a Goods and Services Tax introduced in July 2017. The share of the informal sector is higher at 91% in Bangladesh, followed by 78% in Nepal and 71% in Pakistan according to the International Labour Organisation.

“Covid-19 is likely to reverse many years, if not decades, of gains in poverty reduction and will widen inequalities further,” Dr Nagesh Kumar, Director and Head of South Asia, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific told IPS. South Asia thus cannot afford to have the worst of both worlds: a viral pandemic with rising joblessness and poverty that heighten risks of social unrest. Migrants must be brought back to work in the cities, especially in the informal sector, as the rate of unemployment has hit 26% in India. Pakistan expects 12.3 to 18.5 million people will be jobless with a “moderate to severe” Covid-19 outbreak.

As South Asian economies do not have the fiscal space to move towards a universal social protection to cover migrants, governments must save livelihoods by restarting the economy. India, for its part, has begun to gradually ease up agriculture and industry in non-Covid-19 affected zones. Others in the region too face similar compulsions. Garment exports of Bangladesh and Pakistan have been impacted by closed borders. Tourism has dried up, hitting smaller economies like Nepal. As people are advised to stay at home, retail outlets and restaurants experience fewer footfalls, affecting the region’s services sector.

The bad news is also that South Asian migrants abroad, especially in West Asia, are facing serious challenges of supporting themselves and want to return home. The South Asia- Gulf corridor has been one of the world’s fastest growing migration corridors. But times are a-changing. Oil futures collapsed below zero for the first time on April 20!
Oil-producing countries are employing more local labour than migrants. Travel restrictions are also being imposed, with prospects of returning conditional on medical certificates. Post Covid-19, the nightmarish prospect is for return migration that can only deepen the gloom in the region.

“These factors portend a far bigger and long-lasting crisis in the South Asia-Gulf corridor, even more than during the Gulf war and global economic crisis” stated Dr S Irudaya Rajan, Chair Professor, Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs Research Unit on International Migration at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram to IPS.

Remittances have been an important source of foreign exchange, equivalent to 25% of Nepal’s gross domestic product. In the Indian state of Kerala, the share of remittances is higher at 30% of GDP! Lower remittances will devastate their economies. The ranks of the jobless would swell when these migrants return.

With declining remittances, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh would also register higher imbalances in goods and services trade with the rest of the world than otherwise. Financing this gap will be a serious policy concern as foreign direct investment inflows are declining in these Covid-19 times. So, too, are portfolio investments that rise in
good times and fall in bad times. Research has established that remittances augment savings and investments of recipient households and help in poverty reduction. If such inflows reduce as expected over the near-term, they would worsen distributional outcomes in South Asia.

In the war against Covid-19, South Asia is persisting with national lockdowns — with the most severe one in India to a less restrictive one in Pakistan — to buy time by checking the virus’s transmission. This strategy will be efficacious if it is utilised wisely to beef up public health infrastructure. This is the best time to close the gaps in healthcare provision so that there is greater resilience to disasters. However, the fear is that “if Covid-19’s spread is not contained, due to herd immunity or high temperatures, a HUGE human security catastrophe may engulf the region” warned Commodore Uday Bhaskar, Director, Society for Policy Studies in Delhi.

 

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The post Staring at a Human Security Catastrophe appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 28 2020 (IPS)

The Covid-19 pandemic is now widely considered more threatening than any other recent viral epidemic. Most believe that many more have been infected or even died than officially confirmed.

Despite available information, some national leaders believed that the epidemic would not affect them. Others believed that promoting ‘herd immunity’ would protect populations by exposing them to the virus, triggering human immune systems to produce antibodies.

Flattening the curve?
The principal strategy adopted by most governments is to ‘flatten the curve’, so that countries’ health systems can cope with new infections by tracing, testing, isolating and treating those infected until such time that an approved vaccine or ‘cure’ is available to all.

But this is easier said than done. Vulnerability to infection and capacity to respond depend on many factors including healthcare system preparedness, experience and ability in managing viral outbreaks besides the specific challenges raised by Covid-19.

Government capacity to respond depends crucially on system capacity and capabilities — e.g., authorities’ ability to speedily trace, isolate and treat the infected — and available fiscal resources — e.g., to quickly enhance testing capacity and secure personal protective equipment.

But funding cuts, privatization and other types of rent-seeking in recent decades — in the face of rising costs, not least for medicines — have constrained and undermined most public health systems, albeit on various different pretexts.

Early action without lockdowns
Physical distancing, mask use and other precautionary measures as well as mass testing, tracing, isolation and treatment have checked the epidemic without lockdowns. Such measures have been quite successful so far in much of East Asia, Vietnam and the Indian state of Kerala.

Physical distancing and other precautionary measures, such as wearing masks in public areas, will be critically necessary until a vaccine is affordably available to all. Even the availability of a cure will not obviate the need for prevention offered by a vaccine.

Precautionary measures must be appropriate and affordable. To minimize the risk of infection, authorities can encourage and enable, if not require, changes in social interactions, including work and other public space arrangements, including offices, factories, shops, public transportation and classrooms.

Lockdowns: enforced, extended physical distancing
Since Wuhan, many governments have resorted to various types of ‘stay-in-shelter’ ‘lockdowns’ to enforce physical distancing for protracted periods to try to ‘circuit-break’ transmission. They buy precious time, for complementary interventions, allowing health authorities to check and reverse the spread of infections.

Anis Chowdhury

Besides enforcing extended physical distancing through lockdowns, appropriate complementary measures are needed for lockdowns to work. Testing, treating and quarantining the infected need to be complemented by tracing to identify those more likely to be infected.

But it has to be acknowledged that lockdowns are only part of an array of measures available to authorities to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Lockdowns are blunt measures of last resort, often due to the failure, inadequacy or delay of precautionary ‘early actions’. And ‘if you only have a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail’.

A lockdown was deemed necessary to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, and the surrounding three provinces, after other measures to deal with the novel epidemic seemed ‘too little, too late’. But in most other situations, adequate appropriate early precautionary measures may well have proved enough.

Lockdowns should not be economic knockouts
Depending on context, lockdowns have many other effects as well. Good planning, implementation and enforcement of movement restrictions and provisioning for all adversely affected are crucial, not only for efficacy, but also for transitions before, during and after.

Nonetheless, lockdowns typically incur huge economic costs, distributed unevenly in economies and societies. Governments must therefore be mindful of the costs, including of disruptions, and also of how policies affect various people differently.

The effectiveness of a lockdown has to be judged primarily by its ability to quickly ‘flatten the curve’ and ensure no resurgence of infections. Success should not be measured by duration, enforcement stringency or even by unsustainable declines in new cases.

Most ‘casual’ labourers, petty businesses reliant on daily cash turnover and others in the ‘informal’ economy will find it especially difficult to survive extended lockdowns. Although they need more relief support than most, they are often difficult for governments to reach.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Those living in cramped conditions, e.g., urban slums, cannot realistically be expected to practice consistent physical distancing, but will nonetheless need to be enabled to sustainably practice other precautionary measures within their modest means, e.g., using washable masks.

Governance, mobilization, leadership
To enhance efficacy and minimize disruptions, an ‘all of government’ approach at all levels needs to be developed, involving much more than public health and police enforcement authorities.

Human resource, social protection, transport, education, media, industry, fiscal and other relevant authorities need to be appropriately engaged to develop the various required transitions and to plan for the post-lockdown ‘new normal’.

Another condition for success is ‘whole of society’ mobilization and support. Government transparency and explanations for various measures undertaken are important for public understanding, cooperation, support and legitimacy.

The authorities must also realize how measures will be seen. Singapore’s apparent early success, for example, was not what it seemed as it had overlooked official disincentives for possibly infected migrant workers to cooperate.

Appropriate enhanced public health and other relevant communications and education will often need to be quickly developed to succeed. The efficacy and consequences of a ‘lockdown’ and related measures are contingent on public appreciation of the challenges and the ability of societies to respond appropriately with socio-economic, cultural and behavioural changes.

While the Covid-19 crisis is undoubtedly exceptional and full social mobilization is needed, such special ‘wartime’ measures must not be abused, e.g., by the temptation to bias implementation of measures for political advantage. Success can thus be greatly enabled by legitimate, credible and exemplary leadership, government and otherwise.

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