Oceans produce at least 50% of the Planet’s oxygen, while absorbing about 30% of carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming. Credit: Claudio Riquelme/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 7 2023 (IPS)

The good news: oceans cover three-quarters of the Earth’s surface, contain 97% of the world’s water, represent 99% of the living space on the Planet by volume, and are a major source of food and medicine. Much so that they are the main source of protein for more than a billion people around the world.

More: Oceans produce at least 50% of the Planet’s oxygen, while absorbing about 30% of carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming.

And the bad news

The bad news is that, with 90% of big fish populations depleted, and 50% of coral reefs destroyed, human beings are taking more from the ocean than can be replenished.

Marine biodiversity is under attack from overfishing, over-exploitation and ocean acidification. Over one-third of fish stocks are being harvested at unsustainable levels. And we are polluting our coastal waters with chemicals, plastics and human waste

Indeed, there is another ‘crime’ being committed as a consequence of the unrelenting business obsession with making more and more money. It is about illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, a practice that threatens marine biodiversity, livelihoods, exacerbates poverty, and augments food insecurity.

The ‘criminal’ depletion of the fish

Such illegal activities are responsible for the loss of 11–26 million tons of fish each year, which is estimated to have an economic value of 10–23 billion US dollars.”

Much so that if ‘business’ goes as usual –and all indicate that it will– there will be more tons of plastic than fish by the year 2050, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Moreover, there are issues of marine debris and marine litter involved in IUU fishing, which are not only related to the marine environment but also the safe navigation of ships, explains the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

Who is the worst enemy?

Commenting on their exceptional importance for human beings, the United Nations chief, António Guterres warned on the occasion of the 2023 World Oceans Day (8 June) that “we should be the ocean’s best friend. But right now, humanity is its worst enemy.”

Guterres called oceans ‘the foundation of life’, as they supply the ‘air we breathe and the food we eat,’ while regulating climate and weather.

The greatest reservoir of biodiversity. And of litter

“Marine biodiversity is under attack from overfishing, over-exploitation and ocean acidification. Over one-third of fish stocks are being harvested at unsustainable levels. And we are polluting our coastal waters with chemicals, plastics and human waste.”

According to reports, an estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic, weighing 269,000 tons, is distributed across the ocean.

The United Nations has long warned the international community of the damage ocean garbage does to the economy and the environment, as reported by the large energy company Iberdrola.

This waste decimates marine ecosystems by killing more than a million animals a year, it reports, adding that organisations like Greenpeace report that floating plastic accounts for only 15% of the total, while 85% remains hidden underwater — at depths of up to 11,000 metres, or even trapped in Arctic ice.

Marine pollution

Marine pollution accounts for at least 85% of marine waste, and plastic litter is the chief pollutant, reports the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Every minute, one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into our ocean. If nothing is done about it, by 2040, the equivalent of 50 kg of plastic per metre of coastline worldwide is projected to flow into the ocean yearly, the world leading environmental body informs.

It is estimated that by the year 2030, the world’s coastal populations will contribute three trillion dollars to the global economy in sectors as diverse as fisheries, and tourism, as well as emerging green and blue economies such as renewable energy and marine biotechnology.

More human ‘crimes’ against life

Another major body, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has also focused on the dangers of plastic pollution also to the world’s soils and crops.

On this, it reports that the qualities that make plastic useful are also the ones that make it hazardous: ‘designed to fool nature itself, most plastics are too resilient to biodegrade in a meaningful timeframe.’

The Convention further says that the world’s current efforts to recycle plastics have been inefficient so far: only 9% of plastic is recycled globally, and much of it is either thrown away or cannot be processed for recycling.

“One-third of all plastic waste ends up in soils or freshwater, endangering our food, our livestock and the health of the soil. Invisible to the eye, microplastics linger in the environment, the food chain, and our bodies.”

Soil is the foundation of our agricultural systems which support nearly all food-producing crops: about 95% of our food comes from the soil, UNCCD further explains.

“Fertile soil that produces food is a finite resource, and plastic pollution can have a long-lasting impact on soil health, biodiversity and productivity, all of which are essential to food security.”

Deadly contaminated food

Talking about food security, did you know that “every day, some 1.6 million people worldwide fall ill from eating contaminated food, which kills 420,000 people each year,” as reported by two UN agencies on the occasion of the 2023 World Food Safety Day, (7 June).

Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have in fact reported that “over 200 diseases are caused by eating food contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances such as heavy metals.”

The staggering impacts of human activities against the oceans and everywhere else do not end here. There is still more, much more, to report on the deadly consequences for the world’s oceans, soils, and the whole cycle of life of the human addiction to fossil fuels.

Fake or substandard antimalarial medicines kill as many as 267,000 sub-Saharan Africans every year. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 2 2023 (IPS)

There is a tangled trafficking web that has been woven across the Sahel, which spans almost 6.000 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and is home to more than 300 million people in 10 countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal.

This is how several international specialised bodies, mainly the United Nations, depict the aggravated situation in this already highly fragile African region, which the UN describes as a region in crisis, as those living there are prey to “chronic insecurity, climate shocks, conflict, coups, and the rise of criminal and terrorist networks.”

The Sahel criminal web deals with an unimaginable range of ‘commodities’, from chilli peppers and fake medicine, to fuel, gold, and guns, through humans and more which are being trafficked via millennia-old trade routes crisscrossing the Sahel, according to a 20 May 2023 report.

The US-led military intervention

Security has long been an issue in the region, “but the situation markedly degraded in 2011, following the NATO-led military intervention in Libya, which led to the ongoing destabilisation of the country,” explains the United Nations.

On 19 March 2011, a US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization coalition (31 Western member-countries) launched a military intervention in Libya, with coordinated naval and air forces attacks mainly by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Canada, among others.

Substandard or fake medicines, like contraband baby cough syrup, are killing almost half a million sub-Saharan Africans every year, according to a threat assessment report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

Since then the big oil producer Libya has been the stage of growing instability and chaos, let alone a hub of human trafficking, smuggling and slavery.

Humans, weapons, oil…

Such “ensuing chaos, and porous borders stymied efforts to stem illicit flows, and traffickers transporting looted Libyan firearms rode into the Sahel on the coattails of insurgency and the spread of terrorism,” reports the UN.

Fuel is another commodity trafficked by the main players – terrorist groups, criminal networks, and local militias.

“Armed groups now control swathes of Libya, which has become a trafficking hub.”

In fact, in addition to massive human trafficking and migrant smuggling, markets across the Sahel can be found openly selling a wide range of contraband goods, from fake medicines to AK-style assault rifles.

… And medicines that kill

A UN News series exploring the fight against trafficking in the Sahel, on 27 May 2023 focussed on the illegal trade in substandard and fake medicines.

“From ineffective hand sanitiser to fake antimalarial pills, an illicit trade that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is being meticulously dismantled by the UN and partner countries in Africa’s Sahel region.”

Substandard or fake medicines, like contraband baby cough syrup, are killing almost half a million sub-Saharan Africans every year, according to a threat assessment report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Trafficking medication is often deadly; in just one case, 70 Gambian children died in 2022 after ingesting smuggled cough syrup.

Desperate demand

According to the UN, health care is scarce in the region, which has among the world’s highest incidences of malaria and where infectious diseases are one of the leading causes of death.

“This disparity between the supply of and demand for medical care is at least partly filled by medicines supplied from the illegal market to treat self-diagnosed diseases or symptoms,” the report says.

It further explains that street markets and unauthorised sellers, especially in rural or conflict-affected areas, are sometimes the only sources of medicines and pharmaceutical products.

Fatal results

The study shows that the cost of the illegal medicine trade is high, in terms of health care and human lives.

“Fake or substandard antimalarial medicines kill as many as 267,000 sub-Saharan Africans every year. Nearly 170,000 sub-Saharan African children die every year from unauthorised antibiotics used to treat severe pneumonia.”

In the summer of 2022, 70 Gambian babies and young children died from kidney failure after ingesting cough syrup spooned out by their caregivers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert that four tainted paediatric products had originated in India, as local health authorities continue to investigate how this tragedy unfolded.

Caring for people who have used falsified or substandard medical products for malaria treatment in sub-Saharan Africa costs up to 44.7 million US dollars every year, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates.

Corruption

Corruption is one of the main reasons the trade is allowed to flourish.

About 40% of substandard and falsified medical products reported in Sahelian countries between 2013 and 2021 land in the regulated supply chain, the report showed.

“Products diverted from the legal supply chain typically come from such exporting nations as Belgium, China, France, and India. Some end up on pharmacy shelves.”

The perpetrators

“The perpetrators are employees of pharmaceutical companies, public officials, law enforcement officers, health agency workers and street vendors, all motivated by potential financial gain,” the report found.

Traffickers are finding ever more sophisticated routes, from working with pharmacists to taking their crimes online, according to a UNODC research brief on the issue.

While terrorist groups and non-State armed groups are commonly associated with trafficking in medical products in the Sahel, this mainly revolves around consuming medicines or levying “taxes” on shipments in areas under their control.

Far beyond the Sahel and Africa

Fighting organised crime is a central pillar in the wider battle to deal with the security crisis in the region, which UN Secretary-General, António Guterres says, poses a global threat.

“If nothing is done, the effects of terrorism, violent extremism, and organised crime will be felt far beyond the [Sahel] region and the African continent,” Guterres already warned in 2022.

Apart from repeated proposals for action and solution, evidence shows that very little has been done, if anything, to halt those merchants of death. Who benefits from such a horrid destabilisation of 10 African countries which already rank among the poorest ones on Earth?

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has now reported on the “Staggering’ rise in climate emergencies in the last 20 years.’ Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Baher Kamal
ROME, May 29 2023 (IPS)

Please stop repeating all this softened wording, such as climate change, climate-related hazards, climate crisis, or extreme weather events… And just call it what it really is: climate carnage.

Indeed, several scientific findings, released ahead of the 2023 World Environment Day (5 June), staggeringly indicate that the world-spread climate carnage is predicted to hit all-time records.

See: global temperatures are set to break records during the next five years, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on 17 May 2023 alerted.

Warmest year ever

“There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period, will be the warmest on record.”

It was baffling that nations were continuing knowingly to sow the seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people

Mami Mizutori, UNDRR chief

The world-leading meteorological body then informs that such a rise is fuelled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño weather pattern.

El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern associated with the warming of the ocean surface temperatures in the Central and Eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It occurs on average every two to seven years, and episodes usually last nine to 12 months.

El Niño steers weather patterns around the world, WMO further explains, “can aggravate extreme weather events,” and its events are typically associated with increased rainfall in parts of southern South America, the Southern United States, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.

“This year is already predicted to be hotter than 2022 and the fifth or sixth hottest year on record. 2024 could be even hotter as the impact of the weather phenomenon sets in.”

‘Staggering rise…’

Mind you: This WMO report is just an update that would be logically expected. Indeed, it actually adds to earlier reiterated findings about the worse to come.

For instance, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has now reported on the “Staggering’ rise in climate emergencies in the last 20 years.’

According to its report, there has already been an 80% increase in the number of people affected by disasters since 2015.

Out of control

“However, many of the lessons from past disasters have been ignored.”

The consequences are that now a steadily increasing number of people are being affected by larger, ever more complex and more expensive disasters because decision-makers are failing to put people first and prevent risks from becoming disasters.

“Many of these disasters are climate-related, and in light of the latest warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), countries are likely to face even worse disasters if global temperatures continue to rise.”

“Brutally unequal”

The impacts are “brutally unequal,” with developing countries hit the hardest, as highlighted by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).

Its report multi-country review points to the rapid accumulation of risk that is building up, intersecting with the risks of breaching planetary boundaries, biodiversity and ecosystem limits – which is spiralling out of control.

Not so new, anyway. Indeed the UNDRR chief, Mami Mizutori, reminded already at the end of 2020 that the international community pledged in Paris in 2015 to reduce global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

‘Uninhabitable hell…’

However, she added, “It was “baffling” that nations were continuing knowingly “to sow the seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people”.

One doesn’t have to look hard to find examples of how disasters are becoming worse, said Mami Mizutori. “The sad fact is that many of these disasters are preventable because they are caused by human decisions.”

The point is that already a year ago, the UNDRR warned that “by deliberately ignoring risk, the World is bankrolling its own destruction.”

But this should not be surprising: many fingers have been pointing to the responsibility of the short-sighted politicians, who are too often influenced by the powerful money-making business, that they end up turning a blind eye on such mass destruction.

Drought, heat “100 times more likely”

On 5 May 2023, the World Meteorological Organization reported that climate ‘change’ made both the devastating drought in the Horn of Africa and the record April temperatures in the Western Mediterranean at least 100 times more likely.

Regarding the Horn of Africa, it said that the drought was made much more severe because of the low rainfall and increased evaporation caused by higher temperatures in a world which is now nearly 1.2°C warmer than pre-industrial times.

Mediterranean heatwave

In late April, parts of Southwestern Europe and North Africa experienced a massive heatwave that brought extremely high temperatures never previously recorded in the region at this time of the year, with temperatures reaching 36.9 – 41 °C in the four countries.

“The event broke temperature records by a large margin, against the backdrop of an intense drought.”

“The intense heat wave came on top of a preexisting multi-year drought, exacerbating the lack of water in Western Mediterranean regions and threatening the 2023 crop yield.”

Spreading everywhere

Across the world, climate change has made heat waves more common, longer and hotter, reports WMO based on researchers’ analysis that looked at the average of the maximum temperature for three consecutive days in April across southern Spain and Portugal, most of Morocco and the northwest part of Algeria.

Crops under threat

As other analyses of extreme heat in Europe have found, “extreme temperatures are increasing faster in the region than climate models have predicted,” said the researchers.

Until overall greenhouse gas emissions are halted, global temperatures will continue to increase and events like these will become more frequent and severe.

“The intense heat wave came on top of a preexisting multi-year drought, exacerbating the lack of water in Western Mediterranean regions and threatening the 2023 crop yield.”

And the carnage goes on

In short, the ongoing climate carnage is expected to move from the worst to the worst.

And anyway, the term ‘carnage’ should not sound at all new.

Indeed, it was already spelt out by the United Nations’ top chief, António Guterres, in September 2022, following his field visit to the vast Pakistan’s regions impacted by unprecedented devastating floods.

The people of Pakistan are the victims of “a grim calculus of climate injustice”, said Guterres, reminding that while the country was responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is paying a “supersized price for man-made climate change”.

The UN chief stated that he saw in those regions “a level of climate carnage beyond imagination.”

By the way, do you expect that the coming COP28 in Dubai (November 30th-December 12th, 2023) will come out with anything different from the usual ‘politically correct,” “radical chic” statements?

This money could otherwise be spent on healthcare, education, gender equality and social protection, as well as addressing the impacts of climate change, says Oxfam. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Baher Kamal
ROME, May 22 2023 (IPS)

Two shocking findings have just been revealed: the G7 countries owe low- and middle-income countries a huge 13.3 trillion USD in unpaid aid and funding for climate action, at a time when one billion people now face cholera risk, precisely because of the staggering reduction and even non-payment of committed assistance.

Such an inhuman reality also reveals that the G7 (Group of the seven wealthiest countries), who represent just 10% of the world’s population, continue to demand the Global South to pay 232 million USD –a day– in debt repayments through 2028, on 17 May 2023 revealed a new analysis from Oxfam ahead of the G7.

The Group of Seven (G7) countries owe low- and middle-income countries a huge 13.3 trillion in unpaid aid and funding for climate action, according to an Oxfam new analysis launched ahead of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, and Canada) Summit in Hiroshima, Japan (May 19- 21, 2023)

This is the amount of interest and debt repayment that the mid and low-income nations –including the 46 Least Developed Countries (LDC5)– have to continue transferring -every single day– for the total 10 trillion USD they have been forced to borrow from rich states, private banks and financial corporations.

The findings

The Group of Seven (G7) countries owe low- and middle-income countries a huge 13.3 trillion in unpaid aid and funding for climate action, according to an Oxfam new analysis launched ahead of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, and Canada) Summit in Hiroshima, Japan (May 19- 21, 2023).

“This money could otherwise be spent on healthcare, education, gender equality and social protection, as well as addressing the impacts of climate change,” adds this global movement of people fighting inequality, working in 70 countries, with thousands of partners and allies.

Meanwhile, cholera threatens one billion humans

Such a huge G7 country’s debt to the Global South in their unmet aid pledges would be vitally needed to save the lives of up to one billion people in 43 countries now facing cholera risk amid a ‘bleak’ outlook, as reported by World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children Fund (UNICEF) on 19 May 2023.

In their new alert, the two specialised organisations said that more countries now face outbreaks, increasing numbers of cases are being reported and the outcome for patients is worse than 10 years ago.

After years of steady decline, cholera is making a “devastating comeback and targeting the world’s most vulnerable communities.”

Killing the poor in plain sight

“The pandemic is killing the poor right in front of us,” said Jérôme Pfaffmann Zambruni, Head of UNICEF’s Public Health Emergency unit.

Echoing the bleak outlook, WHO data indicates that by May 2022, 15 countries had reported cases, but by mid-May this year 2023 “we already have 24 countries reporting and we anticipate more with the seasonal shift in cholera cases,” said Henry Gray, WHO’s Incident Manager for the global cholera response.

Cholera cases spiking

“Despite advances in the control of the disease made in the previous decades we risk going backwards.”

The UN health agency estimates that one billion people in 43 countries are at risk of cholera with children under five particularly vulnerable.

“Cholera’s extraordinarily high mortality ratio is also alarming.”

Southeastern Africa is particularly badly affected, with infections spreading in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to the United Nations.

Deadly combination

A deadly combination of climate change, underinvestment in water, sanitation and hygiene services – and in some cases armed conflict – has led to the spread of the disease, said the two UN agencies.

Despite these and so many other threats facing the most vulnerable countries, the wealthy G7 states continue to drastically cut their committed aid, while causing the largest impacts of their highly lucrative addiction to fossil fuels, one of the main causes of the current climate emergency.

Wealth “built on colonialism and slavery”

“Wealthy G7 countries like to cast themselves as saviours but what they are is operating a deadly double standard —they play by one set of rules while their former colonies are forced to play by another,” said Oxfam International interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar.

“It’s the rich world that owes the Global South. The aid they promised decades ago but never gave. The huge costs of climate damage caused by their reckless burning of fossil fuels. The immense wealth built on colonialism and slavery.”

In fact, already in 2020, the G7 countries accounted for more than 50% of global net wealth, estimated at over 200 trillion USD.

“Each and every day, the Global South pays hundreds of millions of dollars to the G7 and their rich bankers. This has to stop. It’s time to call the G7’s hypocrisy for what it is: an attempt to dodge responsibility and maintain the neo-colonial status quo,” said Behar.

“This money could have been transformational,” said Behar. “It could have paid for children to go to school, hospitals and life-saving medicines, improving access to water, better roads, agriculture and food security, and so much more. The G7 must pay its due.”

Billions of poor… and hungry

The G7 leaders are meeting at a moment where billions of workers face real-term pay cuts and impossible rises in the prices of basics like food. Global hunger has risen for a fifth consecutive year, while extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years, reports OXFAM.

Despite a commitment last month from the G7 to phase out fossil fuels faster, Germany is now pushing for G7 leaders to endorse public investment in gas, the human solidarity movement further explains.

G7 owes the poor $9 trillion for their devastation

“It has been estimated that the G7 owes low- and middle-income countries $8.7 trillion for the devastating losses and damages their excessive carbon emissions have caused, especially in the Global South.”

G7 governments are also collectively failing to meet a long-standing promise by rich countries to provide $100 billion per year from 2020 to 2025 to help poorer countries cope with climate change, it adds.

Meanwhile, “In 1970, rich countries agreed to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national income in aid. Since then, G7 countries have left unpaid a total of $4.49 trillion to the world’s poorest countries —more than half of what was promised.”

Will this 10% of the world’s population ever meet its pledges to the 90% of all humans on Earth? What do you think?

“As reuse and recycling capacities in Europe are limited, a large share of used textiles collected in the EU is traded and exported to Africa and Asia, and their fate is highly uncertain,” says the European Environmental Agency. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
ROME, May 18 2023 (IPS)

Once the money-making businesses have turned Asia and Africa into their low-cost factories, to produce and market at higher prices their clothes and footwear, obtaining more profits by selling to these two continents around 90% of all their used and textiles waste.

Not only: such a business alleviates the harsh environmental impacts of the lucrative clothing and fashion industry, and the cost of recycling and eliminating the leftovers of these products.

Textile consumption causes the third largest land use and water use in the value chain, and the fifth largest material resource use and greenhouse gas emissions. Also, textiles cause pressures and impacts from their chemicals on the environment and climate

Just know that textiles are on average “the fourth-highest source of pressure on the environment and climate change from a European consumption perspective,” the European Environment Agency (EEA) on 26 April 2023 reported.

Consequently, “Europe faces major challenges managing used textiles, including textiles waste.”

Europe exports much more than textile waste

Lars Mortensen, EEA expert on circular economy, confirms that textile production and consumption in the European Union have significant impacts on the environment and climate.

“Textile consumption causes the third largest land use and water use in the value chain, and the fifth largest material resource use and greenhouse gas emissions. Also, textiles cause pressures and impacts from their chemicals on the environment and climate”.

The poisoning plastic

A 27 January 2023 EEA briefing focusses on another big problem: plastic.

“Plastic-based — or ‘synthetic’— textiles are woven into daily lives in Europe, in the clothes we wear, the towels and the bed sheets, in the carpets, curtains and cushions. And they are in safety belts, car tyres, workwear and sportswear.”

Synthetic textile fibres are produced from fossil fuel resources, such as oil and natural gas, the briefing goes on, adding that their production, consumption and related waste handling generate greenhouse gas emissions, use non-renewable resources and can release microplastics.

EU consumers discard about 5.8 million tonnes of textiles annually – around 11 kg per person – of which about two-thirds consist of synthetic fibres, according to the briefing.

“In Europe, about one-third of textile waste is collected separately, and a large part is exported.”

Africa and Asia are therefore the largest destinations of these toxic fibres.

Simply put: by exporting European used clothes and textiles waste, their impacts necessarily fall on the shoulders of Africans and Asians.

A highly uncertain fate

Indeed, “as reuse and recycling capacities in Europe are limited, a large share of used textiles collected in the EU is traded and exported to Africa and Asia, and their fate is highly uncertain,” says the European Environmental Agency.

In fact, throughout the past two decades, Africa has been the main continent receiving used textiles from the European Union (EU), importing more than 60% of EU exports.

But while in 2000 Asia received only 26% of EU exports, by 2019 it had significantly increased its share to 41% of EU imports. This is almost equal to Africa, which still imported 46% of EU exports.

Where do second-hand clothes end up?

In the African countries studied, the EEA report says that the import of used textiles seems to be mainly meant for local reuse. This is because there is a demand for cheap, used clothes from Europe, which seem to be preferred to new items.

“What is not fit for reuse mostly ends up in open landfills and informal waste streams.”

In Asia, however, most of the used textiles are imported to so-called economic zones where they are sorted and processed. In the countries studied for this briefing, import for local reuse is restricted.

Instead, used textiles seem to be recycled locally, mostly downcycled into industrial rags or filling, or re-exported either for recycling in other Asian countries or reuse in Africa.

“Textiles that cannot be recycled or re-exported are likely to end up in the general waste management system, most of which is landfilling.”

The big figures…

According to this European Union (EU)’s agency that ‘delivers knowledge and data to support Europe’s environment and climate goals’:

• The amount of used textiles exported from the EU has tripled over the last two decades from slightly over 550,000 tonnes in 2000 to almost 1.7 million tonnes in 2019.
• The fate of used textiles exported from the EU is highly uncertain. The perception of used clothing donations as generous gifts to people in need does not fully match reality,
• Used clothing is increasingly part of a specialised and traded global commodity value chain,
• In 2019, 46% of used textiles ended up in Africa: Imported, used textiles on this continent primarily go towards local reuse as there is a demand for cheap, used clothes from Europe. What is not fit for reuse mostly ends up in open landfills and informal waste streams,
• In 2019, 41% of used textiles ended up in Asia. Most used textiles on this continent are imported to dedicated economic zones where they are sorted and processed,
• The used textiles are mostly downcycled into industrial rags or filling, or re-exported for recycling in other Asian countries or for reuse in Africa. Textiles that cannot be recycled or re-exported are likely to end up in landfills.

… The big exporting hubs

“Some EU countries, such as Germany, Poland and the Netherlands, have exported more than others and seem to have acted as import-export hubs for used textiles from the EU.”

There is no clear reason explaining why five out of 27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom account for around 75% of all EU used textile exports, adds the EEA.

Therefore, it is likely that the largest exporters have been sending used textiles abroad, collected locally and from other EU countries, says the European agency.

Thus, another reason for the concentration of exports in a few EU countries could be that these large exporting countries are acting as export hubs.

“In other words, they are importing used textiles from other EU Member States for re-export beyond the EU. Ports/harbours for international shipment in some of these countries make them logical export hubs.”

Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands have large export harbours.

… and the big increase

EU used textile exports have grown significantly over the last two decades, the EEA reports, explaining that exports of textile waste outside the EU have been steadily increasing to reach 1.4 million tonnes in 2020.

Still, another problem appears: how to avoid that waste streams are falsely labelled as second-hand goods when exported from the EU and in this way escape the waste regime?

EU used textile exports are characterised by a lot of uncertainty, adds the EEA. First, there is uncertainty around the types of textiles exported as well as their quality.

In other words, it says, if used textiles exported from the EU are of too low quality to be reused, or are not reused for very long or do not replace new clothing purchases, they may not really replace new production or benefit the environment.

“Instead, the exports will only lead to more textiles ending up in landfills.”

The argan tree forest constitutes a vital fodder reserve for all herds even in periods of drought. All parts of the argan tree are edible and very appreciated: leaves, fruits and the undergrowth are a meal of choice especially for the most daring goats that do not hesitate to climb the branches. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
ROME, May 12 2023 (IPS)

A much needed break amidst so many alarming news, with a brief story of a tree, a bottle of liquid gold, and a wedding gift.

It is useless to remind you that all trees are wonderful living beings, with an amazing vital system to drain water through their roots, and breathe through their leaves to bring this water to their trunk, branches and leaves.

All of them are sources of most of the oxygen on Earth while absorbing harmful greenhouse gases. Their roots greatly contribute to fixing the land, thus reducing the risk of further degradation and desertification. Let alone purifying the air.

This particular tree

Among them, one is special: the Argan tree.

A native species of the sub-Saharan, Southwest region of Morocco, where it grows in arid and semi-arid areas, this tree is the defining species of a woodland ecosystem, also known as Arganeraie, which is rich in endemic flora.

The argan tree used to grow throughout North Africa, but currently, it only grows in southwestern Morocco. It is estimated to be the second most abundant tree in Moroccan forests, with over 20 million trees living in the region.

The argan tree is one of the world’s wild plants, which are used by an estimated 3.5 to 5.8 billion people, with one billion humans depending on them for their livelihoods and food security.

Furthermore, wild plants offer great economic and nutritional benefits for these communities and for societies around the world. In fact, between 2000 and 2020, the global trade value of medicinal and aromatic plants alone increased by more than 75%, as reported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In spite of that, two in five of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction due to habitat loss, sustainable use and climate change.

Hidden in plain sight

Here is the case of just one of these wild plant species hidden in plain sight:

Argan can be found in cosmetics, food and pharmaceuticals. Mostly used as an oil, its anti-ageing properties are popular for cosmetics, and its demand in the food industry has turned it into the most expensive edible oil in the world, FAO adds.

Under the burning sun

Now see what the UN further tells about its importance on the occasion of this year’s International Day of Argania:

• It withstands temperatures of up to 50° Celsius.
• It is a bastion against desertification, it can reach 10 metres in height and can live for 200 years.
• Its woodlands provide forest products, fruits and fodder.
• Its leaves and fruits are edible and highly appreciated, as is the undergrowth, and constitute a vital fodder reserve for all herds, even in periods of drought.
• It is used as fuelwood for cooking and heating.
• And also as medicines and cosmetics.

A mainstay of indigenous Berbers

For centuries, the argan tree has been a mainstay of the Berber and Arab-origin indigenous rural communities, which developed a specific culture and identity, sharing their traditional knowledge and skills through non-formal education, particularly the knowledge associated with the traditional production of argan oil by women, the world body explains.

The argan-based agro-forestry-pastoral system uses only locally adapted species and pastoralism activities and relies on traditional water management provided by the Matifiya – a rainwater reservoir carved into the rock, hence contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to the conservation of biodiversity.

The ‘liquid gold’

But there is more: the world-renowned argan oil, which is extracted from the seeds and has multiple applications, especially in traditional and complementary medicine and in the culinary and cosmetic industries.

In addition, argan oil is given as a wedding gift and it is used extensively in the preparation of festive dishes.

The fruit of the argan tree is a green to light yellow berry in the centre of which is an almond made up of several seeds gorged with oil. It takes about 150 kg of fruit to produce 3 litres of argan oil.

The Argan Women

Indeed, it is said that, since the 13th century, the Berber women of North Africa have been making argan oil for culinary and cosmetic purposes.

The International Day of Argania further explains that the fruits are hand-picked and dried in the sun, then pulped, grinding, sorting, milling and mixing. Its nuts are crushed and its almonds crushed to filter the oil.

Women lead the entire extraction process through knowledge transmitted from one generation to the next. In fact, rural women and, to a lesser extent, men living in the reserve practice traditional methods to extract argan oil from the fruit of the tree.

“Traditional know-how specific to the extraction of the oil and its multiple uses is systematically transmitted by ‘argan women’, who teach their daughters from a young age to put it into practice.”

What else would you expect from a tree?

Several human-caused threats lay behind the current annual loss of up to 40% of food crops globally, mainly due to plant pests and the introduction of alien species. Credit: Jency Samuel/IPS

By Baher Kamal
ROME, May 10 2023 (IPS)

Two big facts are impressive enough: plants are the source of 80% of all food, and as much as 98% of all oxygen. Logically, it would be taken for granted that human beings would do whatever is needed to protect this essential source of life. But do they?

Not at all. Rather the whole contrary.

Several human-caused threats lay behind the current annual loss of up to 40% of food crops globally, mainly due to plant pests and the introduction of alien species.

Among them stands the massive international travel and trade business, which has been associated with the introduction and spread of so many pests.

Plant health is increasingly at risk. Plant pests are responsible for the annual loss of up to 40 percent of food crops globally. This is especially relevant to the millions of smallholder farmers and people in rural communities who rely on agriculture as a primary source of income and see their livelihoods at risk

Indeed, world trade hit a record 32 trillion US dollars in 2022, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Being such a highly profitable business, it continues to bring thousands of alien species that silently but relentlessly invade – and colonise – the whole Planet Earth.

The ‘White Sea’ and the Black Sea, invaded, colonised

Just know that over 1.000 alien species have already taken over the Mediterranean Sea (popularly known in Arabic as the ‘White Sea’) and the Black Sea.

But these two seas are no exception. All of the world’s seas are already occupied by aliens. And anyway this is not the case of seas only: also all the Planet’s lands and air are highly infected.

Such an alien invasion is extremely dangerous to native species, much so that it is changing the nature of the waters and the lands of these two nearly closed seas.

Aliens on board

“They are non-indigenous fish, jellyfish, prawns, algae and many other marine and not marine species, most of them are being brought by human activities such as giant cargo ships, oil tankers, touristic cruisers, and even medium and small fishing boats,” reliable data show in a recent UN report.

The Mediterranean Sea ranks high on the list of the world’s most trafficked waters.

Did you know that more than 2.000 cargo ships, oil tankers, cruisers, cross the Mediterranean Sea at any given moment?

Over half of those alien species have established permanent populations and are spreading, causing concern about the threat they pose to marine ecosystems and local fishing communities, reports the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

No wonder then that this sea is undergoing a “tropicalisation” process as water temperatures rise, largely due to climate change, the UN warns.

Where from and who is bringing them?

Many species have migrated via well-travelled Mediterranean shipping routes such as the Strait of Gibraltar or the Suez Canal, often attached to the hull of ships or inside them in the ballast waters, explains FAO.

Other species, such as the Pacific cupped oyster and the Japanese carpet shell, were introduced for aquaculture during the 1960s and 1970s and have since escaped and colonised Mediterranean ecosystems.

Number of aliens on the rise

In other words, “Invasive species are changing the nature of the Mediterranean Sea,” the world’s body warns.

Stefano Lelli, a fishery expert for the Eastern Mediterranean working for the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, knows about that. “Climate change and human activities have had a profound impact on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.”

According to Lelli, “We have witnessed a swift and significant alteration of marine ecosystems, which has led to several impacts on local communities livelihoods. In the coming years, we expect the number of non-indigenous species to continue rising.”

Once established, non-indigenous species can outcompete native ones and alter their surrounding ecosystems, with potential economic implications for fisheries and tourism or even human health, says the FAO report.

Massive unsustainable tourism

Add to this the massive, often unsustainable tourism business, and travels by air and ships –both among the main causes of climate emergency–, and the many other invasive pest species that are also associated with rising temperatures which create new niches for pests to populate and spread.

Did you know that the Mediterranean Sea is by far the largest global tourism destination?

Simply, it attracts almost a third of the world’s international tourists (one billion a year), generating more than one-fourth of all international tourism receipts (200 out of 750 billion euros, or about 230 out of 800 billion US dollars).

No wonder then that it is one of the most infected basins by pests and alien species.

What is the reaction to the loss of 40% of food crops globally?

Instead of reacting swiftly to repair all these damages and avoid further ones, human activities resort to the intensive use and misuse of pesticides, which harm pollinators, natural pest enemies and organisms crucial for a healthy environment, warns FAO.

“Yet, plant health is increasingly at risk. Plant pests are responsible for the annual loss of up to 40 percent of food crops globally. This is especially relevant to the millions of smallholder farmers and people in rural communities who rely on agriculture as a primary source of income and see their livelihoods at risk.”

Humans continue to alter ecosystems, reduce biodiversity…

The climate crisis and unsustainable human activities are altering ecosystems, reducing biodiversity and creating new niches for invasive pests to thrive.

Concurrently, international travel and trade that can unintentionally spread pests and diseases rapidly around the world have tripled in volume over the last decade, causing great damage to native plants and the environment.

In view of all the above, no surprise that the UN has declared an International Day of Plant Health, which is observed each year on 12 May, to raise global awareness of how protecting plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect biodiversity and the environment, and boost economic development.

Until when -and how far- will human avidity continue to destroy the very source of life on Planet Earth?

Droughts are a growing threat to global food production, particularly in Africa. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Baher Kamal
ROME, May 8 2023 (IPS)

Less than a decade ago, Africa was home to 60-65% of the world’s uncultivated arable land and 10% of renewable freshwater resources, as reported by the African Union in 2016, while concluding that African farmers could feed the world.

Is it still the case?

The above data had been provided in July 2016 by the NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development), the technical body of the African Union (AU).

Now that seven long years have elapsed, the second largest continent on Earth –after Asia– has been facing too many extraneous pressures and hazards.

A major consequence is that that very percentage (60-65%) of the world’s uncultivated and arable land is now affected by degradation, with nearly three million hectares of forest lost… every single year.

Great walls

The steadily advancing degradation and desertification of major African regions have led the continent to build great green walls.

One of them – the Great Green Wall, is the largest living structure on the Planet, one that stretches over 8.000 kilometres across Africa, aiming at restoring the continent’s degraded landscapes and transforming millions of lives in the Sahel, and ushering in a new era of sustainability and economic growth.

Launched in 2007 by the African Union, this African-led Great Green Wall Initiative. The project is being implemented across 22 African countries and is expected to revitalise thousands of communities across the continent.

It is about “helping people and nature cope with the growing impact of the climate emergency and the degradation of vital ecosystems, and to keep the Sahara desert from spreading deeper into one of the world’s poorest regions,” according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Vast tracts of land along the Great Green Wall have already been restored by local communities. And so far, 80% of the 19 billion US dollars have been pledged, as reported by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

But not enough…

The extraneous factors that have been pushing Africa towards the abyss of extremely severe droughts, unprecedented floods, the advancing degradation of its land and water resources, have led this continent on Earth to rush to build more and longer and larger walls.

For instance, the Southern Africa region is currently busy preparing a similar programme, with all 16 countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) committed to accelerating multi-sectoral transformation through a regional initiative inspired by the Great Green Wall in the Sahel, or SADC Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI).

The SADC member countries are: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, DR Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

A wall for Southern Africa

Their Initiative aims to create productive landscapes in the Southern Africa region that contribute to regional socially inclusive economic prosperity and environmental sustainability.

Together with member countries and key partners the goal is to initiate multi sectoral partnerships and to acquire pledges of an indicative 27 billion US dollars by 2025.

10 Million square kilometres at risk of desertification

Covering a total land area of 10 million square kilometres, Southern Africa faces immediate effects of desertification, land degradation and drought, as well as challenges driven by climate change, biodiversity loss, and unsustainable development practices in agriculture, energy and infrastructure sectors, reports the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

“The Great Green Wall is part of a broader economic and development plan – if we restore land but are not able to reap the benefits of that healthy and restored land due to lack of access to renewable energy and infrastructure, hindering access to markets and livelihoods, then we are only halfway there with our vision,” on this said UNCCD’s Louise Baker.

And a great wall for the Middle East

In addition to the above two new natural wonders, there is another one: the Middle East Green Initiative, a regional effort led by Saudi Arabia to mitigate the impact of climate change on the region and to collaborate to meet global climate targets.

50 billion trees

It aims at planting 50 billion trees across the Middle East, equivalent to 5% of the global afforestation target, and to restore 200 million hectares of degraded land.

A fifth (10 billion) trees will be planted within Saudi Arabia’s borders, with the remaining 40 billion set to be planted across the region in the coming decades.

The trees will also provide numerous other benefits, including stabilising soils, protecting against floods and dust storms and helping reduce CO2 emissions by up to 2.5% of global levels.

Across the Middle East and North Africa, extreme weather events including droughts and heavy rains will become more common in the region if global temperatures continue to increase, according to the Saudi-led project.

A green corridor for East Africa… and elsewhere

In addition to developing an Eastern Africa corridor soon, other similar initiatives under the umbrella of the African Union’s NEPAD are ongoing, such as the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100).

In 2015, AFR100 was founded in Durban by a group of 10 African countries, each committing to restore a certain number of hectares of degraded landscapes within their borders.

Twenty-eight African countries have now committed to restoring 113 million hectares, which, if achieved, will exceed the initiative’s namesake goal of 100 million hectares across the continent under restoration by 2030.

Not only trees

Forest landscape restoration is more than just planting trees,” said Mamadou Diakhite, leader of the AFR100 Secretariat.

On a continent that is expected to account for half the global population growth by 2050, reducing and sequestering greenhouse gas emissions is a welcome byproduct of returning those natural landscapes to health and profitability; but it’s not the first focus, reported Gabrielle Lipton, Landscape News Editor-in-Chief.

“Restoring landscapes that have been degraded by the effects of climate change and human development through planting trees and encouraging sustainable farming and herding must first and foremost provide food, jobs and homes for people, as well as preserve their cultures that are based on the products of their lands.”

Moreover, as more than 1 in 5 people in Africa are undernourished, and forced migration across country borders increases due to climate change and conflict, African economies continue to struggle hard to create jobs for young people.

Any chance that Africa recovers soon from the impacts of so much extraneous damage, which this continent of nearly 1.4 billion humans continues to struggle to reverse?

Africa is the continent that has contributed the least (just 2 to 3%) to the causes of the current climate emergencies while bearing the brunt of 82% of the devastating consequences. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Baher Kamal
ROME, May 4 2023 (IPS)

Some days ago in Rome, the Italian taxi driver switched on the radio during a longish ride through the usual traffic jam. Music, gossip, and the hourly news bulletin. All of a sudden, the man strongly hit the steering wheel. “They are stupid, those bastards…,” he shouted.

“These useless politicians speak every now and then about the need for solidarity with Africa…, blah, blah, blah,” he added. “But the solution is easy, very easy, even the most stupid can see it.”

According to the taxi driver, “the solution is that the government sends to Africa our retired engineers, agronomists, university professors… to teach Africans how to farm.”

The external debt of the world’s low and middle-income countries at the end of 2021 totalled 9 trillion US dollars, more than double the amount a decade ago. Such debt is expected to increase by an additional 1.1 trillion US dollars in 2023

The man was so furious that you would not dare to comment that African farmers already know how to farm… far more than many foreign academicians.

History tells us that Africans were among the first farmers on Earth, and that they knew –and still know– what to plant, when, where and how. And that one of Africa’s biggest deserts, the Sahara used to be one of the greenest areas in the world.

Now that this vast continent –the second largest after Asia– home to around 1.4 billion humans, is experiencing unprecedented hunger, malnutrition, undernourishment and death, outsider technology moguls have now come out with another “easy solution”: the digitalisation of farming…

Those moguls, and the world’s largest organisations, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations, insisting that what poor farmers need is to use devices such as smartphones and computers, and download apps that tell them what to farm, when, where, how, and with which inputs. They call it “transformation.”

Meanwhile, they do not hesitate to attribute to the condemnable war in Ukraine the tsunami of poverty and famine that have been for years and even decades striking the most impoverished humans, saying that that proxy war stands behind such a horrifying situation, or at least that it heavily contributes to dangerously worsening it.

Africa before Ukraine’s war

Here are some key factors to be taken into consideration:

• Hunger in Africa started around four decades ago, amidst a striking shortage of the most basic preventions and social services, like education and health, leading to the surge of diseases that were given for eliminated in other parts of the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that the Horn of Africa hunger emergency sparks surge in disease.
• WHO also alerts that “life-threatening hunger caused by climate shocks, violent insecurity and disease in the Horn of Africa, have left nearly 130,000 people “looking death in the eyes.”
• The world leading health body also reports “exponential rise in cholera cases in Africa”,
• Several African regions have been facing the impacts of the hardest-ever weather extremes, with unprecedented absence of precipitation and record droughts now for the fifth consecutive year.
• This and the previous factors have led to massive migration waves, in addition to millions of internally displaced people, let alone tens of thousands of homeless,
• Conflicts, fights for water and fertile lands, have pushed 33 African nations high in the ranking of the Least Developed Countries,
• Africa is the continent that has contributed the least (just 2 to 3%) to the causes of the current climate emergencies while bearing the brunt of 82% of the devastating consequences,
• As many as 45 African countries fall further under what the International Monetary Fund calls: “The Big Funding Squeeze,” as funding shrinks to lowest ever levels,
• Indebtedness: The external debt of the world’s low and middle-income countries at the end of 2021 totalled 9 trillion US dollars, more than double the amount a decade ago. Such debt is expected to increase by an additional 1.1 trillion US dollars in 2023. A high number of those countries are located in Africa.
• International trade barriers, dominance of mostly Western giant private chains of food production and distribution, price fixing and market speculation, “vulture funds” intensive and extensive land grabbing, armed conflicts, are factors standing behind such a gloomy situation,
• Add to the above the unstoppable rush for Africa’s precious minerals, in particular those which are indispensable for the production and worldwide sales of electronic devices, like the smartphones and computers African farmers are now told to use. Let alone all other natural resources,
• Africa’s oil resources have been exploited over long decades, now more than ever,
• Then you have the excessive use of chemicals, such as fertilisers, pesticides, insecticides, as well as Genetically Modified Organisms and the cultivation of non-autochthonous commodities by the dominant industrial intensive agriculture systems,
• The concentration of key commodities production, such as grains and cereals, in a reduced number of countries (See the case of Russia, Ukraine, let alone major producers such as the United States, Europe, Canada, India…)

Such concentration is so intense that, in his recent article: The War in Ukraine Triggers a Record Increase in World Military Spending, IPS journalist Thalif Deen reported that “The United Nations has warned that the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has threatened to force up to 1.7 billion people — over one-fifth of humanity — into poverty, destitution and hunger.”

And that “Long before the war, Ukraine and Russia provided about 30 percent of the world’s wheat and barley, one-fifth of its maize, and over half of its sunflower oil. But the ongoing 14th-month-old war has undermined– and cut-off– most of these supplies.”

Also that “Together, the UN pointed out, their grain was an essential food source for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people, providing more than one-third of the wheat imported by 45 African and least-developed countries (LDCs), described as “the poorest of the world’s poor.”

All these key factors are extraneous to Africa… all of them!

Perhaps what Africa deserves most is a just reparation for the long decades of exploitation by its former European colonisers –now giant private corporations–, and a fair compensation for the devastating damage caused by their induced climate emergencies and so many other extraneous causes.

Rhine River, Cologne,,Germany,10.08.2022. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 25 2023 (IPS)

Apologies to those Western politicians and media who continue to say that Ukraine’s brutal proxy war stands behind whatever catastrophes, disasters or crises occur in the Planet.

Is this accurate?

Scientific evidence confirms that, much earlier than that war, Europe, like many other regions, was already walking closer to the edge of extreme weather consequences.

Europe’s worst drought in 500 years?

“The drought episode that affected Europe in 2022 could well be the worst in 500 years,” reports Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme which “looks at our planet and its environment to benefit all European citizens and offers information services.”

The most expensive hazards during the period 1980-2021 include the 2021 flooding in Germany and Belgium (almost EUR 50 billion), the 2002 flood in central Europe (over EUR 22 billion), the 2003 drought and heatwave across the EU (around EUR 16 billion), the 1999 storm Lothar in Western Europe and the 2000 flood in France and Italy (both over EUR 13 billion), all at 2021 values

This European service further explains that the 2022 drought episode “is attributable to a severe and persistent lack of precipitation, combined with a sequence of repeated heat waves that have affected Europe from May to October.”

Put simply, the reported climate extremes in Europe are not the consequence of the Ukraine war, and they were already there many years earlier to when it started in February 2022.

Anyway, European citizens now hear the devastating impacts of climate extremes in their own rich continent, which is one of the major global contributors to the ongoing climate emergency.

Are climate emergencies just an impoverished regions’ problem?

So far, the severe impacts of climate extremes in Africa and other impoverished regions, would jump to the news every now and then, by showing short videos of errant human beings and deserts… before analysing in-depth the latest soccer games or reporting on the new friend of a reality-show star. And highway accidents or a fight between young gangs.

Western citizens are also used to hearing that the horrifying numbers of hungry people (more than one billion human beings), in particular in East Africa due to long years of record droughts, is either caused by the war in Ukraine or that their situation was exacerbated by it.

Now European citizens wake up to the upsetting fact that they also fall under the heavy impact of the steadily rising human, economic, and environmental toll of climate change.

How come those impacts are now becoming news?

A swift answer is that such climate extremes, heat waves, severe droughts, water and food production shortages have been causing increasing damage to private businesses, as well as to medium-to-small-size agriculture activities. In short, damaging their pockets.

See what the very same European Union officially says at the macro level:

– Weather- and climate-related hazards, such as temperature extremes, heavy precipitation and droughts, pose risks to human health and the environment and can lead to substantial economic losses.

— Between 1980 and 2021, weather- and climate-related extremes amounted to an estimated EUR 560 billion (2021 values).

– Hydrological events (floods) account for over 45% and meteorological events (storms including lightning and hail, together with mass movements) for almost one-third of the total.

– When it comes to climatological events, heat waves are responsible for over 13% of the total losses while the remaining +/-8% are caused by droughts, forest fires and cold waves.

– The most expensive hazards during the period 1980-2021 include the 2021 flooding in Germany and Belgium (almost EUR 50 billion), the 2002 flood in central Europe (over EUR 22 billion), the 2003 drought and heatwave across the EU (around EUR 16 billion), the 1999 storm Lothar in Western Europe and the 2000 flood in France and Italy (both over EUR 13 billion), all at 2021 values.

– A relatively small number of events is responsible for a large proportion of the economic losses: 5% of the weather- and climate-related events with the biggest losses is responsible for 57% of losses and 1% of the events cause 26% of losses (EEA’s own calculations based on the original dataset).

– This results in high variability from year to year and makes it difficult to identify trends. Nevertheless, the average annual (constant prices, 2021 euros) losses were around EUR 9.7 billion in 1981-1990, 11.2 billion in 1991-2000, 13.5 billion in 2001-2010 and 15.3 billion in 2011-2020.

– The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that climate-related extreme events will become more frequent and severe worldwide. This could affect multiple sectors and cause systemic failures across Europe, leading to greater economic losses.

– Only 30% of the total losses were insured, although this varied considerably among countries, from less than 2% in Hungary, Lithuania and Romania to over 75% in Slovenia and the Netherlands.

Also at the medium-to-micro level

Most medium-to-small agricultural cooperatives, unions and associations in those European countries more stricken by droughts, have been rising their public protests, demanding their governments to compensate them for the big losses of their harvests.

In the specific case of Spain, farmers’ unions and agri-food cooperatives report crop losses of up to two-thirds of the expected harvest.

Back to Copernicus

The “historical drought” affected Europe as evidenced by the Combined Drought Indicator of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service European Drought Observatory for the first ten-day period of September 2022.

On this, Copernicus reports the following findings:

– Heatwaves: 2022 was also characterised by intense, and in some areas prolonged, heatwaves which affected Europe and the rest of the world, breaking several surface air temperature records.

– As reported in the July 2022 Climate Bulletin published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service July 2022 was the sixth warmest July in Europe.

– Temperature anomalies reached peaks of +4ºC in Italy, France, and Spain.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus:

– The prolonged drought that has affected various parts of the globe together with the record temperatures were contributing forces that have certainly caused an increased wildfire risk, which peaked during the summer season both in Europe, in the Mediterranean region, and in the north-west of the United States.

– The Combined Drought Indicator (which is published by the European Drought Observatory as part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service) reported that more than one-fourth of the EU territory was in “Alert” conditions in early September.

– Another extreme phenomenon of 2022 was the marine heatwave that affected the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 2022.

European countries are highly dependent on the Mediterranean Sea for shipping goods, including oil tankers; tourism (one country – Spain receives more than 80 million tourists a year, double its total population); industrial fishing; refineries; harbours, and a long etcetera.

The IMF has made some encouraging improvements in paying attention to social protection, health, and education, but it needs to do much more to avoid, in its own words, “repeating past mistakes”, says new report. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 19 2023 (IPS)

As many as 45 African countries –out of the Continent’s 54 nations–, all of them grouped in what is known as Sub-Saharan Africa, have now been further squeezed to their bones, as funding shrinks to lowest ever levels, and as a portion of the so-called aid goes back to the pockets of rich donor countries.

See what happens.

In its April 2023 World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) talks about a rocky recovery. In its reporting on that, it lowers global economic growth outlook as ‘fog thickens.’

“Donors have turned their aid pledges into a farce. Not only have they undelivered more than 193 billion dollars, but they also funnelled nearly 30 billion dollars into their own pockets by mislabeling what counts as aid"

It says that the road to global economic recovery is “getting rocky.’ And that while inflation is slowly falling, economic growth remains ‘historically low,’ and that the financial risks have risen.

Squeezed

Well. In its April Outlook, the IMF devotes a chapter to Sub-Saharan Africa, titled “The Big Funding Squeeze”.

It says that growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to slow to 3.6 percent as a “big funding squeeze”, tied to “the drying up of aid and access to private finance,” hits the region in this second consecutive year of an aggregate decline.

If no measures are taken, “this shortage of funding may force countries to reduce fiscal resources for critical development like health, education, and infrastructure, holding the region back from developing its true potential.”

Some arguments

According to the IMF:

• Public debt and inflation are at levels not seen in decades, with double-digit inflation present in half of countries—eroding household purchasing power and striking at the most vulnerable.
• The rapid tightening of global monetary policy has raised borrowing costs for Sub-Saharan countries both on domestic and international markets.
• All Sub-Saharan African frontier markets have been cut off from market access since spring 2022.
• The US dollar effective exchange rate reached a 20-year high last year, increasing the burden of dollar-denominated debt service payments. Interest payments as a share of revenue have doubled for the average SSA country over the past decade.
• With shrinking aid budgets and reduced inflows from partners, this is leading to a big funding squeeze for the region.

The giant monetary body says that the lack of financing affects a region that is already struggling with elevated macroeconomic imbalances.

Unprecedented debts and inflation

In a previous article: The Poor, Squeezed by 10 Trillion Dollars in External Debts, IPS reported on the external debt of the world’s low and middle-income countries, which at the end of 2021 totalled 9 trillion US dollars, more than double the amount a decade ago.

Such debts are expected to increase by an additional 1.1 trillion US dollars in 2023, thus totalling 10.1 trillion US dollars.

Now, the IMF reports that “public debt and inflation are at levels not seen in decades, with double-digit inflation present in about half of the countries—eroding household purchasing power and striking at the most vulnerable.”

In short, “Sub-Saharan Africa stands to lose the most in a severely fragmented world and stresses the need for building resilience.”

Like many other major international bodies, the IMF indirectly blames African Governments for non adopting the “right” policies and encourages further investments in the region, while some insist that the way out is digitalisation, robotisation, etcetera.

The big contradiction

Here, a question arises: are all IMF and other monetary-oriented bodies’ recommendations and ‘altruistic’ advice the solution to the deepening collapse of a whole continent, home to around 1,4 billion human beings?

Not really, or at least not necessarily. A global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice, grounded in the commitment to the universality of human rights: Oxfam, on 13 April 2023 said that multilateral lender’s role in helping to insulate people in low- and middle-income countries from economic crises is “incoherent and inadequate.”

For example, “for every $1 the IMF encourages a set of poor countries to spend on public goods, it has told them to cut four times more through austerity measures.”

Countries forced to cut public funding

Then the global civil society movement explains that an important IMF initiative to shore up poor people in the Global South from the worst effects of its own austerity measures and the global economic crisis “is in tatters.”

New analysis by Oxfam finds that the IMF’s “Social Spending Floors” targets designed to help borrowing governments protect minimum levels of social spending— are proving largely powerless against its own austerity policies that instead force countries to cut public funding.

“The IMF’s ‘Social Spending Floors’ encouraged raising inflation-adjusted social spending by about $1 billion over the second year of its loan programs compared to the first year, across the 13 countries that participated where data is available.”

IMF’s austerity policies

By comparison, the IMF’s austerity drive has required most of those same governments to rip away over $5 billion worth of state spending over the same period, warns Oxfam.

“This suggests the IMF was four times more effective in getting governments to cut their budgets than it is in guaranteeing minimum social investments,” said incoming Oxfam International interim Executive Director, Amitabh Behar.

“This is deeply worrying and disappointing, given that the IMF had itself urged countries to build back better after the pandemic by investing in social protection, health and education,” Behar said.

“Among the 2 billion people who are suffering most from the effects of austerity cuts and social spending squeezes, we know it is women who always bear the brunt.”

A fig leaf for austerity?

In its new report “IMF Social Spending Floors. A Fig Leaf for Austerity?,” Oxfam analysed these components in all IMF loan programs agreed with 17 low- and middle-income countries in 2020 and 2021.

Oxfam’s report: “The Assault of Austerity” found inconsistencies between countries. There is no standard or transparent way of tracking progress and many of the minimum targets were inadequate.

The IMF has made some encouraging improvements in paying attention to social protection, health, and education, the report goes on, but it needs to do much more to avoid, in its own words, “repeating past mistakes”.

The farce of aid budget

In another report titled “Obscene amount of aid is going back into the pockets of rich countries,” Oxfam informed that on 12 April 2023 the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (OECD DAC) published its preliminary figures on the amount of development aid for 2022.

According to the OECD report, in 2022, official development assistance (ODA) by member countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) amounted to USD 204.0 billion.

This total included USD 201.4 billion in the form of grants, loans to sovereign entities, debt relief and contributions to multilateral institutions (calculated on a grant-equivalent basis); USD 0.8 billion to development-oriented private sector instrument (PSI) vehicles and USD 1.7 billion in the form of net loans and equities to private companies operating in ODA-eligible countries (calculated on a cash flow basis), it adds.

Total ODA in 2022 rose by 13.6% in real terms compared to 2021, says the OECD.

“This was the fourth consecutive year ODA surpassed its record levels, and one of the highest growth rates recorded in the history of ODA…”

The rich pocketing ‘obscene’ percentage of aid

In response, Marc Cohen, Oxfam’s aid expert, said: “In 2022, rich countries pocketed an obscene 14.4 percent of aid. They robbed the world’s poorest people of a much-needed lifeline in a time of multiple crises.

“Donors have turned their aid pledges into a farce. Not only have they undelivered more than 193 billion dollars, but they also funnelled nearly 30 billion dollars into their own pockets by mislabeling what counts as aid”.

Rich countries inflating their aid budgets

“They continue to inflate their aid budgets by including vaccine donations, the costs of hosting refugees, and by profiting off development aid loans. It is time for a system with teeth to hold them to account and make sure aid goes to the poorest people in the poorest countries.”

"If people do not change the way antibiotics are used now, these new antibiotics will suffer the same fate as the current ones and become ineffective” . Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 11 2023 (IPS)

Research after research, world’s scientists renew their loud alerts against the high dangers of human-driven ‘superbugs’ – bacterias and pathogens that no longer respond to antimicrobials, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.

No way.

The pressure of giant industrial sectors appear to be heavier than the needed political well to reduce the dangerous impacts of the excessive use of those drugs which are widely employed to prevent and treat infections in humans, aquaculture, livestock, and crop production.

Antibiotics are perhaps the most familiar ones, but there are many others, including numerous antivirals, antifungals and antiparasitic agents that have been largely used and misused to treat diseases but that end up spreading them.

They are known as ‘superbugs’ resulting from their increasing resistance to those medicines. And they are antimicrobial resistant germs which are found in people, animals, food, plants and the environment (in water, soil and air).

“They can spread from person to person or between people and animals, including from food of animal origin,” as further explained by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Such an increasing abuse of antimicrobials and other microbial stressors (e.g. the presence of heavy metals and other pollutants) creates favourable conditions for microorganisms to develop resistance.

The big threat

They represent one of the most complex threats to global health, and food safety and security. Much so that the World Health Organization (WHO) lists Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) among the top 10 threats for global health.

The emergence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens that have acquired new resistance mechanisms, leading to antimicrobial resistance, continues to threaten the ability to treat common infections, WHO explains.

Alarming advance of multi-resistant bacterias

“Especially alarming” is the rapid global spread of multi- and pan-resistant bacterias that cause infections that are not treatable with existing antimicrobial medicines such as antibiotics.

“The clinical pipeline of new antimicrobials is dry.” In 2019 WHO identified 32 antibiotics in clinical development that address its list of priority pathogens, of which only six were classified as innovative.

Moreover, estimates suggest that by 2050 up to 10 million additional direct deaths could occur annually. That is on par with the 2020 rate of global deaths from cancer.

Additionally, in the next decade, AMR could result in a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shortfall of at least 3.4 trillion US dollars annually and push 24 million more people into extreme poverty.

Antibiotics, increasingly ineffective

According to the World Health Organization, the lack of access to quality antimicrobials remains a major issue. Antibiotic shortages are affecting countries of all levels of development and especially in health-care systems.

“Antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective as drug-resistance spreads globally leading to more difficult to treat infections and death.”

New antibiotics urgently needed

New antibacterials are urgently needed – for example, to treat carbapenem-resistant gram-negative bacterial infections as identified in the WHO priority pathogen list.

“However, if people do not change the way antibiotics are used now, these new antibiotics will suffer the same fate as the current ones and become ineffective.”

Meanwhile, FAO reports, “the situation is expected to worsen as global demand for food increases,” adding that it is therefore paramount that the agrifood systems are progressively transformed to reduce the need for antimicrobials.

What drives antimicrobials?

As mentioned above, such a threat is primarily driven by the excessive application of antimicrobials, the international body adds. In fact, currently, more than 70% of antimicrobials sold worldwide are used in animals for human consumption.

While AMR occurs naturally over time, usually through genetic changes, FAO reports that their main drivers include:

– misuse and overuse of antimicrobials in human health and agriculture;

– lack of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene for both humans and animals;

– poor infection and disease prevention and control in healthcare facilities and farms;

– poor access to quality, affordable medicines, vaccines and diagnostics; and

– weak enforcement of legislation.

Who influences the spread of superbugs?

According to UN reports, three economic sector value chains profoundly influence AMR’s development and spread:

• Pharmaceuticals and other chemicals manufacturing
• Agriculture and food including terrestrial animal production, aquaculture, food crops or those providing inputs such as feed, textiles, ornamental plants, biofuels, and other agricultural commodities.

• Healthcare delivery in hospitals, medical facilities, community healthcare facilities and in pharmacies where a range of chemicals and disinfectants are used.

Other major consequences

Another leading specialised body, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned in its February 2023 report: Bracing for Superbugs about the need to curtail pollution created by the pharmaceuticals, agricultural and healthcare sectors.

The study focuses on the environmental dimensions of AMR, reporting that the pharmaceutical, agricultural and healthcare sectors are key drivers of AMR development and spread in the environment, together with pollutants from poor sanitation, sewage and municipal waste systems.

Inger Andersen, the UNEP Executive Director, explained that the triple planetary crisis – climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss – has contributed to this.

“Pollution of air, soil, and waterways undermines the human right to a clean and healthy environment. The same drivers that cause environmental degradation are worsening the antimicrobial resistance problem. The impacts of antimicrobial resistance could destroy our health and food systems,” she warned.

Climate, biodiversity, pollution, nature loss…

According to UNEP, global attention to AMR has mainly focused on human health and agriculture sectors, but there is growing evidence that the environment plays a key role in the development, transmission and spread of AMR and is a key part of the solution to tackle AMR.

In fact, AMR is closely linked to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss, and pollution and waste, driven by human activity, unsustainable consumption and production patterns.

The world leading environmental body explains the following:

— Climate crisis and AMR are two of the greatest and most complex threats the world currently faces. Both have been worsened by, and can be mitigated by, human action.

— Higher temperatures can be associated with increases in AMR infections, and extreme weather patterns can contribute to the emergence and spread of AMR.

— Antimicrobial impacts on microbial biodiversity may affect the cycles of carbon and methane, which are directly involved in regulating Earth’s climate.

— Biodiversity loss: Land-use changes and climate change alter soils’ microbial diversity in recent decades, and microbes inhabiting natural environments are sources of pharmaceutical discovery.

— Municipal solid waste landfills and open dumps are prone to wildlife and feral animal interaction and can contribute to the spread of AMR.

— Pollution: Biological and chemical pollution sources contribute to AMR development, transmission, and spread.

We’re spewing a torrent of waste and pollution that is affecting our environment, our economies, and our health, warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 4 2023 (IPS)

Straight to the point: the current system of voracious money-making production and the induced over-consumption patterns have turned Planet Earth into a giant garbage dump.

And straight to the facts:

• Every minute, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into the ocean.
• If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
• More than 75% of all electronic waste is not safely managed.
• Resource extraction is responsible for half of the world’s carbon emissions.
• The amount of municipal solid waste generated globally could rise from around 2.24 billion tons to 3.88 billion tons by 2050.
• 80% of marine pollution originates on land.

One billion tons of food in the garbage

The waste sector contributes significantly to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss, and pollution.

Those who produce waste must design products and services that are less resource and material intensive, smartly manage any waste created across all stages of their products’ lifecycle, and find creative ways to extend the lives of the products they sell
António Guterres, UN Secretary-General


Just take the shocking case of food. Every year, around 931 million tons of food is lost or wasted and up to 14 million tons of plastic waste enters aquatic ecosystems.

Such an unimaginable waste of food in a world of one billion empty plates, is just to be added to the dumping of billions of tons of plastics, textiles, discarded electronics, and debris from mining and construction sites.

‘Trashing our only home’

“The planet is literally drowning in garbage, and it is high time to clean up,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned, marking the first-ever International Day of Zero Waste (30 March 2023).

“We are trashing our only home,” he said. “We’re spewing a torrent of waste and pollution that is affecting our environment, our economies, and our health.”

Guterres said it was time for “a war on waste” on three fronts, calling on polluters themselves to take the lead.

“Those who produce waste must design products and services that are less resource and material intensive, smartly manage any waste created across all stages of their products’ lifecycle, and find creative ways to extend the lives of the products they sell,” he said.

“We need to find opportunities to reuse, recycle, repurpose, repair and recover the products we use. And we need to think twice before throwing these items in the garbage.”

The case of Türkiye

The Türkiye’s Zero Waste Project has so far managed to conserve some 650 million tonnes of raw material, and to eliminate four million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions through recycling.

“All life on earth is connected but industrialization has led to the over-consumption that is polluting the planet, said the Turkish First Lady, Emine Erdoğan, who spearheads the Project.

“Humans have created this frightening landscape.”

“We are obliged to establish a fair system and take on measures based on burden sharing where we look out for countries deeply impacted by the consequences of climate change which had no part to play in the first place,” she said.

Be ‘waste wise’

The head of the UN’s urban development agency, UN-Habitat, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, urged countries to be “waste wise”, including through finding value in reusing items before discarding them.

“Zero Waste is the first step towards creating waste-wise societies,” she said. “The first step is to take responsibility and make a conscious effort to reduce our consumption of single-use plastics. Remember that everything we use and discard must go somewhere.”

Food systems

The global population is on track to reach 10 billion by 2050, and demand for food and non-food agricultural products is also expected to rise by up to 56%, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Meeting this demand will require healthier and more sustainable food production and consumption, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said.

“We need to urgently address the inefficiencies and inequalities in our agri-food systems to make them more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable.”

For this, it would be of great help to implement the world’s Global Strategy for Sustainable Consumption and Production, which calls for the adoption of sustainable consumption and production objectives across all sectors by 2030.

Another available tool is the “End plastic pollution: towards an internationally legally binding instrument”, which was adopted at the United Nations Environment Assembly on 2 March 2022.

Zero waste?

A zero-waste approach entails responsible production, consumption and disposal of products in a closed, circular system. This means that resources are reused or recovered as much as possible and that we minimise the pollution of air, land or water.

Products should be designed to be durable and require fewer and low-impact materials. By opting for less resource-intensive production and transport methods, manufacturers can further limit pollution and waste.

Consumers can also play a pivotal role in enabling zero waste by changing habits and reusing and repairing products as much as possible before properly disposing of them.

‘The world is bigger than five’

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has suggested that “the world is bigger than five” – a reference to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

Sounds good. But the fact is that those five are the world’s major producers and their corporations are dominating the global markets, making astonishing profits from destruction, being all of them the greater polluters.

For example, alongside oil and gas corporations, food companies more than doubled their profits in 2022 at a time when more than 800 million people were going hungry and 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, as reported by Oxfam International.

Meanwhile, the food industry continues to intensively use toxic chemicals in their products, some of them provoking heart diseases and death. Trans fat is just one of them, adding to contaminating fertilisers, pesticides, microplastics and a long etcetera, that end up in land, water and the air.

Shouldn’t such deadly practices be classified as “crimes against humanity”? And their perpetrators be taken to International Criminal Courts?

"Drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end" Credit: Bigstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 21 2023 (IPS)

Shockingly, the human suicidal war on Nature not only continues unabated but is also set to become even more virulent. Just to start with, please be reminded that groundwater accounts for 99% of all liquid freshwater on Earth, according to the 2022 UN World Water Development Report.

And that groundwater already provides half of the volume of water withdrawn for domestic use by the global population, including the drinking water for the vast majority of the rural population who do not get their water delivered to them via public or private supply systems.

Also that around 25% of all water withdrawn for irrigation, being this a major cause of the fast depletion and pollution of this vital source.

There are two main reasons behind such a dangerous over-exploitation and poisoning of the world’s groundwater:

Vampiric draining…

Water is the lifeblood of our world. From health and nutrition to education and infrastructure, water is vital to every aspect of human survival and wellbeing, and the economic development and prosperity of every nation. But drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end

António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General

The industrial agriculture and food supplies systems, imposed by giant private corporations for the sake of increasing their profits, leads to the “vampiric” draining of the world’s groundwater.

Such money-making systems also lead to a growing, deadly poisoning of water, through the irrational abuse of chemicals in intensive agriculture.

… and deadly poisoning

Coinciding with World Water Day, the United Nations inaugurated in its headquarters in New You a two-day Water Conference (22-24 March), which warns that decades of “mismanagement and misuse” have intensified water stress, threatening the many aspects of life that depend on this crucial resource.

According to a joint report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Water Management Institute, human settlements, industries and agriculture are the major sources of water pollution.

Much so that, globally, 80% of municipal wastewater is discharged into water bodies untreated.

Learn also that:

Industry is responsible for dumping millions of tonnes of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes into water bodies each year.

Agriculture, which accounts for 70% of water abstractions worldwide, plays a major role in water pollution. Farms discharge large quantities of agrochemicals, organic matter, drug residues, sediments and saline drainage into water bodies.

The level of water poisoning has largely increased since this joint report was issued in 2017.

The resultant water pollution poses demonstrated risks to aquatic ecosystems, human health and productive activities.

FAO further reports that in most high-income countries and many emerging economies, “agricultural pollution has already overtaken contamination from settlements and industries as the major factor in the degradation of inland and coastal waters.”

“Nitrate from agriculture is the most common chemical contaminant in the world’s groundwater aquifers.”

In addition to poisoned crops, billions of people around the world still lack access to water. It is estimated that more than 800.000 people die each year from diseases directly attributed to unsafe water.

More alarm bells

No wonder then that the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, has sounded the following alarm bells in his message on the occasion of this year’s World Water Day (22 March):

“Water is the lifeblood of our world. From health and nutrition to education and infrastructure, water is vital to every aspect of human survival and wellbeing, and the economic development and prosperity of every nation.”

”But drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end.”

“Meanwhile, climate change is wreaking havoc on water’s natural cycle. Greenhouse gas pollution continues to rise to all-time record levels, heating the world’s climate to dangerous levels,” warns the UN Chief.

“This is worsening water-related disasters, disease outbreaks, water shortages and droughts while inflicting damage to infrastructure, food production, and supply chains.”

More than 1 in 3 people lack basic hand washing facilities at home. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Key facts

Perhaps a look at some of the key facts and figures about this grim picture, which have been released by major international specialised organisations, would suffice to realise the pernicious dimensions of such a war.

See what they report on the occasion of the 2023 World Water Day:

• A quarter of the global population – 2 billion people – use unsafe drinking water sources. Half of humanity – 3.6 billion people – live without safely managed sanitation.
• More than 1 in 3 people lack basic hand washing facilities at home. For at least 3 billion people, mostly in developing countries, the quality of the water they depend on is unknown because the data is not collected routinely.
• Almost half of the schools in the world do not have proper handwashing facilities with soap and water. Every day, more than 700 children under the age of five die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene.
• Eight out of 10 people who lack even basic drinking water service live in rural areas, and about half of them live in least developed countries. In 2019, more than 733 million people lived in countries with high and critical levels of water stress.
• Water-related hazards have increased in frequency over the past 20 years. Since 2000, flood-related disasters have increased by 134 per cent, and the number and duration of droughts also increased by 29 per cent.
• Agricultural and untreated wastewater pose two of the gravest threats to environmental water quality globally. With a well-developed monitoring system, water-quality issues could be identified at an early stage, allowing mitigation measures to be introduced before severe deterioration occurs.
• The number of city inhabitants lacking safely managed drinking water has increased by more than 50% since 2000. While 86% of people in urban areas have safely managed drinking water services, only 60% of people in rural areas have them.

Survival of the innocent victims

Meanwhile, the drilling of local wells to meet the vital needs of the world’s impoverished communities, in particular areas, who suffer the devastating impacts of severe, long-standing droughts, heat waves, unprecedented floods caused by climate emergencies that they have not caused.

Did you know that one of the continents most hit by such devastation is Africa, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions with a negligible 3%, while bearing the brunt of 80% of its consequences?

What else to say?

A family from Sachac, a Quechua farming community in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco in southeastern Peru. When members of these native families move to the cities, they face different forms of racism, despite the fact that 60 percent of the Peruvian population identifies as ‘mestizo’ or mixed-race and 25 percent as a member of an indigenous people. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 17 2023 (IPS)

Three-quarters of a century ago, the world adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasising that all human beings are born equal in dignity and rights. The 2023 theme of its 75th anniversary focuses on the urgency of combating racism and racial discrimination.

More: nearly a quarter of a century ago, the world adopted in South Africa the Durban Declaration to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, distrust, intolerance, and hate, globally.

Since then, these “contagious killers” not only continued unabated but are now more spread than ever in all societies, in particular in those under the dominance of the so-called ‘white supremacy.’

Centuries of colonialism, enslavement

Such a “Pernicious Evil” as rightfully described by the United Nations Chief, António Guterres, takes many forms and impacts all aspects of life. “Much of today’s racism is “deeply entrenched in centuries of colonialism and enslavement,” he warned already two years ago.

The UN Chief then painted a picture of “pervasive discrimination and exclusion” suffered by people of African descent, injustices and oppression endured by indigenous peoples, antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred – and the latest abhorrence of violence against people of Asian descent who are bring targeted unjustly for COVID-19.

The “repugnant” views of white supremacists

“We also see it in the biases built into the codes for facial recognition and artificial intelligence” as well as the “repugnant views of white supremacists and other extremist groups”, added the top UN Official.

In fact, racism harms not just the lives of those who endure it but also society as a whole. It deepens mistrust, casting suspicion on all sides and tearing apart the social fabric, warns the United Nations.

Impacts could include the ability to find a job, get an education, have equal access to healthcare, housing, food, water or get fair treatment in a court of law, explains the world body.

“We all lose in a society characterised by discrimination, division, distrust, intolerance, and hate,” as stated on the occasion of the 2023 International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (21 March).

Contagious killers

“Like COVID-19, racism and xenophobia are contagious killers,” the UN emphasises.

In 2001, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) was adopted at the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa. As the UN’s blueprint to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance globally.

Alongside with the International Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024, the implementation of the Durban Declaration should represent a top priority in the world’s agenda. But is it?

Hatred spreading everywhere

Evidently it is not. Reality shows that the narratives of separatism, discrimination, division and fear and hatred of the other continue to be widespread in the streets, in schools, at work, in public transport; in the voting booth, on social media, at home and on the sports field.

Moreover, hate speech’ scale and impact are now amplified by new communications technologies.

The major victims

The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination lists the following communities among the major victims of abhorrent racism, discrimination and hatred:

People of African Descent

The descendants of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade or more recent migrants, frequently face racial discrimination and prejudice.

Discriminatory structures and institutions, legacies of the injustices of enslavement and colonialism result in people of African descent being among the poorest and most marginalised groups in society who also face “alarmingly high rates of police violence, and racial profiling.”

In addition to People of African Descent and the descendants of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, racism directly impacts the lives of many other communities and groups, including:

Indigenous Peoples

Systematically discriminated against, robbed of their basic rights, lands and cultures, there are nowadays over 476 million indigenous people living in 90 countries across the world, accounting for 6.2% of the global population.

Of those, there are more than 5.000 distinct groups. Indigenous people speak an overwhelming majority of the world’s estimated 7.000 languages.

“Nevertheless, they are nearly three times as likely to be living in extreme poverty compared to their non-indigenous counterparts.”

Migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, Internally Displaced People

There were 82.4 million people forcibly displaced world-wide at the end of 2020 as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order.

There are also millions of stateless people, who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.

Among the 82.4 million forcibly displaced: 26.4 million are refugees, around half of whom are under the age of 18; 20.7 million refugees under UNHCR‘s mandate, and 5.7 million Palestine refugees under UNRWA‘s mandate.

There were also 48 million internally displaced people, 4.1 million asylum seekers, and 3.9 million Venezuelans displaced abroad (UNHCR).

People Living in Extreme Poverty

Poverty entails more than the lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods. Its manifestations include “hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other basic services, social discrimination and exclusion, as well as the lack of participation in decision-making.”

Poverty — a cause and a product of human rights violations

Many people who live in extreme poverty are often also victims of racial discrimination.

In 2001 the World Conference against Racism in Durban emphasised that poverty, underdevelopment, marginalisation, social exclusion and economic disparities are closely associated with racism, and contribute to the persistence of racist attitudes and practices, which in turn, generate more poverty.

A vicious circle

The UN often refers to poverty as a ’vicious circle,’ made up of a wide range of factors, which are interlinked and hard to overcome. Deprivation of resources, capability and opportunities makes it impossible for anyone to satisfy the most basic human needs or to enjoy human rights.

Women

Racial discrimination does not affect all members of victim groups in the same way.

In fact, being the entire half of the world population, women and girls are often among the most vulnerable members of society, and are at greater risk of economic hardship, exclusion and violence; discrimination against them is often compounded.

The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action focused attention on the issue of multiple, or aggravated, forms of discrimination, which are most significantly experienced by female members of discriminated groups, but which are also suffered by persons with disabilities, persons affected by HIV/AIDS, children and the elderly, among others.

These are often among the most vulnerable members of society, and are at greater risk of economic hardship, exclusion and violence; discrimination against them is often compounded.

Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia subject members of these religious communities to discrimination and violent movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas.

There are many other groups and many more millions of human beings who every day, every minute, fall prey to racism, discrimination, hatred, and the consequence of shocking inequalities that kill one person every four seconds.

Why don’t you take a look at what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says?

Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world, says UN chief.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 13 2023 (IPS)

Islamophobia is a ‘fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world.’

Consequently, suspicion, discrimination and ‘outright hatred’ towards Muslims have risen to “epidemic proportions.”

These are not the words of this convinced secular journalist, but those of the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.

In fact, a recent report launched ahead of the International Day to Combat Islamophobia (15 March), warns that, motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that transcends into structural and cultural racism, it targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution sponsored by 60 Member-States of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which designated 15 March as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. The resolution stresses that “terrorism and violent extremism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization, or ethnic group.”
This definition emphasises the link between institutional levels of Islamophobia and manifestations of such attitudes, triggered by the visibility of the victim’s perceived Muslim identity.

A threat to Western values?

This approach also interprets Islamophobia as a form of racism, whereby Islamic religion, tradition and culture are seen as a “threat” to “Western values.”

“Following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and other horrific acts of terrorism purportedly carried out in the name of Islam, institutional suspicion of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim has escalated to epidemic proportions.”

Widespread negative representations of Islam

At the same time, “widespread negative representations of Islam, and harmful stereotypes that depict Muslims and their beliefs and culture as a threat have served to perpetuate, validate and normalise discrimination, hostility and violence towards Muslim individuals and communities.”

In addition, in States where they are in the minority, “Muslims often experience discrimination in accessing goods and services, in finding employment and in education.”

In some States they are denied citizenship or legal immigration status due to xenophobic perceptions that Muslims represent national security and terrorism threats. Muslim women are disproportionately targeted in Islamophobic hate crimes, adds the United Nations.

Islamophobic ‘hate crimes’

Studies show that the number of Islamophobic hate crimes frequently increases following events beyond the control of most Muslims, including terrorist attacks and anniversaries of such attacks.

“These trigger events illustrate how Islamophobia may attribute collective responsibility to all Muslims for the actions of a very select few, or feed upon inflammatory rhetoric.”

The UN says that many Governments have taken steps to combat Islamophobia by establishing anti-hate-crime legislation and measures to prevent and prosecute hate crimes and by conducting public awareness campaigns about Muslims and Islam designed to dispel negative myths and misconceptions.

A resolution…

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution sponsored by 60 Member-States of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which designated 15 March as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.

The resolution stresses that “terrorism and violent extremism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization, or ethnic group.”

It calls for a global dialogue on the promotion of a culture of tolerance and peace, based on respect for human rights and for the diversity of religions and beliefs.

Marking the first International Day to Combat Islamophobia in 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out that “anti-Muslim bigotry is part of a larger trend of a resurgence in ethno-nationalism, neo-Nazism, stigma and hate speech targeting vulnerable populations including Muslims, Jews, some minority Christian communities, as well as others.”

… and a Plan

In response to the “alarming trend” of rising hate speech around the world, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech.

The Strategy clearly states that hate speech incites violence and intolerance.

The devastating effect of hatred, it adds, is sadly nothing new. However, its scale and impact are now amplified by new communications technologies.

“Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world.”

The numbers

With an estimated total of some 1.8 billion followers worldwide, Islam is the second most spread belief after Christianism (2.2 billion).

Here, it should be reminded that not all Arabs are Muslims, nor all Muslims are Arabs.

In fact, Arab countries are home to just slightly more than 1 in 4 Muslims worldwide, while Asia –in particular South and Southeast Asia– accounts for more than 60% of the world’s Muslims.

The largest Muslim population in a single country lives in Indonesia, which is home to 13% of all the world’s Muslims. Pakistan (with 12%) is the second largest Muslim-majority nation, followed by India (11%), and Bangladesh (10%).

Also the Arabs

In spite of the above, there is still a widespread perception mixing Muslims with Arabs, which extends the anti-Muslim hatred wave to all Arab or Arab-majority societies.

Whatever the case is, recent history shows that several Muslim countries have fallen victims to wars, and military occupation (Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen), while others are scenarios to stark instabilities (Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, just to mention some).

Racism everywhere

No lessons have been learnt from horrific crimes committed against believers. Remember the Holocaust against the Jews?

The evidence is that racism, “xenophobia and related discrimination and intolerance exist in all societies, everywhere. Racism harms not just the lives of those who endure it, but also society as a whole,” stated the UN chief.

“We all lose in a society characterised by discrimination, division, distrust, intolerance, and hate. The fight against racism is everyone’s fight…”

Yes, but is it… really?

Nearly every maternal death is preventable, and the clinical expertise and technology necessary to avert these losses have existed for decades. Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 7 2023 (IPS)

The answer is that there are alarming setbacks for maternal health care and, in many cases, even a total lack of maternity services, which threaten to further raise the number of these tragic preventable deaths one million or more a year by 2030.

Severe bleeding, high blood pressure, pregnancy-related infections, complications from unsafe abortion, and underlying conditions that can be aggravated by pregnancy (such as HIV/AIDS and malaria) are the leading causes of maternal deaths, UN specialised bodies report.

“These are all largely preventable and treatable with access to quality and respectful healthcare.”

Why then are these causes still not prevented and treated?

While pregnancy should be a time of immense hope and a positive experience for all women, it is tragically still a shockingly dangerous experience for millions around the world who lack access to high quality, respectful health care,

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO)
In theory, ending maternal mortality should be achievable, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the world’s sexual and reproductive health agency, on 23 February stated, that’s just three weeks ahead of this year’s International Women’s Day (8 March).

“Nearly every maternal death is preventable, and the clinical expertise and technology necessary to avert these losses have existed for decades.”

“Why, then, do almost 800 women still die every day from maternal causes? How, today, can one woman die every two minutes from pregnancy or childbirth?”

Alarming setbacks

It’s a question that has only grown more urgent with the release of the new report –based on estimates by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division, which reveals progress on ending preventable maternal deaths has “not only slowed over the last five years, but stagnated.”

The report reveals “alarming setbacks” for women’s health over recent years, as maternal deaths either increased or stagnated in nearly all regions of the world.

“While pregnancy should be a time of immense hope and a positive experience for all women, it is tragically still a shockingly dangerous experience for millions around the world who lack access to high quality, respectful health care,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).

“These new statistics reveal the urgent need to ensure every woman and girl has access to critical health services before, during and after childbirth, and that they can fully exercise their reproductive rights.”

A miracle turned into tragedy

“For millions of families, the miracle of childbirth is marred by the tragedy of maternal deaths,” said UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell.

“No mother should have to fear for her life while bringing a baby into the world, especially when the knowledge and tools to treat common complications exist. Equity in healthcare gives every mother, no matter who they are or where they are, a fair chance at a safe delivery and a healthy future with their family.”

More poverty, more death

In total numbers, maternal deaths continue to be largely concentrated in the poorest parts of the world and in countries affected by conflict, according to the report.

In 2020, about 70% of all maternal deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa. In nine countries facing severe humanitarian crises, maternal mortality rates were more than double the world average (551 maternal deaths per 100.000 live births, compared to 223 globally).

Stark inequalities

Roughly a third of women do not have even four of a recommended eight antenatal checks or receive essential postnatal care, while some 270 million women lack access to modern family planning methods.

Moreover, “inequities related to income, education, race or ethnicity further increase risks for marginalised pregnant women, who have the least access to essential maternity care but are most likely to experience underlying health problems in pregnancy.”

Needless deaths

“It is unacceptable that so many women continue to die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth. Over 280.000 fatalities in a single year is unconscionable,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem.

“We can and must do better by urgently investing in family planning and filling the global shortage of 900.000 midwives so that every woman can get the lifesaving care she needs. We have the tools, knowledge and resources to end preventable maternal deaths; what we need now is the political will.”

The report reveals that the world must “significantly accelerate progress to meet global targets for reducing maternal deaths, or else risk the lives of over one million more women by 2030.”

Question: How much money is needed to put an end to such horrifying deaths? Wouldn’t it be enough to dedicate what the world’s giant private business gains in just one minute through selling weapons, speculating with oil, power and food prices, marketing artificial baby milk, and a very long etcetera, let alone technologies?

Is digitisation more urgent?

There is another question needing an answer: how come that, in spite of the above-mentioned findings, the United Nations now focuses on the need to ‘digilitalise’ the lives of women?

See what the UN says about this year’s International Women’s Day (8 March), under the theme: DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality:

“Our lives depend on strong technological integration: attending a course, calling loved ones, making a bank transaction, or booking a medical appointment. Everything currently goes through a digital process.”

“However, 37% of women do not use the internet. 259 million fewer women have access to the Internet than men, even though they account for nearly half the world’s population.”

The world’s major multilateral body further explains that if women are unable to access the Internet and do not feel safe online, they are unable to develop the necessary digital skills to engage in digital spaces, which diminishes their opportunities to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields.

And that by 2050, 75% of jobs will be related to STEM areas. “Yet today, women hold just 22% of positions in artificial intelligence, to name just one.”

True: women have historically been victims of all sorts of abuse, violence, and targeted inequalities that have systematically left them far behind in all aspects of life.

Shouldn’t their indisputable right to the most basic health care be –now and always– a high priority on the world’s agenda?

Chronic underinvestment in agriculture is a key cause of the widespread hunger experienced in 2022, according to Oxfam report. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 3 2023 (IPS)

The data is shocking: three-quarters of African Governments have already reduced their agricultural budgets while paying almost double that on arms.

Africa is home to a quarter of the world’s entire agricultural land. Nevertheless, in the 12 months that African leaders vowed to improve food security in the continent, over 20 million more people have been pushed into “severe hunger.”

Today “a fifth of the African population (or 278 million) is undernourished, and 55 million of its children under the age of five are stunted due to severe malnutrition,” Oxfam International adds to the above data in its report: Over 20 million more people hungry in Africa’s “year of nutrition”.

“The hunger African people are facing today is a direct result of inadequate political choices…,” said Fati N’Zi-Hassane, Oxfam in Africa Director.

Chronic underinvestment

The report further explains that chronic underinvestment in agriculture is a key cause of the widespread hunger experienced in 2022.

The majority of African governments (48 out of 54) reportedly spend an average of 3.8% of their budgets on agriculture -some spending as little as 1%. Nearly three quarters of these governments have reduced their agricultural spending since 2019, failing to honour their Malabo commitments to invest at least 10% of their budget on agriculture

Specifically, it adds, the majority of African governments (48 out of 54) reportedly spend an average of 3.8% of their budgets on agriculture -some spending as little as 1%.

“Nearly three quarters of these governments have reduced their agricultural spending since 2019, failing to honour their Malabo commitments to invest at least 10% of their budget on agriculture.”

In 2014 African leaders signed the Malabo Declaration, which stipulated that African governments must spend at least 10% of their budget on Agriculture and supporting farmers.

Politicians doubling military spending

In contrast, “African governments spent nearly double that budget (6.4%) on arms last year. Ongoing conflict, especially in Sahel and Central Africa, has continued to destroy farmland, displace people and fuel hunger.”

In addition, “worsening climate-fuelled droughts and floods, and a global rise in fuel and fertilisers prices, made food unobtainable for millions of people. In 2022 alone, food inflation rose by double digits in all but ten African countries.”

No access to neighbouring markets

As the 36th African Union Summit was held in February 2023, focussing on intra-continental free trade, “millions of smallholder farmers, who are vital food producers in the continent, cannot reach markets in neighbouring countries due to poor infrastructure and high intra-African tariffs.”

In other words, “many African nations find it cheaper to import food from outside the continent than from their next-door neighbour.”
According to Oxfam:

• As of August 2022 (the last available figure), there were 139.95 million people in 35 African countries living in “Crisis or worse acute food insecurity.” That is an increase of 17% (20.26 million people) over the same number a year earlier (119.69 million people).

• This increase can be attributed to both a worsening acute food insecurity situation and an expansion in the population analysed between 2021 and 2022. (Source: Global Report on Food Crises Mid-Year Update 2022).

• The average spending on military as share of total budget is 6.43% (2021) as reported at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, while the average spending in agriculture (2021) was 3.8% as reported on GovernmentSpendingWatch

• South Sudan spends less than 1% of its budget on Agriculture. Calculations of all agricultural spending in Africa is based on data from the government spending watch, national budgets and FAO.

• According to the CAADP report and the FAO Crop Prospects report, Africa’s cereal production in 2022 was 207.4 million tons, a decline of 3.4 million tons from the average of the previous five years.

Five-fold increase in extreme weather events

The increasing hunger in Africa –which is imposed by both externally and internally– is just part of a widespread drama.

In fact, climate change is fuelling hunger for millions of people around the world. “Extreme weather events have increased five-fold over the past 50 years, destroying homes, decimating livelihoods, fuelling conflict and displacement, and deepening inequality,” Oxfam reports.

Hunger more than doubling

Climate change has resulted in more frequent and intense droughts, floods, and heat waves. “The number of disasters has increased five-fold over the past 50 years.”

This is hitting low-income countries hardest, Oxfam goes on, adding that the 10 countries with the highest UN appeals related to weather extremes since 2000, have seen a 123% rise in the number of people suffering extreme hunger -from 21.3 million to 47.5 million.

These countries are Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Somalia and Zimbabwe. According to this data, 7 out of these 10 countries are Africans.

Fossil fuel staggering profits

The G20 countries are amongst the most polluting nations in the world, collectively responsible for nearly 77% of carbon emissions, reports Oxfam, a global movement of people, working together to end the injustice of poverty, by tackling the inequality that keeps people poor.

It is extraordinary that as humanity faces this existential crisis, there is still more incentive to destroy our planet than to save lives.

“The oil and gas industry has enjoyed staggering profits as they wreak havoc on the planet –amassing 2.8 billion US dollars a day (or more than 1 trillion US dollars per year) for the last 50 years.”

Seismic hunger

For its part, the World Food Programme (WFP) reports that the current seismic hunger crisis has been caused by a deadly combination of factors: conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes are combining to create a food crisis of unprecedented proportions.

Much so that “as many as 828 million people are unsure of where their next meal is coming from.”

In its report ‘2023: Another year of extreme jeopardy for those struggling to feed their families,’ WFP warns that a record 349 million people across 79 countries are facing acute food insecurity – up from 287 million in 2021. This constitutes a staggering rise of 200 million people compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.

More than 900,000 people worldwide are fighting to survive in famine-like conditions, the world body reports, adding that this is “ten times more than five years ago, an alarmingly rapid increase.”

In short, politicians also in the most needed and highest exposed to staggering hunger countries, continue to attach higher relevance to spending on arms fueling conflicts, and on fuel fuels spreading climate disasters, rather than investing in saving the lives of their own people.

A million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, we have lost half of the world’s corals and lose forest areas the size of 27 football fields every minute, finds WWF report. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 1 2023 (IPS)

Wildlife is indeed far much more than a safari or an ‘exotic’ ornament: as many as four billion people –or an entire half the whole world’s population– rely on wild species for income, food, medicines and wood fuel for cooking.

In spite of that, one million species of plants and animals are already facing extinction due to the voracious profit-making, over-exploitative, illegal trade and the relentless depletion of the variety of life on Planet Earth.

In fact, billions of people, both in developed and developing nations, benefit daily from the use of wild species for food, energy, materials, medicine, recreation, and many other vital contributions to human well-being, as duly reports the UN on the occasion of the 2023 World Wildlife Day (3 March).

The world is waking up to the fact that our future depends on reversing the loss of nature just as much as it depends on addressing climate change. And you can’t solve one without solving the other

Carter Roberts, head of WWF-US

Much so that 50,000 wild species meet the needs of billions worldwide. And 1 in 5 people around the world rely on wild species for income and food, while 2.4 billion people depend on wood fuel for cooking.

The world’s major multilateral body reminds us of the “urgent need to step up the fight against wildlife crime and human-induced reduction of species, which have wide-ranging economic, environmental and social impacts.”

Variety of life, lost at an “alarming rate”

A world organisation leading in wildlife conservation and protection of endangered species: the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns that unfortunately, we’re losing biodiversity — the rich variety of life on Earth — at an “alarming rate.”

“We’ve seen a 69% average decline in the number of birds, amphibians, mammals, fish, and reptiles since 1970, according to the 2022 Living Planet Report.

“A million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, we have lost half of the world’s corals and lose forest areas the size of 27 football fields every minute.”

WWF highlights the following findings, among several others:

• 69% average decline in wildlife populations since 1970,
• Wildlife populations in Latin America and the Caribbean plummeting at a staggering rate of 94%,
• Freshwater species populations have suffered an 83% fall.

Major causes

The 2022 Living Planet Report points out some of the major causes leading to the shocking loss of the world’s biodiversity.

“The biggest driver of biodiversity loss is the way in which people use the land and sea. How we grow food, harvest materials such as wood or minerals from the ocean floor, and build our towns and cities all have an impact on the natural environment and the biodiversity that lives there.”

Food systems: the biggest cause of Nature loss: according to findings provided by WWF, food production has caused 70% of biodiversity loss on land and 50% in freshwater. It is also responsible for around 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

As a global population, what we’re eating and how we’re producing it right now is good for neither us nor the planet. While over 800 million people are going hungry, over two billion of those who do have enough food are obese or overweight.

The WWF provided findings also indicate that meat tends to have the highest environmental impact, partially because livestock produce methane emissions through their digestive process – something called enteric fermentation – but also because most meat comes from livestock fed with crops.

And that around 850 million people around the world are thought to rely on coral reefs for their food and livelihoods.

WWF’ report also refers to the invasive non-native species: Invasive non-native species are those that arrive in places where they historically didn’t live and out-compete local biodiversity for resources such as sunlight and water. This causes the native species to die out, causing a shift in the makeup of the natural ecosystem.

Future depends on reversing the loss of Nature

“The world is waking up to the fact that our future depends on reversing the loss of nature just as much as it depends on addressing climate change. And you can’t solve one without solving the other,” said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF-US.

“These plunges in wildlife populations can have dire consequences for our health and economies,” says Rebecca Shaw, global chief scientist of WWF.

“When wildlife populations decline to this degree, it means dramatic changes are impacting their habitats and the food and water they rely on. We should care deeply about the unravelling of natural systems because these same resources sustain human life.”

In view of all the above, the causes of the fast destruction of the variety of life have been scientifically identified as well as the dangerous consequences. However, the dominant private business continues to see more profits in destroying than in saving.

In Nigeria's Northeast the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition is projected to increase to two million in 2023. Credit: UNOCHA/Christina Powell.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Feb 23 2023 (IPS)

While the world’s biggest powers and their giant private corporations continue to attach high priority to their military –and commercial– dominance, both of them being shockingly profitable, entire generations are being lost to deadly armed conflicts, devastating climate catastrophes, diseases, hunger and more imposed impoverishment.

Part I of this series of two articles focussed on the unprecedented suffering of the most innocent and helpless human beings – children– in 11 countries. But there are many more.

According to the UN Children Fund (UNICEF), hundreds of thousands of children continue to pay the highest price of a mixture of man-made brutalities, with their lives, apart from the unfolding proxy war in Ukraine, and the not yet final account of victims of the Türkiye and Syria earthquakes, which are forcing children to sleep in the streets under the rumble, amid the chilling cold.

Nigeria

Nigeria is just one of the already reported cases of 11 countries. UNICEF on 11 February 2023 appealed for 1.3 billion US dollars to stop what it calls “the ticking bomb of child malnutrition.”

The appeal is meant to help six million people severely affected by conflict, disease, and disaster in Northeast Nigeria.

“The large-scale humanitarian and protection crisis shows no sign of abating,” said Matthias Schmale, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria. “An estimated 2.4 million people are in acute need – impacted by conflict, disaster and disease – and require urgent support.”

The “ticking time bomb” of child malnutrition is escalating in Nigeria’s Northeast, with the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition projected to increase to two million in 2023, up from 1.74 million last year, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.

Already high levels of severe acute malnutrition are projected to more than double from 2022 to a projected 697,000 this year. Women and girls are the hardest hit, said Schmale.

“Over 80% of people in need of humanitarian assistance across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states are women and children. They face increased risks of violence, abduction, rape and abuse.”

The UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Nderitu raised concerns about a worsening security situation, calling for urgent action to address conflicts and prevent “atrocity crimes.”

Urgent immediate actions must be taken now, both to address the crisis in the short-term and long-term. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Horn of Africa: the suffering of over 20 million children

By the end of 2022, UNICEF warned of a funding shortfall as the region faces an unprecedented fifth consecutive failed rainy season and a poor outlook for the sixth.

The number of children suffering dire drought conditions across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia has “more than doubled in five months,” according to UNICEF.

“Around 20.2 million children are now facing the threat of severe hunger, thirst and disease, compared to 10 million in July [2022], as climate change, conflict, global inflation and grain shortages devastate the region.”

While collective and accelerated efforts have mitigated some of the worst impacts of what had been feared, “children in the Horn of Africa are still facing the most severe drought in more than two generations,” said UNICEF Deputy Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Lieke van de Wiel.

“Humanitarian assistance must be continued to save lives and build the resilience of the staggering number of children and families who are being pushed to the edge – dying from hunger and disease and being displaced in search of food, water and pasture for their livestock.”

Nearly two million children across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia are currently estimated to require ”urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form of hunger.”

In addition, across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia:

• More than two million people are displaced internally because of drought.
• Water insecurity has more than doubled with close to 24 million people now confronting dire water shortages.
• Approximately 2.7 million children are out of school because of the drought, with an additional estimated 4 million children at risk of dropping out.
• As families are driven to the edge dealing with increased stress, children face a range of protection risks – including child labour, child marriage and female genital mutilation.
• Gender-based violence, including sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, is also increasing due to widespread food insecurity and displacement.

UNICEF’s 2023 emergency appeal of US$759 million to provide life-saving support to children and their families will require timely and flexible funding support, especially in the areas of education, water and sanitation, and child protection, which were ”severely underfunded” during UNICEF’s 2022 response.

An additional US$690 million is required to support long-term investments to help children and their families to recover and adapt to climate change.

Meanwhile, more unfolding tragedies for children

The above-reported suffering for the most defenceless human beings–children, does not end here. Indeed, two more major tragedies continue unfolding. Such is the case of the brutal proxy war in Ukraine and the most destructive earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria.

“A child in North Syria passing by the ruins, after the earthquake hit his town.” – Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)

Türkiye-Syria Earthquakes

A steady flow of UN aid trucks filled with vital humanitarian relief continues to cross the border from Southern Türkiye into Northwest Syria to help communities enduring “terrible trauma” caused by the earthquake disaster, UN aid teams on 17 February 2023 reported.

As UN aid convoys continue to deliver more relief to quake-hit Northwest Syria via additional land routes from Türkiye, UN humanitarians warned that “many thousands of children have likely been killed,” while millions more vulnerable people urgently need support.

“Even without verified numbers, it’s tragically clear the number of children killed, the number of children orphaned is going to keep on rising,” on 14 February 2023 said UN Children Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder.

In Türkiye, the total number of children living in the 10 provinces before the emergency was 4.6 million, and 2.5 million in Syria.

And as the humanitarian focus shifts from rescue to recovery, eight days after the disaster, Elder warned that cases of “hypothermia and respiratory infections” were rising among youngsters, as he appealed for continued solidarity with all those affected by the emergency.

“Everyone, everywhere, needs more support, more safe water, more warmth, more shelter, more fuel, more medicines, more funding,” he said.

“Families with children are sleeping in streets, malls, mosques, schools, under bridges, staying out in the open for fear of returning to their homes.”

“Unimaginable hardship”

“The children and families of Türkiye and Syria are facing unimaginable hardship in the aftermath of these devastating earthquakes,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

“We must do everything in our power to ensure that everyone who survived this catastrophe receives life-saving support, including safe water, sanitation, critical nutrition and health supplies, and support for children’s mental health. Not only now, but over the long term.”

The number of children killed and injured during the quakes and their aftermath has not yet been confirmed but is likely to be in the many thousands. The official total death toll has now passed 45,000.

Freezing

Many families have lost their homes and are now living in temporary shelters, “often in freezing conditions and with snow and rain adding to their suffering.” Access to safe water and sanitation is also a major concern, as are the health needs of the affected population.

Ukraine

Months of escalating conflict have left millions of children in Ukraine vulnerable to biting winds and frigid temperatures, UNICEF reports.

Hundreds of thousands of people have seen their homes, businesses or schools damaged or destroyed while continuing attacks on critical energy infrastructure have left millions of children without sustained access to electricity, heating and water.

The list of brutalities committed against the world’s children goes on. The funds desperately needed to save their lives represent a tiny faction of all that is being spent on wars.

A child carries empty jerry cans to fill water from a nearby tap providing untreated water from the Nile river in Juba, South Sudan. Credit: UNICEF/Phil Hatcher-Moore

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Feb 22 2023 (IPS)

Today, there are more children in need of desperate humanitarian assistance than at any other time since World War II.

“Across the globe, children and their families are facing a deadly mix of crises, from conflict and displacement to disease, outbreaks and soaring rates of malnutrition. Meanwhile, climate change is making these crises worse and unleashing new ones.”

Tragically enough, UNICEF – the world’s body which was created in the aftermath of the Second World War to save the lives of millions of children who fell prey to the devastating weapons used by their own continent: Europe – could not depict more accurately the current situation of the most innocent humans.

The UN Children Fund in fact reports on the pressing need to provide life-saving help to millions of children trapped in continuing atrocities committed by adults.

In its report: 11 emergencies that need more attention and support in 2023, UNICEF focuses on the following countries where, additionally, resources have fallen short:

South Sudan

Unprecedented flooding in South Sudan has taken a devastating toll on families. Crops have been destroyed, grazing spaces for cattle and other livestock have been submerged and families have been forced to flee their homes.

With hunger and malnutrition on the rise across the flooded regions, some communities are likely to face starvation without sustained humanitarian assistance.

UNICEF is working to screen and treat children with severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting – the most lethal form of undernutrition, and one of the top threats to child survival. Read the latest appeal for South Sudan

Yemen

After eight years of conflict, the systems that Yemen’s families depend on remain on the edge of total collapse. More than 23.4 million people, including 12.9 million children, have, so far, fallen victim to such a brutal war.

In addition, more than 11,000 children have been killed or maimed since 2015, while conflict, massive displacement and recurring climate shocks have left more than 2 million children “acutely malnourished and struggling to survive.” Read the latest appeal for Yemen

Haiti

Political turmoil, civil unrest and gang violence, crippling poverty and natural disasters, a deadly combination of threats are already posing a massive challenge for families in Haiti. A surge in cholera in 2022 is posing yet another risk for children’s health – and their lives.

“There is an urgent need to step up efforts to protect families against cholera by delivering cholera kits and water purifying tablets and trucking in clean water.”

To contain malnutrition, UNICEF is also screening children for wasting to ensure that those who need help can be treated in mobile clinics and other facilities. Read the latest appeal for Haiti

DR Congo

An escalation in armed conflict and recurrent outbreaks of deadly diseases are taking a heavy toll on millions of children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The country hosts the “second-highest number of internally displaced people in the world.”

The cramped conditions in the camps that families are living in are fraught with danger for children, who face an increased risk of violence and disease. Read the latest appeal for Democratic Republic of the Congo.

A father and son remove their belonging from their flooded home in Taluka, Shujabad, District Mirpurkhas, Pakistan. Credit: RDF

Pakistan

The rains that brought historic flooding to much of Pakistan in 2022 may have ended, but the crisis for children has not.

Months after floods ravaged the country, vast swathes of cropland and villages remain under water, while millions of girls and boys are still in need of immediate lifesaving support.

Around 8 million people are still exposed to flood waters or living close to flooded areas. “Many of these families are still living in makeshift tents alongside the road or near the rubble of their home – often in the open, right next to contaminated and stagnant water.”

UNICEF on January 2022 reported that up to 4 million children in Pakistan are still living next to stagnant and contaminated floodwater Read the latest appeal for Pakistan

Burkina Faso

Political fragility, the impacts of climate change and economic and health crises have contributed to the internal displacement of around 1.7 million people in Burkina Faso – 60% of them are children.

“The anxiety, depression and other stress-related problems associated with displacement can take a lifelong toll on children’s emotional and physical health.” Read the latest appeal for Burkina Faso

Rohingya IDPs confined to a Sittwe camp in Rakhine State wait for international intervention. More than 1.5 million people are displaced in Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Myanmar

Deepening conflict in Myanmar continues to impact children and their families, with some 5.6 million children in need of humanitarian assistance.

Attacks on schools and hospitals have continued at alarming levels, while grave violations of child rights in armed conflict have been reported.

The conflict has undermined the delivery of child health services, including routine immunisation, threatening to take a long-lasting toll on children’s health and well-being. Read the latest appeal for Myanmar

Palestine

“Children in the State of Palestine continue to face a protracted protection crisis and an ongoing occupation.” Around 2.1 million people – more than half of them children – now require humanitarian assistance.

Since 2009, UNICEF has been supporting family centres across the Gaza Strip to provide psychosocial care for children.

Children in need of more specialised services – such as those facing violence at home, school or work – are provided with a case manager who works directly with them and their families. Read the latest appeal for the State of Palestine

Bangladesh

As the Rohingya refugee crisis enters its fifth year, Bangladesh still hosts hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who settled in the Cox’s Bazar District after fleeing “extreme violence” in Myanmar.

While basic services have been provided in the camps, “children still face disease outbreaks, malnutrition, inadequate educational opportunities and other risks like exploitation and violence.” Read the latest appeal for Bangladesh

Syria

The situation was already dire far earlier to the recent earthquakes. In fact, “more than a decade of humanitarian crises and hostilities has left children in Syria facing one of the most complex emergencies in the world.”

“Two thirds of the population require assistance” due to the worsening economic crisis, continued localised hostilities, mass displacement and devastated public infrastructure.

The conflict has seen one of the largest education crises in recent history, with “a whole generation of Syrian children paying a devastating price.” Read the latest appeal for Syria

Kenya

Four failed rainy seasons in a row have left Kenya experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Without water, crops cannot grow, and animals and livestock die.

The resulting loss of nutritious food, combined with poor sanitation, has left “hundreds of thousands of children requiring treatment for wasting.”

Children with wasting are too thin and their immune systems are weak, leaving them vulnerable to developmental delays, disease and death. Read the latest appeal for Kenya

Millions more

In addition to these 11 nations so far identified by UNICEF as needing urgent life-saving humanitarian assistance, with millions of children being the most vulnerable, there are several other countries where they live in dire situations, on which IPS reports in Part II of this two-part series.

Hate speech loads the gun, misinformation pulls the trigger - And that's the kind of the relationship that we've come to understand over the years. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Feb 17 2023 (IPS)

In this world of wars, massive weapons production, sales and use; of sharpening inequalities and deadly climate emergencies, hate speech and its inhumane impact, is being amplified at ‘unprecedented scale’ by new technologies.

Hate speech has now reached dangerous records, fuelling discrimination, racism, xenophobia and staggering human rights violations.

It mainly targets whoever is not “like us” i.e ethnic minorities, black, ‘coloured,’ and Asian peoples; and Muslims worldwide through widespread Islamophobia, let alone the millions of migrants, and the billions of poor. In short, the most vulnerable human beings, let alone the world’s girls and women.

“A lot of the time people want to talk about content moderation, what should be allowed on these platforms, without paying close attention to the political economy of these social media platforms. And it turns out hate speech is profitable”

The UN reports that the new communications technologies are one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world.

A new UN Podcasts series, UNiting Against Hate, explains how this dangerous phenomenon is being tackled worldwide.

Online hate speech on staggering rise

According to a leading international human rights organisation, Minority Rights Group, one analysis records a 400-fold increase in the use of hate terms online in Pakistan between 2011 and 2021.

Being able to monitor hate speech can provide valuable information for authorities to predict future crimes or to take measures afterwards.

There is concern amongst human rights experts and activists that hate speech is becoming more prevalent, with views once perceived as fringe and extreme, moving into the mainstream.

An episode of UNiting Against Hate features Tendayi Achiume, the outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, and Jaroslav Valůch, who is the project manager for fact-checking and news literacy, at Prague-based media development organisation “Transitions”.

‘Hate speech is profitable’

For Tendayi Achiume, a former independent UN human rights expert, more attention needs to be paid to the business models of social media companies.

“A lot of the time people want to talk about content moderation, what should be allowed on these platforms, without paying close attention to the political economy of these social media platforms. And it turns out hate speech is profitable”.

Hate speech and misinformation, closely related

Christopher Tuckwood, the executive director of the Sentinel Project warns that hate speech and misinformation are closely related: “Hate speech loads the gun, misinformation pulls the trigger.“

“And that’s the kind of the relationship that we’ve come to understand over the years”.

It’s now theoretically possible for any human being who can access an Internet connection to become a producer of that sort of content. And so that really does change things, and with a global reach, adds Tuckerwood.

The Sentinel Project is a Canadian non-profit organisation who’s Hatebase initiative monitors the trigger words that appear on various platforms and risk morphing into real-world violence.

Tuckwood describes it as an “early warning indicator that can help us to identify an increased risk of violence.”

It works by monitoring online spaces, especially Twitter, looking for certain keywords, in several different languages, and then applying certain contextual rules to determine what was or was not most likely to be actually hateful content.

In the Balkans

Another organisation doing a similar kind of hate speech mapping is the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

The Network monitors every single trial related to war crime atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and amounts to 700 open cases.

In mapping hate it looks out for four different aspects; “hateful narratives by politicians, discriminatory language, atrocity denial and actual incidents on the ground where minority groups have been attacked.”

Politicians fuelling hatred

According to Dennis Gillick, the executive director and editor of their branch in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the primary drivers of hate narratives in the country are populist, ethno-nationalist politicians.

“The idea behind the entire mapping process is to prove the correlation between political statements and political drivers of hate and the actual atrocities that take place.”

The Network also wants to prove that “there is a lack of systematic prosecution of hate crimes and that the hateful language allows for this perpetuating cycle of violence, with more discriminatory language by politicians and fewer prosecutions.”

As a result of hate speech, we have seen a rising number of far-right groups being mobilised, explains Gillick.

Fake humanitarian groups spreading hateful language

“We are seeing fake NGOs or fake humanitarian groups being mobilised to spread hateful or discriminatory language, in order to expand this gap between the three different ethnic and religious groups in this country.”

The real-life consequences reported by the Network have included defacing or vandalising mosques, or churches, depending on where a specific faith group is in the minority, and open calls to violence.

According to Gillick, this is fuelling the agenda of ethno-nationalist parties who want to cause divisions.

Need to create counter narratives

The way to combat this toxic environment, according to Gillick, is to create counter-narratives, disseminating accurate, factual information and stories that promote unity rather than division.

However, he acknowledges that this is a big ask.

“It is difficult to counter public broadcasters, big media outlets with several hundred journalists and reporters with thousands of flights a day, with a group of 10 to 15 journalists who are trying to write about very specific topics, in a different way, and to do the analytical and investigative reporting.”

Minorities under attack

Another organisation that is trying to create counter-narratives is Kirkuk Now, an independent media outlet in Iraq, which is trying to produce objective and quality content on these groups and share it on social media platforms.

“Our focus is on minorities, internally displaced people, women and children and, of course, freedom of expression,” says editor-in-chief of Kirkuk Now, Salaam Omer.

“We see very little content [about them] in the Iraqi media mainstream. And if they are actually depicted, they are depicted as problems.”

Social media moguls urged to change

The heads of many of the world’s biggest social media platforms were urged to change their business models and become more accountable in the battle against rising hate speech online.

In a detailed statement, more than two dozen UN-appointed independent human rights experts – including representatives from three different working groups and multiple Special Rapporteurs – called out chief executives by name.

They said that the companies they lead “must urgently address posts and activities that advocate hatred, and constitute incitement to discrimination, in line with international standards for freedom of expression.”

They also said the new tech billionaire owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, who heads Google’s parent company Alphabet, Apple’s Tim Cook, “and CEOs of other social media platforms”, should “centre human rights, racial justice, accountability, transparency, corporate social responsibility and ethics, in their business model.”

And they reminded that being accountable as businesses for racial justice and human rights, “is a core social responsibility, advising that “respecting human rights is in the long-term interest of these companies, and their shareholders.”

The human rights experts underlined that the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provide a clear path forward on how this can be done.

Corporate failure

“We urge all CEOs and leaders of social media to fully assume their responsibility to respect human rights and address racial hatred.”

As evidence of the corporate failure to get a grip on hate speech, the Human Rights Council-appointed independent experts pointed to a “sharp increase in the use of the racist ‘N’ word on Twitter”, following its recent acquisition by Tesla boss Elon Musk.

This showed the urgent need for social media companies to be more accountable “over the expression of hatred towards people of African descent, they argued.

Soon after Mr. Musk took over, the Network Contagion Research Institute of Rutgers University in the US, highlighted that the use of the N-word on the platform “increased by almost 500 per cent within a 12-hour period,” compared to the previous average, the human rights experts said.

Industrially produced trans fat is responsible for up to 500,000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year, according to WHO. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Feb 10 2023 (IPS)

The food industry continues to intensively use toxic chemicals in their products, some of them provoking heart diseases and death. Trans fat is just one of them, adding to contaminating fertilisers, pesticides, microplastics and a long etcetera.

“Trans fat is a toxic chemical that kills, and should have no place in food,” warns Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), informing that trans fat has no known benefits, and substantial health risks that incur enormous costs for health systems.

“Put simply, trans fat is a toxic chemical that kills, and should have no place in food.”

What is trans fat?

Trans fat, or trans-unsaturated fatty acids, is a type of unsaturated fat that occurs in food. Of all the fats, trans fat is the worst for health. Used intensively it increases the risks of heart disease and death.

“Put simply, trans fat is a toxic chemical that kills, and should have no place in food.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO)

Trans fat can be found in commercial baked goods, such as cakes, cookies, fried foods, margarine, packaged foods, cooking oils and spreads among many other products.

Industrially produced trans fat is responsible for up to 500,000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year, WHO said.

Currently, nine of the 16 countries with the highest estimated proportion of coronary heart disease deaths caused by trans fat intake do not have a best-practice policy.

They are Australia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan and the Republic of Korea.

The annual status report has been published by WHO in collaboration with Resolve to Save Lives, a not-for-profit organisation that supports action towards eliminating industrially produced trans fat from national food supplies.

Food industry doubles its profits in just one year

Alongside oil and gas corporations, food companies more than doubled their profits in 2022 at a time when more than 800 million people were going hungry and 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, reports Oxfam International.

Industrial food systems destroy

On this, Navdanya International warns that in a few decades, industrial food systems have destroyed the Earth’s systems, human health and livelihoods as it has directly violated ecological laws and laws of justice.

Now we are seeing a global agenda to erase land-based cultures, to destroy real farms, real farmers, real food to create a dystopia of “farming without farmers” and “food without farms” as false totalitarian solutions to climate change, it adds in its Call to Action “Our Bread, Our Freedom” 2022.

“It is time to abandon our resource-intensive and profit-based economic systems that have created havoc in the world, disrupting the planet’s ecosystems and undermining society’s systems of health, justice, and democracy.”

Navdanya and the Navdanya movement was created by Dr. Vandana Shiva 30 years ago in India to defend Seed and Food sovereignty and small farmers around the world.

For its part, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that more than 600 million people fall ill and 420.000 die every year as a result of eating food contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins and chemicals.

More damage, more profits

These huge damages caused by the food business add to many others. One of them is the infant formula corporations’ exploitative marketing tactics, which the world-leading health organisation on 8 February 2023 called for “a swift crackdown” on such business tactics.

In a previous report Scope and impact of digital marketing strategies for promoting breast-milk substitutes on what it called ‘insidious’ online marketing of baby formula, the world’s top health organisation warned that the 55 billion US dollars baby formula industry must end exploitative online marketing targeting parents, particularly mothers

WHO’s report found that companies are paying social media platforms and influencers to “gain direct access to pregnant women and mothers at some of the most vulnerable moments in their lives,” through personalised content that is “often not recognisable as advertising.”

Big Business pays to social media influencers

“Through tools like apps, virtual support groups or ‘baby-clubs’, paid social media influencers, promotions and competitions and advice forums or services, formula milk companies can buy or collect personal information and send personalised promotions to new pregnant women and mothers.”

The report summarises findings of a new research that sampled and analysed 4 million social media posts about infant feeding, published between January and June 2021 using a commercial social listening platform.

These posts reached 2.47 billion people and generated more than 12 million likes, shares or comments.

“This new research highlights the vast economic and political power of the big formula milk companies, as well as serious public policy failures that prevent millions of women from breastfeeding their children,” said Nigel Rollins, one of the authors of a series on the $55 billion-a-year industry and their marketing “playbooks”, published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.

“Actions are needed across different areas of society to better support mothers to breastfeed for as long as they want, alongside efforts to tackle exploitative formula milk marketing once and for all,” he added.

650 million women lack ‘maternity protection’

Currently, around 650 million women lack adequate maternity protections, the research noted.

Elaborated by a group of doctors and scientists, it examines how formula marketing tactics undermine breastfeeding and target parents, health professionals and politicians, and how feeding practices, women’s rights and health outcomes, are determined by power imbalances and political and economic structures.

Dairy lobbyists’ misleading claims

WHO recommends exclusively breastfeeding infants for at least six months. The practice provides immense benefits to babies and young children, from reducing infection risks to lowering rates of obesity and chronic diseases later in life.

However, globally, only around half of newborns are put to the breast within the first hour of life, warns WHO.

Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. Credit: Clae

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)

Gone are those times when catastrophes were measured in terms of human suffering. Now, with an exception: Ukrainians victims of the Russian invasion, everything is calculated in just money.

Following such a solid trend, major financial, business-oriented institutions, like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, are now devoted to calculating if and how big the recession will be, ergo, how much money could be won or lost due, of course, to the Ukrainian proxy war.

The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals Oxfam's new report “Survival of the Richest

They, likewise the establishment’s politicians and media, just talk about inflation, stagflation, economic (read financial) slowdown and commerce.

Rare mention is made of the victims and human suffering of the other 56 armed conflicts still spreading worldwide. Haitians do not matter, nor do Yemenis, Syrians, Somalis, Ethiopians, and a long list of human beings whose lives are broken by wars and climate disasters they did not cause.

Inequality reaches highest peak ever

In yet another evidence of this trend, a global movement of people working together to end the injustice of poverty: Oxfam International, has now revealed that the richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world over the past two years.

“The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals Oxfam’s new report “Survival of the Richest.

“During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.”

Super-rich outstrip their extraordinary grab of half of all new wealth in the past decade, and billionaires’ fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, it reported on 16 January 2023.

“A tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.”

“Survival of the Richest” was published on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In it, Oxfam explains, the elites are gathering in the Swiss ski resort as extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years.

The rich’s wildest dreams

“While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires —a roaring ‘20s boom for the world’s richest,” said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International.

“Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises. It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships —just the super-yachts.”

The rich capture 16 trillion US dollars

Billionaires have seen extraordinary increases in their wealth. During the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis years since 2020, $26 trillion (63 percent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 percent, while $16 trillion (37 percent) went to the rest of the world put together.

A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent. Billionaire fortunes have increased by $2.7 billion a day. This comes on top of a decade of historic gains —the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the last ten years, adds the report.

Profiting from destruction

“Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. They made $306 billion in windfall profits, and paid out $257 billion (84 percent) of that to rich shareholders.”

Oxfam further reports that the Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, received $8.5 billion over the last year. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of major energy corporations, has seen this wealth soar by $42 billion (46 percent) in 2022 alone. Excess corporate profits have driven at least half of inflation in Australia, the US and the UK.

At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and over 820 million people —roughly one in ten people on Earth— are going hungry. Women and girls often eat least and last, and make up nearly 60 percent of the world’s hungry population.

“The World Bank says we are likely seeing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since WW2. Entire countries are facing bankruptcy, with the poorest countries now spending four times more repaying debts to rich creditors than on healthcare.”

Many poorest people pay more taxes than billionaires

Oxfam is calling for a systemic and wide-ranging increase in taxation of the super-rich to claw back crisis gains driven by public money and profiteering. Decades of tax cuts for the richest and corporations have fueled inequality, with the poorest people in many countries paying higher tax rates than billionaires.

It explains that Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, paid a “true tax rate” of about 3 percent between 2014 and 2018. Aber Christine, a flour vendor in Uganda, makes $80 a month and pays a tax rate of 40 percent.

And that worldwide, only four cents in every tax dollar now comes from taxes on wealth. Half of the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax for direct descendants.

“They will pass on a $5 trillion tax-free treasure chest to their heirs, more than the GDP of Africa, which will drive a future generation of aristocratic elites. Rich people’s income is mostly unearned, derived from returns on their assets, yet it is taxed on average at 18 percent, just over half as much as the average top tax rate on wages and salaries.”

The vital 5 percent

According to new analysis by the Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam and the Patriotic Millionaires, an annual wealth tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year…

… This figure would be enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, fully fund the shortfalls on existing humanitarian appeals, deliver a 10-year plan to end hunger, support poorer countries being ravaged by climate impacts, and deliver universal healthcare and social protection for everyone living in low- and lower-middle-income countries.

Any chance that this will ever happen?

War damage in Borodianka, Kyiv Oblast. Photo: Oleksandr Ratushniak / UNDP Ukraine

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jan 20 2023 (IPS)

As if the 100 billion dollars that the United States has so far provided to Ukraine in both weapons and aid were not enough, the US has now started to install in Europe its brand new, more destructive nuclear warheads.

The US 100 billion dollars are to be added to all the weapons and aid that 40 Washington’s ‘allies’ –Europe in particular– have been sending to Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022.

The US spending on the Ukrainian war in less than a year amounts to the desperately needed funding that the United Nations require to partially alleviate some of the horrifying suffering of over one billion human beings over two long years.

From illegally developing nuclear weapons to non-sanctioned use of force, States continue to flout international law with impunity - The rule of law stands between peace and ‘brutal struggle for power', warns the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.


In a further escalation, the United States began in December 2022 to ship new nuclear warheads to Europe: “the B61-12 warhead is a more advanced warhead from the ones currently deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey,” according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

Boeing designed the bomb’s new guided-tail kit, giving it additional manoeuvrability and the appearance of more precision.But, it’s a nuclear weapon, and has different yields, from 0.3kt to 50kt, ICAN reports.

Much more destructive

“These bombs can detonate beneath the Earth’s surface, increasing their destructiveness against underground targets to the equivalent of a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 1,250 kilotons––the equivalent of 83 Hiroshima bombs.”

Even if the bombs are American and the US retains launch authority, they would most likely be dropped by Europeans. If the US decides to use its nuclear weapons located in Germany, the warheads are loaded onto German planes and a German pilot drops them, ICAN further explains.

This Geneva-based coalition of 652 non-governmental partner organisations in 107 countries, promoting adherence to and implementation of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

The ‘brutal struggle for power’

The production, testing, and use of nukes is one of the reasons why the biggest powers are now pushing the world into the abyss of lawlessness. In fact, the UN chief has once more sounded the alarm bell.

“From illegally developing nuclear weapons to non-sanctioned use of force, States continue to flout international law with impunity”, said the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.

The rule of law stands between peace and ‘brutal struggle for power,’ he warned in his 12 January message to the UN Security Council – where five countries: US, Russia, China, UK and France– hold a self attributed authority to override the well of over 190 states, members of the UN.

‘Grave risk’ of lawlessness

The UN chief painted a grim picture of civilians around the world suffering from devastating conflicts, rising poverty, and surging hunger, warning that “we are at grave risk of the Rule of Lawlessness”.

The rule of law “protects the vulnerable; prevents discrimination; bolsters trust in institutions; supports inclusive economies and societies; and is the first line of defence against atrocity crimes.”

Guterres cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; unlawful killings of both Palestinians and Israelis; gender-based apartheid in Afghanistan; the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s unlawful nuclear weapons programme; violence and severe human rights violations in Myanmar; and a deep institutional crisis in Haiti.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile, the world is falling apart, witnessing an “ongoing collision of crises for which traditional response and recovery are not enough,” warns the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

“Our future is at stake, as wars, epidemics, the climate emergency and economic upheaval leave almost no country untouched.

From the war in Ukraine that sparked a global cost of living crisis to the climate emergency, the floods in Pakistan, the global pandemic, hunger in the Horn of Africa, to the crisis in Yemen — we face never before seen challenges to our future, adds UNDP.

Developing economies accounting for more than half of the world’s poorest people need urgent debt relief as a result of “cascading global crises. Without action, poverty will spiral and desperately needed investments in climate adaptation and mitigation will not happen.”

Also meanwhile, millions of children under armed conflicts

The UN Children Fund (UNICEF) reports that more than 400 million children live in areas under conflict; an estimated 1 billion children – nearly half the world’s children – live in countries at extreme vulnerability to the impacts of climate change…

… And at least 36.5 million children have been displaced from their homes; and 8 million children under age 5 across 15 crisis-hit countries are at risk of death from severe wasting.

Today, there are more children in need of humanitarian assistance than at any other time since the Second World War. Across the globe, “children are facing a historic confluence of crises – from conflict and displacement to infectious disease outbreaks and soaring rates of malnutrition.”

UNICEF has appealed for 10.3 billion US dollars to reach more than 110 million children with humanitarian assistance across 155 countries and territories.

Sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies in the industry reached 592 billion US dollars in 2021, a 1.9% increase compared with 2020 in real terms. Credit: Shutterstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 22 2022 (IPS)

Day after day, international humanitarian organisations launch desperate appeals for funding to continue saving some of the many lives at high risk. When they get a handful of dollars –even just one million– from a rich country, they welcome it as manna from heaven.

Not only the available funding for humanitarian aid is already short, but next year will also set another record for humanitarian relief requirements, with 339 million people in need of assistance in 69 countries, an increase of 65 million people compared to the same time last year, the United Nations and partner organisations on 1 December 2022 said.

“The estimated cost of the humanitarian response going into 2023 is US$51.5 billion, a 25% increase compared to the beginning of 2022.”

The estimated cost of the humanitarian response going into 2023 is US$51.5 billion, a 25% increase compared to the beginning of 2022. Such highly needed 51.5 billion US dollars amount to less than one-tenth of the total sales of weapons which reached 592 billion US dollars just in one year: 2021

Such highly needed 51.5 billion US dollars amount to less than one-tenth of the total sales of weapons which reached 592 billion US dollars just in one year: 2021.

As if humanitarian aid funding were not already short enough in times when it is more needed than ever, UN Members Try Defunding Budgets for Human Rights Work, warns Louis Charbonneau, United Nations Director at Human Rights Watch.

“United Nations member countries need to overhaul the budgetary approval process for UN human rights work. The current system, overseen by the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee, is inefficient and overly politicised.”

Human rights mechanisms, exposed

It unnecessarily exposes UN human rights mechanisms – teams of independent experts established to investigate serious international crimes – to attempts by hostile governments to curtail their resources or defund them, adds Charbonneau.

Russia has repeatedly tried to defund investigations of its ally Syria, just as China has done for Myanmar. China and Russia have also worked hard to chip away at funding and staffing levels for other human rights activities and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, he said.

“It’s not only China and Russia. The United States and some European Union countries joined Israel last year to try to defund the Commission of Inquiry on Israel and Palestine. They may try again.”

Social services, dismantled

Even in their own rich countries, politicians go on cutting further the funding of social services such as public health, public education, and other programmes which citizens and taxpayers have voted for them to provide.

Simply, the wave of privatising all social public services now blows strongly from the United States to an overwhelming majority of countries.

Meanwhile, amidst growing social unrest, protests and strikes, politicians seem to have leaned under the heavy pressure of the arms industry, therefore devoting more and more public funds to purchasing weapons.

Arms sales increase for the seventh year

No wonder: sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies in the industry reached 592 billion US dollars in 2021, a 1.9% increase compared with 2020 in real terms, according to new data released on 5 December 2022 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Such an increase marked the seventh consecutive year of rising global arms sales. It took place despite the fact that many parts of the arms industry were still affected by pandemic-related disruptions in global supply chains in 2021, which included delays in global shipping and shortages of vital components, says SIPRI.

‘We might have expected even greater growth in arms sales in 2021 without persistent supply chain issues,’ said Dr Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, Director of the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

“Both larger and smaller arms companies said that their sales had been affected during the year. Some companies, such as Airbus and General Dynamics, also reported labour shortages.”

Need to replenish weapons sent to Ukraine

According to the Stockholm-based peace research institute, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has added to supply chain challenges for arms companies, not least because Russia is a major supplier of raw materials used in arms production.

“This could hamper ongoing efforts in the United States and Europe to strengthen their armed forces and to replenish their stockpiles after sending billions of dollars’ worth of ammunition and other equipment to Ukraine.”

So far, the United States has reportedly spent 100 billion dollars on weapons provided to Ukraine.

US companies dominate the Top 100

The arms sales of the 40 US companies in the listing totalled 299 dollars billion in 2021, the research further explains. North America was the only region to see a drop in arms sales compared with 2020. The 0.8 per cent real-term decline was partly due to high inflation in the US economy during 2021.

Since 2018, the top five companies in the Top 100 have all been based in the USA.

A recent wave of mergers and acquisitions in the US arms industry continued in 2021. One of the most significant acquisitions was Peraton’s purchase of Perspecta, a government IT specialist, for 7.1 billion US dollars.

Private equity companies are becoming more active in the arms industry, particularly in the USA. This could affect the transparency of arms sales data, due to less stringent financial reporting requirements compared with public companies, according to the report.

Chinese companies drive rapid growth in Asian arms sales

The combined arms sales of the 21 companies in Asia and Oceania included in the Top 100 reached 136 billion US dollars in 2021—5.8 % more than in 2020, SIPRI reports. The eight Chinese arms companies in the listing had total arms sales of 109 billion dollars, a 6.3% increase.

There has been a wave of consolidation in the Chinese arms industry since the mid-2010s, said Xiao Liang, a researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. In 2021 this saw China’s CSSC becoming the biggest military shipbuilder in the world, with arms sales of 11.1 billion US dollars, after a merger between two existing companies.

Europe, Russian and the Middle East among the top 100

In 2021 there were 27 Top 100 companies headquartered in Europe. Their combined arms sales increased by 4.2% compared with 2020, reaching 123 billion US dollars.

Meanwhile, six Russian companies are included in the Top 100 for 2021. Their arms sales totalled 17.8 billion US dollars—an increase of only 0.4% over 2020. There were signs that stagnation was widespread across the Russian arms industry, reports SIPRI.

And the five Top 100 companies based in the Middle East generated 15.0 billion US dollars in arms sales in 2021. This was a 6.5% increase compared with 2020, the fastest pace of growth of all regions represented in the Top 100.

"There is no migration crisis; there is a crisis of solidarity" says UN Secretary-General, António Guterres. Credit: Credit: UNOHCR

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 19 2022 (IPS)

When tens of thousands of Europeans had to flee the horrors of two born-in-Europe devastating armed conflicts that attracted other powers: the World Wars I and II, they migrated to the Americas and other Western countries in search of safe haven.

Upon their arrival at their destination, they were checked at the border and admitted to enter as useful workforce.

Seldom, if ever, anybody classified them as “illegal” migrants. Those human beings were fleeing the horrors of those wars.

Due to persistent lack of safe and regular migration pathways, millions continue to take perilous journeys each year. Since 2014 more than 50,000 migrants have lost their lives on migratory routes across the world

Now that millions of people are forced to flee the horrors not only of wars but also of additional waves of devastation, from a climate emergency they did not create to a train of world’s financial crisis originated in and by the world’s most industrialised -and richest- powers, these migrants are classified as “illegal.”

There have been different approaches to get around what the right to far-right political parties in Europe, the United States, Australia, among several others, call “invasion,” a “threat to our civilisation,” “our democracy,” and “our religion,” let alone that they represent a “high risk of terrorism.”

Here, there is an open message from the rich West to these poor migrants: ‘don’t you dare come here, unless….’

• Unless you bring money: in the aftermath of the 2008 world financial crisis, several industrialised countries followed the example of the by then United Kingdom’s government, i.e., migrants were admitted provided they have money enough to buy a property and open a sound bank account;
• Unless you are highly skilled: another criteria used to admit migrants depends on their professional, useful capacity;
• And unless you are “like us”: such is the case of the tens of thousands of human beings attempting to escape the horrors of another, absolutely condemnable war, the European proxy war unfolding in Ukraine. Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, referred to Ukrainians as “they look like us… they are like us.”

If migrants do not enjoy these conditions, they are immediately called “illegal,” and thus non-admitted. And those who had already arrived are being sweept away from the US and Europe.

Why such a race to expel migrants?

The trend to expel migrants has steadily increased in this year 2022, coincidently –or not– proxy war in Ukraine started in February, pushing millions of Ukrainian citizens to flee the horrors of this condemnable armed conflict.

All Western countries, in particular Europe, have opened their doors to those millions of migrants and refugees, to whom all sorts of humanitarian assistance are rightly provided.

In contrast, millions of other human beings are fleeing horror, looking for ways to survive and a job that allows their families and themselves to stay alive.

Migrants workers “dehumanised”

“Migrant workers are often dehumanised”, said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Volker Türk, reminding that “they are human beings entitled to human rights and full protection of their human dignity”.

No one should have to surrender their human right to migrate in order to find a living wage, the UN human rights office, OHCHR said in a new report published on 16 December 2022, highlighting the importance of temporary migratory labour programmes.

The report, We wanted workers, but human beings came, published just two days ahead of the International Migrants Day, zeroes-in on schemes in operation across the Asia-Pacific region – the largest single migrant-producing region in the world.

The report points to just some of the abuse, discrimination, and inhuman treatment of migrants: as part of some seasonal schemes, migrants are expected to work on Saturdays and Sundays, leaving them no time to attend religious services.

Migrant domestic workers in other States have reported being told they would be fired, if they prayed or fasted while at work.

Some migrant construction workers report receiving sub-standard medical care in clinics provided by their employers.

Enforced disappearances

Migrants are particularly at risk during what are often arduous journeys just trying to reach their destination, warn UN-appointed independent human rights experts.

The experts stressed that States must coordinate in “preventing the yearly disappearances of thousands of migrants en route.”

Citing International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates, they said that over 35,000 migrants have died or disappeared since 2014.

“However, there are no exact figures on the proportion of enforced disappearances in cases involving State agents or people acting with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of countries.”

But information indicates that most disappearances occur “during detention or deportation proceedings or because of migrant smuggling or trafficking,” said the UN-appointed human rights experts.

Blanket refusals, detention, expulsions

They blamed States’ rigid border management and migration policies for many disappearances, citing policies that include “blanket refusals of entry; criminalization of migration; and mandatory, automatic, or extensive use of immigration detention; and arbitrary expulsions.”

“These factors encourage migrants to take more dangerous routes, to put their lives in the hands of smugglers and to expose themselves to a higher risk of human rights violations and enforced disappearance”, the experts spelt out.

Misleading promises

Every year, millions leave their countries under temporary labour migration programmes that promise economic benefits for destination countries and development dividends to countries of origin.

The report details how in many cases temporary work schemes impose a range of “unacceptable human rights restrictions.”

It highlights how migrant workers are “often forced to live in overcrowded and unsanitary housing, unable to afford nutritious food, denied adequate healthcare, and face prolonged and sometimes mandatory separation from their families.”

Moreover, policies that exclude them from government support in some countries put migrants at a disproportionate risk of COVID-19 infection, the report says.

“They should not be expected to give up their rights in return for being able to migrate for work, however crucial it is for them and their families, and for the economies of their countries of origin and destination”, Türk underscored.

Are all the “other migrants” illegal?

One day a year –18 December–, the world is expected to observe the International Migrants Day.

On it, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated that today, over 80% of the world’s migrants cross borders in a safe and orderly fashion.

On this International Migrants Day, “we reflect on the lives of the over 280 million people who left their country in the universal pursuit of opportunity, dignity, freedom, and a better life,” he said.

“Today, over 80 per cent of the world’s migrants cross borders in a safe and orderly fashion.” This migration is a powerful driver of economic growth, dynamism, and understanding.

Over the past eight years, at least 51,000 migrants have died – and thousands more have disappeared. Behind each number is a human being – a sister, brother, daughter, son, mother, or father.

“Migrant rights are human rights” the United Nations chief reminded. “They must be respected without discrimination – and irrespective of whether their movement is forced, voluntary, or formally authorised.”

Is there a ‘migration crisis’?

Guterres also highlighted the urgent need to expand and diversify rights-based pathways for migration – to advance the Sustainable Development Goals and address labour market shortages.

“There is no migration crisis; there is a crisis of solidarity.” Today and every day, let us safeguard our common humanity and secure the rights and dignity of all.”

How many migrants?

In recent years, conflict, insecurity, and the effects of climate change, war and conflict have heavily contributed to the forced movement whether within countries or across borders.

In 2020 over 281 million people were international migrants while over 59 million people were internally displaced by the end of 2021.

The UN underlines that regardless of the reasons that compel people to move, migrants and displaced people represent some of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in society…,

… and they are often exposed to abuse and exploitation, have limited access to essential services including healthcare, and are faced with xenophobic attacks and stigma fueled by misinformation.

On the other hand, many migrant workers are often in temporary, informal, or unprotected jobs, which exposes them to a greater risk of insecurity, layoffs, and poor working conditions.

“Due to persistent lack of safe and regular migration pathways, millions continue to take perilous journeys each year. Since 2014 more than 50,000 migrants have lost their lives on migratory routes across the world.”

Despite all the above, and of all World and International conventions, declarations, and commitments which have been adopted by all States, reality shows that some migrants are more equal –and human– than others.

About 60% of the poorest countries are already at high risk of debt distress or already in distress. Credit: Pixabay.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 14 2022 (IPS)

The external debt of the world’s low and middle-income countries at the end of 2021 totalled 9 trillion US dollars, more than double the amount a decade ago. Such debt is expected to increase by an additional 1.1 trillion US dollars in 2023.

Moreover, the debt-service payments, projected to top 62 billion US dollars in 2022, put the biggest squeeze on poor countries since 2000, according to the World Bank.

The poorest countries eligible to borrow from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) now spend over a tenth of their export revenues to service their long-term public and publicly guaranteed external debt—the highest proportion since 2000

As defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), debt service refers to payments in respect of both principal and interest.

Actual debt service is the set of payments actually made to satisfy a debt obligation, including principal, interest, and any late payment fees. Scheduled debt service is the set of payments, including principal and interest, that is required to be made through the life of the debt, OECD goes on.

High risk of debt stress

According to the World Bank’s report: International Debt Report, the poorest countries eligible to borrow from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) now spend over a tenth of their export revenues to service their long-term public and publicly guaranteed external debt—the highest proportion since 2000.

In addition, rising interest rates and slowing global growth risk tipping a large number of countries into debt crises. “About 60% of the poorest countries are already at high risk of debt distress or already in distress.”

Over the past decade, the composition of debt owed by IDA countries has changed significantly. The share of external debt owed to private creditors has increased sharply. At the end of 2021, low- and middle-income economies owed 61% of their public and publicly guaranteed debt to private creditors—an increase of 15 percentage points from 2010.

Unbearable impact

The same day the World Bank’s report was released, 6 December 2022, another international institution: the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), warned that the spiralling debt in low and middle-income countries has compromised their chances of sustainable development.

Rebeca Grynspan, the head of this UN trade facilitation agency, reported that between 70% and 85% of the debt that emerging and low-income countries are responsible for, is in a foreign currency.

“This has left them highly vulnerable to the kind of large currency shocks that hit public spending – precisely at a time when populations need financial support from their governments.”

Speaking at the 13th UNCTAD Debt Management Conference, UNCTAD’s chief explained that so far this year, at least 88 countries have seen their currencies depreciate against the powerful US dollar, which is still the reserve currency of choice for many in times of global economic stress.

And in 31 of these countries, their currencies have dropped by more than 10 percent.

This has had a hugely negative impact on many African nations, where the UNCTAD chief noted that currency depreciations have increased the cost of debt repayments “by the equivalent of public health spending in the continent”.

Wave of global crises

UNCTAD’s conference –held online on 6 to 7 December in Geneva– took place as a “wave of global crises has led many developing countries to take on more debt to help citizens cope with the fallout.”

Government debt levels as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased in over 100 developing countries between 2019 and 2021, said UNCTAD.

“Excluding China, this increase is estimated at about $2 trillion.”

This has not happened because of the bad behaviour of one country. This has happened because of systemic shocks that have hit many countries at the same time, Grynspan said.

Sharp rise of interest rates

With interest rates rising sharply, the debt crisis is putting enormous strain on public finances, especially in developing countries that need to invest in education, health care, their economies and adapting to climate change.

“Debt cannot and must not become an obstacle for achieving the 2030 Agenda and the climate transition the world desperately needs”, she argued.

UNCTAD advocates for the creation of a multilateral legal framework for debt restructuring and relief.

Such a framework is needed to facilitate timely and orderly debt crisis resolution with the involvement of all creditors, building on the debt reduction programme established by the Group of 20 major economies (G20) known as the Common Framework.

Debts to increase to 10 trillion dollars

UNCTAD said that if the median increase in rated sovereign debts since 2019 were fully reflected in interest payments, then governments would pay an additional 1.1 trillion US dollars on the global debt stock in 2023, estimates show.

This amount is almost four times the estimated annual investment of 250 billion US dollars required for climate adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, according to an UNCTAD report.

Indebted countries have reiterated once and again that they have already exceeded several times the total amount of their debts in the form of interest rates they have been paying.

Alongside a high number of economists and experts, they have reiterated their appeals for cancelling those debts.

Uselessly: such a fair –and due– step continues to fall on deaf ears.

While corruption levels remain at a standstill worldwide, in Western Europe and the European Union, 84% of countries have declined or made little to no progress in the last 10 years, report finds. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 7 2022 (IPS)

“Western Europe and the European Union remains the highest scoring region in the world’s corruption index, progress has halted and worrying signs of backsliding have emerged.”

This is how Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) report introduces its section: A Decade of Stagnating Corruption Levels In Western Europe Amidst Ongoing Scandals.

European countries watered down a landmark proposal to clean up business and stop corporate abuse. It is a loss for the women and men who work in terrible conditions around the world to make the goods that end up in our shopping trolleys. The only ones celebrating today is the regressive business lobby

Marc-Olivier Herman, Oxfam EU’s Economic Justice Policy Lead

The report shows that while corruption levels remain at a standstill worldwide, “in Western Europe and the European Union, 84% of countries have declined or made little to no progress in the last 10 years.”

An excuse

The COVID-19 pandemic has given European countries “an excuse for complacency in anti-corruption efforts” as accountability and transparency measures are “neglected or even rolled back.”

Transparency International further explains that “weakening good governance and checks and balances heightens the risk of human rights violations and further corruption.”

The Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

According to the 2021 ranking, the Western Europe and European Union average holds at 66, and these are the region’s most signalled States:

• Countries like Poland (56) and Hungary (43) have backslid, with harsh crackdowns on rights and freedom of expression.
• Others still near the top like Germany (80), the United Kingdom (78) and Austria (74) faced serious corruption scandals.
• Denmark (88) and Finland (88) top the region and the world (alongside New Zealand), with Norway (85) and Sweden (85) rounding out the top.
• Romania (45), and Bulgaria (42) remain the worst performers in the region.
• Switzerland (84), Netherlands (82), Belgium (73), Slovenia (57), Italy (56), Cyprus (53), and Greece (49) are all at historic lows on the 2021 Index.

For each country’s individual score and changes over time, as well as analysis for each region, see the region’s 2021 CPI page.

In short, in the last decade, 26 countries in the region have either declined or made little to no significant progress.

Allowing corruption to fester

On this, Flora Cresswell, Western Europe regional coordinator of Transparency International said:

“Stagnation spells trouble across Europe. Even the region’s best performers are falling prey to major scandals, revealing the danger of inaction. Others have allowed corruption to fester, and are now seeing serious violations of freedoms…

… Nor does the region exist in a vacuum: lack of national enforcement in Europe means corruption is exported globally as foreign actors utilise weak laws to hide money and fund corruption back home.”

In the last decade, 26 countries in the region have either declined or made little to no significant progress, it warns.

Since its inception in 1995, the Corruption Perceptions Index has become the leading global indicator of public sector corruption. The Index uses data from 13 external sources, including the World Bank, World Economic Forum, private risk and consulting companies, think tanks and others.

The scores reflect the views of experts and business people. (See: The ABCs of the CPI: How the Corruption Perceptions Index is calculated.”

Europe waters down a law to clean up business

The European Justice ministers on 1 December 2022 agreed on a proposal for a law to make companies accountable for the damage they cause to people and the planet.

In response, Oxfam EU’s Economic Justice Policy Lead, Marc-Olivier Herman, said:

“Today, European countries watered down a landmark proposal to clean up business and stop corporate abuse. It is a loss for the women and men who work in terrible conditions around the world to make the goods that end up in our shopping trolleys. The only ones celebrating today is the regressive business lobby.”

The original proposal was already a far cry from the game-changer law we expected. Now, after EU countries played their part, it is only weaker, warns Herman.

Many loopholes

“There are more and more loopholes allowing companies to escape their obligations to clean up their business.”

“The financial sector can continue to bankroll human rights violations and damage to the planet without being held accountable as it remains up to each European country to decide whether they want to make banks and other financial players clean up business.”

Anti-Corruption?

The 2022 International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December, states that the world today faces some of its greatest challenges in many generations – challenges which threaten prosperity and stability for people across the globe. The plague of corruption is intertwined in most of them.

An outstanding world body fighting crime: the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), reveals the following findings about the consequences of corruption:

Two Trillion US dollars in procurement is lost to corruption each year (OECD 2016)

89 billion US dollars a year is lost to corruption in Africa, close to double its 48 billion US dollars in foreign aid (UNCTAD 2020).

What else is needed to fight this human rights violation?

Part I of this story can be found here: Corruption: The Most Perpetrated –and Least Prosecuted– Crime – Part I

Multinational companies bribing their way into foreign markets go largely unpunished, and victims’ compensation is rare, according to new report. Credit: Ashwath Hedge/Wikimedia Commons

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 6 2022 (IPS)

In these times when all sorts of human rights violations have been ‘normalised,’ a crime which continues to be perpetrated everywhere but punished nowhere: corruption is also seen as a business as usual. A business, by the way, that relies on the wide complicity of official authorities.

“Corruption attacks the foundation of democratic institutions by distorting electoral processes, perverting the rule of law and creating bureaucratic quagmires whose only reason for existing is the solicitation of bribes.”

“Much of the world's costliest forms of corruption could not happen without institutions in wealthy nations: the private sector firms that give large bribes, the financial institutions that accept corrupt proceeds, and the lawyers, bankers, and accountants who facilitate corrupt transactions,” warns the World Bank

Such a widespread ‘plague’ continues to be more and more exported by the business of the top trading countries as reported by the UN on the occasion of the 2022 International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December.

Corruption weakens and shrinks democracy, a phenomenon that is now more and more extended (See IPS Thalif Deen’s: The Decline and Fall of Democracy Worldwide).

Such a shockingly perpetrated practice –which is rightly defined as a “crime”, — not only follows conflict but is also frequently one of its root causes.

“It fuels conflict and inhibits peace processes by undermining the rule of law, worsening poverty, facilitating the illicit use of resources, and providing financing for armed conflict,” as highlighted on the occasion of this year’s World Day.

Corruption fuels wars

Corruption has negative impacts on every aspect of society and is profoundly intertwined with conflict and instability jeopardising social and economic development and undermining democratic institutions and the rule of law, the UN warns.

Indeed, “economic development is stunted because foreign direct investment is discouraged and small businesses within the country often find it impossible to overcome the “start-up costs” required because of corruption.”

Imposed by private business

It is perhaps useless to say that corruption is a practice widely committed by all sectors of private businesses.

In fact, in several industrialised countries, every now and then, some news shows the facades of zero-equipped hospitals and schools being inaugurated by politicians ahead of their electoral campaigns.

Shockingly, too many involved politicians get proportionally punished, if anytime, after extremely lengthy and mostly unfruitful legal processing.

Disproportionate impact

For its part, the World Bank considers corruption a major challenge to the twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity for the poorest 40 percent of people in developing countries.

“Corruption has a disproportionate impact on the poor and most vulnerable, increasing costs and reducing access to services, including health, education and justice.”

The World Bank explains that corruption in the procurement of drugs and medical equipment drives up costs and can lead to sub-standard or harmful products.

“The human costs of counterfeit drugs and vaccinations on health outcomes and the life-long impacts on children far exceed the financial costs. Unofficial payments for services can have a particularly pernicious effect on poor people.”

Bribery exported

A global movement working in over 100 countries to end the injustice of corruption: Transparency International, which focuses on issues with the greatest impact on people’s lives and holds the powerful to account for the common good, reveals additional findings.

Its report: Exporting Corruption 2022: Top Trading Countries Doing Even Less than Before to Stop Foreign Bribery, warns that despite a few breakthroughs, “multinational companies bribing their way into foreign markets go largely unpunished, and victims’ compensation is rare.”
“Our globalised world means companies can do business across borders – often to societies’ benefit. But what if the expensive new bridge in your city has been built by an unqualified foreign company that cuts corners?

“Or if your electricity bill is criminally inflated thanks to a backroom business deal? The chances of this are higher if you live in a country with high levels of government corruption.”

Public officials who demand or accept bribes from foreign companies are not the only culprits of the corruption equation. Multinational companies – often headquartered in countries with low levels of public sector corruption – are equally responsible.”

Twenty-five years ago, the international community agreed that trading countries have an obligation to punish companies that bribe foreign public officials to win government contracts, mining licences and other deals – in other words, engage in foreign bribery. Yet few countries have kept up with their commitments, it adds.

Everybody is complicit

“Much of the world’s costliest forms of corruption could not happen without institutions in wealthy nations: the private sector firms that give large bribes, the financial institutions that accept corrupt proceeds, and the lawyers, bankers, and accountants who facilitate corrupt transactions,” warns the World Bank.

Data on international financial flows shows that money is moving from poor to wealthy countries in ways that fundamentally undermine development, the world’s financial institution reports.

Worse than ever before…

Transparency International’s report, Exporting Corruption 2022, rates the performance of 47 leading global exporters, including 43 countries that are signatories to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention, in cracking down on foreign bribery by companies from their countries.

“The results are worse than ever before.”

Part II of this story can be found here – Corruption: Europe Doing Nothing – Part II

By 2050, droughts may affect an estimated three-quarters of the world’s population. Credit: Miriet Abrego / IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 1 2022 (IPS)

Drought is one of the ‘most destructive’ natural disasters in terms of the loss of life, arising from impacts, such as wide-scale crop failure, wildfires and water stress.

In other words, droughts are one of the “most feared natural phenomena in the world;” they devastate farmland, destroy livelihoods and cause untold suffering, as reported by the world’s top specialised bodies: the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

They occur when an area experiences a shortage of water supply due to a lack of rainfall or lack of surface or groundwater. And they can last for weeks, months or years.

Exacerbated by land degradation and climate change, droughts are increasing in frequency and severity, up 29% since 2000, with 55 million people affected every year.

The impacts of climate change are often felt through water – more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal rainfall and accelerated melting of glaciers – with cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives,

Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General

By 2050, droughts may affect an estimated three-quarters of the world’s population. This means that agricultural production will have to increase by 60% to meet the global food demand in 2050.

This means that about 71% of the world’s irrigated area and 47% of major cities are to experience at least periodic water shortages. If this trend continues, the scarcity and associated water quality problems will lead to competition and conflicts among water users, adds the Convention.

Most of the world already impacted

The alert is loud and strong and it comes from a number of the world’s most knowledgeable organisations.

To begin with, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on 29 November 2022 reported that most of the globe was drier than normal in 2021, with “cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and our daily lives.”

Water

Between 2001 and 2018, UN-Water reported that a staggering 74% of all-natural disasters were water-related.

Currently, over 3.6 billion people have inadequate access to water at least one month per year and this is expected to increase to more than five billion by 2050.

Moreover, areas that were unusually dry included South America’s Rio de la Plata area, where a persistent drought has affected the region since 2019, according to WMO’s The State of Global Water Resources report.

Drying rivers, lakes

In Africa, major rivers such as the Niger, Volta, Nile and Congo had below-average water flow in 2021.

The same trend was observed in rivers in parts of Russia, West Siberia and in Central Asia.

On the other hand, there were above-normal river volumes in some North American basins, the North Amazon and South Africa, as well as in China’s Amur river basin, and northern India.

Cascading effects

The impacts of climate change are often felt through water – more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal rainfall and accelerated melting of glaciers – with cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“Changes to Cryosphere water resources affect food security, human health, ecosystem integrity and maintenance, and lead to significant impacts on economic and social development”, said WMO, sometimes causing river flooding and flash floods due to glacier lake outbursts.

The cryosphere – namely glaciers, snow cover, ice caps and, where present, permafrost – is the world’s biggest natural reservoir of freshwater.

Soils

Being water –or rather the lack of it– a major cause-effect of the fast-growing deterioration of natural resources, and the consequent damage to the world’s food production, the theme of World Soil Day 2022, marked 5 December, is “Soils: Where food begins.”

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):

• 95% of our food comes from soils.
• 18 naturally occurring chemical elements are essential to plants. Soils supply 15.
• Agricultural production will have to increase by 60% to meet the global food demand in 2050.
• 33% of soils are degraded.

Dangerously poisoned

In addition to the life of humans, animals, and plants, one of the sectors that most depend on water–crops is now highly endangered.

Indeed, since the 1950s, reminds the United Nations, innovations like synthetic fertilisers, chemical pesticides and high-yield cereals have helped humanity dramatically increase the amount of food it grows.

“But those inventions would be moot without agriculture’s most precious commodity: fresh water. And it, say researchers, is now under threat.”

Moreover, pollution, climate change and over-abstraction are beginning to compromise the lakes, rivers, and aquifers that underpin farming globally, reports the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Salinised and plastified

Such is the case, among many others, of the growing salinisation and ‘plastification’ of the world’s soils.

In fact, currently, it is estimated that there are more than 833 million hectares of salt-affected soils around the globe (8.7% of the planet). This implies the loss of soil’s capacity to grow food and also increasing impacts on water and the ability to filter pollution.

Soil salinisation and sodification are major soil degradation processes threatening ecosystems and are recognised as being among the most important problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security and sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions, said the UN on occasion of the 2021 World Soil Day.

Wastewater

Among the major causes that this international body highlights is that in some arid areas, there has been an increase in the amount of wastewater used to grow crops.

“The problem can be exacerbated by flooding, which can inundate sewage systems or stores of fertiliser, polluting both surface water and groundwater.” Fertiliser run-off can cause algal blooms in lakes.

Meanwhile, the amount of freshwater per capita has fallen by 20% over the last two decades and nearly 60% of irrigated cropland is water-stressed.

The implications of those shortages are far-reaching: irrigated agriculture contributes 40% of total food produced worldwide.

Soils are highly living organisms

“Did you know that there are more living organisms in a tablespoon of soil than people on Earth?”

Soil is a world made up of organisms, minerals, and organic components that provide food for humans and animals through plant growth, explains this year’s World Soils Day.

Agricultural systems lose nutrients with each harvest, and if soils are not managed sustainably, fertility is progressively lost, and soils will produce nutrient-deficient plants.

Soil nutrient loss is a major soil degradation process threatening nutrition. It is recognised as being among the most critical problems at a global level for food security and sustainability all around the globe.

‘Hidden’ hunger

Over the last 70 years, the level of vitamins and nutrients in food has drastically decreased, and it is estimated that 2 billion people worldwide suffer from a lack of micronutrients, known as hidden hunger because it is difficult to detect.

“Soil degradation induces some soils to be nutrient depleted, losing their capacity to support crops, while others have such a high nutrient concentration that represents a toxic environment to plants and animals, pollutes the environment and causes climate change.”

Around 7,500 litres of water are used to make a single pair of jeans, equivalent to the amount of water the average person drinks over seven years. Credit: pexels

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 25 2022 (IPS)

Please take a quick look at this short report before rushing to shop on a Black Friday, Christmas sales and all those long chains of big discounts and wholesales, most of them are fake, as often denounced by consumers organisations that report that the business usually inflates prices before launching such deals.

Just a couple of figures to start with: the fashion industry is responsible for more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.

Consequently, it is widely believed that this business is the second major producer of greenhouse gases, just after the other industries using fossil fuels.

And it is a big business, which is estimated as valued at upward of 3 trillion dollars.

Did you know all this?

The global production of clothing and footwear generates 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and, with manufacturing concentrated in Asia, the industry is mainly reliant on hard coal and natural gas to generate electricity and heat

Now back to its worrying impacts. According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and other UN agencies, and non-governmental organisations worldwide:

Wastewater: The fashion industry is responsible for producing 20% of global wastewater and 10% of the global carbon emissions – more than the emissions of all international flights and maritime shipping combined,

Seven years of needed drinking water for an average person are consumed for producing just one single pair of blue jeans: 7.500 litres,

Enough water to quench the thirst of five million. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), some 93 billion cubic metres of water, is used by the fashion industry annually,

Around half a million tons of microfibre, which is the equivalent of 3 million barrels of oil, is now being dumped into the ocean every year, polluting the oceans, the wastewater, and toxic dyes,

Plastic microfibres: The textiles industry has recently been identified as a major polluter, with estimates of around half a million tonnes of plastic microfibers ending up in the world’s oceans as polyester, nylon or acrylic are washed each year,

A truckload of abandoned textiles is dumped in landfill or incinerated every second, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, partner of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). This means that of the total fibre input used for clothing, 87% is incinerated or sent to landfill.

Dangerous working conditions: Fashion is often a synonym for dangerous working conditions, unsafe processes and hazardous substances used in production, with continued cruel abuses of modern slavery and child labour, and the exploitation of underpaid workers.

Fast fashion, fast money, fast destruction

The business of fashion years ago ‘invented’ what is known as ‘fast fashion,’ i.e, nice-looking clothing and footwear at low-price.

In fact, the dominant business model in the sector is that of “fast fashion”, whereby consumers are offered constantly changing collections at low prices and encouraged to frequently buy and discard clothes.

Many experts, including the UN, believe the trend is responsible for a plethora of negative social, economic and environmental impacts and, with clothing production doubling between 2000 and 2014, it is crucially important to ensure that clothes are produced as ethically and sustainably as possible.

The consequence is that it is estimated that people are buying 60% more clothes and wearing them for half as long.

“New season, new styles, buy more, buy cheap, move on, throw away waste, and emissions of fast fashion are fueling the triple planetary crisis,” UNEP warned on 24 November, just one day before the usual ‘Black Friday.’

According to the world’s leading environmental organisation, the annual Black Friday sales on 25 November are a reminder of the need to rethink what is bought, what is thrown away, and what it costs the planet.

“Sustainable fashion and circularity in the textiles value chain are possible, yet this century the world’s consumers are buying more clothes and wearing them for less time than ever before, discarding garments as fast as trends shift.”

A big alliance versus a big business

In a bid to halt the fashion industry’s environmentally and socially destructive practices, and harness the catwalk as a driver to improve the world’s ecosystems, 10 different UN organisations established the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, which was launched during the 2019 UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi

Elisa Tonda, Head of the Consumption and Production Unit at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), one of the 10 UN bodies involved in the Alliance, explained the urgency behind its formation:

“The global production of clothing and footwear generates 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and, with manufacturing concentrated in Asia, the industry is mainly reliant on hard coal and natural gas to generate electricity and heat.”

“If we carry on with a business-as-usual approach, the greenhouse gas emissions from the industry are expected to rise by almost 50% by 2030.”

Children from marginalised ethnic, language and religious groups, from 22 low and middle-income countries which were analysed, lag far behind their peers in reading skills. Credit: Brian Moonga/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 21 2022 (IPS)

An indisputable truth is that no child has ever chosen where to be born, which colour of skin to have, which ethnic community to belong to, what religion to practice and language to speak, or how safe or dangerous the context to grow up in. A child is the most innocent and defenceless human being.

Nevertheless, children fall easy prey to all kinds of brutalities, everywhere and every single day. See how.

Racism and discrimination against children based on their ethnicity, language and religion, are rife in countries across the world, stated the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ahead of this year’s World Children’s Day on 20 November.

In its report: Rights denied: The impact of discrimination on children, the world’s largest body defending the rights of children, reveals the staggering impact of discrimination on children and the extent to which racism and discrimination affect their education, health, access to a registered birth, and to a fair and equal justice system.

It also highlights widespread disparities among minority and ethnic groups.

A lifetime of pain: “Systemic racism and discrimination put children at risk of deprivation and exclusion that can last a lifetime,” said UNICEF Executive Director, Catherine Russell. “This hurts us all.”

Ethnicity, language, religion: The report shows that children from marginalised ethnic, language and religious groups, from 22 low and middle-income countries which were analysed, lag far behind their peers in reading skills.

Lagging behind: On average, students aged seven to 14 from the most advantaged group are more than twice as likely to have foundational reading skills than those from the least advantaged group.

A UNICEF analysis of data on the level of children registered at birth – a prerequisite for access to basic rights – found significant disparities among children of different religious and ethnic groups.

Black children are not children: In their reporting to the UN General Assembly, UN Human Rights experts on 8 November 2022 explained how children of African descent ‘not considered children at all, even in the eyes of the law.’

“The unresolved legacies of trade and trafficking in enslaved Africans, as well as colonialism, post-colonial apartheid and segregation, continue to harm these children today.”

Deprivation: Discrimination and exclusion deepen inter-generational deprivation and poverty, and result in poorer health, nutrition and learning outcomes for children, a higher likelihood of incarceration, higher rates of pregnancy among adolescent girls, and lower employment rates and earnings in adulthood.

‘Povertyism,’ humiliation, stigmatisation: Like racism and sexism, ‘povertyism’ should be illegal, said in his recent report to the world body, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier de Schutter.

“People are stereotyped and discriminated against purely because they are poor. This is frankly sickening and a stain on our society.”

No Need to add that children are among the most hurt by impoverishment, humiliation and stigmatisation.

No immunisation: While COVID-19 exposed deep injustices and discrimination across the world, and the impacts of climate change and conflict continue to reveal inequities in many countries, UNICEF highlights how discrimination and exclusion have long persisted for millions of children from ethnic and minority groups, including access to immunisation, water and sanitation services,

Sentenced to the darkness of ignorance: More than two-thirds of 10-year-olds are unable to read and understand a simple text. And there are 244 million children still out of school, while educational centres are victims of armed attacks.

More horrifying findings

In addition to all the already reported brutalities committed against the most innocent and defenceless humans–the children, many more crimes continue to be perpetrated amidst worldwide impunity.

The following are just some tragic examples.

One billion children experience some form of emotional, physical or sexual violence every single year.

One child dies from violence… every seven minutes.

Millions of children are displaced by armed conflict. These children are at a high risk of grave violations in and around camps, and other areas of refuge.

Drowned, abandoned, stranded: Children are often forced to migrate with their parents to flee armed conflicts, severe droughts, floods and landslides they have not caused. In their voyage to hell, children are drowned, and those who survive are often separated from their families and abandoned at borders.

Violence without frontiers: violence against children knows no boundaries of culture, class or education. It takes place against children in institutions, in schools, and at home. Peer violence is also a concern, as is the growth in cyberbullying.

Isolation, loneliness, fear: Children exposed to violence live in isolation, loneliness and fear, not knowing where to turn for help, especially when the perpetrator is someone close.

Hunted in refugee camps: Criminal groups trading with the lives of the weakest humans go to refugee camps to hunt defenceless children and youth for trafficking, smuggling, enslavement, and making money from selling their organs.

Slavery: Millions of children are pushed into forced labour, carrying out extremely hazardous work. And 70% of boys and girls living in rural areas are workers.

Impunity

All these crimes against innocent children are being committed. And go unpunished.

No wonder, the world is so busy talking about weapons, wars, oil, gas, carbon, the concentration of food markets, more technology, and how to further expand the digitalisation of all aspects of life.

A new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.” Credit: WA

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

As much as wars –or even more–, climate disaster represents a great business opportunity, so don’t bother those who pour their fortunes into fueling them with talks about stopping it.

See what happens.

Investing in wars

A couple of dozens of companies involved in manufacturing the most inhuman weapons of mass destruction– the nuclear warheads, have been supported by over 150 big banks by lending them money or underwriting bonds, according to the Nobel Peace Laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments”

OXFAM International

Its Don’t Bank on the Bomb report also shows that another 186 institutions seek to profit from holding shares or bonds. And that altogether 338 financial institutions have made more than 685 billion US dollars available to the nuclear weapon industry since 2019.

This exercise –and the huge ‘investments’ by the world’s top rich corporations- has proved to be highly efficient.

In fact, in its report “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” ICAN reveals that in 2021 –the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine– nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars on these weapons of mass destruction, that’s more than 156,000 US dollars… per minute!

Another prestigious investigation centre: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently revealed that, right now, of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2.000 —nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA— were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” SIPRI adds in its Yearbook 2022.

Investing in climate catastrophes

But there is another highly lucrative business: climate change.

“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments,” reveals a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice–OXFAM International.

“A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person.”

Its recent major study: Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, reports that a new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 395 million tonnes of CO2 a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.”

The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies.

“Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act.”

Once destroyed, business set to make more money

In either case, wars and climate catastrophes cause vast destruction, let alone unspeakable human suffering, and death.

Both of them further sharpen the world’s unprecedented food crisis.

Also here, market lords continue to make high profits.

In fact, a ”small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally,” as already reported by IPS.

On the current energy crisis, the UN chief António Guterres in mid-September 2022, stated that it is “absolutely unacceptable to see that, when people are suffering so much in different parts of the world and, namely, because of the high costs of energy and high costs of fuel, to see fossil fuel companies having the largest profits ever or at least in the recent past.”

Why not: in addition to speculating with the energy markets, these companies have been largely funded by governments. In fact, politicians have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers’ money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.

More business ‘opportunities’

Then comes the great business of reconstructing all that the money-making business has been greatly contributing. Buildings, highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, universities, etcetera, let alone in further synthetic food.. all of these are to be paid for by the victims.

But there are more business opportunities, like continue buying vast fertile lands for monoculture and intensive agriculture, a money-making practice that by the way further opens the door for high technology corporations to digitalise more and more food production, among so many others.

A production that, also, by the way, is being greatly disrupted due to both wars and climate disaster.

A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 14 2022 (IPS)

For those who have it, a toilet is that ‘thing’ in the bathroom, next to the bidet, the hand-washing sink with hot and cold water faucets, and the bathtub.

Given their ‘unprestigious’ function, some billionaires, in particular in the Gulf oil-producer kingdoms, fancy to pose their buttocks on a solid-gold toilet. Once they are there, why not also solid-gold faucets?

Many others prefer a more comfortable use of their toilets, thus endowing them with both automatic heating and flushing. And anyway, being given-for-granted, nobody would give a thought to the high importance of all these ‘things’.

The other side of the coin shows an entirely different picture. A shocking one by the way.

Billions of humans without one

And it is a fact that close to 4 billion people –or about half of the world’s total population of 8 billion– still live without access to a safe toilet and other sanitation facilities.

Nearly a full decade ago, the international community, represented in the United Nations General Assembly, decided to declare 19 November every single year, as a world day to address such a staggering problem.

And year after year, the UN continues to behave ‘politically correct’ by saying that progress and achievements were anyway made, however much would still be to do.

Despite such ‘correctness,’ the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated on the Day that the world is “seriously off track to keep our promise of safe toilets for all by 2030 – a crucial indicator in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Investment in sanitation systems is too low and progress remains too slow.”

Photo courtesy: Shelter Associates

The facts

Well, this year’s World Toilet Day (19 November) provides some shocking facts:

Death of the children: Every day, over 800 children under age five years old die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene.

Poor sanitation is linked to the transmission of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera and dysentery, as well as typhoid, intestinal worm infections and polio. It exacerbates stunting and contributes to the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Globally, 1 in 3 schools do not have adequate toilets, and 23% of schools have no toilets at all. Schools without toilets can cause girls to miss out on their education. Without proper sanitation facilities, many are forced to miss school when they are on their period.

Open defecation: about 900 million people worldwide practice open defecation, meaning they go outside – on the side of the road, in bushes or rubbish heaps. It’s often a matter of where they live: 90% of people who practice open defecation live in rural areas.

Of these, 494 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water.

Moreover, the lack of sanitation services, just in the year 2020, stood behind the fact that 45% of the household wastewater generated globally was discharged without safe treatment.

Consequently, at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater.

Safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS

The impact on underground water

Should all this not be enough, the 2022 World Toilet Day focuses on another invisible fact: the grave impacts of such a sanitation crisis on groundwater, which is the source of up to 99% of the world’s fresh water.

The 2022 campaign ‘Making the invisible visible’ explores how inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, polluting underground water resources.

However, this problem seems to be invisible. Invisible because it happens underground. Invisible because it happens in the poorest and most marginalised communities.

Groundwater is the world’s most abundant source of freshwater. It supports drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. As climate change worsens and populations grow, groundwater is vital for human survival.

The invisible dangers

The central message of World Toilet Day 2022 is that safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution.

See why:

Safe sanitation protects groundwater. Toilets that are properly located and connected to safely managed sanitation systems, collect, treat and dispose of human waste, and help prevent human waste from spreading into groundwater.

Sanitation must withstand climate change. Toilets and sanitation systems must be built or adapted to cope with extreme weather events, so that services always function and groundwater is protected.

The above shows how those ‘things’ in the bathroom can be life-saving.

Moreover, for those who are obsessed with measuring human suffering in purely money-making terms, it should be enough to know that providing adequate sanitation is a good business: each 1 US dollar invested in it means 5 US dollars saved in health services.