Credit: WHO

By Mary Assunta
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 9 2023 (IPS)

The second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution (INC-2), held in Paris, France, from May 29 to June 02, 2023, concluded with optimism and the prospect of ending plastics pollution. Over 700 delegates from 169 Member States agreed to prepare a zero draft of agreement ahead of the third session in November this year.

Among the more important and interesting debates, health advocates attending the negotiations reported that it was essential to discuss “how to categorize the thousands of types of plastics, chemical precursors and products in a way that allows for a coherent approach to ending plastic pollution.

Some favoured focusing on the chemical precursors, eliminating the most toxic and polluting ones,” while others acknowledged that not every type of plastic could be recycled or reinvented, and certain plastics like cigarette filters need to disappear for good.

Leonce Sessou, speaking on behalf of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), Corporate Accountability (CA), African Tobacco Control Alliance (ATCA), and other members of the Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA), urged Member States to align the future legally binding instrument on plastics with the public health objective of ending the tobacco epidemic, to which most have already committed via the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Tobacco control groups, for example, called for the elimination of cigarette filters. They drew attention to the fact that cigarette butts are some of the most prevalent forms of plastic pollution on the planet and harm land and marine ecosystems.

They reminded delegates to align with human rights and health treaties, particularly the WHO FCTC, and make the tobacco industry pay for its pollution and legacy waste. The WHO FCTC health treaty seeks to reduce the supply and demand for tobacco and protect health policies by keeping the tobacco industry out of policy meetings.

According to a WHO report which called for a ban on cigarette filters, about 4.5 trillion discarded filters (butts) from the almost six trillion cigarettes consumed globally find their way into the environment annually.

They are the top waste item collected from coastlines and urban settings. Cigarette filters are small enough to be ingested by marine animals, and when these plastic filters break down, they release thousands of microplastic particles.

Microplastics have been detected in commercial seafood, other food items, drinking water, and human tissue; this contamination is a threat to food safety and security.

Research shows cigarette butts are a source of microplastic contamination that creates chemical pollution (due to the toxic chemicals found in tobacco products) that leach into the environment. Cigarette butt leachates are found to harm various forms of aquatic organisms, including key food sources for fish and shellfish.

Experts agree that banning cigarette filters is the best solution to this plastic and toxic waste problem. Clean-ups, anti-littering legislation, and redesigning filters for recyclability or biodegradability have not worked and are not viable solutions.

Government committees from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark have recently called for a ban on filters and recommended the same for the rest of the European Union Member States.

For at least five decades, the tobacco industry has known that cigarette filters provide no health benefits; instead, they make cigarettes burn hotter, deliver more nicotine, and increase addiction.

Yet they have misled smokers into thinking filters make cigarettes “safer.” As awareness around smoking increased, the tobacco industry made advertisements for filtered cigarettes more appealing to pacify smokers’ concerns.

Advocates participating in the INC-2 reported a lot of misunderstandings related to cigarette filters that are yet to be addressed. In its blog on day 5 of the negotiations, ASH stated, “Many people, not just people who smoke, assume filters make cigarettes safer rather than more dangerous.”

Numerous countries already have a national policy banning single-use plastics such as plastic bags, straws, and cotton buds but have inadvertently not included cigarette filters. However, advocates speaking to government delegates found widespread support for a ban on cigarette filters.

As the possibility of a cigarette filter ban gathers momentum, the tobacco industry’s public relations (PR) machinery is already in motion implementing beach cleans-ups and cigarette butt collection activities through its corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs across the globe.

Before the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution (INC-3) resumes in Nairobi in November, governments must remember that the tobacco industry is not a stakeholder but a polluter that must be held liable for the myriad harms it has caused as well as continues to cause to human health and the environment.

Over 100 non-governmental health organizations of the STPA, along with other environmental groups such as Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Ecowaste Coalition, Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), Ban Toxics (Philippines), Our Sea of East Asia Network (OSEAN), Development Indian Ocean Network, Earthday.org (Earth Day Network), Green Africa Youth Organization, Vietnam Zero Waste Alliance, and Boomerang Alliance have called for the elimination of cigarette filters.

Mary Assunta is Senior Policy Advisor, Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA)

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Researchers have been driving collaboration, funding, and state-of-the-art research into the earth’s largest carbon sink – located in the high seas. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, Jun 8 2023 (IPS)

Almost half of the world’s population lives in coastal zones. For islands in the Pacific and Caribbean islands such as Dominica, where up to 90 percent of the population lives on the coast, the ocean is fundamental to lives and livelihoods. From fisheries to tourism and shipping, this essential body which covers over 70 percent of the planet, is a lifeline.

But the ocean’s life-saving potential extends much further. The ocean regulates our climate and is critical to mitigating climate change. Researchers have long lamented that major international agreements have failed to adequately recognize the resource that produces half of the earth’s oxygen and whose power includes absorbing 90 percent of excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions.

And while its ability to capture and store carbon has been receiving increased attention as the world commits to keeping global warming below 1.5C, researchers say that coverage of that ability has concentrated on coastal ecosystems like mangroves, seagrass, and salt marshes. This is known as coastal blue carbon.

Protecting and conserving coastal blue carbon ecosystems is very important because of the many co-benefits they provide to biodiversity, water quality, and coastal erosion, and they store substantial amounts of legacy carbon in the sediments below.

Researchers welcome the exposure to topics on ocean solutions to climate change but say the conversation – along with data, investment, and public education – must extend much further than coastal blue carbon. Scientists at Dalhousie University have been driving collaboration, funding, and state-of-the-art research into the earth’s largest carbon sink – located in the high seas.

“It’s easy to imagine the ocean as what we can see standing on the edge of the shore as we look out, or to think about fisheries or seaweed that washes up on the beach – our economic and recreation spaces,” says Mike Smit, a professor in the Faculty of Management and the Deputy Scientific Director of the university’s Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI).

“Beyond that, what you might call the deep ocean, is less studied. It’s harder to get to, it’s not obviously within any national jurisdiction, and it’s expensive. The Institute is really interested in this part of the ocean. How carbon gets from the surface, and from coastal regions, to deep, long-term storage is an essential process that we need to better understand. We know that this deep storage is over 90 percent of the total carbon stored in the ocean, so the deep ocean is critical to the work that the ocean is doing to protect us from a rapidly changing climate.”

OFI’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Anya Waite, says the phrase ‘deep blue carbon’ needs to be a household one – and soon. She says the omission of earth’s largest repository of carbon from climate solutions has resulted in the issue becoming “really urgent.”

“If the ocean starts to release the carbon that it’s stored for millennia, it will swamp anything we do on land. It’s absolutely critical that we get to this as soon as possible because, in a way, it’s been left behind.”

Researchers at the Institute have been studying deep blue carbon and bringing researchers together to spur ocean carbon research, interest, investment, and policy.

Through the Transforming Climate Action research program, the Institute is putting the ocean at the forefront of efforts to combat climate change.

“The ocean needs to be in much better focus overall. We are so used to thinking of the ocean as a victim of sorts. There is ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and pollution, but in fact, the ocean is the main climate actor. It’s time to change that narrative, to understand that the ocean is doing critically important work for us, and we need to understand that work better in order to maintain the function that the ocean provides,” says Waite.

A lot of emphasis has been placed on coastal blue carbon – mangroves, seagrass, and salt marshes, but now the Ocean Frontier Institute intends to ensure deep blue carbon becomes part of the climate change conversation. Credit: Beau Pilgrim/Climate Visuals

Most Important, Yet Least Understood

The OFI is harnessing its ocean and marine ecosystems research to find strategic, safe, and sustainable means of slowing climate change, but time is not on the world’s side to achieve the “deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions” that the latest Synthesis Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states is needed to limit warming to 1.5C.

“We know that the ocean is changing, and how it absorbs carbon might change,” says Smit. “There are just too many open questions, too high uncertainty, and too little understanding of what will enhance natural ocean processes and what will impair their abilities to continue to work.”

According to Waite, the ocean’s storage capacity makes it a better place to remove carbon from the atmosphere than land options. In fact, it pulls out more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than all the earth’s rainforests combined. She concedes, however, that the ocean is more complex physically, making carbon capture and ensuring the durability of sinks more difficult.

“We really need to understand the full scope of the ocean’s carbon-absorbing function and bring that into conversation with policymakers, nations, the finance community, and insurance. There are all sorts of impacts when the heat and carbon budget of the ocean are not well observed. Then we don’t have a good prediction system for cyclones, heat waves, and other important phenomena that insurance companies, governments, and the military all need to understand to keep us safe. There are really strong societal reasons for us to do this work.”

The Economics

The OFI’s innovation and research are meant to inform policy and industry. The commercial side of deep blue carbon will be critical to converting ground-breaking research into in-use technology among climate mitigation companies.

Eric Siegel is the Institute’s Chief Innovation Officer. With a background in oceanography, he has spent the last 20 years at the interface of ocean science, technical innovation, and global business.

“We are trying to work more with industry to bring some of the innovations that our researchers are developing to support innovation in companies, but also trying to bring some of those companies into the research realm to help support our work at the Ocean Frontier Institute,” he told IPS.

“For example, carbon removal companies will need to monetize carbon credits as they will have to sequester the carbon. That takes innovation and investment. It’s a great example of companies that do well and generates revenue by doing good, which is mitigating climate. It’s also sort of a reverse of how, over the last couple of decades, companies have donated charitably because they have generally been successful in extractive technologies or non-environmentally friendly technologies. It’s a nice change from the old model.”

Siegel says presently, there just aren’t enough blue carbon credits that can be monetized.

“There are almost zero validated and durable carbon credits that are being created and are able to be sold now. Many people want to buy them, so there is a huge marketplace, but because the technology is so new and there are some policy, monitoring, reporting, and verification limits in place, there are not enough of them.”

Some companies have started buying advanced market credits – investing now in the few blue carbon credit projects available globally for returns in the next five to 20 years.

“I think that this is our decade to do the science, do the technical innovation, and set up the marketplaces so that at the end of this decade, we will be ready – all the companies will be ready to start actively safely removing carbon and therefore generating carbon credits to make a difference and to sell them into the market.”

The pressing need for solutions to the climate crisis means that work has to be carried out simultaneously at every link in the deep blue carbon chain.

“We don’t have the luxury of saying, okay, we have the science right now; let’s work on the technology. Okay, the technology is right; let’s work on the marketplace. The marketplace is right; now, let’s work on the investment. Okay, all that’s ready; let’s work on the policy. We have to do them all at the same time – safely and responsibly – but starting now. And that’s how we are trying to position Ocean Frontier Institute – different people leading on different initiatives to make it happen in parallel.”

A floating flipped iceberg in the Weddell Sea, off Argentina, with a block of green sea ice now showing above the water, joined to the whiter land ice. This picture was taken from the British research vessel RRS Discovery on a research cruise in the Southern Ocean in the Weddell Sea. The Ocean Frontier Institute says the ocean is the main climate actor and needs this acknowledgment. Credit: David Menzel/Climate Visuals

Global Collaboration – and the Future

The Ocean Frontier Institute is working closely with the Global Ocean Observing System. With Waite as Co-Chair, the system underscores that oceans are continuous. No one country understands or controls the ocean. It is based on the premise that collaboration between nations, researchers, and intergovernmental organizations is key to maximizing the ocean’s role in fighting climate change.

“Every nation that observes is welcome to join this network, and we then deliver recommendations to nation-states and the United Nations,” says Waite.

“The technical systems that observe the ocean are becoming fragile because nations have other things to put their money into. So, we need to get nations to step in and start to boost the level of the observing system to the point where we can understand ocean dynamics properly. This is in real contrast, for example, to our weather observation systems that are very sustained and have a mandate from the World Meteorological Organization that they must be sustained to a certain level.”

For OFI’s Deputy Director, data sharing will be critical to the collaboration’s success.

“The data that we collect from these observations can’t stop at the desks of scientists. We have to get them out of the lab and into the world so that people have some understanding of what is happening out there. It’s critically important, it’s also really cool, and we need to understand it better,” says Mike Smit.

The Institute’s Chief Innovation Officer wants the world to know that deep blue carbon is positioned for take-offs.

According to Siegel, “We need to start realizing that the ocean and the deep blue carbon is actually the big, big opportunity here.”

And as for residents of the Pacific Islands intrinsically linked to the ocean by proximity, tradition, or industry, Waite says their voices are needed for this urgent talk on deep blue carbon.

“Pacific island nations are uniquely vulnerable to climate change. Their economic zone, extending up from their land, is a critical resource that they can use to absorb carbon to maintain their biodiversity. Pacific island nations have a special role to play in this conversation that’s quite different from those who live on big continental nations.”

Deep blue carbon might not be a household term just yet, but the world needs to talk about it. Dalhousie University, through its Ocean Frontier Institute’s research and partnerships, is ensuring that conversation is heard across the globe.

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Excerpt:

Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 1 2023 (IPS)

Turkey’s election hasn’t produced the change many thought was on the cards. Now women’s groups, LGBTQI+ people and independent journalists are among those fearing the worse.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has led the country for two decades, first as prime minister and then as president, prevailed in the 28 May runoff poll, taking around 52.2 per cent of the vote, with his opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, on 47.8 per cent.

The election represented Erdoğan’s biggest-ever electoral test. The run-up was dominated by a cost-of-living crisis. Many pointed the finger at highly unorthodox economic policies insisted on by Erdoğan – of lowering rather than raising interest rates in response to inflation – for making them worse off.

Anger was also sparked by devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria in February, leaving over 50,000 people dead and an estimated 1.5 million people homeless in Turkey. The government was accused of being slow to respond and of overlooking building regulations.

Erdoğan has overcome these hurdles, albeit with a narrow victory. The close vote shows that many Turks wanted change. But after a deeply polarised election, there’s no hint Erdoğan plans to moderate the way he governs.

 
Media dominance tells

Erdoğan prevailed despite facing a united opposition in which six parties put aside their differences. Their aim was to bring to an end Erdoğan’s hyper-presidential form of government and turn Turkey back into a pluralist democracy where parliament can act as a check on excessive presidential power.

A similar approach was tried in Hungary last year, when parties came together to try to oust authoritarian hardman Viktor Orbán, and also failed. Some of their challenges were similar. Both were forced to work in a severely unequal media landscape where media – state media and private media owned by business leaders closely connected to the government – focused almost entirely on the incumbent and starved the challenger of airtime. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers concluded that while the election was competitive, the playing field wasn’t level, with freedom of expression restrictions and media bias giving Erdoğan ‘an unjustified advantage’.

Over his 20 years, Erdoğan has concentrated power on himself and moved to suppress dissent. In 2017, Erdoğan pushed through changes that turned a parliamentary system into an intensely presidential one, placing virtually unlimited powers in his hands.

And he’s used those powers. Turkey is now the world’s fourth-largest jailer of journalists, with terrorism charges commonly applied, and the number of trials and length of sentences increasing.

The deteriorating climate for dissent could be seen in the wake of the earthquakes, when people were detained for criticising the government’s response. There were several reports of attacks on and obstruction of journalists during the election campaign.

A race to the bottom

In past elections, Erdoğan campaigned on his economic record. But this time, with the economic crisis and earthquake destruction leaving him unable to press those points, he fell back on another weapon, deploying a tactic nationalists and populists are using the world over: culture war rhetoric.

The opposition was consistently smeared for allegedly supporting LGBTQI+ rights, with Erdoğan positioning himself as the staunch defender of the traditional family. This messaging persisted even though the opposition had little to say on reversing Erdoğan’s attacks on women’s and LGBTQI+ people’s rights.

The culture war strategy was blended with a strongly nationalist appeal. Political opponents were portrayed as extremists and allies of terrorists. This was reinforced by fake campaign videos – one of many examples of campaign disinformation – that claimed to show members of a banned terrorist organisation supporting Kılıçdaroğlu.

Syrian refugees were also targeted. There are 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey. They’ve crossed the border to escape the brutal, 12-year civil war and grotesque human rights abuses. But Turkey’s economic decline has seen growing xenophobia, which has fuelled violence, inflamed by political rhetoric.

Whoever won the election promised to be bad news for refugees. The opposition reacted to Erdoğan’s attacks by pledging to be even tougher in returning refugees. In the last leg of the campaign, both sides hurled discriminatory and inflammatory language at each other.

Erdoğan’s more authentic appeal to nationalism and socially conservative values ultimately won the day. Erdoğan seems to have convinced enough people he’s the only person who can navigate the current crisis. As in several other countries, including Hungary and El Salvador, a majority of voters embraced authoritarianism.

What next?

Undoubtedly Turkey’s heavily restricted civic space and deeply skewed media landscape played a major role. But even acknowledging these barriers, the opposition will need to do some soul searching ahead of municipal elections next year if they hope to keep control of major city governments. The strategy of imitating Erdoğan’s rhetoric on migrants and terrorism having failed, they must find a way to connect with voters with a more positive message.

There are immediate challenges ahead for Erdoğan too, not least the state of the economy. Erdoğan was able to offer some pre-election enticements such as a minimum wage increases and temporary free gas supplies, buttressed by support from non-democratic states including Russia, with which he has developed warmer relations. The government has significantly depleted its foreign currency and gold reserves to try to prop up the Turkish lira – which still hit a record low after Erdoğan’s victory was confirmed.

Erdoğan can be expected to react to further economic difficulty by deepening his authoritarianism to try to silence critics. Those already targeted – refugees, LGBTQI+ people, women, Kurdish activists and the civil society that defends their rights and independent journalists who report their stories – will remain in the firing line.

But the 25.5 million people who voted against Erdoğan deserve a voice. Erdoğan needs to change the habits of a lifetime, show some willingness to listen and build consensus. Turkey’s democratic allies must encourage him to see it’s in his best interest to do so.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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Grow Food, not Tobacco. Credit: PAHO
 
On May 31, the World Health Organization (WHO) and public health institutions celebrated “World No Tobacco Day” (WNTD). This year’s theme was: “We need food, not tobacco”. WNTD was created by WHO Member States in 1987 to raise awareness about the harmful effects of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 1 2023 (IPS)

The US has some of the strictest laws against smoking in public, including a 1997 executive order which bans smoking in all government federal buildings.

But still, the tobacco industry and its allies do not rest, says Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, Director of the Washington-based Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

Currently, they “spread a lot of misleading information that promotes, especially among young people, the use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products”, he said, on the eve of World No Tobacco Day May 31.

According to PAHO, while the percentage of the population using tobacco in the Americas declined from 28% to 16.3% between 2000 and 2020, novel products and misleading information from the tobacco industry, especially targeting young people, threaten to undo those gains.

“Although eight countries in the region have banned the marketing of e-cigarettes and four of heated tobacco products, we are concerned that 14 countries have not yet taken any regulatory action in this regard,” he pointed out.

According to the latest statistics from PAHO, tobacco-use kills one million people per year in the Americas, one every 34 seconds.

In addition, 15% of cardiovascular disease deaths, 24% deaths from cancer and 45% of deaths from chronic respiratory diseases are attributable to tobacco use. In the region, 11% of young people use tobacco.

E-cigarettes are the most common form of electronic nicotine delivery. Their emissions contain nicotine and other toxic substances that are harmful to both users and those exposed to them.

To address the growing health threat posed by these products, the PAHO Director has called on countries to implement policies to prevent their use, especially among young people, as they can become the gateway to regular tobacco consumption.

Mary Assunta, Senior Policy Advisor, Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance, told IPS about 40 countries in the world have banned e-cigarettes while 70 countries which allow them have instituted restrictions on sales. For example, 36 countries regulate the amount (concentration/volume) of nicotine in e-liquids.

She said New Zealand, the Philippines and England, where e-cigarettes are sold more as recreational products, are facing a big problem with teenage vapers.

The Australian government has just announced a slew of strong measures to strictly regulate e-cigarettes after misinformation on the health effects of vaping helped hook children and young people.

E-cigarettes are meant to be sold by prescription only in Australia, said Assunta.

Yolonda Richardson, Executive Vice President of the Washington-based, Global Programs of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said this World No Tobacco Day, the WHO is calling for action against the tobacco industry’s human and environmental toll.

“Harming human and environmental health is pivotal to the business model of multinational tobacco companies like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco. Millions of people die every year due to Big Tobacco’s profit-over-people model”.

She said low- and middle-income countries increasingly feel this burden, with 80 percent of tobacco-related deaths from diseases such as cancer, lung disease and heart disease projected to be in such countries by 2030. And the tobacco industry traps farmers with unsustainable crops and appropriates arable land to grow tobacco used for deadly products.

On this year’s World No Tobacco Day, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids joins the WHO in calling on governments to stand up to the tobacco industry’s exploitative practices and the devastating impacts of its deadly products.

One in 10 adult deaths around the globe are due to tobacco use. By holding the industry accountable and through the implementation of proven tobacco control measures, we have the power to protect future generations from tobacco-related death and disease, she noted.

“It is critical that governments act with urgency to address tobacco’s burden by passing the proven tobacco control interventions contained in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,” said Richardson.

Without urgent action, tobacco use will kill one billion people this century, lock tobacco farmers into a lifetime of poverty, and cause continued harm to the environment, she declared.

The United Nations which banned smoking in its 38-storyed Secretariat building in New York, back in 2016, says smoking is one of the biggest public health threats in the world today, killing millions of people from lung cancer, heart disease and other diseases.

All delegates, staffers and visitors to UN Headquarters are reminded of the strict no smoking policy mandated by the General Assembly in its resolution A/RES/63/8 and stipulated in ST/SGB/2003/9.　

A designated exterior smoking area is available in the South Garden and signs showing the shortest route from the Secretariat lobby and the General Assembly and Conference Building main areas have been posted.　

Since the entry into force of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2005, says PAHO, the region has made great strides in tobacco prevention and control. Currently, 96% of the population in 35 countries in the region is protected by at least one of the six recommended tobacco control measures.

In 2020, South America became the first 100% smoke-free sub-region – where there is a total ban on smoking in enclosed public places and workplaces, and on public transport.

Mexico also adopted the 100% smoke-free environment policy by the end of 2021 and banned all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. As a result, 63% of the population of the Americas – or more than 600 million people – are now protected from exposure to tobacco smoke.

In addition, in 2022, Paraguay ratified the Protocol to Eliminate the Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, which will boost regional efforts in this area.

“These achievements allow us to be confident that the region of the Americas will reach the target of a 30% reduction in the prevalence of tobacco use in those over 15 years of age by 2025, established in the WHO’s Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases,” Dr. Barbosa said.

But to expedite progress, the PAHO Director considered it “urgent to accelerate efforts to implement key measures that have fallen behind, including tax increases, a total ban on the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco-products, and the adoption of mechanisms to manage conflicts of interest.”

LINKS:
• World No Tobacco Day – May 31, 2023
• WHO urges governments to stop subsidizing life-threatening tobacco crops
• Tobacco Control – PAHO
• Tobacco: E-cigarettes
• WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
• Report on Tobacco Control in the Region of the Americas 2022 (In Spanish)

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Her hands loaded with crates, Susan Quintanilla, a union leader of agro-export workers in the department of Ica in southwestern Peru, gets ready to collect different vegetables and fruits for foreign markets. She has witnessed many injustices, saying the companies “made you feel like they were doing you a favor by giving you work, they wanted you to keep your head down." CREDIT: Courtesy of Susan Quintanilla

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, May 31 2023 (IPS)

Peru’s agro-export industry is growing steadily and reached record levels in 2022. But this has not had a favorable impact on human development in this South American country, where high levels of inequality, poverty, childhood anemia and malnutrition persist, as well as complaints about the poor quality of employment in the sector.

Exports of agricultural products such as blueberries, grapes, tangerines, artichokes and asparagus generated 9.8 billion dollars in revenue in 2022 – 12 percent higher than the 2021 total, as reported in February by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism.“The increase in revenue from agricultural exports has not brought human development: anemia and tuberculosis are at worrying levels and now dengue fever is skyrocketing.” -- Rosario Huallanca

Agricultural exports represent four percent of GDP in this Andean nation, where mining and fishing are the main economic activities.

“The increase in revenue from agricultural exports has not brought human development: anemia and tuberculosis are at worrying levels and now dengue fever is skyrocketing,” Rosario Huallanca, a representative of the non-governmental Ica Human Rights Commission (Codeh Ica), which has worked for 41 years in that department of southwestern Peru, told IPS.

Ica and two other departments along the country’s Pacific coast, La Libertad and Piura, are leaders in the sector, accounting for nearly 50 percent of agricultural exports in this country of 33 million people, which despite this boom remains plagued by inequality, reflected by high levels of poverty and informality and precariousness in employment.

Monetary poverty affected 27.5 percent of the country’s 33 million inhabitants in 2022, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics. This is a seven percentage point increase over the pre-pandemic period. The number of poor people was estimated at 9,184,000 last year, 600,000 more than in 2021.

Ica, which has a total of 850,765 inhabitants, is one of the departments with the lowest monetary poverty rates, five percent, because it has full employment, largely due to the agro-export boom of the last two decades.

Huallanca said the number of agro-export companies is estimated at 320, with a total of 120,000 employees, who come from different parts of the country.

What stands out, she said, is that 70 percent of the total number of workers in the sector are women, who are valued for their fine motor skills in handling fruits and vegetables.

Although a portion of the workers of some companies are in the informal sector, there are no clear numbers, the expert pointed out.

But there are alarming figures available: more than six percent of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, and anemia affects 33 percent of children between six and 35 months of age.

“With the type of job we have, we cannot take our children to their growth checkups, we can’t miss work because they don’t pay you if you don’t show up, we cry in silence because of our anxiety,” 42-year-old Yanina Huamán, who has worked in the agro-export sector for 20 years to support her three children, told IPS.

The two oldest are in middle and higher education and her youngest is still in primary school. “I am both mother and father to my children. With my work I am giving them an education and I have manged to secure a home of my own, but it’s precarious, the bedrooms don’t have roofs yet, for example,” she said.

Huamán is secretary for women’s affairs in the union of the company where she works, a position she was appointed to in November 2022. From that post, she hopes to help bring about improvements in access to healthcare for female workers, who either postpone going to the doctor when they need to, or receive poor medical attention in the social security health system “where they only give us pills.”

Ica currently has the highest number of deaths from dengue fever, a viral disease that led the government of Dina Boluarte to declare a 90-day health emergency in 13 of the country’s 24 departments a couple of weeks ago.

Not only that, it has the history of being the department with the highest level of deaths from Covid-19: 901 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, exceeding the national average of 630 per 100,000. “The health system here does not work,” trade unionist Huamán said bluntly.

Yanina Huamán, a worker in the agro-export sector in the department of Ica in southwestern Peru, explains at a meeting in Lima the problems that affect labor rights in the sector, particularly for women who make up 70 percent of the workers. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Working conditions more difficult for women

The lack of quality employment and the deficient recognition of labor rights, exacerbated by the pandemic, prompted a strike in November 2020 that began in Ica and spread to the northern coastal area of ​​La Libertad and Piura.

Their demands included a minimum living wage of 70 soles (19 dollars) a day, social benefits such as compensation and raises for length of service, and recognition of the right to form unions.

Grouped together in the recently created Ica Workers’ Union Agro-exports Struggle Committee, which represents casual and seasonal workers, they went to Congress in Lima to demand changes in the current legislation.

Susan Quintanilla, 39, originally from the central Andean department of Ayacucho, is the general secretary of the union. She arrived in Ica in 2014 after separating from her husband. She came with her two children, a girl and a boy, for whom she hoped for a future with better opportunities.

After working as a harvester in the fields, and cleaning and packing fruit at the plant, she decided to work on a piecework basis, because that way she could earn more and save up for times when the companies needed less labor.

“It was incredibly hard,” she told IPS. “I would leave home at 10 in the morning and leave work at three or four in the wee hours of the next morning to be there to get my kids ready for school. I was 29 or 30 years old, I was young, but I saw older women with pain in their bodies, their arms and their feet due to the postures we had at work, but they continued because they had no other option.

“I saw many injustices in the agro-export companies,” she added. “They made you feel that they were doing you a favor by giving you work, they wanted you to keep your head down, they shouted at and humiliated people, they made them feel miserable. I protested, raised my voice, and they didn’t fire me because I was a high performance worker and they needed me. The situation has changed a little because of our struggles, but it hasn’t come for free.”

The late 2020 protests led to the approval on Dec. 31 of that year of Law No. 31110 on agricultural labor and incentives for the agricultural and irrigation sector, aimed at guaranteeing the rights of workers in the agro-export and agroindustrial sectors.

But in Quintanilla’s view, the law discriminates against non-permanent workers who make up the largest part of the workforce in the sector, since the preferential right to hiring established in the fourth article of the law is not respected.

“Nor have they recognized the differentiated payment of our social benefits and they include them in the daily wage that is calculated at 54 soles (a little more than 14 dollars): it’s not fair,” she complained.

At the same time, she stressed that the agro-export work is harder on women because they are the ones responsible for raising their children. “We live in a sexist society that burdens us with all of the care work,” Quintanilla said.

She also explained that because several of the companies are so far away, it takes workers longer to get to work, which means they are away from home for up to twelve hours a day. “We go to work with the anxiety that we are leaving our children at risk of the dangers of life, we cannot be with them as we would like, which damages us emotionally.”

Added to this, she said, are the terrible working conditions, such as the fact that the toilets are far from the areas where they work, as much as three blocks away, or in unsanitary conditions, which leads women to avoid using them, to the detriment of their health.

Workers sort avocados for export in Peru. Agro-exports account for four percent of the country’s GDP, but the prosperity of the sector has not translated into better human development for its workers, and diseases such as anemia and tuberculosis are alarmingly prevalent in agroindustrial areas. CREDIT: Comexperu

Agro-export companies and human rights

Huallanca said that Codeh Ica was promoting the creation of a space of diverse stakeholders so that the National Business and Human Rights Plan, a public policy aimed at ensuring that economic activities improve people’s quality of life, is fulfilled in the department. Five unions from Ica and the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Tourism participate in this initiative.

“We have made an enormous effort and we hope that on Jun. 16 it will be formally created by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, the governing body for this policy,” she said.

In the meantime, she added, “we have helped bring together women involved in the agro-export sector, who have developed a rights agenda that has been given shape in this multi-stakeholder space and we hope it will be taken into account.”

Jaggery making on a sugarcane farm in Mandla. Small-scale farmers in India are benefitting from a scheme where they are able to diversify their farms and get support through Farmer Producer Organisations. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

By Rina Mukherji
MANDLA, JHARGRAM & AHMEDNAGAR, INDIA, May 26 2023 (IPS)

Until a decade ago, marginal farmers Gangotri Chandrol and Sunitabai lacked livelihood options in the post-monsoon season.

With farm holdings of just 2-6 acres in Katangatola village in the tribal-majority Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh, they could only grow wheat, paddy, and sugarcane in the wet season for a living.

“Our earnings depended on price fluctuations in the market and the little paddy and wheat procured by the government.”

But now, they can sell their produce at higher than the prevailing market price to their farmers’ collective set up by Ekgaon Technologies, using existing women’s microfinance self-help groups (SHGs).

Furthermore, value-added products like flavoured jaggery obtained from sugarcane ensure a good income.  Farmers like Gangotri and Sunitabai, who were organised into clusters, and trained to form collective bargaining as buyers of agricultural inputs and suppliers of produce, are better off as a result.

While agriculture is India’s primary employment source, agricultural productivity has remained low. This is because the average size of an agricultural plot is less than 2 hectares (4.942 acres) (as per 2001 figures), with a quarter of rural holdings as low as 0.4 hectares (0.988 acres).

Furthermore, poverty and illiteracy make it difficult for most farmers to apply modern scientific inputs to enhance yield. Climate change has further added to the problem, with erratic weather, unseasonal rains, and frequent storms taking their toll on standing crops.

Realising this, India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) developed its Producer Organisation Promoting Institution (POPI) scheme in 2015. This saw several Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) flourish around 2015, and farmers were inducted into registered companies, holding a certain number of shares, each priced at a nominal sum.

Women farmers in West Bengal buying inputs for their Farmer Producer Organisation. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

Ekgaon and its mission in Mandla

Once a single crop with migration-prone villages, Mandla district has seen a facelift ever since Ekgaon Technologies brought together its rural women and organised them into a Farmer Producers Organisation (FPO). Encouraged to buy seeds and fertilizer to distribute within their organisation, the women emerged as small-time entrepreneurs.

Traditionally, paddy cultivators, the farmers here, were trained to move to multi-cropping using natural organic farming methods. Local farmers now grow a mix of paddy, wheat, lentils (Masur), pigeon pea (arhar/tur), green gram (mung), and sugarcane on their marginal farms, using improved techniques and inexpensive homemade organic fertilizers.

Vidhi Patel, a widow and marginal farmer with a one-acre farm, tells IPS, “We were using 40 kg of seeds on our one-acre farm to grow paddy, besides spending on urea, which cost us upwards of Rs 1000. Under the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method, we now use only 25 kg of seeds, which has halved costs.”

Gangotri Chandrol, Sunitabai Chandrol, and Devki Uikey have not just learned to make optimum use of their marginal 2-6 acre farms to grow a variety of traditional crops such as wheat, paddy, sugarcane pigeon pea, masur (lentils), mung (green legumes), and millets, but have now ventured into cash crops like arrowroot, flaxseed, nigerseed, and marigold, which fetch them good returns.

Similarly, Laxmibai and Devki Uikey of the neighbouring Khari village grow sugarcane on one acre of their 3-acre farm and paddy, wheat, marigold and beetroot on the rest.  Besides operating as a small-time entrepreneur, selling agricultural inputs to other members of her FPO, Devki Uikey made organic yellow and maroon colours for the Holi (spring) festival out of beetroot and marigold with some other members of her collective.

“We procured 25 kg of marigold at Rs 40 per 250 g and 10 kg of beetroot at Rs 160 per kg. After making and selling the colours, we earned Rs 2300-Rs 2500 per member,” Devki Uikey told IPS

Besides selling premium varieties of rice such as Chindi Kapur and Jeera Shankar that are native to Mandla but not available elsewhere, Ekgaon has developed value-added products such as millet-ginger-raisin nutribars, millet noodles, amla ( gooseberry) candy, which it markets alongside ( collected) forest products like medicinal herbs, beeswax, and honey, on its e-commerce platform.

Since sugarcane is a major crop in the district and jaggery-making is an important enterprise, Ekgaon has developed ginger and tulsi (basil) flavoured jaggery cubes to brew flavoured tea.  Being part of the FPO has other benefits too. Farmers can access government funds for rainwater harvesters and borewells easily.

A tie-up with Rajdhani Besan, which markets gram flour, helped farmers who cultivate gram, while a tie-up with Lays saw the entire produce of white peas bought over in bulk for (Lays) chips and wafers. The FPO is also grading and procuring wheat for the government, earning the women farmers a small sum.

Consequently, marginal farmers who earned around Rs 50,000 (USD 608) per acre in the past are easily making Rs 3,00,000  (USD 3647) per acre now. Migration has stopped in most villages, and the literacy level has improved.

PRADAN’s initiatives in Jhargram and Bankura

Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) has also converted existing women’s microfinance self-help groups (SHGs) into FPOs in the resource-poor, tribal-majority Bankura and Jhargram districts of West Bengal.

Despite good monsoon rains, water scarcity is the norm in these paddy-growing districts, owing to rocky terrain. Of late, erratic rains have made matters worse, spurring out migration. To withstand the vagaries of the weather, the women farmer-shareholders of the Amon Mahila Chashi Producers Company Limited (Amon Women Farmers Producers Company Limited) and other FPOs now grow hardy, traditional paddy varieties using homemade organic fertilizers.

Sumita Mahato, whose family lives off a one-bigha (0.625 acres) farm, and  Swarnaprabha Mahato, whose three-bigha (1.875 acres) farm must provide for an eight-member family, told IPS: “Chemical fertilizers cost Rs 5000 per 0.625 acres, while homemade organic fertilizer costs us only Rs 80-90 for the same per bigha.”

It has helped them get organic certification for their produce, comprising traditional rice varieties like Malliphul, Satthiya  (red rice), and Kalabhat (black rice), earning them Rs 35 per kg (as against  Rs 12 per kg that rice grown with chemical inputs).  Rainwater harvesters accessed as members of the FPO, under the state government’s scheme for the region, have helped, too, increasing productivity from 25-30 quintals per acre to 40-45 quintals per acre.

As multi-cropping is impossible here owing to limited moisture in the rocky soil, the farmers grow turmeric as a cash crop on the village commons. In Jhargram, Sonajhuri (Acacia auriculiformis) and Cashew are grown for timber and nuts, while in Bankura, farms along the Kankabati River grow watermelons for collective profit.

Traditionally, women in these regions made plates from sal (Shorea robusta) leaves collected from the jungles. They now process and mould plates for urban markets using moulding machines, selling them with their other products online on IndiaMart, earning ample profits to lead well-settled lives.

Watermelon crop in Bankura. Credit: Rina Mukherji/IPS

WOTR’s Efforts in Maharashtra

In Parner taluka (sub-division) of Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, the community-led Ankur Farmer Producers Organisation (FPO), facilitated by the Watershed Trust (WOTR), comprises 762 farmer-shareholders from the villages of Hiwrekorda, Bhangadevadi, and Dawalpuri, with farm holdings of 3-15 acres range, who supplement their incomes through dairy farming.

Being a rain-shadow, the drought-prone region with limited water resources, farming was always rainfed here, with large tracts of land lying barren.

Once Ankur was formed, the farmers could avail of Rs 80 lakh from the State Government (of Maharashtra) contributing the rest to lay a 7.5 km pipeline to bring water from the Kalu river and fill up a lined farm pond, and set up a pump-house for collective benefit.

This enabled them to bring 100 acres of farmland under cultivation to grow onions, marigolds, chrysanthemums, and other crops for the market. Their rainfed single-crop lands also grow two crops with the additional moisture available.

The farmers have opted for organic inputs like vermicompost, which they prepare and sell, both within and outside their FPO, although, as farmers Somnath Palwe and Chandrakant Gawde say, “Our members use both organic and improved seeds, as per preference.”

From growing a single crop of bajra (pearl millet), jowar (sorghum), and pulses, the farmers now grow maize, green gram, marigold, chrysanthemum, and onions, besides cauliflower and tomato. Incomes have grown from as low as Rs 50,000 ( USD 61) for an acre of cultivable land to as high as Rs 5 00,000 (USD 731).

Ankur sells its products online to Ninjacart and offline-in wholesale markets. In both cases, the sale is direct and without middlemen. Farmer Ashok Phalke, tells me. “Onions used to fetch us Rs 10 per kg, while the market price was Rs 12 per kg. We would lose Rs 2 per kg. Now that we sell directly in markets as a group, we earn more. The same goes for tomatoes and flowers.”

Besides promoting organic farming, the FPOs stress natural multi-cropping methods to control pests, such as growing horse gram in combination with maize or sorghum. This attracts birds, which, in turn, help control harmful pests naturally. Kitchen gardens are encouraged as they counter nutritional deficiencies in farming families.

Government Encouragement of FPOs

The Indian government intends to set up 10,000 FPOs all over India for Rs 6865 crore. Under this scheme, FPOs are to receive financial assistance of up to Rs 18 lakh for three years, with each farmer-member being eligible for an equity grant and credit guarantee facility. However, not all existing FPOs have been co-opted into the government scheme.

Since millets are hardy and impervious to erratic weather patterns, the government has been pushing for their cultivation in regions where they were traditionally grown. But the government’s dictum of “one District, one Product” has invited criticism, especially from grassroots organisations, who see multi-cropping as the only guarantor against natural disasters such as hailstorms and cyclones.

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A picture of photovoltaic panels in the solar park in the small town of Armstrong, in the Pampa region, the heart of Argentina’s agricultural production. The park belongs to an electric cooperative, which until 2017 only bought energy to distribute, but now generates electricity as well. CREDIT: FARN

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 26 2023 (IPS)

When the residents of Armstrong, a town of 15,000 in western Argentina, began to meet to discuss a renewable energy project, they agreed that there could be many positive effects and that it was not just a question of doing their bit in the global effort to mitigate climate change.

“The proposal was to use the rooftops and yards of our houses to install solar panels. And I accepted the idea basically because I was excited by the prospect that one day we would become independent in generating our own electricity,” Adrián Marozzi, who today has six solar panels in the back of the house where he lives in Armstrong with his wife and two children, told IPS.“Community-based projects, which are feasible, have several advantages: they improve local autonomy in the generation of electricity, they allow money to be saved from the energy that is not purchased, which can be reinvested in the city, and they promote the decentralization of decision-making in the energy system.” -- Pablo Bertinat

His home is one of about 50 in Armstrong with solar panels generating power for the community, added to the 880-panel solar farm installed in the town’s industrial park. Together they have contributed part of the electricity consumed by the inhabitants of this town in the western province of Santa Fe since 2017.

This is a pioneering project in Argentina, built with public technical organizations and community participation through a cooperative where decisions are made democratically, which has since been replicated in various parts of the country.

With an extensive area of ​​almost 2.8 million square kilometers, Argentina is a country where most of the electricity generation has been concentrated geographically, which raises the need for large power transmission infrastructure and poses a hurdle for the development of the system.

In this context, and despite the financing obstacles in a country with a severe long-lasting economic crisis, renewable energies are increasingly seen as an alternative for clean electricity generation in power-consuming areas.

Marozzi is a biologist by profession, but is dedicated to agricultural production in Armstrong, almost 400 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires. The town is located in the pampas grasslands in the productive heart of Argentina, and is surrounded by fields of soybeans, corn and cattle.

How to bring electric power to widely scattered rural residents was the great challenge that the Armstrong Public Works and Services Provision Cooperative, made up of 5,000 members representing the town’s 5,000 households, grappled with for years.

The institution was born in 1958 and in 1966 it marked a milestone, when it created the first rural electrification system in this South American country, with a 70-kilometer medium voltage line that brought the service to numerous farms.

Once again, in 2016, the Armstrong cooperative pointed the way, when it began to discuss in assemblies with community participation the advantages and disadvantages of venturing into renewable energy production by means of solar energy panels.

“Those of us who accepted the installation of panels in our homes today receive no direct benefit, but we are betting on a future in which we can generate all of the electricity we consume. In addition, of course, we care about environmental issues,” Marozzi said in a conversation from his town.

The 880-panel solar park with 200 kW of installed power is currently being expanded to 275 kW thanks to the money that Armstrong saved from energy that was not purchased in recent years from the national grid. The local residents who make up the cooperative decided that the savings from what was generated with solar energy should be invested in the park.

Two workers carry out maintenance tasks at the solar park in Monte Caseros, a town in the Argentine province of Corrientes, in the northeast of the country. The park was inaugurated in 2021 by the local cooperative, which provides electricity to the residents and is also involved in agricultural activity. CREDIT: Monte Caseros Agricultural and Electricity Cooperative

A replicated model

In Argentina there are about 600 electrical cooperatives in small cities and towns in the interior of the country, which were born in the mid-20th century, when the national grid was still quite limited and access to electric power was a problem.

These cooperatives usually buy and distribute energy in towns. But the members of dozens of them realized that they too could generate clean electricity, after visiting Armstrong’s project, and launched their own renewable energy initiatives.

One of the cooperatives that also has a solar park is the Agricultural and Electricity Cooperative of Monte Caseros, a city of about 25,000 inhabitants in the northeastern province of Corrientes.

“The cooperative was born in 1977 out of the need to bring energy to rural residents,” engineer Germán Judiche, the association’s technical manager, told IPS. “Today we have a honey packaging plant and a cluster of silos for rice, the main crop in the area. Since 2018 we have also distributed internet service and in 2020 we partnered with the province’s public electricity company to venture into renewable energy.”

The Monte Caseros solar park has 400 kW of installed capacity thanks to 936 solar panels. It was inaugurated in September 2021 and has provided such good results that a second park, with similar characteristics, is about to begin to be built by the 650-member cooperative, because it supplies only rural residents of the municipality.

“We have done everything with the cooperative’s own labor and the design by engineers from the National University of the Northeast (UNNE), from our province,” said Judiche. “It is definitely a model that can be replicated. Renewable energy is our future,” he added from his town, some 700 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.

Solar panels can be seen in the backyard of Adrián Marozzi, a resident of the town of Armstrong. Neither he nor the other residents who agreed to give up part of their yards or rooftops receive direct advantages, since the energy savings are capitalized by the cooperative, which thus has to buy less electricity from the national grid. CREDIT: FARN

A slow and bumpy road

According to official figures, the distributed or decentralized generation of renewable energy for self-consumption, which allows the surplus to be injected into the grid, has 1,167 generators registered in 13 of Argentina’s 23 provinces, with more than 20 megawatts of installed power.

Electricity cooperatives that have their own renewable energy generation projects operate under this system.

In total, in this country of 44 million people, renewable energies covered almost 14 percent of the demand for electricity in 2022 and have more than 5,000 MW of installed capacity, although there are practically no major new projects to expand their proportion of the energy mix.

Most of the electricity demand is covered by thermal generation, which contributes more than 25,000 MW, mainly from oil but also from natural gas. Hydropower is the next largest source, with more than 10,000 MW from large dams greater than 50 MW, which are not considered renewable.

Pablo Bertinat, director of the Energy and Sustainability Observatory of the National Technological University (UTN) based in the city of Rosario, also in Santa Fe, explained that in a country like Argentina it is impossible to follow a model like Germany’s widespread residential generation of renewable energy, because it requires investments that are not viable.

“Community-based projects, which are feasible, have several advantages: they improve local autonomy in the generation of electricity, they allow money to be saved from the energy that is not purchased, which can be reinvested in the city, and they promote the decentralization of decision-making in the energy system,” added Bertinat, speaking from Rosario.

The UTN Observatory was in charge of the Armstrong project, in a public-private consortium, together with the cooperative and the National Institute of Industrial Technology (Inti).

The expert said that the cooperatives’ renewable energy projects are advancing slowly in Argentina, despite the fact that there is no credit nor favorable policies – an indication that they could have a very strong impact on the entire electrical system and even on the generation of employment, if there were tools to promote renewables.

“Our aim is to demonstrate that not only large companies can advance the agenda of promoting renewable energy and the replacement of fossil fuels. In Argentina, cooperatives are also an important actor on this path,” Bertinat said.

The case of Armstrong also sparked interest from the environmental movement, which is helping to drive the growth of renewable energy in the country.

Jazmín Rocco Predassi, head of Climate Policy at the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), told IPS that this is “an illustration that the energy transition does not always come from top-down initiatives, but that communities can organize themselves, together with cooperatives, municipal governments or science and technology institutes, to generate the transformations that the energy system needs.”

Long wait at the border between Sudan and Egypt. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, May 25 2023 (IPS)

The conflict in Sudan is impacting the economy in Egypt, and those who make their living moving goods across the borders have spent weeks hoping the situation will normalize.

Muhammad Saqr, a truck driver, left Cairo with a load of thinners on April 13, heading to Khartoum. By the time he had arrived at the border, the battle had flared up. Saqr remained, like dozens of trucks, waiting for the borders to be reopened.

On April 15, 2023, clashes erupted in Sudan between the army led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces led by Lieutenant General Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hamidti.” According to the UN, the clashes have resulted in hundreds of deaths and displaced more than a million people, with 840,000 internally displaced while another 250,000 have crossed the borders.

Saqr was stuck at the border for 28 days.

“We began to run out of supplies, and we reassured ourselves that the situation would improve tomorrow. Twenty-eight days passed while we slept in the open. The information we received from the bus drivers transporting the displaced from Sudan to Egypt convinced us that there would be no immediate relief. We knew that if we entered Khartoum alive, we would leave in shrouds,” Saqr told IPS.

“The merchant to whom we were transferring the goods asked us to wait and not return (home), particularly because he could not pay the customs duties due to the banks’ closure.”

Muhammad Saqr at the border of Sudan and Egypt.

Eventually, they returned with the goods to Cairo, Saqr said.

Mahmoud Asaad, a driver, was stuck on the Sudanese side of the border. Due to customs papers and permits, the livestock he was transporting had already been stuck in the customs barn in Wadi Halfa, Sudan, for thirty days. Then when the conflict broke out, the cows were trapped for another thirty days.

“We used to transport shipments of animals from Sudan to Egypt regularly,” Asaad explains. The average daily transport of animals to Egypt was roughly 60 trucks laden with cows and camels. This trade has stopped, and many Sudanese importers have fled to Egypt while waiting for the conflict to end.

“Sudan is regarded as a gateway for Egyptian exports to enter the markets of the Nile Basin countries and East Africa, and the continuation of war and insecurity will reduce the volume of trade exchange between the two countries, negatively impacting the Egyptian economy, which is currently experiencing some crises,” Matta Bishai, head of the Internal Trade and Supply Committee of the Importer’s Division of the General Federation of Chambers of Commerce, told IPS.

According to Bishai, commodity prices have risen significantly in recent months as the Egyptian pound has fallen against the US dollar. He also stated that the current situation in Sudan would result in additional price increases in the coming months, particularly for commodities imported from Sudan, such as meat.

Bishai explained that while Egypt had an ample domestic meat supply, it was nevertheless reliant on imports. Importing it from other countries such as Colombia, Brazil, and Chad would take longer and be more expensive than importing it from Sudan, as land transport is more convenient and cheaper than transporting the goods by sea.

According to Bishai, Sudan is a major supplier of livestock and live meat to Egypt, supplying about 10 percent of Egypt’s requirements. Higher meat prices will put additional pressure on Egypt’s inflation rates.

“Rising commodity prices, combined with the current situation in Sudan, are expected to result in higher inflation rates in Egypt in the coming months,” said Bishai.

According to data from the General Authority for Export and Import Control on trade exchange between Egypt and the African continent during the first quarter of this year, Sudan ranked second among the top five markets receiving Egyptian exports, valued at USD 226 million.

According to Ahmed Samir, the Egyptian Minister of Trade and Industry, the volume of trade exchange between Egypt and African markets amounted to about USD 2,12 billion in the first quarter of this year, with the value of Egyptian commodity exports to the continent totaling USD 1,61 billion and Egyptian imports from the continent totaling UD 506 million.

Mohamed Al-Kilani, an economics professor and member of the Egyptian Society of Political Economy, said: “The negative consequences will be felt in the trade exchange, which has recently increased and reached USD2 billion. Egypt has attempted to expedite the import process from Sudan by expanding the road network and building a railway.”

Credit rating agency Moody’s warned that should the conflict in Sudan continue for an extended period, it would have an adverse credit impact on neighboring countries and impact multilateral development banks. Moody’s added that if the clashes in Sudan turn into a long civil war, destroying infrastructure and worsening social conditions, there will be long-term economic consequences and a decline in the quality of Sudan’s multilateral banks’ assets, as well as an increase in non-performing loans and liquidity.

As the conflict entered its sixth week, attempts at a ceasefire have failed – with both sides accusing each other of violating agreements.

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Yellowfin tuna diving.

By Grantly Galland
WASHINGTON DC, May 23 2023 (IPS)

Global fisheries are worth more than US$140 billion each year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. But this hefty sum does not capture the true value of fish to ocean health, and to the food security and cultures of communities around the world.

Unfortunately, many important populations were allowed to be overfished for decades by the same regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) charged with their conservation and sustainable use, and in some regions, this continues.

At the same time, the demand for fish continues to grow— from consumers of high-end bluefin tuna sushi to coastal communities who depend on seafood as their primary source of protein. So, RFMOs and governments must do more to ensure sustainable fishing and long-term ocean health.

More than 20 years ago, the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA) entered into force as the only global, binding instrument holding governments accountable for managing the shared fish stocks of the high seas.

Under the agreement, fish should be managed sustainably and consistent with the best available science. Governments that are party to this treaty—and to RFMOs—are supposed to follow its management obligations, and work towards greater sustainability of the transboundary species, including tunas and sharks, vital to the ocean and economies.

Five of those RFMOs focus specifically on tuna management, one each in the Atlantic, eastern Pacific, western and central Pacific, Indian, and Southern oceans. They operate autonomously and, although there is some overlap among their constituent members, each sets its own rules for tuna fishing in its waters.

This makes UNFSA critical to successful management of tuna fisheries. And because the tuna RFMOs manage some of the world’s most iconic species, they often set the tone for how other similar bodies operate.

All of this is pertinent now because UNFSA member governments are meeting in New York May 22-26 to evaluate whether RFMOs are performing consistent with their commitments. A similar review was conducted in 2016, and although management has improved over time, some areas require more work, especially when it comes to ending overfishing and considering the health and biodiversity of the entire ecosystem.

Since 2016, the share of highly migratory stocks that are overfished increased from 36% to 40%, making it all the more urgent for governments to act quickly.

UNFSA calls on RFMOs to be precautionary in how they regulate fishing, although that guidance is not always followed. There are several examples of extensive overfishing of target species, such as bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean; and mako, oceanic whitetip sharks and other species that are caught unintentionally.

Although the RFMOs that manage these fisheries have stopped the overfishing in some cases, in others they have not. But there are signs of progress. Over the past decade, a new precautionary management approach known as harvest strategies has gained traction among RFMOs.

These strategies (or management procedures) are science-based rules that automatically adjust catch limits based on several factors, such as population status. If widely implemented, they should end overfishing and prevent it from threatening these populations again.

Harvest strategies have already been successful, particularly in the Southern and Atlantic oceans, where they’ve been adopted for several species, including bluefin tuna and cod, fish stocks for which precautionary management has historically been difficult, or even controversial.

While this progress is important, UNFSA members are still falling short in an area they have agreed is critically important: taking an ecosystem approach to management. For generations, fisheries managers focused on individual fish stocks—adopting catch limits and other measures with little thought to the broader ecosystem.

Science shows that maintaining ecosystem health is critical to sustainable fishing. Yet, to date, RFMOs largely have not consistently assessed or addressed the wider impacts of fishing on ecosystems, including predator-prey relationships, habitat for target and non-target species, and other factors.

Instead, most action has been limited to reducing the impact of bycatch on individual shark species. Better data collection and sharing, and more monitoring of fishing activities, could help integrate stronger ecosystem considerations into management. The more RFMOs can build the whole ecosystem into their decisions, the better it will be for their fisheries.

For example, in the western and central Pacific, the $10 billion skipjack tuna fishery is an enormous economic driver for island nations that are threatened by climate change. But the harvest strategy in place there is nonbinding and unimplemented.

For a fishery facing changes in stock distribution due to warming waters, as well as increased market pressures, delayed action on implementation—and a lack of an ecosystem approach—may make matters worse.

At this week’s UNFSA meeting, RFMOs should be commended for the work they have done in the seven years since the last review. Good progress has been made, including improvements to compliance efforts, and monitoring and enforcement to fight illegal fishing.

But many of the legal obligations of the treaty remain unfulfilled. As such, sustainability is still out of reach for some critically important stocks, and almost no ecosystem-based protections are in place.

As governments convene this week, they should look to the lessons of the past—when poor decision-making threatened the future of some fisheries—and seize the opportunity to modernize management and adhere to the promises they have made on conservation. The biodiversity in the world’s ocean shouldn’t have to wait another seven years for action.

Grantly Galland leads policy work related to regional fisheries management organizations for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ international fisheries project.

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Adel Mansour takes his WFP food basket home on a cart in Abyan, Yemen. Credit: WFP/Ahmed Altaf

By Max Lawson
LONDON, May 22 2023 (IPS)

“G7 countries have failed the Global South here in Hiroshima. They failed to cancel debts, and they failed to find what is really required to end the huge increase in hunger worldwide. They can find untold billions to fight the war but can’t even provide half of what is needed by the UN for the most critical humanitarian crises.”

Hunger and debt

“If the G7 really want closer ties to the developing countries and greater backing for the war in Ukraine, then asking Global South leaders to fly across the world for a couple of hours is not going to cut it. They need to cancel debts and do what it takes to end hunger.

“Countries of the Global South are being crippled by a food and debt crisis of huge proportions. Hunger has increased faster than it has in decades, and all over the world. In East Africa two people are dying every minute from hunger. Countries are paying over $200 million a day to the G7 and their bankers, money they could spend feeding their people instead.

“The money they say they will provide for the world’s rapidly growing humanitarian crises is not even half of what the UN is asking for, and it is not clear what, if anything, is new or additional —and the G7 have a terrible track record on double counting and inflating figures each year.

“These food and debt crises are direct knock-on effects of the Ukraine war. If the G7 want support from the Global South, they need to be seen to take action on these issues —they must cancel debts and force private banks to participate in debt cancellation, and they must massively increase funding to end hunger and famine across the world.”

Adak Nyuol Bol stands outside her farm which has been submerged by floodwaters. South Sudan is on the frontlines of the climate crisis and currently experiencing a fourth consecutive year of flooding. Credit: World Food Programme (WFP)

Climate Change

“The G7 owes the Global South $8.7 trillion for the devastating losses and damages their excessive carbon emissions have caused. In the G7 Hiroshima communique they said they recognized that there is a new Loss and Damage fund, but they failed to commit a single cent.

“It is good they continue to recognize the need to meet 1.5 degrees, and stay committed to this despite the energy crisis driven by the war in Ukraine, but they try to blame everyone else —they are far off track themselves to contribute their fair share of what is needed to meet this target and they should have been on track years ago.

“They confirm their commitment to end public funding for fossil energy, they maintain their loophole on new fossil gas, using the war as an excuse. This means they have continued to wriggle out of their commitment to not publicly fund new fossil fuels, making a mockery of their fine statements. The G7 must stop using fossil fuels immediately —the planet is on fire.”

Health

“The G7 had hundreds of fine words on preparing for the next pandemic, but yet failed to make the critical commitment —that never again would the G7 let Big Pharma profiteering and intellectual property rights lead to millions dying unnecessarily, unable to access vaccines. Given a 27 percent chance of a new pandemic within in a decade, this omission is chilling.”

More on debt, food and hunger

“Over half of all debt payments from the Global South are going to the G7 or to private banks based in G7 countries, notably New York and London. Over $230 million dollars a day is flowing into the G7.

Countries are bankrupt, spending far more on debt than on healthcare or food for their people. Debt payments have increased sharply as countries in the Global South borrow in dollars, so rising interest rates are supersizing the payments they must make.

“The G7 saying they support clauses to temporarily suspend debt payments for those countries hit by climate disasters is a positive step and a tribute to Barbados and Prime Minister Mia Mottley for fighting for this. They need to go further and cancel debts for all the nations that need it, a growing number daily.

Money is flooding from the Global South into the G7 economies —that is the wrong direction.”

Max Lawson is Oxfam International’s Head of Inequality Policy.

Footnote: The UNOCHA’s current total requirement for humanitarian crises is nearly $56 billion. The G7 communique says they will commit to providing over $21 billion to address the worsening humanitarian crises this year (paragraph 16).

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Some climate scientists said it was unfortunate that western Rwanda experienced flooding despite past investments. For example, some experts were previously convinced that Sebeya, one of the rivers originating in the mountains of western Rwanda, was no longer a threat to the community. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, May 19 2023 (IPS)

Following severe flooding and landslides that hit major parts of Rwanda earlier this month, experts are convinced that investing in the mapping of erosion risk areas could go a long way to keeping the number of casualties down.

Many villagers living along major rivers in Western Rwanda have been among the victims of river erosion and flooding every year.

Felicita Mukamusoni, a river erosion survivor in Nyundo, a mountainous village from Western Rwanda, told IPS that “parts of this village have been eroded to such an extent that we cannot even imagine.”

“I reared cows and goats. My beautiful house was destroyed. The river has taken everything,” she said.

Latest Government estimates indicate that at least 135 people died, and one is still missing following recent flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rains that hit western, northern and southern provinces earlier this month.

In a recent assessment, experts found that land in high-risk areas is mainly used for agriculture, and 61 percent was for seasonal crops. It said that seasonal agriculture exposes soil to splash erosion and further detachment as land is not permanently covered.

The 2022 report on the State of Soil Erosion Control in Rwanda indicates that the erosion control techniques across high-risk areas in Rwanda are still very low.

Erosion control mapping shows that of the 30 districts of Rwanda, land under high erosion risk is about 1,080,168 hectares (45 percent of the total provinces land, which is estimated to be 2,385,830 hectares) of which 71,941 hectares (7 percent of the total risk areas) are at extremely high risk.

According to the same report, at least 190,433 hectares of land are considered very high risk (18 percent), 300,805 hectares are at high risk (28 percent), and 516,999 hectares (48 percent) are at moderate risk.

Dr Charles Karangwa, a climate expert based in Kigali, told IPS that It is unfortunate that fresh disasters happened again despite a lot of investment in the past.

“Rwanda needs to explore other complementary solutions such as water management infrastructure, water harvesting, and where possible, relocate those living in highly risky areas to allow nature to regenerate will help to stabilise the situation both in the long term and medium term,” he said.

Apart from being highly populated, Karangwa pointed out that there is quite a link with geographical vulnerability because of soil erosion risk, which is worsened by high population, and this increased pressure on land.

Flood Management and Water Storage Development Division Manager at Rwanda’s Water Resources Board (RWB), Davis Bugingo, told IPS that among solutions to cope with recurrent disasters in Western Rwanda is the establishment of flood control infrastructures to regulate water flow and reduce flooding risks.

These include the construction of the neighbouring Sebeya retention dam, and Gisunyu gully rehabilitation works expected to significantly contribute to reducing flood impacts in the region.

While accurate and up-to-date data on river flow, topography, and flood vulnerability remains crucial for effective flood management, Bugingo observed that limited data availability and quality could pose challenges in accurate flood forecasting, risk assessment, and planning.

Apart from land use, which contributed to increased flood risks, experts observed that constructions in flood-prone areas, encroachments on riverbanks, and inadequate zoning regulations had exacerbated the impact of floods and hindered effective flood management efforts in western Rwanda.

Most recently, RWB has developed a dedicated application to collect more information to inform future analysis, relocation of people living in risky areas, and adjusting tools used to design flood control infrastructure.

The above tool provides information on flood exposure and areas at risk that can be visualised in 3D and shared the information with the public or other organisations. However, experts are convinced that despite these innovative solutions, limited financial resources may hinder the implementation of these large-scale infrastructure projects, such as dams, flood control structures, gully reclamation and drainage systems.

Rwanda is one of Africa’s most densely populated countries, with large concentrations in the central regions and along the shore of Lake Kivu in the west. This East African country’s total area is 26,338 km2, with a population of 13,246,394.

Bugingo points out that inadequate land use still contributes to increased flood risks.

“Constructions in flood-prone areas, encroachments on riverbanks, and inadequate zoning regulations continue to exacerbate the impact of floods and hinder effective flood management efforts,” he said.

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Credit: Martín Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 19 2023 (IPS)

On 7 May, Chileans went to the polls to choose a Constitutional Council that will produce a new constitution to replace the one bequeathed by the Pinochet dictatorship – and handed control to a far-right party that never wanted a constitution-making process in the first place.

This is the second attempt at constitutional change in two years. The first process was the most open and inclusive in Chile’s history. The resulting constitutional text, ambitious and progressive, was widely rejected in a referendum. It’s now far from certain that this latest, far less inclusive process will result in a new constitution that is accepted and adopted – and there’s a possibility that any new constitution could be worse than the one it replaces.

A long and winding road

Chile’s constitution-making process was born out of mass protests that erupted in October 2019, under the neoliberal administration of Sebastián Piñera. Protests only subsided when the leaders of major parties agreed to hold a referendum to ask people whether they wanted a new constitution and, if so, how it should be drafted.

In the vote in October 2020, almost 80 per cent of voters backed constitutional change, with a new constitution to be drafted by a directly elected Constitutional Assembly. In May 2021, the Constitutional Assembly was elected, with an innovative mechanism to ensure gender parity and reserved seats for Indigenous peoples. Amid great expectations, the plural and diverse body started a one-year journey towards a new constitution.

Pushed by the same winds of change, in December 2021 Chile elected its youngest and most unconventional president ever: former student protester Gabriel Boric. But things soon turned sideways, and support for the Constitutional Assembly – often criticised as made up of unskilled amateurs – declined steadily along with support for the new government.

In September 2022, a referendum resulted in an overwhelming rejection of the draft constitution. Although very progressive in its focus on gender and Indigenous rights, a common criticism was that the proposed constitution failed to offer much to advance basic social rights in a country characterised by heavy economic inequality and poor public services. Disinformation was also rife during the campaign.

The second attempt kicked off in January 2023, with Congress passing a law laying out a new process with a much more traditional format. Instead of the large number of independent representatives involved before, this handed control back to political parties. The timeframe was shortened, the assembly made smaller and the previous blank slate replaced by a series of agreed principles. The task of producing the first draft is in the hands of a Commission of Experts, with a technical body, the Technical Admissibility Committee, guarding compliance with a series of agreed principles. One of the few things that remained from the previous process was gender parity.

Starting in March, the Commission of Experts was given three months to produce a new draft, to be submitted to the Constitutional Council for debate and approval. A referendum will be held in December to either ratify or reject the new constitution.

Rise of the far right

Compared with the 2021 election for the Constitutional Convention, the election for the Constitutional Council was characterised by low levels of public engagement. A survey published in mid-April found that 48 per cent of respondents had little or no interest in the election and 62 per cent had little or no confidence in the constitution-making process. Polls also showed increasing dissatisfaction with the government: in late 2022, approval rates had plummeted to 27 per cent. This made an anti-government protest vote likely.

While the 2021 campaign focused on inequality, this time the focus was on rising crime, economic hardship and irregular migration, pivoting to security issues. The party that most strongly reflected and instrumentalised these concerns came out the winner.

The far-right Republican Party, led by defeated presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, received 35.4 per cent of the votes, winning 23 seats on the 50-member council. The government-backed Unity for Chile came second, with 28.6 per cent and 16 seats. The traditional right-wing alliance Safe Chile took 21 per cent of the vote and got 11 seats. No seats were won by the populist People’s Party and the centrist All for Chile alliance, led by the Christian Democratic Party. The political centre has vanished, with polarisation on the rise.

 
What to expect

The Expert Commission will deliver its draft proposal on 6 June and the Constitutional Council will then have five months to work on it, approving decisions with the votes of three-fifths of its members – meaning 31 votes will be needed to make decisions, and 21 will be enough to block them. This gives veto power to the Republican Party – and if it manages to work with the traditional right wing, they will be able to define the new constitution’s contents.

 
The chances of the new draft constitution being better than the old one are slim. In the best-case scenario, only cosmetic changes will be introduced. In the worst, an even more regressive text will result.

People will have the final say on 17 December. If they ratify the proposed text, Chile will adopt a constitution that is, at best, not much different from the existing one. If they reject it, Chileans will be stuck with the old constitution that many rose up against in 2019. Either way, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand the recognition of rights will have been lost, and it will fall on civil society to keep pushing for the recognition and protection of human rights.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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“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.”

Freshly slaughtered bush meat is being consumed even though it may have health risks.

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, May 18 2023 (IPS)

Meat from wild animals is relished across Africa and widely traded, but scientists are warning that eating bush meat is a potential health risk, especially in the wake of pandemics like COVID-19.

A study at the border settlements of Kenya and Tanzania has found that while people have been aware of the risks associated with eating bushmeat, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak, they don’t worry about hunting and eating wild animals that could transmit diseases.

On the contrary, the demand for bushmeat has increased, the 2023 study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and TRAFFIC and other partners found.

No Beef With Bushmeat

Bushmeat is a collective term for meat derived from wild mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds that live in the jungle, savannah, or wetlands. Bushmeat comes from a variety of wild animals, including monkeys, pangolins, snakes, porcupines, antelopes, elephants, and giraffes.

The study — the first ever to look at disease risk perceptions of wild meat activities in rural communities in East Africa — was conducted in December 2021, and 299 people were interviewed in communities on the Kenya-Tanzania border.

Key findings of the study revealed that levels of education played a critical role in understanding zoonotic disease transmission; a majority of the people interviewed who had higher levels of education were more aware of the risks of disease transmission.

Nearly 80 percent of the respondents had learned about COVID-19 from mass media sources, but this did not impact their levels of wild meat consumption. Some even reported increased consumption. Hoofed animals, such as antelopes, gazelles and deer, were found to be the most consumed species, followed by birds, rodents and shrews.

Scientist and lead study author at ILRI, Ekta Patel, commented that it was important to commence the study in Kenya given the limited information on both rural and urban demand for wild meat and the potential risks associated with zoonotic diseases. The Kenya-Tanzania border is a known hotspot for wild meat consumption.

Zoonotic diseases are those that originate in animals — be they tamed or wild — that then mutate and ‘spill over’ into human populations.  Two-thirds of infectious diseases, from HIV/AIDS, which are believed to have originated in chimpanzee populations in early 20th century Central Africa, to COVID-19, believed to have originated from an as-yet undetermined animal in 2019, come from animals.

Confirming that there is no COVID health risk of consuming wild meat, Patel said that given the COVID-19 pandemic, which is thought to originate from wildlife, the study was investigating if the general public was aware of health risks associated with frequent interactions with wildlife.

Patel said some of these risks of eating bush meat include coming into contact with zoonotic pathogens, which can make the handler unwell. Other concerns are linked to not cooking meats well, resulting in foodborne illnesses.

“The big worry is in zoonotic disease risks associated with wild meat activities such as hunting, skinning and consuming,” Patel told IPS.

Africa is facing a growing risk of outbreaks caused by zoonotic pathogens, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The global health body reported a 63% increase in zoonotic outbreaks in the region from 2012-2022 compared to 2001-2011.

Control or Ban?

Scientists estimate that 70 percent of emerging infectious diseases originated from animals, and 60 percent of the existing infectious disease are zoonotic. For example, Ebola outbreaks in the Congo basin have been traced back to hunters exposed to ape carcasses.  She called for governments to implement policies to control zoonotic disease transmission risks through community engagements to change behaviour.

The study, while representative of the small sample, offered valuable insights about bushmeat consumption trends happening across Africa, where bushmeat is many times on the menu, says Martin Andimile, co-author of the study and Research Manager at the global wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.

Pointing to the need to improve hygiene and standards of informal markets while at the same time providing communities with alternative protein sources, Andimile believes bushmeat consumption should be paused, citing the difficulty of regulating this source of meat.

“I think people in Africa have other options to get meat besides wild meat although some advocate that they get meat from the wild because of cultural reasons and that it is a delicacy, government systems cannot control the legal exploitation of wildlife,” Andimile told IPS. “I think bushmeat consumption should be stopped until there is a proper way of regulating it.”

Andimile said while some regulation could be enforced where the population of species are healthy enough for commercial culling to give communities bushmeat, growing human populations will impact the offtake of species from the wild.

“Bushmeat consumption is impacting species as some households consume bushmeat on a daily basis, and it is broadly obtained illegally (and is) cheaper than domestic meat,” Andimile told IPS.

Maybe regulation could keep bushmeat on the menu for communities instead of banning it, independent experts argue.

“Wild meat harvesting and consumption should not be banned as this goes against the role of sustainable use in area-based conservation as made clear by recent CBD COP15 decisions,” Francis Vorhies, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group (SULi), says.  He called for an enabling environment for sustainable and inclusive wild meat harvesting, which means better regulations and voluntary standards such as developing a FairWild-like standard for harvesting wild animals.

Another expert, Rogers Lubilo, also a member of the IUCN SULi, concurs that bushmeat consumption should not be banned because it is a major source of protein. He argued that local communities who live side-by-side with wildlife would like to access bushmeat like they used to before, but the current policies across many sites incriminate bushmeat when acquired from illegal sources.

“There is a need to invest in opportunities that will encourage access to legal bushmeat,” Lubilo said. “The trade is big and lucrative, and if harnessed properly with good policies and the ability to monitor, would be part of the broadened wildlife economy.”

Eating Species to Extinction

There is some evidence that the consumption of bushmeat is impacting the species’ population, raising fears that without corrective action, people will eat wildlife to extinction.

The IUCN has warned that bushmeat consumption and trade have driven many species closer to extinction, calling for its regulation. Hunting and trapping are listed as a threat to 4,658 terrestrial species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, including 1,194 species in Africa.

At least 5 million tons of bushmeat are trafficked every year in Central Africa. Africa is expected to lose 50 percent of its bird and mammal species by the turn of the century, says  Eric Nana, a member of the IUCN SULi.

Nana notes that bushmeat trafficking from Africa into European countries like France, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK remains a largely understudied channel. He said estimates show that more than 1,000 tons are trafficked yearly.

“Much of the reptile-based bushmeat trade in Africa is technically illegal, poorly regulated, and little understood,” Patrick Aust, also a member of IUCN SULi, said, adding that reptiles form an important part of the bushmeat trade in Africa and further research is urgently needed to better understand conservation impacts and socioeconomic importance.

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the Opening Ceremony at the 36th ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. February 2023. On the economic front, Guterres called for more financial support for a continent that is, being hit by a dysfunctional and unfair financial system, inequalities in the availability of resources for the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The financial system, declared the UN chief, routinely denies African countries debt relief, and charges extortionate interest rates, starving them of investment in vital areas, such as health, education, and social protection. Credit: UNECA/Daniel Getachew

By Daniel Bradlow
PRETORIA, South Africa, May 18 2023 (IPS)

Zambia defaulted on its debt in November 2021 but has not yet reached an agreement with its creditors. Its president recently warned that this situation is hurting its citizens and undermining its democracy because “you cannot eat democracy”.

Given their adverse economic, social, and political impacts, it should be expected that human rights considerations would play an important role in sovereign debt restructurings. Unfortunately, this is not the case, even though all negotiating parties have human rights responsibilities or obligations.

It is unclear why these actors pay so little attention to human rights in the sovereign debt restructuring context. One possibility is that they are not sure how to incorporate human rights into their transactions.

This should not be surprising. It is difficult to understand the causal linkages between a sovereign debt crisis and the deteriorating human rights situation that follows. There can be multiple such linkages and the lines of causation can run in different directions.

Consequently, a human rights consistent debt restructuring will be fact and context specific and will require the parties to understand their role in both creating the situation and in mitigating or eliminating the adverse human rights impacts.

This requires the parties to have a common approach to analysing the debt crisis and its anticipated economic, financial, human rights, environmental, social and governance impacts. Thus, they could benefit from having a mutually acceptable set of principles that incorporates all these issues.

In 2021, I received a grant from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa to explore the feasibility of my proposal to establish a DOVE (Debts of Vulnerable Economies) Fund. This fund would buy the debts of sovereigns in distress and state that it would only support sovereign debt restructurings that were consistent with widely accepted international norms and standards.

My work on this project revealed shortcomings with all the existing international standards and led me to develop the DOVE Fund Principles. The principles are based on 20 existing international norms and standards developed by states, international organisations, industry associations and civil society organisations. They can provide a common framework for the negotiations between states and their creditors. They are now set out and explained.

The DOVE Fund Principles

Principle 1: Guiding Norms: Sovereign debt restructurings should be guided by the following 6 norms: Credibility, Responsibility, Good Faith, Optimality, Inclusiveness, and Effectiveness.

• Credibility: The Negotiating Parties and the Affected Parties are confident that the restructuring process can produce an Optimal Outcome. The “Negotiating Parties” are the sovereign debtor, its creditors and their advisors. The “Affected Parties” are the residents of the debtor country and those individuals whose savings either directly or indirectly finance the debt being restructured.
• Responsibility: The Negotiating Parties seek an agreement that respects their respective economic, financial, environmental, social, human rights and governance obligations and/or responsibilities.
• Good Faith: The Negotiating Parties intend to reach an agreement that takes account of all their rights, obligations and responsibilities.
• Optimality: The Negotiating Parties seek an “Optimal Outcome”, that addresses the circumstances in which the transaction is being negotiated, the parties’ respective rights, obligations and responsibilities, and offers them the best possible mix of economic, financial, environmental, social, human rights and governance costs and benefits.
• Inclusiveness: All creditors can participate in the restructuring process and the Affected Parties are able to make informed decisions about how it will impact them.
• Effectiveness: The Negotiating Parties should seek an Optimal Outcome in a timely and efficient manner.

Principle 2: Transparency: The Negotiating Parties and the Affected Parties should have access to the information that they need to make informed decisions regarding the debt restructuring.

The creditors have access to sufficient information that they can make informed decisions about the scope of the sovereign’s debt problems, the options for their resolution and their potential economic, financial, environmental, social, human rights and governance impacts.

The Affected Parties should also have access to sufficient information, subject to appropriate safeguards, that they can make informed decisions about how the restructuring may affect their rights and interests.

The creditors should inform the debtor and the Affected Parties about their environmental, social, and human rights obligations and responsibilities.

Principle 3: Due Diligence: The sovereign debtor and its creditors should each undertake appropriate due diligence before concluding a sovereign debt restructuring process.

The Negotiating Parties should utilize a debt sustainability analysis which credibly determines the sovereign’s debt restructuring needs and their impacts.

Principle 4: Optimal Outcome Assessment: At the earliest feasible moment, the Negotiating Parties should publicly disclose why they expect their restructuring agreement to result in an Optimal Outcome.

An Optimal Outcome requires the Negotiating Parties to assess the expected impacts of their proposed agreement on the economic, financial, environmental, social, human rights and governance condition of the sovereign borrower and the Affected Parties.

Principle 5: Monitoring: The restructuring process should incorporate credible mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of the restructuring agreement.

The Negotiating Parties should audit the financial aspects of the agreement and monitor its economic, social, environmental, human rights and governance impacts. This information should be published periodically.

Principle 6: Inter-Creditor Comparability: The restructuring process should ensure that all creditors make a comparable contribution to the restructuring of the sovereign’s debt.

The process should give creditors the confidence that all other creditors are making comparable contributions to an Optimal Outcome.

Principle 7: Fair Burden Sharing: An Optimal Outcome should share the burden of the restructuring fairly between Negotiating Parties and should not impose undue costs on any of the Affected Parties.

Both the debtor and the creditor bear some responsibility for causing debt crises and should absorb some of the restructuring costs. Moreover, they should seek to limit how much of the restructuring costs the Affected Parties will have to bear, considering their relative wealth and ability to absorb losses.

Principle 8: Maintaining Market Access: The restructuring agreement, to the greatest extent possible, should be designed to facilitate future market access for the borrower.

It is an unfortunate reality that debtor countries must seek financing from international financial markets. Thus, the Optimal Outcome should help the debtor regain access to financial markets as quickly as possible.

As the Zambian case demonstrates, the current arrangements for restructuring sovereign debt are sub-optimal. The DOVE Fund Principles seek to overcome this problem by offering both Negotiating and Affected Parties a common conceptual framework that facilitates a fair resolution of the crisis incorporating all its social, environmental, human rights, economic, financial and governance impacts.

They therefore can promote an Optimal Outcome.

Daniel D. Bradlow, Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa
SSRN Author Home Page
www.chr.up.ac.za

For further information on this ongoing project, contact: danny.bradlow@up.ac.za
Business and Human Rights Journal articles for further reading:
1) “Social Bonds for Sustainable Development: A Human Rights Perspective on Impact Investing” Stephen Kim PARK Journal: Business and Human Rights Journal / Volume 3 / Issue 2 / July 2018 pp. 233-255
2) The Record of International Financial Institutions on Business and Human Rights
Jessica EVANS Journal: Business and Human Rights Journal / Volume 1 / Issue 2 / July 2016

This article was first published on the RightsasUsual blog.

IPS UN Bureau

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Carrying the Mayan flag, members of the Colibrí Collective lead a march against the Mayan Train in the city of Valladolid, in the southern Mexican state of Yucatán, in May 2023. The construction of the Mexican government’s most important megaproject has drawn criticism from affected communities due to its environmental, social and cultural effects. CREDIT: Arturo Contreras / Pie de Página

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 18 2023 (IPS)

Mexico’s development banks have violated their own socio-environmental standards while granting loans for the construction of the Mayan Train (TM), the flagship project of the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The National Bank of Public Works and Services (Banobras), the Nacional Financiera (Nafin) bank and the Foreign Commerce Bank (Bancomext) allocated at least 564 million dollars to the railway line since 2021, according to the yearbooks and statements of the three state entities.

Banobras, which finances infrastructure and public services, granted 480.83 million dollars for the project in the Yucatan peninsula; Nafin, which extends loans and guarantees to public and private works, allocated 81 million; and Bancomext, which provides financing to export and import companies and other strategic sectors, granted 2.91 million.

Bancomext and Banobras did not evaluate the credit, while Nafin classified the information as “confidential”, even though it involves public funds, according to each institution’s response to IPS’ requests for public information.“(The banks) are committing internal violations of their own provisions in the granting of credits, in order to give loans to projects that are not environmentally viable and that do not respect the local communities.” -- Gustavo Alanís

The three institutions have environmental and social risk management systems that include lists of activities that are to be excluded from financing.

In the case of Bancomext and Nafin, these rules are mandatory during the credit granting process, while Banobras explains that its objective is to verify that the loans evaluated are compatible with the bank’s environmental and social commitments.

Bancomext prohibits 19 types of financing; Banobras, 17; and Nafin, 18. The three institutions all veto “production or activities that place in jeopardy lands that are owned by indigenous peoples or have been claimed by adjudication, without the full documented consent of said peoples.”

Likewise, Banobras and Nafin must not support “projects that imply violations of national and international conventions and treaties regarding the indigenous population and native peoples.”

The three entities already had information to evaluate the railway project, since the Superior Audit of the Federation, the state comptroller, had already pointed to shortcomings in the indigenous consultation process and in the assessment of social risks, in the 2019 Report on the Results of the Superior Audit of the Public Account.

The total cost of the TM has already exceeded 15 billion dollars, 70 percent above what was initially planned, mostly borne by the government’s National Fund for Tourism Promotion (Fonatur), responsible for the megaproject.

Mexico’s three state development banks are partially financing the Mayan Train, for which they have failed to comply with the due process of the evaluation of socio-environmental risks that are part of their regulations. The photo shows the clearing of part of the route of one of the branches of the railway line in the municipality of Playa del Carmen, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, in March 2022. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Violations

Angel Sulub, a Mayan indigenous member of the U kúuchil k Ch’i’ibalo’on Community Center, criticized the policies applied and the disrespect for the safeguards regulated by the state financial entities themselves.

“This shows us, once again, that there is a violation of our right to life, and there has not been at any moment in the process, from planning to execution, a will to respect the rights of the peoples,” he told IPS from the Felipe Carrillo Port, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, where one of the TM stations will be located.

Sulub, who is also a poet, described the consultation as a “sham”. “Respect for the consultation was violated in all cases, an adequate consultation was not carried out. They did not comply with the minimum information, it was not a prior consultation, nor was it culturally appropriate,” he argued.

In December 2019, the government National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) organized a consultation with indigenous groups in the region that the Mexican office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights questioned for non-compliance with international standards.

Official data indicates that some 17 million native people live in Mexico, belonging to 69 different peoples and representing 13 percent of the total population.

INPI initially anticipated a population of 1.5 million indigenous people to consult about the TM in 1,331 communities. But that total was reduced to 1.32 million, with no official explanation for the 12 percent decrease. The population in the project’s area of ​​influence totaled 3.57 million in 2019, according to the Superior Audit report.

The conduct of the three financial institutions reflects the level of compliance with the president’s plans, as has happened with other state agencies that have refused to create hurdles for the railway, work on which began in 2020 and which will have seven routes.

The Mayan Train, run by Fonatur and backed by public funds, will stretch some 1,500 kilometers through 78 municipalities in the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, within the peninsula, as well as the neighboring states of Chiapas and Tabasco. It will have 21 stations and 14 other stops.

The Yucatan peninsula is home to the second largest jungle in Latin America, after the Amazon, and is notable for its fragile biodiversity. In this territory, furthermore, to speak of the population is to speak of the Mayans, because in a high number of municipalities they are a majority and 44 percent of the total are Mayan-speaking.

The government promotes the megaproject, whose locomotives will transport thousands of tourists and cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork – key economic activities in the area – as an engine for socioeconomic development in the southeast of the country.

It argues that it will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and energize the regional economy, which has sparked polarizing controversies between its supporters and critics.

The railway faces complaints of deforestation, pollution, environmental damage and human rights violations, but these have not managed to stop the project from going forward.

In November 2022, López Obrador, who wants at all costs for the locomotives to start running in December of this year, classified the TM as a “priority project” through a presidential decree, which facilitates the issuing of environmental permits.

Gustavo Alanís, executive director of the non-governmental Mexican Center for Environmental Law, questioned the way the development banks are proceeding.

“They are committing internal violations of their own provisions in the granting of credits, in order to give loans to projects that are not environmentally viable and that do not respect the local communities. They are not complying with their own internal guidelines and requirements regarding the environment and indigenous peoples in the granting of credits,” he told IPS.

Groups opposed to the Mayan Train protest along a segment of the megaproject in the municipality of Carrillo Puerto, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, on May 3. CREDIT: Arturo Contreras / Pie de Página

Trendy guidelines

In the last decade, socio-environmental standards have gained relevance for the promotion of sustainable works and their consequent financing that respects ecosystems and the rights of affected communities, such as those located along the railway.

Although the three Mexican development banks have such guidelines, they have not joined the largest global initiatives in this field.

None of them form part of the Equator Principles, a set of 10 criteria established in 2003 and adopted by 138 financial institutions from 38 countries, and which define their environmental, social and corporate governance.

Nor are they part of the Principles for Responsible Banking, of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative, announced in 2019 and which have already been adopted by 324 financial and insurance institutions from more than 50 nations.

These standards address the impact of projects; sustainable client and user practices; consultation and participation of stakeholders; governance and institutional culture; as well as transparency and corporate responsibility.

Of the three Mexican development banks, only Banobras has a mechanism for complaints, which has not received any about its loans, including the railway project.

In this regard, Sulub questioned the different ways to guarantee indigenous rights in this and other large infrastructure projects.

“The legal fight against the railway and other megaprojects has shown us in recent years that, as peoples, we do not have effective access to justice either, even though we have clearly demonstrated violations of our rights. Although it is a good thing that companies and banks have these guidelines and that they comply with them, we do not have effective mechanisms for enforcement,” he complained.

In Sulub’s words, this leads to a breaching of the power of indigenous people to decide on their own ways of life, since the government does not abide by judicial decisions, which in his view is further evidence of an exclusionary political system.

For his part, Alanís warned of the banks’ complicity in the damage reported and the consequent risk of legal liability if the alleged irregularities are not resolved.

“If not, they must pay the consequences and hold accountable those who do not follow internal policies. The international banks have inspection panels, to receive complaints when the bank does not follow its own policies,” he stated.

The US dollar's supremacy in the international financial system has long been beyond question. But countries like Brazil are attempting to break away.

By Monica Hirst and Juan Gabriel Tokatlian
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil / BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, May 17 2023 (IPS)

Half a century ago, the dominance of the United States dollar in the international finance and trade system was indisputable.

By 1977, the US dollar reached a peak of 85 per cent as the prevailing currency in foreign exchange reserves; in 2001, this position was still around 73 per cent. But today, it is at approximately 58 per cent.

The dominance of the dollar and the hegemonic position of the United States have for long been intertwined. And the recent global transformations are affecting American’s ability to sustain this: the gradual movement of the centre of gravity from the West to the East, the unravelling complexities of US domestic politics, the growing muscle of the international projection of China and an international assertiveness among the countries of the Global South have restrained the American dollar’s supremacy and status.

And yet, the currency still holds by far the largest share of global trade, foreign exchange transactions, SWIFT payments and debt issued outside the United States. In fact, Western financial agents, government officials and renowned experts tend to downplay the so-called de-dollarization arguing that a relatively debilitated dollar doesn’t necessarily mean its demise.

Notwithstanding controversial standpoints, it is undeniable that the world system faces more complex, diverse and plural challenges that involve currency competition and new inventive financial pathways.

Resistance against the US Dollar

The so-called de-dollarization in global finance has its landmarks. The launch of the Euro in 1999 was crucial since the European currency, by now, represents 20 per cent of the global foreign exchange reserves. By the dawn of the 21st century, an Asian Currency Unit came to life as well: it represented a salad bowl of 13 currencies from East Asian nations (ASEAN 10 plus Japan, China and South Korea).

Along with the successful spill overs of economic regionalisation, Western-led geopolitics also came to be a source of global financial novelties that affected the US dollar’s pre-eminence.

The growing recourse to a sanction regime against countries such as Iran, especially since 2006, and Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, encouraged alternative currency arrangements. As of today, Washington’s sanctions policy punishes 22 nations.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and the extension of sanctions hampering the use of the US dollar encouraged even more de-dollarized practices. In response to the decision to disconnect Russia from SWIFT, Moscow advanced bilateral fuel transactions with partial payment in Rubles.

Simultaneously, Russia and a group of African countries initiated talks to establish settlements in national currencies, discontinuing both the US dollar and the Euro. Meanwhile, China is trying to insulate itself from the West and is attempting to internationalise the Renminbi, even though it represents less than 3 per cent of the official reserves worldwide.

Moscow and Beijing are coming closer in terms of financial cooperation, France and Saudi Arabia agreed to use the Renminbi in certain oil and gas deals, while Bangladesh became the 19th country to commerce with India in Rupees.

Last but not least, a gold rush is also picking up. As Ruchir Sharma has recently observed, key buyers are now central banks, which are procuring ‘more tons of gold now than at any time since data begins in 1950 and currently account for a record 33 per cent of monthly global demand for gold […] and 9 of the top 10 are in the developing world.’

Besides, some African nations seem willing to trade in currencies backed by rare-earth metals. In the Global South, in fact, there is a growing perception that de-dollarization is a step towards a multipolar world in which new actors, interests and rules interplay. In that sense, it is becoming evident that a multi-currency trading regime is slowly emerging.

How Brazil ‘de-dollarizes’

De-dollarization has been included in Brazil’s foreign policy strategy. Since the inauguration of his third mandate, President Lula da Silva rapidly disclosed the intention of overcoming his discrepancies with Western rule-setting. An adjourned narrative that contests the Global North’s preponderance in the World Order has resurfaced.

Demands for inclusive reforms in global governance, the condemnation of geopolitical worldviews leading to securitised methods and military escalation, and the questioning of the Dollar’s dominance in international trade and finance have arisen. In the present context of tensions and rivalries between the Great Powers, Brazil strives to speak of an autonomous voice of the Global South.

And thus, Lula has tried to promote peace in Ukraine on the basis of negotiations that recognise the voices of all parties involved in the war.

Lula’s de-dollarization standing has been stimulated by Brazil’s association with the BRICS, as well as its expanded bilateralism with China. The continuously record-breaking Brazilian-Chinese trade relationship reached a peak of $150,5 bn in 2022 (while the Russia-China trade relationship for the same year was $190,2 bn).

As bilateral ties are expanding further, during Lula’s recent state visit to China, novel settlements are being negotiated, aiming to put trade and financial operations on track directly with Chinese Renminbi and Brazilian Reais.

Concurrently, the Brazilian government has decided to use the New Development Bank (NDB), the BRICS’ multilateral bank, as a platform to defend a de-dollarized trade system among its members and with the countries that benefit from NDB credit lines.

By positioning former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as the head of the bank, Lula has upgraded the Brazilian political commitment to this frontline. Most certainly, this will become a reiterated pledge in Brazil’s performance in global governance arenas, with mention to its 2024 presidency of the G20.

It is remarkable how the Lula government has sought a prudent strategy balancing its anti-dollar hegemony signals among its BRICS partners with a constructive presence in a dollar-dominating terrain such as the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB).

By holding the presidency of the IDB since last December, supporting the candidacy of Brazilian ex-IMF official Illan Goldfajn, Brazil has stretched its footprint in international finance from Washington to Shanghai.

Beyond Brazil

Brazil has made a first attempt to bring in the de-dollarization card to its South American neighbourhood, particularly together with Argentina. Last February, bilateral talks took off to begin working on a common currency project that could reduce reliance on the US dollar. This could mean ingraining de-dollarization within the MERCOSUR area.

Following Brazil’s example, Argentina has started to consider the use of the Renminbi in its trade with Beijing. For Brazil, these are moves that could, step-by-step, lead to a regional financial terrain with relative distance from US dollar dominance. However, ongoing macroeconomic turbulences in Argentina, together with an extremely low level of foreign exchange reserves, will surely obstruct these plans in the short term.

Besides, more than two will be needed to tango. If a sustained economic recovery of Argentina takes place, Brazil will need to assure the support of extra-regional, heavyweight, non-Western actors, particularly China and India, in investment and trade flows to trigger a renewed insertion of MERCOSUR into the world economy.

De-dollarization could become a part, among others, of a dynamic reconfiguration of financial and productive intersections of Brazil and its neighbours with other regions and economic powerhouses of the global economy. Needless to say, this is a long-term strategy. The key consideration is the role of South America, that, in the near future, may play into the promotion of a multi-currency trading regime.

For now, while a strident flag of Lula’s presidential diplomacy, Brazilian ties with the US Dollar can be reduced but remain of unquestionable relevance. Decision-making in Brazil is conducted by a complex inter-ministerial web responsible for the states’ international sector that cannot avoid the influence of key production segments in the private sector.

Thus, transforming the Brazilian international financial modus operandi will depend on major accommodations that cannot overlook a broad domestic negotiation process, particularly if conjoined with the strengthening of democracy.

Monica Hirst is a research fellow at the National Institute for Science and Technology Studies in Brazil; Juan Gabriel Tokatlian is Provost at the Torcuato Di Tella University, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

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Joy of Marketing - Ethiopia. Credit: International Seed Federation

By Michael Keller
VAUD, Switzerland, May 16 2023 (IPS)

At long last, momentum is growing for an overdue rethink of climate finance and development assistance to support countries on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

But while investment, aid and compensation are all much needed, another form of currency is equally valuable for climate-vulnerable countries that are also highly dependent on small-scale agriculture: quality seeds.

The latest generation of seeds offers varieties adapted to specific climatic circumstances to provide more reliable food production, as well as improved incomes and livelihoods for farmers, having boosted productivity by 20 per cent for nine key crops in the European Union over 15 years.

Yet improved varieties of many of the world’s staple cereals, vegetables and pulses are too often inaccessible for farmers in Africa, despite having some of the greatest exposure to climate extremes.

For instance, in East Africa, certified quality seed potatoes – which produce higher yields and greater resilience to climatic changes, pests, and diseases – account for just one per cent of all those planted by farmers.

By leveraging the advances and resources of the commercial seed sector – supported and scaled by public and NGO partners – the global community can ensure African farmers receive the tangible, long-term support they need to cope with the impacts of climate change.

Michael Keller

For example, non-profit Fair Planet coached more than 2,300 lead farmers in 65 Ethiopian villages and trained their regional extension agents in improved farming practices. With this training, farmers were able to quickly adopt and maximize their crop yields using locally tested and improved varieties of vegetables.

In total, some 75,000 smallholder farmers in the project’s regions subsequently tripled their vegetable production at a time when the Horn of Africa faced pressing food security challenges. As a result of an historic, ongoing drought, an estimated 22 million people are currently facing acute food insecurity across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.

According to an external evaluation, more than 95 per cent of households involved in Fair Planet’s work in Ethiopia – or roughly 485,000 people – benefitted from improved nutrition after the increased yields raised household incomes in just one production season by more than 25 per cent. This extra income provided farmers with a greater buffer against climate shocks, and more money to spend on health services and education for their families.

Opening up access to improved varieties of staple crops plays an important role in safeguarding food and nutrition security in the face of climate change, which could reduce levels of protein, iron and zinc in cereals by up to 10 per cent.

This is why the International Seed Federation (ISF), together with Fair Planet, is embarking on a five-year project to increase farmer choice of and access to quality seeds in Rwanda.

The aim is to benefit 84,000 Rwandan farmers by offering increased access to improved, high-quality vegetable, pulses, cereal, and potato varieties alongside downstream value chain projects training to support higher yields and incomes, and climate adaptation.

The final piece of the puzzle is to establish the policies and regulations needed to develop resilient and sustainable seed systems that benefit farmers. This requires policymakers to build an efficient and effective regulatory framework that provides reassurance to farmers that they are receiving the highest quality seed year after year, while also providing the long-term certainty likely to incentivize additional private sector investment.

Quality seeds are clearly the bedrock upon which productive and resilient farming systems are built, yet these technologies up to now remain out of reach for many of Africa’s farmers – one of the many significant challenges they face today.

By investing and collaborating to build resilient seed systems, the private sector can share more broadly the fruits of progress in global crop science through partnerships that ensure farmers receive seeds that are not only fit for purpose but fit for the future.

Improved seeds can then pay dividends by unlocking better productivity, incomes, and climate resilience for those on the frontlines who have for too long been underserved.

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Excerpt:

Credit: UNESCO

By Yasmine Hamdar, Keyzom Ngodun Massally and Gayan Peiris
UNITED NATIONS, May 16 2023 (IPS)

From ChatGPT to deepfakes, the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been making headlines. But beyond the buzz, there are real benefits it holds for advancing development priorities.

Assessing countries’ AI readiness as one of the first steps towards adoption can help mitigate potential risks.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to benefit society in manifold ways. From using predictive analytics for disaster risk reduction to leveraging translation software to break down language barriers, AI is already impacting our daily lives.

Yet, there are also negative implications, especially if proactive steps are not taken to ensure its responsible and ethical development and use.

Through an AI Readiness Assessment, UNDP is making sure countries are equipped with valuable insights on design and implementation as they progress on their AI journey.

The intersection between AI, data and people

AI-powered tools on the market are often touted based on their benefits – not their shortcomings. However, as seen with the latest example of ChatGPT, questions around responsible and ethical use become important.

As highlighted in UNDP’s Digital Strategy, by design, technology must be centred on people. Digital transformation, including AI innovations, must be intentionally inclusive and rights-based to yield meaningful societal impact.

For instance, whilst governments can leverage AI to improve public service delivery, consideration must be given to various layers of inclusion to ensure everyone can benefit equally.

AI models rely on data to function. The quality of data that gets fed into a model determines the quality of its outputs – a classic representation of the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ axiom.

In fact, the lack of quality data may even exacerbate bias and discrimination, particularly against vulnerable groups – pushing them further behind.

Therefore, the degree of accuracy, relevance, and representativeness of a data set will impact the reliability and trustworthiness of results and insights the data is informing.

Digital public infrastructure, as an interoperable network of digital systems working together, is important for enabling timely and reliable data flows. This is pertinent, for instance, in responding to crises, when access to accurate and up-to-date information is needed to inform responsive programming and decision-making.

Without such digital infrastructure, data flows may be disrupted, or the data available may be inaccurate or incomplete.

Supporting countries on their AI journey

There is strong interest amongst UN Member States in adopting AI-powered technologies to improve people’s lives by providing better services.

But as the benefits and risks of these technologies are uncovered, the need for an ethical data and AI governance framework, improved capacities and knowledge has become equally relevant.

The ‘Joint Facility’ is an initiative launched by UNDP and ITU to enhance governments’ digital capacity development, including in harnessing AI responsibly.

UNDP is assisting countries such as Kenya, Mauritania, Moldova and Senegal in developing data governance frameworks to promote the use of data for evidence-based decision making.

Also under development is a ‘Data to Policy Navigator’ that is being created by UNDP and the BMZ’s Data4Policy Initiative. The Navigator is designed to provide decision-makers with the knowledge they need to integrate new data sources into policy-development processes. No advanced or prior knowledge of data science is needed.

UNDP, along with UNESCO and ITU, is also part of a United Nations Inter-Agency Working Group on AI, where the goal is to share collective learnings and best practices for other countries’ benefit.

The group has developed recommendations on AI Ethical Standards, which include key aspects of international and human rights regulations around the right to privacy, fairness and non-discrimination, and data responsibility.

Countries are at different stages of their AI journey, and careful assessment is needed to determine the appropriate digital infrastructure, governance and enabling community that may be required based on their unique needs and capabilities.

To this end, UNDP, along with Oxford Insights, designed an AI Readiness Assessment as a first step that can help countries better understand their current level of preparedness and what they may need moving forward as they seek to adopt responsible, ethical and sustainable AI systems.

The AI Readiness Assessment

The AI Readiness Assessment comprises a comprehensive set of tools that allow governments to get an overview of the AI landscape and assess their level of AI readiness across various sectors.

The framework is focused on the dual roles of governments as 1) facilitators of technological advancement and 2) users of AI in the public sector. Critically, this assessment also prioritizes ethical considerations surrounding AI use.

The assessment highlights key elements necessary for the development and implementation of ethical AI, including policies, infrastructure and skills.

These aspects are important for countries to consider as AI-powered technologies are implemented at population scale to help meet national priorities and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The assessment employs a qualitative approach, utilizing surveys, key informant interviews, and workshops with civil servants to gain a more in-depth understanding of the AI ecosystem in a country.

In doing so, it offers governments valuable insights and recommendations on how to go about effective and ethical implementation of AI regulatory approaches, including how AI ethics and values may be integrated into existing frameworks.

Importantly, the assessment is a UN tool that is globally applicable and available for use, particularly for governments at any stage of their AI journey.

Staying ahead

UNDP is committed to the ethical and responsible use of AI. To avoid shortcomings, an AI system should be built with transparency, fairness, responsibility and privacy by default.

More AI-powered innovations are expected to emerge in years to come, and it is critical that we take proactive measures to ensure that their potential benefits and risks are evaluated through a people-centred approach.

Like ChatGPT, efficiency of a digital tool does not necessarily mean its design and functions are ethical and responsible. Having a framework to thoroughly assess the benefits and risks is key.

As these innovations evolve, so must governments’ mindset on AI. The AI Readiness Assessment is part of an effort to promote a proactive governance approach to digital development to ensure countries are informed, prepared and staying ahead when it comes to AI.

Yasmine Hamdar is AI Policy Specialist, UNDP Chief Digital Office;
Keyzom Ngodup Massally is Head of Digital Programming, UNDP Chief Digital Office;
Gayan Peiris, Head of Data and Technology, UNDP Chief Digital Office

To learn more about the AI Readiness Assessment, please contact us at digital.support@undp.org.

The authors would like to thank Dwayne Carruthers, Communications Specialist, for his support.

Source: UN Development Programme (UNDP)

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The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)’s latest interest rate hike comes before the ink of the much-awaited review of the RBA, released on 20 April, has dried. The threat of more increases to come is a clear sign of an emboldened RBA as the government accepts all of the panel’s utterly disappointing 51 recommendations.

Anis Chowdhury

The recommendations of the three-person panel, charged with reviewing the structure, governance, and effectiveness of the RBA, range from creating a separate board to make decisions on interest rates, to giving the Bank a simpler dual mandate to pursue both price stability and full employment.

Utter disappointment
The Review report fails to question the long-held taboos about inflation and Central Bank’s role in a social democracy. While the Review panel leaves the RBA’s 2-3% inflation target unchanged, it outrageously recommends dropping from the RBA’s mandate “economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia” and the removal of government’s power to intervene in the RBA’s decisions.

This will make the RBA more inflation hawkish, and more aggressive in its use of the blunt interest rate tool without much regard for the consequences on jobs, especially when the RBA’s full employment mandate is left vague.

Without the power to intervene in the RBA’s decisions, such hawkish interest rate hikes will force the government to cut its expenditure as it has to pay more on interest for its debts while its tax revenue shrinks when the economy slows.

Thus, the well-being of ordinary citizens, especially those who will lose jobs, will worsen as the government struggles to find money for targeted budget support. No wonder the Treasurer termed the latest RBA interest rate decision as “Pretty brutal”.

Voodoo of 2-3% inflation target
In accepting the RBA’s current 2-3% inflation target, the Review panel ignores the fact that the 2-3% inflation target has become a “global economic gospel” without any empirical or theoretical basis.

The 2-3% target was plucked out of the air and it became a universal mantra after a chance remark by the then Finance Minister of New Zealand in a television interview followed by relentless preaching.

The recommendation ignores the changed circumstance since the 2-3% inflation target was first adopted. In the wake of the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis, many, including the then IMF’s Chief Economist, Olivier Blanchard suggested a 4% inflation target would be more appropriate.

The inflation-unemployment trade-off relationship (i.e., the Phillips curve) has become flatter over the years due to labour market deregulations, off-shoring and other developments. This means trying to dogmatically achieve such a low inflation target would require a much higher unemployment rate as recognised by the former Fed Chair and current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. That is, the interest rate must rise more steeply inflicting serious damages to the business finances, household spending and government budget.

Full employment, a poor cousin
The Review panel recommends “full employment” mandate along with inflation target. However, while the inflation target has a numerical figure (2-3%), there is no such specific target mentioned for unemployment that may be consistent with the concept of full employment. When asked during a press conference, the Treasurer said, “It’s a contested concept”.

The report mentions full employment 100 times! But does not say what it means; instead, the panel accepts the current RBA’s definition and measure of full employment based on a contestable concept of a “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment” (NAIRU). That is, full employment is consistent with an unemployment rate below which inflation will accelerate.

There is general consensus that models based on NAIRU are basically wrong. An article in the RBA Bulletin acknowledged, “Model estimates of the NAIRU are highly uncertain and can change quite a bit as new data become available”. Thus, James Galbraith argued for ditching the NAIRU. And an op-ed in The Financial Times concluded, “The sooner NAIRU is buried and forgotten, the better”.

Social democracy sacrificed
The panel thinks, there are too many factors that affect prosperity and welfare. So, it recommends removal of the RBA’s third mandate “economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia”, enshrined in the 1959 RBA Act.

Furthermore, the panel seeks to remove the government’s ability to overrule an RBA decision because it “undermines the independent operation of monetary policy”.

With these recommendations implemented, the RBA will not be bound to the commitment to build a fairer society, although economic prosperity and people’s welfare can remain as an “overarching purpose”.

The Winner
A super independent RBA will have all the power it needs to use its sole weapon, interest rate rises, to keep inflation at 2-3%. The emboldened RBA will declare the consequences to its actions on the job markets as consistent with a vaguely defined full employment, and economic prosperity and welfare of the people.

It can simply assert that job and income losses are short-term pains for long-term gains, without having to provide any evidence. There are no such things as short-term pains.

For many, job loss may cause permanent damages to their mental health, self-esteem and social life often leading to suicides. IMF research shows that the scarring effects of recessions can be permanent.

Thus, the clear winner of the recommended reforms, is the RBA, not the ordinary people struggling to find decent jobs to enable them to put a roof over their heads and two square meals on their tables.

Meanwhile, the RBA’s ideological anti-inflationary fight with a blunt interest rate tool benefits the big four banks. They are “tipped to rake in record $33 billion” in profits from rising interest rates when everyday Aussies and small businesses battle rising bankruptcies and job losses.

Anis Chowdhury is Adjunct Professor, School of Business, Western Sydney University. He held senior United Nations positions in the area of Economic and Social Affairs in New York and Bangkok.

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Participants in the 11th Global South-South Development Expo 2022. Credit: ESCAP / Louise Lavaud

By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 15 2023 (IPS)

Asia is the fastest growing and most dynamic region of the world according to a recent IMF Report; “Recovery Unabated Amid Uncertainty”. ¹

Asia and the Pacific will contribute around 70 percent of global growth this year as expansion accelerates after Covid-19 supply chain disruptions, with ongoing geopolitical turmoil and war in Europe, as well as, various hybrid over the horizon cyber and kinetic attacks targeting Indian Ocean ports and shipping.

Global economic expansion would be significantly powered by the BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, as well as the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), group that includes Indonesia.

A series of Exogenous Economic Shocks over the past four years, from terror attacks to Covid-19, and ‘climate catastrophe’ policy-mistakes, such as an overnight switch to organic fertilizer, temporarily set back the rise of these ‘emerging economies’ of the Global South on the world stage.

They are now increasingly set to lead a rebound in a Multipolar ‘Asian 21st Century’ as Euro-American hegemony wanes.

Asian Giants, China and India, have huge populations, domestic markets, resources and the civilizational weight to lead global expansion. In the West, growth is poised to decelerate as rising interest rates, trillion-dollar deficits and military budgets weigh, with Inflation high, and banking strains in the United States and Europe.

Asia Pacific growth would increase to 4.6 percent despite the somber backdrop of war and economic weakness elsewhere in the world according to the IMF report.

Strategic Sri Lanka, which staged its first sovereign Default, loosing economic policy autonomy to the Washington Twins (IMF and World Bank), ironically on the eve of 75 years of Independence, clearly needs to look to Asia and the BRICS as Cold War and Colonialism once again roil the Indian Ocean World with nuclear submarines and military bases popping up a dime a dozen these days.

Four new US bases in the Philippines were announce just last month. The country after all is a bell weather for more than fifty other Global South countries caught in post-Covid-19 Eurobond debt traps, and the Washington Twins (World Bank and IMF) ‘bailout business’.

BRICS back on Track as Empires Rise and Fall

The BRICS was strengthened with the return of President Lula da Silva to the helm in Brazil in January. These powerhouse economies are increasingly trading in their own national currencies, promoting a trend to de-dollarization that has gathered steam in the context of US debt of $ 31 trillion and sanctions on Russia last year.

The search is on for alternatives to the US dollar as the global reserve currency as the BRICS economies had outstripped the traditional economic heavyweights – the G-7.

The New Development Bank (NDB) or BRICS bank which is a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS in 2014 to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects in the developing world is expanding at this time with Iran and Saudi Arabia set to join amid a recent China brokered peace deal to stabilize Yemen and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The NDB launched with $50 billion in seed money as an alternative to the IMF and WB. Additionally, a liquidity mechanism called the Contingent Reserve Arrangement to support members struggling with payments was created. In 2021, Egypt the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Bangladesh took up shares and membership of NDB while Egypt, Algeria, and Argentina, as well as, Mexico and Nigeria are in the pipeline. ²

Nineteen countries including Indonesia had expressed an interest in joining the BRICS group of nations as it prepares to hold an annual summit in June in South Africa, which is now struck by sabotage and power-cuts

De-dollarize to decolonize

Saudi Arabia’s petro-dollar linked oil reserves had stabilized the US dollar as the Global Reserve currency for decades, but this is changing with talk of the Petro Yuan and related geopolitical developments. In the wake of the Iran-Saudi peace agreement, Syria rejoined the Arab League after a 12-year long US led regime change operation failed against Bashar al Assad.

These movements perhaps explain some of the new Cold War proxy wars and turmoil in MENA and South Asia–from Sudan, to Palestine/Israel, to Afghanistan and Pakistan as the Euro-American empire wanes at this time.

Remarkably Argentina, South America’s 2nd largest economy after Brazil, seeking alternatives to the IMF has applied for membership of the NDB. Argentina, victim of the Monroe doctrine for decades is on its 22nd IMF bailout and 9th default, as Buenos Aires was again rocked by anti-IMF protests last month.

The NDB along with the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), increasingly constitute a Global South alternative to the Washington Consensus and colonial Club de Paris dominated Bretton Woods International development and finance architecture.

Bankrupt by what metric? Beyond The myth of TINA to the IMF

Sri Lanka as an Asian country would best leverage the Asian 21st Century and the NDB, but Colombo’s Washington-backed Ranil Rajapakse regime that is responsible for the country’s first sovereign default had promoted two myths, that “Sri Lanka is Bankrupt” and “there is no alternative” (TINA) to the IMF agenda, of austerity and a Firesale of strategic assets!

Last year upon assuming office the President promised Famine and 15-hour power cuts, in a psychological operation to spread fear, and prepare the people for an IMF Firesale and the country’s asset stripping.

However, the famine and 15-hour power cuts did not materialize also given plentiful monsoon rains for hydro-power generation as the weather gods miffed the Cold War gods.

The question is: by what metric and on whose Data was the strategic county that sits on major energy, trade and undersea data cable routes deemed ‘bankrupt’? As one of South Asia’s (SAARC) wealthiest countries in terms of GDP per capita with the best social and human development indicators, Former US Ass. Secretary of South and Central Asia Alice G. Wells termed the lush and fertile tropical island, blessed with two monsoons and extensive marine and mineral resources “valuable real estate”! Others have called it an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier.’

Whether a shortage of exorbitantly privileged US dollars is adequate to measure the ‘wealth of nations’ also given America’s 31 trillion debt is not a rhetorical or philosophical question to elicit yet another theory of value.

Rather, it flags here the failure by the Washington Consensus to make an elementary distinction between ‘illiquidity’ and ‘insolvency’ in determining the purported bankruptcy of Global South countries caught in the World Bank’s Middle Income Country (MIC) trap, to enable a Firesale of strategic assets. Does this not rather reflect great moral and intellectual bankruptcy?

Re-Orient to de-colonize in a Multipolar World

As the Asian 21st Century becomes a reality in a multipolar world where the BRICS economies have overtaken the traditional G-7 countries as the world’s engine of growth, Sri Lanka caught in a Eurobond US dollar denominated debt trap clearly needs to ReOrient as German sociologist and world systems theorist Andre Gunder Frank wrote in his acclaimed book; “ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age” (1998).

Much of Frank’s analysis finds resonance in a more recent book by Kishore Mahbubani, Former President of the United Nations Security Council, titled the Asian 21st Century.

In the context, Sri Lanka would best ban further borrowing on Eurobond markets, and engage bi-lateral lenders India and China to join hand with NDB, also to renew its Independence and sovereignty in its 75th year, and ensure calibrated exit from US dollar denominated Eurobond debt bondage.

Other countries may aid Sri Lanka’s, but only if the county leads in the search for alternatives to the IMF’s bankruptcy narratives– as Dr. Yanis Varoufakis, former Finance Minister of Greece who has extensive experience with IMF debt negotiations had noted.

Debt trapped countries the Global South and humanity are clearly at a turning point in an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data mining, deep fakes, and drone surveillance by those with the technologies for global governance and control of populations.

Hence, following Elon Musk, Warren Buffet recently warned that ‘AI is a nuclear bomb’. As a genuinely multipolar world re-emerges after two hundred years of Euro-American hegemony, on the cusp of another World War, it is up to debt-trapped countries of the Global South to promote multi-polarity and respect for genuine cultural diversity.

Dr Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake is a Cultural Anthropologist with expertise in international development and political economic analysis. She was a member of the International Steering Group of the North-South Institute project “Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Development Architecture.’ She had authored and co-edited several books, the most recent being “Multi-religiosity in Contemporary Sri Lanka: Innovation, Shared Spaces, Contestation’ Routledge (2022).

¹ https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/APAC/Issues/2023/04/11/regional-economic-outlook-for-asia-and-pacific-april-2023
² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm_y3w7x1qk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-24/brics-draws-membership-requests-from-19-nations-before-summit#xj4y7vzkg

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According to the United Nations, the world’s population is more than three times larger than it was in the mid-twentieth century. The global human population reached 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022 from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950, adding 1 billion people since 2010 and 2 billion since 1998. The world’s population is expected to increase by nearly 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from the current 8 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 10.4 billion in the mid-2080s.

By Nandita Bajaj
ST PAUL, Minnesota USA, May 10 2023 (IPS)

India’s population has just reached 1.4 billion people, surpassing China as the world’s most populous nation four years earlier than projected. Spurring this growth is a traditional patriarchal culture in which women’s identity is constrained by the social expectation they bear children.

Across the globe, pronatalist forces undermine women’s autonomy and self-determination. Pronatalism is an underlying driver of the global population growing to 8 billion and counting, with 80 million added each year.

The new UNFPA State of World Population Report is wrong to dismiss “population anxiety” as groundless and assert that “population sizes are neither good nor bad.” Population growth is not good for people or the planet, and anxiety is not an unwarranted response to how it affects us.

Population growth deepens social and economic inequality and has negative impacts on unemployment, housing costs, inflation, infrastructure, resource scarcity, pollution, and well-being. It even fuels resource conflicts and wars.

It’s also one of the key variables determining overall consumption and pollution levels, which are jeopardizing planetary life support systems on which we and Earth’s remaining biodiversity depend.

Population growth is a significant factor in climate change according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Over the past three decades, it has cancelled out most climate gains from renewables and efficiency.

Going forward, population growth will be concentrated in the developing world. Dismissing its environmental impacts betrays an assumption that low-income populations in the Global South will stay that way.

This is false as well as unjust. Across the globe, the middle class is the fastest-growing segment of the population, projected to grow another billion to reach 5 billion by 2030. This will bring better living standards for a billion of today’s poor. But we must recognize that it will also bring more peril to an already overburdened planet.

Beyond its impacts on GHG emissions and the climate, population growth also drives broader “overshoot,” meaning that human demands are exceeding Earth’s regenerative capacity.

Currently, we consume 75 percent more than the Earth can provide sustainably, resulting in unprecedented biodiversity loss and an extinction crisis, dwindling freshwater supplies, ocean acidification, expanding desertification, and resource scarcity.

Much of this damage comes from our global food systems, which are directly tied to population growth, and which have already transformed at least 40 percent of the planet’s ice-free land area. They are the primary threat to 86 percent of endangered species.

Much of agriculture’s negative impact is due to the Green Revolution, which is often invoked to inspire confidence that human ingenuity can solve the problems associated with population growth.

But the Green Revolution has posed wicked problems of its own, including deforestation, damaging soil health and the nutritional content of food, and agrochemical pollution. In the Global South, where these problems are especially acute, it has failed to improve health and well-being.

Similarly, faith in green technology, including the unfounded belief renewable energy will somehow decouple growth from environmental damage, ignores real-world negative impacts which disproportionately affect poor people and frontline communities.

Scaling up massive clean energy infrastructure without working to downsize demand wreaks environmental devastation. So does mining toxic rare earth metals, dirty and dangerous work which is done in slave-like conditions by people in the Global South.

The UNFPA report displays this kind of misplaced faith in technology and human ingenuity. Such faith is rooted in a bias toward endless economic growth, propagated by those who have most benefited from the current economic system and who are already wealthy. It ignores the ecological unraveling of continued human expansionism, and the massive toll it takes on human well-being.

According to the IPCC, the climate crisis will lead to increased death and illness from extreme weather and heat waves, growing agricultural losses, destruction of small island states, debilitating drought, declining freshwater supplies, and escalating losses of marine and terrestrial biodiversity.

Over a billion people are expected to be climate refugees by 2050.

From climate change, violence, and conflict to decreased economic opportunity, population growth’s impacts are felt most acutely by women, whose status in developing countries is already low, and by children, including those yet to be born. UNICEF calls the outlook for a billion children in climate-vulnerable countries “unimaginably dire.”

In a time when no government climate plans are on track to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and we are witnessing a human-driven mass extinction event, dismissing the profound impacts of population growth is shockingly irresponsible.

The UNFPA makes this mistake. It seeks to champion reproductive rights, yet dismisses the importance of population growth, which is driven by patriarchal pronatalist forces that pressure women into obsolete gender roles and abrogate their rights.

Failure to make this connection between rights and growth is the report’s most disappointing aspect.

Population deceleration and human rights go together; we need to advocate both. They are both achievable by the same set of human rights-based policies: universal education, women’s empowerment, children’s rights, and free, state-of-the-art family planning for all.

Truly advancing the causes of human rights and ecological sustainability requires humanity to shrink our population and our economies. It’s our only chance to achieve a high standard of living for all while staying within planetary boundaries.

Nandita Bajaj is the executive director of Population Balance and co-host of The Overpopulation Podcast. She also teaches the first graduate course of its kind: Pronatalism, Overpopulation, and the Planet, through the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, May 8 2023 (IPS)

The World changes, though prejudices and misconceptions remain. In 1996, political scientist Samuel Huntington published The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, in which he predicted that people’s cultural and religious identities would become the primary source of conflict in a Post–Cold War World. Huntington’s allegations have been contradicted by a number of critics, among them American Palestinian professor Edward Said, who lamented their extreme cultural determinism, which omitted the dynamic interdependency and interaction of cultures. Said’s own Orientalism depicted a generalised “Western view” of Arab cultures as “static and undeveloped”, while European culture was considered to be “developed, rational, flexible, and superior.” Literature and movies have depicted Arabs as exotic men riding camels and horses through the desert, and their women as dangerously seductive objects of male desire. Eventually, the exotic men turned in to being terrorists, and/or depraved oil-rich magnates, while Muslim women were presented as veiled, enigmatic, and oppressed.

Are there no counter-images to such a one-sided view, for example an Arab film industry? Since the inception of a film industry in Europe and the US it has generally been assumed that local movie production arrived in the Middle East much later than in “the West”. As a matter of fact, already by the beginning of the 20th century both screening and production had been brought into most Arab countries. Eventually, Egyptian film production came to dominate Middle Eastern movie industry, while it established affiliated companies in Lebanon. Iraq, Jordan, Iran, Israel, and more recently the United Arab Emirates and Palestine, followed suit.

Films serve as visual entertainment for huge audiences and in a vivid manner reflect social attitudes. They thus constitute a great medium for inspiring societal change. Of course, films might serve as a means for propaganda and indoctrination, but this does not hinder them from proving helpful in making people inclined to change a status quo. There are now signs that a pervasive socio/economic change is taking place in Saudi Arabia, where a growing film industry has become part of what appears to be an overhaul of hitherto domineering ideologies

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the only nation in the world named after a dynasty. It was founded in 1932 by King Abdul-Aziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, though the strength of The House of Saud can be traced back to 1745, when a local leader established a politico-religious alliance with the Wahhabis, a religious affinity honouring a Salafiyya interpretation of Islam, i.e. what is believed to be the faith of the “pious predecessors of the first three generations.” The House of Saud offered obedience to the Wahhabis, while promising to propagate their faith during a fierce struggle against Turkish and foreign influences.

Initially, Saudi Arabia did not refute the idea of movie theatres and allowed improvised cinemas, but all films were heavily censored and supposed to be screened privately. In 1982, Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud became the fifth king of Saudi Arabia. Actively trying to base his authority on Wahhabism, he increased Government support to the conservative religious establishment; spending millions of dollars on religious education, strengthening separation of the sexes and the power of Muatawwa’ūn, a religious branch of the police.

Between 1983 and 2018 the only movie theatre to be found in the country was at a Science and Technology Centre, which only screened “educational” films. If Saudis wished to watch films it had to be via satellite, or DVD. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia grew into the largest economy in the Middle East. Its citizens benefit from free education and health care, along with subsidized food, electricity and housing. However, the economy relies overwhelmingly on oil. The country exports almost nothing else and imports almost everything. A welfare state has been built on the expectation that oil revenues would remain at historic levels, though prices are falling and oil will eventually run out. Furthermore, seventy per cent of the population is under thirty years of age and many demand increased personal freedom.

When King Fahd died in 2005 he was succeeded by King Abdullah Al Saud. Contrary to his predecessor, the new king realised that Saudi youth had to be better educated. As soon as he came to power, Abdullah implemented a scholarship program sending young Saudi men and women abroad for undergraduate and postgraduate studies. More than 70,000 Saudis began studying abroad in more than 25 countries, with the US, Great Britain, and Australia as main destinations. Educated and emancipated women also became considered as an asset for development. The King established a governmental department to promote women’s higher education and in 2011 women were allowed to vote in municipal council elections. The year after, women athletes competed in the Olympics and in 2013 domestic violence became a criminal offence.

However, still no movie production and screening were allowed in the country. The trend towards increased openness, innovation, efforts to limit religious bigotry and enlarged women’s rights continue under the current king, Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. Its most visible propagator is Mohammed bin Salman, colloquially called MbS. He is Crown Prince, i.e. Salman bin Abdul-Aziz’s heir, though MbS is already the country’s Prime Minister and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.

Already during King Abdullah’s reign, semi-clandestine initiatives were made by a budding movie industry. Wadja became the first feature-length film made by a female Saudi director. In 2012 it was entirely shot within the Kingdom. Written and directed by US-educated Saudi citizen Haifaa al-Mansour it told the story of a spirited 10-year old living in Riyadh. On her way to school she passed a shop window with a green bike. However, its price was high and girls riding bikes were frowned upon.

Wadja deals with feelings of school girls, though it mirrors a society where grown women are regimented as if they were still in school. Behind closed doors the beauty and wit of Wadjda’s mother were unmasked, though she seemed to be barely aware of it. Her main concern was that her husband intended to take a much younger woman as second wife. Wadjda set about to earn cash to buy the bicycle. Her target was a school prize, awarded to the student expressing most devotion in learning and reciting passages from the Quran. Wadjda feigned orthodox goodness and her efforts at memorization impressed her teacher. She won the competition, though staff and students became shocked when Wadjda announced her intention to use the prize to buy a bicycle. The headmistress was furious and against Wadjda’s will donated the prize money to charity.

Despite an apparent sentimental depiction of a little schoolgirl’s desires, Wadjda emphasized her longing for freedom and self-realization, as well as fear of emotional abandonment when her father took a second wife. It is not only a film about a young person’s awkward relationship with an authoritative society and distressed parents – her longing for a bicycle of her own actually became emblematic of an entire people’s striving for freedom.

Wadjda was shot in a country where zealous clergy forbade cinemas and with a totalitarian regime with zero-tolerance of female film directors. al-Mansour had most of the time to work from the back of a van, as she could not publicly mix with men of her crew. She generally had to communicate via walkie-talkie and watch the actors on a monitor.

Haifaa al-Mansour spent seven years on finding adequate funding. It was the Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud who finally agreed to contribute. Al Waleed is a grandson of Abdul-Aziz, the first king of Saudi Arabia, and among other altruistic initiatives he financed the training of the first Saudi female commercial airline pilot, declaring that he was disposed to give “full support of Saudi ladies working in all fields.”

In November 2017, Al Waleed and other prominent Saudis were arrested during an “anti-corruption drive”. Some 200 detainees were brought to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh and subjected to coercion and abuse. Some, among them Al Waleed, were released after paying heavy fines. MbS not only attacked the old, extremely wealthy oligarchy, but also religious leaders who uphold Wahhabi doctrines. He openly declared that there are no static schools of thought, nor any infallible persons. In another statement MbS acknowledged that the Saudi state had not been “normal” for the past 30 years and that it was his intention to introduce social, religious, economic, political changes and a new educational policy, asserting a “Saudi national identity” within what he called a post-Wahhabi era.

Without interrupting or limiting his totalitarian powers MbS prohibited the Muatawwa’ūn to “stop, follow, arrest, punish, and ask people for their ID.” Muatawwa’ūn had until recently 4,000 officers, assisted by thousands of volunteers, and an additional 10,000 administrative personnel. It imposed strict segregation between the sexes, controlled that women wore the hijab, and forbade the sale of dogs and cats, as well as toys like Barbie dolls and Pokémon items.

Most of these restrictions are now abandoned. Women are allowed to drive cars and can chose not to wear the hijab. Women above 21 years can obtain passports and travel abroad without permission from their male guardians. It has become legally possible for women to independently open their own businesses and bank accounts, while mothers are authorised to retain immediate custody of their children after divorce. Women have now access to operas, concerts, cinemas and sports events.

This is part of the Government’s Saudi Vision 2030, aiming at diversifying the nation’s economy through heavy investments in non-oil sectors, including “green” technology, tourism, local expenditure and entertainment. In Riyadh, construction has begun of The Mukaab, a gigantic structure, which will include an armada of hotels, shopping malls, several cinemas and an “immersive” theatre. In the Northwest, Neom I is under construction – a high-technology megalopolis, with robotic services and even an artificial moon. The Line, a zero-carbon city stretching 170 kilometres across the desert. Qiddiya, a gigantic amusement park just outside of Riyadh. Trojena, a luxury ski resort in the Tabouk Mountains. The Red Sea Project, which is intended to be a string of luxurious hotels along the Red Sea shores.

Saudi Arabia has now 60 high-tech cinemas with approximately 500 screens in operation, as well as an increasing local production of TV entertainment. In accordance with Vision 2030 a General Entertainment Authority has been established. Its current chairman is bin Salman’s old friend Turki Al-Sheikh, known for his lyrics, sung by several Arab artists.

The film The Cello is expected to premiere in Riyadh this year. It is based on a novel by Turki Al-Sheikh that takes place in several locations, foremost in the 18th Century Italian town of Cremona, but also in present time. After being filmed in Prague, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Vienna, the movie stars world famous actor Jeremy Irons, as well as a great number of movie celebrities from Europe, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In The Cello a young man purchases a cursed cello, built by a Cremonese master luthier, builder of string instruments, who butchered and cut up his entire family, using parts of their blood and bones to make a cello.

The cutting up of people in Turki Al-Sheikh’s The Cello might remind viewers of the murder and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, allegedly carried out by Saudi officials in Turkey. However The Cello may have an intended, or unintentional, so called Boris Bus effect. i.e. changing the subject of the gruesome murder of a journalist into the making of a wondrous instrument. Boris Johnson managed to redirect Google searches from past embarrassing and deceitful bus ads about Brexit into a description of his hobby of making toy buses with painted, happy passengers on board.

Bin Salman’s occasionally brutal and draconic measures might be interpreted as residues from hundreds of years of despotism. They will hopefully mellow, or even disappear, if Arabian society is allowed to continue on its already beaten path towards an open and democratic society, allowing for women’s emancipation, free speech and general wellbeing. A trend already evident within the Saudi Arabian film industry, which does not shy away from controversial subjects and where almost forty per cent of crew and directors currently are women.

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The Toledo Bioenergy Center, in southern Brazil, is under construction, but its biodigesters are already operating with manure and the carcasses of disease-free dead animals from 16 pig farms. The goal is to generate one megawatt of power and for pig farmers to participate in the production of biogas without having to invest in their own plants, so their waste is biodigested and turned into fertilizer, instead of polluting rivers and the soil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
TOLEDO, Brazil , May 8 2023 (IPS)

It is the “best energy,” according to its producers, but biogas from livestock waste still lacks an organized market that would allow it to take off and realize its potential in Brazil, the world’s largest meat exporter.

“There is a lack of steady consumers,” said Cícero Bley Junior, who has been a pioneer in the promotion of biogas in the west of the southern state of Paraná, since he served as superintendent of Renewable Energies at Itaipu Binacional (2004-2016).

Itaipu, a gigantic hydroelectric plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay on the Paraná River which forms part of the border between the two countries, encourages nearby pig farmers to take advantage of manure to produce biogas, avoiding its disposal in the rivers that flow into the reservoir, whose contamination affects electricity generation in the long run.“The animal protein chain must also see itself as a generator of energy, just as the sugarcane sector defines itself as a sugar and energy industry since it began producing ethanol (a biogas) almost 50 years ago.” -- Cícero Bley

The companies that form part of the animal protein chain, in general the meat industry that purchases animals ready for slaughter and offers breeding sows and technical assistance to livestock producers, should also buy biogas and its biomethane derivative from the breeders, Bley said.

“The animal protein chain must also see itself as a generator of energy, just as the sugarcane sector defines itself as a sugar and energy industry since it began producing ethanol (a biogas) almost 50 years ago,” he told IPS.

But the companies do not do so: none of them are affiliated with the Brazilian Biogas Association (Abiogás), he lamented. The dairy industry could greatly reduce the cost of picking up milk from farms if it replaced diesel with biomethane in its trucks, he said, to illustrate.

If no such decision is taken, there will be no large investments in gas-fired engines either, which can use natural gas or biomethane, also called renewable natural gas.

In addition to the environmental benefits, such as the reduction in water pollution and the decarbonization of energy, biogas offers economic advantages by making use of manure that was previously considered waste and converting it into biofertilizer.

It also drives a new equipment industry and local development by decentralizing energy and fertilizer production.

“It’s the best energy, for sure,” said Anelio Thomazzoni, a pig farmer from Vargeão, a small municipality of 3,500 inhabitants in the west of the state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil. His farm has a 600-kilowatt biogas power plant and a 1-megawatt solar power plant.

“The correct use of crop waste, as fertilizer after biodigestion, made it possible for me to reduce by 100 percent the purchase of potassium chloride and phosphorus,” formerly essential fertilizers, he told IPS by phone from his town.

A visitor in Toledo examines the external controls of the mixer, an essential piece of equipment in the production of biogas and whose absence or mishandling can affect the operation. The complexity of biodigestion, compared to photovoltaic solar energy, is a factor that is slowing down the expected progress of biogas in Brazil, despite its multiple benefits in energy, environmental and economic terms. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Frustrated potential

Brazil today produces only 0.5 percent of the biogas that could result from agricultural, livestock and industrial waste, urban garbage and sewage, estimated Bley, who founded the International Center for Renewable Energies-Biogás (CIBiogás) in 2013.

Brazil would have the potential to replace 70 percent of the diesel it consumes if it allocated all the biogas to the production of biomethane, according to Abiogás. In terms of electricity, it could reach almost 40 percent, but today it is limited to 353 megawatts – around 0.0018 percent of the total – according to the government’s National Electric Power Agency.

In global terms, Brazil is only ninth in biogas electricity generation, accounting for 2.1 percent of the global total, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

The sugarcane sector joined the effort five years ago in promoting biogas, with larger plants for power generation or biomethane refining in the southern state of São Paulo. New initiatives are attempting to accelerate the development of this energy market in the southern region of Brazil, which concentrates two-thirds of the national production of pork.

Residues from the production of sugar and ethanol from cane represent 48 percent of Brazil’s biogas potential, followed by the animal protein chain, which accounts for 32.2 percent, estimates Abiogás. The rest comes from agricultural waste and sewage.

This large pre-treatment tank uses pig carcasses, an abundant material that is still little employed in the production of biogas, which the Toledo Bioenergy Plant in southern Brazil will process to reach a generation capacity of one megawatt, playing a sanitary role at the same time. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Innovative initiatives

The Bioenergy Plant under construction by CIBiogás, a nonprofit technology and innovation institution in Toledo, a city of 156,000 people in western Paraná, seeks to “validate a possible business model,” explained Juliana Somer, a construction engineer who is operations manager at the Center.

Pig farmers provide the “substrate” and receive back a part of the “digestate”, as the manure converted into a better fertilizer is called, without the gases that make up the biogas, extracted in the biodigestion process. With that they fertilize their land.

To generate electricity, biogas must have at least 55 percent methane. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is another component, making up about 40 percent. Hydrogen sulfide must be removed to prevent corrosion of the equipment.

“The objectives are environmental, social, energy-related and the dissemination of technologies,” said Rafael Niclevicz, environmental engineer at CIBiogás. To that end, an area of ​​high pig farm density was chosen, with about 120,000 hogs in five square kilometers.

The manure is collected daily, 70 percent by trucks and the pig farmers themselves, and the rest by pipelines from the nearest farms. Currently, 16 pig farmers, whose herds total about 40,000 animals, supply the plant, which also collects carcasses of disease-free dead pigs.

“The model makes sense for pig farmers who do not want to invest in facilities to produce biogas on their own. It solves the problem of waste disposal and there are socio-environmental benefits for everyone,” said Somer.

This Enerdimbo truck is powered by biomethane and is used to collect manure from 40 pig producers that feeds the company’s large biodigesters in southern Brazil. Solar power is added to biogas to provide 2.5 megawatts of energy, enough to supply 5,000 medium-sized households. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The plant is a joint project between the municipal government, which ceded the land, and Itaipu Binacional, which provided funding. The goal is an installed capacity of one megawatt.

In Ouro Verde, 22 kilometers from Toledo, a similar plant, Enerdinbo, receives the “substrate” from 40 farms within a radius of 15 kilometers, where more than 100,000 pigs are raised, for a total generation capacity of two megawatts, to which are added 500 kilowatts from a solar plant.

It is enough to provide electricity to 5,000 households, estimates EDB Energía do Brasil, the company that offers businesses and residential consumers the possibility of reducing their electricity bills by 10 percent by joining the cooperative that benefits from the electricity generated by Enerdinbo.

The business of EDB, created by businesspeople in Cascavel, 60 kilometers from Ouro Verde, is to implement small renewable energy plants to distribute the benefits of distributed generation among members of the cooperative, with the investment by the consumers themselves to save on energy costs.

Enerdinbo and the Toledo Bioenergy Plant seek to expand biogas by avoiding the difficulty for pig farmers and other small farmers or ranchers to invest in the energy business.

A view of one of the three large biodigesters of Enerdimbo, a plant of the EDB Energía do Brasil company that distributes the benefits of distributed electricity generation to numerous members of the cooperative, whose power bills are thus reduced by 10 percent. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Demand from animal protein producers

“Small and medium-sized rural producers are true heroes who face various risks when deciding, in isolation, to implement a waste treatment project generated in the animal protein chain for the production of biogas on their properties,” said a manifesto from the producers and bioenergy specialists.

The document, released at the South Brazilian Biogas and Biomethane Forum on Apr. 18 in Foz do Iguaçu, in the far west of Paraná, calls for greater support from the public sector and from companies that link biogas production and the meat industry, for their “strategic value for Brazil’s energy transition.”

Only 333 animal waste biogas plants are suppliers to the national electricity grid, that is, 0.005 percent of Brazil’s 6.5 million livestock farms, the document stressed.

Credit: Victor Drachev/AFP via Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, May 5 2023 (IPS)

Where will you be in 2040? For Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the answer is: in the Kuksaroy Presidential Palace. That’s the chief consequence of the referendum held in the Central Asian country on 30 April.

With dissent tightly controlled in conditions of closed civic space, there was no prospect of genuine debate, a campaign against, or a no vote.

Repression betrays image of reform

Mirziyoyev took over the presidency in 2016 following the death of Islam Karimov, president for 26 years. Karimov ruled with an iron fist; Mirziyoyev has tried to position himself as a reformer by comparison.

The government rightly won international recognition when Uzbekistan was declared free of the systemic child labour and forced labour that once plagued its cotton industry. The move came after extensive international civil society campaigning, with global action compensating for the inability of domestic civil society to mobilise, given severe civic space restrictions.

While that systemic problem has been addressed, undoubtedly abuses of labour rights remain. And these are far from the only human rights violations. When one of the proposed constitutional changes announced last July sparked furious protests, the repression that followed belied Mirziyoyev’s reformist image.

Among the proposed changes was a plan to amend the status of Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan region. Formally, it’s an autonomous republic with the right to secede. The surprise announcement that this special status would end brought rare mass protests in the regional capital, Nukus. When local police refused to intervene, central government flew over riot police, inflaming tensions and resulting in violent clashes.

A state of emergency was imposed, tightly restricting the circulation of information. Because of this, details are scarce, but it seems some protesters started fires and tried to occupy government buildings, and riot police reportedly responded with live ammunition and an array of other forms of violence. Several people were killed and over 500 were reported to have been detained. Many received long jail sentences.

The government quickly dropped its intended change, but otherwise took a hard line, claiming the protesters were foreign-backed provocateurs trying to destabilise the country. But what happened was down to the absence of democracy. The government announced the proposed change with no consultation. All other channels for expressing dissent being blocked, the only way people could communicate their disapproval was to take to the streets.

Civic space still closed

It remains the reality that very little independent media is tolerated and journalists and bloggers experience harassment and intimidation. Vague and broad laws against the spreading of ‘false information’ and defamation give the state ample powers to block websites, a regular occurrence.

Virtually no independent civil society is allowed; most organisations that present themselves as part of civil society are government entities. Independent organisations struggle to register, particularly when they have a human rights focus. New regulations passed in June 2022 give the state oversight of activities supported by foreign donors, further restricting the space for human rights work.

It’s been a long time since Uzbekistan held any kind of recognisably democratic vote. The only presidential election with a genuine opposition candidate was held in 1991. Mirziyoyev certainly hasn’t risked a competitive election: when he last stood for office, to win his second term in 2021, he faced four pro-government candidates.

A flawed vote and a self-serving outcome

The referendum’s reported turnout and voting totals were at around the same levels as for the non-competitive presidential elections: official figures stated that 90-plus per cent endorsed the changes on a turnout of almost 85 per cent.

Given the state’s total control, voting figures are hard to trust. Even if the numbers are taken at face value, election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe pointed out that the referendum was held ‘in an environment that fell short of political pluralism and competition’. There was a lack of genuine debate, with very little opportunity for people to put any case against approving the changes.

State officials and resources were mobilised to encourage a yes vote and local celebrities were deployed in rallies and concerts. State media played its usual role as a presidential mouthpiece, promoting the referendum as an exercise in enhancing rights and freedoms. Anonymous journalists reported that censorship had increased ahead of the vote and they’d been ordered to cover the referendum positively.

Mirziyoyev is clearly the one who benefits. The key change is the extension of presidential terms from five to seven years. Mirziyoyev’s existing two five-year terms are wiped from the count, leaving him eligible to serve two more. Mirziyoyev has taken the same approach as authoritarian leaders the world over of reworking constitutions to stay in power. It’s hardly the act of a reformer.

The president remains all-powerful, appointing all government and security force officials. Meanwhile there’s some new language about rights and a welcome abolition of the death penalty – but no hint of changes that will allow movement towards free and fair elections, real opposition parties, independent human rights organisations and free media.

The constitution’s new language about rights will mean nothing if democratic reform doesn’t follow. But change of this kind was always possible under the old constitution – it’s always been lack of political will at the top standing in the way, and that hasn’t changed.

Democratic nations, seeking to build bridges in Central Asia to offer a counter to the region’s historical connections with Russia, may well welcome the superficial signs of reform. A UK-based public relations firm was hired to help persuade them. But they should urge the president to go much further, follow up with genuine reforms, and allow for real political competition when he inevitably stands for his third term.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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Soledad Arnedo is head of the La Negra del Norte cooperative textile workshop, which works together with other productive enterprises of the popular economy in the Argentine municipality of San Isidro, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 5 2023 (IPS)

Nearby is an agroecological garden and a plant nursery, further on there are pens for raising pigs and chickens, and close by, in an old one-story house with a tiled roof, twelve women sew pants and blouses. All of this is happening in a portion of a public park near Buenos Aires, where popular cooperatives are fighting the impact of Argentina’s long-drawn-out socioeconomic crisis.

“We sell our clothes at markets and offer them to merchants. Our big dream is to set up our own business to sell to the public, but it’s difficult, especially since we can’t get a loan,” Soledad Arnedo, a mother of three who works every day in the textile workshop, told IPS.

The garments made by the designers and seamstresses carry the brand “la Negra del Norte”, because the workshop is in the municipality of San Isidro, in the north of Greater Buenos Aires.“In Argentina in the last few years, having a job does not lift people out of poverty. This is true even for many who have formal sector jobs.” -- Nuria Susmel

In Greater Buenos Aires, home to 11 million people, the poverty rate is 45 percent, compared to a national average of 39.2 percent.

La Negra del Norte is just one of the several self-managed enterprises that have come to life on the five hectares that, within the Carlos Arenaza municipal park, are used by the Union of Popular Economy Workers (UTEP).

It is a union without bosses, which brings together people who are excluded from the labor market and who try to survive day-to-day with precarious, informal work due to the brutal inflation that hits the poor especially hard.

“These are ventures that are born out of sheer willpower and effort and the goal is to become part of a value chain, in which textile cooperatives are seen as an economic agent and their product is valued by the market,” Emmanuel Fronteras, who visits different workshops every day to provide support on behalf of the government’s National Institute of Associativism and Social Economy (INAES), told IPS.

Today there are 20,520 popular cooperatives registered with INAES. The agency promotes cooperatives in the midst of a delicate social situation, but in which, paradoxically, unemployment is at its lowest level in the last 30 years in this South American country of 46 million inhabitants: 6.3 percent, according to the latest official figure, from the last quarter of 2022.

Women work in a textile cooperative that operates in Navarro, a town of 20,000 people located about 125 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires. Many of the workers supplement their income with a payment from the Argentine government aimed at bolstering productive enterprises in the popular economy. CREDIT: Evita Movement

The working poor

The plight facing millions of Argentines is not the lack of work, but that they don’t earn a living wage: the purchasing power of wages has been vastly undermined in recent years by runaway inflation, which this year accelerated to unimaginable levels.

In March, prices rose 7.7 percent and year-on-year inflation (between April 2022 and March 2023) climbed to 104.3 percent. Economists project that this year could end with an index of between 130 and 140 percent.

Although in some segments of the economy wage hikes partly or fully compensate for the high inflation, in most cases wage increases lag behind. And informal sector workers bear the brunt of the rise in prices.

“In Argentina in the last few years, having a job does not lift people out of poverty,” economist Nuria Susmel, an expert on labor issues at the Foundation for Latin American Economic Research (FIEL), told IPS.

“This is true even for many who have formal sector jobs,” she added.

On five hectares of a public park in the Argentine municipality of San Isidro, in Greater Buenos Aires, there is a production center with several cooperatives from the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy (UTEP), which defends the rights of people excluded from the formal labor market. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) estimates that the poverty line for a typical family (made up of two adults and two minors) was 191,000 pesos (834 dollars) a month in March.

However, the average monthly salary in Argentina is 86,000 pesos (386 dollars), including both formal and informal sector employment.

“The average salary has grown well below the inflation rate,” said Susmel. “Consequently, for companies labor costs have fallen. This real drop in wages is what helps keep the employment rate at low levels.”

“And it is also the reason why there are many homes where people have a job and they are still poor,” she said.

Social value of production

La Negra del Norte is one of 35 textile cooperatives that operate in the province of Buenos Aires, where a total of 160 women work.

They receive support not only from the government through INAES, but also from the Evita Movement, a left-wing social and political group named in honor of Eva Perón, the legendary Argentine popular leader who died in 1952, at the age of just 33.

The Evita Movement formed a group of textile cooperatives which it supports in different ways, such as the reconditioning of machines and the training of seamstresses.

“The group was formed with the aim of uniting these workshops, which in many cases were small isolated enterprises, to try to formalize them and insert them into the productive and economic circuit,” said Emmanuel Fronteras, who is part of the Evita Movement, which has strong links to INAES.

“In addition to the economic value of the garments, we want the production process to have social value, which allows us to think not only about the profit of the owners but also about the improvement of the income of each cooperative and, consequently, the valorization of the work of the seamstresses,” he added in an interview with IPS.

The 12 women who work in the Argentine cooperative La Negra del Norte sell the clothes they make at markets and dream of being able to open their own store, but one of the obstacles they face is the impossibility of getting a loan. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The high level of informal employment in Argentina’s textile industry has been well-documented, and has been facilitated by a marked segmentation of production, since many brands outsource the manufacture of their clothing to small workshops.

Many of the workers in the cooperatives supplement their textile income with a stipend from the Potenciar Trabajo government social programme that pays half of the minimum monthly wage in exchange for their work.

“Economically we are in the same situation as the country itself. The instability is enormous,” said Celene Cárcamo, a designer who works in another cooperative, called Subleva Textil, which operates in a factory that makes crusts for the traditional Argentine “empanadas” or pasties in the municipality of San Martín, that was abandoned by its owners and reopened by its workers.

Other cooperatives operating in the pasty crust factory are involved in the areas of graphic design and food production, making it a small hub of the popular economy.

The six women working at Subleva Textil face obstacles every day. One of them is the constant rise in the prices of inputs, like most prices in the Argentine economy.

Subleva started operating shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, so it had to adapt to the complex new situation. “They say that crisis is opportunity, so we decided to make masks,” said Cárcamo, who stressed the difficulties of running a cooperative in these hard times in Argentina and acknowledged that “We need to catch a break.”

Construction workers in Chile are among those who will benefit from the gradual reduction of the workweek from the current 45 hours to 40, within five years. A 40-hour workweek already exists in countries such as Ecuador and Venezuela, but in most of the region the workweek is longer. CREDIT: Camila Lasalle/Sintec

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 4 2023 (IPS)

The reduction in the workweek recently approved by the Chilean Congress forms part of a trend of working fewer hours and days that is spreading in today’s modern economies, but also highlights how far behind other countries in Latin America are in this regard.

Latin America “has legislation that is lagging in terms of working hours and it is imperative that this be reviewed,” said the director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for the Southern Cone of the Americas, Fabio Bertranou, after Chile’s new law was passed."Non-human work, that of artificial intelligence, can massively reduce employment and make 40 hours a week seem like an immense amount of work." -- Francisco Iturraspe

The workweek in Chile will be gradually reduced from 45 to 40 hours, by one hour a year over the next five years, according to the bill that a jubilant President Gabriel Boric signed into law on Apr. 14.

“After many years of dialogue and gathering support, today we can finally celebrate the passage of this bill that reduces working hours, a pro-family law aimed at improving quality of life for all,” said Boric.

The law provides for the possibility of working four days and taking three off a week, of working a maximum of five overtime hours per week, while granting exceptions in sectors such as mining and transportation, where up to 52 hours per week can be worked, if the worker is compensated with fewer hours in another work week.

Chile is thus aligning itself with its partners in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in some of which, such as Australia, Denmark and France, the workweek is less than 40 hours, while in others, such as Germany, Colombia, Mexico or the United Kingdom, the workweek is longer.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric (L) celebrates the modification of the labor law by the Chilean Congress to reduce the workweek, as an achievement aimed at “improving quality of life for all,” with the understanding that workers will have more time to rest and for family life. CREDIT: Presidency of Chile

The range in Latin America

According to ILO data, until the past decade two countries in the region, Ecuador and Venezuela, had a legal workweek of 40 hours, while, like Chile up to now, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Guatemala were in the range between 42 and 45 hours.

Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay had a workweek of 48 hours.

According to national laws, the maximum number of hours that people can legally work per week under extraordinary circumstances for specific reasons is 48 in Brazil and Venezuela, and between 49 and 59 in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay.

In Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras the maximum is 60 or more hours, and in El Salvador and Peru there is simply no limit.

But in practice people work less than that, since the regional average is 39.9 hours, more than in Western Europe, North America and Africa (which range between 37.2 and 38.8 hours), but less than in the Arab world, the Pacific region and Asia, where the average ranges between 44 and 49 hours per week.

ILO figures showed that in 2016 in Latin America, male workers worked an average of 44.9 hours a week and women 36.3, 1.7 hours less than in 2005 in the case of men and half an hour less in the case of women.

Among domestic workers, the decrease was 3.3 hours among men and more than five hours among women (from 38.1 to 32.9 hours a week), which is partly attributed to the fact that after 2005 legislation to equate the workweeks of domestic workers with other workers made headway.

A teacher connects from her home with her students in an online class. This trend expanded in different sectors in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic and allows workers more freedom to organize their time, although sometimes it leads to longer working days. CREDIT: Marcel Crozet/ILO

Health and telework

A study by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the ILO attributes the death of some 750,000 workers each year to long working hours – especially people who work more than 55 hours a week.

The study showed that in 2016, 398,000 workers died worldwide from stroke and 347,000 from ischemic heart disease – ailments that are triggered by prolonged stress associated with long hours, or by risky behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol and eating an unhealthy diet.

María Neira, director of the WHO’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, said in this regard that “working 55 hours or more per week poses a serious danger to health. It is time for all of us – governments, employers and employees – to realize that long working hours can lead to premature death.”

On the other hand, the telework trend boomed worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 23 million workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, mainly formal wage- earners with a high level of education, stable jobs and in professional and administrative occupations.

Access to telework has been much more limited for informal sector and self-employed workers, young people, less skilled and lower-income workers, and women, who have more family responsibilities.

ILO Latin America expert Andrés Marinakis acknowledged in an analysis that “in general, teleworkers have some autonomy in deciding how to organize their workday and their performance is evaluated mainly through the results of their work rather than by the hours it took them to do it.”

But “several studies have found that in many cases those who telework work a little longer than usual; the limits between regular and overtime hours are less clear,” and this situation is reinforced by the available electronic devices and technology, explained Marinakis from the ILO office in Santiago de Chile.

This means that “contact with colleagues and supervisors is possible at any time and place, extending the workday beyond what is usual,” which raises “the need to clearly establish a period of disconnection that gives workers an effective rest,” added the analyst.

Artificial intelligence, for example with robots that work with great precision and speed, favors the technological development of countries and increases productivity by reducing costs in the production of goods or services, but it can lead to significant reductions in employment. CREDIT: IDB

The other face

Argentine labor activist Francisco Iturraspe told IPS by telephone that on the other hand, in the future it appears that “non-human work, that of artificial intelligence, can massively reduce employment and make 40 hours a week seem like an immense amount of work.”

Iturraspe, a professor at the National University of Rosario in southeastern Argentina and a researcher at the country’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, said from Rosario that the reduction in working hours “responds to criteria typical of the 19th century, while in the 21st century there is the challenge of meeting the need for technological development and its impact on our countries.”

He argued that “to the extent that abundant and cheap labor is available, and people have to work longer hours, business owners need less investment in technology, which curbs development.”

But, on the other hand, Iturraspe stressed that investment in technologies such as artificial intelligence reduces the cost of producing goods and services, evoking the thesis of zero marginal cost set out by U.S. economist Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The End of Work” and other books.

This translates into a reduction in the workforce needed to produce and distribute goods and services, “perhaps by half according to some economists, a Copernican shift that would lead us to a situation of mass unemployment.”

The quest to reduce the workday walks along that razor’s edge, “with the hope that the reduction of working time can give working human beings new ways of coping with life,” Iturraspe said.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefs journalists in Doha, Qatar, on the situation in Afghanistan. 3 May 2023. Credit: UNESCO/Khava Mukhieva
 
A letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Special Representatives and Envoys for Afghanistan, and UN leadership in-and-out of Afghanistan.

By Ahmad Wali Ahmadi
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 4 2023 (IPS)

We are a group of Afghans living in the country and working across sectors including peace, civil society, humanitarian aid, human rights, media, and the private sector, and are working to promote dialogue and seek long-term solutions for our country.

This ad hoc group encompasses and reflects the work of individual Afghan men and women and organizations led by and employing women working across the aforementioned sectors at grassroots, sub-national, and national levels.

As you gathered in Doha, Qatar on May 1st and 2nd 2023 to discuss the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, we welcome your initiative to explore avenues of engagement and dialogue to resolve the impasse that the Taliban Authorities and the international community have been in over the course of the last 19 months.

Afghans are suffering from the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet worsened by a weakened economy and a lack of a framework for political dialogue. Whilst humanitarian engagement has been a necessity, we need the global community to recognize that this is neither sustainable nor optimal for alleviating the human suffering in Afghanistan.

A principled, pragmatic, and phased approach to engagement with the Taliban Authorities is needed to ensure the well-being of the Afghan people and to remove the roadblocks holding us back from pursuing the social and economic development of our country.

As such, we urge that you take into consideration the following:

Political track

– With the recent renewal of the UNAMA mandate, the organization needs to be supported, strengthened, and empowered as the major political entity representative of the international community present inside Afghanistan.

– The international community should work with people inside Afghanistan to develop Afghan solutions to Afghan problems. We encourage the creation of spaces to promote local peace building initiatives and dialogues that already exist and support to expand on our work.

– Wide-range consultation with Afghans living inside Afghanistan including participation in international engagements taking place on Afghanistan.

Aid track

– Ensure the effective and principled implementation of humanitarian assistance through I/NGOs and UN Agencies with routine monitoring and re-evaluation of approach, commitment of timely and effective delivery of aid, and meaningful participation of women both as humanitarians and clients.

– Expansion and flexibility in funding – local organisations have shown better capacity to negotiate humanitarian access and the ability to expand into essential non-humanitarian work. Therefore, donor agencies should consider expansion of funds to national entities as well as showing flexibility around areas of operation and expansion of programming in areas where women can work.

* Focus on funding women-led and owned organizations and explore opportunities of funding private sector to develop and expand their initiatives.

* Repurpose and replenish ARTF funding to be fit-for-purpose in the current operational context through supporting locally-led mechanisms for delivery of aid and implementation of development programming.

* Women and girls can continue to access and be active through a range of institutions such as local media, certain types of vocational institutes, cultural heritage preservation and arts programming. These spaces would benefit from investment from the international community.

* Fund initiatives tackling climate change in Afghanistan before it is too late – the effects of climate change are increasingly evident, putting millions of lives and economic livelihoods at risk.

Economic track

* While the economy is no longer in freefall and there is evidence of a low-level stabilization, external obstacles continue to have significant detrimental effects on the Afghan economy. We urge for the lifting of sanctions on financial transactions that are crippling an already struggling private sector and leads to overcompliance of the international banking system.

* Unfreezing of the Afghanistan Central Bank’s assets to improve the banking and liquidity crisis plaguing the country and restore the SWIFT system.

*Technical support to the Afghanistan Central Bank in the areas of Anti-Money Laundering, Countering Terrorist Financing, and relevant fiscal policy departments to build confidence in the banking sector and support economic activity.

Diplomatic track

* Increase the in-country diplomatic presence to ensure direct engagement and dialogue without the reliance on intermediaries.

* Establish a clear roadmap for international dialogue with the Taliban Authorities including launch of informal working groups with the Taliban Authorities on issues of common interests such as countering terrorism, illicit drugs, irregular migration, preservation of cultural heritage as trust building measures, and enhancement of access to information as a public good.

As Afghans living and working in Afghanistan, we are advocating on behalf of millions that have remained here and are suffering from a multitude of man-made crises. We urge you all to consider them when you meet this week to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

The current approach to Afghanistan has only increased the suffering in this country. Our people are innovative, determined, pioneering and resilient – let’s work towards lifting the barriers to our progress.

Signatories

Ahmad Wali Ahmadi – Mediothek Afghanistan

Shahir Zahine – Development and Humanitarian Services for Afghanistan (DHSA)

IPS UN Bureau

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Young girls attend class at a UNICEF-supported school in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. April 2023. Credit: UNICEF/Mark Naftalin

By Jean-François Cautain
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 4 2023 (IPS)

I am writing from Kabul where I have been living for this past 11 months. I consider myself a friend of Afghanistan, a country full of contrasts that I know since 1986; I have lived here for a little over 12 years.

My return to Afghanistan was motivated by the desire, which I share with my wife who runs a medical NGO in Kabul, to help the Afghan population that is once again hostage to a modern “Great Game”, bringing violence and misery.

I was in Afghanistan when the Taliban first took Kabul in September 1996 after four years of armed conflict between various Afghan warlords that vied for supremacy after the departure of the Soviets in 1989. Heading a rural rehabilitation programme, I worked for 3 years under the first Taliban regime.

I was again present during the early years of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan between 2001 and 2005, working for the European Union. I remember the enthusiasm of the Afghan people. But I also remember the doubts that very quickly emerged about the viability of the project to “build a new Afghanistan”.

Today, I am extremely concerned about the isolation of Afghanistan on the international scene. It will lead to more suffering for the Afghan people and pose an increased risk to regional and international security.

In isolating Afghanistan, we are repeating mistakes made during the first Islamic Emirate, between 1996 – 2001, with the same well known dire consequences. Today, we must collectively, the international community and the Afghans, learn from past mistakes.

I do not consider myself an “expert” on Afghanistan, but the historical perspective I have on the country and the fact that I am currently living in Kabul mean that I probably have a different point of view to many of those currently being expressed from Europe and the United States.

The confrontation with Afghan poverty that I experience daily is no stranger to this discrepancy that I perceive between my vision of the situation and most of the analyses and positions expressed outside Afghanistan’s borders.

We all have to draw lessons

On 15 August 2021, 20 years of foreign military presence in Afghanistan came to an end. The US-led intervention raised great hopes in the early years. Unfortunately, this turned into a fiasco.

The international community and Afghanistan must analyse the many causes such as: the original sin of denying the defeated Taliban a seat in the first meeting aimed at the stability and reconstruction of the country (Bonn Conference 2001); too much aid leading to massive corruption, especially of certain political elites; a confusion of objectives between military operations aimed at eradicating terrorism and the (re)construction of a state.

We are just at the beginning of this necessary self-criticism from which we will have to draw lessons, but it is currently put on the backburner, or even forgotten, because of the recent developments in the country.

Since the Taliban took power, we have witnessed a widening chasm between the West and the new masters of Afghanistan. Both sides are clearly responsible for the current situation. At first, the Taliban displayed moderation when reaching out to the international community. They spoke of general amnesty, freedom of work for women, education for all, and the fight against terrorism.

The West refused to seize this extended hand. On the contrary, thanks to its dominant position on the international scene and taking advantage of the disarray caused by the return of the Taliban and the chaotic evacuation scenes at Kabul airport, the West responded by imposing conditions on the recognition of the Taliban government, the halt of development aid (40% of GNP), the freezing of the Central Bank of Afghanistan’s assets and the de facto extension of sanctions on financial transactions to the whole country.

These decisions brought the Afghan economy to its knees in a few weeks, precipitating this already poor country (48% of the population lived below the poverty line before the arrival of the Taliban – despite billions of dollars and euros poured into the country over 20 years) into an unprecedented economic crisis with unprecedented humanitarian consequences.

Today 28.3 million Afghans out of a population of around 40 million depend on humanitarian aid for their survival. And the poverty rate has reached 97%, according to the United Nations.

The Taliban also bear a great responsibility for this stalemate with decisions compromising the political and societal gains made over the past 20 years. The failure of their initial diplomatic approach with the West opened the door to the return of coercive policies that are unacceptable to the international community and to a large majority of Afghans.

Today, it is widely known that girls cannot study in secondary schools and universities, women cannot work in UN agencies and NGOs, and cannot go to parks and hammams. Political life is also minimal, with very few opportunities for dissenting voices to be heard and the media often having to censor themself.

There is a total lack of trust between the West and the Taliban. Western countries blame the Taliban for not respecting the Doha agreement by taking power by force and of having failed to keep their words by taking unacceptable decisions drastically reducing human rights, especially those of women and girls. This sad reality leads many educated Afghan families to leave the country for the sake of their daughters’ future.

For their part, many Taliban feel that the West is not sincere when it talks about peace in Afghanistan. They suspect the West, and especially the United States, of working to overthrow their government.

They point to the refusal to recognise their government, the sanctions, the freezing of the Central Bank’s assets and the military drones’ flying over the country, daily, for months. For them, the war with the West is not over, but has taken another form.

Confrontation cannot last

At a time when Western opinions are rightly outraged by the restrictions imposed on Afghan women and girls, one must also accept that the Taliban are proud to have liberated their country from an occupation led by the world’s greatest military power.

As a result, many do not understand why they have been ostracised for over 20 months. They feel that they should be “treated as equals” within the international community – which is more or less what some countries in the region are doing.

It is also important to realise, even if it is difficult to accept in some Western chancelleries, that this feeling of “liberation” is shared by a very significant percentage of the Afghan population, especially in rural areas, even if they are not all unconditional supporters of the Taliban regime.

Having driven the British out of Afghanistan in the 19th century, the Soviets in the 20th century, and now NATO in the 21st century, is part of the collective psyche of Afghans and makes many of them proud.

Yet, despite this incredibly complicated and terribly polarized context, it is imperative to continue and strengthen a direct dialogue between Western countries and the Taliban. The participants to the recent meeting convened by the UN Secretary General in Doha “agreed on the need for a strategy of engagement that allows for the stabilization of Afghanistan but also allows for addressing important concerns.”

It is only through frequent face-to-face meetings – I do not believe in e-diplomacy – driven by a constructive spirit of understanding on both sides, that progress can be made for the Afghan people.

How could dialogue start?

Increasing interaction with the Taliban does not mean recognising their government, but rather creating spaces for discussion to dispel misunderstandings, pass on messages and build relationships that go beyond mere posturing.

It means putting the human element and pragmatism back into a relationship that is essentially conflictual today, opposing great international principles against “Afghan” values.

Dialogue must start by talking about subjects where there is a possible convergence of interests between the Western countries and the Taliban. Why not the fight against international terrorism and the fight against opium production, two scourges that affect both Afghanistan and Western countries?

The Taliban, who until now have never had any agenda other than a national one, are fighting the Islamic State, which remains a real threat in many countries. They also eliminated poppy cultivation in 2001 and have been tackling it again this year.

Keeping in mind the common goal of the wellbeing of the Afghan people, positive signals must also be sent from both sides. For example, on education on the one hand, on sanctions and/or asset freezes on the other.

This sustained dialogue needs to start even if it will surely be essentially transactional at first. This will probably not be satisfactory for both parties: the first steps will be modest, but it will have the merit of unblocking a stalemate situation whose victims are primarily Afghan women and girls and the Afghan population in general.

It is also urgent to give oxygen to the local economy to allow Afghans to have their minds free of the daily, haunting, and exclusive constraint of feeding their families. Humanitarian aid is essential and must continue to be delivered whatever the obstacles.

But even more humanitarian aid will never be a substitute for a revitalised economy. The obstacles on the Afghan economy are largely in the hands of Western countries. The latter could use the lifting of sanctions on financial transactions and the gradual restitution of the assets of the Central Bank of Afghanistan as positive vectors in a dialogue with the Taliban. Only then can the Afghan people regain their voice and influence the future of their country.

The road to an Afghanistan at peace with itself, and in tune with the international community, will be long and complicated. It can only be achieved through a sincere and sustained dialogue. It is the responsibility of the Taliban, other members of Afghan society and Western countries to take the first step in this direction, for the greater benefit of Afghans.

Jean-François Cautain is a former Ambassador of the European Union.

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Fish farmers harvest genetically improved farmed tilapia. Credit: Shandy Santos

By Jharendu Pant
PENANG, Malaysia, May 3 2023 (IPS)

For Timor-Leste, as with most other islands in the Pacific, fortunes are to be found in fish – an equity food available to all regardless of status.

Nevertheless, the island is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change, hampering domestic food production and contributing to Timor-Leste’s ranking of 110th out of 121 countries for malnutrition. Meanwhile, the country is highly dependent on imported foods – including aquatic foods.

But a national strategy to prioritise the sustainable growth of fish production, particularly through farming of Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia (GIFT), is helping not only to reverse these trends, but also to provide new economic and livelihood opportunities throughout the entire aquaculture value chain.

And its successes offer economies of scale for development agencies and donors looking to maximise impact by replicating the strategy across other Pacific states with similar environments and challenges.

Jharendu Pant

Timor-Leste is on track to double fish consumption between 2010 and 2030, with all the benefits for improving nutrition this holds, having already generated returns by tripling productivity while reducing culture period by half. Timor-Leste’s farmers are now able to produce more nutritious aquatic food in less time.

The ripple effects of these successes are already spreading in the region: representatives from the Solomon Islands travelled to Timor-Leste for training in 2018 and 2019 to learn from the model, which offers a blueprint for addressing similar challenges faced by other island nations.

Small island developing states (SIDS) are collectively among the countries most affected by malnutrition, with 75 per cent of adult deaths in the Pacific caused by non-communicable disease – many of them diet-related. At the same time, small island states are among the most exposed to climate risk, which impacts the production of nutritious, indigenous foods.

But based on Timor-Leste’s learnings, other small island nations can also boost nutrition security and livelihoods through a similar dedicated strategy for aquaculture.

The approach starts with prioritising and deploying locally adapted solutions and technologies. WorldFish, working together with the Government of Timor-Leste, helped to introduce a public-private partnership (PPP) model for Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia (GIFT) hatcheries across the country, ensuring that farmers have access to high quality fish fingerlings in their local area.

Senor Robiay, cluster coordinator of Laubonu. Credit: Silvino Gomes

This improved breed of tilapia is ideal for addressing nutrition gaps for protein, essential fatty acids and micronutrients, while also minimising the burden on the environment, due to its relatively lower carbon footprint. The hatcheries were also established following rigorous environmental standards, which limits the release of effluence and observes biosecurity measures.

However, one of the challenges remaining for Timor-Leste and other resource-poor countries is the development of effective regulations and compliance monitoring. Alongside greater capacity for upholding environmental standards, subsequent phases of the strategy would also look to ensuring the benefits of increased production are shared equitably. This includes addressing issues of gender equality as well as youth employment opportunities.

Secondly, other countries with similar contexts can learn from Timor-Leste’s example of prioritising growth in production to drive increased consumption. Timor-Leste’s new fish hatcheries have helped increase production threefold between its first and second phase, paving the way for the successful scaling of aquaculture across the country.

And by prioritizing the production of monosex (all male) tilapia – which grow faster than female tilapia – Timor-Leste’s approach allowed the country’s farmers to maximize growth and the rate at which domestic production could meet the nutrition needs of the population. This resulted in increased availability and accessibility of nutritious fish to support higher levels of consumption.

Finally, Timor-Leste’s commitment to an ongoing aquaculture strategy over a decade and counting has also allowed the initiative to evolve over time. Such a long-term approach has also enabled the testing and validation of technologies and practices, making the scaling and replication elsewhere comparatively straightforward.

But ongoing funding is critical, both to develop the long-term capacity needed to maintain economic and nutritional gains in Timor-Leste, and to jumpstart similar initiatives elsewhere. The Partnership for Aquaculture Development in Timor-Leste (PADTL2) has been funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) New Zealand since 2014, with complementary financing from USAID in recent years, offering more solid and lasting gains than ad hoc interventions that last just a couple of years.

The sustainable growth of aquaculture production offers many benefits for small island nations. Over the last decade, Timor-Leste’s aquaculture strategy has become a model for developing more inclusive and secure food systems for all, helping to combat the challenges of malnutrition and exposure to climate change that impact Pacific Islands.

Partners including WorldFish are standing by to replicate this success and support other island governments to sustainably increase fish production and consumption to unlock blue fortunes for all.

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Palau’s Marine Spatial Plan will provide a framework for managing ocean and coastal resources. Credit: SPC

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Apr 28 2023 (IPS)

Growing up in Palau in the western Pacific Ocean, Surangel Whipps Jr. played on the reefs and spearfished on an island teeming with birds, giant clams, fish, and turtles.

Today that has all changed as a result of growing sea level rise. Half of the turtle eggs nesting on beaches are not surviving because they are laid in the tidal zone and swallowed by the sea.

During the United Nations Ocean Conference in Portugal in June 2022, Whipps Jr., the President of Palau, emphasized the interconnectedness of the fate of the turtles, their homes, culture, and people, drawing global attention to the dire impact of climate change on this island nation that relies heavily on the ocean for its livelihood.

Protecting Palau’s Marine Treasures

The Pacific Ocean is the lifeblood of Palau, supporting its social, cultural, and economic development. Palau is an archipelago of over 576 islands in the western tropical Pacific Ocean. Its rich marine biota includes approximately 400 species of hard corals, 300 species of soft corals, 1400 species of reef fishes, and the world’s most isolated colony of dugongs and Micronesia’s only saltwater crocodiles.

Worried that the island would have no future under the sea, Palau has launched an ambitious Marine Spatial Plan (MSP) initiative for its marine ecosystems that are vulnerable to climate change and impacted by human activities such as tourism, fishing, aquaculture, and shipping. It will provide a framework for managing ocean and coastal resources in a way that balances economic, social, and environmental objectives. It also aims to minimize conflicts between different users of the ocean and coastal areas and promotes their sustainable use.

Marino-O-Te-Au Wichman, a fisheries scientist with the Pacific Community (SPC) and a member of the Palau MSP Steering Committee, explains that the initiative is particularly important for Palau due to the country’s dependence on the marine ecosystem for food security, livelihoods, and cultural identity.

“We recognize the critical role that MSP plays in the development of maritime sectors with high potential for sustaining jobs and economic growth,” Wichman said, emphasizing that SPC was committed to supporting country-driven MSP processes with the best scientific advice and capacity development support.

“The MSP can help balance ecological and economic considerations in the management of marine resources, ensuring that these resources are used in a sustainable way.  Some of the key ecological considerations that MSP can help address include the conservation of biodiversity, restoration of habitats, and the management of invasive species. While on the economic front, MSP can help promote the sustainable use of marine resources: and promote low-impact economic activities such as ecotourism,” Wichman observed.

Climate Informed Decision Making

As climate change continues to impact ocean conditions, the redistribution of marine ecosystem services and benefits will affect maritime activities and societal value chains. Mainstreaming climate change into MSP can improve preparedness and response while also reducing the vulnerability of marine ecosystems.

Palau’s rich marine biota includes approximately 400 species of hard corals, 300 species of soft corals, 1400 species of reef fishes, and the world’s most isolated colony of dugongs and Micronesia’s only saltwater crocodiles. Credit: SPC

“MSP can inform policy making in Pacific Island countries in several ways to support sustainable development, particularly in the face of climate change impacts. The MSP initiative launched by Palau encompasses a Climate Resilient Marine Spatial Planning project that is grounded in the most reliable scientific data, including climate change scenarios and climate risk models,” said Wichman, noting that the plan can help identify areas that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise, ocean acidification, movement of key tuna stocks and increased storm intensity.

Increasing the knowledge base on the impacts of a changing climate is necessary for policymakers to ensure the protection of ecologically important areas and the implementation of sustainable development strategies. This includes building strong evidence that takes into account the potential spatial relocation of uses in MSP, the knowledge of conservation priority species and keystone ecosystem components, and their inclusion in sectoral analyses to promote sustainability and resilience.

Although progress has been made in understanding the impacts of climate change and its effects on marine ecosystems, there is still a need for thorough scientific research to guide management decisions.

“At SPC, we are dedicated to supporting countries in advancing their knowledge of ocean science. Our joint efforts have paid off, as Palau has made significant strides in improving their understanding of the ocean and safeguarding its well-being. Through the Pacific Community Centre for Ocean Science (PCCOS), Palau and other Pacific countries are given support to continue promoting predictive and sustainable ocean practices in the region,” explained Pierre-Yves Charpentier, Project Management Advisor for the Pacific Community Centre for Ocean Science.

A Long-Term Commitment To Protect the Ocean  

In 2015, Palau voted to establish the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, one of the world’s largest marine protected areas, with a planned five-year phase-in. On January 1, 2020, Palau fully protected 80% of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), prohibiting all forms of extractive activities, including mining and all types of fishing.

A Palauan legend is told of a fisherman from the village of Ngerchemai. One day the fisherman went out fishing in his canoe and came upon a large turtle and hastily jumped into the water after it. Surfacing for a breath, the fisherman realized his canoe wasn’t anchored and was drifting away. He then looked at the turtle, and it was swimming away. He could not decide which one he should pursue. In doing so, he lost both the canoe and the turtle.

Unlike the fisherman, Palau cannot afford to be indecisive about protecting its marine treasures, Whipps Jr. said: “Ensuring the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development is our collective responsibility.”

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A group of drivers push a car at the end of a long line to refuel in Havana. The Cuban authorities say the fundamental cause of the shortage of diesel and gasoline has to do with breaches of contracts by suppliers. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Apr 27 2023 (IPS)

Long lines of vehicles outside of gas stations reflect the acute shortage of diesel and gasoline in Cuba, which has had negative impacts on an economy that is highly dependent on fuel imports and has only a small proportion of renewable sources in its energy mix.

“They don’t sell you enough fuel at the gas stations and the line barely creeps forward because there are also many irregularities and corruption. It’s exhausting,” said engineer Rolando Estupiñán, who was driving an old Soviet Union-made Lada. When he spoke to IPS in Havana, he was still a long way from the pumps at the station and had given up hope of working that day.

Lisbet Brito, an accountant living in the Cuban capital, lamented in a conversation with IPS that “the public buses take a long time. Private cars (that act as taxis) are making shorter trips and charging more. Nobody can afford this. It’s very difficult to get to work or school, or to a medical or any other kind of appointment.”

Brito said another fear “is that food prices will rise further or supplies will decrease, if the shortage of oil makes it difficult to supply the markets.”

External and internal factors, including the fuel shortage, contribute to low levels of agricultural production, which is insufficient to meet the demand of the 11.1 million inhabitants of this Caribbean island nation.

The outlook is made even more complex by the macroeconomic imbalances, marked by partial dollarization, high inflation and depreciation of wages, salaries and pensions which have strangled household budgets.

Asiel Ramos, who uses his vehicle as a private taxi in this city of 2.2 million people, justified the increase in his rates “because the cost of a liter of diesel skyrocketed” on the black market, where it ranges from a little more than a dollar to three dollars, in sharp contrast to the average monthly salary of around 35 dollars.

“I pay taxes and I have to keep the car running so my children and wife can eat. I can’t spend days stocking up on fuel, and when it’s over, go back again. If I buy ‘on the left‘ (a euphemism for buying on the black market) I have to raise my prices,” Ramos told IPS.

To get around, most Cubans depend on the public transport system, based mainly on buses, which are less expensive than private taxis. But the chronic deficit of equipment, spare parts, lubricants and other inputs, added to the fuel shortage, means service is irregular, the most visible expression of which is the packed bus stops.

A group of people try to board a minibus on a central avenue in Havana. Public transport in Cuba faces a chronic deficit of equipment, spare parts, lubricants and other inputs, which, added to fuel shortages, means service is irregular and bus stops are crowded. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Measures

The fuel shortage drove the authorities to announce on the night of Apr. 25 the cancellation of the traditional parades for May 1, International Workers’ Day, and other activities such as political rallies or workplace, community or municipal events, as a rationing and austerity measure, and to declare that only essential transportation would be available.

In the capital, instead of the workers’ march through the José Marti Plaza de la Revolución, a rally was called for May 1 along the Havana Malecón or seaside boulevard, which expects some 120,000 people coming on foot from five of the 15 Havana municipalities.

On Apr. 17, the Minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy said on television that the fundamental cause of the shortage of diesel and gasoline is related to breaches of contracts by suppliers.

He said the U.S. embargo “makes it very difficult to obtain ships to transport the fuel, to seek financing and to meet the normal requirements of these contracts.”

In November, during President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s tour of Algeria, Russia, Turkey and China, agreements were signed with some of these countries for the stable supply of hydrocarbons, power generation and the modernization of thermoelectric plants.

Venezuela and Russia appear to be the country’s main energy suppliers.

On Apr. 23, the general director of the state company Unión Cuba Petróleo (Cupet), Néstor Pérez, told national media outlets that “one of the closest suppliers despite having innumerable production limitations… has guaranteed the supply of some products (refinable crude and derivatives) that somewhat alleviate the existing situation, but do not cover all the demands of the economy and the population.”

Presumably Pérez was referring to Venezuela, although he did not specifically say so, because that country has been the largest supplier of hydrocarbons this century, although due to its own internal crisis its exports to Cuba have clearly declined.

De la O Levy noted that, based on negotiations with international suppliers, an improvement is expected in May, although the availability of fuel will not reach the levels seen in 2017 or 2018, when the country was in a more favorable situation.

The priorities in the use of the reserves are the health and funeral services, public transportation and transport of merchandise, as well as the potato harvest, the official said.

The government of Havana, which as a province encompasses the 15 municipalities that make up the capital, limited the sale of diesel to 100 liters per vehicle and 40 liters of gasoline. In the remaining 14 provinces, rationing measures were also ordered.

Several universities postponed the entry of scholarship students until the first week of May, and announced online classes and consultations.

Sales of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are also affected, used by more than 1.7 million consumers, although the next arrival of a ship with the product should bring back stability to the service, according to officials.

Two men shine a mobile phone flashlight while fixing a car during a blackout in Havana. Breakages and repairs in some of the country’s thermoelectric plants lead to power shortages that trigger blackouts that last several hours in some parts of the country. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Electricity generation deficit

This situation coincides with breaks and repairs in some of the 20 thermoelectric generation plants, which have operated for an average of more than 30 years.

These plants process, for the most part, heavy national crude oil, with a sulfur content between seven and 18 degrees API, which requires more frequent repair cycles that are sometimes postponed due to a lack of financing.

Around 95 percent of the electricity generated in Cuba comes from fossil sources.

This country consumes some 8.3 million tons of fuel per year, of which almost 40 percent is nationally produced.

President Díaz-Canel explained on Apr. 14 that due to the number of thermoelectric blocks under repair “we have had to depend more on distributed generation that basically consumes diesel” in the country’s 168 municipalities.

The generation deficits cause blackouts, although of a lesser magnitude than the 10 to 12-hour a day cuts that for a large part of 2022 affected different parts of the country and sparked demonstrations and pot-banging protests in poor neighborhoods of several municipalities.

The rest of the electricity generation comes from gas accompanying national oil, and floating units rented to Turkey, while renewable energy sources account for only five percent of the total.

The current energy situation is occurring as summer looms, when temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius increase the use of fans and air conditioners, while a majority of the 3.9 million homes in Cuba depend on electricity for cooking food.

Members of the Electric Motorcycle Club gather in Havana for recreational activities. Customs measures have facilitated the importation of electric vehicles which reduce carbon emissions. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Promoting renewable sources

“We must further promote renewable sources and stimulate a change from fuel-guzzling, polluting vehicles that are more than half a century old to more modern and efficient ones,” computer scientist Alexis Rodríguez told IPS from the eastern city of Holguin, where he lives.

The transformation of the national energy mix is ​​considered by the government a matter of national security, and as part of its plans it aims for 37 percent of electricity to come from clean energy by 2030.

Since 2014, Cuba has had a policy for the prospective development of renewable energy sources and their efficient use, and in 2019 Decree Law 345 established regulations to increase the proportion of renewables in electricity generation and gradually decrease the share of fossil fuels.

Such a significant transformation will require investments of some six billion dollars, authorities in the sector estimate, which constitutes a challenge for a country whose main sources of revenue are dwindling, and which has pending a restart of interest payments on its debt to international creditors.

“It is also important to encourage the use of bicycles and electric vehicles, but they must be sold at reasonable prices, on credit as well, with guarantees of spare parts and the improvement of infrastructure,” Rodríguez added.

In addition to hybrid buses, a hundred light electric vehicles have been added to the capital’s public transport system that contribute to citizen micromobility and to reducing carbon emissions.

In recent years, the customs agency made provisions more flexible for citizens and companies to import solar panels. Although official data are not available, the measure has not had a significant influence.

Measures for the import and assembly on the island of bicycles, motorcycles and three and four-wheel electric vehicles – more than half a million of which circulate in Cuba – also bolster the mobility of people and families.

However, the high prices and sales only in hard currencies curb the expansion and use of more environmentally-friendly vehicles. Another hurdle is the dependence on the national power grid to recharge the batteries and the absence of service stations for electric vehicles.

The replanting of palm oil plants aimed at producing better trees through good agricultural practices. The UNDP’s Good Growth Partnership (GGP) in Indonesia included several projects under one umbrella. Credit: ILO/Fauzan Azhima

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 27 2023 (IPS)

Smallholder farmers are critical to the success of Indonesia’s efforts to address deforestation and climate change. Creating an understanding and supporting this group, internally and abroad, is a crucial objective for those working towards reducing deforestation and promoting good farming practices, especially as smallholders often work hand-to-mouth and are vulnerable to perpetuating unsustainable farming practices.

Musim Mas, a large palm oil corporation involved in sustainable production, says smallholders “hold approximately 40 percent of Indonesia’s oil palm plantations and are a significant group in the palm oil supply chain. This represents 4.2 million hectares in Indonesia, roughly the size of Denmark. According to the Palm Oil Agribusiness Strategic Policy Initiative (PASPI), smallholders are set to manage 60 percent of Indonesia’s oil palm plantations by 2030.” 

Since last year a new World Bank-led programme, the Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR), incorporates the United Nations Development Programme Good Growth Partnership (GGP). It will continue to be involved in the success of palm oil production and smallholders’ support—crucial, especially as a study showed that the “sector lifted around 2.6 million rural Indonesians from poverty this century,” with knock-on development successes including improved rural infrastructure.

Over the past five years, GGP conducted focused training with about 3,000 smallholder farmers, says UNDP’s GGP Global Project Manager, Pascale Bonzom:

“The idea was to pilot some public-private partnerships for training, new ways of getting the producers to adopt these agricultural practices so that we could learn from these pilots and scale them up through farmer support system strategies,” Bonzom says.

Farmer organizations speaking to IPS explained how they, too, support smallholder farmers.

Amanah, an independent smallholder association of about 500 independent smallholders in Ukui, Riau province, was the first group to receive Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification as part of a joint programme, right before the start of GGP, between the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, UNDP, and Asian Agri. This followed training in good agricultural practices, land mapping, high carbon stock (HCS), and high conservation value (HCV) methodologies to identify forest areas for protection.

“The majority of independent smallholders in Indonesia do not have the capacity to implement best practices in the palm oil field. Consequently, it is important to provide assistance and training on good agricultural practices in the field on a regular and ongoing basis,” Amanah commented, adding that the training included preparing land for planting sustainably and using certified seeds, fertilizer, and good harvesting practices.

A producer organization, SPKS, said it was working with farmers to implement sustainable practices. It established a smallholders’ database and assisted them with ISPO and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certifications.

Jointly with High Conservation Value Resource Network (HCVRN), it created a toolkit for independent smallholders on zero deforestation. This has already been implemented in four villages in two districts.

“At this stage, SPKS and HCVRN are designing benefits and incentives for independent smallholders who already protect their forest area (along) with the indigenous people,” SPKS said, adding that it expected that these initiatives could be used and adopted by those facing EU regulations.

SPKS sees the new EU deforestation legislation as a concern and an opportunity, especially as the union has shown a commitment to supporting independent small farmers—including financial support to prepare for readiness to comply with the regulations, including geolocation, capacity building, and fair price mechanisms.

Amanah also pointed to the EU regulations, which incentivize independent smallholders to adhere to the certification process.

“As required by EU law, the EU is also tasked with implementing programs and assistance at the upstream level as well as serving as an incentive for independent smallholders who already adhere to the certification process. The independent smallholder will be encouraged by this incentive to use sustainable best practices. Financing may be used as an incentive. The independent smallholders will be encouraged by this incentive to use sustainable best practices,” the organization told IPS.

SPKS would like to see final EU regulations include a requirement for companies importing palm oil into the EU to guarantee a direct supply chain from at least 30 percent of independent smallholders based on a fair partnership.

“In the draft EU regulations, it is not yet clear whether the due diligence is based on deforestation-related risk-based analysis. Indonesia is often considered a country with a high deforestation rate, and palm oil is perceived to be a factor in deforestation. Considering this, we hope the EU will consider smallholder farmers by ensuring that EU regulations do not further burden them by issuing Technical Guidelines specifically designed for smallholder farmers.”

In April 2023, the European Parliament passed the law introducing rigorous, wide-ranging requirements on commodities such as palm oil. UNDP is looking into how it can tailor its support to producing countries with compliance of this and other similar current and future regulations.

Setara Jambi, an organization dedicated to education and capacity building for oil palm smallholders for sustainable agricultural management, says that while they are concerned about the EU regulations, small farmers have “many limitations, which are different from companies that already have adequate institutions.

“This concern will not arise if there is a strong commitment from both government and companies (buyers of smallholder fresh fruit bunches) to assist smallholders in preparing and implementing sustainable palm oil management.”

The next five years with FOLUR will face significant challenges. There is a need to ensure that the National Action Plan moves to the next level because it is going to expire at the end of 2024. It will require updating and expanding.

In Indonesia, there are 26 provinces and 225 districts that produce palm oil. And at the time of writing, eight provinces and nine districts have developed their own versions of the pilot Sustainable Palm Oil Action Plan and developed their own provincial or district-level Sustainable Palm Oil Action Plans.

There is a lot to do, including supporting the Indonesian government’s multi-stakeholder process, capacity building for the private sector, supporting an enabling environment for all, and working with financial institutions to make investment decisions aligned with deforestation commitments.

The biggest issue is to get the smallholder farmers on board. Because they live a life of survival, often they are vulnerable to “short-termism.”

On the positive side, the FOLUR initiative has the government’s backing. At the launch in Jakarta last year, Musdhalifah Machmud, Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, said that the implementation of the FOLUR Project was expected to be able to create a value chain sustainability model for rice, oil palm, coffee, and cocoa through sustainable land use and “comprehensively by paying attention to biodiversity conservation, climate change, restoration, and land degradation.”

At that launch workshop in Jakarta, the World Bank’s Christopher Brett, FOLUR co-leader, noted: “Healthy and sustainable value chains offer social benefits and generate profits without putting undue stress on the environment.”

Bonzom agrees: “At the end of the day, they (smallholders) will need to see the benefits—better market terms, better prices, better, more secure contracts—that’s what is attractive for them.”

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A harvester checks the ripeness of oil palm fresh fruit. The UNDP’s Good Growth Partnership has worked with all sectors of the palm oil supply chain to reduce deforestation. Credit: ILO/Fauzan Azhima

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 27 2023 (IPS)

Indonesia finds itself in a delicate balancing act of uplifting people from poverty, managing climate change and biodiversity, and satisfying an increasingly demanding international market for sustainable farming practices—and at the pivot of this complexity is the management of its palm oil sector.

As the UNDP-led Good Growth Partnership (GGP) joins a new World Bank-led project with similar objectives—the Food Systems, Land Use, and Restoration (FOLUR) Impact Programme, it acknowledges that the government of Indonesia has made considerable advancements in improving the sustainability of the industry and the value chain over the past five years with GGP support.

The GGP, using a multi-stakeholder approach, included several projects under one programmatic umbrella, linking production, demand, responsible sourcing, traceability, and transparency, with supporting financial institutions and investors in relation to reducing deforestation from land use change. The project aimed to connect all components of the supply chain—which, in the case of Indonesian palm oil, represents 4.5 percent of the country’s GDP and 60 percent of global exports.

Late in 2022, Trase, in its report From Risk Hotspots to Sustainability Sweet Spots, confirmed Indonesia had reversed its deforestation trends in 2018-2020; deforestation for palm oil was 45,285 hectares per year—only 18 percent of its peak in 2008-2012. The improvement is attributed to strengthened law enforcement, moratoria, certification of palm oil plantations, and implementation of corporate zero-deforestation commitments.

“Importantly, deforestation has fallen during a period of continued expansion of palm oil production. Although the decline in deforestation has been linked to a drop in the market value of crude palm oil, the recent spike in palm oil prices has not yet been accompanied by a boom in palm-driven deforestation—a cause for cautious optimism,” Robert Heilmayr and Jason Benedict commented on Trase’s website.

However, CDP Palm Oil Report 2022 notes that while companies are adopting a wider range of actions to end deforestation, these “actions are not yet robust enough to end commodity-driven deforestation in the palm oil value chain.”

CDP says while 86 percent of companies implemented no-deforestation policies, only 22 percent have public and comprehensive policies: “Traceability systems have been implemented by 87 percent of companies, but only 25 percent have the capacity to scale these to over 90 percent of their production/consumption back to at least the municipality or equivalent.”

One major challenge is the inclusion of smallholders in the supply chains—and while 44 percent of companies work with smallholders to reduce or remove forest degradation, less than a third support “good agricultural practices and provide financial or technical assistance to help them achieve this.”

It is precisely these challenges the GGP confronted in Indonesia.

“Systemic change in commodity supply chains is one of the essential transformations that must occur this decade to mitigate the combined threats of catastrophic climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity and to achieve resilience for humanity globally,” GGP says in its assessment report, Reducing Deforestation from Commodity Supply Chains.

These deforestation commitments are not new and followed the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF), adopted in 2014, which called for the end of forest loss and the restoration of 350 million hectares of degraded landscapes and forestlands by 2030. Then came the Paris Climate Agreement, which in terms of its Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) agreements, was crucial for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries. More commitments flowed after the 2015/2016 fires, which were blamed on slash-and-burn agricultural practices, exacerbated by a dry El Niño; the fires raged for months, leading to deaths, respiratory tract infections, and cost, according to the World Bank, 16 billion US dollars.

The fires were also thought to cause a global rise in emissions and put wildlife, including the endangered orangutan population, at risk. Indonesia is a place where companies have been making commitments for some time, but implementing them with both direct and indirect suppliers is not easy.

Recognizing this challenge, the GGP supported the “improvement of sustainable production and land use policies and increased farmers’ capacities to shift to sustainable practices. At the same time, it has increased supply chain transparency and consumer demand for sustainable palm oil and built the awareness of financial institutions to invest sustainably and screen out deforesters in their portfolio.”

The GGP supported Indonesia’s National Action Plan—which is now being implemented at sub-national provincial, and district levels, too.

The action plan, along with Indonesia’s Enhanced Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), recognizes the country’s climate change vulnerabilities, especially in the low-lying areas throughout the archipelago and its position in the so-called ring of fires. The Enhanced NDC has set ambitious deforestation and rehabilitation targets, including peat land restoration of 2 million hectares and rehabilitation of degraded land of 12 million hectares by 2030.

Despite good results, stress ratcheted up for the industry as a new European Union policy now excludes sourcing palm oil or produce from areas deforested and degraded after December 31, 2020.

The new regulation will require companies to prove their bona fides through recognized traceability techniques. The sector is still working out its detailed response to the requirements, which some see as a unilateral EU move that does not respect the rights of the producing countries.

While the EU is a small market for Indonesia compared with the domestic, Chinese, and Indian markets, the regulations put additional pressure on an industry still strongly associated with small-scale farmers. It is also likely that other large markets will eventually align themselves with these regulations.

Even before the regulations became an issue, the GGP involved itself in communication campaigns to sensitize the public to sustainable certification, from the Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO)to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards.

The communication campaigns worked to create awareness about sustainability issues among consumers, but also with large retailers (including one called Super Indo) to place RSPO-certified palm oil products on their shelves.

It’s critical to get all players in the supply chain on board, which is where multi-stakeholder tactics work effectively; the GGP believes that this multi-faceted approach is crucial to influencing companies.

“You influence companies through government policies, through the market, but you also influence them through the financial institutions,” says UNDP’s GGP Global Project Manager, Pascale Bonzom. “If the financial institutions that fund these downstream companies require them to show that they have no deforestation commitments, and they are implementing them with results, then they (the companies) are going to have to do something about it.”

Elaborating on the strategy, she said GGP and its partner World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worked at a regional level on building capacity in financial institutions to understand the impacts of their investments.

Now a scorecard is available—to equip and influence the investors to make better decisions and to use this kind of Environmental, Social, and Governance factors (ESG) screening for deforestation.

See Part 2: Smallholders Key to Indonesian Deforestation Successes

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Cocoa farmers in Padre Abad in Ucayali, Peru, benefitted from UNDP support to produce sustainable cocoa. Credit: UNDP

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, Apr 26 2023 (IPS)

In 2015, just over 30 cocoa farmers from Padre Abad in Ucayali, a province in the lush and ecologically diverse Peruvian Amazon, formed an alliance to tackle long-standing concerns such as soil quality, access to markets, fair prices for their produce and a growing number of illegal plantations. The result was the Colpa de Loros Cooperative, and from the start, the goal was to produce the finest quality, export-ready cocoa.

Membership would grow to over 500 partners covering 200 hectares of land today.

For almost four years, the cooperative’s small producers worked tirelessly on the transition of the area from traditional but environmentally taxing cocoa harvesting to growing premium cocoa that could meet export demand in the chocolate industry. This was no easy feat, as fine-flavor cocoa production demanded significant investment in technical training for members, initiatives to monitor deforestation, and data systems to ensure cocoa traceability, production, and sales. On the education side, it demanded a change from centuries-long cocoa farming practices to the principles of agroecology.

Then in April 2023, as the farmers worked to meet demanding international certifications, the European Parliament passed a new law introducing rigorous, wide-ranging requirements on commodities such as palm oil, soy, beef, and cocoa. Now the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is researching how it should step up its assistance to producers to meet the new criteria.

New EU Requirements

Colpa de Loros sells 100 percent of its cocoa to a European buyer, the French company Kaoka. When word of the new European regulations hit, the cooperative had already achieved organic production and fair-trade certification. It had also attained ‘fair for life’ certification, a Kaoka-led initiative.

Attaining these credentials meant that members had been working on a blueprint for environmentally friendly agriculture systems. However, for Peru, the world’s third largest cocoa supplier to Europe, the new regulations triggered frenetic action to maintain contracts with buyers and protect the almost 100,000 small producers who depend on cocoa exports to sustain their households.

“The law affects not only Colpa de Loros, but all producers,’ said Ernesto Parra, Manager of Colpa de Loros Cooperative.

“We already have laws which require analysis of pesticides, which makes costs higher. To ensure compliance with this rule, they implement measures like regular audits. Every grain must be free of contamination. There are organizations bigger than Colpa that are experiencing difficulties to respond, and no actions have been taken by the government to support them,” he said.

The European Commission has now also introduced new forest conservation and restoration rules. The Commission said the deforestation regulation would promote EU consumption of deforestation-free supply chain products, encourage international cooperation to tackle forest degradation, reroute finance to aid sustainable land-use practices, and support the collection and availability of quality data on forests and commodity supply chains.

Parra says this commitment to the environment complements the cooperative’s core values.

“The cooperative aligns with this green pact signed by all actors in Europe to not buy chocolate from deforested areas or involving child or forced work. They not only promote the protection of the environment, but reforestation, land protection, recycling programmes, and biogas from cacao liquid. We agree that cocoa can’t come from deforested areas or make new plantations in protected areas.”

While the cooperative is firm in its environmental consciousness, Parra says the investment is needed in educational activities and technical support for rural farmers who are struggling to accept the realities of land degradation and climate change.

“Some of them are still burning forests. Organizations need to convince the base of producers and farmers to change. Not only their partners but all people in the communities. Incentives can help. For example, I can be carbon neutral, but I’m going to have a higher cost, and if the market does not recognize it, if I don’t have an incentive, the standard will be difficult to maintain. Our cooperative gives its own incentives: those who commit to the organic certification receive fertilizer produced by Colpa de Loros to increase production.

“It is a start, but this is not enough. The state or the market needs to offer incentives as well.”

UNDP Support – and Good Growth Partnership Scoping

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been working with the world’s commodity-producing countries to put sustainability at the center of supply chains.

For the past five years, its Good Growth Partnership (GGP), based on the tenets of the Sustainable Development Goals and funded by the Global Environment Facility, has struck a balance between livelihoods and environmental protection—prioritizing people and the planet.

From Brazil to Indonesia, the GGP has embraced an Integrated Approach, working with producers, traders, policymakers, financial institutions, and multinational corporations to build sustainability in soy, beef, and palm oil supply chains.

Peru has so far not been covered by GGP but is being scoped for possible assistance under a next phase of the programme.

In the meantime, the UN agency has been supporting Peru to achieve sustainable commodity production- a target that remains crucial in the face of the new EU regulation.

“The control and monitoring of all production processes had to be doubled, and UNDP is vital here. With its finance, the technical department was strengthened, agricultural technology was incorporated, and members received capacity building in sustainability and food security,” said Parra.

Each member of Colpa de Loros is responsible for 3-4 hectares of land. The GEF-financed Sustainable Productive Landscapes (SPL) in the Peruvian Amazon project, led by the Ministry of Environment with technical assistance from UNDP, has been supporting projects that enhance food production while protecting water and land resources.

“The organization’s cocoa is not conventional cocoa. It is a fine aroma cocoa. So, producers needed equipment for special analysis. Then all information needed to be organized in a digital platform. UNDP helped in these areas,’ he added.

“The GEF-financed SPL project provided US$150,000 to complement the work of the organization with maps, digital platforms, and traceability. As there is no global system of traceability, Colpa is using its own, which is expensive.”

Action Plans

The UN organization, working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture, has also been assisting the Government and industry partners to develop and implement national action plans for the cocoa and coffee sectors. The Peruvian National Plan for Cocoa and Chocolate was unveiled in November 2022. It breaks down divisions between production, demand, and finance issues in agriculture. It also contains clear strategies to increase sustainability based on science, technology, and tradition.

The plan complements the values of UNDP and represents a win for both farmers and the environment.

“It is important to recognize that many Peruvian farmers’ cooperatives and companies, regardless of the EU regulation, are concerned about the potential impacts of their production systems on the environment, and they are increasingly conscious of the impacts that climate change is having on their production systems,” said James Leslie, Technical Advisor Ecosystems and Climate Change at UNDP Peru.

“Now, the concern is the feasibility of complying with the EU regulation and in the timeframe required. This concern is directly related to the fact that the EU markets are important for Peruvian agricultural products, particularly coffee, and cocoa. There is a concern that with the new EU regulation, there can be restricted or more challenging access to the market.”

The UNDP official says meeting stringent sustainable production requirements comes at a hefty cost to owners of small and medium-sized farms.

“There is not necessarily a price premium for their products due to certification,” he said. Incentives are a key factor in GGP’s work in encouraging farmers to adopt sustainable practices.

“It’s important also to recognize that there is a difference within the farmer population. Some farmers are organized and are part of cooperatives. For example, roughly 20 percent of cocoa and coffee farmers are organized in some way, which means that 80 per cent are not. Those unorganized farmers are less likely to be certified, and they are less likely to be accessing stable markets that provide some price guarantee.”

According to the UNDP, Peru ranks 9 in the world’s top ten cocoa producers and tops the world in organic cocoa production. The majority of farmers are small-scale and medium scale. Leslie says many of these farmers are either living in poverty or vulnerable to falling below the poverty line.

“Add to that additional restrictions and costs in order to access markets, and it poses a risk for these farmers—for their wellbeing and livelihoods,” he said.

The Future of Sustainable Agriculture

Looking ahead, Leslie says access to traceability systems is important. The farmers will need to prove that their production has met the EU requirements.

He says the Government will also need to expand technical assistance, increase investment in science and technology, including the purchase of climate change-resistant crop varieties, and ensure that farmers can receive finance aligned with the EU regulation’s sustainability criteria.

Clear land use policies will also be needed to delineate land that is appropriate for agriculture and particular types of crops. Areas that must be regenerated should be clearly marked, along with those that should be conserved, such as watersheds and zones of high biodiversity value.

For Colpa de Loros, Parra says the goal must be to strike a balance between sustainable land use and livelihoods.

“For deforestation, there is a big relation to poverty. The majority of the time a producer cuts down a tree, it’s because of need.”

He says the challenge is to create a supply chain that is sustainable, competitive, and inclusive – a goal that is attainable with adequate support and buy-in from every link in the value chain.

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