Feed aggregator

Alors que l'Espagne lutte contre les pires incendies depuis des décennies, la pression politique s'accentue sur le Premier ministre Pedro Sánchez, qui fait déjà face à une vague de scandales de corruption.

The post Pedro Sánchez sous le feu des critiques alors que les incendies et les scandales font rage en Espagne appeared first on Euractiv FR.

By Sudiksha Battineni
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

Chad is one of the most extreme examples of energy poverty, with just 10% of the population connected to electricity, a rural electrification rate below 2%, and a global per capita electricity consumption rate that’s just 18% of the global average. This hinders its economic development.

So does its rapid population growth. Chad has one of the world’s fastest-growing populations; its 21 million people are expected to more than triple by the end of the century. Chad’s low educational attainment, with 38% of girls completed primary school, coupled with high rates of child marriage and fertility also pose problems for its development.

The World Bank is working on some of these fronts, including announcing a new agreement that will strengthen Chad’s education system, and launching Mission 300 in partnership with the African Development Bank to connect 300 million more people in Africa to electricity by 2030.

But these issues are all linked and can only be solved when they aren’t siloed. Affordable, clean energy for all is Sustainable Development Goal 7, which also relates to SDG 5, gender equity and women’s empowerment, which is preerequisite for lowering fertility and slowing population growth. Energy access is also interwoven with education (SDG 4), ending poverty (SDG 1), promoting health (SDG 3), fighting climate change (SDG 13), and the entire SDG agenda.

For example, energy poverty keeps hospitals from storing vaccines, people from starting businesses, and children from studying after sunset. It exacerbates the very inequalities that education seeks to combat, particularly gender inequality.

As a holistic way to redress it, women activists in energy-poor countries are promoting “feminist electrification” — explicitly designing energy investments to empower women as economic actors and consumers. This could include integrating family planning into energy rollouts, investing in women’s education, training, and leadership development, and including them in energy planning.

This perspective is currently lacking in Mission 300’s “energy compacts” — voluntary commitments outlining how countries, companies, and organizations affordable and clean energy for all. Chad’s National Energy Compact calls for adding connections for over 14 million more people, raising electricity access from 11% to 90% by 2030, achieving 46% access to clean cooking solutions by 2030, boosting renewables to 30% of total electricity generation, adding 866 MW of new capacity, and mobilizing $650.3 million in total investments, about one-third from the private sector.

The Compact addresses infrastructure, private sector engagement, and regulatory reform, but overlooks critical human dimensions of energy, including its intersection with gender equality and population growth.

For example, Chad’s high fertility rates result in large household sizes and increased energy demand for cooking, lighting, and other activities. Women manage most of the domestic energy needs, yet they generally aren’t part of energy decision-making.

Nearly all Chad’s rural households rely on wood for cooking, which devastates forests and exposes families to indoor air pollution that contributes to respiratory diseases. Clean cooking solutions, like LPG stoves or electric induction cookers, could transform these risks. But only if women can access, afford, and trust them.

Unmet family planning needs are accelerating Chad’s rapid population growth, which threatens to swamp any gains in energy access. With little education and few economic options, 61% of girls get married by age 18, part of the reason for Chad’s sky-high total fertility rate of 5.14 births per woman.

Fast population growth accelerates urban sprawl, drives deforestation for charcoal production, and makes it harder to extend grid infrastructure to meet energy demands.

For all these reasons, family planning and energy planning are connected. Chad can’t meet its Energy Compact targets without also setting and meeting goals for family planning and empowering women.

Feminist electrification would provide women with vocational training in solar installation, electric stove sales and maintenance, ensuring that clean energy solutions reach households while creating jobs for women and opportunity for self-determination, which universally tends to lower fertility rates. It would further the Compact’s goals of expanding decentralized renewable energy and fostering private investment by extending them to women.

Chad should revise its National Energy Compact to include a specific gender and demographics integration plan. It should require gender impact assessments for all new energy projects, track energy access outcomes by gender and income, and link electrification operations directly with family planning, health, and women’s economic empowerment initiatives.

Energy access is not just about how many kilowatts get generated; it’s about the human realities behind the numbers, and who shares the benefits of electricity. True access means that a woman in rural Chad can flip a switch, cook cleanly, breathe safely, and choose the size of her family.

That’s the kind of power Africa needs.

Sudiksha Battineni is a rising sophomore at Duke University and a Stanback Fellow at the Population Institute

IPS UN Bureau

 

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

Le Luxembourg dispose de troupes situées sur le flanc oriental de l'OTAN, en Lituanie et en Roumanie, mais un déploiement de forces en Ukraine solliciterait trop leurs capacités, selon la ministre de la Défense Yuriko Backes.

The post Le Luxembourg n’enverra pas de troupes en Ukraine appeared first on Euractiv FR.

The United States is pressuring developing countries to make a binary choice without making itself a better choice.

Nuclear weapons remain central to the Kremlin’s playbook of intimidation and coercion. And in the grey zone between conventional war and full-scale nuclear conflict, Russia has options – NATO has far fewer

Security services are monitoring the movement, though a source familiar with the matter said there is no current indication of foreign influence

Nigerians made their mark during this year's Love Island USA - but it caused tensions within the fanbase.

Over the past three years, Russian state-backed news channel RT has expanded its international presence.

South Africa comfortably beat Brazil in Northampton, but the Women's Rugby World Cup debutants show "rugby matters" to Brazilians.

The Commission president called the deal solid although imperfect

Les autorités du Burkina Faso ont mis fin aux activités menées par Target Malaria dans leur pays pour réduire la propagation du paludisme à l'aide de moustiques mâles génétiquement modifiés, l'organisme de recherche assurant, pour sa part, être toujours « disposé à coopérer » avec cet État d'Afrique de l'Ouest.

Kenya's Geoffrey Kamworor and Ethiopia's Mizan Alem claim comfortable wins in the Antrim Coast Half Marathon men's and women's events on Sunday.

Canada's Mark Carney, US envoy Keith Kellogg among those in Kyiv to mark Ukraine's independence amid ongoing war

Essays and insider accounts on the secret history of the agency.

Spanish authorities said this month’s heatwave was the country's most severe on record

Trump is pushing for peace talks, but Russia's chief diplomat is blaming others for holding up a summit

The biggest logistical hurdle for would-be hosts remains the ICC arrest warrant against Putin

by Emilio Del Pupo (University of Helsinki)

What does sustainability really mean in EU trade deals—and who gets to define it?

Ever since the EU and Mercosur began negotiating a new trade agreement in 1995, one group has made its opposition heard loud and clear: European farmers. But instead of sticking to opposing the deal with old-school protectionist arguments, over time many agri-food groups began speaking a new language—one filled with concerns about the environment, animal welfare, food safety, and even climate justice.

In a new article for the Journal of Common Market Studies, I explore how agricultural lobbies strategically used sustainability arguments to push back against trade liberalisation. This wasn’t just greenwashing. It was a calculated effort to adapt to a new political environment where EU trade policy is more transparent, more contested, and more responsive to public opinion than ever before.

Since the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament holds formal powers over trade agreements, meaning that in theory the Commission can no longer ignore political pressure during negotiations. The effects have been far-reaching. Trade deals like the EU-Mercosur Association Agreement (EMAA) have become flashpoints for broader debates about environmental standards, democratic accountability, and the global responsibilities of European trade.

During the EMAA negotiations, European farming groups—traditionally seen as defenders of the status quo in matters such as the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—shifted their discursive strategies. They began calling for mirror clauses, which would ensure that imported products meet the same standards as domestic ones. They invoked the idea of food sovereignty, arguing that European producers should not be undercut by imports from regions with weaker regulations. And they linked their cause to popular environmental concerns—warning that ratifying the deal would accelerate deforestation, worsen climate change, and undermine the EU’s Green Deal ambitions.

In short, they reframed protectionism as sustainability.

From Exceptionalism to Post-Exceptionalism (or not quite)

This discursive turn reflects a broader shift in how agricultural interests operate in EU politics. In the past, these groups often relied on arguments about food security, cultural identity, or rural livelihoods to justify continued subsidies and market protections. Today, many still want to preserve those benefits—but they’re doing so by speaking the language of sustainability and ethical trade.

This shift is part of what scholars call an incomplete move from agricultural “exceptionalism” to “post-exceptionalism.” Under the old model, agriculture was treated as a special sector—shielded from market competition because of its social and strategic value. That model has been challenged by growing public awareness of climate change, biodiversity loss, and the environmental impact of industrial farming. In response, many farmers are now repositioning themselves: not as obstacles to sustainability, but as guardians of it (although not without some resistance to these reforms).

And they have found allies in surprising places. Environmental NGOs and agricultural unions—often at odds on the issue of farming subsidies and how they should be utilised—have sometimes formed coalitions to oppose trade agreements. In France, for instance, major farming groups worked alongside green organisations to pressure the government into delaying the ratification of the EMAA. Their shared concerns? Pesticide use, animal welfare, carbon leakage, and the fear that trade liberalisation would erode Europe’s regulatory standards.

Sustainability as a rhetorical battleground

While many of these sustainability arguments are made in good faith, they also serve tactical goals. Drawing on interviews with EU officials, agricultural lobbyists, and civil society representatives—alongside a close analysis of policy documents, stakeholder materials, and media reporting—my research shows that they are often deployed selectively, to block imports, preserve subsidies, or resist regulatory change. Sustainability becomes a kind of discursive currency: a flexible tool used by actors with very different interests to make their claims more politically acceptable.

This has important consequences. It means that sustainability, far from being a settled norm, is a battleground—a contested space where powerful actors shape its meaning to suit their own purposes.

One of the most striking findings in my study is how EU institutions themselves have adapted to this new terrain. The European Commission, facing resistance from both member states and civil society, has proposed an additional sustainability instrument to accompany the EMAA. The European Parliament has issued multiple resolutions stressing the need for stronger environmental and labour provisions. And national governments—particularly France, Germany, and Spain—have invoked domestic concerns to delay or condition support for the agreement.

The Commission has also made other moves in the direction of trying to appease the ire of European farmers, such as offering strengthened protection of the Geographical Indications of agri-food products as a sort of reassurance that the old ways of European agriculture would not be destroyed by the EMAA (the creation of a 1 billion Euro fund, to cushion the impact of the agreement on European agriculture does not hurt either).

These are not just symbolic gestures. They show how politicisation is also changing the way agri-food trade is governed in Europe. Decisions that were once made quietly behind closed doors are once again being contested in public arenas—through parliamentary debates, media campaigns, and transnational advocacy networks, this time with agriculture as the main sticking point.

The EMAA negotiations offer a window into this changing landscape. Through interviews, document analysis, and stakeholder materials, my article traces how sustainability arguments were used, by whom, and to what effect. It shows how politicisation—when understood as a strategic process of meaning-making—can reshape the dynamics of agri-food trade governance, even when formal institutional rules remain largely unchanged.

So what comes next?

The EU is likely to continue embedding sustainability provisions in future trade deals with other agricultural powerhouses—with Indonesia already in the pipeline. But the political meaning of sustainability is unlikely to stay fixed. As long as actors compete to define what “sustainable” trade should look like, its boundaries will remain fluid and contested.

Democratic contestation is essential to making EU trade policy more legitimate and responsive. But it also means we need to stay attentive to how ideas like sustainability are used—and by whom. Just because a policy is framed as “green” does not mean it is progressive. And just because a lobby claims to defend rural livelihoods does not mean its proposals will benefit the public or the planet.

Agri-food politics in the EU have long moved beyond debates over CAP reform and now hang over the fate of this and many more trade agreements to come. Once the tractors start rolling again, the Commission will be ignoring them at their own peril.

Emilio Del Pupo is a doctoral researcher in the Latin American Studies programme at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on EU–Mercosur trade politics, agri-food, and the role of non-state actors in shaping global trade governance. In addition to JCMS, he has previously published in Journal of Civil Society, Globalizations, and National Identities.

The post How EU Farmers Reframed Sustainability in the Mercosur Negotiations appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Les robes conçues et fabriquées en Afrique connaissent un grand succès lors des bals de fin d'année des lycéens aux États-Unis.

La Russie et la Chine sont en tête de la course mondiale aux missiles hypersoniques. Dans quelle mesure devons-nous nous inquiéter du fait que les États-Unis tentent de rattraper leur retard et que le Royaume-Uni n'en possède aucun ?