Africa

Prime Minister Oury Bah pays tribute to the victims and announces an inquiry into the "tragic" disaster.

Joe Biden will highlight a massive new railway project to help transport critical minerals to the US.

Venâncio Mondlane tells the BBC that demonstrations could force the ruling party into negotiations.

Uganda is facing condemnation following the arrest of the veteran politician while in Kenya.

Uganda is facing condemnation following the arrest of the veteran politician while in Kenya.

Uganda is facing condemnation following the arrest of the veteran politician while in Kenya.

Mixed-race children were forcibly removed from their families under a state policy in the 1940s.

Former Chelsea midfielder Michael Essien on coaching in Denmark and learning from Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti.

Abdul Nondo's alleged kidnapping follows the abduction and killing of another opposition figure in September.

Credit: Great Blue Wall

By James A Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Dec 2 2024 (IPS)

The Ocean is our life source, but for decades it has been repeatedly marred by humankind. With the disposal of pollutants into the Ocean, overexploitation of Ocean resources and the human-driven increase of global temperatures, the Ocean is changing and not for the better. Our Oceans are warming, corals are dying, fish stocks are declining, toxic chemicals are being released into the Ocean – these eAects are clearly visible today, but there is hope. There are organisations from all around the world that are fighting to save our Ocean.

James A Michel

Backed by coastal communities, governments, the private sector, NGOs and donors, is a growing global multi-stakeholder partnership led and driven by the global south. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Great Blue Wall Initiative stands out as a first-of-its-kind eAort to create a connected network of protected marine areas to combat climate change and global warming in the Western Indian Ocean. It is a roadmap which spearheads the establishment of a connected network of regenerative seascapes. This network will be connected by a living blue wall that will act as a regional ecological corridor formed by conserved and restored critical blue ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrasses, corals and coastal forests.

Whilst the Great Blue Wall will act as a wall against climate change impacts and biodiversity loss, it will also protect coastal communities, their culture and livelihoods, and create the enabling conditions and necessary mechanisms to accelerate the development of a regenerative blue economy. By 2023, the Great Blue Wall will equitably and eAectively protect, conserve and manage at least two million km square of the Ocean; it will support the achivement of a net-gain of biodiveristy by conserving and restoring at least two million hectares of critical ecosystems and sequester more than one hundred million tons of carbon; and it will unlock regenerative livelihood opportunities and create at least two million blue jobs, whilst advocating and providing support to countries in the global south.

At the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Glasgow in 2021, I delivered the opening speech at the Launch of the Great Blue Wall Initiative. There, I urged all countries to continue presenting a strong common front and work together turning ambitions into concrete actions to unleash the potentials of the Blue Economy, and called on countries and organisations with resources to partner with us on this journey to promote and develop an inclusive nature-people blue economy architecture based on the Great Blue Wall, unlocking the full potential of the development of the blue economy driven by conservation and regeneration.

Since its launch, the Great Blue Wall has achieved many milestones:

Credit: Great Blue Wall

Through these milestones, the Great Blue Wall promises to deliver. It promises to accelerate and upscale ocean conservation actions while enhancing socio-ecological resilience and the development of a regenerative blue economy by catalysing political leadership and financial support.

When I was first presented with this initiative, I was immediately convinced of its uniqueness, its purpose, the outcomes it aims to achieve and the nature-people relationship it is seeking to re-establish and strengthen. So, I pledged my full support to the Great Blue Wall and have promoted it ever since. In November 2024, I was appointed as a High-Level Champion of the Great Blue Wall at the 29th meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. And during this conference, it was also announced that the Great Blue Wall will be partnering with the ODISEA expedition on an expedition to explore and protect biodiversity in the Western Indian Ocean. In this press conference I was moved by the words of Thomas Sberna, IUCN Regional Head Coastal and Ocean Resilience of Eastern and Southern Africa:

“[This expendition] is about giving a voice to the unheard and bringing a light to the unseen. It’s about telling their stories. It’s about enabling them to produce the science that will inform their decisions and unveiling the local knowledge that will guide their actions. This expedition will bear witness and be an actor in what will be remembered as the Rise of our Blue Guardians.”

Today, many people are taking ownership of their responisibilty of the future of the Ocean behalf of present and future generations. Today, the Blue Economy is seen as a driver of conservation and development and we are unlocking its full potential. It can be sustainable. It can be regenerative. It can be people-centred.

To guide its development and implementation, and to achieve its goals, the Great Blue Wall is based on a premise of three key pillars – regenerative seascapes, climate change and a regenerative blue economy – to create resilient systems built upon strengthening connectivity and diversity at all levels and of all nature.

Credit: Great Blue Wall

Fourteen years ago, I saw the architecture of the blue economy concept as the savior of our planet. Today, this reality is being talked about in all countries around the world. There is an ecological imbalance in the Ocean and its eAects are reaching us. It is important for all of us to remember that our relationship with the Ocean is one of reciprocity. Whilst we are dependent on it for our survival, it depends on us to ensure it is able to continue to provide for us.

James Alix Michel, former President of Seychelles.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The 16th session of the Conference of Parties (COP 16) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) will take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 2 to 13 Dec. 2024

By UN Department of Global Communications
RIYADH Saudi Arabia, Dec 2 2024 (IPS)

A major new scientific report was launched December 1, a day ahead of the opening of the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP16).

The report charts an urgent course correction for how the world grows food and uses land in order to avoid irretrievably compromising Earth’s capacity to support human and environmental wellbeing.

Produced under the leadership of Professor Johan Rockström at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in collaboration UNCCD, the report, titled Stepping back from the precipice: Transforming land management to stay within planetary boundaries, was launched as nearly 200 countries convene for COP16 starting on Monday, 2 December in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The report draws on roughly 350 information sources to examine land degradation and opportunities to act from a planetary boundaries’ perspective. It underlines that land is the foundation of Earth’s stability and regulates climate, preserves biodiversity, maintains freshwater systems and provides life-giving resources including food, water and raw materials.

It outlines how deforestation, urbanization and unsustainable farming are causing global land degradation at an unprecedented scale, threatening not only different Earth system components but human survival itself.

The deterioration of forests and soils further undermines Earth’s capacity to cope with the climate and biodiversity crises, which in turn accelerate land degradation in a vicious, downward cycle of impacts.

“If we fail to acknowledge the pivotal role of land and take appropriate action, the consequences will ripple through every aspect of life and extend well into the future, intensifying difficulties for future generations,” said UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw.

According to the UNCCD, the global area impacted by land degradation – approx. 15 million km², more than the entire continent of Antarctica or nearly the size of Russia – is expanding each year by about a million square km.

Planetary boundaries
The report situates both problems and potential solutions related to land use within the scientific framework of the planetary boundaries, which has rapidly gained policy relevance since its unveiling 15 years ago.

“The aim of the planetary boundaries framework is to provide a measure for achieving human wellbeing within Earth’s ecological limits,” said Johan Rockström, lead author of the seminal study introducing the concept in 2009. “We stand at a precipice and must decide whether to step back and take transformative action, or continue on a path of irreversible environmental change,” he adds.

The planetary boundaries define nine critical thresholds essential for maintaining Earth’s stability. The report talks about how humanity uses or abuses land directly impacts seven of these, including climate change, species loss and ecosystem viability, freshwater systems and the circulation of naturally occurring elements nitrogen and phosphorus. Change in land use is also a planetary boundary.

Six boundaries have already been breached to date, and two more are close to their thresholds: ocean acidification and the concentration of aerosols in the atmosphere. Only stratospheric ozone – the object of a 1989 treaty to reduce ozone-depleting chemicals – is firmly within its “safe operating space”.

Unsustainable agricultural practices
Conventional agriculture is the leading culprit of land degradation according to the report, contributing to deforestation, soil erosion and pollution. Unsustainable irrigation practices deplete freshwater resources, while excessive use of nitrogen- and phosphorus-based fertilizers destabilize ecosystems.

Degraded soils lower crop yields and nutritional quality, directly impacting the livelihoods of vulnerable populations. Secondary effects include greater dependency on chemical inputs and increased land conversion for farming.

Climate change
Meanwhile, climate change – which has long since breached its own planetary boundary – accelerates land degradation through extreme weather events, prolonged droughts, and intensified floods. Melting mountain glaciers and altered water cycles heighten vulnerabilities, especially in arid regions. Rapid urbanization intensifies these challenges, contributing to habitat destruction, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

The report also states that land ecosystems absorbed nearly one third of human-caused CO₂ pollution, even as those emissions increased by half. Over the last decade, however, deforestation and climate change have reduced by 20% the capacity of trees and soil to absorb excess CO₂.

Transformative action
According to the report, transformative action to combat land degradation is needed to ensure a return to the safe operating space for the land-based planetary boundaries. Just as the planetary boundaries are interconnected, so must be the actions to prevent or slow their transgression.

Principles of fairness and justice are key when designing and implementing transformative actions to stop land degradation, ensuring that benefits and burdens are equitably distributed.

Agriculture reform, soil protection, water resource management, digital solutions, sustainable or “green” supply chains, equitable land governance along with the protection and restoration of forests, grasslands, savannas and peatlands are crucial for halting and reversing land and soil degradation.

From 2013 to 2018, more than half-a-trillion dollars were spent on agricultural subsidies across 88 countries, a report by FAO, UNDP and UNEP found in 2021. Nearly 90% went to inefficient, unfair practices that harmed the environment, according to that report.

New technologies
The report also recognizes that new technologies coupled with big data and artificial intelligence have made possible innovations such as precision farming, remote sensing and drones that detect and combat land degradation in real time. Benefits likewise accrue from the precise application of water, nutrients and pesticides, along with early pest and disease detection.

It mentions the free app Plantix, available in 18 languages, that can detect nearly 700 pests and diseases on more than 80 different crops. Improved solar cookstoves can provide households with additional income sources and improve livelihoods, while reducing reliance on forest resources.

Numerous multilateral agreements on land-system change exist but have largely failed to deliver. The Glasgow Declaration to halt deforestation and land degradation by 2030 was signed by 145 countries at the Glasgow climate summit in 2021, but deforestation has increased since then.

Some key findings include:
Land degradation is undermining Earth’s capacity to sustain humanity;
Failure to reverse it will pose challenges for generations;
Seven of nine planetary boundaries are negatively impacted by unsustainable land use, highlighting land’s central role in Earth systems;
Agriculture accounts for 23% of greenhouse gas emissions, 80% of deforestation, 70% of freshwater use;
Forest loss and impoverished soils drive hunger, migration and conflicts;
Transformation of land use critical for humanity to thrive within environmental limits
Read the full press release with more facts and figures in all official languages, as well as with daily media updates: https://www.unccd.int/news-stories/press-releases

The COP is the main decision-making body of UNCCD’s 197 Parties – 196 countries and the European Union. UNCCD, the global voice for land, is one of three major UN treaties known as the Rio Conventions, alongside climate and biodiversity, which recently concluded their COP meetings in Baku, Azerbaijan and Cali, Colombia respectively.

Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of UNCCD, COP 16 will be the largest UN land conference to date, and the first UNCCD COP held in the Middle East and North Africa region, which knows first-hand the impacts of desertification, land degradation and drought. COP 16 marks a renewed global commitment to accelerate investment and action to restore land and boost drought resilience for the benefit of people and planet.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Massacres scar the Sudanese town of el-Geneina, now a near-empty city as the 19-month war grinds on.

Massacres scar the Sudanese town of el-Geneina, now a near-empty city as the 19-month war grinds on.

Massacres scar the Sudanese town of el-Geneina, now a near-empty city as the 19-month war grinds on.

Credit: US National Archives

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 2 2024 (IPS)

If and when the devastating military conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza come to an end, the ultimate winners will not be the Russians, the Americans or the Israelis but the world’s arms manufacturers—contemptuously described as “merchants of death”.

And so will be the winners in a rash of conflicts and civil wars in Syria, Myanmar, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan.

The latest report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) points out revenues from sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies in the industry reached $632 billion in 2023, a real-terms increase of 4.2 per cent compared with 2022.

The new data, released December 2, says arms revenue increases were seen in all regions, with particularly sharp rises among companies based in Russia and the Middle East.

Overall, smaller producers were more efficient at responding to new demand linked to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, growing tensions in East Asia and rearmament programmes elsewhere.

In 2023, according to SIPRI, many arms producers ramped up their production in response to surging demand. The total arms revenues of the Top 100 bounced back after a dip in 2022.

Almost three quarters of companies increased their arms revenues year-on-year. Notably, most of the companies that increased their revenues were in the lower half of the Top 100.

“There was a marked rise in arms revenues in 2023, and this is likely to continue in 2024,” predicted Lorenzo Scarazzato, a Researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

“The arms revenues of the Top 100 arms producers still did not fully reflect the scale of demand, and many companies have launched recruitment drives, suggesting they are optimistic about future sales,” he said.

Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO, the Center for Victims of Torture, told IPS the number of people in the world displaced by persecution, conflict and atrocities has more than tripled in the past decade to over 120 million.

The people who have gained the most from this expansion in human misery, he said, are the war criminals, torturers and human rights violators of the world.

“But they can’t survive without the weapons manufacturers who arm and enable them. And it is the arms manufacturers who have directly profited the most”.

“Wherever we see civilian suffering, bombed buildings, death and destruction in the world, there is some arms trader who sees a fresh business opportunity and increased profit margins.”

This is an industry whose economic livelihood is bloodshed,” declared Dr Adams.

In an article titled “War Profiteering” in the July issue of The Nation, David Vine and Theresa Arriola single out the five biggest US companies thriving off the war industry: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing and General Dynamics.

And it was US President Dwight Eisenhower, who in 1961, warned Americans about the might of the “military industrial complex” (MIC) in the US.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, cited in the article, “the MIC has sowed incomprehensible destruction globally, keeping the United States locked in endless wars that, since 2001, have killed an estimated 4.5 million people, injured many millions more, and displaced at least 38 million.”

Dr M.V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and Graduate Program Director, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told IPS the latest statistics published by SIPRI shows how military industries and investors in these producers of the means of killing and maiming people are thriving economically even as their role in perpetuating slaughter of civilian populations and the violation of the human rights among peoples in multiple countries becomes clearer by the day.

“Leading this ignominious list is the United States, which sells roughly half of all the weapons sold; the top five arms merchants are U.S. companies, which together account for around a third of all sales.”

This state of affairs, he argued, is tragic, not only because of the human toll extracted by these weapons in places around the world, ranging from Gaza and Lebanon to Ukraine, but also because this money could be used to meet pressing human needs around the world.

To offer but one example, the United Nations World Food Program, he said, estimates that it would cost $40 billion every year “to feed all of the world’s hungry people and end global hunger by 2030”.

That’s less than 40 percent of the revenues of the top two corporations involved in the arms business. In all, the data meticulously produced year after year by SIPRI is a really sad commentary on the priorities of governments and powerful institutions that control decisions on spending, Dr Ramana declared.

According to SIPRI, the 41 companies in the Top 100 based in the United States recorded arms revenues of $317 billion, half the total arms revenues of the Top 100 and 2.5 per cent more than in 2022. Since 2018, the top five companies in the Top 100 have all been based in the USA.

Of the 41 US companies, 30 increased their arms revenues in 2023. However, Lockheed Martin and RTX, the world’s two largest arms producers, were among those registering a drop.

‘Larger companies like Lockheed Martin and RTX, manufacturing a wide range of arms products, often depend on complex, multi-tiered supply chains, which made them vulnerable to lingering supply chain challenges in 2023,’ said Dr Nan Tian, Director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. ‘This was particularly the case in the aeronautics and missile sectors.’

Meanwhile, the combined arms revenues of the 27 Top 100 companies based in Europe (excluding Russia) totalled $133 billion in 2023. This was only 0.2 per cent more than in 2022, the smallest increase in any world region.

However, behind the low growth figure the picture is more nuanced. European arms companies producing complex weapon systems were mostly working on older contracts during 2023 and their revenues for the year consequently do not reflect the influx of orders.

‘Complex weapon systems have longer lead times,’ said Scarazzato. ‘Companies that produce them are thus inherently slower in reacting to changes in demand. That explains why their arms revenues were relatively low in 2023, despite a surge in new orders.’

At the same time, a number of other European producers saw their arms revenues grow substantially, driven by demand linked to the war in Ukraine, particularly for ammunition, artillery and air defence and land systems.

Notably, companies in Germany, Sweden, Ukraine, Poland, Norway and Czechia were able to tap into this demand. For instance, Germany’s Rheinmetall increased production capacity of 155-mm ammunition and its revenues were boosted by deliveries of its Leopard tanks and new orders, including through war-related ‘ring-exchange’ programmes (under which countries supply military goods to Ukraine and receive replacements from allies).

The SIPRI Arms Industry Database, which presents a more detailed data set for the years 2002–23, is available on SIPRI’s website at <https://www.sipri.org/databases/armsindustry>.

Thalif Deen is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; and military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group. He is author of the 2021 book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote me on That” available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The Peace Palace housing the International Court of Justice. The court today will begin hearings into the responsibilities of UN member states with regard to climate change. Credit: ICJ

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 2 2024 (IPS)

The intersection of law, diplomacy, and science will come under the spotlight at the International Court of Justice hearings starting today (Monday, December 2, 2024) in The Hague as the court starts its deliberations into the obligations under international law of UN member states to protect people and ecosystems from climate change.

The case was started by the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) with the support of Ishmael Kalsakau, the then prime minister of the Pacific island of Vanuatu. Now Vanautu will be the first of 98 countries that will make presentations during the fortnight of hearings, after which the court will give an advisory opinion.

Grace Malie, Tuvalu youth and climate activist speaking at COP29 in Baku, says the advisory opinion will set a “baseline that cannot be ignored,” especially for the youth in climate change-affected countries.

Tuvalu, a small low-lying atoll nation, faces an uncertain future due to sea level rise and it is estimated that by 2050 half the land area of the capital will be flooded by tidal waters. While it has ambitious adaptation plans, it also has developed a Te Ataeao Nei project (Future Now) that outlines how it will manage statehood should it face the worst-case scenario and sink due to rising sea levels.

“What this means for Pacific youth is that climate talks can no longer dismiss our existential concerns as negotiable.” It will foster an environment that secures the islands as “thriving” and “resilient,” rather than as “distant” memories.

The ruling, she believes, will secure the Pacific’s youths’ rights, including to remain rooted in culture, land, and heritage as protected by international law.

The ICJ’s hearings and advisory opinion are unique in that they do not focus solely on a single aspect of international law. Instead, they include the UN Charter, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the duty of due diligence, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the principle of prevention of significant harm to the environment, and the duty to protect and preserve marine environments.

The court will give its opinion on the obligations of states under international law to ensure the protection of the climate system for present and future generations.

It will also consider the legal consequences of causing significant harm to the climate system and the environment and its impact on other states, including “small island developing states (SIDS), which are affected by climate change, and peoples and individuals, both present and future generations, affected by the adverse effects of climate change.”

Attorney General Graham Leung of Fiji says the court isn’t a substitute for negotiations, which are complex and painstakingly slow.

“The ICJ opinion will be precedent-setting. That is to say it will cover and discuss and analyze the legal issues and the scientific issues, and it will come to a very, very important or authoritative decision that will carry great moral weight.

While the court doesn’t have enforcement rights and while it won’t be legally binding, it will work through moral persuasion.

“It’s going to be a very brave country that will stand up against an advisory opinion on the International Court of Justice, because if you are in that minority that violates the opinion of the court, you can be regarded as a pariah or as an outlaw in the international community.”

The hearings come as the outcome of the COP29 negotiations was met with criticism, especially with regard to the financing of the impacts of climate change.

Ahead of the hearings, WWF Global Climate and Energy Lead and COP20 President Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said, “With most countries falling far short of their obligations to reduce emissions and protect and restore nature, this advisory opinion has the potential to send a powerful legal signal that states cannot ignore their legal duties to act.”

Other criticisms of the present status quo include a belief that the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are inadequate, and climate finance, intended as a polluter pays mechanism, has failed to reach those most affected, with, for example, the Pacific countries only receiving 0.2 percent of the USD 100 billion a year climate finance pledge.

Cristelle Pratt, Assistant Secretary General of the Organization of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS), , agrees that the court’s decision will make it easier to negotiate on climate finance and loss and damage provisions by making that clearer.

It’s expected the ICJ to publish its final advisory opinion in 2025.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Youth and climate activists believe that the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion will send a powerful legal signal that UN member states cannot ignore their legal duties to act and protect the environment against climate change.

Olympic champions Letsile Tebogo and Sifan Hassan are named male and female athlete of the year at the World Athletics Awards.

Abdul Nondo's reported kidnapping follows the abduction and killing of another opposition figure in September.

This is the latest incident on the country's inland waterways where regulations are rarely enforced.

Presidential candidate Panduleni Itula alleges electoral malpractice after voting was extended.