Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Ndongo Samba Sylla and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
DAKAR and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22 2022 (IPS)

The ongoing plunder of Africa’s natural resources drained by capital flight is holding it back yet again. More African nations face protracted recessions amid mounting debt distress, rubbing salt into deep wounds from the past.

With much less foreign exchange, tax revenue, and policy space to face external shocks, many African governments believe they have little choice but to spend less, or borrow more in foreign currencies.

Ndongo Samba Sylla

Most Africans are struggling to cope with food and energy crises, inflation, higher interest rates, adverse climate events, less health and social provisioning. Unrest is mounting due to deteriorating conditions despite some commodity price increases.

Economic haemorrhage
After ‘lost decades’ from the late 1970s, Africa became one of the world’s fastest growing regions early in the 21st century. Debt relief, a commodity boom and other factors seemed to support the deceptive ‘Africa rising’ narrative.

But instead of long overdue economic transformation, Africa has seen jobless growth, rising economic inequalities and more resource transfers abroad. Capital flight – involving looted resources laundered via foreign banks – has been bleeding the continent.

According to the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, the continent was losing over $50 billion annually. This was mainly due to ‘trade mis-invoicing’ – under-invoicing exports and over-invoicing imports – and fraudulent commercial arrangements.

Transnational corporations (TNCs) and criminal networks account for much of this African economic surplus drain. Resource-rich countries are more vulnerable to plunder, especially where capital accounts have been liberalized.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Externally imposed structural adjustment programs (SAPs), after the early 1980s’ sovereign debt crises, have forced African economies to be even more open – at great economic cost. SAPs have made them more (food) import-dependent while increasing their vulnerability to commodity price shocks and global liquidity flows.

Leonce Ndikumana and his colleagues estimate over 55% of capital flight – defined as illegally acquired or transferred assets – from Africa is from oil-rich nations, with Nigeria alone losing $467 billion during 1970-2018.

Over the same period, Angola lost $103 billion. Its poverty rate rose from 34% to 52% over the past decade, as the poor more than doubled from 7.5 to 16 million.

Oil proceeds have been embezzled by TNCs and Angola’s elite. Abusing her influence, the former president’s daughter, Isabel dos Santos acquired massive wealth. A report found over 400 companies in her business empire, including many in tax havens.

From 1970 to 2018, Côte d’Ivoire lost $55 billion to capital flight. Growing 40% of the world’s cocoa, it gets only 5–7% of global cocoa profits, with farmers getting little. Most cocoa income goes to TNCs, politicians and their collaborators.

Mining giant South Africa (SA) has lost $329 billion to capital flight over the last five decades. Mis-invoicing, other modes of embezzling public resources, and tax evasion augment private wealth hidden in offshore financial centres and tax havens.

Fiscal austerity has slowed job growth and poverty reduction in ‘the most unequal country in the world’. In SA, the richest 10% own over half the nation’s wealth, while the poorest 10% have under 1%!

Resource theft and debt
With this pattern of plunder, resource-rich African countries – that could have accelerated development during the commodity boom – now face debt distress, depreciating currencies and imported inflation, as interest rates are pushed up.

Zambia’s default on its foreign debt obligations in late 2020 has made headlines. But foreign capture of most Zambian copper export proceeds is not acknowledged.

During 2000-2020, total foreign direct investment income from Zambia was twice total debt servicing for external government and government-guaranteed loans. In 2021, the deficit in the ‘primary income’ account (mainly returns to capital) of Zambia’s balance of payments was 12.5% of GDP.

As interest payments on public external debt came to ‘only’ 3.5% of GDP, most of this deficit (9% of GDP) was due to profit and dividend remittances, as well as interest payments on private external debt.

For the IMF, World Bank and ‘creditor nations’, debt ‘restructuring’ is conditional on continuing such plunder! African countries’ worsening foreign indebtedness is partly due to lack of control over export earnings controlled by TNCs, with African elite support.

Resource pillage, involving capital flight, inevitably leads to external debt distress. Invariably, the IMF demands government austerity and opening African economies to TNC interests. Thus, we come full circle, and indeed, it is vicious!

Africa’s wealth plunder dates back to colonial times, and even before, with the Atlantic trade of enslaved Africans. Now, this is enabled by transnational interests crafting international rules, loopholes and all.

Such enablers include various bankers, accountants, lawyers, investment managers, auditors and other wheeler dealers. Thus, the origins of the wealth of ‘high net-worth individuals’, corporations and politicians are disguised, and its transfer abroad ‘laundered’.

What can be done?
Capital flight is not mainly due to ‘normal’ portfolio choices by African investors. Hence, raising returns to investment, e.g., with higher interest rates, is unlikely to stem it. Worse, such policy measures discourage needed domestic investments.

Besides enforcing efficient capital controls, strengthening the capabilities of specialized national agencies – such as customs, financial supervision and anti-corruption bodies – is important.

African governments need stronger rules, legal frameworks and institutions to curb corruption and ensure more effective natural resource management, e.g., by revising bilateral investment treaties and investment codes, besides renegotiating oil, gas, mining and infrastructure contracts.

Records of all investments in extractive industries, tax payments by all involved, and public prosecution should be open, transparent and accountable. Punishment of economic crimes should be strictly enforced with deterrent penalties.

The broader public – especially civil society organizations, local authorities and impacted communities – must also know who and what are involved in extractive industries.

Only an informed public who knows how much is extracted and exported, by whom, what revenue governments get, and their social and environmental effects, can keep corporations and governments in check.

Improving international trade and finance transparency is essential. This requires ending banking secrecy and better regulation of TNCs to curb trade mis-invoicing and transfer pricing, still enabling resource theft and pillage.

OECD rhetoric has long blamed capital flight on offshore tax havens on remote tropical islands. But those in rich countries – such as the UK, US, Switzerland, Netherlands, Singapore and others – are the biggest culprits.

Stopping haemorrhage of African resource plunder by denying refuge for illicit transfers should be a rich country obligation. Automatic exchange of tax-related information should become truly universal to stop trade mis-invoicing, transfer pricing abuses and hiding stolen wealth abroad.

Unitary taxation of transnational corporations can help end tax abuses, including evasion and avoidance. But the OECD’s Inclusive Framework proposals favour their own governments and corporate interests.

Africa is not inherently ‘poor’. Rather, it has been impoverished by fraud and pillage leading to resource transfers abroad. An earnest effort to end this requires recognizing all responsibilities and culpabilities, national and international.

Africa’s veins have been slit open. The centuries-long bleeding must stop.

Dr Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist working at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Dakar. He authored The Fair Trade Scandal. Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich and co-authored Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story. He also edited Economic and Monetary Sovereignty for 21st century Africa, Revolutionary Movements in Africa and Imperialism and the Political Economy of Global South’s Debt. He tweets at @nssylla

IPS UN Bureau

 

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World Children’s Day Statement by ECW Director Yasmine Sherif

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Nov 21 2022 (IPS-Partners)

On World Children’s Day, we must remember what it means to be a child born with a right to reach the human potential. Nothing is more precious, more priceless, than a child growing towards that potential. And nothing is more despicable than to ignore the innocence and learning needs of a child in the process of becoming…

The child’s brain is in constant flux and growth and can move in either direction. The education the child receives from day one onwards – the mind, the heart and the soul – will determine the outcome and prospects for achieving the human potential. Sadly, it would take thousands of years until we finally declared – six decades ago – the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Now, we must realize it.

Children have a right to early childhood development and a right to attend formal school. This is our promise to them as we bring them into the world. Because without them how can we possibly create a better world? Not only are they our world, they are our hope for a better world. They are our promise in materializing all human rights and in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Through early learning and childhood development we prepare them for formal education and for life, itself. By encouraging our daughters, we empower them to become strong girls and young women who will lead the way through the 21st century, so that we can bring an end to the era where women were hidden in the dark.

By allowing our children to rebel, explore and develop their curiosity for learning and knowledge, and by matching that with a quality education, we prepare them to become climate activists who will protect both people and planet, teachers who will kindle a light in their students, nurses and doctors who will save lives, human rights activists who will speak truth to power, scientists and entrepreneurs who will keep our drive for creativity and innovation on fire, and government officials who will lead by ethical imperatives and democratic values.

This is what we promised six decades ago in adopting the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. How can we justify six decades later that we have not yet invested in all of them through a quality education – but instead left millions of them to fend for themselves against sexual violence and rape, child marriage, child labor, extreme poverty, illiteracy, recruitment into armed groups, and other violations against children.

Investing in their education is our investment in resilient economies, strong and peaceful communities and is the most profitable investment in a more just and humane world for generations to come.

Now is our time to act for children everywhere. Now is our time to deliver on our promises of an education, especially for the 222 million girls and boys whose education has been brutally disrupted by armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and protracted crises. Each one has a dream: #222MillionDreams. Each one has a potential and a story to tell. We need their voices to be heard and their dreams to be realized, now more than ever.

The Government of Switzerland and Education Cannot Wait will host ECW’s High-Level Financing Conference on 16-17 February 2023 in Geneva. Co-convened by the Governments of Colombia, Germany, Niger, Norway and South Sudan, the conference will provide global leaders, and public and private sector donors with the opportunity to substantively fund ECW to help ensure every child, everywhere, is able to go to school – especially the 222 million crisis-impacted children and adolescents caught in the world’s toughest contexts who urgently need education support.

As the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW is working to deliver on their 222 million dreams. Our Case for Investment and our 2023-2026 Strategic Plan outline our important contribution to these global commitments.

Children are both the present and the future. They must be heard and they must be seen. Their rights must be honored and their potentials realized. They must be put front and center in our global agenda for sustainable development and our global promise to ensure universal human rights, peace and security. The time has come to invest in education as the very foundation for every child and hence the pillar upon which we build the world we want.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Children from marginalised ethnic, language and religious groups, from 22 low and middle-income countries which were analysed, lag far behind their peers in reading skills. Credit: Brian Moonga/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 21 2022 (IPS)

An indisputable truth is that no child has ever chosen where to be born, which colour of skin to have, which ethnic community to belong to, what religion to practice and language to speak, or how safe or dangerous the context to grow up in. A child is the most innocent and defenceless human being.

Nevertheless, children fall easy prey to all kinds of brutalities, everywhere and every single day. See how.

Racism and discrimination against children based on their ethnicity, language and religion, are rife in countries across the world, stated the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ahead of this year’s World Children’s Day on 20 November.

In its report: Rights denied: The impact of discrimination on children, the world’s largest body defending the rights of children, reveals the staggering impact of discrimination on children and the extent to which racism and discrimination affect their education, health, access to a registered birth, and to a fair and equal justice system.

It also highlights widespread disparities among minority and ethnic groups.

A lifetime of pain: “Systemic racism and discrimination put children at risk of deprivation and exclusion that can last a lifetime,” said UNICEF Executive Director, Catherine Russell. “This hurts us all.”

Ethnicity, language, religion: The report shows that children from marginalised ethnic, language and religious groups, from 22 low and middle-income countries which were analysed, lag far behind their peers in reading skills.

Lagging behind: On average, students aged seven to 14 from the most advantaged group are more than twice as likely to have foundational reading skills than those from the least advantaged group.

A UNICEF analysis of data on the level of children registered at birth – a prerequisite for access to basic rights – found significant disparities among children of different religious and ethnic groups.

Black children are not children: In their reporting to the UN General Assembly, UN Human Rights experts on 8 November 2022 explained how children of African descent ‘not considered children at all, even in the eyes of the law.’

“The unresolved legacies of trade and trafficking in enslaved Africans, as well as colonialism, post-colonial apartheid and segregation, continue to harm these children today.”

Deprivation: Discrimination and exclusion deepen inter-generational deprivation and poverty, and result in poorer health, nutrition and learning outcomes for children, a higher likelihood of incarceration, higher rates of pregnancy among adolescent girls, and lower employment rates and earnings in adulthood.

‘Povertyism,’ humiliation, stigmatisation: Like racism and sexism, ‘povertyism’ should be illegal, said in his recent report to the world body, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier de Schutter.

“People are stereotyped and discriminated against purely because they are poor. This is frankly sickening and a stain on our society.”

No Need to add that children are among the most hurt by impoverishment, humiliation and stigmatisation.

No immunisation: While COVID-19 exposed deep injustices and discrimination across the world, and the impacts of climate change and conflict continue to reveal inequities in many countries, UNICEF highlights how discrimination and exclusion have long persisted for millions of children from ethnic and minority groups, including access to immunisation, water and sanitation services,

Sentenced to the darkness of ignorance: More than two-thirds of 10-year-olds are unable to read and understand a simple text. And there are 244 million children still out of school, while educational centres are victims of armed attacks.

 

More horrifying findings

In addition to all the already reported brutalities committed against the most innocent and defenceless humans–the children, many more crimes continue to be perpetrated amidst worldwide impunity.

The following are just some tragic examples.

One billion children experience some form of emotional, physical or sexual violence every single year.

One child dies from violence… every seven minutes.

Millions of children are displaced by armed conflict. These children are at a high risk of grave violations in and around camps, and other areas of refuge.

Drowned, abandoned, stranded: Children are often forced to migrate with their parents to flee armed conflicts, severe droughts, floods and landslides they have not caused. In their voyage to hell, children are drowned, and those who survive are often separated from their families and abandoned at borders.

Violence without frontiers: violence against children knows no boundaries of culture, class or education. It takes place against children in institutions, in schools, and at home. Peer violence is also a concern, as is the growth in cyberbullying.

Isolation, loneliness, fear: Children exposed to violence live in isolation, loneliness and fear, not knowing where to turn for help, especially when the perpetrator is someone close.

Hunted in refugee camps: Criminal groups trading with the lives of the weakest humans go to refugee camps to hunt defenceless children and youth for trafficking, smuggling, enslavement, and making money from selling their organs.

Slavery: Millions of children are pushed into forced labour, carrying out extremely hazardous work. And 70% of boys and girls living in rural areas are workers.

Impunity

All these crimes against innocent children are being committed. And go unpunished.

No wonder, the world is so busy talking about weapons, wars, oil, gas, carbon, the concentration of food markets, more technology, and how to further expand the digitalisation of all aspects of life.

A couple participate in the gay pride parade in San Salvador, held before the state of emergency was declared on Mar. 27, under which the government is carrying out massive raids in search of suspected gang members. Members of the LGBTI community are among those arbitrarily detained, victims of police homophobia and transphobia. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Nov 21 2022 (IPS)

Police raids against gang members in El Salvador, under a state of emergency in which some civil rights have been suspended, have also affected members of the LGBTI community, and everything points to arrests motivated by hatred of their sexual identity.

Personal accounts gathered by IPS revealed that some of the arrests were characterized by an attitude of hatred towards gays and especially transsexuals on the part of police officers."Cases like this, which reveal hatred towards gay or trans people, are happening, but the organizations are not really speaking out, because of the fear that has been generated by the ‘state of exception’.” -- Cultura Trans

“Cases like this, which reveal hatred towards gay or trans people, are happening, but the organizations are not really speaking out, because of the fear that has been generated by the ‘state of exception’,” an activist with Cultura Trans, a San Salvador-based organization of the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) community, told IPS.

Hatred of homosexuals and transgender people

The activist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that another member of his organization, a gay man known as Carlos, has been detained since Jul. 13, after he complained about the arrest two months earlier of his sister Alessandra, a trans teenager.

The authorities have accused them of “illicit association,” the charge used to arrest alleged gang members or collaborators, under the state of emergency.

“The case against Carlos was staged, it was invented,” said the source. “He is a human rights activist in the trans community, we have documents that show that he participates in our workshops, in our activities.”

A police officer stops a young man in San Salvador and checks his back and other parts of his body for gang-related tattoos, one of the elements used by authorities to track down gang members in El Salvador. Since the state of emergency was declared, 58,000 people have been detained, in many cases arbitrarily, among them members of the LGBTI community. CREDIT: National Civil Police

The state of exception, under which some civil rights are suspended, has been in force in El Salvador since Mar. 27, when the government of Nayib Bukele launched a crusade against criminal gangs, with the backing of the legislature, which is controlled by the ruling New Ideas party.

Gangs have been responsible for the majority of crimes committed in this Central American country for decades.

According to the constitution, a state of exception can be in place for 30 days, and can be extended for another 30. But a legal loophole has allowed the government and Congress to renew the measure every month, under the argument that this was already done during the 1980-1992 civil war.

This interpretation could only be modified by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice. But Bukele, with the backing of the legislature, named five hand-picked magistrates to that chamber in May 2021, in what his critics say marked the beginning of a shift towards authoritarianism, two years into his term.

Since Mar. 27, the police and military have imprisoned some 58,000 people.

In most cases no arrest warrants were issued by a judge, and the arrests are generally based on gang members’ police files.

In addition, anonymous tips by the public to a hotline set up by the government have gradually expanded the number of people arrested.

“The state of emergency exposes you to an inefficient prosecutor, incapable of investigating and linking people to crimes,” William Hernández, director of Entre Amigos, an LGBTI organization founded in 1994, told IPS.

He added: “If a police officer decides to detain someone and make a report of the arrest, they go out to look for them, but there’s no record of who reported that individual, where the information came from, and no one knows who investigated them.”

Among the 58,000 detainees are some 40 people from the LGBTI community, according to a report made public in October by Cristosal and other human rights organizations that monitor abuses committed by the Salvadoran authorities under the state of exception.

These organizations have collected some 4,000 complaints of arbitrary detentions and other abuses, including torture, committed against detainees. Some 80 people have died in police custody and in prison.

Carlos is a gay man who spoke out against the arrest of his younger sister Alessandra, a trans woman seized in May by Salvadoran police, accused of belonging to a gang. In July he was also arrested and so far little is known about their situation, under the state of emergency in El Salvador, which has led to the imprisonment of 58,000 people. CREDIT: Courtesy of Cultura Trans

Police homophobia

In the case of Carlos, 32, and his sister Alessandra, 18, the information available is that she was arrested in May in one of the police sweeps, in a poor neighborhood in the north of San Salvador.

She was arrested for not having a personal identity card. She had recently turned 18, the age of majority, and she should have obtained the document, which is needed for any kind of official procedure.

The police officers who arrested Alessandra told her mother that she was only being taken for 72 hours, while the situation was clarified.

However, something that could have been easily investigated and resolved turned into an ordeal for her and her family, especially her mother, who was facing several health ailments, said the Cultura Trans activist.

“She was in the ‘bartolinas’ (dungeons) of the Zacamil (a police station in that poor neighborhood),” the source said. “We went to leave food for her, then they sent her to the Mariona prison. We realized that she had been beaten and sexually abused, because she was being held in a men’s facility.”

He added: “When they took Alessandra, her mother told us that the police told the girl ‘culero, we are going to take you to be raped, to be f**ked,’ which is what actually did happen. ‘We’re going to take you so that you learn not to dress like a woman’.”

Culero is a pejorative term used in El Salvador against gays.

Meanwhile, her brother Carlos spoke out against Alessandra’s arrest, during activities carried out by the LGBTI community.

In May, in a march against “homo-lesbo-transphobia” – hatred of gays, lesbians and trans people – he carried several handmade signs calling for his sister’s release from prison.

The authorities visited Carlos’ house, and threatened to arrest him as well, which they did on Jul. 13.

According to the source, the police and prosecutors put together a case and accused him of illicit association. They are asking for a 20-year prison sentence.

“It’s not because of illicit association, we know that very well. It’s because he’s a human rights activist in the LGBTI community, and because he has been demanding the release of his sister,” said the Cultura Trans activist.

“We want him back with us, and his sister too,” he said.

William Hernández, director of the association Entre Amigos, said that the police and the Attorney General’s Office stage raids against alleged gang members without carrying out proper investigations to substantiate the arrests or to release detainees if they are innocent. The Salvadoran government has been on a crusade against gangs since March, but in the process there have been numerous abuses and illegal detentions, according to human rights organizations. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Underreporting hides the real number of cases

According to reports by the NGOs, while the 40 people from the LGBTI community who have been detained represent a small proportion of the total number of people arrested, there could be an underreporting of undocumented cases, especially in rural areas.

“In this country, although it’s small, there may be cases in remote places involving people who have never contacted an NGO. These are cases that remain invisible,” Catalina Ayala, a trans woman activist with Diké, an LGBTI organization whose name refers to justice in Greek mythology, told IPS.

Ayala said that, although she has not personally experienced transphobia from the authorities on the streets of San Salvador, and her organization has not received concrete reports of cases like Alessandra’s, she did not rule out that they could be happening.

“I think it’s a positive thing that the authorities are arresting gang members, but not people who have nothing to do with crime, or just because they are LGBTI,” she said.

The organization’s lawyer, Jenifer Fernández, said Diké has provided legal assistance to 12 people from the LGBTI community who have been detained, mainly because they were not carrying their identity documents.

In one of the cases, the police said things that could be construed as transphobic, although there was also a basic suspicion, since she was a trans woman without an identity document.

“She was a 25-year-old woman who had never had a DUI, an identity document, because she suffered from gender dysphoria and was afraid to go to register, afraid of being asked to cut her hair or to remove her make-up,” said Fernández.

Gender dysphoria is a sense of unease caused by a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity and has repercussions on their ability to function socially.

“The arrest report said that she was a gang member disguised as a woman, that they did not know who she was, that she gave a name but that it could not be proven without a DUI,” the lawyer explained.

But Fernández added that, in general, with or without a state of exception, trans women suffer the most from harassment, mockery and aggression.

Of the 12 cases, 11 of the individuals were released, and only one remains in custody because, according to the police, there is evidence that the person may have had ties to a gang, although the details of that evidence are unknown.

Call to stop abuses

On Nov. 11, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern over “the persistence of massive and allegedly arbitrary arrests” by Salvadoran authorities under the state of emergency.

It also reported non-compliance with judicial guarantees, and called on the government “to implement citizen security actions that guarantee the rights and freedoms established in the American Convention on Human Rights and in line with Inter-American standards.”

Among the constitutional rights suspended since the beginning of the state of emergency on Mar. 27 are the rights of association and assembly, although the government says this only applies to criminal groups meeting to plan crimes.

It also restricts the right to a defense and extends the period in which a person can be detained and presented in court, which Salvadoran law sets at a maximum of three days.

On Nov. 16, Congress, which is controlled by the governing party, approved a new extension of the state of emergency, which it has done at the end of each month.

New Ideas lawmakers have said that the restriction of civil rights will be extended as long as necessary, “until the last gang member is arrested.”

In this country of 6.7 million people, there are an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 gang members.

Bukele’s party holds 56 seats in the 84-member legislature, and thanks to three allied parties they have a total of 60 votes, which gives them a large absolute majority.

Related Articles

• The Price of Bukele’s State of Emergency in El Salvador

Ann Potokri, a nurse and service provider working with ICW, and Queen Kennedy, a community pharmacist and mentor mother. Maararaba, Nasarawa State, North Central Nigeria, June 2020. Photo courtesy of International Community of Women Living with HIV West Africa.

By Jaime Atienza and Charles Birungi
GENEVA, Nov 21 2022 (IPS)

In this moment of profound challenge in international relations, it was understandable that the conclusion of the G20 meeting left leaders feeling relieved that the meeting took place without a breakdown. Leaders were justifiably proud too of important steps forward they made including the launch of the new pandemics fund.

But G20 leaders did not manage to resolve the fiscal crisis that threatens many low-and middle-income countries, and which risks undermining global health security because it is driving countries to slash investments in essential health services.

As the world approaches the end of 2022, no resolution mechanism to properly resolve the debt crisis has been established by either the IMF or the G20. In 24 months, the “G20 common framework” has delivered a debt relief agreement for just one country, Chad.

UNAIDS report “A pandemic triad” shows how growing debt burdens across developing countries are impairing their ability to fight and end AIDS and COVID, and their readiness for future pandemics. Half of the low-income countries in Africa are already in debt distress or at high risk of being so.

Across the world, the 73 countries which are eligible for the Debt Service Suspension Initiative have been recorded as spending on average four times as much on debt servicing as they have been able to invest in the health of their people. Only 43 of those countries have seen even a temporary suspension – totalling less than 10% the money they continued to pay back.

Two thirds of people living with HIV are in countries that received absolutely no support from the Debt Service Suspension Initiative at all during the critical 2020-2021 period. The seven Debt Service Suspension Initiative eligible countries with the largest population of people living with HIV – Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia – saw their public debt levels grow from 29% in 2011 to 74% in 2020.

According to the World Bank, “interest payments will constrain the capacity of low-income countries to spend on health, on average by 7%, and in lower middle-income countries by 10%, in 2027.”

110 out of 177 countries will see a drop or stagnation in their health spending capacity and are not set to be able to achieve pre-COVID spending levels by 2027.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, deficits increased worldwide, and debt accumulated much faster than they did in the early years of other recessions including the Great Depression and the Global Financial Crisis. The scale is comparable only to the twentieth century’s two world wars.

Government expenditure cuts are expected to take place across 139 countries in the coming years. In the case of the 73 countries that were eligible to the Debt Service Suspension Initiative, primary expenditures are expected to decline an average of 2.8% of GDP between 2020 and 2026.

This comes at a moment when economic forecasts have been downgraded by the IMF for a fourth time in a year. Austerity will mean dangerous reductions in health expenditure. To even restrain the damage will require a systemic reprioritization of public resources towards health systems.

There is a direct correlation between deepening fiscal problems and worsening health outcomes.

The COVID-19 crisis is dragging on. The impacts of the war in Ukraine on the global economy are making things worse. The HIV response is in danger, with the promise to end AIDS by 2030 under threat.

The world is not prepared today for the pandemics of to come. The international response to resolve the health financing crisis is nowhere close enough. Even as developing countries struggle with the debt crisis, the Ukraine war has led several donors to cut aid.

But there is a way out. With bold action, the health and development financing crisis can be overcome. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Bridgetown Agenda for action on debt, expansion of multilateral finance and effective SDR reallocation sets out the order of magnitude of response required.

There is an urgent need for debt cancellation for countries in fiscal distress, and for an effective and fast mechanism to deal with debt restructuring at scale. Health and education must be central considerations in debt negotiations.

Vital too is an expansion of the use of existing Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from high income countries for investments in lower income countries of at least twice the 100 billion committed.

The G20 leaders’ work has not ended in Bali. The consequences of an unresolved debt crisis, and the lack of additional resources, would be disastrous for lives, livelihoods and health security. We don’t have time. No one is safe until everyone is safe.

Jaime Atienza is the Director of Equitable Financing at UNAIDS. Charles Birungi is the Senior HIV Economics, Finance and Policy Advisor.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Security Council members vote to adopt a resolution endorsing special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2022 (IPS)

The United States, which recently laid down a set of guidelines to monitor sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by US citizens in international organizations, including the United Nations and its agencies worldwide, has implicitly accused the UN of faltering on a high-profile case last month.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sentenced Karim Elkorany, an American citizen and a former UN employee, to 15 years in prison for the drugging and sexual assault of one victim and making false statements to cover up another sexual assault.

As part of the federal investigation, Elkorany admitted that he had drugged and/or sexually assaulted 17 additional victims between 2002 and 2016.

Ambassador Chris Lu, U.S. Representative for UN Management and Reform at the US Mission to the United Nations, said that consistent with State Department policies, “we have referred this matter to the Office of Inspector General for review to ensure a culture of accountability”

“We also call on the United Nations to undertake a similar review that includes a comprehensive examination of the handling of any sexual exploitation and abuse or sexual harassment (SEAH) allegations against Mr. Elkorany during his employment with the United Nations”.

The investigation, he said, should examine whether UN officials were aware of Elkorany’s misconduct and failed to take appropriate action, including ensuring the availability and accessibility of assistance to survivors.

In line with the “Principles on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment (SEAH) for U.S. Government Engagement with International Organizations”, the United States said it is committed to preventing and responding to sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment in the UN system.

“We strongly support the United Nations’ zero tolerance policy and the Secretary-General’s efforts to strengthen its implementation”.

“Protection from SEAH is the responsibility of leadership and managers at every level who have a duty to take action in response to allegations of SEAH and ensure implementation of governance policies and delivery of services in a manner that respects the rights and dignity of all personnel and communities served by our institutions.”

The critical stand against the UN comes amid “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence”, beginning November 25, and billed as an opportunity to call for prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has established a Chief Executive Board Task Force to review policies to prevent sexual harassment and develop improved and consistent approaches across the UN, including a review of how the UN defines sexual harassment.

Tsitsi Matekaire, the Global Lead on Equality Now’s End Sexual Exploitation Programme based in the UK, told IPS the publication of these principles by the US government is a welcome development.

They echo similar positive initiatives by countries such as Australia and the UK, which have introduced measures following highly publicized scandals in recent years within the international aid sector.

“It is good to see more organizations introducing and extending safeguarding policies, but words must be underpinned by effective action and we need more evidence about the impact of these commitments. It is no good having protection strategies and procedures in place if they are not being well implemented and abuse continues unchecked”, said Matekaire.

“We don’t know the true scale of the problem, but we do know from frequent revelations that sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and abuse remain a widespread problem inside the United Nations system and within other international development organizations”.

In September 2022, she pointed out, a media investigation disclosed sexual abuse by humanitarian workers at an UN-run camp in South Sudan. It was reported that abuse occurred “on a daily basis” over a number of years and aid officials were aware as early as 2015.

Although the UN did take some action, it faced criticism for failing to introduce effective strategies to end the problem, and an external review cited a lack of victim support, she noted.

“The UN and all international development agencies must enforce a zero-tolerance approach to sexual abuse and harassment directed at, and perpetrated by, staff. This must apply to everyone, regardless of what level their position is”.

“All staff should receive training, with policies and procedures well communicated. Reports of abuse should be taken seriously, investigations carried out swiftly and effectively, and perpetrators held fully to account”.

She also said that aid workers and other whistle-blowers need to be well protected so they are able to disclose allegations of abuses without fear of negative repercussions, including retaliation or sidelining.

And safeguarding and reporting mechanisms need to ensure sexual predators are not able to evade punishment or move to different jobs where they are able to commit further offences.”

And here is the link to the article about the South Sudan story referenced above.

Meanwhile, a Reuters report of November 1 said the World Health Organization (WHO) has suspended a senior manager at its Geneva headquarters after a British doctor publicly alleged she was sexually assaulted at a health conference last month, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Rosie James, a 26-year-old junior doctor working for England’s National Health Service tweeted last month that the assault occurred at the World Health Summit in Berlin. The event, which took place from Oct. 16-18, was jointly organized by the WHO. James said at the time that she planned to report the incident.

“The alleged perpetrator is on leave and the investigation is on-going,” a WHO spokesperson said in an emailed response to Reuters about James’s statements, without naming him.

The set of “Government Engagement Principles on Protection from Sexual Exploitation Abuse and Sexual Harassment within International Organizations, laid down by the US includes six key components:

Zero Tolerance

The United States will continue to promote the full implementation of policies of zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment, including zero tolerance for inaction in response to allegations, across the United Nations and other International Organizations.

This includes support for policies that prioritize prevention and mitigation efforts, monitor the effectiveness of such efforts, ensure safe access to confidential SEAH reporting mechanisms and appropriate survivor support, and embed survivor-centered principles across all actions in response to reported allegations – including investigations.

The United States recognizes that an absence of reporting does not mean incidents are not being perpetrated, nor does it indicate that zero tolerance policies are being fully implemented.

A Survivor-centered Approach

The United States expects all allegations or incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment to be reviewed and addressed, while respecting principles of due process.

In its engagement with the United Nations and other International Organizations, the United States will continue to advocate for the use of survivor-centered principles and standards – an approach that recognizes and empowers survivors as individuals with agency and unique needs, safeguarding their dignity and wellbeing.

Prevention and Risk Mitigation

The United States will work with the United Nations and other International Organizations to institutionalize prevention and mitigation measures that go beyond basic awareness-raising, training, capacity-building or dissemination of codes of conduct, and include a commitment to promote adequate funding, dedicated technical staff, and meaningful risk analysis and mitigation.

The United States will hold the United Nations and other International Organizations to the highest standard, including from the onset of a crisis, conflict or emergency, to mitigate against such risk, especially with highly vulnerable populations.

Accountability and Transparency

The United States expects the leadership of the United Nations and other International Organizations to take meaningful action to support accountability and transparency through, among others, the following: the conduct of timely and survivor-centered investigations; response efforts driven by the needs, experiences, and resiliencies of those most at risk of SEAH; clear reporting and response systems, including to inform Member States of allegations or incidents; and accountability measures, including termination of employment or involvement of law enforcement, as needed.

Organizational Culture Change

The United States will work to advocate for the development by the United Nations and other International Organizations of evidence-based metrics and standards of practice in the implementation of zero tolerance policies, promote holistic approaches, empower women and girls, and reinforce leadership and organizational accountability.

Policies, statements, and training are essential, but alone are insufficient to produce lasting positive change. Systems-level change requires a shift in organizational culture, behavior, and the underlying processes and mechanisms to deliver assistance and promote internal accountability.

Empowerment of Local Communities

The United States will prioritize, in partnership with the leadership of the United Nations and other International Organizations, the critical importance of locally-led efforts, particularly those led by women and girls, who, when meaningfully supported and engaged, can inform the measures that may mitigate risks and promote safer foreign assistance programming.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, chair of COP27, reads the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the document that concluded the climate summit on Sunday Nov. 20, to an exhausted audience after tough and lengthy negotiations that finally reached an agreement to create a fund for loss and damage, a demand of the global South. CREDIT: Kiara Worth/UN

By Daniel Gutman
SHARM EL SHEIKh , Nov 20 2022 (IPS)

They were on the brink of shipwreck and did not leave happy, but did feel satisfied that they got the best they could. The countries of the global South achieved something decisive at COP27: the creation of a special fund to address the damage and loss caused by climate change in the most vulnerable nations.

The fund, according to the Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the official document approved at dawn on Sunday Nov. 20 in this Egyptian city, should enable “rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction” following extreme weather events in these vulnerable countries.

Decisions on who will provide the money, which countries will benefit and how it will be disbursed were left pending for a special committee to define. But the fund was approved despite the fact that the issue was not even on the official agenda of the summit negotiations, although it was at the center of the public debate before the conference itself.

“We are satisfied that the developed countries have accepted the need to create the Fund. Of course, there is much to discuss for implementation, but it was difficult to ask for more at this COP,” Ulises Lovera, Paraguay’s climate change director, told IPS, weary from a longer-than-expected negotiation, early Sunday morning at the Sharm El Sheikh airport.

“This COP has taken an important step towards justice. I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. He also described as an achievement that a “red line” was not crossed, that would take the rise in global temperature above the 1.5-degree limit.

More than 35,000 people from nearly 200 countries participated in the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change in Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian seaside resort on the Red Sea, where the critical dimension of global warming in the different regions of the world was on display, sometimes dramatically.

Practically everything that has to do with the future of the modes of production and life of humanity – starting with energy and food – was discussed at a mega-event that far exceeded the official delegations of the countries and the great leaders present, such as U.S. President Joe Biden and the Brazilian president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Hundreds of social organizations, international agencies and private sector stakeholders came here to showcase their work, seek funding, forge alliances, try to influence negotiations, defend their interests or simply be on a stage that seemed to provide a space for all kinds of initiatives and businesses.

At the gigantic Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center there was also a global fair with non-stop activities from morning to night in the various pavilions, in stands with auditoriums of between 20 and 200 seats, where there was a flurried program of presentations, lectures and debates, not to mention the more or less crowded demonstrations of activists outside the venue.

In addition, government delegates negotiated on the crux of the summit: how to move forward with the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which at COP21 in 2015 set global climate change mitigation and adaptation targets.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres (3rd-R) walks hurriedly through the Sharm El Sheikh Convention Center during the last intense hours of the COP27 negotiations, when there were moments when it seemed that there would be no agreement and the climate summit would end in failure. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

On the brink of failure

Once again, the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan did not include in any of its pages a reference to the need to abandon fossil fuels, but only coal.

The document was the result of a negotiation that should have ended on Friday Nov. 18, but dragged on till Sunday, as usually happens at COPs. What was different on this occasion was a very tough discussion and threats of a walkout by some negotiators, including those of the European Union.

But in the end, the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, established in the Paris Agreement, was maintained, although several countries tried to make it more flexible up to 2.0 degrees, which would have been a setback with dramatic effects for the planet and humanity, according to experts and climate activists.

“Rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions (are) required – lowering global net greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by 2030 relative to the 2019 level – to limit global warming to 1.5°C target,” reads the text, although no mention is made of oil and gas, the fossil fuels most responsible for those emissions, in one of the usual COP compromises, since agreements are reached by consensus.

The Bolivian delegation in Sharm El Sheikh, which included officials as well as leaders of indigenous communities from the South American country, take part in a meeting with journalists at COP27 to demand more ambitious action. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The priorities of the South

Developing countries, however, focused throughout the COP on the Loss and Damage Fund and other financing mechanisms to address the impacts of rising temperatures and mitigation actions.

“We need financing because we cannot deal with the environmental crisis alone. That is why we are asking that, in order to solve the problem they have caused, the rich nations take responsibility,” Diego Pacheco, head of the Bolivian delegation to Sharm El Sheikh, told IPS.

Environmental organizations, which showed their power in Egypt with the presence of thousands of activists, also lobbied throughout COP27 for greater commitments, including mitigation actions.

“This conference cannot be considered an implementation conference because there is no implementation without phasing out all fossil fuels,” the main cause of the climate crisis, said Zeina Khalil Hajj of the international environmental organization 350.org.

“Together for implementation” was precisely the slogan of COP27, calling for a shift from commitments to action.

“A text that does not stop fossil fuel expansion, that does not provide progress from the already weak Glasgow Pact (from COP26) makes a mockery of the millions of people living with the impacts of climate change,” said Khalil Hajj, head of global campaigning at 350.org.

One of the demonstrations by climate activists at COP27 held in Egypt Nov. 6-20, demanding more ambitious climate action by governments, as well as greater justice and equity in tackling the climate crisis. CREDIT: Busani Bafana/IPS

The crises that came together

Humanity – as recognized by the States Parties in the final document – is living through a dramatic time.

It faces a number of overlapping crises: food, energy, geopolitical, financial and economic, combined with more frequent natural disasters due to climate change. And developing nations are hit especially hard.

The demand for financing voiced by countries of the global South thus takes on greater relevance.

Cecilia Nicolini, Argentina’s climate change secretary, told IPS that it is the industrialized countries, because of their greater responsibility for climate change, that should finance developing countries, and lamented that “the problem is that the rules are made by the powerful.”

However, 80 percent of the money now being spent worldwide on climate change action is invested in the developed world, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world’s largest funder of climate action, which has contributed 121 billion dollars to 163 countries over the past 30 years, according to its own figures.

In this context, the issue of Loss and Damage goes one step further than adaptation to climate change, because it involves reparations for the specific impacts of climate change that have already occurred, such as destruction caused by droughts, floods or forest fires.

“Those who are bearing the burden of climate change are the most vulnerable households and communities. That is why the Loss and Damage Fund must be established without delay, with new funds coming from developed countries,” said Javier Canal Albán, Colombia’s vice minister of environmental land planning.

“It is a moral and climate justice imperative,” added Canal Albán, who spoke at a press conference on behalf of AILAC, a negotiating bloc that brings together several Latin American and Caribbean countries.

But the text of the outcome document itself acknowledges that there is a widening gap between what developing countries need and what they actually receive.

The financing needs of these countries for climate action until 2030 were estimated at 5.6 trillion dollars, but developed countries – as the document recognized – have not even fulfilled their commitment to provide 100 billion dollars per year, committed since 2009, at COP15 in Copenhagen, and ratified in 2015, at COP21 which adopted the Paris Agreement.

It was the absence of any reference to the need to accelerate the move away from oil and natural gas that frustrated several of the leaders at the COP. “We believe that if we don’t phase out fossil fuels there will be no Fund that can pay for the loss and damage caused by climate change,” Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who was at the two-week conference in Sharm El Sheikh held Nov. 6-20, told IPS.

“We have to put the victims first in order to make an orderly and just transition,” she said, expressing the sentiments of the governments and societies of the South at COP27.

Climate change activists at COP27, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Negotiators which struggled to complete reach agreement on the critical loss and damage fund demanded by developing nations most affected by climate change. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 20 2022 (IPS)

After a tense impasse and many hours of negotiations, almost 200 countries struck a deal to set up a loss and damage fund to assist nations worst hit by climate change – a demand considered not-negotiable by the developing countries.

COP27 was extended by a day after negotiators couldn’t agree on the fund – leading to UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying on Friday, November 18, 2022, that the time for talking about loss and damage finance is over. He alluded to a growing breakdown of trust between developing and developed countries.

Guterres, early on Sunday, November 20, 2022, welcomed the fund saying: “I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period. Clearly, this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust.”

He added that the voices of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis must be heard.

Speaking in the closing plenary, COP President H.E. Sameh Shoukry said:

“The work that we’ve managed to do here in the past two weeks, and the results we have together achieved, are a testament to our collective will, as a community of nations, to voice a clear message that rings loudly today, here in this room and around the world: that multilateral diplomacy still works… despite the difficulties and challenges of our times, the divergence of views, level of ambition or apprehension, we remain committed to the fight against climate change… we rose to the occasion, upheld our responsibilities and undertook the important decisive political decisions that millions around the world expect from us.”

Shoukry noted: “This was not easy. We worked around the clock. Long days and nights. Strained and sometimes tense, but united and working for one aim, one higher purpose, one common goal that we all subscribe to and aspire to achieve. In the end, we delivered.”

Under the previous global climate summit, which took place in Glasgow, Scotland last year, parties agreed on the roadmap where developing countries, which did little to cause the climate crisis, arrived with a determination to win a commitment from rich nations to compensate them for this damage.

On several occasions during negotiations, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, also the COP27 President, stated that climate finance remains key for Africa since the continent contributes 4 percent to global emissions and is adversely affected to a much higher degree by global warming-relate events.

On losses and damages, some climate finance experts believe that ongoing climate talks on finance at COP27 are one of the most painful examples of the African proverb that when the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.

“Ongoing negotiations on loss and damage are the most recent iteration of this long-standing fight,” Sophia Murphy, the Executive Director of the US-based Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), told IPS.

Delegates debate climate finance on the sidelines of COP27 at Sharm El Sheikh. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

IATP is a think tank that analyses the interconnection between agriculture, trade, and climate in developing countries.

Since 2015, loss and damage have served as the main catalyser under the UNFCCC process, especially for enhancing financial support for adaptation to avert, minimise and address climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

Murphy pointed out that the G77 includes a very wide range of countries and interests, and the climate crisis is not suffered equally across the South.

“Currently developing nations at COP27 are likely showing that everyone is responsible for the negative realities of climate change and loss and damage negotiations is the most recent iteration of this long-standing fight,” she said.

While many negotiators in Sharm El Sheikh believe that rich countries are lagging in measures to allocate loss and damage funding, there is a consensus that the current negotiations on climate finance did not go very well, particularly with respect to the expectations for COP27.

Dr Somorin Olufunso, Regional Principal Officer, Climate Change and Green Growth (East Africa) at the African Development Bank, told IPS that the finance negotiation is primarily a “trust” negotiation.

“Unfortunately, if the trust is broken, it may affect other issues being negotiated and ultimately affect our collective action of combatting climate change,” the senior financial expert said.

The bank published the 2022 African Economic Outlook report on the needs of African Countries for loss and damage in 2022-2030 at between USD 289.2 to USD 440.5 billion. The estimated adaptation finance needs are in a similar order of magnitude.

For many Africans, according to Olufunso, the negotiations were not aggressive enough in finding solutions urgently needed at both scale and speed.

Until the end of the summit, loss and damage fund remained a major sticking point.

“Negotiations are going well in some items and not well in other items (…) Rwanda and other vulnerable countries had much expectation in securing a decision of adopting the establishment of loss and damage fund,” Faustin Munyazikwiye, the Deputy Director General of Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) and Rwanda’s Lead negotiator, told IPS in an interview.

According to him, this item [on loss and damage] did not go well.

African negotiators at COP27 prioritised filling gaps between present risks associated with climate change and financing for adaptation.

However, most developing countries prefer to ensure that finance for loss and damages is channelled through the private sector and is not necessarily a liability for rich countries.

But other experts believe that cost of repairing these damages is staggering and the countries which should pay are the ones who contributed to climate change in the first place.

While some climate finance experts observe that the commitment by rich nations to pay the developing world $100 billion cannot even compensate what Africa’s needs, others point out that COP27 must deliver a bold finance facility to pay for loss and damage to communities already impacted by climate change on the continent.

Kelly Dent, the Global Director of External Engagement at the UK-based World Animal Protection, told IPS most vulnerable countries, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, are considering the climate emergency as a matter of life.

“Without a coherent and meaningful agreement on finance, COP27 will fall short of its mission and put millions of lives at risk,” she said.

From Dent’s perspective, a roadmap to track and deliver a doubling of adaptation finance is critical.

The 2022 UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report, released on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, indicates that the continent requires 7 to 15 billion US dollars annually to enhance adaptation to climate change besides the nearly 3 trillion dollars investment that is needed to implement nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and cap emissions in line with the Paris climate deal.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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• Food Systems Crucial for Pacific Islands at COP27
• COP27: Africa’s Agri-food Systems Losses Ignored in Global Climate Negotiations
• COP27: Climate Change’s Dire Consequences in the World’s Most Water-Scarce Region

Hundreds of mangrove seedlings are growing in a small bay of an island south of Fiji's main island Viti Levu. The Pacific Island Countries are vulnerable to climate change and need resources to adapt. Credit: Tom Vierus/Climate Visuals

By Labanya Prakash Jena
Sharm El-Sheikh, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) – 14 small island developing nations in the Pacific Ocean – comprise one of the most exposed and vulnerable regions to climate change and natural calamities. The region did not cause this climate crisis; the crisis stemmed from heavy carbon emissions by developed countries. Yet paradoxically, the countries in the region are also the least resourced to adapt to climate change.

The IMF estimates that the PICs need an additional investment of an average of 9% of GDP on developing climate-resilient infrastructure over the next ten years. Some countries’ climate-resilient infrastructure needs more than 10% of their GDP. However, this much capital mobilisation is impossible for the region with low per capita income, volatile economy, lack of fiscal space, and low saving rate. Besides, these countries have also committed to ambitious targets to decarbonize their economies.

In this scenario, international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make the region resilient and prosperous. The longer the delay in building the much-needed climate-resilient infrastructure, the higher the cost and greater the risk of exposing these countries to extreme events for a longer time.

Labanya Prakash Jena, Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser, Indo-Pacific Region, argues international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make Pacific Island Countries resilient and prosperous. Credit: Commonwealth

Tackling the bottlenecks

There are two primary bottlenecks to international climate flows: institutional structure and lack of capacity at various levels. The PIC region’s institutional structure is plagued by limited administrative and financial capabilities, inadequate program management and accountability, and an obscure audit system to mobilise international public climate finance.

In addition, these countries lack the capacity to design and structure projects and develop a robust and tangible climate adaptation project pipeline. Besides, the region is not strategically allocating available capital, including budgetary outlays, international climate finance, development aid, and private finance. The primary focus of international institutions must be to address these challenges quickly.

Options for international climate finance: Grants, debt, equity

The total GDP of the PIC region is only about USD10 billion, with an average per capita income of approximately USD4,000 and a gross capital formation rate of 20%, according to the World Bank. This translates to a maximum domestic capital mobilisation of USD 2 billion per year. Meanwhile, the IMF estimates that the region needs an additional capital of USD 1 billion per annum for climate resilience infrastructure investment.

International grant capital is the only option to fund climate adaptation projects in the region. The reason is that any form of debt capital, even if in the form of concessional debt capital over the long term, is not an economical one. The PIC region cannot pay back debt, and it is unlikely the region’s economic size will increase at a rapid rate in the future to pay back debt.

Although the region’s primary sources of international climate finance – the Green Climate Fund (GCF), World Bank, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) – provide grants, it is only for project preparation and capacity development. These financers mostly provide debt financing, albeit at a better rate than private financers.

However, the low debt servicing ability of the region arrests them, raising foreign debt capital. It is even more problematic if the debt capital is in foreign currency (e.g., USD) – the borrowers face huge foreign currency due to expected and unexpected devaluation in the local currency, and borrowers face currency risk.

Equity capital is not the best form of financing for climate adaptation projects. Unlike climate change mitigating projects, they do not generate clear cash flows as the beneficiaries are difficult to identify to monetize climate adaptation projects. Hence, equity capital is not an efficient source of capital for climate adaptation projects.

Strategic allocation of capital is key

Unlike developed and developing countries, the PIC region does not have a have strong domestic financial and banking sector, and it rarely attracted foreign capital for large-scale investment. So, it is futile to expect large-scale private financing flows to bridge the financing gaps for their climate actions.

Moreover, the public goods nature of climate adaptation projects does not attract private financers. Hence, public financing, including capital Government budgetary outlays, international climate finance, and other development aids must be spent judiciously.

The crux is strategically allocating the available capital and aligning projects’ needs with the mandates of the public finances. One of the most efficient ways is to carve out the climate financing as a separate portfolio and decide where and how the capital would be used in various climate adaptation projects.

In addition, the climate change divisions of these countries can work closely with the Ministry of finance to mainstream climate adaptation in national development plans and sector policies and bring climate change perspectives in economic decision-making. The countries can also need to identify the projects which offer dual benefits of climate migration and adaptation, which brings a lot of attention to global climate financers.

For example, nature-based carbon sequestration through ocean conservation, forestry, and wilding (wetland, grassland) sequestrates carbon, offers natural shields, and protects human life and properties in extreme weather events. The global impact investors will find these projects attractive as they help the region become climate-resilient and create a global public good, helping everyone, including the financer’s country.

Way forward

International institutions must support Pacific Island countries to strengthen administrative and financial structures for better transparency and accountability, which can help the PICs access global public capital. In addition, Governments in the region must strategically allocate climate finance, prioritise climate actions in decision-making, integrate adaptation projects with national climate action plans, and identify suitable projects offering dual climate mitigation and adaptation benefits.

The international institutions can also help the countries identify and design projects to develop pipeline projects for funding. There is a dire need to develop institutional and local capacity to meet the needs of climate change-related economic activities in the region. But if addressed, the region will be able to finally make headway in addressing the deep adaptation challenges they face due to climate change.

• Labanya Prakash Jena is the Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser for the Indo-Pacific Region.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Yomira Cuadros faced motherhood at an early age, as well as the obstacles of a sexist society like Peru’s, regarding her reproductive decisions. In the apartment where she lives with her family in Lima, she expresses faith in the future, now that she has finally started attending university, after having two children as a result of unplanned pregnancies. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

No woman in Peru should have to die, have her physical or mental health affected, be treated as a criminal or have an unwanted pregnancy because she does not have access to abortion, said Dr. Rocío Gutiérrez, an obstetrician who is the deputy director of the Manuela Ramos Movement, a non-governmental feminist center that works for gender rights in this South American country.

In this Andean nation of 33 million people, abortion is illegal even in cases of rape or fetal malformation. It is only legal for two therapeutic reasons: to save the life of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious and permanent health problem.

Peru thus goes against the current of the advances achieved by the “green wave”. Green is the color that symbolizes the changes that the women’s rights movement has achieved in the legislation of neighboring countries such as Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina and some states in Mexico, where early abortion has been decriminalized. These countries have joined the ranks of Cuba, where it has been legal for decades."I didn't tell my parents because they are very Catholic and would have forced me to go through with the pregnancy, they always instilled in me that abortion was a bad thing. But I started to think about how pregnancy would change my life and I didn't feel capable of raising a child at that moment." -- Fatima Guevara

But Latin America remains one of the most punitive regions in terms of abortion, with several countries that do not recognize women’s right to make decisions about their pregnancies under any circumstances. In El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Haiti it is illegal under all circumstances, and in some cases draconian penalties are handed down.

In the case of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela, meanwhile, abortion is allowed under very few conditions, while there are more circumstances under which it is legal in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador.

“In Peru an estimated 50,000 women a year are treated for abortion-related complications in public health facilities,” Dr. Gutiérrez told IPS. “This is not the total number of abortions in the country, but rather the number of women who reach public health services due to emergencies or complications.”

The obstetrician spoke to IPS from Buenos Aires, where she participated in the XV Regional Conference on Women, held Nov. 7-11 in the Argentine capital.

Gutiérrez explained that the cases attended are just the tip of the iceberg, because for every abortion complicated by hemorrhage or infection treated at a health center, at least seven have been performed that did not present difficulties.

Multiplying by seven the 50,000 cases treated due to complications provides the shocking figure of 350,000 unsafe clandestine abortions performed annually in Peru.

The doctor regretted the lack of official statistics about a phenomenon that affects the lives and rights of women “irreversibly, with damage to health, and death.”

Gutiérrez said that another of the major impacts is the criminalization of women who undergo abortions, due to mistreatment by health personnel who not only judge and blame them, but also report them to the police.

Obstetrician Rocío Gutiérrez (C), deputy director of the feminist Manuela Ramos Movement, stands with two fellow activists holding green scarves – representing the struggle for reproductive rights – during the XV Regional Conference on Women held this month in the city of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Courtesy of Rocío Gutiérrez

Under article 30 of Peru’s General Health Law, No. 26842, a physician who attends a case of presumed illegal abortion is required to file a police report.

Gutiérrez also referred to the fact that unwanted pregnancies have numerous consequences for the lives of women, especially girls and adolescents, in a sexist country like Peru, where women often do not have the right to make decisions on their sexuality and reproductive health.

Healing the wounds of unwanted motherhood

By the age of 19, Yomira Cuadros was already the mother of two children. She did not plan either of the pregnancies and only went ahead with them because of pressure from her partner.

In 2020, according to official data, 8.3 percent of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 were already mothers or had become pregnant in Peru.

Cuadros, whose parents are both physicians and who lives in a middle-class family, said she never imagined that her life would turn out so differently than what she had planned.

“The first time was because I didn’t know about contraceptives, I was 17 years old. The second time the birth control method failed and I thought about getting an abortion, but I couldn’t do it,” Cuadros told IPS.

At the time, she was in a relationship with an older boyfriend on whom she felt very emotionally dependent. “I had made a decision (to terminate the pregnancy), but he didn’t want to, he told me not to, the pressure was like blackmail and out of fear I went ahead with the pregnancy,” she said.

Making that decision under coercion hurt her mental health. Today, at the age of 26, she reflects on the importance of women being guaranteed the conditions to freely decide whether they want to be mothers or not.

Peruvian activists go topless to demand the right to legal abortion, during a demonstration in the streets of the capital on Mar. 8, 2018. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

In her case, although she had the support of her mother to get a safe abortion, the power of her then-partner over her was stronger.

“Becoming a mother when you haven’t planned to is a shock, you feel so alone, it is very difficult. I didn’t feel that motherhood was something beautiful and I didn’t want to experience the same thing with my second pregnancy, so I considered terminating it,” she said.

Finding herself in that unwanted situation, she fell into a deep depression and was on medication, and is still in therapy today.

“I went from being a teenager to an adult with responsibilities that I never imagined. It’s as if I have never really gone through the proper mourning process because of everything I had to take on, and I know that it will continue to affect me because I will never stop being a mother,” she said.

She clarified that “it’s not that I don’t want to be a mother or that I hate my children,” and added that “as I continue to learn to cope, I will get better, it’s just that it wasn’t the right time.”

She and her two children, ages nine and seven, live with her parents and brother in an apartment in the municipality of Pueblo Libre, in the Peruvian capital. She has enrolled at university to study psychology and accepts the fact that she will only see her dreams come true little by little.

“Things are not how I thought they would be, but it’s okay,” she remarked with a newfound confidence that she is proud of.

Gutiérrez said more than 60 percent of women in Peru have an unplanned pregnancy at some point in their lives, and argued that the government’s family planning policies fall far short.

The National Institute of Statistics and Informatics reported that the total fertility rate in Peru in 2021 would have been 1.3 children on average if all unwanted births had been prevented, compared to the actual rate of 2.0 children – almost 54 percent higher than the desired fertility rate.

“There are a set of factors that lead to unwanted pregnancies, such as the lack of comprehensive sex education in schools, and the lack of birth control methods and timely family planning for women in all their diversity, which worsened during the pandemic. And of course, the correlate is access to legal and safe abortion,” said Gutiérrez.

She lamented that little or no progress has been made in Peru in relation to the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe and free legal abortion, despite the struggle of feminist organizations and movements in the country that have been demanding decriminalization in cases of rape, artificial insemination without consent, non-consensual egg transfer, or malformations incompatible with life.

University student Fátima Guevara decided to terminate an unwanted pregnancy when she was 19 years old. Four years later, she is sure that it was the right decision, in terms of her plans for her life. The young woman told her story at a friend’s home, where she was able to talk about it openly, in Lima, Peru. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The obscurity of illegal abortion

The obscurity surrounding abortion led Fátima Guevara, when she faced an unwanted pregnancy at the age of 19, to decide to use Misoprostol, a safe medication that is included in the methods accepted by the World Health Organization for the termination of pregnancies.

“I didn’t tell my parents because they are very Catholic and would have forced me to go through with the pregnancy, they always instilled in me that abortion was a bad thing. But I started to think about how pregnancy would change my life and I didn’t feel capable of raising a child at that moment,” she told IPS in a meeting at a friend’s home in Lima.

She said that she and her partner lacked adequate information and obtained the medication through a third party, but that she used it incorrectly. She turned to her brother who took her to have an ultrasound first. “Hearing the fetal heartbeat shook me, it made me feel guilty, but I followed through with my decision,” she added.

After receiving proper instructions, she was able to complete the abortion. And today, at the age of 23, about to finish her psychology degree, she has no doubt that it was the right thing to do.

Karen Mapusua, SPC’s Director of the Land Resources Division, would like to see food high up on the loss and damage fund if it is agreed to. Credit Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

Food is everything to the culture and identity of the Pacific island countries.

Climate change impacts of rising sea levels and higher temperatures threaten islanders’ food security, which is largely dependent on fisheries and subsistence agriculture. Almost 70 percent of islanders rely on agriculture for their livelihood.

Pacific island countries at the COP27 summit, taking place at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, say agriculture is high on their agenda, with parties to the UNFCCC calling for a decision to protect food security through the mobilisation of climate finance for adaptation.

Activists at the COP27 summit demand food and agriculture remain on the negotiation’s agenda. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

At the COP negotiations, agriculture features on many levels, including during discussions on the ongoing Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA) – a formal process established to highlight the potential of food and agriculture in tackling climate change. However, there has been no progress in countries making commitments to placing agriculture and food systems in the final text.

The agriculture sector accounts for 37% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with land seen as a potential major carbon sink that can be considered for capturing emissions.

Could agriculture be off the menu?

“Not yet,” says Karen Mapusua, Pacific Community’s (SPC) Director of the Land Resources Division. “Unless the parties can come together and through their work demonstrate the value of the Koronivia work programme and a clear way forward for it, then that is a risk.”

She explains that it was critical to keep the Koronivia plan alive and secure a global strategy for agriculture and food systems to be considered solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

“Agriculture contributes 30 percent of emissions, and everybody has to eat, and if we do not take this seriously, then we are in trouble,” said Mapusua, who is also the President of IFOAM Organics International, a global organisation specialising in changing agricultural practices.

Pacific countries are very low emitters of harmful carbon emissions – except for a few high-input industries like sugar production in Fiji and the commercial production of exotic horticulture for export.

“We are losing productive land to sea level rise, inundation and desalination of soils near the coast,” she said. Farmers have experienced increased pests and diseases due to a change in temperatures and weather conditions. For example, the islands have been hit by an infestation of the coconut rhinoceros beetle, an invasive pest that can destroy coconut plantations.

Farmers are also experiencing changes in fruiting patterns for major crops. Farmers are relocating their vanilla plantations in Vanuatu because it no longer flowers in the area where it was once most productive.

Developing countries are also pushing for the establishment of a loss and damage facility where they can be compensated for damage caused by climate change, particularly to infrastructure. However, no decision has been reached on this demand.

“There will be a lot of competition on what goes in the loss and damage fund, but I am hopeful that because food is so essential, it will be higher up the priority list when it comes to accessing finance through such a facility, if it is agreed on,” Mapusua, told IPS.

Fish eaters but threatened fisheries

Islanders are also dependent on fisheries for food security. This sector has also been affected by rising sea levels and high temperatures, which have led to the bleaching of coral reefs, which are a key habitat for fish.

Scientific research projects a decline in coastal fisheries of up to 20 percent by 2050 in the western Pacific and up to 10 percent by 2050 in the eastern Pacific, which would impact heavily on the diet of islanders who, on average, consume 58 kg of fish annually.

Mapusua said the island countries were building aquaculture at a local level and poultry to compensate for the projected loss of fisheries.

In Vanuatu, the government was deploying fish aggregating devices (FADS), which are offshore floating objects to attract fish. The project has enabled farmers to harvest fish from the locations where the devices have been installed without travelling far from the coast to fish. In addition, a fishponds system has been promoted at the household level, encouraging families to build their own fishponds to harvest fish.

Nelson Kalo, a Senior Mitigation Officer in the Ministry of Climate Change in Vanuatu, adds there are other projects too.

“Vanuatu is also promoting climate resilience projects working with the United Nations Development Programme to replicate climate resilient root crops that communities when climate condition change.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Matti Kohonen
LONDON, Nov 18 2022 (IPS)

G20 leaders met in Indonesia in the midst of multiple crises, with 85 percent of the world population expected to face austerity measures and severe budget cuts next year that will impact the most vulnerable compounded by an insufficient response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with only 38 percent of relief funds going to social protection in global South countries.

The G20 summit motto was “Recovering Together, Recovering Stronger” yet the Joint Declaration failed to deliver any alternatives to the wave of austerity engulfing the world. It ignored the option of raising enough tax revenues from large corporations, taxing the wealthy and tacking illicit financial flows and tax abuses which alone accounts for over US$200 billion of tax revenue lost per year due to profit shifting in the global South.

For one, the summit blocked any progress towards the negotiations of a UN Tax Convention that would address the issues of corporate tax abuses and illicit financial flows, as denounced in an open letter from the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).

In an open letter denouncing this inaction to tackle corporate tax abuses and IFFs, delivered to embassies of Indonesia, India and Brazil, Lidy Nacpil from the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) said that the summit blocked “any progress towards the negotiations of a UN Tax Convention that would address the issues of corporate tax abuses and illicit financial flows,” but there was no reaction.

Making matters worse, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) failed to deliver on mandates to publish country-by-country reporting before the summit. This would have allowed to monitor the performance of mechanisms to prevent for example multinational companies shifting profits to tax havens and avoid paying taxes.

The data was only published on 17 November, a day after the summit, which was too late to hold the G20 leaders accountable. According to Alex Cobham, Director at the Tax Justice Network, “without the transparency data, neither the Tax Justice Network nor any other independent research can evaluate how much each government is losing to multinationals’ corporate tax abuse, or any progress made to curb tax losses in recent years.”

But that is not everything since the summit did not confront the hidden offshore wealth and kleptocracy problem. Maira Martini from Transparency International said that the G20 members “in recent years have dragged their feet, unable to agree on key measures and failing to implement even those to which they had already committed. In the meantime, the corrupt have consolidated wealth and power, allowing them to attack everything from sustainable development to global security to democracy.”

In an open letter released ahead of the Bali summit, Transparency International representatives from across G20 countries called on their governments to take immediate action against cross-border corruption. The Joint Declaration stated its support towards implementing Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations for improved financial transparency, but does not say that beneficial ownership registries should be public, a critical element to enable stakeholders and the authorities to uncover hidden assets.

Also the declaration included regional efforts related to signing of the Asia Initiative Declaration in July 2022 on tax and financial transparency in Asia. However, it did not specify whether this initiative would create a stronger standard than the current OECD transparency standard, or simply implement an OECD standard in the Asian regional context.

Positively, the Bali Joint Declaration made a link between increased beneficial ownership information and tackling natural resource crimes, but offered no specific proposals to address this issue. Indonesia loses an estimated US$4 billion in Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) each year due to illegal, unregulated and underreported (IUU) fishing alone, while Africa loses an estimated US$11.5 billion to this illicit activity. It would be vital that beneficial ownership information on all vessels and fishing companies is collected on a public registry, to hold those responsible for illicit fishing activities accountable.

Between 75 and 95 million people are expected to be thrown into extreme poverty this year as a result of the pandemic and the effects of rising inflation and the war in Ukraine, according to the UN. Many other are struggling to make a living and feed themselves as governments around the world are resorting to painful austerity measures.

The G20 had an opportunity to offer solutions to these crises and a lifeline to struggling nations. Unfortunately for all of us, they have failed.

Matti Kohonen is executive director, Financial Transparency Coalition.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres with COP27 President Sameh Shoukry.

By IPS Correspondent
Sharm El-Sheikh, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the negotiators at COP27 that time for talking about loss, and damage finance is over.

“We need action. No one can deny the scale of loss and damage we see around the globe. The world is burning and drowning before our eyes. I urge all parties to show that they see it – and get it.”

He echoed the words of COP27 President Sameh Shoukry, who spoke about how emergent and developing countries had not reached an agreement on loss and damage – and urged the negotiators to put in extra efforts to reach agreements here.

Guterres said it was clear that there was a breakdown in trust between North and South.

This was no time for finger-pointing.

“The world is watching and has a simple message: stand and deliver. Deliver the kind of meaningful climate action that people and the planet so desperately need,” he said.

Global emissions were at their highest level and rising, and “climate impacts are decimating economies and societies – and growing.”

He said it was not possible to deny climate justice to those who contributed least to the climate crisis and are getting hurt the most.

“The 1.5 target is not simply about keeping a goal alive – it’s about keeping people alive.”

He said the Just Energy Transition Partnerships were important pathways to accelerate the phasing out of coal and the scaling up of renewables – and should be expanded.

Guterres also said the parties should act on the crucial question of finance.

“That means delivery of the $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries.

It means clarity on how the doubling of adaptation finance will be delivered through a credible roadmap. And it means acting on the consensus to reform multilateral development banks and international financial institutions.”

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Activists say governments should be urgedto put agriculture onto the negotiating table at COP27 especially to diverse,resilient agroecological farming are crucial for farmers which will enablefarmers to adapt to climate chaos. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

At a time when sustainable farming approaches such as agroecology have been removed from the text at ongoing global climate negotiation (COP27) taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, activists are urging African governments to explore new steps to integrate agriculture into the UN climate agreement.

According to the most recent assessment of climate impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), loss and damage can broadly be split into two categories: economic losses involving “income and physical assets”; and non-economic losses, which include – but are not limited to – “mortality, mobility and mental wellbeing losses”.

Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa, says green revolution solutions have failed the continent. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

In the agriculture sector, estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that despite overall gains in food production and food security on a global scale, many countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have failed to make progress in recent decades.

According to UN experts, the region produces less food per person today than it did three decades ago, and the number of chronically undernourished people has increased dramatically.

“This must change because many of Africa’s agricultural and food security problems have been related to misguided policies, weak institutions in the context of climate crisis,” said Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa (AFSA).

Belay pointed out that the industrial food system is a major culprit driving climate change but is still not being taken seriously by climate talks.

“Real solutions like diverse, resilient agroecological farming are crucial for farmers [in Africa] to adapt to climate chaos, but they are being sidelined and starved of climate finance,” he told IPS on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

While COP27 in Egypt is trying to address food systems, for the first time, new suggested solutions by multinational companies and global philanthropists by providing new technologies and systems that reward African farmers for mitigating emissions have become a new point of anxiety among climate activists.

The industrial food systems such as monocultures, high-fertilizer and chemical use are described by experts as an enormous driver of climate change in Africa, while small-scale, agroecological farming and indigenous systems comparatively have significantly less GHG emissions and can even work to sequester carbon in healthy ecosystems.

“Historically, these philanthropists and multinationals have been considering Africa as a continent facing an agriculture productivity crisis, yet the serious problem is instead related to resilience crisis,” Belay said.

As global warming patterns continue to shift and natural resources dwindle, agroecology is considered by climate experts as the best path forward for feeding the continent. Most experts agree that under current growth rates, Africa’s population will double by 2050 and then double again by 2100, eventually climbing to over 4 billion by the end of the century.

The latest estimates by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) show that feeding this growing population will require significant advancements in Africa’s food systems.

Martin Fregene, the Director of Agriculture and Agro-Industry at the African Development Bank, told delegates at COP27 that the power of agricultural technologies to raise productivity and combat malnutrition on the continent are desperately needed.

Speaking during a session that focused on major solutions for a sustainable Agriculture sector in Africa, Fregene pointed out that the inadequate public investment in agricultural research, training and infrastructure and the limited mobilization of the private sector are some major contributing factors to food insecurity affecting Africa because of Climate Change.

In May this year, the African Development Bank launched an African Emergency Food Production Facility to provide 20 million African smallholder farmers with seeds and access to fertilizers in a bid to enable them to rapidly produce 38m tons of food – a $12bn increase in production in two years.

The programme aims especially at providing direct subsidies to farmers to buy fertilizer and other inputs, as well as financing large importers of fertilizer to source supply from other regions.

While climate-induced shocks to the food system used to occur once every ten years on average in Africa, experts show that they are now happening every 2.5 years.

Estimates show by 2050, warming of just 1.2 to 1.9℃, well within the range of current IPCC projections, is likely to increase the number of malnourished in Africa by 25 to 95 percent–25 percent in central Africa, 50 percent in east Africa, 85 percent in southern Africa and 95 percent in west Africa.

Both activists and climate experts agree that the public sector in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa can do more to engage the private sector to ensure that smallholder farmers are taking ownership of established adaptation strategies.

Matthias Berninger, the senior Vice-President of Global Public and Government Affairs at Bayer, a global Life Science company with core competencies in the areas of health care and agriculture, told IPS that yet there are positive examples showing how the private sector is getting involved in agricultural adaptation to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, there is still a long way to go.

“The continent has adaptation projects that are now demonstrating their potential, but there is still a pressing need to reshape Africa’s food system to be more resilient, productive and inclusive,” Berninger said.

A new study by researchers from Biovision, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the United Kingdom-based Institute of Development Studies shows that such sustainable and regenerative farming techniques have either been neglected, ignored, or disregarded by major donors.

One of the major findings is that most governments, especially in Sub-Saharan still favour “green revolution” approaches, believing that chemical-intensive, large-scale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food. “Green revolution solutions have failed,” said Belay.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.” Credit: WA

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

As much as wars –or even more–, climate disaster represents a great business opportunity, so don’t bother those who pour their fortunes into fueling them with talks about stopping it.

See what happens.

 

Investing in wars

A couple of dozens of companies involved in manufacturing the most inhuman weapons of mass destruction– the nuclear warheads, have been supported by over 150 big banks by lending them money or underwriting bonds, according to the Nobel Peace Laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments”

OXFAM International

Its Don’t Bank on the Bomb report also shows that another 186 institutions seek to profit from holding shares or bonds. And that altogether 338 financial institutions have made more than 685 billion US dollars available to the nuclear weapon industry since 2019.

This exercise –and the huge ‘investments’ by the world’s top rich corporations- has proved to be highly efficient.

In fact, in its report “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” ICAN reveals that in 2021 –the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine– nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars on these weapons of mass destruction, that’s more than 156,000 US dollars… per minute!

Another prestigious investigation centre: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently revealed that, right now, of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2.000 —nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA— were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” SIPRI adds in its Yearbook 2022.

 

Investing in climate catastrophes

But there is another highly lucrative business: climate change.

“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments,” reveals a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice–OXFAM International.

“A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person.”

Its recent major study: Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, reports that a new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 395 million tonnes of CO2 a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.”

The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies.

“Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act.”

 

Once destroyed, business set to make more money

In either case, wars and climate catastrophes cause vast destruction, let alone unspeakable human suffering, and death.

Both of them further sharpen the world’s unprecedented food crisis.

Also here, market lords continue to make high profits.

In fact, a ”small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally,” as already reported by IPS.

On the current energy crisis, the UN chief António Guterres in mid-September 2022, stated that it is “absolutely unacceptable to see that, when people are suffering so much in different parts of the world and, namely, because of the high costs of energy and high costs of fuel, to see fossil fuel companies having the largest profits ever or at least in the recent past.”

Why not: in addition to speculating with the energy markets, these companies have been largely funded by governments. In fact, politicians have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers’ money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.

 

More business ‘opportunities’

Then comes the great business of reconstructing all that the money-making business has been greatly contributing. Buildings, highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, universities, etcetera, let alone in further synthetic food.. all of these are to be paid for by the victims.

But there are more business opportunities, like continue buying vast fertile lands for monoculture and intensive agriculture, a money-making practice that by the way further opens the door for high technology corporations to digitalise more and more food production, among so many others.

A production that, also, by the way, is being greatly disrupted due to both wars and climate disaster.

Water scarcity in the Middle East is impacting on lives and causing diplomatic tensions in between countries. The Turkish dam project, which includes the large Ataturk and Ilisu dams, has reduced water flow to the Tigris River’s natural channel impacting Syria and Iraq. Pictured here is Koctepe - a village covered by water in the Ilisu dam project. Credit: Mustafa Bilge Satkın/Climate Visuals Countdown

By Hisham Allam
Sharm El Sheikh, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

The Middle East and North Africa are the world’s most water-scarce regions – with 11 of the 17 water-stressed countries on the globe.

According to UNICEF, nine out of 10 children live in areas with high or very high-water stress, resulting in significant consequences for their health, cognitive development, and future livelihoods.

Now climate change is resulting in less rain for agriculture and a decline in the quality of freshwater reserves due to saltwater transfer to fresh aquifers and increased pollution concentrations.

Maha Rashid, Middle East managing committee member for Blue Peace, which works for water cooperation among borders, sectors, and generations to foster peace, stability, and sustainable development, says the situation in the region is dire.

“More than 60% of this region’s population lives in areas of high or very high-water stress, compared to the global average of about 35%. While the Middle East and North Africa have continued to experience water scarcity for thousands of years, several interconnected challenges today threaten environmental sustainability and security for the region’s water supply.”

Water scarcity is expected to impact development in the Middle East. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

As COP27 negotiations continue at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, people in the Middle East are dealing with the impacts of climate change. Rashid explained that Iraq relies on water from Turkey and Iran, as well as rain and snow, to feed its rivers, especially in the spring. Water revenues to Iraq’s rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, dropped for the third season in succession. The current season has experienced a more severe and unprecedented fall not seen for several years, and water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers declined, and drought conditions are experienced in the rivers and lakes in Diyala Governorate.

The Turkish dam system, which includes the large Ataturk and Ilisu dams, has reduced water flow to the Tigris River’s natural channel. It will result in a 10 billion cubic metre annual reduction in water flow for downstream countries – like Syria and Iraq.

Despite having large amounts of arable land, Iraq will not be able to achieve food and water security. Instead, over the long term, water will confine development, plans, and programs and not bring food or water security, says Rashid, who is also a professor at Tigris University, told IPS.

Water insecurity in the region had also impacted international relations, with tensions arising over Ethiopia’s building of the Renaissance Dam for irrigation and electricity generation without considering the significant effects on Egypt and Sudan. Now the threat of water scarcity is growing for the two countries, followed by food security and potential future natural disasters.

The Middle East is now experiencing rising temperatures, which is one of the effects of climate change. As a result, North Africa is now experiencing drought in some regions and torrential downpours in others.

According to Rashid, since 2010, which set new temperature records in 19 countries, many of which were Arab nations, countries are experiencing summertime temperatures of up to 54 degrees Celsius, including in Iraq and Morocco, where two-thirds of the oases have vanished as a result of decreased precipitation and increased evaporation. Saudi Arabia and Sudan are also experiencing fierce sandstorms.

These climatic changes are predicted to get worse unless the inhabitants and governments of the area deal with them properly and urgently over the course of the next fifty years.

Rashid contended that doing this calls for more prudent resource management as well as adjustments to sectoral and economic models, mindsets, and behaviours. While she is optimistic about the outcome of the climate negotiations, most countries have not committed to implementing the recommendations and reducing carbon emissions since the COP 26 climate summit in Scotland.

“I believe that COP27 will address climate change issues and, in the end, will insist on finding a method that works to save poor communities.”

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Recognizing that innovation cannot be delivered by government alone, Singapore is focusing on building baseline adoption of digital tools in the private sector. Image: Shutterstock

By William Tan and Riad Meddeb
NEW YORK, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

Small states take the path less travelled. They face challenges unfamiliar to many: scarce resources, smaller economies and the real impact of climate change.

However, small states are also able to leverage assets in ways that large states often cannot. As an example, Singapore has learned how innovation and digital can accelerate development.

Small states are not passive actors in traditional development or innovation trajectories. They have exciting power and agency to steer innovation in new directions.

This includes forging a new age of global innovation leadership – defining and setting global standards and innovation priorities, and shaping a small states comparative advantage in the context of innovation.

Technological innovation is founded on policy innovation

Innovation does not operate in a vacuum, and governance is a key catalyst. This includes exploring how governance structures and processes can identify, implement and scale innovation.

There is a growing need to craft systems, cultures, and infrastructure that not only embrace innovation but become part of it. Governments can ensure that new technologies engage with local priorities — and shape global solutions which fill these gaps.

This is not a destination but a journey; it is about creating environments for continued innovation.

Governance needs to be responsive to the constant evolution of technologies. Some examples of such agile governance include regulatory sandboxes, outcome-based regulations, and testbeds for global innovators (though small states must not ‘just’ test innovations but co-design them too).

Agility also comes from data-driven innovating and data innovation. Here, governments can shape both foundational data infrastructure, but also leverage data to accelerate innovation – through initiatives such as the UNDP SIDS Data Platform. Such insights can then become part of ‘feedback loops’ to inform policy and service design.

We need to focus on outcomes, not solutions

There is a need to shift priorities towards the positive outcomes of innovation – whether driven by frontier technologies or frugal innovations, communities and entrepreneurs or corporations and governments. Each configuration leads to greater success in different contexts, and reaffirms why we need to be led by problems and not solutions.

Small states share unique challenges which do not necessarily respond to established technological ‘answers’, and there are wider positive multipliers which emerge when innovating for these challenges.

Small states again have the advantage of size; coordination can be faster, and enterprises may more easily work in tandem with governments to harmonize innovation priorities.

Particularly important is indeed recognizing that innovation cannot be delivered by government alone. The private sector plays a particularly fundamental role – including the smaller enterprises.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turbocharged digitalization and many entities now recognize that they can no longer do business in the traditional way.

In Singapore, this shift has been accompanied by a focus on building baseline adoption of digital tools through the ‘CTO-as-a-service’ platform under the ‘SMEs Go Digital Programme’. Since 2017, over 80,000 small and medium-sized enterprises have adopted digital solutions under the programme.

We need to build and strengthen local efforts and small state capacity

Innovation must be led and owned by local people — and this begins with human capital development. Brain drain is an immense struggle for small states, and tackling this is an imperative for governments.

Small states should look to shape robust curricula across local schools for young people, as well as develop advanced STEM offerings to encourage innovators to contribute to their home countries.

For example, Singapore’s TechSkills Accelerator Initiative has supported over 7,000 companies to hire, train and retain technology talent. It has placed more than 12,000 Singaporeans in technology roles, whilst an accompanying framework supports businesses in hiring global talent with in-demand skills.

At the same time, innovation is not a product of financial investment or discrete initiatives alone; it emerges out of complex interactions between the public and private sector, shaped by institutional frameworks to go with the above human capacity development, research and development, and business support.

Singapore’s national platform for digital innovation, the Open Innovation Platform, provides professional consultancy support to help companies diagnose business challenges, define problem statements and crowdsource solutions from 12,000 solution providers from the private sector.

The government also plays an active role to support startups in their growth stage. Through the Accreditation@SGD and SGD Spark programmes, organizations are provided third-party assurance on a startup’s ability to deliver on their products and outcomes, as well as connecting them to government and business demand.

Innovation is not optional for small states

The challenges faced by small states are matched by the potential that innovation and digital technology can offer. And part of this is the role and importance of learning from each other.

The Singapore Cooperation Programme (SCP) extends technical assistance and shares Singapore’s development experience with fellow developing countries. In its 30th year in 2022, the SCP has welcomed close to 150,000 foreign government officials to its programmes.

In 2021, Singapore launched the “FOSS for Good” technical assistance package to address small states’ unique development priorities – including digital transformation in the areas of health, education and public governance. UNDP has been an important partner in this programme.

Such shared learning and collaboration opportunities, combined with the wide-ranging support of initiatives such as the UNDP Global SIDS Offer, will be crucial to ensure that small states build and sustain global innovation leadership.

Both in the face of continued shocks and crises, but also to leverage opportunities where innovation can positively change lives and livelihoods.

William Tan, Director-General, Technical Cooperation Directorate, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore & Riad Meddeb is Interim Director, UNDP Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development

Source: UNDP

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One of the many activities held on Energy Day (Nov. 15) at COP27, where discussions are taking place for two weeks on how to make further progress on global climate action. The consensus among observers is that the energy transition away from fossil fuels will accelerate in the wake of the war in Ukraine and its impact on oil and gas supply and prices. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 16 2022 (IPS)

COP27 is unlikely to produce new commitments to reduce emissions of climate-changing gases, but the global energy crisis will eventually prompt more action by countries to move away from fossil fuels. That is the positive feeling that many observers are taking away from the annual climate summit being held in Egypt.

“The rise in energy prices due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set back many countries in the transition to renewable energies in 2022,” Manuel Pulgar Vidal, global leader of Climate & Energy at WWF, told IPS. “But this is not going to last, because developed nations have proven that the best path to energy security is to accelerate the abandonment of fossil fuels.”“…(D)eveloped nations have proven that the best path to energy security is to accelerate the abandonment of fossil fuels." -- Manuel Pulgar Vidal

The issue is seen from the same point of view in some countries of the developing South.

Costa Rica’s Minister of Environment and Energy Franz Tattenbach Capra was emphatic in an interview with IPS: “Countries like ours, which don’t have oil or gas, are appalled by the price increases. This will lead us to try to become less dependent on imports.”

The close relationship that has been established between climate action and economic development is easy to see at the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has drawn more than 33,000 people to this seaside resort town on the Sinai Peninsula.

This link goes far beyond the negotiations between the 193 States Parties on climate change mitigation and adaptation, which this year focuses on climate action, as highlighted by the summit’s slogan: “Together for Implementation”.

A demonstration is held at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center at COP27 to remind the world of the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals aimed at boosting global peace and prosperity, fighting climate change and making the transition to clean energy by 2030. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Global fair

COP27 is very much like a trade fair and a multitudinous meeting place, with an overwhelming number of talks, activities and document sharing, where the task of choosing where to be is very difficult and everyone constantly feels they are missing out on something more interesting happening at the same time.

While world leaders give speeches and technical officials discuss the next steps for climate action, countries, organizations and companies seek and offer financing, in public and private meetings, for all kinds of projects, ranging from energy, agriculture and infrastructure to the empowerment of indigenous communities."The conflict made many people understand how vulnerable the global energy system is and how harmful dependence on fossil fuels is.” -- Carlos Manuel Rodríguez

“This process has been very skillful in connecting climate change and economics. We all know that countries that do not act responsibly with regard to the climate are going to slide backwards in the coming years,” said Pulgar Vidal, who co-organized and chaired COP20, held in Lima in 2014, when he was Peru’s environment minister.

The energy sector is definitely the master key to finding solutions to climate change, as it is responsible for more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and is still primarily fossil-fuel based.

According to a report presented here by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), only 29 percent of generation comes from alternative sources and carbon emissions continue to rise.

And the past year “frankly, has been a year of climate procrastination,” said United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) executive director Inger Andersen on Nov. 15, the day dedicated to energy in the never-ending agenda of side events taking place at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Convention Center.

In the official negotiations, however, the energy discussion appears to be in the background, behind the debate on the creation of a fund to compensate for loss and damage in the countries of the South that have suffered the most from droughts, floods, hurricanes, forest fires and other phenomena that have accelerated in recent years.

COP26, held a year ago in Glasgow, Scotland, ended with a bitter taste with respect to energy when, following an intervention by India, a commitment was made to reduce, rather than eliminate, the use of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel.

For now, there is no indication that this summit will end with a better agreement in this area.

Manuel Pulgar Vidal, a former Peruvian environment minister and the chair of COP20 on climate change, held in Lima in 2014, poses for photos in one of the corridors of COP27 at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center in Egypt, where he is participating as global leader of Climate & Energy at WWF. CREDIT: WWF

Effects of the war

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, chair of the largest multilateral fund for financing climate action in developing countries, is also convinced that the energy crisis generated by the war in Ukraine will, in the medium and long term, trigger a faster transition.

“The conflict made many people understand how vulnerable the global energy system is and how harmful dependence on fossil fuels is,” the CEO of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) told IPS in one of the wide corridors of the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center, where the heavy traffic of people does not stop between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM.

Rodríguez, the former Costa Rican environment minister, said that “With an energy mix based more on renewable sources, there would have been more resilience to the impact of the events in Ukraine. European countries have already understood this and I am confident that they are understanding it in other regions.”

Reports circulating in Sharm El Sheikh support the theory that the impact of the crisis could be beneficial for the energy transition in the long run.

In the four largest emitters – China, the United States, the European Union and India – public and private investment in transport electrification and renewable energy is growing due to market mechanisms and concerns about energy security, says a paper presented by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), an independent advisory organization based in the United Kingdom.

“The pace at which the green transition is speeding up…is remarkable….no-one who genuinely understands the interconnected crises facing the world believes that more oil and gas represent anything more than a very short-term solution,” Gareth Redmond-King, international lead at the ECIU, said at the climate summit.

Harjeet Singh, of the Climate Action Network International, which brings together more than 1,800 environmental organizations, takes part in a demonstration at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center. The demand is to ensure that the necessary efforts are made so that global temperature does not increase beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Pressure from civil society

A broad spectrum of organizations are taking part in COP27, aiming to influence the negotiation process and seek funding.

Harjeet Singh of the Climate Action Network International (CAN-I), an umbrella group of more than 1,800 organizations in 130 countries, told IPS that “the war in Ukraine shifted the focus of many developed countries from climate action to energy security.”

Singh has called for a commitment to halt the expansion of fossil fuels to be included in the outcome document of COP27, which is due to end on Nov. 18 if it is not extended by one day as is customary at these summits.

At the same time, he lamented that, because of the impact of the war, “we see the fossil fuel industry taking advantage of this space to sell itself as sustainable, which is unacceptable.”

Evidence of the need to appear as part of the oil sector’s climate action is everywhere in this gigantic Convention Center, where the organization Global Witness denounced that 636 lobbyists for oil interests and companies are registered as participants.

One of the hundreds of organizations with booths at Sharm El Sheikh is the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) Fund for International Development.

“We came here to make ourselves visible, as we want to contribute to making the energy transition in all countries inclusive,” Nadia Benamara, Head of Outreach & Multimedia for the Vienna-based Fund, told IPS.

Benamara said the Fund pledged 24 billion dollars up to 2030 to finance climate action because “oil producing and exporting countries are also victims of climate change and want to contribute to the solution.”

IPS produced this article with support from Climate Change Media Partnership 2022, the Earth Journalism Network, Internews, and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.

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By External Source
Nov 16 2022 (IPS-Partners)

What happens to a country without land?
As rising sea levels threaten to submerge our home, we have made a radical plan for the survival of our nation.
Watch Tuvaluan Minister Simon Kofe’s address at COP27 and visit https://www.tuvalu.tv to find out how you can help.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Nov 16 2022 (IPS)

Like most armed conflicts the Ukrainian war intends to establish hegemony over a certain area, in rivalry with other usurpers. Russian propaganda pinpoints the US and EU as Russia’s main adversaries, while Ukraine is portrayed as a pawn in these nations’ international yearnings. Such a scenario is not new.

The Great Game was a political and diplomatic confrontation between British – and Russian Empires, which continued for most of the 19th and parts of the 20th centuries. Britain’s role was eventually taken over by the US. The Great Game mainly affected Mesopotamia (Iraq), Persia (Iran), and Afghanistan, though it had, and still has, repercussions on a wide range of neighboring territories.

Britain originally feared that the Russian Empire’s ultimate goal was to dominate Central Asia and reach the Indian Ocean through Persia, thus threatening Britain’s Asian trade links and its domination of India.

Britain posed as the World’s first free society, declaring its adherence to Christian values, respect for private property, and democratic institutions. Claims bolstered by an advanced industry, fueled by steam power and iron, as well as an ever increasing use of oil. English leaders assumed their nation had a God-given task to spread “civilization” and that such a worthy cause permitted them to exploit the earth’s natural resources, as well as the world’s labor force. Similarly to the Brits, the Russians, the Yankees, and the French considered themselves to be “civilizing forces”.

The quest for dominion was carried out in a traditional manner – pitching internal fractions against each other and let them do most of the fighting. Nevertheless, this strategy eventually led to direct clashes between “world powers”. Britain strived to convince the Russian army that it did not have a chance against the British war machine. The UK, France and Italy felt threatened by a growing influence of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. Accordingly, these nations supported an increasingly weakened Ottoman Empire, intending it to remain a buffer zone blocking Russia’s expanding war fleet from the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.

As part of this policy, Britain and France provided arms and money to anti-Russian insurgents in Chechnya, thus contributing to an enduring tradition of Chechen terrorism against Russia. After a minor scuffle between the Russian – and Ottoman Empires, Russia occupied the Principate of Wallachia (Romania), prompting France and Great Britain to attack Crimea with a huge military force.

The Crimean War (1853-56) proved that the Tsar’s army was no match for the allied forces. Russia was humiliated and its expansion towards the European mainland and meddling in Persia and Afghanistan were halted. Instead people living on the steppes of Central Asia and Siberia continued to be subdued and forced to join the Russian Tsardom.

The Crimean disaster had exposed the shortcomings of every institution in Russia – not just the corruption and incompetence of the military command, the technological backwardness of the army and navy, or the inadequate roads and lack of railways that accounted for the chronic problems of supply, but the poor condition and illiteracy of the serfs who made up the armed forces, the inability of the serf economy to sustain a state of war against industrial powers, and the failures of autocracy itself.

The meddling of imperialists in other nations’ affairs was gradually worsened by efforts to secure fossil fuels for their own benefit. Refined petrol was originally used to fuel kerosene lamps and became increasingly important when street lighting was introduced. After 1857, oil wells drilled in Wallachia became very profitable, inspiring a search for new oilfields in the east. In 1873, the Swede Robert Nobel established an oil refinery in Azerbaijan, adding Russia’s first pipeline system, pumping stations, storage depots, and railway tank cars. At the same time, Calouste Gulbenkian assisted the Ottoman government to establish the oil industry in Mesopotamia. Gulbenkian eventually became the world’s wealthiest man.

Profit from these endeavors increased through assembly-line mass production of motor vehicles, introduced by Henry Ford in 1914. However, the main reason for gaining control of oil was belligerent. The English First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, realized that if the British navy was fuelled by oil, instead of coal, it would be irresistible: “We must become the owners or at any rate the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the supply of natural oil which we require.” In 1914, Churchill feared that this could be too late – the Germans were already on their way to conquer the Middle Eastern oil fields. Together with the Ottomans they were finishing the Berlin-Baghdad railway line, which would it make possible for the German army to transport troops to the Persian Gulf and onwards to Persian oilfields.

Germany and its allied Ottoman Empire lost World War I and the Berlin-Baghdad railway never reached the Persian Gulf. In accordance with the so-called Sykes-Picot Agreement Arab territories of the former Ottoman Empire were divided into French and British “spheres of influence”. In 1929, the newly formed Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), a joint endeavor of British, French and American oil interests, brokered by Gulbenkian, received a 75-year concession to exploit crude oil reserves in Iraq and Persia, and eventually in what would become the United Emirates.

Access to oil continued to be a major factor in World War II. The German invasion of USSR included the goal to capture the Baku oilfields, which had been nationalized during the Bolshevik Revolution. However, the German Army was defeated before it reached the oil fields.

The Germans had pursued a relatively benign policy towards the USSR’s Muslim population of Caucasus and neighboring areas. This was after the war taken as an excuse for Stalin’s treatment of “treacherous ethnic elements”. Forced internal migration had begun already before the war and eventually affected at least 6 million people. Among them 1.8 million kulaks, mainly from Ukraine, who were deported from 1930 to 1931, one million peasants and ethnic minorities were driven from Caucasus between 1932 to 1939, and from 1940 to 1952, a further 3.5 million ethnic minorities were resettled.

Nearly 8,000 Crimean Tatars died during these deportations, while tens of thousands perished subsequently due to the harsh exile conditions. The Crimean Tatar deportations resulted in the abandonment of 80,000 households and 360,000 acres of land. From 1967 to 1978, some 15,000 Tatars succeeded in returning legally to Crimea, less than 2 percent of the pre-war Tatar population. This remission was followed by a ban on further Tatar settlements.

In 1944, almost all Chechens were deported to the Kazakh and Kirgiz Soviet republics. Accordingly, the Russian presence in Caucasus and Ukraine increased and so was Russian control of these areas’ natural resources, including wheat, coal, oil and gas.

After World War I, Britain had first tried to halt the Bolshevik penetration of Iran and did in 1921 support a coup d’état placing the UK-friendly general Reza Shah as leader of the nation. When Britain and USSR eventually became allies against Nazi Germany they did together attack Iran and replaced Reza Shah with his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Reza Shah had become “far too Nazi-friendly.”

Following a 1950 election, Mohammad Mosaddegh became president of Iran. He was committed to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, AIOC (successor of the IPC mentioned above). In a joint effort the Secret Intelligence Services of the UK and the US, MI6 and CIA, organized and paid for a “popular” uprising against Mosaddegh, though it backfired and their co-conspirator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled the country. However, he did after a brief exile return and this time a coup d’état was successful. The deposed Mosaddegh was arrested and condemned to life in internal exile.

Mosaddegh’s internally popular effort to remove oil revenues from foreign claws inspired other Middle East leaders to oppose Britain and France. In 1956, the Egyptian president Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, primarily owned by British and French shareholders. An ensuing invasion by Israel, followed by UK and France, aimed at regaining control of the Canal, ended in a humiliating withdrawal by the three invaders, signifying the end of UK’s role as one of the world’s major powers. The same year, USSR was emboldened to invade Hungary, quenching a popular uprising.

In 1960, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded in Baghdad. This was a turning point toward national sovereignty over natural resources. The US Iranian protégé, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, eventually came to play a leading role in OPEC where he promoted increased prices, proclaiming that the West’s “wealth based on cheap oil is finished.” The US was losing its ability to influence Iranian foreign and economic policy and discretely began to support the religous extremist Khomeini, who initially claimed that American presence was necessary as a counterbalance to Soviet influence. However, after coming to power in 1979 Khomeini revealed himself as a fierce opponent to the US. The US and some European governments thus ended up supporting the brutal Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran. The Iraqui leader, heavily financed by Arab Gulf states, suddenly became a ”defender of the Arab world against a revolutionary Iran.” The war ended in a stalemate,with approximately 500,000 killed.

Ukraine is one last example of how a country has ended up in a siutaion where a superpower use its military force to impose its will upon it, while implying that other nations have similar intentions. Times are constantly changing and hopefully Russia will realise, like the UK once did, that it cannot maintain its might and strength through armed invasions, but instead have to rely on diplomacy and peaceful negotiations.

Russia seems to be stuck in a time capsule where foreign greed and meddling in other nations’ internal affairs resulted in ruthless wars and immense human suffering. As the German philosopher Hegel stated in 1832:

What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The past is never dead. It's not even past.
                                         William Faulkner