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In the United States, in 2024 alone, there have been 24 climate change associated events with losses exceeding $1 billion each. Credit: Shutterstock.

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, US, Nov 15 2024 (IPS)

The United Nations recently released the 2024 Nationally Determined Contributions synthesis report, just weeks before presidents, global leaders, climate scientists and activists convene in Azerbaijan for the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The report reveals that current national climate plans are not sufficient.

This is particularly alarming considering how many countries, including the United States, were negatively and economically impacted by climate change associated disasters this year, including flooding, extreme heat, drought, and pest out breaks.

In the United States, in 2024 alone, according to NOAA, there have been over 24-billion-dollar climate change associated events that have causes losses exceeding $1 billion. Also in the United States, damage by flooding averages $46 billion a year. In Western Africa, flooding disrupted the lives of millions and resulted in overwhelming losses. In the greater Horn of Africa, millions are facing food insecurity and acute hunger due to repeated droughts.

Funding flooding research would help to cut down the devastating impacts flooding has on agricultural crops and the financial burdens that come about after flooding including government and insurance payouts to those that are impacted

Flooding, that ranks in the top three of the disasters, according to NOAA, has particularly hit hard in 2024. It has caused destruction not only of human lives but of livestock, poultry, and agricultural plants.  Yet, to date, flooding news has only focused on the impacts flooding has on humans and not plants. Yet the recent flooding events in Spain, for example, have negatively impacted agriculture.

Worse still is the fact that many of these climate-change associated events often happen concurrently, producing catastrophic and compounding  effects  on livelihoods and economies.

Conversations surrounding COP29 will heavily focus on climate finance and the need to grow the finances being committed for climate change action. While finance can help reduce the impacts these climate disasters have on livelihoods and economies, those investments need to be coupled with investments exclusively dedicated to climate research.

Investing in emerging climate disasters such as flooding today will be crucial and boost climate resilience. Otherwise, in the future, food shortages will become more common and food prices more volatile, with the potential to exacerbate conflict over scarce resources.

Funded flooding research will not only provide foundational answers about the impacts of flooding, but also solutions.  These multifaceted solutions range from identifying and breeding flooding tolerant crops, and finding sustainable products that can be applied to help plants and soils to recover well and boost their ability to defend themselves from pests, pathogens and plant viruses following flooding.

Similarly, flooding research could also identify combinations of crops that can be planted together to suppress flooding impacts while finding regenerative agricultural practices that do help to mitigate flooding impacts on plants.

Financial investments in flooding research are necessary. These can come through governments’ national science funding agencies.

In the United States, for example, the National Science Foundation, NOAA, and United States Department of Agriculture are big funders of research. To ensure that these emerging climate change associated stressors, particularly flooding and its impacts on agricultural crops are addressed via research, special proposal calls can be advertised and funds set aside to specifically fund flooding related research.

There are indicators that we are moving in the right direction. Recently, the BIDEN-Harris administration, through NOAA funded over $22.78 M to advance research of water-related climate impacts .

However, though encouraging most of the funded projects are on modelling and improving prediction of flooding.

For example, $7.6 M was awarded to fund work to create street-level maps of potential flood, improve models of how water cycles through nations rivers, all of which will help communities and businesses better understand the effects of extreme rainfall.

None of the projects focused on understanding and predicting the impacts flooding will have on agricultural plants or finding solutions to conquer the negative impacts flooding has on plants, soils and beneficial microbes that underpin plant health and productivity. These are areas that must be funded, too.

Funding flooding research and research surrounding building climate resilience would help ensure that lives are saved, infrastructure-related damage is cut down. Importantly, funding flooding research would help to cut down the devastating impacts flooding has on agricultural crops and the financial burdens that come about after flooding including government and insurance payouts to those that are impacted.

A 2024 climate resiliency report revealed that for every $1 invested in preparing for climate change associated disasters saves communities $13 in damages and economic impacts.

Similarly, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, every $1 invested in prevention and preparedness can save up to US$15 in damages and economic costs.

Research has continued to provide sustainable solutions to climate change-associated disasters. Investing in flooding research today will prepare us for tomorrow and a future where flooding events are expected to increase.

 

Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Richard Bennett, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, briefs reporters at UN Headquarters. Credits: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 2024 (IPS)

It has been three years since the 2021 Taliban offensive and the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan continues to grow more dire. Human rights violations are committed by the Taliban insurgent group on a frequent basis, with gender-based discrimination and violence being regular occurrences for millions of Afghan women. Gender inequalities are pervasive, with freedom of speech and mobility being significantly limited. The humanitarian crisis is exacerbated by widespread impunity enjoyed by members of the Taliban.

Shortly after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, a number of fundamental rights were stripped from over 14 million women that reside in the country. In 2023, the United Nations (UN) dubbed Afghanistan as the most socially and culturally repressive nation for women’s rights in the world.

The Taliban has imposed widespread violations of economic independence for all Afghan women. Women have been removed from their positions in all sectors of the workforce, with limited exceptions in healthcare and education. However, most employers opt to hire men in these fields. Women-owned businesses such as hair salons were forcibly shut down.

“This isn’t about getting your hair and nails done. This is about 60,000 women losing their jobs. This is about women losing one of the only places they could go for community and support after the Taliban systematically destroyed the whole system put in place to respond to domestic violence,” says Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director for Human Rights Watch (HRW).

According to a study conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), after the Taliban enforced these work restrictions, Afghanistan’s economic output fell by over 20 percent, making it one of the poorest countries in the world. Banning women from work has also raised rates of poverty significantly, with 96 percent of the entire population being at risk of falling below the poverty line.

Additionally, millions of girls and women have experienced their rights to education being stripped away after the Taliban took rule. Currently, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where women and girls are barred from secondary and higher education. According to a report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), there are approximately 2.5 million girls who lack access to schooling, which equates to 80 percent of Afghanistan’s population of young girls.

In the three years since the Taliban took power once more, they have erased decades of progress for education in Afghanistan, greatly threatening the future generation. “One thousand days out of school amounts to 3 billion learning hours lost or 1.5 million girls. This systematic exclusion is not only a blatant violation of their right to education, but also results in dwindling opportunities and deteriorating mental health. The rights of children, especially girls, cannot be held hostage to politics. Their lives, futures, hopes and dreams are hanging in the balance,” said Executive-Director for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Catherine Russell.

Freedom of mobility for women in Afghanistan has also been severely restricted. One of the 80 edicts established by the Taliban that target women’s rights bans all women from visiting public locations without the accompaniment of a male chaperone, referred to as a mahram. “The cumulative effect of the Taliban’s edicts and behaviors has largely resulted in the imprisonment of women within the walls of their homes,” said UN Women.

A dress code has also been implemented in the 80 Taliban edicts. If Afghan women are to leave their homes, they are expected to be covered from head-to-toe, with only their eyes exposed, usually in a burqa. Women are also prohibited from speaking in public. These decrees were met with significant backlash from Afghan women, humanitarian organizations, and world leaders alike. When asked for the reasoning behind this order, Khaled Hanafi, Taliban’s acting minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, explained, “we want our sisters to live with dignity and safety”.

“The Taliban are really taking a very significant step in terms of stripping away what autonomy still remains for women and girls. They’re creating a situation where it’s not even in the hands of women and girls themselves to make a decision about whether they’re going to resist the Taliban on this, what types of risks they’re willing to take with their own safety,” Barr said.

Over the past three years, rates of forced and child marriages have risen sharply. According to a report from UNICEF, the lack of education for women and girls has caused an increase in reported child marriage.

“As most teenage girls are still not allowed to go back to school, the risk of child marriage is now even higher. Education is often the best protection against negative coping mechanisms such as child marriage and child labour,” Henrietta Fore, former UNICEF Executive-Director, had said on the situation. Estimates from UNICEF also indicate that 28 percent of Afghan women aged 15-49 years old were married off in exchange for a dowry. There are also reports of girls as young as 20 days old being sold off.

Women who have protested these laws have been subjected to a host of human rights violations including enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, and physical torture. For women who have had the vast majority of their civil rights taken away, the banning of peaceful protests and freedom of speech has been described as a crushing blow.

Nausheen, an Afghan women’s rights protester, spoke to BBC reporters of the conditions the Taliban subjected her to when they detained her one year prior. “The Taliban dragged me into a vehicle saying ‘Why are you acting against us? This is an Islamic system.’ They took me to a dark, frightening place and held me there, using terrible language against me. They also beat me. When we were released from detention we were not the same people as before and that’s why we stopped protesting. I don’t want to be humiliated any more because I’m a woman. It is better to die than to live like this,” she said.

HRW reported cases of women being detained in poorly ventilated rooms, with little access to food, water. Furthermore, many women reported being denied contact with their families. According to Amnesty International, “UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan” recorded 1,600 incidents of detention-related human rights violations between January 2022 and July 2023, half of them constituting torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.

The Taliban has enjoyed vast levels of impunity for their crimes against women for decades. This seems most evident in the last three years, despite their claims to work closely with the international community to ensure the wellbeing and protection of rights for all Afghans. Despite condemnation and pressure from the international community to reverse their bans on girls’ education and women’s rights, largely the Taliban has only continued to double down and introduce increasingly restrictive laws limiting the spaces for half of the population. Afghan women and girls have faced dire conditions at the hands of Taliban personnel and have had their fundamental rights taken away from them. Access to justice has been denied for thousands of victims due to the Taliban abolishing existing laws that would lead to them being investigated or persecuted. HRW has pointed out that the existing legislature was replaced with a “narrow interpretation of sharia law”, with previous judicial personnel being fired in favor of candidates that support the Taliban’s policies.

The international community has urged the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to look into these violations of international humanitarian law.

“Afghan women and girls have faced some of the harshest consequences of Taliban rule, and they have led the difficult fight to protect rights in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, their pleas to the international community to stand by them have not been answered,” said Barr.

In an address to the UN Human Rights Council back in June, Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, warned of the severe social implications of a lack of justice for human rights violations committed by the Taliban. “Failure to effectively tackle the cycle of impunity only emboldens the Taliban’s oppressive regime and reduces the possibility of genuine & durable peace in Afghanistan and beyond,” he said. Bennet has also supported calls for the UN to recognize gender apartheid in Afghanistan as a crime under international law.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Kaitiaki! Whaia says she is at COP29 to bring indigenous wisdom to influence policy and to provide guardianship (kaitiaki) of the climate negotiations. Whaia, who now lives in Aotearoa, New Zealand, was raised as an Indigenous Aboriginal in Australia, where through her community she led a life of cultural practices that protect the environment. “Our […]

COP29 will need to build on COP16’s successes and mitigate its failures. Credit: COP16

By Yamide Dagnet, Amanda Maxwell, Zak Smith, and Jennifer Skene
BAKU, Nov 15 2024 (IPS)

The United States just went through its most consequential election. While the outcome raises questions about what the re-election of Trump means for U.S. engagement in global climate talks moving forward (in view of his previous stunt), the game is still on, with or without him. Despite the challenges, local communities, cities, states, private actors, and the public more broadly have embarked on an unstoppable journey—upholding the spirit of the Paris Agreement.

The world’s biodiversity agreement just faced its first big test in Cali, Colombia, at the United Nations’ 16th Biodiversity Conference of the Parties (COP16). The results were decidedly mixed, with some breakthroughs but also critical missed opportunities. Ultimately, it left the international community with a suite of urgent priorities to address our rapidly closing window to halt biodiversity collapse and to align the protection of nature with action on climate change.

With countries rapidly pivoting to the UN climate conference (COP29) this week, they will need to build on COP16’s successes and mitigate its failures, prioritizing the equitable delivery of main “AAA” objectives that are relevant to both: accountability, the alignment of biodiversity and climate plans, and the adequacy of resource mobilization and access to finance.

COP16 in Cali was the first Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP since the December 2022 adoption of the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF or, commonly, GBF). The GBF set forth a plan to reverse and halt biodiversity loss by 2030 through the achievement of 23 action-oriented targets and to live in harmony with nature by 2050 by meeting four overarching goals.

COP16 offered a chance to make progress on the AAA objectives, as they are essential to delivering on the GBF, while also ensuring equity is built into each of them. These objectives manifest in some of COP16’s most notable outcomes, including the adoption of a work program and the creation of a permanent subsidiary body on Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) under the CBD, with a recognition of the role of Afro-descendants. The outcomes also included decisions on a historic and long-overdue fund to foster equitable benefits sharing from their knowledge.

Overall, however, the international community left Cali with a long road ahead for meaningful, enduring, and equitable implementation.

Accountability
A long history of failed promises on biodiversity cast a broad shadow as the international community began negotiations at COP16. None of the biodiversity conservation targets set for 2010–2020 were fully met, making the challenge of halting and reversing biodiversity loss in the following decades much harder. While parties to the CBD have had two years since adopting the GBF to revise their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), which are supposed to detail how they will fulfill their GBF obligations, only about 22 percent of countries had done so by the conclusion of the COP.

Developed countries have been particularly notorious for sidestepping accountability, especially on forest commitments. For decades, international policy has largely focused on addressing deforestation in the tropics while allowing the wealthier countries of the Global North to evade scrutiny for their own forest degradation. As countries chart their ambition under the GBF and related commitments at the intersection of nature and climate, voices from the Global South, including the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, have begun calling for frameworks to drive more equitable accountability.

The GBF’s monitoring framework presented an opportunity to begin correcting this imbalance through the adoption of concrete, shared indicators to guide biodiversity protection and restoration. Instead, in the months leading up to COP16, negotiators began building a monitoring framework that risks cloaking business as usual under the guise of progress. Ultimately, without additional revisions and willingness to strengthen the indicators, the monitoring framework will be subject to the same inequities and weaknesses that have plagued policies for decades.

As countries look to build accountability, the enhanced transparency framework and global stocktake under the UN climate convention can provide models for how to bring more teeth into the CBD process and foster responsibility for all parties. In addition, wealthy countries need to ensure their NBSAPs are action-oriented and to hold themselves to the same standards on deforestation and forest degradation that they expect in the tropics.

There may also be opportunities to channel success elsewhere into greater accountability on biodiversity conservation. One example is the progressing ratification of the new high seas treaty, which is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for biodiversity conservation at a global scale. The treaty must be ratified by 60 nations to come into force and then be effectively implemented, both of which saw progress at COP16 with the announcement of Panama’s ratification during the COP and several countries confirming the signing of the treaty and announcing intentions to start working on the first round of high seas marine protected areas.

Alignment of biodiversity and climate efforts
Biodiversity loss and climate change are inextricably linked, requiring aligned, synergistic action. The UN biodiversity and climate conventions have historically been siloed, resulting in disconnected, sometimes conflicting decision-making and ambition. Last December, at the UN climate conference in Dubai (COP28), countries agreed to the first global stocktake, which emphasized the need to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 and to align with the GBF.

COP16 created an opening for fostering that alignment and ensuring coordination and complementarity. Parties agreed to establish a process, with submissions of views from all stakeholders by May 2025, for coordinating between the three Rio Conventions (addressing climate, biodiversity, and desertification). This creates a pathway for ensuring that climate mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity protection and restoration mutually reinforce each other’s priorities.

At COP29, negotiators should build off of this leadership, elevating the need to integrate climate and biodiversity commitments and reinforcing the importance of an efficient, robust collaboration process. Particularly given next year’s ocean and climate summits in France and Brazil, respectively, which will thrust oceans and forests to the forefront of the climate agenda, it is imperative that countries set the stage for the alignment between biodiversity and climate commitments, create opportunities for the exchange of lessons and best practices between the conventions, and deliver more robust and ambitious climate and biodiversity plans as soon as possible, and no later than in a year’s time in 2025.

Adequacy of finance
As at COP15, the issue causing the greatest rift at COP16 was the question of how to fund the biodiversity conservation called for in the GBF. Since the signing of the GBF, positions—particularly divisions between developed and developing countries—have only hardened. The European Union announced in September that it was opposed to a key demand of developing countries: the creation of a new finance mechanism to distribute biodiversity finance. At the same time, the Ministerial Alliance for Ambition on Nature Finance released a statement from 20 Global South countries calling on the Global North to meet the commitments it made in the GBF to ensure that at least $20 billion per year is delivered from developed to developing countries by 2025 and that at least $30 billion per year is delivered by 2030.

Unfortunately, discussions on these issues started too late in the negotiations and dragged into the last day of the COP, until the meeting ended abruptly for lack of a quorum. The aborted talks adjourned with no agreed-upon strategy for increasing funds to finance nature conservation. Countries will now continue talks next year at an interim meeting.

This result is unacceptable. The vast majority of countries in the Global South will not have the resources necessary to meet their obligations in the GBF if the Global North does not meet its funding commitments.

The problem is compounded given that some of the key sticking points of biodiversity finance echo discussions about climate finance. For example, under the UN climate convention, there have been similar disagreements around appropriate finance mechanisms, such as around the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund in 2022. During those and other discussions, diverging opinions around sources of finance, transparency, and access to funding have stymied progress. Now, with the inconclusive end of COP16 on these issues, there is even larger, more entrenched distrust between developed and developing countries.

At COP29, countries need to agree to a new, ambitious climate finance goal to build the needed confidence among governments and the private sector to pursue more ambitious climate action that also drives the protection of nature; the richest and most-polluting countries must therefore dramatically enhance their efforts.

This is not charity—it is investment for economic and social justice, a matter of national, food, and energy security, and it is essential to building a climate-safer world for all.

Ultimately, all countries will get hurt by climate impacts with billions’ worth of damages. The richest countries are not immune to this (as we saw most recently in the United States and Spain), and they all need to step up. A deal on finance cannot just hinge on the United States. That was true before, and it’s truer now.

Looking forward
For both climate and nature, 2030 is a deadline that will dictate our future. By then, the international community will need to have implemented transformative change across all sectors, establishing climate-safe, nature-positive economies while ensuring equity and human rights.

Government progress, including at the subnational level, on accountability, alignment, and adequacy of finance is particularly critical given the unprecedented attention from the private sector on biodiversity and climate risks and outcomes. Companies and investors had a major presence at COP16—they are paying close attention to these negotiations and to the growing risks of failing to take action. Signals from the government are critical to pushing money flows and supply chains toward sustainable, equitable outcomes and building the structures that will transform business practices.

COP16 made important strides but ultimately left far too much on the table. At COP29 and beyond, parties need to renew trust and pursue their resolve to rapidly scale up and invest in holistic, equitable, all-of-planet approaches that propel action at every level of society and government, finally turning global commitments into reality on the ground. COP29 needs to and can deliver.

Note: Yamide Dagnet, Senior Vice President of NRDC International, Amanda Maxwell, Managing Director of NRDC Global, Zak Smith, Senior Attorney of NRDC International, and Jennifer Skene, Director of NRDC Global Northern Forests Policy, International, wrote this article. It was republished with the permission of NRDC International.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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As expected, climate finance has taken center stage in Baku COP29 in a bid to renew the global focus on finance as a means to transform climate ambitions into tangible, sustainable action.  African countries are losing up to 5 per cent of their GDP, with many diverting as much as 9 per cent of their […]

By CIVICUS
Nov 15 2024 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses the gender dimensions of genocide in Gaza with Kifaya Khraim, International Advocacy Coordinator at the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC). Founded in 1991, WCLAC is a feminist organisation that documents Israeli violations against Palestinian women and uses this evidence for international advocacy.

The genocide that began following the attacks of 7 October 2023 has disproportionately affected Palestinian women, who face the general effects of extreme violence and displacement, and gender-based forms of violence, including sexual violence. To achieve sustainable peace, the international community must implement a ceasefire, uphold the decisions of the International Court of Justice, hold accountable those responsible for atrocities and ensure the active participation of women in the peace process.

Kifaya Khraim

How are Palestinian women affected by Israel’s current aggression?

The aggression has had a profound impact on Palestinian women, who face unique dangers because of their gender. Since 7 October, we have witnessed targeted killings of women and children and a rise in sexual violence by Israeli forces and illegal settlers.

Restrictions on reproductive healthcare exacerbate the situation. Most hospitals, including maternity wards in Gaza, were deliberately targeted by Israeli forces in the first three months of the aggression. As a result, according to local doctors. miscarriage rates have increased by over 300 per cent.

On top of this, around 400 Palestinian women are being held in Israeli administrative detention centres, meaning they are imprisoned without formal charges or access to legal representation. Systematic sexual abuse has become a disturbing trend in detention centres in various regions, including Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank. We’ve documented cases of soldiers conducting invasive strip searches on women, often in the presence of others. These women are subjected to torture and inhumane treatment without being informed of any charges or given a fair trial.

Is this violence new, or part of an older trend?

Palestinian women have long faced human rights violations. Since 1948, successive wars and attempts at ethnic cleansing have severely affected our lives.

Palestinian women have long suffered human rights abuses, but now the violence has escalated. We are no longer talking about violence but a crisis in which an occupying state is controlling our territories and committing genocide against our people.

In addition to the killing of over 12,000 women in Gaza, and on top of the direct violence against women, this context has devastated the livelihoods of many women, leading to early marriages as families hope to secure a safer life for their daughters outside frequently attacked areas.

There are currently over 900,000 Israeli settlers living illegally in the West Bank. They are illegal settlers because international law prohibits the transfer of a state’s population to occupied territory. Settlers use direct and indirect violence to remove us from our homes and confiscate our land. Direct violence often includes burning our crops, contaminating our water sources and destroying our homes. Indirect violence includes setting up factories that damage the sewage systems of Palestinian villages and pollute our air. These attacks disproportionately affect women, who are often the ones responsible for water use, cooking and household chores.

Palestinian women are also deprived of their right to travel to work or school on the basis of so-called ‘security concerns’. In Gaza, before the genocide, women faced obstacles in accessing healthcare, which is particularly critical for those with cancer or living with chronic diseases. Israel has blocked the import of medical equipment and often denies medical permits, leaving people in need of essential treatment such as chemotherapy unable to travel. When permits are granted, they often come with restrictions, such as the need to travel unaccompanied and return the same day, or being granted a travel permit to one chemotherapy session but denied another.

How is the violence suffered by women different from that suffered by men?

In discussing the gendered impact of human rights violations against Palestinians, we must begin by acknowledging that men are often the targets. But women also pay a heavy price.

If a man is accused of a crime under Israeli military law, the whole family is punished. Their home is searched and destroyed, and Israeli soldiers often harass, beat or sexually assault women and children. This is a form of collective punishment, which is a war crime under international law.

This is all the more serious because challenges of mobility, lack of jobs and violence at checkpoints mean women are often financially dependent on men. When their homes are demolished and they are left homeless, many are forced to move in with their in-laws and become their primary caregivers, which can lead to additional mental health problems.

So while men may be the primary targets of home invasions, arrests and killings, the indiscriminate violence is devastating entire communities and affecting women in specific ways.

How are Palestinian women working to support each other and respond to the crisis?

The occupation makes it incredibly difficult for Palestinians to unite. The West Bank is so fragmented that it is like living on archipelago. It is often impossible to simply travel between areas. This makes it difficult for us to form support groups.

Women who try to organise run the risk of being arrested. Take the case of Suhair Barghouthi. She’s a 62-year-old woman whose son was killed by Israeli forces. She couldn’t give him a proper burial because they wouldn’t give her his body. She looks after her grandson, who keeps asking if his father is alive. She tried to organise a group of families who have suffered similar losses to press for the return of their loved ones’ bodies. But this landed her in prison, where she was denied medicine, food and proper clothing. She was eventually released but continues to be harassed by Israeli officers. We have documented many cases like hers.

Palestinian women continue to support each other. For example, those who have lost children to violence organise visits to comfort others who have recently experienced a similar loss. But this is becoming increasingly difficult. Checkpoints add another layer of risk: if women are searched and Israeli soldiers discover they’re part of a human rights campaign, they may arrest them.

What should the international community do to ensure accountability for human rights violations against Palestinians?

As Palestinians, we rely heavily on international support, which is why we focus so much of our advocacy on engaging with global institutions.

One of our key strategies is to document and share evidence of violations with United Nations mechanisms. We document abuses to draw immediate attention to ongoing violations and help prevent further harm, and for future accountability. We hope that by proving Israel’s systematic violation of international law, we can persuade other states to end academic, diplomatic and economic relations. We are also calling for a boycott of companies that are complicit in human rights abuses. By showing a united front against violations, the international community could send a powerful message, challenge the status quo and push for change.

International legal bodies have confirmed that human rights violations are taking place and that they must stop. We urge states to heed the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the situation in Palestine.

Israel’s impunity for these crimes sets a precedent that risks becoming a global norm. The message seems to be that there are no real consequences for states that commit genocide or war crimes. The international community must take responsibility for ending this cycle of impunity. This would support Palestinians and strengthen global norms that protect all humanity.

What are the challenges facing activists seeking justice?

A major challenge is the lack of response from the international community. We warned of escalating violence long before 7 October, and while we are listened to, tangible action rarely follows. This has led to widespread disillusionment, both among activists and within Palestinian communities, where people tend to question the value of documentation and advocacy. People’s loss of faith in international mechanisms has made it harder to mobilise and document events, which is crucial for accountability.

Another challenge is direct retaliation by Israeli forces, who target and detain activists, often without charges or fair trials. Colleagues and lawyers working on detention cases are routinely arrested and sometimes held for months. This creates a climate of fear that limits advocacy.

The fact that our permits are often denied also obstructs cooperation and connection between Palestinian communities. Social media harassment adds to the risks, as settlers spread personal information about human rights defenders, particularly women, through platforms like Telegram.

This means real progress on key issues remains limited. Simple, achievable steps such as allowing the International Committee of the Red Cross to access detention centres could make a big difference, helping to restore trust in the system and provide safety for activists seeking justice.

Despite the challenges, I still believe in people power and women power. We shouldn’t underestimate the impact of sharing stories and raising awareness. Empathy can drive change. This is why I work at WCLAC: I know women will help accelerate progress towards justice, so future generations don’t have to endure what we’re facing today.

Get in touch with WCLAC through its website or Facebook and Instagram pages, and follow @WclacPalestine on Twitter.

 

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A child wades through water on her way to school in Kurigram district, northern Bangladesh, during floods in August 2016. Credit: UNICEF

By Joyce Chimbi
BAKU, Nov 15 2024 (IPS)

Directly destroying schools and learning materials, climate shocks are increasingly taking away the right to education. A staggering 400 million students globally experienced school closures from extreme weather since 2022. As COP29 negotiations deepen, defining a sustainable financial path to learning for vulnerable children, particularly those caught up in crises and conflict, is critical and urgent.

Concerns are rife that as weather events significantly disrupt continuous learning, opportunities for lifelong learning and earning opportunities will shrink as affected children might never find their way back into the education system. Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies, says COP29 is an unmissable opportunity to chart a financial path to education for climate-affected children.

Graham Lang, Education Cannot Wait’s Deputy Director

“Unfortunately, less than 1 percent of all climate-related finance at the moment is going towards education. We have a mandate to elevate the profile of education in emergencies and protracted crises in the COP29 dialogue, as it’s critical that this aspect of financing is strongly amplified. The prevailing lack of financing and climate-related interventions designed for education in emergencies and protracted crises will only derail climate action,” Graham Lang, ECW’s Deputy Director, told IPS.

A one-time investment of around USD 18 per child can mitigate the impact from climate shocks and better safeguard the children from the climate carnage. Lang said it is urgent that climate funds expedite and simplify their approval and disbursement processes to increase funding for adaptation and mitigation projects focusing on sectors that enhance resilience and co-benefits for vulnerable communities, such as education, especially in humanitarian settings.

The nexus between education and climate is undeniable. Extreme weather events are hitting education the hardest in low-income countries, with 18 school days lost annually on average, compared to 2.4 days in wealthier nations. The magnitude of the climate crisis is such that a 10-year-old in 2024 will experience three times more floods, five times more droughts, and 36 times more heatwaves over their lifetime compared to a 10-year-old in 1970.

Fatuma (15) waters her goats in Puntland, Somalia. Credit: UNICEF

Dianah Nelson, ECW’s Chief of Education, spoke to IPS about how underinvesting in education creates a knowledge gap in green skills and that this is a missed opportunity in the context of using education to accelerate the efficient and effective implementation of climate action. And raise a generation of young learners on the frontlines of climate action.

While children and young people are the most impacted by climate change, they are also enthusiastic about engaging in climate action. Still, existing education systems are not equipped to adequately facilitate access to knowledge, value, attitudes towards a change in behavior, and innovations required to accelerate sustainable climate action. Financing will raise education to meet the climate challenge.

The demand for green skills—the knowledge, abilities, values, and attitudes needed to live in, develop, and support a sustainable and resource-efficient society—is already outpacing supply in many low- and middle-income countries, with research showing that nearly 73 percent of young people across eight countries mistakenly believe that they cannot get a green job without Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills. Meanwhile, green skills are being demanded at nearly all skill levels and sectors across low- and middle-income countries.

Posters hang on the wall inside a UNICEF-supported learning centre that has been forced to close due to flooding in Sunamganj, northeastern Bangladesh.
Credit: UNICEF

Nelson stressed that “education is a unique sector that can help reach not just schools, teachers, and learners but surrounding communities, and this helps reduce the cost of climate action while improving the attainment of positive and life-transformative outcomes. At COP29, we have a real opportunity to make a difference by financing education to reach all children, everywhere.”

ECW is advocating for simpler funding and fund disbursement processes as they are the only lifelong for climate-impacted children in vulnerable, high-risk countries. Meanwhile, Lang calls for a comprehensive, research-backed loss and damage finance gap report to give an accurate account of the current education financial needs and gaps.

Nelson emphasized that climate-related financing for education helps reach affected children while also averting additional challenges that come with school closures. Stressing that “schools can be utilized as essential climate action hubs for information sharing on early warning systems. Research is telling us that when children are engaged and involved in climate action, they have the highest impact on their families and communities. 

Within this context, Lang says extending financial support would help build climate-resilient education infrastructure while also training learners to be positive agents of change. On the most desirable COP29 education outcome, he says the COP29 Baku deal must break the historical silence that shrouds education in climate settings and more in critical COP negotiations.

“We want the conference declaration document to explicitly reference education and even go a step further to refer to education in humanitarian settings. This would give the neglected sector a much-needed boost and help reach learners disproportionately affected by climate and left furthest behind the education system with an opportunity to shape their futures,” Lang emphasized.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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President Donald Trump addresses the General Assembly’s 75th sessions back in September 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 2024 (IPS)

US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20 next year may be another calamity for the United Nations—particularly if the second term turns out to be a re-run of his first presidency (2017-2021).

Trump’s past track record included the US withdrawal from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); threats against member states voting for anti-Israeli resolutions and slashing funds to a 72-year-old UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Trump also pulled out of the 2016 Paris climate change agreement describing climate change as “a hoax;” threatened to “totally destroy” a UN member state, North Korea; subjected the UN’s annual budget to a $285 million reduction for 2018-2019, and made attempts to wreck the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement.

Trump triggered a global backlash when he singled out both Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” eliciting protests from the 55-member African Union (AU). Trump also came under fire for his insulting statements that “all Haitians have AIDS” and Nigerians who visit the US “would never go back to their huts.”

And now, Trump has promised to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty – a second time around.

Will a second Trump presidency be an equally disastrous sequel to the first? As Karl Marx once observed: “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce”.

“When a significant historical event occurs with serious consequences, it’s initially perceived as a tragedy, but if the same type of event happens again later, it can seem almost comical or absurd because people haven’t learned from the past mistakes”.

Is Trump capable of learning from his past political blunders?

Last week, Trump picked House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York to be his next ambassador to the United Nations. She is described as a hard-liner and a strong pro-Israeli stalwart.

In the UN, she said, Americans see a corrupt, defunct, and paralyzed institution more beholden to bureaucracy, process, and diplomatic niceties than the founding principles of peace, security, and international cooperation laid out in its charter.

“We must strive for a U.N. in which no one nation is expected to foot the bill but receive no accountability or transparency in return, in which no despot or dictator can sit in judgment of others while deflecting attention away from their own human rights abuses, and in which no organization corrupted by the likes of the Chinese Communist Party can dictate sweeping conventions and international standards across its membership.”

Dr James E. Jennings, President of Conscience International and Executive Director of US Academics for Peace told IPS the United States is approaching a period of renewed political turmoil at home combined with a jingoist policy abroad, clearly a dangerous combination.

Destabilizing moves threatened by the new Trump Administration based on MAGA rhetoric, he said, includes drastically cutting support for the Ukraine war, confronting Iran in a bellicose manner, and greatly weakening the United Nations and its agencies, including opposing even the merest lifeline to Palestine.

“It is particularly galling that the next Republican Congress seems willing–even enthusiastic–to follow Israel’s lead in cutting off all aid to UNRWA under today’s dire conditions in Gaza, with devastating consequences for human life and survival. Palestinian Children will die from the first day–and the second day–and the day after that, and so on day after day with no end in sight”.

It is a sad fact that most Americans, including many politicians, are ignorant of world geography and history, and therefore of the real-world consequences of turning a blind eye to human needs globally, he said.

“At this point only peace activism everywhere can make a difference, including importantly, Israeli peace activist organizations. One of them has an appropriate title–yesh gvul–“There is a Limit!” Activists everywhere must stand up. There is a limit!,” declared Dr Jennings.

Asked if Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is prepared for potential funding cuts that could come with the new Trump administration, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “I don’t want to pre-empt whatever decision may be made by the next (US) administration”.

“I would say that over the last few years the Secretary-General, I think, has been very frugal in managing the money because we’ve been over the last few years living in a liquidity crisis which has forced us to be very responsible how money is spent. The Secretary-General will work with the next administration”.

Asked about the US-UN relations under the first Trump presidency, Dujarric said: “What I can tell you is under the administration of President Trump four years ago, the Secretary-General had very good relations with the president.”

The fact that they had different opinions about a number of issues was clear to all, he said. “I think the Secretary-General stated his opinions. The US administration had its policies. It did not stop the Secretary-General from engaging with the United States government, just as all of the previous Secretary-Generals have”.

Dr Purnima Mane, former Deputy Executive Director (Programme) and UN Assistant-Secretary-General (ASG) at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS it is truly sobering to reflect on the impact of the US presidential elections on the UN.

“There is serious concern that there will be a repetition of what transpired during 2017-2021, when the US, acknowledged till then, as a strong champion of the UN entered a difficult phase in its relations with the UN”.

Through this period, the US displayed caution, lack of confidence in and sometimes hostility about the UN’s workings. It withdrew from global agreements like the 2016 Paris climate change agreement and organizations it had supported like UNESCO, threatened certain member states, and cut overall US support to the UN.

Those were difficult years to say the least in terms of US-UN relations. In the last four years the US has shown renewed engagement with the UN but the world today is even more divided and in dire need for nations to work together to reinstate global order and bring economic and social equity to those who have consistently suffered as a result of the chaos we are seeing today, said Dr. Mane, a former President and CEO of Pathfinder International.

With many countries affected by political instability, civil unrest, and wars and with the negative impact of climate change even more palpable, Dr Mane pointed out, it seems redundant to state that the world continues to need an even stronger UN to bring the countries together for an impetus towards global stability and development.

The United States, she noted, definitely plays a critical role in making this happen. If funding cuts return, the US pulls out of more agreements and any of the 5 permanent member States of the Security Council promote their own agendas at the cost of global goals, the chaos that will follow is unimaginable.

“In some cases, other member states and foundations will hopefully augment their own support and take on greater leadership but in the current economic and political climate the world over, there is no guarantee of sustained and sizeable support or leadership”.

And in the interim, many more lives are likely to be lost, development globally will definitely diminish with the SDGs seriously threatened, and hard-won efforts and investments will be wasted. People all over the world including the US do not deserve this, she added.

Martin S. Edwards, Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, told IPS there are two challenges for the UN in dealing with President Trump, and there are no good solutions for either of them.

There were optimists at the start of his presidency that just thought about efficiency: the President likes making deals, and there’s no better venue for making deals than the UN. So, some argued that the UN would benefit under Trump.

But that view ran into two problems: First, this is a presidency that does not value multilateralism a great deal, so there’s not much for the UN to work with the White House on.

Without a recognition of common interests, he argued, any international organization loses its punch. Second, and equally important, the Trump administration’s focus on unraveling the Obama-Biden legacy means that it will squander trust with allies, since the US is no longer viewed as a country that keeps its word.

“So, the President is not going to ask much of the UN, and the members are not going to ask much of the US. This is certainly not a stance that will benefit either party in the long term, and the funding issue is certain to come back up once the budget process unfolds in the House,” said Edwards.

Elaborating further, Dr Mane said: “Hopefully we will see this recognition from the US administration but it is too early to tell”.

“Though sadly history often repeats itself – and none of the presidential campaign rhetoric so far has been heartening in that direction – we might be pleasantly surprised to find that with global persuasion and pressure, and on reflection and consideration of what the risks are to the world including to the US, good sense will prevail”.

Surely, she said, the US will want to continue to be seen as a nation that plays a leadership role globally and desire to sustain and augment its own development. Hopefully this will help the US to play its part in fostering the UN as an institution that ensures and enhances global and national development – not seeing one as taking away from the other.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Russia-Africa Summit, October 2019.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Nov 15 2024 (IPS)

At the first ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum in the southern coastal city of Sochi, seeking to deepen political and business ties with African countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin in his message and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his powerful speech underlined Russia’s security support to fight terrorism and extremism across Africa.

As Russia has expressed readiness to provide security it signed documents on military cooperation with African countries, according to media reports emerging from the first Russia-Africa ministerial conference held on 9-10 November 2024.

Setting long-term security alliances

In his message, Vladimir Putin reaffirmed the continuity in providing comprehensive assistance to African partners across a wide range of sectors. This includes supporting sustainable development, combating terrorism and extremism in Africa.

On his side, Lavrov also stressed the determination to intensify cooperation in the fight against terrorism and address other new security challenges in Africa, according to a statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

“We confirm readiness to establish a permanent Russian-African dialogue mechanism at the highest level, which will contribute to building peace, stability and security, as well as coordinating efforts to combat terrorism and extremism, address environmental problems, as well as issues related to food and information security,” the document posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website said.

Russia’s military assistance will be in exchange for full access to raw materials and exploiting natural resources, training military specialists and supply of military equipment and weaponry. Russia’s relations with Africa have been strengthening in multifaceted directions over the past few years. Its influence has grown too significantly as authorities demonstrated steps to help Africa struggle against western dominance especially in the emerging multipolarity architecture in this present world.

It is not a hidden fact that Russia earns revenue by increasing exports, including military equipment and weaponry to Africa. It exports grains, oil and gas. And therefore, several agreements signed would allow Russia to have a full access to exploring natural resources in exchange for its military assistance, as these African countries face financial difficulties. Russia has signed bilateral military-technical cooperation agreements with more than 20 African countries.

Challenges arising from security alliances

Given the persistent complex nature of conflicts in Africa and within the local conditions, the African Union Security Commission, Regional Organizations and related specialized security agencies, after exhaustively review and discussions during high meeting, offered strong recommendations.

In the past, African leaders, for example, AUC Moussa Faki Mahamat, South African Cyril Ramaphosa, Rwandan Paul Kagame shared the same position with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, that dealing with existing conflicts and disputes on the continent, it is necessary to mobilize collective efforts to resolve them and “must be confined to this continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.”

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and other leaders, at the 36th Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) held in Addis Ababa, further highlighted their opinions and perspectives which have been related to the backyard by the Francophones. Developments in these conflict-infested countries have negatively been affected, with millions of people displaced and ultimately pushed into abject poverty.

Until today, Africa’s peace-building processes have remarkably been complicated by external forces, largely imposing their aspirations to exploit natural resources and, to a greater extent, influencing internal policies which shape the future directions in those countries. In the long-run, Africa’s illusive dream of unity makes the future uncertain.

Defeating terrorism through multilateral cooperation

Leading discussions at the United Nations Security Council on challenges posed by increasing terrorism cum extremism and mechanism to eradicate the scourge across Africa, Mozambican Filipe Jacinto Nyusi unreservedly shared his country’s unique experiences, progressive approach and success story with the gathering in New York.

Citing the 2022 Global Terrorism Index, Nyusi reported that some 48 per cent of terrorism-related deaths occurred in Africa, while the Sahel is the “new epicentre” of terrorist attacks. He highlighted the fact African countries, the AU and regional organizations on the continent – such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the West African bloc ECOWAS, and its East African counterpart, IGAD – have accumulated years of experience in conflict resolution.

For example, the regional security force, the SADC Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM), has achieved remarkable success in fighting terrorists in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

Nyusi, very outspoken, shared valuable experiences about the use of well-constituted regional military force for enforcing peace and security in Mozambique. Creating regional military forces to fight threats of terrorism will absolutely not require bartering the entire gold or diamond mines (natural resources) for the purchase of military equipment from external countries. Filipe Nyusi’s sentiments were about Russia’s security partnership with Africa, especially French-speaking African countries.

Russia’s military diplomacy

The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), a policy think tank, has published a special report on Russia-Africa. The report titled – Russia’s Private Military Diplomacy in Africa: High Risk, Low Reward, Limited Impact – says that Russia’s renewed interest in Africa is driven by its quest for global power status. Few expect Russia’s security engagement to bring peace and development to countries with which it has security partnerships.

While Moscow’s opportunistic use of private military diplomacy has allowed it to gain a strategic foothold in partner countries successfully, the lack of transparency in interactions, the limited scope of impact and the high financial and diplomatic costs exposes the limitations of the partnership in addressing the peace and development challenges of African host countries, the report says.

Overcoming the multidimensional problems, especially extremism and terrorism, facing Libya, Sudan, Somali, Mali, and the Central African Republic (CAR) will require comprehensive peace and development strategies that include conflict resolution and peacebuilding, state-building, security sector reform, and profound political reforms to improve governance and the rule of law – not to mention sound economic planning critical for attracting foreign direct investment needed to spur economic growth.

AU Agenda 2063 and continental security

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the entire international community have expressed collective concerns about any use of private mercenary forces, instead strongly suggested the use of well-constituted regional forces approved by regional blocs or organizations, and the nation’s respective legislative bodies and approval by the executive organs as a means of addressing conflicts in Africa.

During the 36th Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU), under the chairmanship of Chadian Moussa Faki Mahamat, held in Addis Ababa, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, interestingly used the phrase – “African solutions to African problems” – seven times during his speech delivered on February 18.

By emphasizing local balanced or combined solutions, regional organizations become valuable players and their active involvement will steadily enhance continental legitimacy and the dynamics of traditional governance.

Within the context of growing complexities of world’s geopolitical changes, Abiy Ahmed offered objective suggestions including the fact that addressing existing conflicts and disputes with commitment and in practical terms on the continent, it is absolutely necessary to mobilize collective efforts to resolve them and, most importantly, it “must be confined to the continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.”

The African Union is headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Its vision is focused on an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena.

It has designed a continental development programme, referred to as the AU Agenda 2063, which is Africa’s development blueprint to achieve inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development over a 50-year period.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Dr Githinji Gitahi_Amref Health Africa Group CEO

By Dr Githinji Gitahi
Nov 14 2024 (IPS)

Global warming is no longer just an issue for the environment but a crisis of life itself. Yet, African governments’ climate action strategies, specifically those submitted under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), remain disproportionately focused on emission reductions—an approach that fails to address the most pressing health needs of African communities. For many Africans, it’s hard to explain why their leaders prioritize reducing emissions, which are rather low and insignificant when the immediate threat of climate change is not their carbon footprint but their vulnerability to its effects.

Consider the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). With a per capita carbon emission of just 0.04 metric tons, it would take an average Congolese citizen over 400 years to match the emissions of a citizen in a high-income country like the U.S., Canada, or Australia. However, DRC’s NDC includes an unconditional commitment to reduce emissions by 2%, with a conditional target of 21% by 2030. This ambitious reduction, aimed at emissions that are already minuscule, would come at a cost of $25.6 billion for mitigation compared to the $23 billion allocated for adaptation actions.

This isn’t an argument against the DRC’s commitment, but an example of the absurdity that is replicated across most of the African climate action strategies as stated in their NDCs. Across the continent, mitigation costs consistently overshadow adaptation investments, even though Africa’s contribution to global emissions is minimal. What impact would DRC’s 21% reduction from 0.04 to 0.0316 metric tons per capita emissions have on the global climate at a cost of $25.6 billion?

Ethiopia provides another example. With per capita emissions of 0.2 metric tons, Ethiopia aims to cut emissions by 68.8% by 2030. However, of its $316 billion climate action budget, $275.5 billion is dedicated to mitigation, while only $40.5 billion is allocated to adaptation. This imbalance overlooks Ethiopia’s pressing need for climate resilient infrastructure in health, water, and sanitation to protect millions from climate-induced floods and droughts.

The story continues in Malawi, where per capita emissions are only 0.1 metric tons. Malawi’s NDC targets a 6% unconditional reduction and a 51% conditional reduction by 2040, with $41.8 billion allocated for mitigation but only $4.5 billion for adaptation. This focus on mitigation underfunds Malawi’s immediate vulnerabilities, such as water scarcity, food insecurity, and a fragile agricultural sector.

Zimbabwe and Uganda follow similar patterns. Zimbabwe, with per capita emissions of 0.9 metric tons, aims to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030, budgeting $4.83 billion for mitigation compared to just $2.35 billion for adaptation. Uganda, with emissions at 0.1 metric tons per capita, commits to a 24.7% reduction by 2030, with $16.7 billion allocated for mitigation and $11.4 billion for adaptation, despite recurring droughts that jeopardise agriculture and health systems.

A more people-centered approach would give precedence to climate-resilient crops, effective water management, and adaptable healthcare systems that directly address the immediate needs of vulnerable populations.

This fixation on mitigation in countries with negligible emissions reveals what I call “distributed carbon guilt”—a shared sense of responsibility for a problem these countries did not create. African nations seem trapped in a “copy-paste” climate agenda that mirrors the priorities of high-emission countries rather than building strategies rooted in local needs.

It’s time for African leaders to rethink their climate strategies and make a decisive shift away from carbon metrics toward a people-centred approach. This human life crisis demands a bottom-up strategy focused on protecting lives and livelihoods, prioritising the safety and resilience of vulnerable communities facing growing health risks, water and food scarcity, and the loss of jobs and incomes.

Achieving this scale of change requires harnessing the power of citizen engagement to build a groundswell of advocacy that places people at the heart of climate negotiations. Empowered African voices—from grassroots activists to government representatives—are essential in holding wealthier nations accountable, demanding they honour their commitments for a just energy transition and provide the financial and technological support necessary to safeguard lives and strengthen the resilience of African communities.

The Pathway to Resilience

Climate adaptation and mitigation are not opposing approaches but mutually reinforcing strategies to tackle climate change and its impacts.  Each should be applied based on the specific needs of communities. For example, investing in adaptation in Africa provides immediate protection and reduces future risks, avoiding the escalating costs of inaction. According to the Global Commission on Adaptation, an investment of $1.8 trillion in areas like early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, sustainable agriculture, and water resources could yield $7.1 trillion in benefits. If African farmers adopted solar-powered irrigation, resilient crop varieties, and weather alert systems, global agricultural yields could avoid a 30% decline by 2050. Clearly, investing in adaptation delivers significant co-benefits for both resilience and mitigation.

African governments should therefore refocus on five key areas: strengthening climate-resilient health systems, offering reliable, safe water and sanitation services, supporting sustainable agriculture, mitigation, especially where there are direct co-benefits and implementing social protection programmes. Climate-resilient health systems are vital to managing climate-driven pressures, including rising disease burdens from malaria, dengue, and respiratory illnesses linked to pollution and extreme temperatures. They are also critical for responding to health impacts from extreme weather events like droughts and floods.

Reliable water and sanitation infrastructure that can withstand prolonged droughts and unpredictable rainfall is essential for tackling Africa’s growing water scarcity. This is directly linked to health, as failing and overwhelmed sanitation systems increase the risk of diseases like cholera.

In agriculture, climate-smart practices—such as resilient crop varieties, agroforestry, improved irrigation, and early warning systems—are crucial for food security. Meanwhile, government-led people-centric social protection programmes offer a safety net for communities facing the economic impacts of climate shocks.

These priorities will form a central part of discussions at next year’s Africa Health Agenda International Conference (AHAIC25) in Kigali, where African leaders will host global health and development stakeholders to exchange best practices and innovative solutions for tackling these urgent challenges.

Calling for Accountability from High-Income Countries

Based on the widely accepted principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,’ Africa should not bear this financial burden of adaptation alone. High-income countries, whose emissions have driven this crisis, have a moral obligation to compensate for the damage affecting developing nations. The Climate Convention mandates developed countries to provide this support, but funding is still not flowing at the scale or speed required. At COP29 in Baku, African leaders must stand united in demanding substantial, immediate financial support from wealthier nations to fund adaptation efforts across the continent as the world jointly works to slow down the global warming catastrophe.

As the next round of NDCs is due in early 2025, African policymakers must shift the focus to address their countries’ most pressing priorities.  Adaptation should be the primary consideration, guided by available data that highlights Africa’s urgent need for resilience. Mitigation should be pursued selectively where it offers direct benefits, such as reducing indoor air pollution. Meanwhile, G20 countries, especially the highest emitters, must lead on global mitigation efforts. Continuing to prioritize emission reductions in low-emission African nations is effectively adopting someone else’s agenda and diverts attention from Africa’s critical needs.

Africa’s climate commitments must prioritize lives, livelihoods, and resilience. The continent’s leaders must champion a strategy that safeguards its people, builds robust systems, and prepares for the climate impacts already upon us. In this crisis of life, Africa needs a climate action strategy centered on people—not carbon.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Prime Minister of Grenada, Dickon Mitchell superimposed on a dramatic poster displayed at the CARICOM Pavilion at COP 29. Credit: Aishwarya Bajpai/IPS

By Aishwarya Bajpai
BAKU, Nov 14 2024 (IPS)

“Though I come from a ‘no worries’ island, climate change is deeply worrisome for us,” Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told IPS in an exclusive interview at COP29 currently underway in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Asked how his country was recovering from Hurricane Beryl, Mitchell said the island in the last 24 hours “experienced flash flooding and landslides… So, apart from Hurricane Beryl, we are also dealing with other climate catastrophes.”

However, despite the challenges, the people of Grenada remain hardy.

“We (the people of Grenada) are resilient people. But we will shift the mindset of the people to a long-term perspective, to adapt to protection and sustainability,” Mitchell says. “We (SIDS) are at the frontline of the climatic crisis. It is not easy—we face disruption, loss of livelihoods, damage to property, and loss of lives.”

His country Grenada—a tiny island nation in the Caribbean Sea—faces heightened vulnerability to climate change, and has seen increased frequency of cyclones, heavy rainfall, landslides, forest fires, crop losses, and water shortages.

“It is my first COP, and I have come here to show the world that we need to be serious about transforming the world and protecting the climate.”

Mitchell determination to ensure the best deal for his island country is evident when asked about the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) which has been touted as a game-changing tool expected to save up to USD 250 billion, he responded saying “In the Caribbean Islands, carbon emissions are nonexistent. We have held our end of the bargain—all Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have.”

However, there was more to climate change than emissions, which Mitchell believes are central to the negotiations. He would like to see more benefits to ordinary people affected by climate change.

“Financing should be direct and transparent and should be to the farmers and fishing communities that are suffering the most.”

He said it was disheartening to tell 16- to 17-year-olds the global average temperature increases by 1.5 degrees.

He sighed then continued, “We need to acknowledge that we are falling short of the required standards. To address this, we must focus on climate financing to support mitigation, adaptation, and resource stability. Our goal is sustainable, renewable, and secure energy for the future. We’re prepared to make this transition, but it requires financial backing and strong partnerships to make it possible.”

When asked about his expectations of COP29? He asserted, “It is one planet, one globe. While our carbon emissions are none, we are the most vulnerable.”

He then threw down the gauntlet to the rich countries.

“At COP 29, if the developed world is serious about tackling the climate crisis, they have to take steps to curb carbon emissions and they can finance it. There is no justification for carbon subsidies. There is no justification for not transitioning to renewable energy nor for not financing us to ensure adaptation to the climate crisis.”

Mitchell demands that at COP29 climate finances are rationalized.

“At COP29, we must streamline the climate finances for SIDS, especially by making the processes easier and simpler, without their control. For example, Loss and Damage Funds should go to SIDS for actual loss and damage experienced by these islands,” he says.

The Prime Minister is adamant—the unnecessary bureaucracy in accessing funds is unacceptable.

“We shouldn’t need to create ‘projects’ to secure funding to rebuild schools washed away by floods or to compensate farmers whose crops are destroyed. We are already doing a lot in building financial resilience—we can only go so far!”

Again, referring to his country and the current crisis with flooding and landslides, he says, “we are asking for very concrete steps at COP 29.”

His message is straightforward.

“I will use the famous American saying, ‘Show me the money!’… Put simply, when you have a climate calamity of ‘X’ magnitude, you get it billed. And that bill should be allowed to respond to the direct needs of the citizens without having to pay it back, without charging the interest on it, and without being able to go to the (global institutions) to access it. That’s the kind of manuscript of simple financing we need.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A Lebanese family resides in a small camp on the streets of Beirut following a series of airstrikes that destroyed significant amounts of civilian infrastructure. Credit: UNICEF/Fouad Choufany

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 14 2024 (IPS)

As winter approaches, the ongoing airstrikes and bombardments on Lebanon has threatened the lives and livelihoods of civilians across the country and neighboring regions, which has resulted in skyrocketing death tolls and levels of displacement. Since hostilities escalated in September, Lebanon has seen the destruction of a significant amount of critical infrastructure, including historical sites that are integral to Lebanese history.

Over the course of the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, airstrikes from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have not spared civilians. Repeated airstrikes in the capital city of Beirut have caused widespread fear among civilians that Hezbollah officials are hiding among them, opening them up to further attacks.

A civilian watch group in Beirut examines neighborhood demographics to ensure that no Hezbollah members are among them. “The circumstances require our patrols to be more attuned than ever. There is a big fear of Hezbollah members coming and hiding in some apartments, in some houses and we’re trying to be available at any time [residents] ask us to check any suspicious activity,” says Nadim Gemayel, a member of the Lebanese parliament and founder of the neighborhood watch program.

According to the latest report conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), the first seven days of November saw over 214 civilian deaths from Israeli attacks. In the same reporting period, the IDF had attacked 3 healthcare facilities, leading to 2 deaths and 7 injuries among healthcare workers.

On November 11, the IDF conducted a raid on Saksakiyeh in the Sidon district of southern Lebanon which killed a total of 54 people. On the same day, another Israeli missile hit a residential building in Ain Yaaqoub, a town located in the far north of Lebanon. According to a November 13 post shared to X (formerly Twitter) by the Lebanese Health Ministry, the total death toll in Lebanon since last year has reached approximately 3,365 civilians.

High levels of displacement only put more pressure on humanitarian efforts, in what has become a crisis. According to a report conducted by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), roughly 473,000 people residing in Lebanon have fled to Syria since the escalation of hostilities in September. It is added that approximately 500 to 600 refugees on average cross Lebanon’s borders daily.

Evacuation orders are frequent throughout all districts of Lebanon. When asked about new forced displacement orders and bombardments, then-Israeli defense minister Israel Katz told reporters, “We will make no ceasefires, we will not take our foot off the pedal, and we will not allow any arrangement that does not include the achievement of our war objectives. We will continue to strike Hezbollah everywhere.”

According to a study conducted by AMEL Association International, a Lebanese non-profit organization that aims to support vulnerable communities in Lebanon, over 1.2 million Lebanese civilians are displaced, with 193,000 residing in overcrowded displacement shelters. These shelters are situated on mountainous land and lack heating infrastructures, making living conditions particularly harsh during this period.

“We have entered the winter and are stripped of necessities to protect ourselves from the cold and storms. The first rain that hit Lebanon a few days ago is one of the calamities that awaits us, including stronger storms and heavy snow,” says Saeda Abdallah, a resident of a shelter in eastern Lebanon.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has condemned the IDF’s attacks on Lebanese heritage sites. The ancient city of Tyre was just one of the many culturally and historically important sites that was targeted by IDF bombardment. Tyre, which UNESCO recognized as a World Heritage Site in 1984, is known as one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises in the world, and is home to the Tyre Hippodrome, an ancient arena that hosted chariot races.

“The Tyre bombing is something that has really moved all the people, because Tyre is a concept, a symbol, a World Heritage Site,” said Helene Sader, a professor at the American University of Beirut, in an interview for New Line Magazine.

Beginning on October 23, Israeli missiles ravaged Tyre and destroyed significant civilian infrastructures. Historians and UNESCO personnel fear that delicate historical sites may have sustained significant levels of foundational damage.

“We know almost nothing from an archaeological point of view from these areas, and the bombings could have destroyed precious evidence in the form of ancient sites,” said Francisco Nunez, a professor of Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Warsaw.

The ancient town of Mhaibib has been demolished from Israeli bombardment. Situated on the border of northern Lebanon, Mhaibib is known for housing the shrine to Benjamin, an Islamic prophet. This site is considered to be extremely sacred and culturally significant. The statue and shrine has sustained considerable damage from Israeli airstrikes and as of late October, it is unknown if the shrine still stands.

Graham Philip, a professor of archaeology at Durham University, opines that cultural heritage sites in Lebanon are of great importance to Lebanon’s cultural identity and history, almost akin to “the soul of a population”. “Imagine how people would feel in Britain if the Tower of London or Stonehenge were destroyed. It’s part of their identity,” he said.

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Manufacturing has been the engine of growth in Asia, but a transition to modern, tradable services could be new source of growth and productivity. Credit: JohnnyGreig/iStock by Getty Images, via IMF

By Chikako Baba, Rahul Giri and Krishna Srinivasan
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov 14 2024 (IPS)

The Asia-Pacific region prospered by becoming the source of more than half of global factory output, but another transformation to higher-productivity services has the potential to further support growth.

Employment and production typically move from agriculture to manufacturing to services, as part of natural progression that comes with rising income. Today, many Asian countries—including China, Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand—are highly industrialized. If history is a guide, industry’s share of production will shrink as more activity passes to services.

Indeed, the growth of services has already drawn about half of the region’s workers into that sector, up from just 22 percent in 1990, as hundreds of millions moved from farms and factories. This shift is likely to accelerate with further expansion of international trade in modern services such as finance, information, and communication technology, as well as business outsourcing (for example, as already done in India and the Philippines).

By contrast, traditional services—for example, tourism or distribution services—have lower productivity and contribute less to economic growth.

Policymakers should embrace this shift to modern services because they have higher productivity, as we show in an analytical note accompanying our October 2024 Asia-Pacific Regional Economic Outlook. Transitioning to a more services-led economy comes with greater economic growth opportunities, provided the right policies are in place.

Productivity is an important variable when considering which sectors can best deliver growth in coming years. Manufacturing productivity in Asia is already close to the level of global leaders, so further improvement offers only limited scope to boost productivity and growth.

By contrast, services in Asia don’t enjoy the same efficiency advantage, so the region’s economies have more to gain by catching up with countries that have the most efficient services sectors.

In addition, in several services sectors like finance and business services, productivity is higher than in manufacturing, which means greater contributions to growth. For example, Asia’s labor productivity in financial services is four times higher than in manufacturing, and it’s twice as high in business services, our new analysis shows.

Even so, countries need to have the right conditions in place to benefit from services. Manufacturing benefited from low trade costs and greater global integration, but services sectors are relatively protected in Asia, which can hamper progress.

Just like Asia’s higher tariffs on agriculture, which average 12 percent versus 7.5 percent globally, foreign companies that hope to enter the services sector face various restrictions. These include outright bans, approval requirements, local presence, and higher tax rates.

Policymakers should also recognize that workers leaving agriculture and manufacturing need the skills to find good jobs in services. With waves of new digital technologies replacing some jobs like clerical support, policies should ensure widespread internet and technology access, and introduce education and training to develop a digitally skilled workforce capable of leveraging artificial intelligence.

With growth projected to slow in many Asian countries due to rapid aging, boosting productivity by nurturing productive services is a key to Asia’s future success.

This IMF blog is based on an analytical note, “Asia-Pacific’s Structural Transformation: The Past and Prospects,” included in the October 2024 Asia-Pacific Regional Economic Outlook.

Source: IMF BLOG

Chikako Baba, Rahul Giri & Krishna Srinivasan, International Monetary Fund (IMF)

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Co-chairs of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) have arrived at a workable basis for discussion on the Summit’s top priority finance goal.

By Joyce Chimbi
BAKU, Nov 14 2024 (IPS)

Three days into the landmark COP29 conference, the co-chairs of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) have arrived at a workable basis for discussion on the summit’s top priority goal—a new climate finance goal. The COP29 Presidency says the draft will, moving forward, “guide conversations around potential landing zones and help identify concerns.”

The NCQG is a new global climate finance goal that the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA) shall set from a floor of USD 100 billion per year, prior to 2025. Parties have welcomed the decision, edging the summit closer to setting ambitious goals. 

“This is a significant step but there are still many options to be resolved. We now want to hear everyone’s views and we will create spaces for them to provide their inputs throughout COP29. But the parties must remember that the clock is ticking and we only have 10 days left,” COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev commented about the draft.

Mambagri Ouoba, Party in the Burkina Faso country delegation, has expressed his optimism that, at last, this COP will chart a sustainable financial path to finance effective, efficient and sustainable climate action to push back on the climate onslaught. Stressing that vulnerable, high-risk and poor countries in the Global South are in need of substantial financial and technical support to build resilience.

“Delegates, Parties, Observers and people from indigenous and other vulnerable communities are following discussions very closely and any progress, such as this, is very much welcome. Any decision or outcome made here at Baku must reflect the wishes and aspirations of all of us in every corner of the world. It is our collective responsibility to build resilience against climate change,” Ouoba told IPS.

Simon Philbert Kimaro, Party in the Tanzania delegation, told IPS that it is important to set binding financial goals “as pledges do not work very well. Commitments must be binding so that nations and other relevant stakeholders can be held into account. COP28 was historic as it very quickly arrived at an agreement on the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund but we expected much more progress than what has been achieved over the last year. Nevertheless, we are hopeful, as there has been some positive progress in the last few days of COP29.”

The loss and damage fund was established to bring finance to millions of people in developing countries on the frontlines of the devastating climate onslaught. As of September 2024, a total of USD 702 million has been pledged to the Fund from 23 contributors. Delegates from the Global South say this is far from enough to meet the climate challenge.

In Baku, the loss and damage issue appears to be a key priority in the COP29 Presidency’s plan to enhance ambition and enable action. The Presidency has pushed for progress and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage is now ready to accept contributions after the signing of key documents.

The Fund will serve as a lifeline by providing critical and urgent support for those impacted by the devastating consequences of climate change. With this important milestone reached, the Fund is now expected to start financing projects in 2025.

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Community health worker in Nepal helping giving polio vaccine to a child. Climate change-induced events are affecting basic health facilities directly. Photo: Tanka Dhakal/IPS

By Tanka Dhakal
BAKU, Nov 14 2024 (IPS)

Climate change and its impact on public health hasn’t made the top of the agenda even at a forum like the UN Climate Conference, but is should, say the health community.

Understanding the gap, more than 100 organizations from across the international health and climate community came together as the Global Climate and Health Alliance and have called wealthy countries to protect people’s health by committing to provide climate finance in the order of a trillion dollars annually, in addition to global action with leadership from the highest emitting countries to end the fossil fuel era.

Alliance endorsed nine recommendations for the summit through a policy brief—‘A COP29 for People and Planet’ which includes financing to community engagement.

In an interview with Dr. Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance IPS asked about the recommendations and why they were necessary.

Dr. Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

IPS: How and why the international health and climate community came together—why was it necessary, right before COP29?

Miller: For many years, the UN climate negotiations have been going on. For many years, health was not a part of the conversation. And in fact, the Global Climate and Health Alliance was established because a handful of health organizations felt like this is an important health issue, and we need to get health into that conversation, and we’re not seeing it there. Over the years, more and more health organizations have really begun to understand the threat that climate change poses to people’s health. I think a big contributing factor as well is that we are now seeing those impacts of climate change in real time in communities all over the world—every country, every region, is seeing some combination of extreme weather events.

This is directly impacting the communities that we serve, and we have to raise the alarm bell and make sure that we’re pushing for those solutions that are going to protect people’s health. The report, specifically the policy recommendations, is really an attempt to take what we’re seeing from the health perspective, the concerns that we have. About the threat that this poses for people’s health and the reality of the impacts on people’s health, and somewhat translate that into terms that make sense for negotiators to pick that up, understand it, and use it in the context of those actual decision-making processes in the climate talks.

IPS: Wealth is concentrated on one side of the world or one section of the community, but burden—especially public health burden—is on marginalized communities who don’t have access to basic resources. Is there any way that gap will be narrowed in the near future?

Miller: This is such a critically important issue. And unfortunately, we’re seeing some real extremes of wealth disparity—ironically, in countries that have huge wealth disparity within the country, everyone is less healthy than they would be if there was less health disparity. If people were more equal, that would be healthier for everyone. But the reality is, many people, as you say, don’t have the resources to access the basic necessities of life. Healthy food, clean water, electricity of any kind, but particularly clean energy, even access to education, access to basic health care—all of those things are really vital to growing up healthy and to living a healthy life. And the thing that is so clear is that access to those basic necessities early in life makes a tremendous difference in being able to grow up healthy, resilient, and productive.

It’s a huge impact on the individual that’s growing up without those resources—it’s also an impact on society. So, a society that has people that grow up with enough resources to be resilient, healthy, and well educated is a healthier society. And I would argue that that extends not only within a community or even a country but also internationally. So, if we have huge disparities internationally, that’s also kind of a drain on the world, a challenge for the world as a whole. It leads to conflict, it leads to friction, and it leads to difficulty making decisions to tackle climate change together. I would argue that it’s really in the best interest of wealthy countries to make those investments to help the lowest-income, vulnerable countries have the resource they need to address those basic necessities. I think it’s fundamental. It’s the right thing to do.

I think for so many reasons, it’s important that the wealthy countries do step up and provide this kind of resources.

IPS: While talking about the resources, wealthy countries are already far behind on their climate finance commitment. Do you think they will consider financing to protect people’s health?

Miller: This is a major focus of this year’s climate negotiations. In fact, on the table is a major discussion about a new pot of financing for climate change, and I don’t think we know the answer yet as to how that’s going to come out.

It often gets talked about as we can’t economically afford to put in that money. I think a key question is, what is the cost of inaction? If we fail to act, we’re already seeing. The cost of failing to act on climate change is immense. The cost of failing to enable countries to be better, prepared to be better, to have their systems, their water and sanitation systems be stronger, their hospitals be more prepared, etc. The costs are just staggering. So, when we’re talking about, can we afford to put the money into climate action, I think we also need to ask the question, can we afford not to? I think the answer is no. And then the last thing that I’ll say about this is, and this is also important, we are currently subsidizing fossil fuels more than a trillion a year in direct public subsidies. So that’s public money going into supporting the production and use of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are the primary driver of climate change.

So again, when we’re talking about, can we afford to or are we prepared to invest in climate action and put money into a Climate Fund? We need to ask ourselves the question. What is the cost of not doing so? And then where else is public money going that could be going into moving us in the right direction, towards clean energy, towards climate resilience?

IPS: You talked about the extreme weather events. In recent years, extreme events contributed by climate change are causing destruction en masse; often its monetary losses will be counted but its public health impact is still to be discussed. How do you see climate and health discussion moving forward especially regarding financing?

Miller: I don’t think it happens by itself. In my own country, the US, we are seeing climate-exacerbated disaster, and yet people not accepting the role of climate change in that and not accepting that the health impacts, the dislocation, and the trauma that they’re experiencing were caused by climate change.

It’s not necessarily going to happen just by itself, in in other countries as well. People may be feeling the impacts, but not connecting the dots, and not because of disinformation, not recognizing.

I do think that it’s important for those who know about those connections—the scientists, the advocates, the health professionals who are looking at these issues, the academic departments—to talk about it and articulate what those connections are.

But then I do think that each time one of those extreme weather events does create the opportunity for that conversation to happen, and we need to step up to those opportunities.

And I think that can make a really big difference in changing the nature of the conversation and opening-up possibility for a deeper conversation about what we need to do about this.

IPS: Let’s talk about the report. It talks about healthy climate action for most affected communities. Can you explain it for our audience and what would be the role of the community?

Miller: It’s so often the case that decisions get made without consulting communities affected by those decisions. There can be very good will that is, and good intentions behind that, and yet the results are not going to be as good if you’re not working with the people affected by the issue. The thing that community members know that nobody else knows in the way that they know it is their lived experience of what’s going on in their community, their resources in terms of their own knowledge, their own community relationships, their own resilience, their own techniques. There may be techniques that they know for growing food and their ecosystem.

There may be knowledge you know for forced communities, knowledge that they have of the force that they live in. There is very deep knowledge that communities have about their circumstances, their context, and their needs and what they can bring in terms of solutions, so effectively working with communities means really involving them in the conversation from the get-go when designing programs and projects and all of that sort of thing. And I think when it comes even to financing, thinking about how finance for Climate Solutions reaches that community level.

I think another thing that’s really important to recognize is that climate change puts a huge strain on all of us. It’s a huge psychological strain just to live in the climate era. Enabling communities to come together and be a part of the solution helps to heal that burden.

IPS: You touched on mental health. The report also talks about mental health and wellbeing outcomes—we are seeing people struggling with climate-related post- and pre-event psychological burden in different forms. How do you see this dimension moving forward?

Miller: That is one area where I’ve definitely seen significant progress in the last several years. I think I’ve seen significant progress in increasingly recognizing the health impacts of climate change and the health threat that climate change poses, and then within that, significant progress in beginning to recognize and acknowledge and understand the mental health dimensions of this. There’s a long way to go, but it is a part of the conversation, and it’s an important one.

There are mental health impacts before or after an extreme weather event, and that can show up as kind of anxiety and stress, a variety of things. People who go through major extreme weather events, like the post-traumatic stress of having experienced that and having gone through it, not knowing if it might happen again or when it might happen again.

There’s also the sense of losing one’s world, losing the world that one grew up in, losing the environment that one, the world that one grew up in and seeing those things kind of slip away—this sort of a cultural, ecological and cultural dimension to that. And if you know, failing to acknowledge that mental health dimension both leaves people suffering and also leaves people sort of disempowered.

I think community is important in response to those kinds of mental health challenges—the kind of recognition that there are actions that one can take and ways that one can come together. And some of those actions may be kind of the direct actions of sustainability, working to live a more sustainable lifestyle. I think even, maybe even more important than that, are actions of coming together with the community to influence the kinds of decisions that get made, to call for the kinds of policies that will turn the needle on climate change, to have a voice in the larger conversation. I think that can be even more powerful.

IPS: Do you have anything to add that we may have missed or you wanted to add?

Miller: I think the one thing that I would add is that, right now, every government that’s part of the Paris Agreement is in the process of drafting new national climate commitments.

It’s an important opportunity, not just at the international level, and as at these big international climate talks, but at home, in every single country, for people to call on their governments to make commitments that are aligned with protecting their health from climate change.

Also, I think it’s important to continue to focus on what we can do. The headwinds can feel pretty strong. Addressing climate change will be something that we’re doing for the rest of our lives, not just for the rest of my life—anybody alive today will be dealing with this issue for the rest of our lives. So, we need to maintain our stamina around it and know that this is a long-term commitment and know that it’s worth it.

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Trump's focus: Drilling for oil, not saving the planet. Credit: Shutterstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 13 2024 (IPS)

During his electoral campaign, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump highlighted that the U.S. holds more oil reserves than any other country, even surpassing Saudi Arabia. In this context, he openly encouraged big businesses to tap into these reserves with the words: ’Drill, baby, drill.’

The US president-elect has also threatened to impose record tariffs on electric cars’ imports from China, by increasing them between 100% and 200%, and has hinted at higher taxes on European vehicles as well.

As the U.S. remains the second-largest global contributor to climate damage after China, do you expect that this year’s climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan (11-22 November) can achieve what all the previous 28 sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have failed to?

In other words, can COP29 come out with effective, verifiable, legally binding decisions to mobilise the amount of financial resources (between 187 and 359 billion US dollars annually) to overcome the current huge adaptation finance gap?

Or shall this yet another expensive gathering end up with the usual ‘politically correct’ Declaration that will be announced as “landmark,” “historical,” although a non-binding step to halt the growing “climate carnage,” as called by the United Nations’ Secretary-General António Guterres.

So far, major political –and financial– world’s leaders decided to skip the summit, as is the case of the United States, the European Commision, and Germany, among others.

 

The Huge Financial Gap

The life-saving amount required to heal peoples and Nature –187 to 359 billion US dollars annually– is just a fraction of what the world’s military powers spend –annually– on weapons whose function is to kill peoples and Nature.

See what an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports:

 

• Estimated global military expenditure rose for the ninth consecutive year in 2023, to surpass $2.4 trillion,
• Despite the consequent growth in demand for weapons and continued efforts to meet that demand, arms companies have found it difficult to boost production.
• The 6.8 per cent increase in total military spending in 2023 was the largest rise since 2009 and pushed estimated world spending to the highest level recorded by SIPRI.
• As a result, the global military burden—world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP)—rose to 2.3 per cent.
• Governments allocated an average of 6.9 per cent of their budgets to the military or 306 US dollars per person.
• Estimated military spending increased across all five geographical regions for the first time since 2009.

 

‘America First’

“The United States remained by far the largest military spender in the world.”

The USA’s expenditure of 916 billion US dollars was more than the combined spending of the 9 other countries among the top 10 spenders, and 3.1 times as large as that of the second biggest spender, China, reports SIPRI, which is ranked among the most respected think tanks worldwide

During the same year -2023- up to 39 of the 43 countries in Europe increased military spending. The 16 per cent surge in total European spending was driven by a 51 per cent rise in Ukrainian spending and a 24 per cent rise in Russian spending.

The Israel–Hamas war was the main driver for the 24 per cent increase in Israel’s military expenditure, adds SIPRI in its Yearbook 2024.

 

The Big Polluters

The United States and other rich, industrialised powers, like Europe, and Japan, are the largest polluters, as is the case of China and India, while being those with the biggest capability to reduce the financial adaptation gap they have been causing.

See what a global movement of people who are fighting injustice for a more equal world, working across regions in 79 countries, with thousands of partners and allies: Oxfam International unveils in its report: “Carbon Inequality Kills”:

 

• Super Yachts and Jets of Europe’s Elite Emit More Carbon Pollution in a Week than the World’s Poorest 1% Emits in a Lifetime
• One ultra-rich European takes an average of 140 flights a year, spending 267 hours in the air and producing as much carbon as the average European would in over 112 years.
• In the same period, an ultra-rich European on their yachts emits, on average, as much carbon as an ordinary European would in 585 years.

 

On the climate adaptation financial gap, the report highlights what it called Make rich polluters pay.

“Climate finance needs are enormous and escalating, especially in Global South countries that are withstanding the worst of climate impacts.

“A wealth tax up to 5% on European multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise 286.5 billion euros annually. , supporting communities to build better lives for themselves, grow resilience and protect lives and livelihoods also in times of crisis.”

 

The Victims Pay?

Another global movement of more than 10 million people in over 150 countries and territories who campaign to end abuses of human rights: Amnesty International, has reported.

“With millions of people already displaced by climate change disasters in Africa, the richer countries most responsible for global warming must agree at the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan “to fully pay for the catastrophic loss of homes and damage to livelihoods taking place across the continent.”

Africa’s contribution to the climate carnage amounts to a neglectable 2 per cent.

 

And the suicidal war on Nature and Humans goes on

On the eve of the COP29, the World Meteorological Organization warned that the year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures.

Meanwhile, since the beginning of this century, the world has witnessed more than 2,500 disasters and 40 major conflicts.

 

A Misleading Claim

By the way, the elected president of the United States’ statement that his country has the largest oil reserves in the world, including Saudi Arabia, is anything but accurate.

According to the WorldAtlas’ list of the top 10 oil reserves by country, Venezuela ranks first with 303 billion barrels, followed by Saudi Arabia with 267 billion barrels, while the United States comes the 9th, with oil reserves amounting to 55 billion barrels.

In short, for the world’s biggest military powers, wars are worth spending far more than saving lifes. And the oil business that kills Mother Nature and all that lives on it, also ranks hight among their top priorities.

‘Drill, baby, drill’

Wind power installation in the impoverished desert peninsula of La Guajira in northern Colombia. Credit: Giampaolo Contestabile / Pie de Página

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Nov 13 2024 (IPS)

The Latin American and Caribbean region is a student with good grades in renewable energy, but not in energy efficiency, and has a long way to go in contributing to global climate action and overcoming the vulnerability of its population and economies.

The recent energy crises in Ecuador and Cuba, with power outages ranging from 14 hours a day to days at a time, and the threats posed by droughts – which this year hit Bogotá and the Brazilian Amazon, for example – to the hydroelectric systems that power the region, are proof of this.

Among the 660 million Latin Americans and Caribbeans enduring the various impacts of climate change, there are at least 17 million people, some four million households, who still lack access to electricity.“Countries in the region are very much affected by barriers in their investment ecosystems, access to financing, whether due to institutional problems, policies or legal security”: Alfonso Blanco.

That scenario comes under new scrutiny at the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which began its two-week run on Monday 11 in Baku, capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan.

The annual conference of 196 states parties has climate action financing as its main theme and will also review the global commitment made a year ago to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency.

The COP28 in Dubai proposed a global installed capacity of 11,000 gigawatts (Gw, equivalent to 1,000 megawatts, Mw) of energy from renewable sources by 2030, 7,000 Gw more than today. This is unlikely, judging by the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

The NDCs serve as commitments by states to adopt measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that global warming does not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, as stated in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which concluded the COP21.

Large solar power plant in the Sertao region, in the arid northeast of Brazil, installed by the Spanish company Naturgy. Credit: Naturgy

In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, “the installed capacity for electricity generation is already 58% renewable energy, and in 11 countries it exceeds 80%,” Uruguayan expert Alfonso Blanco, director of energy transition and climate at the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue, told IPS.

According to the Latin American Energy Organisation (Olade), the region’s installed electricity generation capacity was 480,605 megawatts (MW) in 2022, with about 300,000 MW produced from renewable sources – 200,000 MW from dams – and the rest from non-renewable sources, mainly fossil fuels.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) put the region’s installed electricity generation capacity at 342,000 MW last year, with advances in solar energy installations, with a capacity of 64,513 MW, and wind power, which reached 49,337 MW, as the hydroelectric source remains stable at 202,000 MW.

The Latin American and Caribbean region “can increase its capacity to generate electricity from sources such as solar or wind, but it can’t triple its hydroelectric capacity,” said Blanco, who was executive secretary of Olade in the period 2017-2023.

Diana Barba, coordinator of energy diplomacy at the Colombian think tank Transforma, also believes that “tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030 does not apply to Latin America and the Caribbean”.

“The next step is to maintain the proportion… until 2040, and in general to reduce the trend towards the use of fossil fuels,” Barba told IPS.

An auto parts factory in the Mexican state of Coahuila. Credit: México Industry

Elusive efficiency

Green energy capacity figures are improving every year in the region, but energy efficiency figures are not keeping pace. Experts from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) have shown that only the Caribbean sub-region has made significant progress compared to the first decade of this century.

Measured in kilograms of oil equivalent (kgoe) per 1,000 dollars of gross domestic product (GDP), the Caribbean consumed 110 kgoe during the 2001-2010 decade and decreased that expenditure to 67 units in 2022, while the region as a whole fell from 95 to 87 kgoe.

In that period, the Andean sub-region was able to fall from 108 kgoe to 90, Central America and Mexico from 85 to 70, and the Southern Cone remained at 90, although the figure is 80 kgoe if Brazil is excluded.

Efficiency, in which the region shows more modest results, is fundamental for the triple purpose of saving resources, reducing costs and, a primary objective at climate COPs, reducing the carbon emissions that pollute the environment and heat the atmosphere, precipitating climate change.

In this regard, the World Economic Forum, which each year gathers political and economic leaders, advocates electrifying transport, and above all stresses that NDCs should focus on demand and supply to improve industrial energy efficiency, only mentioned in 30% of the world’s NDCs.

In transport, an Olade study highlights that the fleet of electrified light-duty vehicles multiplied more than 14 times in the region in 2020-2024, with a total of 249,079 units in circulation by the first half of 2024.

This market – which entails greater energy efficiency and drastic reductions in carbon emissions – is led by Brazil with 152,493 vehicles, followed by Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile, but Costa Rica has the best per capita figure, with 34 electrified cars per 10,000 inhabitants, followed by Uruguay with 17.

However, as far as manufacturing industry is concerned, with an annual GDP of 874 billion dollars (14% of regional GDP), ECLAC records that it consumes more renewable energy each year and less fossil fuels such as residual fuel oil.

But its energy intensity – an indicator that measures the ratio of energy consumed to GDP – went from 232 tonnes of oil equivalent per million dollars of value added in the 1990s to 238 TOE in 2022, suggesting that the region’s industrial sector has not improved its energy efficiency.

Rows of solar panels on the roofs of Metrobús stations in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Credit: Caba

Four South Americans

To assess the necessary and possible efforts of each country to contribute to global renewable energy capacity targets, Transforma studied four cases, those of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia.

Barba explained that Argentina and Brazil were considered for their membership of the G20 (Group of 20 industrialised and emerging economies), Colombia for its capacity for action and Chile for its decision to accelerate the end of the operation of thermal power plants, while insufficient information was received from Mexico.

Argentina could take advantage of its onshore wind energy potential and large-scale solar energy, but Barba argues that “it would be super-difficult” to triple its energy matrix in a few years, which is only 37% covered by renewables, and that its current president, Javier Milei, “is betting on fossil fuels”.

Brazil can take advantage of its large-scale renewable energy potential, but Barba notes “contradictory signals” regarding its NDCs, by favouring hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation in the Amazon “instead of sending a very clear signal to close these projects in strategic ecosystems”.

Chile could reach 96% renewable generation in its electricity matrix by 2030, taking advantage of sources such as solar, wind, thermal and geothermal, and Colombia could reach 80% renewables in installed electricity capacity if it continues to multiply its solar and wind energy installations.

Of the countries analysed, Chile is the only one with a specific target of 10% reduction in its energy intensity, established in its national energy efficiency plan 2022-2026, and Transforma suggests that the other countries adopt similar targets in their plans for 2030.

On the other hand, there are calls for savings, considering that energy efficiency is “the first fuel”, the most cost-effective source or, in other words, that the cleanest energy is the one that is not used.

Oil exploitation in the Brazilian Amazon at the Urucu base in the Coari area along the Amazon River. Credit: Petrobras

A question of finance

Giovanni Pabón, Director of Energy at Transforma, has stated that “the issue of financing covers everything. If we don’t have secure financing, we can talk about a lot of things, but in the end it is very difficult to achieve the goals we require” in the Paris Agreement.

Blanco highlights that, in order to tackle their transition to green energy, countries in the region “are very much affected by the existing barriers in their investment ecosystems, access to financing, whether due to institutional problems, policies or legal security”.

“Overcoming that barrier is not impossible, but it requires work and political will, which is often lacking,” he added.

He recalled that countries with strong extractive industries, which are more oriented towards fossil fuels and allocate subsidies to them, stand out in that scenario.

Finally, Blanco considered that COP29, the second consecutive one in an oil-producing country, is “a transitional summit”, preparatory to COP30, which will be held in 2025 in the Amazonian city of Belém do Pará, with Brazil as host and leader, and could produce clearer and firmer results and commitments in terms of renewable energies and energy efficiency.

Financial solutions for the global South are under the spotlight during COP29. Credit: UN Climate Change/ Habib Samadov

By Umar Manzoor Shah
BAKU, Nov 13 2024 (IPS)

Riad Meddeb, Director of the Sustainable Energy Hub at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), stressed the urgency of finding innovative financial solutions during COP29.

Meddeb was speaking to IPS in an exclusive interview at the conference. He said the negotiations were expected to focus heavily on finance—a core issue that has historically hampered climate action in developing and least-developed nations.

The Finance COP Expectations

Meddeb highlighted the historical challenge of meeting the USD 100 billion annual target for climate finance, which has been a central but elusive goal in previous COPs. He noted that Azerbaijan’s COP 29 presidency aims to overcome this by ensuring the necessary funds are available, especially for countries most vulnerable to climate impacts. 

“This year’s COP is considered the ‘Finance COP’ because it’s crucial we not only set targets but also mobilize the resources to help countries adapt and mitigate climate impacts,” he explained.

A key focus will be developing sustainable financing mechanisms for countries that struggle with debt. Many nations in the global South face significant financial burdens, and accelerating their energy transitions requires resources that may be challenging to secure within their existing economic constraints. Meddeb also stressed the need for concrete financial schemes that can attract private sector investments to supplement international climate funding.

Riad Meddeb, Director of the Sustainable Energy Hub at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Progress at COP 28 and Hopes for COP 29

Reflecting on COP 28, Meddeb noted key successes, including establishing the Loss and Damage Fund and reaching consensus on a targeted increase in renewable energy capacity.

“The agreement to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030 was a significant breakthrough at COP28,” he said. “Now, COP29 must translate that ambition into action by securing the financial support needed to achieve these goals.”

Making sure that the commitments made at COP28 are more than just empty words is one of the main challenges going forward, according to Meddeb.

“By COP30, we want a global commitment on the pathway to adaptation and mitigation,” he added.

UNDP’s Role in the Climate Action Landscape

UNDP plays a critical role in translating international climate targets into real, on-the-ground actions. Through initiatives like the UN’s “Climate Promise,” UNDP supports countries in implementing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and operationalizing climate goals. Meddeb explained that UNDP is uniquely positioned to facilitate these efforts due to its extensive network of country offices in 170 nations. This network enables UNDP to address climate issues from a development perspective, integrating energy solutions into broader sectors such as health, education, and poverty alleviation.

“UNDP’s approach is not just about energy,” he said. “It’s about sustainable energy for development. We link energy needs with development needs, connecting climate action to real improvements in health, education, and economic opportunities. This is the difference UNDP makes.”

Addressing the Debt Issue in Climate Finance

A significant portion of the interview focused on the complex financial situations faced by many global South nations, where debt often limits capacity to implement ambitious climate plans. Meddeb pointed out that addressing these financial constraints is essential for equitable progress toward climate goals. He suggested that international financial institutions should provide debt relief or restructuring options to allow these countries to invest more readily in clean energy and climate adaptation.

“Pushing countries with heavy debt burdens to accelerate their energy transition requires a nuanced approach,” Meddeb said. “We need financial structures that acknowledge their debt situations while still allowing them to contribute meaningfully to global climate targets.”

Implementation of the Paris Agreement: From Words to Action

Meddeb stressed the importance of shifting the Paris Agreement’s commitments from paper to practice, especially regarding emission reductions by developed nations. He believes that developed countries have a moral obligation to reduce their carbon footprints, given their historical contribution to climate change and their financial capacity.

“The plan is clear, and it’s agreed upon by all parties in the Paris Agreement. Now it’s just about accelerating implementation,” he asserted. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel—we need to get it moving.”

When asked whether the current pace of implementation is sufficient, Meddeb offered a candid view: “The Secretary General was very clear—it’s now or never. We need optimism and ambition but also an unyielding focus on practical solutions. There are obstacles, yes, but there are solutions too. Together, we can save our planet.”

The Responsibility of Developed Nations Toward Vulnerable Countries

As climate impacts disproportionately affect poorer nations, Meddeb urged developed countries to support those bearing the brunt of climate change. He pointed to the Loss and Damage Fund as a critical mechanism for this purpose. Set up at COP28, the fund has already garnered around USD 700 million, and Meddeb hopes COP29 will build on this initial success by accelerating funding mobilization.

After all, as the UN secretary general António Guterres noted this week, while the Loss and Damage Fund was a victory, the initial capitalization of USD 700 million doesn’t come close to righting the wrong inflicted on the vulnerable.  “USD 700 million is roughly the annual earnings of the world’s ten best-paid footballers,” Guterres said.

Meddeb agrees. “Mobilizing funds for loss and damage is a positive first step. But we must continue pushing to ensure that the support reaches the most affected communities quickly and effectively.”

A Call to Action

For Meddeb, the stakes could not be higher, and the time for incremental progress is over. He said that COP 29 must not only focus on setting ambitious goals but also make real progress on securing the necessary financing to turn aspirations into achievements.

“Now is the moment to turn pledges into action,” he said. “We’ve reached a point where the world cannot afford to wait any longer. This is the COP for finance, and we need to ensure the resources are in place for meaningful climate action.”

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Turkana women recover with white bandages over their eyes after undergoing surgery to treat trachoma, the world's leading cause of blindness. Efforts like these are crucial in preventing the spread of this debilitating disease in vulnerable communities. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
ELANKATA ENTERIT, Kenya, Nov 13 2024 (IPS)

Draped in the vibrant red of his Maasai shuka, 52-year-old Rumosiroi Ole Mpoke sits cross-legged on a worn cowhide mat outside his hut, his face etched with a sorrow deeper than the lines of age. His once-sharp eyes, now clouded by trachoma, can barely make out the shadows of the cattle he once tended with pride.

“I should have done something when I still could see,” he says quietly, his voice thick with regret. “Now, I am useless with my livestock, and my children must guide me around our land. I can no longer provide for them as a father should.”

In Elankata Enterit, Narok County, a remote village tucked 93 miles northwest of Nairobi, Rumosiroi has been stripped not only of his sight but of his role as a provider, now trapped in a cycle of poverty and dependence that gnaws at his spirit.

The Maasai, known for their resilience and deep bond with the land, are among Kenya’s pastoralist communities, particularly vulnerable to trachoma. The dusty, arid environment they inhabit fosters this infectious disease, which tightens its grip on communities already cut off from adequate healthcare services. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Sightsavers, and Kenya’s Ministry of Health are working to tackle the disease, but for communities like Rumosiroi’s, the struggle is unrelenting.

Pascal, a Community Drug Distributor (CDD), hands azithromycin tablets to a woman identified as Abedi during a Mass Drug Administration (MDA) in Kajaido, near the Kenyan-Tanzania border. Credit: Sightsavers/Samuel Otieno

In Kenya’s harsh, sun-baked lands of Kenya’s Rift Valley and the north, where water sources are scarce and sanitation is poor, trachoma—a neglected tropical disease caused by Chlamydia trachomatis—leads to chronic suffering and blindness, affecting pastoralist communities who rely on livestock for survival. Addressing trachoma is essential to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, specifically SDG 3, which aims to provide universal health coverage, including access to quality healthcare and affordable medicines.

Elsewhere, at Chemolingot Hospital in East Pokot, Baringo County, a group of elderly women sits in the courtyard, not for medical care but to collect relief food distributed by the county government. Six frail figures lean heavily on walking sticks, guided by young boys to the right spot. Each woman is blind, their sight stolen by trachoma. With red, swollen eyes, they rub incessantly, trying to ease the relentless pain that marks their faces with lines of resignation and fatigue.

“They’ve given me so much eye ointment,” mutters Kakaria Malimtich, her voice tired and defeated. “I don’t even care about treatment anymore—now, it’s just about getting food.”

Malimtich, like many here, has lost her battle with trachoma, which afflicts 1.9 million people globally, primarily in poor regions. In the arid lands of Baringo, people battle blindness along with hunger, poverty, and a lack of basic resources.

Julius, a Community Drug Distributor (CDD), educates two women about trachoma and encourages them to take the treatment during a Mass Drug Administration (MDA) in Kajaido, near the Kenyan-Tanzania border. Credit:Sightsavers/Samuel Otieno

Cheposukut Lokdap, a 68-year-old resident of Chemolingot, sits nearby, rubbing her eyes to relieve the sharp stinging pain. “It feels like something is cutting into me,” she whispers, half to herself, half to anyone who’ll listen. Two years ago, her remaining vision faded, plunging her into “the dark world.” She remembers that day vividly—the eye she’d relied on to see the sun and shadows finally failed.

Trachoma is prevalent across Kenya, particularly in pastoralist regions like Turkana, Marsabit, Narok, and Wajir. According to WHO, it’s the leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide, yet it remains underfunded and largely overlooked. The disease thrives in communities with limited access to clean water and healthcare—conditions common among pastoralists.

According to April 2024 data from the World Health Organization, approximately 103 million people live in areas endemic to trachoma and are at risk of blindness from the disease.

“Here in Marsabit, clean water is a luxury, not a right,” says 40-year-old Naitore Lekan, whose husband is a cattle herder. “Our children suffer from eye infections all the time, and there’s no proper clinic to take them to. Sometimes we use herbs or hope it heals on its own, but it often doesn’t.” Naitore’s experience highlights broader issues in pastoralist communities, where traditional beliefs and lack of awareness hinder effective treatment and prevention.

She recounts her family’s struggle with trachoma. “My daughter, Aisha, started losing her sight last year. We thought it was just a simple eye infection, but at the clinic, they told us it was trachoma. They gave her antibiotics, but we couldn’t return for follow-up because the clinic is too far and we can’t afford transport.” For families like Naitore’s, the distance to healthcare centers and financial constraints make trachoma treatment challenging.

In Marsabit, community health worker Hassan Diba is determined to fight trachoma. “Awareness is key,” he says. “I travel to different homesteads, teaching families about trachoma, its causes, and prevention. But I can only reach so many people. We need more resources and support to tackle this issue on a larger scale.”

Trachoma’s impact goes beyond health; it disrupts pastoralist families’ economic stability. “When someone in the family is sick, everything stops,” says Rumosiroi. “I can’t go to graze the animals, and if our livestock aren’t healthy, we can’t sell them. Then we can’t buy food or pay school fees.” According to WHO, the economic burden of trachoma deepens poverty, as families divert resources to medical expenses.

Kenya’s health system faces major challenges, particularly in remote pastoralist areas. The government’s commitment to universal health coverage is commendable, yet implementation lags in regions where access to health services is hindered by geography and infrastructure.

Pascal, a Community Drug Distributor (CDD), measures 3-year-old Praygod’s height to determine the correct dose of azithromycin syrup during a Mass Drug Administration (MDA) in Kajaido, near the Kenyan-Tanzania border. Credit: Sightsavers/Samuel Otieno

“Most health facilities here are understaffed and under-resourced,” says Dr. Wanjiru Kuria, a public health official in Marsabit. “We need to prioritize funding for preventive measures like clean water and sanitation and train health workers to manage trachoma cases. Without these basics, the fight against trachoma won’t succeed.”

Moses Chege, Director of Sightsavers Kenya, explains that “trachoma disproportionately affects the poorest communities, and eliminating it has profound benefits for individuals and their broader communities.” He adds, “Kenya has made significant strides in the fight against trachoma, which is transforming lives—allowing more children to attend school and more adults to work and support their families.”

“The challenge to eliminate trachoma in Kenya is immense—over 1.1 million people remain at risk,” he told IPS. “Keeping hands and faces clean is essential to prevent the spread, but it’s difficult to maintain good hygiene when communities lack access to clean water. For nomadic groups like the Maasai, reaching them with consistent health services is challenging. There’s also a cultural aspect—some Maasai see the presence of houseflies as a sign of wealth and prosperous livestock. However, these flies carry the bacteria that cause trachoma.”

According to Moses Chege, Kenya has the potential to eliminate trachoma through strategic, evidence-based investments and urgent action, joining the ranks of 21 other countries that have already eradicated the disease. Since 2010, Sightsavers Kenya has been a strong partner to the Ministry of Health, distributing over 13 million trachoma treatments, including 1.6 million treatments in 2022 alone to protect Kenyans from the disease.

The recent launch of Kenya’s Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) master plan by the Ministry of Health is also expected to accelerate efforts in preventing, eradicating, eliminating, and controlling trachoma and other NTDs across the country.

Organizations like Sightsavers and the Ministry of Health have implemented programs to combat trachoma through mass drug administration and education campaigns. These efforts aim not only to treat the infected but also to promote hygiene practices to prevent the disease’s spread. “We’re seeing positive changes,” says Wanjiru. “When communities understand hygiene’s importance and have treatment access, they can break the cycle of trachoma. But it requires commitment from everyone.”

In 2022, Malawi became the first country in Southern Africa to eliminate trachoma, while Vanuatu achieved this milestone as the first Pacific Island nation.

As the world moves closer to the 2030 SDG deadline, addressing trachoma in pastoralist communities is essential for fulfilling the promise of health for all. It demands a multi-faceted approach combining community education, infrastructure development, and equitable healthcare access. For pastoralists like Naitore, Rumosiroi, and Malimtich, these interventions are not just a promise of restored health but a lifeline to a better future.

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

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