ICS Conservation Team protecting Alphonse Island's fragile nearshore ecosystems by retrieving a drifted FAD. Credit: Pep Nogues
By James A Michel
VICTORIA, Republic of Seychelles, Feb 21 2024 (IPS)
For most of history, only those who made their living from the sea chose to live on the coast. Fear of being battered by storms, not to mention vulnerability to attacks from foreign navies, kept most people inland. Gradually that changed and, along with fisherfolk and their families, the idea of a coastal location became something of a cult. High property prices still reflect its popularity. But is it any longer so desirable?
One reason to question the trend is rising sea levels. Scientists may argue about precise measurements but the rise is unmistakable. The warming of the ocean and melting ice are causing it. And by the end of this century it will be in feet rather than centimetres. Individual houses, the lower reaches of cities and even large swathes of continental nations will be under water. Bangladesh has for long been in the danger zone but so, too, are island communities, especially in the Pacific. Some of these islands have already been lost to the sea.
A second reason why a coastal location is no longer so attractive is marine pollution. Waste materials in the sea and around the coast are ubiquitous. Some are deliberately dumped by municipal bodies without adequate disposal units. In other cases waste is swept ashore, often emanating far away. Even in some of the remote islands of Seychelles, volunteers on beach-cleaning operations collect, literally, tons of rubbish from what should be a pristine shoreline.
What should we be doing to reverse trends and save coastal communities? Answers are not so difficult to find. The best way to slow down the rise of sea levels is to reduce global temperatures. But progress in achieving this is disappointing. In turn, marine pollution can be drastically reduced if poorer nations have the capacity to properly treat waste materials. Easy enough in theory but it calls for a massive transfer of resources from North to South. And there are precious few signs of that.
Discarded fishing nets: Brikole is a business startup in Seychelles which recycles the high volume of redundant fishing nets in the surrounding seas. Credit: Ardfern/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
There are more attainable ways to mitigate the situation but by definition, these generally offer little more than sticking plaster for deep wounds. Building new houses on stilts, raising sea walls, clearing rubbish from beaches on a regular basis, and more effective codes for the fishing industry and other shipping to minimise waste in the sea.
A bigger question is to ask who will take action on much-needed global solutions?
– Also at a global level, the United Nations encourages its members to meet sustainability targets. To loud acclaim, 2015 saw the launch of 17 Sustainability Development Goals, to be achieved by 2030 at the latest. We’re past the halfway mark now and all seventeen of these flagships are trailing, Goal number 14, ‘Life Below Sea’, is all about the ocean and no one could fault the analysis and selection of targets. The problem remains one of how any of this will be implemented.
– Individual nations are little better. Their leaders make fine speeches, travel around the world, and then promptly go quiet when they have to find the necessary resources to make the changes.
Experience shows that some of the most promising initiatives are not to found in the great debating chambers but closer to the ground. Smaller organisations cannot solve all of the world’s problems but they can make a difference at a local level. NGOs, for instance, have the advantage of being nimble and strongly focused on specific issues. Restoring a mangrove forest, protecting the habitat of marine mammals in a particular location, or reviving a coastal coconut industry can all bring tangible benefits.
Coconut plantation revival: Kentaste is a local company reviving the coconut industry along Kenya’s beaches. Credit: Picture courtesy of Joanne Muchai
Even without the formal status of an NGO, schools and local communities are active in beach-cleaning projects, providing visitors with information and renewing worn-out fencing. These might too easily be dismissed as superficial but, without such interventions, the coastal environment would be all the poorer.
A third source of innovation is to be found in business startups. Entrepreneurs, invariably young, are prepared to invest their own savings in ideas that might one day evolve into profitable businesses but which, in any case, yield outcomes for the common good. Recycling waste products is one example that can be seen in different countries.
Coastal communities need all the help they can get. If national and international bodies are slow to respond, we can’t afford to wait. There are many individuals and groups ready to make a much-needed start. From small beginnings, who knows what will result? They need all the help we can give. The time for waiting is over.
James A Michel is Former President Republic of Seychelles (2004-2016) and Executive Chairman James Michel Foundation.
IPS UN Bureau
Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
Le président de la fédération algérienne de football, Walid Sadi, brise le silence à propos du sujet du futur sélectionneur national. Il a fait taire […]
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A Buddha statue keeps watch over the village of Kampong Khleang. Credit: Kris Janssens/IPS
By Kris Janssens
KAMPONG KHLEANG, Cambodia, Feb 21 2024 (IPS)
Living in a floating village means embracing the rhythm of the ever-changing water. As I stroll through Kampong Khleang, flanked by wooden stilt houses lining sandy streets, I witness daily life unfolding. Alongside staircases, people prepare meals or run their little shops.
But actually, I’m walking at the bottom of a lake. In about six months from now, this will all disappear below the water surface. Residents will have to move to the highest floor of their houses and they will suddenly need a boat to go out.
Kampong Khleang is located on the shores of Lake Tonle Sap, in northwestern Cambodia, roughly 50 kilometers from Siem Reap and the renowned Angkor Wat temple. Owing to a unique tidal current, the village gets flooded once a year.
As the level of the Mekong river starts to rise in rainy season, the tributary called Tonle Sap is being pushed inland by the force of the water.
Lifeline
As the Mekong River’s level starts to rise during the rainy season, its tributary, Tonle Sap, is pushed inland by the force of the water. Following a meticulous scenario by Mother Nature, the lake at the end of the Tonle Sap overflows its banks and becomes five times as large, up to 250 km long and 100 km wide. From November onwards, the water recedes again.
This system is the lifeblood of this area and it creates a unique biodiversity. More than 1.2 million people in the region make their living from fishing.
But according to the Cambodian fisheries administration, fish stocks have declined by twenty percent in recent years. One of the causes is climate change. For several years now, the monsoon is less powerful and starts later than usual.
Eighty-three-year-old Laa recalls how her house was almost completely submerged during the summer. “As a child I had to go to bed by boat!” she shouts, giggling with joy at the memory. “But that’s all over now.”
Borei (24) would prefer to start his own business on land. Credit: Kris Janssens/IPS
Shallow Waters
It is five o’clock in the morning, one hour before sunrise. I go out to fish with 24-year-old fisherman Borei. With a headlamp guiding our way, he skilfully steers his outboard motor canoe through small bushes, sticking out of the water.
“More than an hour!” he shouts over the noise of the spinning propeller. He has to go further and further away from the village to find fish-rich areas.
We reach a cluster of trees, their roots more than a meter below the water surface. Borei paddles through this flooded forest and jumps into the water to check his traps.
From Father to Son
The catch is meager. A turtle can be sold, a little snake is thrown back into the water. Toads are clumsily trying to crawl out of the bucket. But Borei is mainly concerned with the fish: trei roah, a perch-like species, goes 2.5 dollars per kilogram.
Even for a dry season, the water level is exceptionally low, causing bigger fish to disappear. We return to the open water and enjoy the rising sun and a gentle breeze over the lake.
“We are fishermen from father to son, it’s our destiny,” Borei says shyly. He would prefer a more profitable job. “La-urng kook,” he says. The expression for “on land”, away from the water. Maintenance of mopeds, for example, or repairing mobile phones. But he has no investment money to start his own business.
Kampong Khleang: everything you see at street level disappears under water. Credit: Kris Janssens/IPS
“Not sufficient!”
Back in the village, the same story is repeated over and over again. There are fewer fish and everyone should learn to live within their means.
Two older ladies in a coffee shop, Laom and Juon, are discussing the situation as a local Statler and Waldorf duo. “At kroup”, they keep saying. “We don’t have enough.” Being 68 and 71 years old, they’re not so much worried about themselves, but more about the next generation.
Pooit (36) is cleaning the catch of the day. With strong strokes of a cleaver, she separates heads from slippery bodies. I’ve never understood why Cambodians prefer sitting on the ground for these kinds of jobs.
Biologists have been warning about the disastrous consequences of these dams, of which there are now eleven on the river. The hydroelectric power stations retain sediment, a sand layer containing micro-organisms that serve as food for larger animals
In a shrill voice she shouts orders to four children, crouched in a improvised circle, who help with the chore. Countless eyes of decapitated fish stare at me. The rhythmic tapping on the chopping blocks and the wriggling of struggling fish gives me a ghostly feeling. The sickening fish smell, which constantly blows through the village, combined with the stray pieces of trash, create a rough atmosphere.
“We work every day from early in the morning,” says Pooit, “we never have a day off.” But the result is very disappointing. “We only eat twice a day, mornings and evenings,” she says.
These fish are too small to be sold individually or per kilo. They are used to make the typical fermented fish paste called ‘prohok’. Once invented as a storage technique and now called ‘the cheese of Cambodia’ because of its penetrating smell.
Dams on the Mekong
Daney (34) remembers seeing big fish in the water next to the village. “They’ve all gone,” she says, “since the dams were built on the Mekong”.
Biologists have been warning about the disastrous consequences of these dams, of which there are now eleven on the river. The hydroelectric power stations retain sediment, a sand layer containing micro-organisms that serve as food for larger animals.
The dams also hold back water, which explains the lower flow rate. And larger fish, migrating to mate, cannot pass. This happens upstream on the Mekong, in Laos and northern Cambodia, more than three hundred kilometers to the east. But Mekong and Tonle Sap are two communicating vessels, and the negative effect can be felt as far away as Kampong Khleang.
No Future As Fishermen
Choon Phop (65) witnessed it all. He stopped working as a fisherman in 2016 and is now a bicycle repairer. “Many species have disappeared,” he says. “Illegal fishing techniques have destroyed the business, although there are now stricter laws.”
He refers, among other things, to electrofishing, a prohibited technique of using electric shocks in the water to affect the instinct and thus the movement of fish.
I sense more optimism from Takhoa, a 62-year-old retired fisherman, who has given his stilt house in Kampong Khleang to his son’s family. Now he lives in a small boat, surviving on vegetables and fish. In the reddish morning light he looks quite happy with his simple life.
Takhoa shares his insight like a teacher who talks to his student. According to him, the catch is poor because the low shrubs, a natural habitat for fish, are being cut on a large scale. Rice fields and other plantations are taking their place. “There are strict laws,” says Takhoa while he puffs on his cigarette, “but the police takes bribes to turn a blind eye.”
The Old Wise Man
A little later, mourning funeral prayers echo in the square in front of the pagoda. Large megaphones add a strange metal distortion to the dark sound. When the ceremony is over, I talk to the oldest monk Som Hoa (66), known by his epithet ‘grandfather’. I want to know how he sees the future of the village.
We sit on a bench in front of the meter-high golden Buddha statue. Som Hoa speaks slowly in a low, croaking voice.
“The problem is man-made,” he says. He cites illegal techniques and overfishing as the biggest causes. “They have to wake up and follow the rules. And then eventually everything will be fine.” He concludes with an old Cambodian saying: as long as there is water, there are fish.
Les travaux de la session extraordinaire de l'Assemblée nationale, 9è législature, se sont ouverts ce mercredi 21 février 2024 au Palais des Gouverneurs à Porto-Novo en présence du Garde des Sceaux, Ministre de la justice, Yvon Detchenou. L'examen du projet de loi portant révision de la Constitution, du projet de relecture du Code électoral et dix autres dossiers sont inscrits à l'ordre de cette première session extraordinaire de l'année 2024 qui a été suspendue jusqu'à lundi prochain.
A l'ouverture des travaux de la première session extraordinaire au titre de l'année 2024 de l'Assemblée nationale, le secrétaire parlementaire Mahougnon Kakpo a procédé à la vérification du quorum sur instructions du président de l'Assemblée Louis Vlavonou. 89 députés sur 109 sont présents à la session extraordinaire.
Après la lecture des communications, une minute de silence a été observée en mémoire des défunts.
Les députés ont eu une longue discussion au sujet de la prise en compte ou non d'une proposition de loi portant modification du Code électoral initiée par le député Nourénou Atchadé et déposée ce mercredi 21 février.
Divers dossiers ont été affectés aux Commissions de l'Assemblée nationale pour étude et avis par le président Louis Vlavonou. Il s'agit de l'Autorisation de ratification de l'Accord de l'Organisation Mondiale du Commerce (OMC) sur les subventions à la pêche transmis par le gouvernement le 31 janvier dernier qui a été affecté à la Commission du Plan, de l'Equipement et de Production (C3) pour étude sur le fond et aux Commissions C2 et C5 (Finances et des Echanges- Relations Extérieures, de la Coopération au Développement, de la Défense et de la Sécurité) pour avis.
Le projet de loi portant règlementation bancaire en République du Bénin a été affecté à la Commission C2 quant au fond et à la Commission C5 pour avis. La Commission des lois (C1) a reçu pour étude de fond et les Commissions C2 ; C3 ; C4 et C5 pour avis le projet de portant modification du code électoral initié par le député Aké Natondé.
Les députés ont procédé à l'amendement et à l'adoption du rapport de la session plénière du 30 janvier dernier.
Il a été procédé à l'installation de Abou Torou, suppléant du député Sourokou Sabi décédé.
Le président de l'Assemblée nationale a ordonné la suspension de la session extraordinaire. « Elle reprendra lundi prochain à 10 heures », a indiqué Louis Vlavonou.
La suspension se justifie par la tenue d'un Séminaire sur l'agriculture prévu du 22 au 23 février 2024 à Dassa-Zoumè. Un séminaire pour lequel certains députés sont attendus dès la soirée de ce mercredi 21 février, selon le président de l'Assemblée nationale.
M. M.
Written by Bruno Bilquin.
Almost two years since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, EU military assistance under the European Peace Facility (EPF) is lagging. The special European Council meeting of 1 February 2024 invited the Council to agree by early March 2024 to amend the regulation establishing the EPF, in order to increase its financial ceiling.
Is the European Peace Facility entering a new phase?In October 2023 and again in December, the High Representative/Vice-President of the Commission (HR/VP) Josep Borrell proposed to the Foreign Affairs Council an envelope under the EPF of €5 billion a year for the years 2024 to 2027 for military assistance to Ukraine. At the Foreign Affairs Council meeting of 22 January 2024, this evolved into a proposal for a single, non-repeatable €5 billion EPF top-up in order to establish a ‘Ukraine Assistance Fund‘ within the EPF, to encourage EU Member States to increase their military support for Ukraine. This support remains badly needed, as Ukraine is still suffering from ‘shell hunger’, despite EU efforts and those of the international artillery coalition led by France and the United States (US). EU military aid to Ukraine is all the more necessary given the potential outcome of the next US presidential elections and the current congressional funding crisis.
Between February 2022 and 1 February 2024, the US delivered US$44.2 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. On 4 February 2024, a bi-partisan deal in the Senate proposed a $118 billion draft package pairing strengthened security on the US–Mexico border with wartime aid for Israel and other US partners, with a $60 billion envelope for Ukraine. Top Republicans in the House immediately rejected the draft; it is still under discussion since the Senate on 11 February again supported it, through a procedural vote, and on 14 February, approved it.
During their 31 January 2024 informal meeting, EU defence ministers had discussed the way ahead for EU military support to Ukraine. In his press remarks upon arrival at that meeting, the HR/VP said:
It is obviously necessary to have a clear understanding of where we are with [the provision of] ammunition. Ministers have been asked to present exactly what they have done, what they are doing, what they plan to do, in order to have a clear understanding of what has to go all together to provide Ukraine with what it needs […]. Ukraine needs more ammunition. There is a big imbalance between the fire capacity from one side and the other, and this gap has to be filled.
Indeed, according to experts, the EU is not on track to hit the one million rounds of ammunition target decided by the Council on 20 March 2023 under a three-track approach: deliveries, joint procurement and ramping-up of ammunition production. ‘We … will try to solve the issues that some Member States want to be considered in the new stage of the EPF’, the HR/VP added, mentioning the need for the EPF to shift from funding the destocking of the previous existing material to supporting the production of the European defence industry. In his press remarks following the January 2024 informal meeting, the HR/VP said that he had reiterated the urgent need to agree on further military support for the short and long term, and that the Member States and the EU had shared the following aggregated data.
Initially, the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework (MFF) was the only point on the draft agenda of the special European Council meeting of 1 February 2024. EU leaders discussed the mid-term review of the 2021-2027 MFF, including support for Ukraine. This support consists mainly of the Ukraine Facility, a €50 billion fund, split between €17 billion in grants and €33 billion in loans, for 2024 to 2027, to help Ukraine’s recovery, reconstruction and modernisation towards EU accession. The European Council came to an agreement on the Ukraine Facility.
In his press remarks before the meeting, the HR/VP said he would urge EU leaders to increase military support for Ukraine, through the Ukraine Assistance Fund within the EPF. He also confirmed that ‘some Member States, Hungary for example’, had expressed their wish to no longer participate in the EPF, albeit without obstructing it. The leaders did not, however, reach an agreement on the Ukraine Assistance Fund. The European Council reviewed the Council’s work on military support for Ukraine under the EPF and the proposed rise in the facility’s overall financial ceiling and invited the Council to reach an agreement by early March 2024 to amend Council Decision (CFSP) 2021/509. The EPF ceiling, set at €12 billion in current prices, would receive a one-off top-up of €5 billion, based on the 22 January 2024 HR/VP proposal, which no longer includes a €5 billion ‘annual’ top-up for the four coming years, marking a drastic down-sizing of the HR/VP’s initial ambition. Decision 2021/509 establishing the EPF has already been amended twice for the first and second tracks of the ammunition plan.
The European Council also invited the Council to take into account ‘suggestions by the Member States’. This refers, inter alia, to Germany’s request for a detailed list of commitments from other Member States for military deliveries in 2024 and to reduce its own real contribution to the EPF comparatively. On 8 January 2024, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had pointed out that Germany was, after the US, the world’s second-biggest provider of military aid to Ukraine, committed to deliver weapons and military material worth over €7 billion in 2024 alone. He had called on the other EU Member States to step up their support for Ukraine, asking them to present, by 1 February (the day of the special European Council meeting), a detailed summary of their military deliveries to Ukraine.
Lastly, the European Council reiterated ‘the urgent need to accelerate the delivery of ammunition and missiles, notably in view of the commitment to provide Ukraine with one million rounds of artillery ammunition’ and called on Member States ‘to explore all options to meet Ukraine’s needs …, including continued stock donations, redirection of existing orders and the placing of the necessary new orders, which will contribute to increasing European industry’s production capacity’.
On 27 February, Members of the European Parliament are expected to vote on a report urging Member States to approve the HR/VP’s initial proposal for a €20 billion Ukraine assistance fund within the EPF, and to accelerate ammunition deliveries from their stocks to Ukraine through the EPF.
Read this ‘at a glance’ note on ‘European Peace Facility: Continued EU military assistance to Ukraine‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.
The Constitutional Court, in co-operation with the OSCE Presence in Albania, presented the first Guide on Constitutional Court Case Law, on 21 February 2024.
Representatives from justice institutions, advocates, academics, legal community and international partners participated in the launching event, which was opened by the Constitutional Court Chair Holta Zaçaj and Acting Head of OSCE Presence Clarisse Pasztory.
The Guide aims to enhance the quality of individual complaints, thus contributing to an increased citizens’ access to the Court and a better protection of their fundamental rights and freedoms. It will serve the judicial staff to improve their research capacities, and help the Court standardize decisions. The Guide will also help lawyers, legal professionals, law practitioners and scholars to efficiently search the Court’s case law.
The OSCE Presence supported the drafting of the Guide as part of its project “Strengthening rule of law and promoting protection of human rights in Albania through support to the Constitutional Court”, funded by the United States of America, Italy and Greece.
The Presence will continue to support the Constitutional Court in its efforts to enhance transparency, access and efficiency of its operations and strengthening institutional capacities to uphold the rule of law and protect human rights in line with international standards and OSCE commitments.
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