MADRID, Jul 28 (IPS) – A wide majority, including the United States, has cheered the 22 July Turkey-brooked agreement between Russia and Ukraine to resumen cereals and fertilisers exports from both countries.
Such exports had been stopped since last February due to the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, on the one hand, and the successive United States-led Western sanctions imposed on Russia.
The Istanbul agreement is projected to allow both countries to release their cereals and fertilisers exports, under UN and international supervision.
The accord is projected to release around five million tons of Ukrainian cereals per month. Considering this country’s cereals exports used to amount to some 45 million tons a year, the reached agreement would mean that Ukraine will export much more now than before the war: 60 million tons per year.
Anyway…
But if you look at the global figures, you may wonder if such agreement suffices to fix up the disproportionate rise of the prices of food products all over the globe. Unless such a rise is also driven by a high-tide of profit-making speculations, the resumed exports do not appear like a miraculous solution.
Ukraine is not the world’s single grain producer. Nor is it the Planet’s largest grain exporter. In fact, Ukraine represents 10% of the global supply.
The same applies to Russia, which will also resume its cereal exports in virtue of the Istanbul agreement. With around 118 million tons a year, Russia ranks fourth in the world’s list of the world’s top producers.
The big producers
The largest one, China, with over 620 million tons, generates more than four-fold the total Russian production.
The United States, with 476 million tons, is the world’s second largest cereal producer, nearly three-fold what Russia produces.
Then you have the European Union, with 275 million tons. France alone produces some 63 million tons. Canada produces more than 58 million tons. Other major cereals producers are India, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia.
Are Western politicians and mainstream media really accurate when they continue repeating that the world’s food markets have collapsed just due to the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine?
The future is compromised
Meanwhile, a joint study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), makes immediate and future projections.
Over the next decade, the study reports, cereal production is expected to increase by 336 million tons, reflecting gains made primarily in major grain-producing countries.
More than 50% of the “global production increase in wheat” will come from India, Russia, and Ukraine. For maize, the United States, China, and Brazil will account for more than half of the expected production growth.
Concerning maize, the United States will remain the leading exporter, followed by Brazil, Ukraine, Argentina, and Russia. The European Union, Australia, and the Black Sea region are expected to continue to be the main exporters of other coarse grains.
Also India, Viet Nam and Thailand will continue to lead global rice trade, while Cambodia and Myanmar are expected to play an increasingly important role in global rice exports.
Severe drought in Europe
There are other key facts about the current world food crisis. One of them is the European Commission warning that the European Union’s food production and exports is at risk due to “severe droughts,” “severe precipitation deficit,” “reduced stored water volume,” and “high competition for water resources,” among other facts.
In short, neither Ukraine’s nor Russia’s exports should be blamed for having created such a devastating food shortage all over the whole globe, nor the sharpest rise in food prices, let alone the steady, alarming increase in inflation rates.
And anyway, much earlier than the Ukraine war, the world was already facing an unprecedented crisis. For instance, more than four years ago, climate emergency driven drought has been hitting East African countries, causing a devastating famine.
The situation
As defined by a number of international organisations, the world has long been facing a “perfect storm” of climate disasters and conflicts.
Here you are some examples:
The above mentioned ones are just a few indicative examples showing how the world was already broken before the Ukraine war.
It goes without saying that all wars are criminal, all of them, no matter who or on whom.
Meanwhile, the human suicidal war on Nature continues unrelented; the limitless greed and voracious profit-making further go on, as it do the sluagherting of the world’s most vulnebrables’ basic human rights, including the right to stay alive.
KATHMANDU, Jul 28 (IPS) – Canada and its major cities consistently appear in Top 10 lists of best places in the world to live. But delve into figures about children’s lives in the northern nation known for ice hockey heroics and you see a different picture.
For example, one in five children in the North American country of 38 million people lives in conditions of poverty. That rises to one in two for First Nations children (First Nations people account for about half of Canada’s Indigenous population of 1.7 million).
Also, Canada ranks 30th among 38 of the world’s richest countries in the well-being of children and youth under age 18, according to UNICEF. “Canada’s public policies are not bold enough to turn our higher wealth into higher child well-being,” suggests UNICEF to explain the gap.
“Canada is not using its greater wealth for greater childhoods: Canada ranks 23rd in the conditions for good childhood but 30th in children’s outcomes,” adds the United Nations agency, in its 2019 report Worlds Apart, the Canadian companion to a global survey of the world’s richest countries.
UNICEF suggests that rising inequality might be reflected in the low scores for children’s well-being. “More equal societies tend to report higher overall child well-being and fewer health and social problems, such as mental illness, bullying and teenage pregnancy,” says Worlds Apart.
Activist Leila Sarangi goes a step further to explain the inequality. “Canada is still a colonized nation and that is a strategy for maintaining structure and systems that perpetuate things like poverty,” says Sarangi, National Director of Campaign2000, a non-partisan coalition of 120 organizations.
She refers to a 2016 decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that found the Canadian Government had discriminated against First Nations children in providing child welfare benefits. It ordered the government to pay each affected child $40,000. Earlier this month the government agreed to total compensation of $20 billion for children and caregivers affected by that discrimination.
On 23 June 2002 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child wrote that it was “deeply concerned” about “discrimination against children in marginalized and disadvantaged situations in the State party (Canada) such as the structural discrimination against children belonging to indigenous groups and children of African descent, especially with regard to their access to education, health and adequate standards of living.”
In its concluding observations of reports submitted in May, the committee recommended that Canada “put an end to structural discrimination against children belonging to indigenous groups and children of African descent and address disparities in access to services by all children.”
Sarangi says Campaign2000 hoped that the federal government budget in April would act on the government’s post-Covid-19 ‘build back rhetoric’ and provide relief to the poorest Canadians. “We really believe that big spending and big change is possible and we saw that in the pandemic, the way that the government moved really quickly to provide different kinds of support and services,” she added in a Zoom interview.
“Unfortunately the budget missed out. It talks a lot about the deficit and trying to reduce the deficit. One of the things that was really absent from that budget — there was really nothing on income security.”
Instead, poor families have fallen into even deeper poverty says Campaign2000’s 2021 report card on child and family poverty, the first time that has happened since 2012. “When the (monthly, tax-free) Canada Child Benefit was implemented in 2016 and 2017 you can see the rate of child poverty drop pretty significantly — you see a real drop in that rate of child poverty,” says Sarangi. “But in the last two years it’s stalling, and that’s because there’s not been new investment into that benefit… it is frustrating because we know that those kinds of transfers work.”
Non-profit organization Canada Without Poverty (CWP) noted that the budget mentioned poverty 4 times, compared to 90 times for its 2021 counterpart. “It is a policy choice not to invest in social programmes that will serve marginalized communities and alleviate and reduce poverty,” says National Coordinator Emilly Renaud in an email interview. “It is not about less money, it is about a lack of political will to deal with issues of poverty.
“The federal government has committed to a 50 percent poverty reduction by 2030, but there is no clear answer as to what that 50 percent will look like, and if it will look equitable,” she added.
Between 1980 and 2005, the average earnings among the least wealthy Canadians fell by 20%.
People living with disabilities (both mental and physical) are twice as likely to live below the poverty line.
Precarious employment increased by nearly 50 percent over the past two decades.
The situation won’t improve without structural change, says Campaign2000’s 2021 report card: “Dismantling systemic racism, particularly anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism, is needed to eradicate poverty and inequality. Policies meant to address higher poverty rates in marginalized communities need to be developed with the communities they target and incorporate trauma-informed principles to policymaking.”
The Joint Coordination Centre (JCC), inaugurated on Wednesday, brings together senior representatives from Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye and the UN.
The Joint Coordination Centre, which aims to facilitate safe export of commercial foodstuffs and fertilizers from key Ukrainian ports, was officially inaugurated today in Istanbul.
This is an important step toward the implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
The Secretary-General has underscored the importance of the parties working in partnership directly to effectively implement the Black Sea Grain Initiative, with a view to reducing global food insecurity, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said in a statement issued late that day.
Ukraine, Russia and Türkiye signed the agreement in Istanbul on Friday.
The JCC will enable the safe transportation, by merchant ships, of commercial foodstuffs and fertilizer from three key Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea: Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny.
“This will help to effectively respond to and prevent rising global food insecurity,” said Mr. Haq.
“Together with the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Russian Federation and the Secretariat of the United Nations on promoting the access of Russian food products and fertilizers to world markets, it will help reinstate confidence in the global food market and reduce food prices from their current levels,” he added.
Ensuring compliance
The JCC will monitor the movement of commercial vessels to ensure compliance with the agreement. Focus will be on export of bulk commercial grain and related food commodities only.
It will also ensure the on-site control and monitoring of cargo from Ukrainian ports and report on shipments facilitated through the Initiative.
The Secretary-General expressed gratitude to Türkiye, which provided the parties and the UN with a platform to help operationalize the Initiative. He also thanked Russia and Ukraine for nominating and quickly sending their senior representatives to Istanbul.
‘Swift collective action’
The top UN aid official also welcomed the JCC’s launch.
Martin Griffiths, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, noted that the centre’s swift opening was made possible through the invaluable support of Türkiye, and the commitment shown by Russia and Ukraine.
“I am hopeful that their swift collective action will translate quickly and directly into much-needed relief for the most vulnerable food insecure people around the world.”
The UN’s interim representative at the JCC, Frederick Kenney Jr., attended the inauguration ceremony and is leading the Organization’s efforts on the ground.
“It is extremely encouraging to see the parties focusing on implementing the initiative,” he said. “Work at the centre is non-stop with the aim to see the first shipments heading out of Ukrainian ports quickly, safely and effectively.”
The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, speaks with internally displaced people in North East Nigeria. January 2022. Credit: UNOCHA/Christina Powell
Opinion by Matthias Schmale (abuja, nigeria)
Inter Press Service
ABUJA, Nigeria, Jul 28 (IPS) – Today in north-east Nigeria, millions of people are facing the painful consequences of a deteriorating food security and nutrition crisis. Food insecurity means not knowing when or where your next meal will come from.
It means, in essence, not being able to meet the basic needs for yourself or your family. As a result, countless families are forced to make alarming sacrifices to survive. Many, particularly children, are at risk of not making it through the lean season.
According to the latest food security assessments, 4.1 million people in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States – three of the states in north-eastern Nigeria, are at risk of severe food insecurity in this lean season. People’s resilience and coping mechanisms have been devastated by more than a decade of conflict.
As food insecurity worsens, so does the risk of malnutrition. In 2022, 1.74 million children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition across the north-east. Mothers who have lost their children to malnutrition can testify to the danger it poses and the sorrow and despair it brings.
While visiting a nutrition stabilization center in the north-east I saw the haunting sight of a child on the brink of death, and it is a memory that continues to leave me troubled.
The food security situation is impacted by many factors, such as insecurity due to ongoing conflict, rising food prices and climate change. This is taking place in a region where people are already facing extreme vulnerabilities.
North-east Nigeria has struggled through 12 years of conflict and instability due to the violence of non-State armed groups like Boko Haram. This year, 8.4 million people need humanitarian assistance, of which about 80 per cent are women and children.
The violence has displaced more than 2.2 million people from their homes. Livelihoods, health services, education and other essential areas have been devastated, depriving millions of people of critical support and the capacity to provide for themselves and their families.
People displaced by violence have few options. Many fled to garrison towns for safety, where going beyond the towns’ protective ditches to practice agriculture or collect firewood puts their lives at risk.
Many vulnerable people have little choice but to resort to negative coping mechanisms to obtain food, such as survival sex, child marriages, begging, child labor or recruitment into armed groups.
Hauwa, a mother in Rann, Borno State, has no access to food and must beg on the street to feed herself and her two children. But it is not nearly enough, and hunger has turned her body into something she no longer recognizes. She says, “This is not my body.” Her story is just one of countless stories of suffering that we hear every day.
The humanitarian community is gravely concerned about the millions of people facing the risk of hunger this lean season and the sacrifices they will make to survive. Every effort must be made to ensure that life-saving programmes continue to deliver food security assistance and respond to acute malnutrition.
Humanitarian and government actors are ready to scale up interventions, but funding is urgently needed.
As part of the USD$1.1 billion required for the 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan for Nigeria, a $351 million multisector response has been developed to save lives and protect the most vulnerable.
Funds are immediately needed, and every contribution can make a difference. You can help get life-saving assistance to the people of north-east Nigeria by donating at: https://crisisrelief.un.org/nigeria-crisis. We need your support now, tomorrow may be too late for Hauwa and countless others.
The confluence of the waters with the distinct colors of the pollution of each one: darker waters reflect the urban sewage of the Arrudas River, while brown reflects erosion coming from the upper Velhas River, a natural effect or product of mining visible in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
by Mario Osava (belo horizonte, brazil)
Inter Press Service
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, Jul 27 (IPS) – Torrential water in the streets and none coming out of the taps are two disasters that plague Brazil’s metropolises, especially those located along the upper stretches of rivers, such as Belo Horizonte, capital of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.
Floods have become routine, fuelled by the hilly topography, paved-over streams and land-surface impermeabilization in this city of 2.5 million people.
In January and February, as happens every year, torrential rains flooded the roads and swept away cars, furniture, sometimes people, and flooded houses on the valley bottoms, where the streams used to flow freely but are now buried and running in culverts under streets and avenues.
The drinking water supply has remained steady overall, but in 2015 and 2021 the city was on the verge of water rationing due to droughts that began in the previous year. However, some neighborhoods have complained about dry water taps.
About 70 percent of the water consumed in Belo Horizonte comes from the Velhas River basin, whose headwaters are some 100 kilometers south of the city. The supply depends on rainfall upstream and there are no reservoirs to accumulate water.
That is why caring for the headwaters of the rivers and streams, located in the surroundings of Ouro Preto, a historical city that was at the center of Brazil’s 18th century gold rush, and of neighboring Itabirito, is vital for Belo Horizonte.
These cities are still involved in mining, although the industry there is now dominated by iron ore. They are part of the so-called Iron Quadrangle, made up of 25 municipalities that account for the production of almost half of Brazil’s iron ore.
Iron ore mining, in addition to consuming abundant water and polluting rivers, poses a threat of major environmental and human disasters. Two tailings dams collapsed in the Quadrangle, in Mariana in 2015 and in Brumadinho in 2019, killing 19 and 270 people, respectively.
In Brumadinho, the toxic mudflow reached the Paraopeba River, which supplied 15 percent of the inhabitants of Belo Horizonte. Fortunately, three reservoirs on tributaries of the Paraopeba that were not affected are the source of water for most of the metropolitan region, comprising 34 municipalities with a total combined population of six million.
Frederico Leite, Itabirito’s environmental secretary, and his deputy Julio Carvalho, a forestry engineer, in addition to negotiating environmental measures with the mining companies, have been working on cleaning up the Itabirito River, which crosses the city, and on creating a number of small catchments disseminated around the countryside aimed at reducing erosion and retaining water in the soil.
These micro-catchments are “barraginhas” or wide pits dug on gently sloping land to slow down the runoff of rainwater that causes erosion, and “caixas secas,” smaller but deeper pits dug next to roads to collect runoff that damages roadways and clogs up streams with sediment.
Sedimentation is a major problem in the Velhas River, reducing the depth of the river and the quality of its earth-colored waters.
In Ouro Preto, Ronald Guerra, a former secretary of the environment who is an activist in the basin committees, proposes the construction of a succession of small dams to retain water and revitalize forests.
In Belo Horizonte, the battle is against floodwaters and sewage that pollute the watercourses.
“The goal is to once again be able to swim, fish and play in the Onça River by 2025,” like people did 70 years ago, dreams Itamar de Paula Santos, a community leader in the Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood, one of the most affected by the river’s floods, since it is located on its lowest stretch.
The construction of riverside linear parks and the resettling of residents in nearby areas safe from floods are among the actions that united the city government and community leaders such as Santos and, in other neighborhoods, Maria José Zeferino and Paulo de Freitas. In addition to the environmental benefits, the parks are recreational areas and allow people healthy access to the river.
Apolo Heringer, a physician and university professor, has been fighting since the 1990s to “renaturalize” the Velhas River basin. To this end, he created the Manuelzão Project, a university project inspired by a well-known local literary character.
Its strategy is to concentrate efforts on a 30-kilometer stretch of the Arrudas and Onça streams, which cross Belo Horizonte, and the Velhas River between the mouths of the two streams.
Eighty percent of the urban pollution in the basin is concentrated there and eliminating it would allow “bringing back the fish and swimming” in the 800 kilometers of its waters.
View of a demonstration by social organizations in a Buenos Aires square in July. The scene occurs almost every day in the capital of Argentina, a country where poverty has held steady at around 40 percent of the population since before the COVID-19 pandemic. The possibility of a social uprising is one of the fears in the face of the deepening socioeconomic crisis. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
Inter Press Service
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 27 (IPS) – Darío is a locksmith in Flores, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in the Argentine capital, who will have to stop working in the next few days. “Suppliers have suspended the delivery of locks, due to a lack of merchandise or because of prices,” he laments. His case is an illustration of an economy gone mad in a country that once again finds itself on the brink of the abyss.
The problems that have been dragging on in this South American country, where the vast majority of the population has become poorer over the last four years and social unrest is on the rise, exploded this month with an exchange and financial crisis that created enormous uncertainty about what lies ahead.
The Central Bank ran out of dollars, and imports, which in large part are a source of inputs for domestic production, were restricted to the maximum. The result is fear, speculation, increased social unrest and out-of-control inflation, which is causing price references to be lost and some companies and businesses are hedging their bets with preventive increases, or they even decide not to sell.
Today, in the streets and in the media, the questions raised are whether the country is on the eve of a social outbreak and whether President Alberto Fernández, so politically isolated that he is questioned by his own government coalition, will reach the end of his term in December 2023.
At that time, Argentina will be celebrating 40 years of democracy, marked by a succession of economic crises that have left an aftermath of growing inequality and have caused distrust to spread easily in society at the first signs that things are not going well.
The crisis deepened at the beginning of the month, when the Jul. 2 resignation of then Economy Minister Martín Guzmán triggered a 50 percent drop in the parallel exchange rate — known locally as the dollar blue — the only one that can be freely acquired in a country with exchange controls, and this, in turn, further fuelled inflation, which in 2021 stood at 50 percent and this year is already expected to end above 90 percent.
“There has been a series of imbalances in Argentina’s macroeconomy for years, which means that today the government does not have the tools to deal with exchange rate and financial pressures,” Sergio Chouza, an economist who teaches at the public University of Buenos Aires (UBA), told IPS.
“In this country the value of the dollar dominates expectations about prices and as a result it is increasingly difficult to avoid a ‘spiral’ of inflation. At the same time, government bonds have collapsed and are already yielding less than those of Ukraine,” he adds.
Chouza says that the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the major contributing factors in triggering a situation that seems to have gotten out of control.
“There was an expansion of public spending, as in most of the world. But the problem is that while most countries financed it with credit, Argentina could not do so because it was already over-indebted,” the expert explains.
Homeless people who survive by picking through garbage in Buenos Aires sleep on the corner of a central street in Argentina’s capital. In 2021 the country experienced an economic recovery after the first year of the pandemic, but a rise in inflation in 2022 has aggravated the crisis once again. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
Social protests
The square in front of the Palacio de Tribunales, in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires, is overflowing with people. The youngest protesters hold banners from social movements from poor outlying neighborhoods, but there are also entire families with small children in their arms. Traffic in the surrounding area is completely cut off as the columns of marchers continue to pour in.
It is a Thursday in July, but this is an image that can be seen practically every day in the Argentine capital, where the most vulnerable social sectors are staging a series of protests because, in the midst of the crisis, the government has suspended the expansion of the Potenciar Trabajo program.
This is the name of the National Program for Socio-productive Inclusion and Local Development, which offers a stipend from the government in exchange for four hours of work in social enterprises, such as soup kitchens or urban waste recyclers’ cooperatives.
“In our neighborhoods things have been very hard for many years, but now it’s getting worse because we can no longer afford to put food on the table,” Fernando, who preferred not to give his last name, told IPS. He is a young man from Laferrere, one of the poorest localities on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, who was a waiter in a bar before becoming unemployed in 2021. Today he does occasional construction work.
Santiago Poy, a researcher at the Observatory of Social Debt at the private Argentine Catholic University (UCA) tells IPS that, with the combination of currency devaluation and inflation since 2018, wages have lost around 20 percent of their purchasing power.
“Poverty stood at around 25 percent in 2017, climbed to 40 percent in 2019 and remained steady after that. Today there is a feeling of widespread impoverishment, despite the fact that the unemployment rate is only seven percent, because 28 percent of workers are poor,” says Poy, describing the situation in this Southern Cone country of 47.3 million people.
After the height of the pandemic in 2020, social indicators improved in 2021 but are worsening again this year and the vast social assistance network does not seem to be sufficient to curb the decline.
“Social aid is not going to solve things in Argentina, because the macroeconomy is a permanent factory of poverty,” says Poy.
One of the operations carried out last weekend by Economy Ministry personnel in supermarkets in Buenos Aires, in order to control price hikes on basic products and “dismantle speculative maneuvers,” as reported. CREDIT: Economy Ministry
The price race
“I am ashamed to set some prices at which I have to sell such basic things as bread, flour or sugar,” Fernando Savore, president of the Federation of Grocery Stores of the province of Buenos Aires, which groups 26,000 businesses in the country’s most populous region, tells IPS.
Savore says that since the beginning of the year the price hikes by suppliers have been constant, but that they skyrocketed in the first week of July, after the economy minister resigned.
“We have seen increases of more than 10 percent in food and more than 20 percent in cleaning products. I don’t think they are justified, but every time the dollar goes up, prices go up,” says Savore, who adds that grocers are hesitant to sell some products because of uncertainty about the costs of restocking them.
And in a context of overall jitters, the government unofficially leaks rumors about economic measures, which do not then materialize but fuel the sense of uncertainty.
President Fernández said that the lack of dollars would be solved if agricultural producers sold a good part of their soybean harvest, which they are currently withholding, worth 20 billion dollars.
They are obliged to export at the official exchange rate, whose gap with the parallel dollar has reached a record level of more than 150 percent, and they are apparently waiting for a devaluation.
On Jul. 25, the new economy minister, Silvina Batakis, met in Washington with the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, to assure her that this country will comply with the agreement signed with the multilateral lender this year, which includes goals to reduce the fiscal deficit and increase the Central Bank’s reserves.
But in Argentina, few people dare to predict where the crisis is heading, and how quickly it will evolve.
The San Crisanto ejido protects since 1995 mangrove forests in the northern coast of the Mexican southeastern state of Yucatán, that’s home to species of fish, birds, like the pink flamingo; mammals and others.
Credit: Juan Pablo Ampudia / IPS
by Emilio Godoy (sinanchÉ, mexico)
Inter Press Service
SINANCHÉ, Mexico, Jul 27 (IPS) – When hurricanes Opal and Roxanne both hit the Mexican state of Yucatán in a ten-day period in 1995, they destroyed much of the mangrove forest in the small coastal community of San Crisanto. The local people responded by replanting mangroves and clearing channels among the trees to allow water to flow freely. They committed to protect the ecosystem.
Today it’s a conservation success story, with the restored mangroves protecting the coastline, sustaining wildlife and supporting livelihoods based on fishing and ecotourism. Now, after 27 years of hard work, the community is reaping new benefits by capitalizing on the carbon the mangroves contain. They are selling Mexico’s first carbon credits based on the so-called ‘blue carbon’ of marine ecosystems.
“We have been the first to do so,” says to IPS José Loria, the president of the community’s San Crisanto Foundation. “We are pioneers. We built the project, we designed it. It is a meaningful issue, relevant to the area. It’s a long-term project.”
Mexico has huge reserves of blue carbon and, as San Crisanto shows, it can generate finance that supports conservation and sustainable livelihoods.
But Mexico has no national policies and plans for tapping into this potential, and blue carbon gets scant mention in the country’s climate change commitments. Lacking support, communities, companies and nongovernmental organizations are pushing on anyway.
Credit: Johana Claudio / IPS
Rising market
Mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes hold back waves, limit erosion and lessen the impacts of rising sea levels, so their conservation is a nature-based adaptation to the climate crisis.
But these ecosystems also capture and store vast amounts of organic carbon, so they play a key role in limiting the global heating that causes climate change in the first place. There comes its “blue carbon” name.
For the captured and stored carbon dioxide (CO2), the mangroves owners can issue certificates for selling in domestic and international markets to corporations interested in reducing their polluting emissions.
Companies and individuals can buy these credits on what is known as the voluntary carbon market to offset their greenhouse gas emissions — each credit represents the removal of one metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
In fact, a mangrove absorbs 5-10 times more carbon than a tropical forest of the same area.
This is especially relevant for Mexico, which has a greater area of blue carbon ecosystems than most other countries. In 2020, for example, it had 905 086 hectares of mangroves — only Indonesia, Australia and Brazil have more.
This means that Mexico is well-placed to benefit from the emerging trade in blue carbon credits.
“The voluntary carbon market is in full growth, as more and more companies are integrating carbon credits into their environmental strategies to complement the measurement and reduction of their emissions,” says Alessandra Souroujon, a senior analyst at Climate Seed — a carbon trade broker based in Paris.
“It is expected that this trend will continue to increase and, with it, more projects of this type will be developed.”
In an e-mail to IPS, Souroujon emphasized challenges, such as the cost of certification and the need for long-term community commitment and the right project partners.
She said the success of San Crisanto shows the potential for the trade in blue carbon to finance the conservation and restoration of mangroves, and to produce income to develop the community and improve the quality of life there.
Mangrove rows in the San Crisanto ejido, in the state of Yucatán, in southeastern Mexico. After the strike of two devastating hurricanes in 1995, the ejido owners restored the habitat and cleaned the channels to allow the flow of water in the mangrove. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS
San Crisanto shows how
San Crisanto is located in the Sinanché municipality, about 1 360 kilometers southeast of Mexico City. It is an ejido — an area of land owned by the state but held and managed communally by local people.
A few dozen meters from the village’s sea-bleached sandy streets, spreads a green blanket of tall, thin trees. They are the 850 hectares of mangroves that the community has preserved since 1995.
The forest has four species of mangrove trees: red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), white (Laguncularia racemosa), black (Avicennia germinans) and buttonwood (Conocarpus erectus). It is a haven for fish, turtles, crocodiles and 167 bird species, including pink flamingos that have returned to the area after a gap of 50 years.
Having spent years counting species there, the local land managers are now counting how much blue carbon the mangroves hold.
The venture, with 125 000 dollars of investment from the ejido’s coffers, started in 2015 with the measurement of carbon in mangrove tree trunks and branches.
It took a few years of trial and error to get the methodology right before the ejido could report its data to a certification body for verification. This was completed in March 2022 by the Mexican subsidiary of the Colorado’s Ruby Canyon-based Ruby Canyon Environmental Inc.
Loria told IPS that the ejido’s carbon credits are being sold in the international voluntary market for more than 20 dollars per ton of carbon. This is a noteworthy fee — four times more than the price of carbon credits from some projects in terrestrial forests in Mexico. One European company producing luxury goods has already bought more than 10 000 offsets from the ejido.
But this is just the start. This year, the measurement of above-ground carbon totaled 25 tons per hectare. The number of offsets the ejido can sell is set to increase as the mangroves grow and once the ejido has also quantified the carbon in the roots and sediment.
“The revenues will strengthen the project,” says Loria. In an announcement published on 31 May 2022, the San Crisanto Foundation said it would use the money generated by selling carbon credits “to maintain the mangrove forest, fund environmental education, strengthen local culture and traditions, and enhance public services, improving the community’s quality of life”.
Lost at sea
Despite Mexico’s potential, cases like San Crisanto happen in a vacuum as there is no national blue carbon strategy. In 2021, a non-governmental organization, The Nature Conservancy Mexico, produced a roadmap for developing such a strategy but it has not published it.
Blue carbon does feature in the commitments Mexico has made under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, in a periodically updated document called a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
The latest NDC, from 2020, mentions “strengthening instruments and executing actions for biodiversity conservation and the restoration of marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems, as well as increasing and maintaining carbon reservoirs, with emphasis on blue carbon”.
The NDC notes that blue carbon can contribute to ten of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that the international community adopted in 2015 at the United Nations to achieve by 2030. These include the goals on clean water, climate action, underwater life and terrestrial ecosystems.
Similarly, while the country’s Climate Change Strategy for Protected Natural Areas 2015-2040 aims to mitigate the climate crisis through carbon capture and storage, it only mentions blue carbon once, in relation to mapping the resource in those areas.
More than half of Mexico’s mangroves — some 464 000 hectares — are preserved in these areas, which are under the jurisdiction of the governmental National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Conanp). They represent a great opportunity for blue carbon projects, but Conanp lacks precise CO2 measurements at each site.
This is a challenge as the carbon content of mangrove forests varies greatly. While San Crisanto has 25 tons of above-ground carbon per hectare, other mangroves in Mexico have several hundred tons.
There is even more carbon underground — as much as 1 000-2 000 tons per hectare. But while above ground carbon can be quantified with satellite-based measurements, CO2 in roots and sediments must be laboriously measured on site.
A Conanp document seen by IPS recommends advancing the quantification of blue carbon deposits, the formulation of regulations including to count emissions from coastal degradation, and the promotion of regulated trading schemes for offsets.
When IPS asked Conanp to comment about the lack of a national strategy, a spokesperson replied that, “it has not been possible to consolidate the efforts between the various stakeholders and the financing needed for the generation of an effective strategy, which contemplates the diversity of existing contexts”.
Conanp acknowledged that it seeks strategies to take advantage of the potential of the carbon market, “with special emphasis on all the mechanisms used being translated into social benefit of the legitimate holders of environmental assets”.
It says, the roadmap for a strategy must cover at least a 10-year period and include the quantification of the contribution of blue carbon ecosystems to the climate action and the mobilization of climate finance for its management.
Joanna Acosta, a conservation biologist at the state-run Autonomous University of Carmen, located in Ciudad del Carmen (Campeche), says to IPS the environmental authorities already know what to do, but there has been no political will to move forward with policies that support blue carbon projects.
“They are long-term projects,” she says. “There has to be a very clear vision that it is meant to conserve and restore mangroves, and that the money from the offsets has to be invested again in the community. In Mexico we are not ready for carbon credits. There are many expectations, but nothing is clear.”
Acosta proposed a roadmap that generates institutional arrangements and clear rules, “so that each party knows what their responsibility is, from the community, which is close to the resource, to academia, in support of the community, and the government”.
Jorge Herrera, academic at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the state-run National Polytechnic Institute, says there is too much emphasis on carbon offsets, and that other conservation approaches are also needed to protect mangroves.
“The benefits depend on the carbon in the mangroves, not just the credits,” he told IPS. “What is least known is carbon in the soil, of which we know very little. Those in charge of the policies should explain why blue carbon mechanisms are missing.”
Credit: Johana Claudio / IPS
Slow carbon
Despite the absence of enabling policies, some blue carbon projects are trying to make progress. In Magdalena Bay, in the northern state of Baja California Sur, the private Corporación MarVivo is developing the MarVivo Blue Carbon Conservation Project in partnership with local communities. By conserving 22 000 hectares of mangroves, it aims to offset 26 million tons of CO2 emissions over 30 years.
In November 2021, the company and the US private corporation Carbon Streaming announced an investment agreement through which the latter will invest six million dollars in the implementation, with an initial disbursement of two million.
Upon the project reaching its goals, the fund will deliver four installments of one million dollars and will have the right to buy more than 200 000 credits each year.
Several other initiatives want to take off, but they face barriers, mainly financial.
Nongovernmental organization Costasalvaje’s Blue Carbon Project aims to protect 33 891 hectares of mangroves in the Gulf of California, in northern Mexico. The organization is working with the El Dátil community to restore degraded red mangroves in the El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve in the state of Baja California Sur.
It is also working with the women’s group “Guardians of the Conchalito” to restore the mangroves of El Conchalito Estuary, near the state capital La Paz.
The organization has estimated that a 16 592-hectare area of mangroves in northwestern Mexico stores 20-million tons of carbon, equivalent to the emissions of 608 944 cars in a year.
On the southern side of the Gulf of California, in the western states of Nayarit and Sinaloa, TNC Mexico identified 80 000 hectares for protection and regeneration in the Marismas Nacionales Biosphere Reserve.
Closer to San Crisanto, in Yucatán state, the Sisal ejido in the Hunucmá municipality is preparing to launch the trade of carbon credits from 5 060 hectares of mangroves. It aims to sell 3.18 million credits over 30 years.
And in south-eastern Mexico, in Quintana Roo state, a consortium led by the non-governmental Resiliencia Azul is seeking 100 000 dollars to certify carbon and issue offsets in a project called Taab Ché (mangrove, in the indigenous Mayan language).
The project is working in the Yum Balam Flora and Fauna Protection Area, whose 7 265 hectares of mangroves are mostly in good condition, and the Isla Cozumel Natural Areas which have 3 011 hectares of mangroves, with almost half being well preserved.
A possible future
Back in San Cristanto, Loria says that other communities seeking to capitalize on the blue carbon in their mangroves will need trust and patience.
“They have to be sure of what they want to do,” he says. “If the community wants to, it doesn’t need a national framework. We did it, period. It depends on the maturity of the organization, the work that has been done. It doesn’t happen by spontaneous generation.”
But Tannia Frausto, the climate change manager for Costasalvaje, stresses the need for policies that can be applied locally.
“If there was a national strategy, with clear policies and funding, and it was a priority, the conservation of those ecosystems could be sped up and prioritized,” she says. “Mangroves are already a resource we have, so the job is to take care of them. It is urgent to create the legal framework that allows optimizing resources. Environmental degradation is going faster than what can be protected with the current instruments.”
Frausto recommends closing the gap between investment and ecosystem recovery.
“At a global level, companies are going to need carbon offsets, not only to mitigate but because of a sense of social responsibility,” she says. “While offsets are not the ultimate goal, they allow entrepreneurs, bankers and communities to be brought together and seated at the same table. That’s the added value.”
In a bid to protect soil globally and help farmers, the FAO warned on Wednesday that the equivalent of one soccer pitch of earth erodes, every five seconds.
It also takes around a thousand years to create just a few centimetres of topsoil and to help land restoration. Now, the UN agency is calling for more action by countries and partners who’ve signed up to the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) over the last decade.
Action areas
The five key actions that FAO has called for, tasks civilians, governments and international institutions, with taking greater action to monitor and care for soil.
One achievement of GSP, thus far, has been the partnership with farmers and local governments to enhance soil health.
Programmes have been initiated to improve the amount of organic matter in soil, “by adopting practices such as using cover crops, crop rotation and agroforestry”, said FAO.
Costa Rica and Mexico have signed up to these pilot schemes and trained farmers in the use of best practices which include using so-called “cover crops” that prevent erosion, crop rotation and tree planting.
Digital mapping
Furthermore, the GSP has expanded data collection in the form of digital soil mapping.
This technology informs policymakers of relevant soil conditions and empowers them to make informed decisions on managing soil degradation.
The FAO also has, through the GSP, called for the coordination and integration of sustainable practices through investment in development and education.
These carefully planned programmes facilitate the transfer of information and technology concerning soil health. These networks harmonize methods, units and information relevant to soil analysis.
More inclusivity
Similarly, the highly technical nature of topsoil policy debate, can alienate constituencies who might otherwise be concerned and engaged on such an important environmental and social issue, FAO states.
Campaigns, such as the International Year of Soils and World Soil Day are designed to raise youth awareness of soils and increase participation in preventing further degradation.
While the work of the GSP represents the efforts of non-State partners to promote sustainable soil practices, State policymakers are necessary actors in implementing a sustainable soil policy.
Valuable guidance
Production of documents like the Revised World Soil Charter, the Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil and the International Code of Conduct for the Sustainable Use and Management of Fertilizers, contribute valuable guidance from the GSP, for national governments.
The five achievements described above represent a key existing strategy within the United Nations system, for stemming soil degradation, in support of sustainable farming worldwide.
In the first-ever direct contribution between the two UN agencies in the country, the Sudan Emergency Safety Nets Project aims to provide cash transfers and food for more than two million people across the impoverished and crisis-wracked nation, including for those internally displaced.
“WFP is extremely grateful to the World Bank for this generous contribution, at a crucial time in Sudan when more and more people do not know where their next meal will come from,” said Eddie Rowe, WFP’s Representative and Country Director in Sudan.
Food insecure
The country’s economic and political crisis has grown more intense due to rising inflation, conflict and displacement. That’s been exacerbated by climate shocks – including droughts and floods, and a poor harvest – all of which has increased food insecurity throughout Sudan.
As hunger continues to rise at “an alarming rate,” one-third of the population is facing food insecurity, said WFP.
In Sudan, WFP is working to sustain people facing acute hunger while addressing the root causes of food insecurity.
The newly launched project will enable the UN food relief agency to save lives while laying the foundation for a more targeted social safety net system in Sudan by supporting the most vulnerable to withstand shocks and build more resilient livelihoods for the long term.
“This funding will help to mitigate a looming hunger crisis in Sudan and inform future social safety net systems for the country’s most vulnerable that not only saves but changes lives,” said Mr. Rowe.
Shortfall despite generosity
The allocation has been provided by the World Bank-managed Sudan Transition and Recovery Support Trust Fund (STARS), supported by the European Union, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, Norway, Canada, Italy, Finland, Spain, Ireland, and the World Bank-administered State and Peacebuilding Fund.
Yet, despite the substantial contribution, WFP still requires at least $266 million more through the end of the year to reach over 10 million vulnerable people year.
Since the beginning of 2022, WFP has reached 4.8 million people across Sudan with life-saving food or cash and nutrition support, school meals, and livelihood opportunities.
Activists have asked for gender sensitizing of the police, rather than the so-called Romeo squad. Source: Twitter
by Mehru Jaffer (lucknow)
Inter Press Service
Lucknow, Jul 27 (IPS) – Romeo is a bad word in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s largest province with nearly 25 million people.
While the name symbolises love, various shows of affection and love between women and men can be seen as a criminal offence in UP. For their safety, women are advised not to be seen cosying up with their lovers, especially in public places – because the state police department’s anti-Romeo squads could arrest them.
“The Indian Penal Code (IPC) has sufficient sections to arrest and prosecute men harassing women. The anti-Romeo squad has become a tool to harass and embarrass young men and women. It has no place in a civilised democracy,” Bobby Naqvi, senior journalist and former editor of Gulf News, told the IPS. “Disturbing images of these squads harassing youngsters spoil India’s reputation as the largest democracy and a nation where almost 230 million people fall between the age group of 15 years and 24 years.”
Soon after the government was installed in office on March 25, an order was passed reviving the anti-Romeo squads. The squads were first launched in 2017 to safeguard women in public places.
Advocates of women’s rights, including activists Aruna Roy, Kavita Srivastava, Kalyani Menon Sen and lawyers Indira Jaising and Vrinda Grover, had released a joint statement in 2017 demanding that anti-Romeo squads in UP be disbanded immediately and replaced by long-term legal and institutional measures to ensure women’s safety. However, the unpopular squad is now back in action.
Renu Mishra, executive director of the Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives (AALI), a Lucknow-based non-profit organisation, sees the anti-Romeo squad as another way to keep women in check.
Women activists say that gender-sensitising of the police, an increase in the number of policewomen, an enabling environment for women to file FIRs, and more frequent convictions are needed.
They argue that the anti-Romeo squads are a physical manifestation of patriarchy that views women as helpless creatures to be protected rather than empowered.
According to Namita Bhandare, a writer on social and gender issues, there is no need for a squad.
In their previous incarnation, stories abounded of the excesses of the squad. Several young men accused of allegedly harassing girls were forced to shave their heads. A female police officer asked a young man to do sit-ups for being in the company of a female friend. A video of the same incident went viral and led to anger against similar excesses.
While crimes against women are high in Uttar Pradesh, activists fear squads like the so-called Romeo Squad will not resolve the issues. Source: Twitter
The Romeo hunters were disbanded, but now that the same government has returned to office for another five years and they are back. In the eyes of the ruling party, the name Romeo conjures up images of an ‘Eve’ teaser, a female harasser and a stalker. The anti-Romeo squads are expected to perform the role of gallant knights who help women safeguard their purity and honour. The UP Police says that they are trying to book as many roadside Romeos as possible to put an end to the harassment of women.
The squads are viewed with fear by many in the community, and when IPS tried to talk to former victims of the anti-Romeo squads, they declined for fear of retaliation.
Despite the squad’s return, there is no indication that crimes against women have decreased. In statistics released earlier year by the National Commission for Women (NCW) more than 31,000 crimes against women were reported, and over half were from Uttar Pradesh.
The anti-Romeo squad seems helpless before politically powerful men who claim to be religious and dress in flowing saffron robes but threaten to rape women.
In April, a video emerged on social media showing a clean-shaven man in saffron robes speaking on a megaphone from inside an automobile. He threatened to kidnap and rape Muslim women.
The speaker was identified as Mahant Bajrang Muni Das of the Maharishi Sri Laxman Das Udasin Ashram in the Khairabad area of Sitapur, some 80 km from Lucknow.
“I am saying this with love for you that I will publicly drag your daughters-in-law and daughters out of your homes and rape them if any Hindu girl is molested in Khairabad. Muslims will be killed if any Hindu is killed here.”
NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma wrote to the state police chief to register an FIR and arrest the accused. Opposition party spokesperson of the Congress party Supriya Shrinate said that Bajrang Muni is an insult to the Hindu religion and his rape threat mocks law and order in UP.
Shrinate told the Chief Minister that he should act against anyone threatening to rape women.
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