Category: World

Sanctions Now Weapons of Mass Starvation — Global Issues

Source: 2022 Global Report on Food Crises; 2022: projected
  • Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Anis Chowdhury (sydney and kuala lumpur)
  • Inter Press Service

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 31 (IPS) – US and allied economic sanctions against Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine have not achieved their declared objectives. Instead, they are worsening economic stagnation and inflation worldwide. Worse, they are exacerbating hunger, especially in Africa.

Sanctions cut both ways
Unless approved by the UN Security Council (UNSC), sanctions are not authorized by international law. With Russia’s veto in the UNSC, unilateral sanctions by the US and its allies have surged following the Ukraine invasion.

During 1950-2016, ‘comprehensive’ trade sanctions have cut bilateral trade between sanctioning countries and their victims by 77% on average. The US has imposed more sanctions regimes, and for longer periods, than any other country.

Unilateral imposition of sanctions has accelerated over the past 15 years. During 1990-2005, the US imposed about a third of sanctions regimes around the world, with the European Union (EU) also significant.

The US has increased using sanctions since 2016, imposing them on more than 1,000 entities or individuals yearly, on average, from 2016 to 2020 – nearly 80% more than in 2008-2015. The one-term Trump administration raised the US share of all new sanctions to almost half from a third before.

During January-May 2022, 75 countries implemented 19,268 restrictive trade measures. Such measures on food and fertilizers (85%) greatly exceed those on raw materials and fuels (15%). Unsurprisingly, the world now faces less supplies and higher prices for fuel and food.

Monetary authorities have been raising interest rates to curb inflation, but such efforts do not address the main causes of higher prices now. Worse, they are likely to deepen and prolong stagnation, increasing the likelihood of ‘stagflation’.

Sanctions were supposed to bring Russia to its knees. But less than three months after the rouble plunged, its exchange rate is back to pre-war levels, rising from the ‘rouble rubble’ promised by Western economic warmongers. With enough public support, the Russian regime is in no hurry to submit to sanctions.

Sanctions pushing up food prices
War and sanctions are now the main drivers of increased food insecurity. Russia and Ukraine produce almost a third of world wheat exports, nearly 20% of corn (maize) exports and close to 80% of sunflower seed products, including oil. Related Black Sea shipping blockades have helped keep Russian exports down.

All these have driven up world prices for grain and oilseeds, raising food costs for all. As of 19 May, the Agricultural Price Index was up 42% from January 2021, with wheat prices 91% higher and corn up 55%.

The World Bank’s April 2022 Commodity Markets Outlook notes the war has changed world production, trade and consumption. It expects prices to be historically high, at least through 2024, worsening food insecurity and inflation.

Western bans on Russian oil have sharply increased energy prices. Both Russia and its ally, Belarus – also hit by economic sanctions – are major suppliers of agricultural fertilizers – including 38% of potassic fertilizers, 17% of compound fertilizers, and 15% of nitrogenous fertilizers.

Fertilizer prices surged in March, up nearly 20% from two months before, and almost three times higher than in March 2021! Less supplies at higher prices will set back agricultural production for years.

With food agriculture less sustainable, e.g., due to global warming, sanctions are further reducing output and incomes, besides raising food prices in the short and longer term.

Sanctions hurt poor most
Even when supposedly targeted, sanctions are blunt instruments, often generating unintended consequences, sometimes contrary to those intended. Hence, sanctions typically fail to achieve their stated objectives.

Many poor and food insecure countries are major wheat importers from Russia and Ukraine. The duo provided 90% of Somalia’s imports, 80% of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s, and about 40% of both Yemen’s and Ethiopia’s.

It appears the financial blockade on Russia has hurt its smaller and more vulnerable Central Asian neighbours more: 4.5 million from Uzbekistan, 2.4 million from Tajikistan, and almost a million from Kyrgyzstan work in Russia. Difficulties sending remittances cause much hardship to their families at home.

Although not their declared intent, US measures during 1982–2011 hurt the poor more. Poverty levels in sanctioned countries have been 3.8 percentage points higher than in similar countries.

Sanctions also hurt children and other disadvantaged groups much more. Research in 69 countries found sanctions lowered infant weight and increased the likelihood of death before age three. Unsurprisingly, economic sanctions violate the UN Convention on the Rights of Children.

A study of 98 less developed and newly industrialized countries found life expectancy in affected countries reduced by about 3.5 months for every additional year under UNSC sanctions. Thus, an average five-year episode of UNSC approved sanctions reduced life expectancy by 1.2–1.4 years.

World hunger rising
As polemical recriminations between Russia and the US-led coalition intensify over rising food and fuel prices, the world is racing to an “apocalyptic” human “catastrophe”. Higher prices, prolonged shortages and recessions may trigger political upheavals, or worse.

The UN Secretary-General has emphasized, “We need to ensure a steady flow in food and energies through open markets by lifting all unnecessary export restrictions, directing surpluses and reserves to those in need and keeping a lead on food prices to curb market volatility”.

Despite declining World Bank poverty numbers, the number of undernourished has risen from 643 million in 2013 to 768 million in 2020. Up to 811 million people are chronically hungry, while those facing ‘acute food insecurity’ have more than doubled since 2019 from 135 million to 276 million.

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, OXFAM warned, the “hunger virus” could prove even more deadly. The pandemic has since pushed tens of millions into food insecurity.

In 2021, before the Ukraine war, 193 million people in 53 countries were deemed to be facing ‘food crisis or worse’. With the war and sanctions, 83 million – or 43% – more are expected to be victims by the end of 2022.

Source: 2022 Global Report on Food Crises; 2022: projected

Economic sanctions are the modern equivalent of ancient sieges, trying to starve populations into submission. The devastating impacts of sieges on access to food, health and other basic services are well-known.

Sieges are illegal under international humanitarian law. The UNSC has unanimously adopted resolutions demanding the immediate lifting of sieges, e.g., its 2014 Resolution 2139 against civilian populations in Syria.

But veto-wielding permanent Council members are responsible for invading Ukraine and unilaterally imposing sanctions. Hence, the UNSC will typically not act on the impact of sanctions on billions of innocent civilians. No one seems likely to protect them against sanctions, today’s weapons of mass starvation.

IPS UN Bureau


Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

FAO ramps up support to Sudan farmers as starvation threat grows in East Africa — Global Issues

Food insecurity is soaring in the country, driven by the combined impacts of armed conflict, drought, the COVID-19 pandemic, low production of key staple crops due to infestation by pests and diseases, and economic turmoil.  

The “cascading effects” of the conflict in Ukraine could also worsen the situation. 

Meeting the needs 

FAOhas welcomed a $12 million contribution from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for a new project to provide emergency agriculture and livestock supplies to thousands of farming and pastoral communities in 14 of the most severely affected counties. 

“This generous contribution from CERF means that FAO can urgently provide essential agricultural inputs to vulnerable farming households before the main agriculture season starts in June. It will ensure that they can produce enough food to meet their needs for the months to come,” said Babagana Ahmadu, FAO Representative to the Sudan.  

The project will target 180,000 households, or 900,000 people, among the most vulnerable farming and pastoralist communities, including internally displaced people, returnees, and refugees.  

Reducing dependence on aid 

As twothirds of Sudan’s population lives in rural areas, FAO said providing smallholder farmers with agricultural support is essential to the humanitarian response. 

The project covers both agricultural and livestock assistance, which aims at rapidly reducing dependence on emergency food assistance and provides a basis for medium and longer-term recovery.  

Assistance covers the provision of crop, legume and vegetable seeds, donkey ploughs and hand tools, veterinary vaccines and drugs, animal feed, as well as donkey carts and productive livestock.  

It also includes provision of cash and the rehabilitation of community assets such as small-scale water infrastructure, pasture and hafirs, or artificial ponds for harvesting rainwater. 

Ukraine war impact 

FAO said the situation looks grim for millions in Sudan.  The war in Ukraine is causing further spikes in food prices, and the country is dependent on wheat imports from the Black Sea region.  

Interruption in grain supplies to Sudan will make it more difficult and expensive to import wheat, with current local prices per tonne, costing 180 per cent more when compared with the same period last year. 

Additionally, high prices for fertilizers on global markets will also affect imports, and, ultimately, agricultural production.  

While the CERF allocation is timely and vital, FAO added that another $35 million is urgently needed to ensure adequate support for two million vulnerable farming and pastoral households in Sudan.  

© UNFPA Ethiopia/Paula Seijo

Climate shocks and extreme weather are fuelling mass displacement and driving up humanitarian needs across the Horn of Africa.

Starvation threat in East Africa 

Meanwhile, UN agencies and their partners are calling for a rapid scale up in action to address the looming threat of starvation in East Africa following four failed rainy seasons. 

The drought, which is affecting Somalia, as well as parts of Kenya and Ethiopia, is likely the worst in 40 years, and the situation is set to worsen. 

The warning came in a statement issued on Monday by FAO on behalf of the 14 partners, who include meteorological agencies and humanitarian organizations. 

Some 16.7 million people in the region currently face high acute food insecurity and figures are projected to increase to 20 million by September, they said, citing data from a regional platform co-chaired by FAO.  

“The climate conditions that cause the current drought are expected to prevail until the end of this year, posing a serious threat to the October-December 2022 season,” said Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 

Devastation and displacement 

The rainy season from March to May of this year, which appears likely to be the driest on record, has devastated livelihoods and driven sharp increases in food, water, and nutrition insecurity.  

Over a million people have been displaced in Somalia and southern Ethiopia alone, while an estimated 3.6 million livestock have died in Kenya and Ethiopia.  

Furthermore, it is estimated that in the worst-affected areas of Somalia, one out of three livestock have perished since mid-2021. 

The partners said the latest long-lead seasonal forecasts indicate that there is now a concrete risk that the October to December rainy season could also fail.  

“Should these forecasts materialize, the already severe humanitarian emergency in the region would further deepen,” they said. 



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

How the Russia-Ukraine Conflict Impacts Africa — Global Issues

Josefa Sacko is the AUC Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment (ARBE)
  • Opinion by Josefa Sacko, Ibrahim Mayaki (luanda, angola)
  • Inter Press Service

LUANDA, Angola, May 31 (IPS) – While Africa is yet to fully recover from the socio-economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict poses another major threat to the global economy with many African countries being directly affected.

Just within a few weeks, global wheat, sunflower, and oil crude prices have soared to unprecedented levels. Africa is heavily reliant on food imports from both countries, and the Continent is already experiencing price shocks and disruptions in the supply chain of these commodities.

The conflict will likely impact food security in Africa. Both through availability and pricing in some food crops, particularly wheat and sunflower, as well as socio-economic recovery and growth, triggered by rising uncertainties in global financial markets and supply chain systems.

Over the past decade, the Continent has seen growing demand for cereal crops, including wheat and sunflower, which has been mainly supported by imports than local production. Africa’s wheat imports increased by 68 per cent between 2007 to 2019, surging to 47 million tonnes.

Josefa Sacko is the AUC Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment (ARBE)

Russia and Ukraine, both often referred to as the world’s breadbasket, are major players in the export of wheat and sunflower to Africa. North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia), Nigeria in West Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan in East Africa, and South Africa account for 80 per cent of wheat imports.

Wheat consumption in Africa is projected to reach 76.5 million tonnes by 2025, of which 48.3 million tonnes or 63.4 per cent is projected to be imported outside of the Continent.

The sanctions imposed on Russia by Western countries will further exacerbate commercial flows between Russia and Africa due to the closure of vital port operations in the Black Sea. Russia is one of the world’s biggest exporters of fertilizers.

Concerns are growing that a worldwide shortage of fertilizer will lead to rising food prices, with knock-on effects for agricultural production and food security.

Russia is also the world’s third-largest oil producer behind the United States and Saudi Arabia. The disruption of oil prices on the world market is expected to lead to an increase in fuel prices and higher costs of food production.

Some regions, including the Horn of Africa and Sahel region, are at greater risk of food insecurity due to country-specific shocks, climate change, export restrictions, and stockpiling, especially if rising fertilizer and other energy-intensive input costs will negatively impact the next agricultural season as a result of the ongoing conflict.

Dr Ibrahim Mayaki is the Chief Executive Officer of AUDA-NEPAD

A silver lining to reduce reliance on food imports

While the socio-economic ramifications are already substantial and the situation remains highly unpredictable, Africa must also see the current geopolitical crisis as an opportunity to reduce its reliance on food imports from outside the Continent.

African countries need to take advantage of their 60 per cent global share of arable land to grow more food for domestic consumption and export to the global market. This would lower the number of people facing food and nutrition insecurity caused by external shocks.

Africa’s Common Position on Food Systems

In 2021, the African Union Commission (AUC) and African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) worked with African countries to create a common African position ahead of the Food Systems Summit in line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The African Common Position is a synthesis and unified view on how to transform Africa’s food systems over the next decade, primarily on resilience in the face of growing vulnerability and shocks. It is anchored in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth.

Rapid expansion in agricultural and food productivity and production has been identified as one of the game-changing solutions. To prevent future disruptions in the supply chain for wheat and sunflower across Africa, countries that produce these cereals need to increase their capacity to produce and supply to other countries through intra-African trade.

And those that do not should consider incorporating specific food crops into their agriculture value chain. This will reduce the reliance on wheat and grain imports from Russia and Ukraine and, most importantly, promote intra-African trade and grow Africa’s agribusiness sectors.

African Continental Free Trade Area a lever and driver for intra-regional agri-food markets

Another lever in transforming Africa’s food systems is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which came into effect on 1 January 2021. African countries must take advantage of the world’s largest free trade area.

The trade treaty is expected to offer US$2.5 trillion in combined GDP and agribusiness will significantly contribute to this growth. The AfCFTA will increase production and value addition as well as ensure adequate quality infrastructure and food safety standards to supply and grow local and regional agri-food markets.

The oil and gas factor

To avoid future food price shocks caused by rising oil and gas prices on the global market, African countries must improve their oil and gas production and exploration capability to fill any gaps that may occur as a result of supply chain disruption among the major global producers.

African countries that produce fuel and gas such as Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, and Tanzania should explore boosting production and filling the gas and oil gap within the continent and beyond to alleviate fuel price shocks, which could contribute to lower food costs.

In addition, African governments should invest in or attract greater international investment in oil and gas exploration, particularly in countries where subterranean oil reserves are believed to exist but have yet to be explored.

2022 African Union Year of Nutrition

The AU declared 2022 the Year of Nutrition with the main objective to strengthen resilience in food and nutrition security. The AU CAADP biennial review report of 2019 revealed that Africa is not on track to meet its goal of ending hunger by 2025, noting a deterioration in food and nutrition security on the continent since the inaugural report in 2017.

Increasing food production and expanding Africa’s food basket will serve both nutrition and resilience objectives. In this regard, there must be intentional investments toward increased productivity and production of traditional and indigenous crops. This also requires a systems approach by integrating nutrition into resilient and strong health systems and social protection systems.

Climate resilience in Africa’s food systems

African food systems continue to face several challenges, including extreme weather events and climate change; limited adoption of yield-increasing technologies; dependency on rain-fed agriculture and low levels of irrigation; and most recently, the spread of fall armyworm in parts of the continent.

More than 38 million more people are at risk of hunger and poverty in Africa due to climate change. Climate-resilient technologies present major opportunities for the Continent to increase African food production and productivity while building resilience and reducing poverty and hunger.

Digital and biotechnologies and the transformation of food systems

While the Continent has made significant progress in the adoption and use of information and communication technologies for large-scale food producers, the benefits of digital innovations have not been fully leapfrogged by small-scale producers, processors, and retailers to access extension services, markets, and financial services.

Increasing the competitiveness of African agriculture also includes the adoption of biotechnology, including improved seed varieties, and requires robust food production policy frameworks. Biotechnology is expected to accelerate growth, create wealth, and feed an African population expected to reach 2.2 billion people by 2050.

Regional solutions are a prerequisite to addressing structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities, including poverty and inequality

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has once more exposed the urgent need for policy and investment choices to sustain and build viable, resilient, and inclusive food systems on the Continent.

The African Common Position on Food Systems provides pathways for Africa to increase home-grown agri-food production and ensure inclusive access to sustainable and nutritious food sources, while addressing structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities, including poverty and inequality.

The successful transformation of African food systems will largely depend on the willingness of African countries to realise continental and regional solutions to build and sustain greater resilience in the face of external shocks. 2022 is Africa’s Year to action food and nutrition development goals.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau


Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

winning solutions for the planet — Global Issues

Sometime before the COVID-19 pandemic, Cassie Flynn was heading to work on a rush-hour packed New York City subway train.

As the Strategic Advisor on Climate Change for the UN Development Programme (UNDP), she often used the monotony of the commute to think of innovative ways to get ordinary people involved in the climate fight, and on this morning, she noticed everyone around her busy with their phones, not just staring at them or scrolling, but doing something.

“I was a bit cheeky, and I started looking at what people were doing and I kind of peeked over this woman’s shoulder and saw she was playing Angry Birds, and then I looked over and this other guy was playing Candy Crush. All of these people were playing games on their phones,” she recalled while speaking to UN News.

A lightbulb went off, and Ms. Flynn thought: “What if we could meet people there?”

“You know how in [some] games they have these 30-second ads that pop up? What if we could use that? Instead of it being an advertisement for another game or something else, what if this is where we could talk to people about climate change?”

And that’s exactly what she and her team at UNDP decided to do.

UNDP

The mobile game Mission 1.5 by UNDP and partners allows users to vote on climate solutions and actions they wat to see happen.

Influencing global policy by playing a mobile game

Ms. Flynn’s momentous subway ride gave birth to UNDP’s Mission 1.5 mobile game, which allows people to learn about the climate crisis and at the same time communicate to governments about solutions that could be put in place to tackle it – all while they’re exploring virtual universes.

“More people play videogames on their phones than they [listen to] music and [watch] videos combined, it’s just massive,” says the expert.

Thanks to an inter-agency effort and a partnership with a gaming company, UNDP’s game – which challenges users to make the right decisions to keep the world on the path to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees –went online at the beginning of 2020.

“Fast forward [to today], we have about 6 million people that have played the game so far in 58 countries, with a 50 per cent completion rate. So, when people start it, they really play it, which is something that we’re really excited about,” Ms. Flynn adds.

But it goes beyond educating the users on climate solutions in 17 languages; the game asks them to cast a vote about which strategies, in their opinion, would be more successful to tackle the crisis.

These answers have become the source for what is now known as the ‘People’s climate vote,’ the largest survey of public opinion on climate change ever conducted.

“We took data from about 50 countries, and we were able to use the samples to cover over half of the world’s population in terms of their thinking on how they should solve the climate crisis,” Ms. Flynn explains.

That information has now been shared and discussed by parliamentarians all over the world and during major international meetings, such as the recent G20 summit and the latest UN Climate Conference, COP26. The results were even included in the latest series of reports issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are very influential for intergovernmental negotiations.

Unsplash/Onur Binay

A young man plays famous mobile game Crash Bandicoot on his smartphone.

Reaching new populations: The Playing for the Planet Alliance

Mission 1.5’s success is only the tip of the iceberg if we think about the reach of today’s video gaming industry, which stretches beyond our smartphones onto the screens of at least 3 billion people in the world – or 1 in every 3 people in the planet.

“The video gaming industry is probably the most powerful medium in the world in terms of attention, reach and engagement,” says Sam Barratt, UN Environment’s Chief of Education, Youth & Advocacy.

Mr. Barratt is the Co-Founder of the first-of-its-kind group of private video game sector organizations that have made commitments to help protect people and the planet, with the support of the United Nations.

Launched during the pivotal 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, the Playing for the Planet Alliance has made headlines in recent years for including commitments from some of the major names in the gaming industry, such as Microsoft, Sony and Ubisoft, as well as dozens of other well-known videogame studios.

Mr. Barrat was inspired by watching his son spend time exploring, playing, and socializing on these platforms, and seeing how the games created incentives to keep the players engaged.

“[It was] an industry that hadn’t really thought about what difference it could make”, he explains to UN News.

Less carbon footprint, more action

The alliance aims to work with these companies on two fronts: First, reducing the carbon footprint of their industries; and second, harnessing the power of their platforms to include messages or steps they might take related to climate action.

“We’ve built a really strong community of practice on this agenda. We’ve doubled in size – for now, at least over 40 studios – with more coming on board. The way I see our role [as United Nations] is that we’re facilitating leadership, we’re here to help the industry… but in the end, it’s a voluntary initiative where the kind of leadership that they show is determined by them,” Mr. Barrat explains.

Playing for the Planet also hosts a yearly ‘Green Game Jam’, which is an opportunity for videogame studios to get extra creative and integrate green activations within their popular games or create new ones.

This means including environmentally themed features and messages, educating users and inviting them to donate or to participate in UN conservation and restoration campaigns.

It’s not all fun and games

Over the past two years there has already been an array of cool initiatives and games that have made a difference outside of the screens.

For instance, different activations in games during the Jams have contributed to the planting of over 266,000 trees, with this number likely to increase.

Another remarkable example is the popular video game Alba: A Wildlife Adventure by the English studio Ustwo, which is a member of the Alliance.

The game features a girl protagonist who tries to prevent the construction of a resort on a beautiful Mediterranean Island. It teaches the importance of conservation and restoration to PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC and iOS users, while devoting some of the proceeds from every download to support tree-planting as a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Alba has so far led to a remarkable 1million trees planted and 3 habitats restored, with this number set to grow.

During the last Green Game Jam in 2021, UN Environment invited participant studios to support campaigns such as Play4Forests, a petition to demand action from world leaders in protecting forests; and GlowingGlowing Gone, to accelerate ocean protection and climate action.

Studios with a combined reach of 1 billion players participated in the 2021 Jam, and they were able to engage 130 million players around the world with some 60,000 pledges signed for the UN campaigns, and $800,000 in donations to different charities working with environmental causes.

And of course, it was also fun. Just to give you a few examples:

PAC-MAN players were able to play a forest-themed ‘Adventure Mode’ with six stages, an album filled with collectibles and a skin [a download which changes the appearance of characters in the game] as the reward for the event completion.

Minecraft, a 3-D computer game where players can build anything, added an additional lesson plan on ‘Radical Recycling’ to player maps, and therefore was able to make a $100,000 donation to The Nature Conservancy.

Pokémon Go created a first-of-its-kind avatar item to give players a new way to voice their support for sustainability efforts.

Angry Birds fans were able to collect a special Mariner Hat Set for participating in a Sea Adventure, and the campaign reached over 280,000 people.

Meanwhile, for Anno 1800, a city-building real-time strategy video game, PC players usually grow settlements and create massive production chains in a world with infinite resources. This time, they learned how, in the real world, their decisions affect the environment and could end up destroying it.

Players start out on an untouched island with a small population and are required to create a sustainable city. If they don’t keep in mind the downsides of population growth and find measures to counter them, the island’s ecosystem and the city will ultimately collapse.

For example, building monocultures depletes island fertility, over-fishing destroys food supplies for future generations, and deforestation leads to deserted islands.

This last game initiative won the Jam’s UNEP’s choice award for 2021.

Decarbonizing the industry

Speaking about change in the real world, according to the latest report of the Playing for the Planet Alliance, 60 per cent of its members are now committed to becoming net zero or carbon negative by 2030 at the latest.

“So, we do know that for many gaming companies, most of the carbon is produced through games that play on devices. Mainly through mobile and all through other parts of that scope. But we still don’t have a full picture. We are working this year to get the whole industry to come up with a methodology so they can understand how they can recall that carbon impact,” Alliance co-founder Sam Barrat, explains.

He adds that while gaming seems to have a lesser carbon footprint when compared with other leisure activities, it all depends on how long users play and what media they use for it.

“When you’re playing on a CD ROM and playing that game a lot, the carbon consequence of its life cycle approach is less than streaming lots of small games,” Mr. Barrat says, highlighting that the Alliance is working together to figure out ways to measure their emissions better.  

Unsplash/Mika Baumeister

A young person holds a cell phone with the game Minecraft Earth.

Big companies are already starting to take the lead

Last year, Microsoft conducted a report that details the amount of energy in Watt-hours that mobile devices use while playing mobile video games in a 30-minute period of gameplay.

The previous study that was being used for calculation was from 2012, so this new dataset will allow companies to make more accurate calculations of gamers’ energy use through mobile gaming.

Meanwhile, Sony created a carbon footprint tool on the carbon impacts of the gaming sector and made substantial improvements in the energy efficiency of their Play Station 4 and 5 consoles. 

“We also recognize the impact we have on climate change as an industry – and we are taking steps to address it… We’ve achieved an estimated avoided energy use for PS4 and PS5 consoles of 57.4 TWh [Terawatt-hour] and 0.8 TWh respectively from energy efficiency improvements we’ve made to date, such as efficient chipsets, power supplies, and low power rest mode,” Ross Townsend, Sony PlayStation Corporate Communication Manager, tells UN News.

He adds that for this year’s Earth Day, Sony Interactive Entertainment invested in high-quality projects and was able to offset carbon emissions equivalent to 100 million hours of average console electricity during gameplay.

Videogames being the biggest entertainment industry, the impact is real: there is a room to lead rather than follow

Gameloft, a giant mobile game developer, has also made moves to reduce its carbon footprint.

“We have the ambitious project to become Net Zero Carbon with long-term work consisting of focusing on Scopes 1 [direct greenhouse emissions associated with fuel combustion] and 2 [Indirect emissions associated with electricity, steam, cooling etc.] and by reducing our energy and electricity footprint by 80 per cent and onboarding our providers in our decarbonization’s journey,” emphasizes Stephanie Cazaux-Moutou, Gameloft Communications Manager.

Since 2019, the company is also reducing its business travel and compensating the remaining emissions.

Other Alliance members are also working on a new protocol to reduce the use of plastics within the industry to be launched sometime in 2022.

“Three quarters of the consumers around the world expect brands to be actively involved in solving social and environmental changes. Videogames being the biggest entertainment industry, the impact is real: there is a room to lead rather than follow,” adds Ms. Cazaux-Moutou.

Into the Future

The 2022 Green Game Jam has included the participation of over 50 studios that have been launching their activations since April, and has a focus on ‘Food, Forests and Our Future’.

Gameloft, for example, integrated into Asphalt 9, a key racing game, the opportunity for players to drive stunning electric cars, including the luxurious Lotus Evija, and race for the planet.

“Gaming is no longer solely for younger generations. Considering the adverse impact climate change will have on communities across the globe, it is important to educate, inspire and engage as many people as possible,” highlights Mr. Townsend from Sony, which is also participating in the latest Jam with their game “Dreams”, inviting users to create Sustainable Farming community games, and planting up to 130,000 real world trees.

Competing videogame companies working and learning together, and collaborating with each other, might have been hard to imagine a few years ago, but today, it is a reality.

Because the truth is, if we don’t come together to end the climate crisis, no one is going to be a winner.

“There’s a real opportunity here to use this for good and to help ignite conversations around some of the world’s challenges that people may want to be engaged with and talk about, but haven’t had the opportunity… I think through video games and through the gaming industry, we can reach entirely new populations and help to engage people in new ways that we haven’t been able to before,” highlights UNDP’s Cassie Flynn.

In 2022, Mission 1.5 will launch a new series of questions to include in the game, while the Alliance will be holding several events, including a virtual climate march and a Green Game Jam student edition.

“I think this medium has got unprecedented agency and influence in the world, and it’s very young and to some extent maybe misunderstood… we’ve got no choice but to work with this industry because their kind of ability to influence behaviour is potentially exponential,” concludes Mr. Barret.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Xenophobia-hit Zimbabweans Saving Countrys Dead Economy — Global Issues

Workers pictured at a home in Zimbabwe’s Mwenezi rural district, where 44-year-old Davison Chihambakwe, based in neighbouring South Africa, has helped upgrade and modernise some of the houses belonging to his family. He uses the money he sends after fleeing this country’s economic hardships 15 years ago. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
  • by Jeffrey Moyo (harare)
  • Inter Press Service

Harare, May 31 (IPS) – Two decades ago, Trynos Mahamba left Zimbabwe for the United Kingdom, but back home, he has changed the lives of his relatives.

Since the day after he left, Mahamba (53) has been sending money home while Zimbabwe’s economy faltered amidst violent land seizures from commercial white farmers during Zimbabwe’s land reform programme.

In neighbouring South Africa, 44-year-old Davison Chihambakwe, who left this country in 2007, claims he has built a giant construction empire, and, with it, he said, has also made a difference back home.

Even in neighbouring Botswana, 39-year-old Langton Mawere, who left Zimbabwe in 2008 at the height of its economic crisis, has ‘made it’ back home. He has set up a property business by sending money for developments managed by others on his behalf.

Speaking from the United Kingdom, Mahamba says he sends money to his aged parents living in the Zimbabwean capital Harare. The money reaches them through WorldRemit – a money transfer company.

“I have made sure that without failure, I send about 2000 Pounds (sterling) to my ailing parents who are now in their eighties because they need monthly medical check-ups and food as well,” Mahamba told IPS.

From South Africa, Chihambakwe says his family also benefits.

“None of my close relatives or family members are suffering back home because I make sure I send them money to meet their daily needs.”

He sends the money through another international money transfer company Western Union, to his relatives like 32-year-old Denis Sundire, based in Harare.

Sundire says that his SA-based cousin has supported him since college.

“Davison (Chihambakwe) supported me since my college days, and even to this day, as I struggle to get a job, he still sends me money for my upkeep. That’s why he is becoming more and more successful. He is so kind,” Sundire told IPS.

Zimbabwe battles 90 percent unemployment, according to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), although the government has downplayed that to 11 percent, claiming people are working in the informal sector.

Mahamba, Chihambakwe and Mawere all said they fled this Southern African country searching for greener pastures as economic hardships visited this country.

As a result, hundreds of Zimbabwean economic migrants who fled this country have over the years become the panacea to the African nation’s worsening financial woes.

Zimbabwe’s economic migrants like Mahamba, Chihambakwe and Mawere are breathing life into the country’s faltering economy through the remittances they send back home.

Chihambakwe boasts of modernising his rural village in Masvingo province in the Mwenezi district. He claimed he has helped some of his poor villagers build modern houses, doing away with the thatched huts.

For many like Chihambakwe, helping his village and loved ones from his South African base has also increased diaspora remittances into Zimbabwe’s economy.

According to the Ministry of Finance, remittances from outside the country were said to have reached US$1,4 billion in 2021, up from US$1 billion a year before.

Yet even as Zimbabwe’s economic migrants in countries like South Africa make strides, they frequently face xenophobic sentiments and, at times, attacks.

Many South Africans heap blame on migrant Zimbabweans for seizing local jobs and rising crime.

In South Africa, the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) results for the fourth quarter of last year showed the official unemployment rate reaching over 35 percent, the highest rate since 2008, when the QLFS began.

Recently, a video of South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi launching a scathing attack on illegal foreign nationals went viral.

He (Motsoaledi) made the remarks on foreign nationals at an ANC regional conference in the Eastern Cape in South Africa.

Referring to migrants that he said have flooded South Africa, Motsoaledi said, “something is going wrong in our continent, and SA is on the receiving end.

“When people do wrong things in their countries, they run here.”

“We are the only country that accepts rascals. Even the UN is angry with us that SA has a tendency, because of something called democracy, to accept all the rascals of the world,” the South African Minister was quoted saying.

As Zimbabwean migrants breathe life into their country’s struggling economy via remittances, with xenophobia climbing to new heights in South Africa, a gardener, 43-year-old Elvis Nyathi from Zimbabwe, was this year stoned by a mob in the neighbouring country before being burnt to death ostensibly for being a foreigner.

Recently writing in the Mail & Guardian, South Africa’s Fredson Guilengue working for the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) regional office in Johannesburg, said “the issue of xenophobic attacks against foreign nationals has once again reached disturbing levels in South Africa.

The tensions are also exacerbated by an anti-migrant campaign dubbed Operation Dudula, headed by 36-year-old Nhlanhla ‘Lux’ Dlamini.

Dlamini was arrested and now faces housebreaking, theft, and malicious damage to property charges after Dudula members descended on a suspected “drug house” in Soweto in March.

However, even within the ruling ANC, there have been mixed messages about the operation, with some indicating support, although SA President Cyril Ramaphosa distanced his government from the Dudula machinations.

“The concerns that we have is that we have got a vigilante force-like organisation taking illegal actions against people who they are targeting, and these things often get out of hand, they always mutate into wanton violence against other people”, Ramaphosa said.

IPS UN Bureau Report


Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

UN health agency — Global Issues

The UN agency revealed that the tobacco industry costs the world more than eight million human lives every year. As well as the human costs, 600 million trees, 200,000 hectares of land, 22 billion tonnes of water, and 84 million tonnes of CO2 are used in the production of tobacco.

Most of the environmental cost falls on low-and-middle-income countries, where water and farmland are used to grow tobacco plants, instead of for food production, which is often desperately needed.

The WHO report “Tobacco: Poisoning our planet” highlights that the industry’s carbon footprint from production, processing and transporting tobacco is equivalent to one-fifth of the CO2 produced by the commercial airline industry each year, further contributing to global warming.

Unsplash/Lex Guerra

Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of death.

Trillions of filters pollute the planet

“Tobacco products are the most littered item on the planet, containing over 7,000 toxic chemicals, which leech into our environment when discarded”, said Dr Ruediger Krech, Director of Health Promotion at WHO. “Roughly 4.5 trillion cigarette filters pollute our oceans, rivers, city sidewalks, parks, soil and beaches every year”.

Products like cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes also add to the build-up of plastic pollution. Cigarette filters contain microplastics and make up the second-highest form of plastic pollution worldwide.

The WHO is calling for policy-makers to treat cigarette filters the same as any other single-use plastic, and consider banning them, to protect public health and the environment: despite tobacco industry marketing, there is no evidence that filters have any proven health benefits. 

© FAO/Amos Gumulira

Farmers processing their tobacco to sell it at he market in Mzingo Village, Malawi.

Make the polluter pay

The costs of cleaning up littered tobacco products fall on taxpayers, rather than the industry creating the problem. Each year, this costs China roughly $2.6 billion and India roughly $766 million. The cost for Brazil and Germany come in at over $200 million.

However, countries like France and Spain and cities like San Francisco, California in the USA are taking a stand. Following the “polluter pays” principle, they have successfully implemented legislation which makes the tobacco industry responsible for clearing up the pollution it creates.

WHO urges countries and cities to follow this example, as well as give support to tobacco farmers to switch to sustainable crops, implement strong tobacco taxes and offer support services to help people quit tobacco.
 

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Hurricane Agatha sets May record, then weakens over Mexico

Placeholder while article actions load

PUERTO ESCONDIDO, Mexico — Hurricane Agatha made history as the strongest hurricane ever recorded to come ashore in May during the eastern Pacific hurricane center, making landfall on a sparsely populated stretch of small beach towns and fishing villages in southern Mexico.

The storm came ashore in Oaxaca state Monday afternoon as a strong Category 2 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (165kph), then it quickly lost power as it moved inland over the mountainous interior.

Agatha was downgraded to a tropical storm late Monday, its sustained winds down to 70 mph (110 kph). The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm should dissipate overnight, but warned that the system’s heavy rains still posed a threat of dangerous flash floods for Mexico’s southern states.

Torrential rains and howling winds whipped palm trees and drove tourists and residents into shelters. Oaxaca state’s civil defense agency showed families hustling into a shelter in Pochutla and a rock and mud slide that blocked a highway.

Heavy rain and big waves lashed the beach town of Zipolite, long known for its clothing-optional beach and bohemian vibe.

“There is a lot of rain and sudden gusts of strong wind,” said Silvia Ranfagni, manager of the Casa Kalmar hotel in Zipolite. Ranfagni, who decided to ride out Agatha at the property, said, “You can hear the wind howling.”

In the surfing town of Puerto Escondido, people took shelter and put up plywood to prevent windows from breaking in the strong winds.

The government’s Mexican Turtle Center — a former slaughterhouse turned conservation center in Mazunte — closed to visitors because of the hurricane.

Agatha formed only on Sunday and quickly gained power. It was the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in May in the eastern Pacific, said Jeff Masters, meteorologist with Yale Climate Connections and the founder of Weather Underground.

He said the region’s hurricanes typically get their start from tropical waves coming off the coast of Africa.

“Since the African monsoon typically does not start producing tropical waves until early- or mid-May, there simply aren’t enough initial disturbances to get many eastern Pacific hurricanes in May,” Masters wrote in an email. “In addition, May water temperatures are cooler than they are at the peak of the season, and wind shear is typically higher.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Upset with the Opulence of the Rich? But the World’s Children Are Paying the Bill — Global Issues

“The world’s richest countries are providing healthier environments for children within their borders, yet are disproportionately contributing to the destruction of the global environment”. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
  • by Baher Kamal (madrid)
  • Inter Press Service

MADRID, May 30 (IPS) – The excesses committed by rich people can be deadly–and in fact they are. Be it about food, energy or overall waste, such excesses have been depleting the world’s natural resources and pushing both current and future generations towards the edge of a predictable abyss.

See how

Over-consumption in the world’s richest countries is destroying children’s environments globally, explains UNICEF (the UN Children Fund) in its report Innocenti Report Card 17: Places and Spaces.

“The world’s richest countries are providing healthier environments for children within their borders, yet are disproportionately contributing to the destruction of the global environment.”

In fact, if everybody in the world consumed resources at the rate people do in Economic Cooperation and Development OECD (38 countries), and the European Union (EU) States (27), the equivalent of 3.3 Earths would be needed to keep up with consumption levels.

But if everyone were to consume resources at the rate at which people in Canada, Luxembourg and the United States do, at least five Earths would be needed

UNICEF compares how both OECD and the EU countries fare in providing healthy environments for children.

For this purpose, it features indicators such as exposure to harmful pollutants including toxic air, pesticides, damp and lead; access to light, green spaces and safe roads; and countries’ contributions to the climate crisis, consumption of resources, and the dumping of e-waste.

Destroying children’s environment.. And lives

“Not only are the majority of rich countries failing to provide healthy environments for children within their borders, they are also contributing to the destruction of children’s environments in other parts of the world,” said Gunilla Olsson, Director of UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti.

“Mounting waste, harmful pollutants and exhausted natural resources are taking a toll on our children’s physical and mental health and threatening our planet’s sustainability.

Learn more, please

The Innocenti Report includes other key findings. See some of them:

  • Over 20 million children have elevated levels of lead in their blood. Lead is one of the most dangerous environmental toxic substances.
  • Finland, Iceland and Norway rank in the top third for providing a healthy environment for their children yet rank in the bottom third for the world at large, with high rates of emissions, e-waste and consumption.
  • In Iceland, Latvia, Portugal and the United Kingdom 1 in 5 children is exposed to damp and mould at home; while in Cyprus, Hungary and Turkey more than 1 in 4 children is exposed.
  • Many children are breathing toxic air both outside and inside their homes. Mexico has among the highest number of years of healthy life lost due to air pollution at 3.7 years per thousand children, while Finland and Japan have the lowest at 0.2 years.
  • In Belgium, Czech Republic, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland more than 1 in 12 children are exposed to high pesticide pollution.
  • Pesticide pollution has been linked with cancer, including childhood leukaemia and can harm children’s nervous, cardiovascular, digestive, reproductive, endocrine, blood and immune systems.

But there is more, much more…

Sadly enough, all the above is not the sole cause that damages the present and future of children. See, for example:

  • The shocking extent of exploitative baby formula milk marketing. The world’s leading health specialised body (WHO) revealed the “… insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits.
  • Severe wasting: UNICEF warns that the number of children with severe wasting is rising and getting worse. Its report Severe wasting: An overlooked child survival emergency shows that in spite of rising levels of severe wasting in children and rising costs for life-saving treatment, global financing to save the lives of children suffering from wasting is also under threat.
  • Severe wasting – where children are too thin for their height resulting in weakened immune systems – is the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition. Worldwide, at least 13.6 million children under five suffer from severe wasting, resulting in 1 in 5 deaths among this age group.
  • Migrant children: Around the world, migrant children are facing alarming levels of xenophobia, the socioeconomic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and limited access to essential services, according to UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
  • Children in war: Nearly 90% of people in Syria live in poverty. More than 6.5 million children need urgent assistance – the greatest number of Syrian children in need since the conflict began. There, only one in four young children get the diets they need to grow healthy. The price of the average food basket has nearly doubled in 2021 alone. In Yemen, 45% of children are stunted and over 86% have anaemia; In other Middle East countries, like Lebanon, 94% of young children are not receiving the diets they need, while over 40% of women and children under the age of five have anaemia;
  • Child soldiers: Thousands of children are recruited and used in armed conflicts across the world. Between 2005 and 2020, more than 93,000 children were verified as recruited and used by parties to conflict, although the actual number of cases is believed to be much higher.These boys and girls suffer extensive forms of exploitation and abuse that are not fully captured by that term. Warring parties use children not only as fighters, but as scouts, cooks, porters, guards, messengers and more. Many, especially girls, are also subjected to gender-based violence.
  • Child forced labour: There are more than 160 million children forced in labour. They are children washing clothes in rivers, begging on the streets, hawking, walking for kilometres in search of water and firewood, their tiny hands competing with older, experienced hands to pick coffee or tea, or as child soldiers are familiar sights in Africa and Asia, explains IPS journalist Joyce Chimbi.

Resources are scarce

There are too many other crimes being committed against the world’s children.

One of them is really staggering: the very organisation: UNICEF, which was created 75 years ago to cover the emergencies of European children who fell victims of the Europe-launched II World War, is now bady short of vitally needed funding to save the lives of millions of world’s children.

Not only, a good part of these scarce resources is justifiably devoted to saving children of yet another European war.

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Shortage Amidst Plenty — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Frederic Mousseau (san francisco, usa)
  • Inter Press Service
  • The writer is Policy Director at The Oakland Institute, San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, USA, May 30 (IPS) – India is being asked by the US government and the IMF to reconsider its decision to suspend wheat exports. Their cited concern is that export restrictions will exacerbate food shortages amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the argument does not stand ground technically or morally.

Market in New Delhi. Credit: The Oakland Institute

There is no food shortage. According to a May 6, 2022 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world enjoys “a relatively comfortable supply level” of cereals. This is confirmed by the World Bank, which noted that global stocks of cereals are at historically high levels and that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the war started.

These numbers are consistent with data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture that reported on May 19 that the country exported 46.51 million tons of cereals in the 2021/22 season, versus 40.85 million the previous year.

In a repeat of 2007-2008 food crisis, it is speculation which is the key factor behind the current rise in food prices in international markets. As reported by the Lighthouse Reports, “speculators have flooded commodity markets in attempts to make a profit out of escalating prices.” A striking example are two top commodity-linked “exchange traded funds” (ETFs) which have received US$1.2 billion of investments – compared to just US$197 million for the whole of 2021 – a 600 percent increase.

According to the New York Times, “in April, speculators were responsible for 72 percent of the buying activity on the Paris wheat market, up from 25 percent before the pandemic.” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, has rightly observed that “speculative activity by powerful institutional investors who are generally unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals are indeed betting on hunger, and exacerbating it.”

Maize harvest, Gambella, Ethiopia. Credit: The Oakland Institute

Instead of food shortage, the reality is that the world produces far more food than we eat. Over 33 percent of the food produced globally is used for animal feed as well as for other non-food uses, mainly agro-fuels.

The US produces roughly 400 million tons of corn, but over 40 percent of this amount – 160 million tons – goes to ethanol production, while another 40 percent goes to animal feed, and only 10 percent is used as food whereas another 10 percent is exported. India was not expected to export more than 10 million tons of wheat in 2022-2023, which is insignificant in comparison to the US numbers.

The increasing amount of food diverted to the production of agro-fuels – again as in the 2007-2008 crisis – is another major factor fueling tension in the global cereal markets. As noted in a 2009 analysis, “although biofuels still account for only 1.5 percent of the global liquid fuels supply, they accounted for almost half the increase in the consumption of major food crops in 2006–07, mostly because of corn-based ethanol produced in the United States.”

In the US, ethanol production increased from 3.6 million barrels in 2001 to over 102 million in 2019. Despite the fact that ethanol is at least 24 percent more carbon-intensive than gasoline, under pressure from the Congress and the industry, the Biden administration has just taken steps to encourage further ethanol production while continuing to heavily subsidize it.

The US call against trade restrictions has been echoed by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Food Programme, and the World Trade Organization, who are urging “all countries to keep trade open and avoid restrictive measures such as export bans on food or fertilizer that further exacerbate the suffering of the most vulnerable people.”

But if governments and international institutions are serious about eliminating human suffering caused by high food prices, they should abstain from pressuring countries who are trying to maintain food supply at a level which will allow national food security. It is essential that they recognize and respect food sovereignty of all nations.

Immediate key measures that countries should be taking to relieve pressure on world markets are to reduce the amount of food used as fuel, curb speculation on food products – specifically restricting the so-called future commodity markets where speculators bet on future prices.

Both the US and the European Union have instruments and mechanisms in place that allow them to act, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). What is missing is the political will to act.

What is not missing is hypocrisy. The US government-funded ethanol industry uses the equivalent of 35 percent of the global world trade of cereals of 473 million tons. The Indian export ban set to prevent hunger will affect less than 2 percent of this amount.

Meanwhile, previous research on the 2007-2008 food crisis brings evidence that India and other countries were successful in preventing price transmission to domestic markets through trade regulation measures. For example, the price of rice actually decreased in Indonesia in 2008 while it was escalating in neighboring countries.

Public interventions to prevent this transmission were a mix of trade facilitation policies (for instance, cutting import tariffs or negotiating with importers) and trade restrictions or regulations (such as export bans, use of public stocks, price control, and anti-speculation measures).

The success of measures taken to limit domestic inflation depended primarily on governments’ ability to control domestic availability and regulate markets, often based on pre-existing public systems. Export restrictions possibly contributed to increased inflation in global food markets but they constituted a fast and effective way to protect consumers by mitigating the effect of global markets on domestic prices.

But regardless of the trade measures that some countries may adopt, even in the absence of a global food shortage, the food crisis is real. Droughts, conflicts, and now high food prices, are threatening to starve hundreds of millions of people.

Unfortunately, the massive human suffering and hunger that was affecting many countries even prior to the war in Ukraine was barely met with adequate response from rich nations. UN humanitarian appeals for acute crises are chronically underfunded. In 2021, only 45 percent of the UN appeal for Yemen and the Horn of Africa was fulfilled, only 29 percent for Syria.

The US Congress just approved an aid of US$40 billion for Ukraine, including over US$26 billion of military aid. This is US$12 billion more than the US$28 billion that the US will spend globally in 2022 on international assistance through USAID.

Amidst the war on Ukraine, given the chronic shortfalls of funding to international assistance, it is critical that all countries ensure their solidarity and adequate support is provided to all victims. But beyond aid, the only reasonable decision would be for them to act decisively on the broader causes of the high food prices and curb speculation on food commodities and diversion of food for the production of fuel.

Unfortunately, given measures were not taken following the 2007-2008 food crisis, how likely is it to happen now. High income countries and international institutions may rather repeat their motto of “keep trade open” and continue business as usual. It is therefore up to governments in the Global South, in particular food deficit countries, to recognize this harsh reality and act to reduce their dependency on food imports by supporting their own farmers and proactively regulating their food and agricultural markets.

The Oakland Institute is an independent policy think tank that conducts research and advocacy on issues such as international development, environment, land, food, and agriculture.

IPS UN Bureau


Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

The Motto of Their Defenders in Peru — Global Issues

Community organizing is a lynchpin in the lives of environmental defenders in Peru, as in the case of Mirtha Villanueva, pictured here with other activists from the Cajamarca region also involved in the defense of rivers and Mother Earth. CREDIT: Courtesy of Mirtha Villanueva
  • by Mariela Jara (lima)
  • Inter Press Service

LIMA, May 30 (IPS) – “Water is part of our culture, it is intrinsic to the Amazon,” said José Manuyama, a member of a river defense committee in his native Requena, a town located in the department of Loreto, the largest in Peru, covering 28 percent of the national territory.

Despite the large size of this Amazon rainforest department or province located in the northeast of the country, data from 2020 indicated that it barely exceeded one million inhabitants, including some 220,000 indigenous people, in a country with a total population of 32.7 million.

A teacher by profession and a member of the Kukama indigenous people, one of the 51 officially recognized in Peru’s Amazon rainforest region, Manuyama reminisced about his childhood near a small river in a conversation with IPS during the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, held in Lima on May 25.

“We would wait for the high water season and the floods, because that was our world. When the water comes, it’s used for bathing, for fishing, it’s a whole world adapted to water,” he said.

And he added: “We also waited for the floods to pass, which left us enormous areas of land where the forest would grow and where my mother would plant her cucumbers, her corn. Seeing the river, the transparent water, that beautiful, fertile world: that’s where I grew up.”

Today, approaching the age of 50, Manuyama is also an activist in defense of nature and rivers in the face of continuous aggressions from extractive economic activities that threaten the different forms of life in his home region.

Manuyama is a member of a collective in defense of the Nanay River that runs through the department of Loreto. It is one of the tributaries of the Amazon River that originates in the Andes highlands in southern Peru and which is considered the longest and the biggest in terms of volume in the world, running through eight South American countries.

“We started out as the Water Defense Committee in 2012 when the Nanay watershed was threatened by oil activity,” he said. “Together with other collectives and organizations we managed to block that initiative, but since 2018 there has been a second extractive industry wave, with mining that is damaging the basin and seems to be the latest brutal calamity in the Amazon.”

José Manuyama, a member of the Kukama indigenous people and a teacher committed to the protection of nature, stands in front of the Momón River, a tributary of the Nanay River, which environmental activists have been defending from extractive activities that threaten its very existence in the department of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon jungle region. CREDIT: Courtesy of José Manuyama

Their struggle was weakened during the pandemic, when the “millionaire polluting illegal mining industry” – as he describes it – remained active. Their complaints have gone unheeded by the authorities despite the harmful impacts of the pollution, such as on people’s food, which depends to a large extent on the fish they catch.

However, he is hopeful about the new national network of defenders of rivers and territories, an effort that emerged in 2019 and that on May 25 organized its second national meeting in Lima, with the participation of 60 representatives from the Amazon, Andes and Pacific coast regions of the country.

“It is important because we strengthen ourselves in a common objective of defending territories and rights, confronting the various predatory extractive waves that exist in this dominant social economic system that uses different factors in a chain to achieve its purpose. The battle is not equal, but this is how resistance works,” Manuyama said.

Like the watersheds of a river

Ricardo Jiménez, director of the non-governmental Peru Solidarity Forum, an institution that works with the network of organizations for the protection and defense of rivers, said it emerged as a response to the demand of various sectors in the face of depredation and expanding illegal mining and logging activities detrimental to water sources.

The convergence process began in 2019, he recalled, with the participation, among others, of the Amazonian Wampis and Awajún indigenous peoples, “women defenders of life and the Pachamama” of the northeastern Andes highlands department of Cajamarca, and “rondas campesinas” (rural social organizations) in various regions of the country.

Mirtha Villanueva, defender of life and Pachamama in the Cajamarca region of northeastern Peru, is seen here participating in one of the sessions of the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, which brought together 60 participants from different parts of the country. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The first important milestone of the initiative occurred in 2021, when they held their first national meeting, in which a National Promotional Committee of Defenders of Rivers and Territories was formed.

They approved an agenda that they sent to the then minister of culture, Gisela Ortiz, who remained in office for only four months and was unable to meet the request to form the Multisectoral Roundtable for dialogue to address issues such as environmental remediation of legal and illegal extractive activities.

The proposed roundtable also mentioned the development of criteria for the protection of the headwaters of river basins, and the protection of river defenders from the criminalization of their protests and initiatives.

At this second national meeting, the Promotional Committee updated its agenda and created synergies with the National River Protection Network, made up of non-governmental organizations.

It also joined the river action initiative of the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (Fospa), whose tenth edition will be held Jul. 28-31 in Belem do Pará, in Brazil’s Amazon region, and whose national chapter met on May 27.

Three days of activity were organized in the Peruvian capital by the defenders of the rivers and their riverside communities, who on May 26 participated in a march of indigenous peoples, organized by the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest.

“There is a coming together of the social collectives at the national level and also with their peers at the Pan-Amazonian level; we have a shared path with particularities but which coincides,” Jiménez told IPS.

A group of villagers participates in the monitoring and surveillance of the Chimín river in the Condebamba valley, in the Cajamarca region of northeastern Peru. The river is contaminated by illegal mining activity, which harms all the communities along its banks, as it irrigates 40 percent of the crops in the area. CREDIT: Courtesy of Mirtha Villanueva

Rivers have no borders

Mirtha Villanueva is an activist who defends life and Pachamama (Mother Earth, in the Quechua indigenous language) in Cajamarca, a northeastern department of Peru, where more than a decade ago the slogan “water yes, gold no!” was coined as part of the struggles of the local population in defense of their lakes and wetlands against the Conga mining project of the U.S.-owned Yanacocha gold mine.

The project was suspended, but only temporarily, after years of social protests against the open-pit gold mine, which in 2012 caused several deaths and led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the region for several months, in one of the most critical episodes in the communities’ struggle against the impact of extractivism on their environment and their lives.

A large part of Villanueva’s 66 years has been dedicated to the defense of nature’s assets, of rivers, to guarantee decent lives for people, in a struggle that she knows is extremely unequal in the face of the economic power of the mining companies.

“We, the defenders of the rivers, have to grow in strength and I hope that at the Fospa Peru meeting we will approve a plan of action agreed with our brothers and sisters in Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil, because our rivers are also connected, they have no borders,” she told IPS during an interview at the meeting in Lima.

“We need to strengthen ourselves from the local to the international level to have an impact with our actions. We receive 60 percent of our rainfall from the Amazon forest. How can we not take care of the Amazon?” she said.

José Manuyama stands to the right of the poster during one of his presentations at the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, which brought together activists from different parts of Peru in Lima. His group analyzed power relations in the context of the risks surrounding the country’s rivers, especially those in the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The work she carries out with the environmental committees is titanic. She recalled the image of poor rural families protesting the change in the rivers and how it has caused rashes on their children’s skin.

And when they went to the mine to complain, they were told: “When I came, your river was already like this. Why do you want to blame me? Prove it.”

“In this situation, the farmer remains silent, which is why it is important to work in the communities to promote oversight and monitoring of ecosystems and resources. We work with macroinvertebrates, beings present in the rivers that are indicators of clean or polluted waters, gradually training the population,” she explained.

This is an urgent task. She gave as an example the case of the district of Bambamarca, in Loreto, which has the highest number of mining environmental liabilities in the country: 1118. “Only one river is still alive, the Yaucán River,” Villanueva lamented.

She also mentioned the Condebamba valley, “with the second highest level of diversity in Peru,” and 40 percent of whose farmland is being irrigated by water from the Chimín river polluted by the mines.

“In Cajamarca we have 11 committees monitoring the state of the rivers, we all suffer reprisals, but we cannot stop doing what we do because people’s health and lives are at stake,” both present and future, she said.

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version