The issue is the focus for World Migratory Bird Day, observed this Saturday, 14 April, under the theme “Dim the Lights for Birds at Night.”
Light pollution is increasing, with artificially lit outdoor areas rising by 2.2 per cent per year from 2012 to 2016, according to one study cited by the Secretariat of the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), a UN environmental treaty.
Currently, more than 80 per cent of the world’s population is estimated to live under a “lit sky”, and the figure is closer to 99 per cent in Europe and North America.
Altering natural patterns
“Natural darkness has a conservation value in the same way as clean water, air, and soil. A key goal of World Migratory Bird Day 2022 is to raise awareness of the issue of light pollution and its negative impacts on migratory birds,” said Amy Fraenkel, the CMS Executive Secretary.
Artificial light alters natural patterns of light and dark within ecosystems, and contributes to the deaths of millions of birds each year.
Light pollution can cause birds to change their migration patterns, foraging behaviours and vocal communication, resulting in disorientation and collisions.
Disorientation and death
Migrating birds are attracted to artificial light at night – particularly when there are low cloud conditions, fog, rain, or when flying at lower altitudes – luring them to dangers in cities.
Birds become disorientated and, as a result, may end up circling in illuminated areas. With their energy reserves depleted, they risk exhaustion, or worse.
“Many nocturnally migrating birds such as ducks, geese, plovers, sandpipers and songbirds are affected by light pollution causing disorientation and collisions with fatal consequences,” said Jacques Trouvilliez, Executive Secretary of the African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA), another UN treaty.
“Seabirds such as petrels and shearwaters are attracted by artificial lights on land and become prey for rats and cats.”
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Safer skies
Two years ago, countries that are party to the CMS endorsed guidelines on light pollution covering marine turtles, seabirds, and migratory shorebirds.
The recommendations call for Environmental Impact Assessments to be conducted for projects that could result in light pollution.
Projects should consider the main sources of light pollution at a certain site, the likely wild species to be affected, and facts about proximity to important habitats and migratory pathways.
New guidelines focused on migratory landbirds and bats are currently being developed and will be presented for adoption at a CMS conference next year.
Solutions to light pollution are readily available, said Ms. Frankel. More and more cities worldwide are taking measures to dim building lights during migration phases in spring and autumn, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Call to action
World Migratory Bird Day is celebrated twice a year, on the second Saturday in May and October, in recognition of the cyclical nature of bird migration and the different peak migration periods in the northern and southern hemispheres.
It is organized by a collaborative partnership among the two UN wildlife treaties and the non-profit organization, Environment for the Americas (EFTA).
“World Migratory Bird Day is a call to action for international migratory bird conservation,” said Susan Bonfield, the EFTA Director.
“As migratory birds’ journey across borders, inspiring and connecting people along the way, it is our aim to use the two days in 2022 to raise awareness of the threat of light pollution and the importance of dark skies to bird migrations.”
Sylvie Djacbou, Exchanging with indigenous communities and somes civil societies around the Impact of Cameroon growth and employment strategy through structural projects like Agro-industries on Indigenous communities. @inside their sacred forest, Assok/Mintom, South Region Cameroon
Opinion by Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue (yaoundÉ)
Inter Press Service
YAOUNDÉ, May 13 (IPS) – Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue is Forest Campaigner with Greenpeace Africa and a 2022 Aspen New Voices Fellow.Growing up amid under the leafy canopy of the Congo Basin rainforest, the woodland was more than our home. It was our playground, our medicine cabinet, our teacher, our therapist. And it was a source of livelihood with its rich biodiversity and helped shield us from the effects of climate change.
The mounting tension between economic growth and healthy forest life over years has led to the destruction of some of the world’s oldest forests and the resulting poverty of its communities. This massive deforestation has led to the expropriation of indigenous and local communities from their ancestral land without their consent, increased carbon emissions, migration and the disappearance of Indigenous communities’ culture and languages.
Rather than developing our country, the changes are impoverishing forest communities and leaving the entire region more vulnerable to climate change and diseases.
The Congo Basin rainforest, larger than the US state of Alaska, refers to six Central African countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Central African Republic) and is the world’s second largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon.
Recently, just weeks after International Forest Day on 21st of March, the third part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was released showing us that there is still a lot to do on the ground to limit the effect of climate change. And the Congo Basin forest is one of the frontlines in the fight.
This report once again rang the alarm that, if nothing is done, then the world may find itself on a pathway to climate breakdown and extreme poverty.
Later this year, the annual UN climate conferences (COP 27) will take place in Egypt where the world’s leaders will meet to agree on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including its SDG 15 which aims to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”.
We are expecting more action and fewer false promises from Africa’s leaders and for its youth to take the lead scene in holding their leaders accountable.
As we prepare for this event, it is important to think through how we can use that international platform to drive national governments, especially those from Congo Basin, to act with the same speed they took their pledges to address the climate change crisis.
The current economic development model in Congo Basin is rooted in massive deforestation: more and more concessions are being granted with large scale land set aside for industrial agriculture such as palm oil and rubber.
The loss of the forest ecosystem – and therefore the spiritual and cultural heritage of the community – is irreversible. The tropical rainforests of the Congo Basin are being eliminated.
The impact is not just economic: When forests are cleared, the carbon they store is released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. According to the recent Global Forest Watch data, in 2021, 3.75 million hectares of pristine rainforest (an area critical to carbon storage and biodiversity) was lost at a rate of 10 football fields per minute.
Cameroon, for instance, has lost more than 80 thousand hectares of its primary forests in 2021, almost twice area of the primary forest destroyed in 2019. The Democratic Republic of Congo has lost nearly half a million hectares of primary forest in 2021 (Increase of almost 29% compared to 2020). Only to enrich a small portion of selfish elites.
At this rate, there is no way to reverse forest loss by 2030, as pledged by leaders from 141 countries at last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Despite that, Cameroon is still granting a company, like Camvert SA, tax exemptions to implement an almost 60,000 hectares palm plantation project. This will result not only in deforestation but also in biodiversity destruction alongside the loss of communities’ livelihoods but also lead communities in the areas in extreme poverty.
One forest community member told me: “Before this company, I was able to collect non timber forest products and sell them. I was also able to find my treatment there when I was ill. Now, there will be no more forest and we are left to ourselves.”
Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue
The benefits of these deals, however, do not reach local residents. They are seldom hired when these concessions are developed. My research shows experienced workers in these concessions tend to come from other areas of the country and – even when local community members are hired – they are paid a pittance.
While companies often brag that they are promoting development by opening up roads, it’s important to note that these roads are used mainly to deliver timber to the market and are not open for communities.
The Congo Basin countries are not immune: The 2022 World Bank report show the country is a long way away from achieving substantial poverty reduction, with the COVID-19 pandemic keeping people below the poverty line and remaining stubbornly constant.
In DRC, a recent IGF report showed that more than USD 10 million in forest royalties were not paid to the public treasury between 2014 and 2020.
What’s worse, the climate change that this deforestation is making worse will only deepen poverty. The latest IPCC report estimates that in the next decade alone, climate change will drive 32-132 million more people into extreme poverty.
Yes, we need development. But at what cost? And who should that development benefit? Protecting forests is a matter of preserving the livelihoods of the local community and reducing poverty. Granting more forest concessions will not make us richer than we are now.
We need alternative development models that embrace indigenous communities’ wellbeing and promote healthy forests. By taking advantage of the indigenous people’s wisdom and knowledge, in forest management there is a possibility to develop while securing communities’ land and contribute in bringing back global warming below the critical level (2°C ).
Achieving sustainable development and eradicating poverty in the Congo Basin would involve effectively stopping deforestation and implementing climate policies which ensure social justice and meaningful participation of communities in decision-making.
It is time for the various policy working groups on forest issues in Congo Basin to consider more than their personal economic interests but to take more into consideration the long term need to have healthy forests for healthy life.
During one of the hearings in Buenos Aires, the court trying a 1924 indigenous massacre in the Chaco heard the testimony of historian Nicolás Iñigo Carrera, from the University of Buenos Aires, who has been studying indigenous history in Argentina for decades. The expert witness described in detail the conditions in the Napalpí indigenous “reducción” or camp where the massacre took place. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
Inter Press Service
BUENOS AIRES, May 13 (IPS) – It’s a strange trial, with no defendants. The purpose is not to hand down a conviction, but to bring visibility to an atrocious event that occurred almost a hundred years ago in northern Argentina and was concealed by the State for decades with singular success: the massacre by security forces of hundreds of indigenous people who were protesting labor mistreatment and discrimination.
“We are seeking to heal the wounds and vindicate the memory of the (indigenous) peoples,” explained federal judge Zunilda Niremperger, as she opened the first hearing in Buenos Aires on May 10 in the trial for the truth of the so-called Napalpí Massacre, in which an undetermined number of indigenous people were shot to death on the morning of Jul. 19, 1924.
The trial began on Apr. 19 in the northern province of Chaco, one of the country’s poorest, near the border with Paraguay. But it was moved momentarily to the capital, home to approximately one third of the 45 million inhabitants of this South American country, to give it greater visibility.
In a highly symbolic decision, the venue chosen in Buenos Aires was the Space for Memory and Human Rights, created in the former Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), where the most notorious clandestine torture and extermination center operated during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, which kidnapped and murdered as many as 30,000 people for political reasons.
The hearings in Buenos Aires ended Thursday May 12, and the court will reconvene in Resistencia, the capital of Chaco, on May 19, when the prosecutor’s office and the plaintiffs are to present their arguments before the sentence is handed down at an unspecified date.
“This trial is aimed at bringing out the truth that we need, and that I come to support, in the place where they brought my daughter when they kidnapped her. This shows that genocides are repeated in history,” Vera Vigevani de Jarach, seated in the front row of the courtroom, her head covered by the white scarf that identifies the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group, told IPS.
Vera, 94, is Jewish and emigrated with her family to Argentina when she was 11 years old from Italy, due to the racial persecution unleashed by fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1939. In 1976 her only daughter, Franca Jarach, then 18 years old, was forcibly disappeared.
“Truth trials” are not a novelty in Argentina. The term was used to refer to investigations of the crimes committed by the dictatorship, carried out after 1999, when amnesty laws passed after the conviction of the military regime’s top leaders blocked the prosecution of the rest of the perpetrators.
A petition filed by a member of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (made up of mothers of victims of forced disappearance) before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) led later to an agreement with the Argentine State, which recognized the woman’s right to have the judiciary investigate the fate of her disappeared daughter, even though the amnesty laws made it impossible to punish those responsible.
Eventually, the amnesty laws were repealed, the trials resumed, and defendants were convicted and sent to prison.
Indigenous communities and human rights organizations held an Apr. 19, 2022 demonstration in Resistencia, capital of the Argentine province of Chaco, at the beginning of the trial for the truth about the Napalpí massacre. CREDIT: Chaco Secretariat of Human Rights and Gender
Historic reparations
“My grandmother was a survivor of the massacre and I grew up listening to the stories of labor exploitation in Napalpí and about what happened that day. For us this trial is a historic reparation,” Miguel Iya Gómez, a bilingual multicultural teacher who today presides over the Chaco Aboriginal Institute, a provincial agency whose mission is to improve the living conditions of native communities, told IPS.
The trial is built on the basis of official documents and journalistic coverage of the time and the videotaped testimonies of survivors of the massacre and their descendants, and of researchers of indigenous history in the Chaco.
The Argentine province of Chaco forms part of the ecoregion from which it takes its name: a vast, hot, dry, sparsely forested plain that was largely unsettled during the Spanish Conquest. Only at the end of the 19th century did the modern Argentine State launch military campaigns to subdue the indigenous people in the Chaco and impose its authority there.
Once the Chaco was conquered, many indigenous families were forced to settle in camps called “reducciones”, where they had to carry out agricultural work.
“The ‘reducciones’ operated in the Chaco between 1911 and 1956 and were concentration camps for indigenous people, who were disciplined through work,” said sociologist Marcelo Musante, a member of the Network of Researchers on Genocide and Indigenous Policies in Argentina, which brings together academics from different disciplines, at the hearing.
“When indigenous people entered the ‘reducción’, they were given clothes and farming tools, and this generated a debt that put them under great pressure. And they were not allowed to make purchases outside the stores of the ‘reducción’,” he explained.
David García, a member of the Napalpí Foundation, created in 2006 to gather information about and bring visibility to the 1924 massacre, took part in the trial in Buenos Aires. His organization was one of the driving forces behind the historic trial in Argentina. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
Invaded by cotton
Historian Nicolás Iñigo Carrera said it was common for indigenous people in the Chaco to go to work temporarily in sugar mills in the neighboring provinces of Salta and Jujuy, but the scenario changed in the 1920s, when the Argentine government introduced cotton in the Chaco, to tap into the textile industry’s growing global demand.
“Then the criollo (white) settlers, who often had no laborers, demanded the guaranteed availability of indigenous labor to harvest the cotton crop, and in 1924 the government prohibited indigenous people, who refused to work on the cotton plantations, from leaving the Chaco, declaring any who left subversives,” Carrera said.
Anthropologist Lena Dávila Da Rosa said the Jul. 19, 1924 protest involved between 800 and 1000 indigenous people from Napalpí, and some 130 police officers who opened fired on them, with the support of an airplane that dropped candy so the children would go out to look for it and thus reveal the location of the protesters they were tracking down.
“It’s impossible to know exactly how many indigenous people were killed, but there were several hundred victims,” Alejandro Jasinski, a researcher with the Truth and Justice Program of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, told IPS.
“The official report mentioned four people killed in confrontations among themselves, and there was a judicial investigation that was quickly closed. All that was left were the buried memories of the communities,” he added.
The memories were revived and made public in recent years thanks in large part to the efforts of Juan Chico, an indigenous writer and researcher from the Chaco who died of COVID-19 in 2021.
“Juan started collecting oral accounts almost 20 years ago,” David García, a translator and interpreter of the language of the Qom, one of the main indigenous nations of the Chaco, told IPS. “I worked alongside him to bring the indigenous genocide to light, and in 2006 we founded an NGO that today is the Napalpí Foundation. It was a long struggle to reach this trial.”
Vera Vigevani de Jarach, a member of the human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, attended the hearing in Buenos Aires for the Napalpí indigenous massacre, held in the most notorious clandestine detention and torture center used by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina. CREDIT: National Secretariat of Human Rights
Indigenous people in the Chaco today
Of the population of Chaco province, 3.9 percent, or 41,304 people, identified as indigenous in the last national census conducted in Argentina in 2010, which is higher than the national average of 2.4 percent.
Census data reflects the harsh living conditions of indigenous people in the Chaco and the disadvantages they face in relation to the rest of the population. More than 80 percent live in deficient housing while more than 25 percent live in critically overcrowded conditions, with more than three people per room. In addition, more than half of the households cook with firewood or charcoal.
Today, the site of the Napalpí massacre is called Colonia Aborigen Chaco and is a 20,000-hectare plot of land owned by the indigenous community where, according to official data, some 1,300 indigenous people live, from the Qom and Moqoit communities, the most numerous native groups in the Chaco along with the Wichi.
In 2019, mass graves were found there by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, a prestigious organization that emerged in 1984 to identify remains of victims of the military dictatorship and that has worked all over the world.
“What we hope is that the sentence will bring out the truth about an event that needs to be understood so that racism and xenophobia do not take hold in Argentina,” Duilio Ramírez, a lawyer with the Chaco government’s Human Rights Secretariat, which is acting as plaintiff, told IPS. “People need to know about all the blood that has flowed because of contempt for indigenous people.”
“We hope that with the ruling, the Argentine State will take responsibility for what happened and that this will translate into public policies of reparations for the indigenous communities,” he said.
The drought follows four consecutive failed rainy seasons, and the fear is the number could jump to 20 million if the current below-average rains fail.
Imagine having to choose between feeding your child or sending them to school.
Communities I met in Turkana County, #Kenya today, are facing these impossible choices every day due to drought in the #HornOfAfrica.
UN Humanitarian Coordinator Martin Griffiths was in the region this week on a two-day mission to Kenya to raise awareness of this climate-induced emergency, which is happening at a time when global attention is focused on numerous crises.
Last month, he released $12 million from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to respond to the drought, while another $17 million was allocated from the Ethiopia Humanitarian Fund.
Families in misery
The relief chief was in remote Turkana county, northern Kenya, on Thursday to show solidarity with local communities and underline the need for more funding and food aid.
The UN and partners require $480 million to support the humanitarian response through October.
“The world’s attention is elsewhere, and we know that,” he said. “And the world’s misery has not left Turkana. And the world’s rains have not come to Turkana.”
Mr. Griffiths spoke to families in Lomoputh who have nothing left. Their animals have died and there is no way to make money.
‘Impossible choices’
Although children can sometimes get food at school – often the only thing to eat available – this requires walking six kilometres to fetch water for the children to take with them.
As a result, mothers are being forced to make “impossible choices”, he said.
“One of them said to us that some of them even have children who are of the age to go to secondary school… but to pay the fees to go to a secondary school in this area, you need to sell livestock. Sell a goat, as she said. There’s no more goats. There’s no more livestock. They’ve gone.”
Malnutrition and migration
Some 3.5 million people in Kenya are severely food insecure and acute malnutrition rates in some areas are more than double the emergency threshold, according to the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, which Mr. Griffiths heads.
Across the three countries, roughly 5.7 million children are acutely malnourished,
Additionally, more than three million livestock—which pastoralist families rely on for sustenance and survival —have died.
Mr. Griffiths concluded his mission to Kenya on Friday, meeting virtually with people in Ethiopia’s Somali region.
The severe drought is affecting more than eight million people across the country. More than 7.2 million need food aid, and some four million require water assistance.
At least 286,000 people have migrated in search of water, pasture, or assistance, but others, often the elderly or the sick, have remained behind.
In a post on Twitter, Mr. Griffiths urged the international community not to ignore the rapidly escalating crisis in the Horn of Africa.
“We need urgent action to help these communities survive now, and increased investment in their ability to withstand future shocks,” he wrote. “We need to give them a future.”
“This remains the case today,” Thomas Markram said.
The Russian Federation, the United States and Ukraine are all States Parties to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention prohibiting the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological and toxin weapons.
Channels for recourse
Mr. Markram – who is also the Deputy to the High Representative – explained that the Convention does contain several measures which concerned States Parties can us to address concerns or suspicions about the activities of their peers.
For example, he said, pursuant to Article V, States Parties can consult one another and cooperate in solving any problems through international procedures, including on a bilateral basis. Noting that one such procedure is the convening of a consultative meeting, he said other possibilities exist under Article VI.
“I would therefore encourage any States Parties with compliance concerns to use the procedures available under the Convention,” Mr. Markram said. The Office for Disarmament Affairs stands ready to support any procedures under the Convention that States Parties may decide to use.
Alleged biosecurity threat to Eastern Europe
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said his country called today’s meeting – the third on this topic – because it continues to receive evidence that the United States Department of Defense is carrying out dangerous biological projects of a secret military nature on the western border with his country.
“It is a real threat to the biosecurity of our country, the region and, given the cross-border nature of these bio threats, to the whole world,” he said. Yet, as confirmed by Mr. Markram, neither Ukraine nor the United States has included information on this threat in the reporting stipulated by the Convention, he said.
Preventing such dangerous activity is only possible through his country’s “special military operation”, he said. He drew attention to “Project 3007” in which Ukrainian specialists, under the supervision of United States colleagues, collect water samples from the Dnipro, Danube and other waterways, looking for pathogens, such as typhoid. The samples are then sent to the United States.
The logical question is “why?”, he said. A glance at a map of Ukraine’s water sources is enough to understand that the results could be used to create a biological catastrophe in the Russian Federation, through the Azov and Black Seas, and in Eastern Europe, he added.
Among other claims, he charged Ukraine with attempting to spread dangerous bioaerosols across the Russian Federation, pointing to its receipt of 50 drones in January equipped to deliver such an assault, and the United States with financing such activities through subcontractors.
He said another bio incident in 2020 using “false money” as a carrier for tuberculosis in Luhansk, endangered the children who found it. “This money was infected with a bioactive tuberculosis,” he claimed, confirmation of “a very worrying trend”. He went on to claim that other evidence implicates US scientists in carrying out experiments on psychiatric patients in hospital number 3, in Kharkov.
Reactor 3 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in Ukraine.
‘Fanciful’ claims, conspiracy theories
In turn, US deputy ambassador Richard M. Mills lamented that the United Nations disarmament director had been asked to join today’s “truly farcical conversation”. He blamed Russia for again using the Council as a platform to spout disinformation and conspiracy theories about Ukraine as it continues its brutal and inhumane assault on the Ukrainian people.
“Russia repeatedly debases the Council through these absurd meetings,” he said. Endless claims of chemical and biological weapons programmes in Ukraine are categorically false and “ludicrous”. In making “fanciful” assertions about poisoned bank notes, secret treatments on psychiatric prisoners and non-disclosure agreements, “it is as if the Russian delegation’s talking points came from a bad spy novel,” he said.
Track record of chemical weapons use
They follow a well-warn pattern, he said, in which Russian authorities accuse others, of the very violations that they have perpetrated or intend to perpetrate. He cautioned against lending these “outlandish” claims any credence – beyond watching closely for the possibility of a false flag chemical or biological attack by Russian forces themselves.
What should not be forgotten, he said, is that Russia has a long and well-documented track record of chemical weapons use, including in attempted assassinations and the poisoning of President Vladimir Putin’s enemies, including opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
The first Open-ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats that’s been meeting all week in the Swiss city, is the result of a UN General Assembly resolution last December, seeking to promote “norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviours” among countries already present in the cosmos – or which are planning to have a presence in space.
“The situation has changed dramatically in the last few decades. We have so many space activities there is a growing number of space-faring nations – and even those that are not space-faring are sending their own satellites,” explained Hellmut Lagos, chair of the working group talks.
“There are so many activities and the regulations …are not enough to deal with the different risks and threats to the security of all those activities.”
Progress on disarmament is a key priority of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who recently reported on ways to reduce the “risks of misunderstanding and miscalculations” on outer space issues.
Treaty revamp push
An international Outer Space Treaty already exists that forms the basis of international space law.
Its main focus is on the peaceful “exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies…for the benefit and in the interests of all countries…and shall be the province of all mankind”.
In keeping with the optimism of the era surrounding the space race, astronauts are described “as envoys of mankind”, and there is also a nod to today’s concerns over space pollution, with explicit wording that States must avoid the “harmful contamination” of space, the moon and other “celestial bodies”.
Russia, the UK and the US provided the original impetus for the treaty, whose impressive title in full is “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies”.
But the Outer Space Treaty is 55 years old and needs updating urgently, to take account of new space-based threats to global security – and the fact that all nations rely on space today for everything from navigation to communication, broadband and finance, explained Mr. Lagos:
“The most basic things that we do in in modern life, they are dependent on these technologies and services that come from space: GPS, critical infrastructure, energy, everything, everything is controlled by space technologies…everyone is becoming increasingly aware of this issue.”
Weapons loophole
Chilean diplomat Lagos also pointed out that although nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction are banned in the 1967 space accord – “the cornerstone of the international space regime”, in his words – there was no way of knowing about today’s new generation of missile systems that can target satellites.
Equally important, there is no review mechanism of the treaty as there is with other major treaties, Mr. Lagos noted, which is why all Member States need to find “common ground” on new norms, rules and principles, to plug legal gaps that might be exploited by space-faring nations.
To date, China, Indian Russia and the US have reportedly used anti-satellite (ASAT) technology, sparking concerns about attempts to weaponise space – and the fact that an unknown number of fragments may now be hurtling around around earth in low orbit, threatening spacecraft including the International Space Station.
NASA/Johnson
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is seen floating during a spacewalk on 21 December 2015 as he and fellow astronaut Tim Kopra released brake handles on crew equipment carts on either side of the space station.
Inclusive approach
Underlining the increasing number of non-State actors involved in space exploration, Mr. Lagos welcomed the significant number of civil society representatives at the talks in Geneva, and the fact that countries from all regions of the world attended.
“Civil society is extremely important, not only because there are an increasing number of non-State actors in space, but also because their participation in these multilateral processes, they give an additional layer of legitimacy to the result, to the outcome of the process.”
And although global tensions are higher than they’ve been for decades, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, the underlying push for consensus of the working group’s agenda has kept discussions on track, Mr. Lagos insisted.
Last week, the head of Russia’s space agency reportedly confirmed that in response to sanctions over the war in Ukraine, Russia was planning to pull out of the International Space Station.
“It is obvious that the geopolitical context now is really concerning and it has an impact on all the discussions and all the processes all over the world – that does not exclude us,” said Mr. Lagos.
“But we are trying to have a positive momentum in this process at least to try to make progress because it is in everybody’s interest, and so far we have achieved that – we see that there is big engagement and interest in moving things forward.”
The next session of the Working Group is planned for September, where the item will be “current and future threats by States to space systems, and actions, activities and omissions that could be considered irresponsible”.
Next year, the group will take up its item on the preparation of recommendations to the General Assembly.
The Coalition of Action for Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems for all (HDSFS), brings together governments, UN agencies, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and social movements.
The Summit called for progress towards achieving the SDGs by examining how food systems are linked to global challenges such as malnutrition, climate change, and poverty.
Sickness and inequality
The HDSFS comes at a crucial time, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), one of its members, because “our food systems are making us sick”.
Every year, unhealthy diets cause 11 million deaths, while a further 420,000 people die from consuming unsafe foods.
Unhealthy diets are also related to six of the top 10 risk factors for the global burden of disease, but some three billion people worldwide cannot afford to buy healthy food.
“The burden of malnutrition represents a violation of the human right to food and continues to drive health and social inequalities,” said WHO.
The picture gets worse, as the UN agency said the unsustainable practices which define food systems today are also driving deforestation, biodiversity loss, the depletion of the oceans, antimicrobial resistance, and the emergence of zoonotic diseases.
A woman buys fresh vegetables at an organic farm store in Rome, Italy.
More than food
For WHO, “healthy diets from sustainable food systems” goes beyond having affordable access to foods that promote health and prevent disease.
It also means having food that is produced and distributed in ways that ensure decent work and help sustain the planet, soil, water, and biodiversity.
WHO pointed to the wider impacts this would have towards achieving the SDGs, such as ending hunger and malnutrition, promoting healthy lives and well-being, improving maternal and child health, encouraging responsible consumption and production, and advancing urgent action to combat climate change.
Coordinated action
The HDSFS will work as a “Coalition of the willing”, serving as a platform for coordinated action on healthy diets from sustainable food systems through which countries can share experiences, champion policy actions, and gain support, information and inspiration.
As urgent action is needed in policies, practices, availability of data, and resource allocation, the Coalition’s work will be centred around three main areas: mobilizing stakeholders to align action across food systems; facilitating peer-to-peer learning between countries, and managing special projects on integrating nutrition, health and sustainability through food.
So far, 16 nations and the European Commission are “frontrunner countries” in the HDSFS.
The Coalition’s “core group members” include WHO and four other UN agencies: the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Food Programme (WFP).
Other members from civil society and academia include the World Wildlife Fund, the humanitarian organization CARE, the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, and the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London.
Every year, 570 million tons of food are wasted at the household level people. Global food waste accounts for 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, May 13 (IPS) – Please do not say you were not aware that the world produces enough food to feed all human beings on Earth, while nearly double the combined European Union’s population go to bed hungry… every single night.
And please don’t pretend you did not know that 20% of all humans –those who live in the wealthiest countries– waste about 35% of the food they buy, throwing it in the garbage.
Poverty, armed conflicts and corruption are also to be blamed in poor countries for wasting food –although in a much lesser volume–, due to the lack of adequate stocking infrastructure.
In short, every year, 570 million tons of food are wasted at the household level, according to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP)’s Food Waste Index Report 2021 report.
This amount of wasted food is sufficient to feed the millions of hungry people.
Moreover, global food waste accounts for 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions, UNEP warns.
Meanwhile, the intensive agriculture industries dump in lands and seas huge amounts of food either because they are “ugly” –therefore not nice enough to be marketable–, or to keep their prices the most highly profitable possible.
The triple planetary crisis
Food waste accelerates the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution, according to the world’s environmental body.
Just take the case of a vast continent like Africa –55 countries home to 1.4 billion humans– causes a negligible 2% to 3% of all global greenhouse emissions, however it falls victim to more than 80% of the world’s climate catastrophes.
All the above, and other innumerable consequences, have a common name: inequality.
The numbers are unbelievably staggering: the world’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes from 700 US billion to 1.5 trillion US dollars—at a rate of 15,000 per second or 1.3 billion a day, according to a new study from Oxfam International, IPS journalist Thalif Deen reported.
“These phenomenal changes in fortunes took place during the first two years of a Covid-19 pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall, and over 160 million more people forced into poverty—60 million more than the figures released by the World Bank in 2020.”
Grabbed
As this happens, conservative estimates indicate that 811 million human beings are extremely hungry, close to the abyss of famine and death.
These millions live in the poorest regions of the world, those which have enormous natural resources –oil, indispensable minerals for giant technologies, private corporations, fertile soils grabbed by big business, etc– just do not eat.
Playing with fire
But there is much more evidence showing how the most vulnerable are left behind in one of the worst health crises in decades: COVID-19 vaccines.
See what the World Health Organization’s chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on 4 May 2022: the best way to save lives, protect health systems and minimise cases of “long COVID” is by vaccinating at least 70% of every country’s population – and 100% of most at-risk groups.
Although more jabs have become available, a lack of political commitment, operational capacity problems, financial constraints, misinformation and disinformation, are limiting vaccine demand, he added while warning that COVID treatment is still often ‘out of reach’ for the poor.
Manufacturers’ record profits
While “we’re playing with a fire that continues to burn us”, he said that “manufacturers are posting record profits”.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that “we cannot accept prices that make life-saving treatments available to the rich and out of reach for the poor”.
Acute food and water shortages
Back to the staggering impacts of the climate crisis on those who contributed the least to cause it.
In East Africa only, 25 million humans now face acute food and water shortages due to the climate crisis, as already projected a few months ago by the scientific community.
The driest conditions
The East African region, and in particular, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya, are experiencing the driest conditions and hottest temperatures since satellite record-keeping began, the world’s environmental body reported.
“As a result, as many as 13 million people are currently experiencing acute food and water shortages and a projected 25 million will face a similar fate by mid-2022.”
Scientists are blaming climate change for the current crisis in a part of the world that is least able to cope with.
“However, the continent suffers the heaviest impacts of the climate crisis, including increased heat waves, severe droughts and catastrophic cyclones, like the ones that hit Mozambique and Madagascar in recent years.”
Things will only get worse
Furthermore, scientists and experts project that things will only get worse for Africa if current trends continue.
According to the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, “key development sectors have already experienced widespread loss and damage attributable to anthropogenic climate change, including biodiversity loss, water shortages, reduced food production, loss of lives and reduced economic growth.”
“The current drought hitting East Africa has been particularly devastating to small-scale farmers and herders across the Horn who are already vulnerable to climate related shocks.”
“At the moment in the Horn of Africa we are witnessing vulnerable communities being disproportionately affected by climate change who are least able to buffer against its impact,” said Susan Gardner, the Director of UNEP’s Ecosystems Division.
Famine
In the case of one East African country: Somalia, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that the drought emergency has deteriorated to a point where the country is facing the risk of famine.
And that about 4.5 million people are affected, of whom nearly 700,000 people have been displaced from their homes in search of water, food, pasture and livelihoods.
• About 3.5 million people are in acute need of water assistance, including 1.4 million internally displaced people. Water trucking activities are ongoing but are insufficient to meet increasing needs.
• Schools are closing as children are displaced with their families. At least 420,000 (45% girls) out of 1.4 million children whose education has been disrupted are at risk of dropping out of school because of the drought.
• At least 1.8 million people were reached with various forms of assistance in February, but the escalating emergency calls for sustained scaling up of response and flexibility in reprogramming.
Unprecedented impacts
Confirming these facts, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for its part reported that The Horn of Africa is in the grip of the worst drought in decades – parching landscapes, heightening food insecurity and causing increasingly widespread displacement.
An estimated 15 million people are severely affected by the drought in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia – approximately 3,5 and 7 million people in each country, respectively.
The unprecedented impacts of multiple failed rainy seasons are threatening to create a humanitarian crisis in a region “already negatively impacted by cumulative shocks, including conflict and insecurity, extreme weather conditions, climate change, desert locusts and the negative socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Now that you have been reminded about some of the multiple, severe impacts of inequality, which, even at different levels, takes place in the rich, industrialised countries… will you take them into account when it comes to voting politicians?
A child beneficiary holding a drawing portraying domestic violence, at the Centre for Youth Empowerment and Civic Education, Lilongwe, Malawi which partnered with the ILO/IPEC to support the national action plan aimed at combating child labour. Credit: Marcel Crozet/ILO
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
Nairobi, May 13 (IPS) – 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.
Child rights experts at Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation reiterate that tolerance and normalisation of working children, many of whom work in hazardous conditions and circumstances, and apathy has stalled progress towards the elimination of child labour.
Further warnings include more children in labour across the sub-Saharan Africa region than the rest of the world combined. The continent now falls far behind the collective commitment to end all forms of child labour by 2025.
The International Labour Organization estimates more than 160 million children are in child labour globally.
How to achieve the Sustainable Development Target 8.7 and the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour that focuses on its elimination by 2025 will be the subject of the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour to be held in Durban, South Africa, from May 15 to 20, 2022.
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to open the conference. He will share the stage with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairperson and President of the Republic of Malawi Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder, and Argentina President Alberto Ángel Fernández Pérez (virtual).
“There are multiple drivers of child labour in Africa, and many of them are interconnected,” Minoru Ogasawara, Chief Technical Advisor for the Accelerating action for the elimination of child labour in supply chains in Africa (ACCEL Africa) at the International Labour Organization (ILO) tells IPS.
He speaks of the high prevalence of children working in agriculture, closely linked to poverty and family survival strategies.
Rapid population growth, Ogasawara says, has placed significant pressure on public budgets to maintain or increase the level of services required to fight child labour, such as education and social protection.
“Hence the call to substantially increase funding through official development assistance (ODA), national budgets and contributions from the private sector targeting child labour and its root causes,” he observes.
UNICEF says approximately 12 percent of children aged 5 to 14 years are involved in child labour – at the cost of their childhood, education, and future.
Of the 160 million child labourers worldwide, more than half are in sub-Saharan Africa, and 53 million are not in school – amounting to 28 % aged five to 11 and another 35 % aged 12 to 14, according to the most recent child labour global estimates by UNICEF and ILO.
Against this grim backdrop, keynote speakers Nobel Peace Laureates Kailash Satyarthi and Leymah Gbowee and former Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven will address the conference, which is expected to put into perspective how and why children still suffer some of the worst, most severe forms of child labour such as bonded labour, domestic servitude, child soldiers, drug trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.
Satyarthi has been at the forefront of mobilising global support to this effect.
“I am working in collaboration with a number of other Nobel Laureates and world leaders. We are demanding the setting up of an international social protection mechanism. During the pandemic, we calculated that $53 billion annually could ensure social protection for all children in all low-income countries, as well as pregnant women too,” Satyarthi emphasises.
“Increased social protection, access to free quality education, health care, decent job opportunities for adults, and basic services together create an enabling environment that reduces household vulnerability to child labour,” Ogasawara stresses.
He points to an urgent need to introduce and or rapidly expand social security and other social protection measures suitable for the informal economy, such as cash transfers, school feeding, subsidies for direct education costs, and health care coverage.
The need for a school-to-work transition and to “target children from poor households, increase access to education while reducing the need to combine school with work among children below the minimum working age” should be highlighted.
In the absence of these social protection safety nets, the International Labour Organization says it is estimated that an additional 9 million children are at risk of child labour by the end of this year and a possible further increase of 46 million child labourers.
In this context, the fifth global conference presents an opportunity to assess progress made towards achieving the goals of SDG Target 8.7, discuss good practices implemented by different actors around the world and identify gaps and urgent measures needed to accelerate the elimination of both child labour and forced labour.
The timing is crucial, says the ILO, as there are only three years left to achieve the goal of the elimination of all child labour by 2025 and only eight years towards the elimination of forced labour by 2030, as established by the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 8.7.
The conference will also see the active participation of young survivor-advocates from India and Africa. They will share their first-person accounts and lived experiences in sync with the core theme of the discussion.
The conference will also take place within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, amid fears and concerns that ending child labour became less significant on the international agenda as the world coped with the impact of the pandemic. This could reverse the many gains accrued in the fight against child labour, forced labour and child trafficking.
This is the first of a series of stories which IPS will be publishing during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour from May 15 to 20, 2022.
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 (IPS) – The Russian invasion of Ukraine last February has triggered multiple crises in several fronts: the deaths of thousands of civilians, the destruction of heavily populated cities, the rise in military spending in Europe, a projected decline in development assistance to the world’s poorer nations; the demolition of schools and health-care facilities — and now the threat of hunger and starvation worldwide.
David Beasley, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), said last week: “Right now, Ukraine’s grain silos are full,” while “44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation.”
Population-wise, that amounts to the entirety of Argentina.
“The bullets and bombs in Ukraine could take the global hunger crisis to levels beyond anything we’ve seen before,” Beasley warned during a visit to the Polish-Ukrainian border.
“The world demands it because hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies. We’re running out of time and the cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine. I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where it’s desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine”.
Beasley warned that unless the ports are reopened, Ukrainian farmers will have nowhere to store the next harvest in July/August. The result will be mountains of grain going to waste while WFP and the world struggle to deal with an already catastrophic global hunger crisis.
A leading producer of grain, Ukraine had about 14 million tons in storage and available for export. But Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea ports has brought shipments to a standstill. More grain is stranded on ships unable to move because of the conflict.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters May 3 the United States chaired a Security Council meeting last March focusing on the link between armed conflict and food security.
“Once again, we will bring a spotlight to the conflict as a driver of food insecurity.”
The US, which is holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, has scheduled an open debate on May 19 to examine “the nexus between conflict and food security.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to preside over the meeting in-person.
Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank, told IPS Russia’s war against Ukraine and their war crimes will have consequences that will last for decades. Yields of staple crops were already down in many parts of the world because of the impacts of the climate crisis and other conflicts.
“The war will only exacerbate the many crises the world is now facing—the biodiversity loss crisis, the health crisis, and the climate crisis”.
“And because Ukraine and Russia provided so much food—and cooking oils and fertilizer—to other parts of the world, including the Global South, there will be a massive hunger crisis,” she warned.
There is a chance that the war will accelerate a transition to more regenerative and local and regional food systems which was needed before the war. But in the meantime, there will be a a lot of suffering. Governments, NGOs, businesses, and other stakeholders will need to take action now to prevent a food crisis, Nierenberg said.
At a press conference in Vienna May 11, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: ” I have been in intense contact with the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Turkey, and several other key countries, in order to try to address seriously the problems of food security”.
“But once again, I do not intend to make public any of the initiatives I am having until they produce a result, because if this becomes something to be discussed, globally, I am sure that we will not be able to achieve anything,” he said.
WFP’s analysis has found that 276 million people worldwide were already facing acute hunger at the start of 2022. That number is expected to rise by 44 million people if the conflict in Ukraine continues, with the steepest rises in sub-Saharan Africa.
Daniel Bradlow, Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, told IPS the war in Ukraine will have a devastating impact in Africa because many African countries import food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine.
Therefore, the war will lead to increase in food and fertilizer prices as well as shortages of food and fertilizer. The impact of the war will come on top of extreme weather events– droughts, floods– in various parts of the continent that will also have adverse impacts on food prices and supplies.
“Thus. it is likely that there will be increases in the number of people going hungry across the continent which will have tragic impacts on the development and wellbeing of children”.
The only silver lining in this terrible situation is that it might lead to people across the continent increasing their reliance on more indigenous crops such as cassava, he noted.
Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam’s Policy Advisor on Food, Agriculture and Land, told IPS global hunger is soaring with the war in Ukraine seeing food prices skyrocket.
“This is catastrophic for people living in countries highly dependent on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. Countries like Yemen and Syria in the Middle East and Somalia and South Sudan in Africa where we are seeing people pushed beyond the brink of hunger,” she said.
The reason is a broken global food system, one that is unable to withstand crises and one that is built on inequality. Many poorer countries are unable – and are too often made unable – to produce enough food to feed their people. They must rely on food imports. This dependency is dangerous, she added.
“Countries should refrain from using food export bans. They just do more harm. Countries should ensure that food can move quickly from one country to another”.
“We need a food system that works for everybody. One that can stand against shocks such as rapid food inflation and one that is built on local small-scale family farming” she declared.
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