Tag: Development & Aid

The Innovation Imperative for Small States — Global Issues

Recognizing that innovation cannot be delivered by government alone, Singapore is focusing on building baseline adoption of digital tools in the private sector.
Image: Shutterstock
  • Opinion by Riad Meddeb, William Tan (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Nov 17 (IPS) – Small states take the path less travelled. They face challenges unfamiliar to many: scarce resources, smaller economies and the real impact of climate change.

However, small states are also able to leverage assets in ways that large states often cannot. As an example, Singapore has learned how innovation and digital can accelerate development.

Small states are not passive actors in traditional development or innovation trajectories. They have exciting power and agency to steer innovation in new directions.

This includes forging a new age of global innovation leadership – defining and setting global standards and innovation priorities, and shaping a small states comparative advantage in the context of innovation.

Technological innovation is founded on policy innovation

Innovation does not operate in a vacuum, and governance is a key catalyst. This includes exploring how governance structures and processes can identify, implement and scale innovation.

There is a growing need to craft systems, cultures, and infrastructure that not only embrace innovation but become part of it. Governments can ensure that new technologies engage with local priorities — and shape global solutions which fill these gaps.

This is not a destination but a journey; it is about creating environments for continued innovation.

Governance needs to be responsive to the constant evolution of technologies. Some examples of such agile governance include regulatory sandboxes, outcome-based regulations, and testbeds for global innovators (though small states must not ‘just’ test innovations but co-design them too).

Agility also comes from data-driven innovating and data innovation. Here, governments can shape both foundational data infrastructure, but also leverage data to accelerate innovation – through initiatives such as the UNDP SIDS Data Platform. Such insights can then become part of ‘feedback loops’ to inform policy and service design.

We need to focus on outcomes, not solutions

There is a need to shift priorities towards the positive outcomes of innovation – whether driven by frontier technologies or frugal innovations, communities and entrepreneurs or corporations and governments. Each configuration leads to greater success in different contexts, and reaffirms why we need to be led by problems and not solutions.

Small states share unique challenges which do not necessarily respond to established technological ‘answers’, and there are wider positive multipliers which emerge when innovating for these challenges.

Small states again have the advantage of size; coordination can be faster, and enterprises may more easily work in tandem with governments to harmonize innovation priorities.

Particularly important is indeed recognizing that innovation cannot be delivered by government alone. The private sector plays a particularly fundamental role – including the smaller enterprises.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turbocharged digitalization and many entities now recognize that they can no longer do business in the traditional way.

In Singapore, this shift has been accompanied by a focus on building baseline adoption of digital tools through the ‘CTO-as-a-service’ platform under the ‘SMEs Go Digital Programme’. Since 2017, over 80,000 small and medium-sized enterprises have adopted digital solutions under the programme.

We need to build and strengthen local efforts and small state capacity

Innovation must be led and owned by local people — and this begins with human capital development. Brain drain is an immense struggle for small states, and tackling this is an imperative for governments.

Small states should look to shape robust curricula across local schools for young people, as well as develop advanced STEM offerings to encourage innovators to contribute to their home countries.

For example, Singapore’s TechSkills Accelerator Initiative has supported over 7,000 companies to hire, train and retain technology talent. It has placed more than 12,000 Singaporeans in technology roles, whilst an accompanying framework supports businesses in hiring global talent with in-demand skills.

At the same time, innovation is not a product of financial investment or discrete initiatives alone; it emerges out of complex interactions between the public and private sector, shaped by institutional frameworks to go with the above human capacity development, research and development, and business support.

Singapore’s national platform for digital innovation, the Open Innovation Platform, provides professional consultancy support to help companies diagnose business challenges, define problem statements and crowdsource solutions from 12,000 solution providers from the private sector.

The government also plays an active role to support startups in their growth stage. Through the [email protected] and SGD Spark programmes, organizations are provided third-party assurance on a startup’s ability to deliver on their products and outcomes, as well as connecting them to government and business demand.

Innovation is not optional for small states

The challenges faced by small states are matched by the potential that innovation and digital technology can offer. And part of this is the role and importance of learning from each other.

The Singapore Cooperation Programme (SCP) extends technical assistance and shares Singapore’s development experience with fellow developing countries. In its 30th year in 2022, the SCP has welcomed close to 150,000 foreign government officials to its programmes.

In 2021, Singapore launched the “FOSS for Good” technical assistance package to address small states’ unique development priorities – including digital transformation in the areas of health, education and public governance. UNDP has been an important partner in this programme.

Such shared learning and collaboration opportunities, combined with the wide-ranging support of initiatives such as the UNDP Global SIDS Offer, will be crucial to ensure that small states build and sustain global innovation leadership.

Both in the face of continued shocks and crises, but also to leverage opportunities where innovation can positively change lives and livelihoods.

William Tan, Director-General, Technical Cooperation Directorate, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore & Riad Meddeb is Interim Director, UNDP Global Centre for Technology, Innovation and Sustainable Development

Source: UNDP

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Will the Global Energy Crisis Accelerate the Energy Transition? The Big Question at COP27 — Global Issues

One of the many activities held on Energy Day (Nov. 15) at COP27, where discussions are taking place for two weeks on how to make further progress on global climate action. The consensus among observers is that the energy transition away from fossil fuels will accelerate in the wake of the war in Ukraine and its impact on oil and gas supply and prices. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
  • by Daniel Gutman (sharm el sheikh, egypt)
  • Inter Press Service

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 16 (IPS) – COP27 is unlikely to produce new commitments to reduce emissions of climate-changing gases, but the global energy crisis will eventually prompt more action by countries to move away from fossil fuels. That is the positive feeling that many observers are taking away from the annual climate summit being held in Egypt.

“The rise in energy prices due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set back many countries in the transition to renewable energies in 2022,” Manuel Pulgar Vidal, global leader of Climate & Energy at WWF, told IPS. “But this is not going to last, because developed nations have proven that the best path to energy security is to accelerate the abandonment of fossil fuels.”

The issue is seen from the same point of view in some countries of the developing South.

Costa Rica’s Minister of Environment and Energy Franz Tattenbach Capra was emphatic in an interview with IPS: “Countries like ours, which don’t have oil or gas, are appalled by the price increases. This will lead us to try to become less dependent on imports.”

The close relationship that has been established between climate action and economic development is easy to see at the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has drawn more than 33,000 people to this seaside resort town on the Sinai Peninsula.

This link goes far beyond the negotiations between the 193 States Parties on climate change mitigation and adaptation, which this year focuses on climate action, as highlighted by the summit’s slogan: “Together for Implementation”.

A demonstration is held at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center at COP27 to remind the world of the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals aimed at boosting global peace and prosperity, fighting climate change and making the transition to clean energy by 2030. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
A demonstration is held at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center at COP27 to remind the world of the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals aimed at boosting global peace and prosperity, fighting climate change and making the transition to clean energy by 2030. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Global fair

COP27 is very much like a trade fair and a multitudinous meeting place, with an overwhelming number of talks, activities and document sharing, where the task of choosing where to be is very difficult and everyone constantly feels they are missing out on something more interesting happening at the same time.

While world leaders give speeches and technical officials discuss the next steps for climate action, countries, organizations and companies seek and offer financing, in public and private meetings, for all kinds of projects, ranging from energy, agriculture and infrastructure to the empowerment of indigenous communities.

“This process has been very skillful in connecting climate change and economics. We all know that countries that do not act responsibly with regard to the climate are going to slide backwards in the coming years,” said Pulgar Vidal, who co-organized and chaired COP20, held in Lima in 2014, when he was Peru’s environment minister.

The energy sector is definitely the master key to finding solutions to climate change, as it is responsible for more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and is still primarily fossil-fuel based.

According to a report presented here by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), only 29 percent of generation comes from alternative sources and carbon emissions continue to rise.

And the past year “frankly, has been a year of climate procrastination,” said United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) executive director Inger Andersen on Nov. 15, the day dedicated to energy in the never-ending agenda of side events taking place at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Convention Center.

In the official negotiations, however, the energy discussion appears to be in the background, behind the debate on the creation of a fund to compensate for loss and damage in the countries of the South that have suffered the most from droughts, floods, hurricanes, forest fires and other phenomena that have accelerated in recent years.

COP26, held a year ago in Glasgow, Scotland, ended with a bitter taste with respect to energy when, following an intervention by India, a commitment was made to reduce, rather than eliminate, the use of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel.

For now, there is no indication that this summit will end with a better agreement in this area.

Manuel Pulgar Vidal, a former Peruvian environment minister and the chair of COP20 on climate change, held in Lima in 2014, poses for photos in one of the corridors of COP27 at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center in Egypt, where he is participating as global leader of Climate & Energy at WWF. CREDIT: WWF

Effects of the war

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, chair of the largest multilateral fund for financing climate action in developing countries, is also convinced that the energy crisis generated by the war in Ukraine will, in the medium and long term, trigger a faster transition.

“The conflict made many people understand how vulnerable the global energy system is and how harmful dependence on fossil fuels is,” the CEO of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) told IPS in one of the wide corridors of the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center, where the heavy traffic of people does not stop between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM.

Rodríguez, the former Costa Rican environment minister, said that “With an energy mix based more on renewable sources, there would have been more resilience to the impact of the events in Ukraine. European countries have already understood this and I am confident that they are understanding it in other regions.”

Reports circulating in Sharm El Sheikh support the theory that the impact of the crisis could be beneficial for the energy transition in the long run.

In the four largest emitters – China, the United States, the European Union and India – public and private investment in transport electrification and renewable energy is growing due to market mechanisms and concerns about energy security, says a paper presented by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), an independent advisory organization based in the United Kingdom.

“The pace at which the green transition is speeding up…is remarkable….no-one who genuinely understands the interconnected crises facing the world believes that more oil and gas represent anything more than a very short-term solution,” Gareth Redmond-King, international lead at the ECIU, said at the climate summit.

Harjeet Singh, of the Climate Action Network International, which brings together more than 1,800 environmental organizations, takes part in a demonstration at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center. The demand is to ensure that the necessary efforts are made so that global temperature does not increase beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Pressure from civil society

A broad spectrum of organizations are taking part in COP27, aiming to influence the negotiation process and seek funding.

Harjeet Singh of the Climate Action Network International (CAN-I), an umbrella group of more than 1,800 organizations in 130 countries, told IPS that “the war in Ukraine shifted the focus of many developed countries from climate action to energy security.”

Singh has called for a commitment to halt the expansion of fossil fuels to be included in the outcome document of COP27, which is due to end on Nov. 18 if it is not extended by one day as is customary at these summits.

At the same time, he lamented that, because of the impact of the war, “we see the fossil fuel industry taking advantage of this space to sell itself as sustainable, which is unacceptable.”

Evidence of the need to appear as part of the oil sector’s climate action is everywhere in this gigantic Convention Center, where the organization Global Witness denounced that 636 lobbyists for oil interests and companies are registered as participants.

One of the hundreds of organizations with booths at Sharm El Sheikh is the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) Fund for International Development.

“We came here to make ourselves visible, as we want to contribute to making the energy transition in all countries inclusive,” Nadia Benamara, Head of Outreach & Multimedia for the Vienna-based Fund, told IPS.

Benamara said the Fund pledged 24 billion dollars up to 2030 to finance climate action because “oil producing and exporting countries are also victims of climate change and want to contribute to the solution.”

IPS produced this article with support from Climate Change Media Partnership 2022, the Earth Journalism Network, Internews, and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.

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

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Show Me the MoneySupported by Policy — Global Issues

In 2021, the world experienced four mega weather events that each cost $20+ billion in economic loss: Hurricane Ida, flooding in Europe, flooding in China and unprecedented winter weather in Texas and parts of Mexico. Credit: Patricia Grogg/IPS
  • Opinion by Peter Schlosser, Michael Dorsey (sharm el-sheikh)
  • Inter Press Service

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Nov 16 (IPS) – Climate change is an existential threat to humans and our ability to thrive on a healthy planet. But when it comes to rising temperatures, the inability of humankind to slow emissions and limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius isn’t because we lack knowledge or need new technologies.

Consider: Humans have been warned for more than a century about the dangers of a warming climate and its adverse impact on human health and planetary systems, including but not limited to loss of biodiversity, decreased soil and ocean health, increased sea-ice melt and corresponding sea-level rise, and amplified disasters such as hurricanes, floods, heat waves and droughts.

Fifty years ago, “The Limits to Growth” warned humans of the serious need to live in balance with Earth’s systems. The science is settled. Likewise, technologies that drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions are available and increasingly cost-competitive–particularly in energy production and transportation, two of the most significant contributors to global emissions.

What is missing? This is not a difficult physics equation. While we live in a complex world, the laggards in this area are observable: money and societal will.

As countries enter the second week of the global negotiations at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, typically referred to as COP27, success will depend on the ability of the negotiators to mobilize investments and advance policy at the conference to accelerate opportunities for progress in altering the trajectory of climate change.

Even discussions on “loss and damage”–a signature issue of this conference that is historically neglected–are defined by these two needs. Underlying the issues of loss and damage are questions about processes for addressing loss (policy) and determinations of who is financially responsible (investment).

The price tag to address climate change is not small, but viewed in the right frame, it is a bargain. Take climate-enhanced disasters. In 2021, the world experienced four mega weather events that each cost $20+ billion in economic loss: Hurricane Ida, flooding in Europe, flooding in China and unprecedented winter weather in Texas and parts of Mexico.

These types of human-induced disasters are now increasingly frequent, occurring at more places and at higher amplitudes, and are more costly without considerable investment to curtail rising greenhouse gas emissions. The 5th High Level Ministerial Dialogue on Climate Finance takes place during the second week of COP27, where ministers will discuss achieving the annual $100 billion support mark for lower-income countries, a total those countries already note as too little, too late. The real need is in trillions of dollars, not billions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that globally, $1.6-3.8 trillion (USD) must be invested every year through public and private climate-related finance to keep warming well below warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius. For comparison, the International Monetary Fund reports that fossil-fuel subsidies in 2020 were $5.9 trillion (USD) when summing up explicit and implicit subsidies.

Combining policy with public investment can dramatically amplify results. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, the country’s most dramatic attempt to reorient its infrastructure and electricity production to lower emissions, could spend as much as $800 billion (USD) in tax credits, spurring on private investment to the tune of $1.7 trillion (USD) over the next decade, according to a Credit Suisse review of the policy.

The same report estimates that with the manufacturing and consumer tax credits, the cost of solar electricity could fall below one U.S. cent, possibly as soon as 2025. The investment bank declared that the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act “definitively changes the narrative from risk mitigation to opportunity capture” for corporations to take advantage of the law’s positive impact on the economy.

We have fallen behind the timeline set by the Paris Climate Accords and the 1.5 degrees Celsius target no longer seems to be achievable. The international negotiations must push the agenda to define aggressive mitigation policies, with incentives and disincentives, to scale known solutions on the fastest timescales possible for manufacturing and distribution throughout the world.

This needs real investments, private as well as public, for a chance to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. The time is now to show the most marginalized countries the money.

Peter Schlosser is one of the world’s leading earth scientists, with expertise in the Earth’s hydrosphere and how humans affect the planet’s natural state. He is the vice president and vice provost of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures at Arizona State University.

Michael Dorsey is a globally recognized expert on sustainability, finance, renewable energy and environment matters. He is the chair of the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service at Arizona State University.

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

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COP27 Fiddling as World Warms — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Hezri A Adnan (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
  • Inter Press Service

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 15 (IPS) – The latest annual climate conference has begun in the face of a worsening climate crisis and further retreats by rich nations following the energy crisis induced by NATO sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Copping out again
The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP 27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is now meeting in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, from 6 to 18 November 2022.

Hezri A Adnan

COP27 takes place amidst worsening poverty, hunger and war, and higher prices, exacerbating many interlinked climate, environmental and socio-economic crises.

The looming world economic recession is likely to be deeper than in 2008. The likely spiral into stagflation will make addressing the climate crisis even more difficult.

Invoking the Ukraine war as pretext, governments and corporations are rushing to increase fossil fuel production to offset the deepening energy crisis.

Resources which should be deployed for climate adaptation and mitigation have been diverted for war, fossil fuel extraction and use, including resumption of shale gas ‘fracking’ as well as coal mining and burning.

War causes huge social and economic damage to people, society and the environment. The wars in Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere impose high costs on all, disrupting energy and food supplies, and raising prices sharply.

Russia’s Ukraine incursion has provided a convenient smokescreen for a hasty return to fossil fuels, as military-industrial processes alone account for 6% of all greenhouse gases.

The future is already here

All these have worsened crises facing the world’s environment and economy. The most optimistic Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenario expects the 1.5°C rise above pre-industrial levels threshold for climate catastrophe to be breached by 2040.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Crossing it, the world faces risks of far more severe climate change effects on people and ecosystems, especially in the tropics and sub-tropical zone.

But the future is already upon us. Accelerating warming is already causing worse extreme weather events, ravaging economies, communities and ecosystems.

Recent floods in Pakistan displaced 33 million people. Wildfires, extreme heat, ice melt, drought, and extreme weather phenomena are already evident on many continents, causing disasters worldwide.

In 2021, the sea level rose to a record high, and is expected to continue rising. UN reports estimate women and children are 14 times more likely than adult men to die during climate disasters.

Popular sentiment is shifting, even in the US, where ‘climate scepticism’ is strongest. Devastation threatened by Hurricane Ida in 2021 not only revived painful memories of Katrina in 2005, but also heightened awareness of warming-related extreme weather events.

Stronger climate action needed

In international negotiations, rich nations have evaded historical responsibility for ‘climate debt’ by only focusing on current emissions. Hence, there is no recognition of a duty to compensate those most adversely impacted in the global South.

Last year’s COP26 Glasgow Climate Pact was hailed for its call to ‘phase-out’ coal. This has now been quickly abandoned by Europe with the war. And for developing countries, Glasgow failed to deliver any significant progress on climate finance.

At COP27, the Egyptian presidency has proposed an additional ‘loss and damage’ finance facility to compensate for irreparable damage due to climate impacts.

After failing to even meet its modest climate finance promises of 2009, the rich North is dithering, pleading for further talks until 2024 to work out financing details.

Meanwhile, the G7 has muddied the waters by counter-offering its Global Shield Against Climate Risks – a disaster insurance scheme.

Get priorities right

What the world needs, instead, are rapidly promoted and implemented measures as part of a more rapid, just, internationally funded transition for the global South. This should:

  • replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, including by subsidizing renewable energy generation for energy-deficient poor populations.
  • promote energy-saving and efficiency measures to reduce its use and greenhouse gas emissions by at least 70% (from 1990) by 2030.
  • implement a massive global public works programme, creating ‘green jobs’ to replace employment in ‘unsustainable’ industries.
  • develop needed sustainable technologies, e.g., to replace corporate agricultural practices with ‘agroecological’ farming methods, investment and technology.

Another world is possible

Another world is possible. A massive social and political transformation is needed. But the relentless pursuit of private profit has always been at the expense of people and nature.

Greed cannot be expected to become the basis for a just solution to climate change, let alone environmental degradation, world poverty, hunger and gross inequalities.

The COP27 conference is now taking place in Sharm-al-Sheikh, an isolated, heavily policed tourist resort. Only one major road goes in and out, as if designed to keep out civil society and drown out voices from the global South.

The luxury hotels there are charging rates that have put COP27 beyond the means of many, especially climate justice activists from poorer countries. The rich and powerful arrived in over 400 private jets, making a mockery of decarbonization rhetoric.

Thus, the COP process is increasingly seen as exclusive. Without making real progress on the most important issues, it is increasingly seen as slow, irrelevant and ineffective.

Generating inadequate agreements at best, the illusion of progress thus created is dangerously misleading at worst.

By generating great expectations and false hopes, but actually delivering little, it is failing the world, even when it painstakingly achieves difficult compromises which fall short of what is needed.

Multilateralism at risk

Multilateral platforms, such as the UNFCCC, have long been expected to engage governments to cooperate in developing, implementing and enforcing solutions. With the erosion of multilateralism since the end of the Cold War, these are increasingly being bypassed.

Instead, self-appointed private interests, with means, pretend to speak for world civil society. Strapped for resources, multilateral platforms and other organizations are under pressure to forge partnerships and other forms of collaboration with them.

Thus, inadequate ostensible private solutions increasingly dominate policy discourses. Widespread fiscal deficits have generated interest in them due to the illusory prospect of private funding.

Private interests have thus gained considerable influence. Thus, the new spinmeisters of Davos and others have gained influence, offering seductively attractive, but ultimately false, often misleading and typically biased solutions.

Meanwhile, global warming has gone from bad to worse. UN Member States must stiffen the backs of multilateral organizations to do what is right and urgently needed, rather than simply going with the flow, typically of cash.

Hezri A Adnan is an environmental policy analyst and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. He is author of The Sustainability Shift: Reshaping Malaysia’s Future.

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In Praise of Toilets — Global Issues

A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS
  • by Baher Kamal (madrid)
  • Inter Press Service

MADRID, Nov 14 (IPS) – For those who have it, a toilet is that ‘thing’ in the bathroom, next to the bidet, the hand-washing sink with hot and cold water faucets, and the bathtub.

Given their ‘unprestigious’ function, some billionaires, in particular in the Gulf oil-producer kingdoms, fancy to pose their buttocks on a solid-gold toilet. Once they are there, why not also solid-gold faucets?

Many others prefer a more comfortable use of their toilets, thus endowing them with both automatic heating and flushing. And anyway, being given-for-granted, nobody would give a thought to the high importance of all these ‘things’.

The other side of the coin shows an entirely different picture. A shocking one by the way.

Billions of humans without one

And it is a fact that close to 4 billion people –or about half of the world’s total population of 8 billion– still live without access to a safe toilet and other sanitation facilities.

Nearly a full decade ago, the international community, represented in the United Nations General Assembly, decided to declare 19 November every single year, as a world day to address such a staggering problem.

And year after year, the UN continues to behave ‘politically correct’ by saying that progress and achievements were anyway made, however much would still be to do.

Despite such ‘correctness,’ the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated on the Day that the world is “seriously off track to keep our promise of safe toilets for all by 2030 – a crucial indicator in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Investment in sanitation systems is too low and progress remains too slow.”

Photo courtesy: Shelter Associates

The facts

Well, this year’s World Toilet Day (19 November) provides some shocking facts:

Death of the children: Every day, over 800 children under age five years old die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene.

Poor sanitation is linked to the transmission of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera and dysentery, as well as typhoid, intestinal worm infections and polio. It exacerbates stunting and contributes to the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Globally, 1 in 3 schools do not have adequate toilets, and 23% of schools have no toilets at all. Schools without toilets can cause girls to miss out on their education. Without proper sanitation facilities, many are forced to miss school when they are on their period.

Open defecation: about 900 million people worldwide practice open defecation, meaning they go outside – on the side of the road, in bushes or rubbish heaps. It’s often a matter of where they live: 90% of people who practice open defecation live in rural areas.

Of these, 494 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water.

Moreover, the lack of sanitation services, just in the year 2020, stood behind the fact that 45% of the household wastewater generated globally was discharged without safe treatment.

Consequently, at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater.

Safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS

The impact on underground water

Should all this not be enough, the 2022 World Toilet Day focuses on another invisible fact: the grave impacts of such a sanitation crisis on groundwater, which is the source of up to 99% of the world’s fresh water.

The 2022 campaign ‘Making the invisible visible’ explores how inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, polluting underground water resources.

However, this problem seems to be invisible. Invisible because it happens underground. Invisible because it happens in the poorest and most marginalised communities.

Groundwater is the world’s most abundant source of freshwater. It supports drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. As climate change worsens and populations grow, groundwater is vital for human survival.

The invisible dangers

The central message of World Toilet Day 2022 is that safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution.

See why:

Safe sanitation protects groundwater. Toilets that are properly located and connected to safely managed sanitation systems, collect, treat and dispose of human waste, and help prevent human waste from spreading into groundwater.

Sanitation must withstand climate change. Toilets and sanitation systems must be built or adapted to cope with extreme weather events, so that services always function and groundwater is protected.

The above shows how those ‘things’ in the bathroom can be life-saving.

Moreover, for those who are obsessed with measuring human suffering in purely money-making terms, it should be enough to know that providing adequate sanitation is a good business: each 1 US dollar invested in it means 5 US dollars saved in health services.

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

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President Biden is Hosting a Summit of African Leaders

Stability in the Sahel will come not through the rule of the gun but through the rule of law. The Biden administration can use the Africa Leaders’ Summit to reset approaches to the Sahel. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS
  • Opinion by Doussouba Konate (bamako)
  • Inter Press Service

BAMAKO, Nov 11 (IPS) – The upcoming Africa Leaders’ Summit– slated to take place in Washington, DC in December- is well-timed. The Biden administration has made a welcome and significant push over the past two years to support democracy, anti-corruption and peace-building around the world- and in Africa in particular.

From the Summit for Democracy to the new Sub-Saharan Africa and Countering Corruption strategies- policies and practices within the US government have shifted in ways that can support much needed reforms across the continent.

It is in the Sahel where many of the biggest challenges remain- and these should be a priority during the upcoming Summit. The recent coup in Burkina Faso was the 7th in Africa in just over two years. Here in Mali, jihadists continue to march eastwards, killing hundreds of innocent civilians as they go.

Across our borders in Niger and Chad we see klepto-military elites pilfering state resources at a breathtaking rate, undermining public finances, stability and any kind of hope for a better future. All of this opens up the region to the influence of Russia and China. The Russian mercenary outfit the Wagner group are operating freely in the Central African Republic and Mali, for example- and we know from Syria and Ukraine how catastrophic this can be.

Focusing on the symptoms of these problems- such as rising violent extremism- with militarized responses has never worked. After 9 years and more than $880 million of euros for the Barkhane operation, the French found this out in Mali before being forced out of the country recently.

Now, the people of Burkina Faso are demanding a diplomatic break with France and a new partnership with Russia and possibly the Wagner Group. The Western democratic alliance has failed in the Sahel; and this has inevitably led to a tilt towards more authoritarian partners.

Equally, allowing post-coup militarized regimes to get away with the trappings of a transition plan for democracy without putting in place any meaningful changes in decision-making is also a mistake.

The regime in Mali has consistently postponed the hand-over of power to a civilian government since the coup last year; and the process to develop a transitional charter in Burkina Faso recently also gives no indication that there is any real intention to hand back power to elected representatives.

At their core, these are issues of governance. Stability in the Sahel will come not through the rule of the gun but through the rule of law. The Biden administration can use the Africa Leaders’ Summit to reset approaches to the Sahel.

First, it must make anti-corruption front and center of every conversation with leaders from the region. The US Africa strategy lists openness and open societies as the 1st of four priorities- and now is the time for the US to follow-through on these.

At the same time there is work to be done at home- progress on critical domestic anti-corruption efforts in the US- such as passage of the Enablers Act and full implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act would demonstrate commitment to these issues.

Second, it is imperative that it is made clear that post-coup political agreements include a focus on citizen voices and bottom-up accountability. This means pushing those in power to conduct meaningful consultations with civilians to ensure even the most excluded are heard.

In Mali, the transitional authorities have launched “Assises Nationales de la Refondation de l’Etat“- a series of consultations at the communal and national levels to give the entire population a voice on key issues such as governance and justice. We have to make sure that these kinds of processes are meaningful, inclusive and backed with real implementation- otherwise they can lead to further disappointment and disengagement.

Third, whether within a post-coup environment or more generally it means finding larger ways to shift systems to slowly remove the military from politics and consolidate civilian control of decision-making.

This sounds difficult but we forget that it has been done successfully before in Mali. Following Amadou Toumani Touré’s coup in 1991, power was returned to a civilian government, allowing Alpha Oumar Konaré to be elected president in 1992.

In the Sahel, we need among other reforms, a shift in civilian law enforcement to other bodies such as the police; empowerment of accountability institutions within militaries; and political work with reformists within the army to push for a return of troops to their barracks. The US must also fully support regional organizations like the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) to push Sahelian countries to follow clear plans, processes and timelines for the return to or maintenance of civilian rule.

Finally, longer-term stability in our countries requires a fundamental generational shift. The median age in Mali is 16; in Niger it is just 15 years old. Our countries are passing through a massive demographic change- and this has to be reflected in the systems we use to govern ourselves, or extremist groups will continue to recruit young people that have more of a stake in overthrowing systems than rebuilding them.

The US cares about young people on paper– now is the time to create the spaces for a new generation to lead. After all, they cannot be any worse than the corrupt elites we have seen mismanaging our politics for decades.

The African Leaders Summit is an important opportunity for the US to reinforce its commitment to governance in the Sahel; and to a foreign policy that places a primacy on governance and inclusion rather than simply on economics and security. The people of the region deserve it.

Doussouba Konate is Director of Accountability Lab Mali and an Obama Foundation leader. Follow the Lab on Twitter @accountlab

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Towards a New Approach to Development Cooperation? — Global Issues

  • Opinion by A.H. Monjurul Kabir (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Nov 10 (IPS) – We are living in a world where both our bilateral and multilateral achievements, consensuses on human rights and social justice, and our resolve to public good are being tested like never before.

Now, more than ever, we need to bring to life the values and principles of the UN Charter in every corner of the world. Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its unique international character, the UN can act on the issues confronting humanity, including:

    • Maintain international peace and security
    • Protect human rights
    • Deliver humanitarian aid
    • Promote sustainable development
    • Uphold international law

Given my own personal trajectory in human rights advocacy and development cooperation, let me focus on aspects of sustainable development and consider whether we need to change and adopt any new approach to it to end extreme poverty, reduce inequalities, and rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from exclusionary practices.

Development or Sustainable Development must be inclusive: In fact, inclusion at the heart of Development Cooperation. Inclusive development is the concept that every person, regardless of their identity, is instrumental in transforming their societies.

Development processes that are inclusive yield better outcomes for the communities that embark upon them. The UN was created to promote the rights and inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented populations in the development process and leads the UN’s response to addressing the needs and demands of those in in adversity and youth.

Therefore, the UN implements activities that combat stigma and discrimination, promote empowerment and inclusion of marginalized or underrepresented groups, and improve the lives of populations in high-risk situations.

It is important that we also adopt this in institutional and management settings: For example, UN Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) recently conducted its first survey on Racism and Racial Discrimination in five languages.

The survey was intended to capture data reflecting the Asian perspective in the UN system. It is planning to issue a report on the survey’s findings to support and address many critical issues of racism and racial discrimination. There are other networks who are addressing different elements of intersectionality including but not limited to, gender, disability, ethnicity, identity etc.

So, the world and its challenges have become much more intersectional, which calls for a robust and intersectional approach to development cooperation.

Intersectional Approach: An intersectionality lens allows us to see how social policy may affect people differently, depending on their specific set of ‘locations,’ and what unintended consequences particular policies may have on their individual lives.

By listening to the most marginalized and/or disadvantaged groups of a community, development organizations can help combat oppression at all levels of society and rebuild communities from the ground up.

Take the example of Persons with Disabilities. They are not a homogenous group, and this should be reflected in our policy advocacy and communications by considering intersectionality—the intersection of disability together with other factors, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, refugee, migrant or asylum seeker status.

For example, a person with disability also has a gender identity, may come from an Indigenous group and be young, old, a migrant or live in poverty.

At the UN System, it is time to adopt an intersectional approach in our development cooperation, policy advocacy, programming, operational support, planning and budgeting. An intersectional approach considers the historical, social, and political context and recognizes the unique experience of the individual based on the intersection of all relevant grounds.

This approach allows the experience of discrimination, based on the confluence of grounds involved, to be acknowledged and remedied. Using an intersectionality lens to approach our development practice means moving beyond the use of singular categories to understand people and groups and embracing the notion of inseparable and interconnected sets of social ‘locations’ that change through time, vary across places, and act together to shape an individual’s life experience and actions.

This would go a long way to contribute to the SDGs’ Leave No One Behind principle (LNOB). The new approach calls for invigorating existing practices, making them more innovative, effective, and efficient.

Innovation: We need to think of innovative approaches and instruments to attract and channel new resources to finance our developmental aspirations, as outlined in the 2030 SDGs now more than ever.

Reliable and well-administered development financial institutions with a well-defined mandate and sound governance framework will continue to be an important vehicle to accelerate inclusive economic and social development.

They can create new channels to crowd-in the private sector. Moreover, they can play a catalytical role by generating new knowledge, convening stakeholders, and providing technical assistance to build capacity in the private and public sectors. Mutual collaboration between and across public and private sector is critical to harness the full potential of innovation and innovative approaches.

Let us not forget new media’s growing impact on both inclusive participation leveraging innovative practices.

New Media: New media, including mobile and social media, could help demystify international institutions and encourage participation. The new media is also critical to widen the breadth of accessibility for persons with disabilities or those who live in rural and/or remote, hard to reach areas.

Alongside this, there could be more regular interactions by the leadership of intergovernmental organisations with multi-stakeholders including civil society, organisations of persons with disabilities, and the media, and the creation of accessible databases of statistical and other information and knowledge on their work.

Notwithstanding the Ukraine war, work at the UN continues. The world body can and should continue to play a constructive role in both development cooperation, crisis management, peace building, and post-conflict stabilization. It should continue to focus on crises from Afghanistan to Mali and Ukraine itself.

However, it must explore new and innovative and intersectional ways to support inclusive development, climate justice and resilience, peacekeeping, and other global and regional key priorities.

Otherwise, the SDGs will not be even near to their desired destination in 2030 or beyond.

Dr. A.H. Monjurul Kabir, currently Global Policy and UN System Coordination Adviser and Team Leader for Gender Equality, Disability Inclusion, and Intersectionality at UN Women HQ in New York, is a political scientist and senior policy and legal analyst on global issues and Asia-Pacific trends.

For policy and academic purposes, he can be contacted at [email protected] and followed on twitter at mkabir2011

This article is from a blog based on a speech delivered by the author, in his personal capacity, at an event commemorating the UN’s 77th anniversary organized by UN-ANDI– a New York-based global network of like-minded Asian staff members of the UN system who strive to promote a more diverse and inclusive culture and mindset within the UN.

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Climate Finance for Locally-Led Climate Solutions Needs a New Focus — Global Issues

Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
  • Opinion by Anne Jellema (capetown, south africa)
  • Inter Press Service

CAPETOWN, South Africa, Nov 09 (IPS) – Anne Jellema is CEO of HivosImagine a world where the people hit hardest by climate crisis have a say in how to stop it. Imagine that youth, Indigenous Peoples, women, and others most affected by global warming have the resources to implement their own climate solutions. Solutions that are highly effective because they meet local needs, suit the local context, and create sustainable economic opportunities for local people. This world would be one where people have a much better chance of surviving, and even thriving, despite the massive upheavals of the climate crisis.

Climate finance remains a pipe dream at local level

At the global level, to achieve the key commitments made in Paris, climate investment should count in trillions rather than billions. The 100 billion per year climate financing target from 2020 onwards has already been missed. Industrialized countries have overwhelmingly failed to provide anything close to the scale of climate financing needed – let alone the specific demand for a loss and damage financing facility.

And at the local level, although ever more governments and stakeholders understand the importance of shifting resources, leadership and agency to the local level, the world pictured above is still far from reach

To illustrate this, in 2017–18 only 20.5 percent of bilateral climate finance went to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and 3 percent to Small Island States (SIDS). It was often in the form of loans and other non-grant instruments, which risks plunging these already vulnerable countries further into debt. Even in the current meagre climate finance, according to some estimates, less than 10 percent actually flows to the local level.

Why?

There are many reasons why climate finance doesn’t end up at the local level.

Some are related to complex rules and requirements in accessing international funding, which local actors often lack the knowledge, network, skills and/or scale to comply with.

Moreover, most climate finance typically flows through international, rather than national or regional, intermediaries. Although international agencies currently have the most experience in navigating complex climate finance bureaucracies, they are also the furthest removed from local realities.

Decision-making power is still held at the national and international level, often failing to (financially) enable local actors to lead climate action. Even at national level, those most affected by climate change often have the least say in setting priorities for climate policy and funding.

What needs to happen

Recently, Hivos – as part of the Voices for Just Climate Action alliance – studied a handful of promising alternative finance delivery mechanisms. While some have performed better than others, they share the potential for downward accountability and effective participation of different voices as an integral part of the funding mechanism. Based on the study, we put forth the following recommendations which governments, international intermediaries, and global banks and funds should give serious consideration to at the upcoming COP27.

Firstly, create mechanisms for participatory funding and oversight structures to ensure that local actors drive decision making. This includes addressing structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, Indigenous people, and other marginalized groups, and fully integrating these groups in the design and implementation of adaptation and mitigation actions.

Secondly, routinely set concrete targets for funds that need to reach climate solutions driven by local actors. Provide grants instead of loans, and use long-term, patient and flexible programmatic funding instead of short-term, ad hoc project funding. At COP27 the rich countries must deliver robust action to scale up grant-based climate finance to the developing world.

Thirdly, ensure easy access for local actors by simplifying fund application processes.

Lastly, decisive steps must be taken to use national, not international financing mechanisms and structures for channeling finance. The International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) designed a climate finance delivery mechanism that bypasses international intermediaries. Here, money flows directly to local civil society, national and local governments, and/or the private sector.

Hivos joins hands with its partners and climate movements in demanding that concrete, gender-responsive targets are set to get climate funding into the hands of local actors, and new funding mechanisms are developed by and with climate-affected communities to make climate finance work for them.

To conclude…commitments are vital, but focus must shift

The COP Presidency, this year in the hands of Egypt, has called for significant progress on commitments and pledges, especially on the delivery of the annual USD 100 billion from developed countries to developing countries. Failure to keep to this commitment has often been a breaking point in climate negotiations and has damaged trust between countries.

Equally important, however, is shifting our focus from the volume of climate finance to its effectiveness. Only then will a world governed by climate justice be within reach.

This opinion piece was originally published by Hivos

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

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World Population after 8,000,000,000 — Global Issues

Source: United Nations.
  • Opinion by Joseph Chamie (portland, usa)
  • Inter Press Service

Moreover, that fancied collapse of world population is neither the biggest problem facing the world nor is that false notion a much bigger risk to civilization than climate change, which is certainly humanity’s greatest challenge.

According to recent projections, the world’s population is expected to continue increasing over the coming decades. Hundreds of millions of more people are projected to be added to the planet, but at a slower pace than during the recent past.

The expected slowdown in the growth of world population does not constitute a problem. The global demographic slowdown clearly signals social, economic, environmental and climatic successes and benefits for human life on planet Earth.

Many of those calling for increased rates of population growth through higher birth rates and more immigration are simply promoting Ponzi demography. The underlying strategy of Ponzi demography is to privatize the profits and socialize the costs incurred from increased population growth.

World population reached the 1 billion milestone in 1804. World population doubled to 2 billion in 1927, doubled again to 4 billion in 1974, and then doubled a third time to 8 billion in 2022 (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

Throughout the many centuries of human history, the 20th century was an exceptional record-breaking period demographically.

World population nearly quadrupled from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion by the close of the century. In addition, the world’s population annual growth rate peaked at 2.3 percent in 1963 and the annual increase reached a record high of 93 million in 1990.

Since the start of the 21st century, the world’s population has increased by nearly 2 billion people, from 6.1 billion in 2000 to 8 billion in 2022. Over that time period, the world’s annual rate of population growth declined from 1.3 percent to 0.8 percent, with the world’s annual demographic increase going from 82 million to 67 million today.

While mortality continues to play an important role in the growth of the world’s population, as witnessed recently with the COVID-19 pandemic, fertility is expected to be the major determinant of the future size of world population.

The world’s average fertility rate of approximately 2.3 births per woman in 2020 is less than half the average fertility rates during the 1950s and 1960s.

The United Nations medium variant population projection assumes fertility rates will continue to decline. By the century’s close the total fertility rate is expected to decline to a global average of 1.8 births per woman, which is one-third the rate of the early 1960s and well below the fertility replacement level.

The medium variant projection results in an increasing world population that reaches 9 billion by 2037, 10 billion by 2058 and 10.3 billion by 2100.

Alternative population projections include the high and low variants, which assume approximately a half child above and below the medium variant, respectively. Accordingly, world population by 2100 ends up being substantially larger in the high variant at 14.8 billion and substantially smaller in the low variant at 7.0 billion (Figure 2).

Source: United Nations.

Another alternative population projection, which is unlikely but instructive, is the constant variant. That projection variant assumes the current fertility rates of countries remain unchanged or constant at their current levels throughout the remainder of the 21st century. The constant variant results in a projected world population at the close of the century that is more than double its current size, 19.2 versus 8.0 billion.

Although world population is projected to continue increasing over the coming decades, considerable diversity exists in the future population growth of countries.

The populations of some 50 countries, including China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea and Spain, are expected to decline in size by midcentury due to low fertility rates. At the same time, the populations of about two dozen other countries, including Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Niger, Somalia and Sudan, are expected to increase substantially due to their comparatively high fertility rates.

A comparison of the growth of the populations according to the medium variant for the four projected largest countries by midcentury, i.e., China, India, Nigeria, and the United States, highlights the diversity of population growth expected during the 21st century.

China’s current population size is estimated to be near its peak at approximately 1.4 billion. Due to its fertility rate of 1.16 births per woman, which is close to half the replacement level and is assumed to remain relatively low over the coming decades, the Chinese population is expected to decline to 1.3 billion by 2050 and decline further to 0.8 billion by 2100.

In contrast, India’s population, which has an estimated fertility rate of 2.0 births per woman that is expected to decline further, is continuing to increase in size. As a result of that demographic growth, India’s population will likely overtake China’s population by 2023. By 2060 India’s population is projected to peak at 1.7 billion and decline to 1.5 billion by 2100 (Figure 3).

Source: United Nations.

The population of the United States, currently the third world’s largest population after China and India, is expected to continue increasing in size largely due to immigration. By 2050 the U.S. population is projected to reach 375 million and be close to 400 million by the century’s close.

Nigeria’s rapidly growing population, which more than doubled over the past 30 years from 100 million in 1992 to 219 million in 2022, is expected to continue its rapid demographic growth for the remainder of the century. The population of Nigeria is expected to be larger than the U.S. population by 2050, when it reaches 377 million, and then increase to 500 mil1ion in 2077 and 546 million by the century’s close.

Admittedly, the future size of the world’s population remains uncertain. Demographic conditions, especially mortality levels as recently witnessed with the COVID-19 pandemic, could change markedly and future fertility rates may also follow different patterns from those being assumed in the most recent population projections.

Nevertheless, it appears that the world’s current population of 8 billion will continue increasing over the coming decades, likely gaining an additional 2 billion people by around midcentury.

The expected demographic growth of the world’s population of 8 billion during the 21st century poses daunting challenges. Prominent among those challenges are dire concerns about food, water and energy supplies, natural resources, biodiversity, pollution, the environment, and of course climate change, considered by most, including the world’s scientists, to be humanity’s greatest challenge.

Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

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Inconvenient Truth of Our Times — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Hezri A Adnan (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
  • Inter Press Service

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 08 (IPS) – Ahead of the first United Nations environmental summit in Stockholm in 1972, a group of scientists prepared The Limits to Growth report for the Club of Rome. It showed planet Earth’s finite natural resources cannot support ever-growing human consumption.

Limits used integrated computer modelling to investigate twelve planetary scenarios of economic growth and their long-term consequences for the environment and natural resources.

Hezri A Adnan

Emphasizing material limits to growth, it triggered a major debate. Authored by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, Limits is arguably even more influential today.

Within limits

Limits considered population, food production, industrialization, pollution and non-renewable resource use trends from 1900 to 2100.

It conceded, “Any human activity that does not require a large flow of irreplaceable resources or produce severe environmental degradation might continue to grow indefinitely”.

Most projected scenarios saw growth ending this century. Ominously, Limits warned of likely ecological and societal collapses if anthropocene challenges are not adequately addressed soon enough.

Failure would mean less food and energy supplies, more pollution, and lower living standards, even triggering population collapses.

But Limits was never meant to be a definitive forecast, and should not be judged as such. Instead, it sought to highlight major resource threats due to growing human consumption.

Off-limits?

Gaya Herrington showed three of Limits’ four major scenarios anticipated subsequent trends. Two lead to major collapses by mid-century. She concluded, “humanity is on a path to having limits to growth imposed on itself rather than consciously choosing its own.”

Limits stressed the urgent need for radical transformation to achieve ‘sustainable development’. The ‘international community’ embraced this, in principle, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, two decades after Stockholm.

With accelerating resource depletion – as current demographic, industrial, pollution and food trends continue – the planet’s growth limits will be reached within the next half-century. The Earth’s ‘carrying capacity’ is unavoidably shrinking.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

For Limits, only a “transition from growth to…a desirable, sustainable state of global equilibrium” can save the environment and humanity.

The report maintained it was still possible to create conditions for a much more sustainable future while meeting everyone’s basic material needs. As Gandhi said, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

No other environmental work then, or since, has so directly challenged mainstream growth beliefs. Unsurprisingly, it attracted strong opposition.

The 1972 study was long dismissed by many as neo-Malthusian prophecy of doom, underestimating the potential for human adaptation through technological progress.

Many other criticisms have been made. Limits was faulted for focusing too much on resource limits, but not enough on environmental damage. Economists have criticized it for not explicitly incorporating either prices or socioeconomic dynamics.

Beyond limits

In Beyond the Limits (1993), the two Meadows and Randers argued that resource use had exceeded the world environment’s carrying capacity.

Using climate change data, they highlighted the likelihood of collapse, going well beyond the earlier focus on the rapid carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere.

In another sequel, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (2004), they elaborated their original argument with new data, calling for stronger actions to avoid unsustainable excess.

Dennis Meadows stresses other studies confirm and elaborate Limits’ concerns. Various growth trends peak around 2020, suggesting likely slowdowns thereafter, culminating in environmental and economic collapse by mid-century.

Limits’ early 1970s’ computer modelling has been overtaken by enhanced simulation capabilities. Many earlier recommendations need revision, but the main fears have been reaffirmed.

Limitless?

Two key Limits’ arguments deserve reiteration. First, its critique of technological hubris, which has deterred more serious concern about the threats, thus undermining environmental, economic and other mitigation efforts.

As Limits argued, environmental crisis and collapse are due to socioeconomic, technological and environmental transformations for wealth accumulation, now threatening Earth’s resources and ecology.

Conventional profit-prioritizing systems and technologies have changed, e.g., with resource efficiency innovation. Such efforts help postpone the inevitable, but cannot extend the planet’s natural limits.

Of course, innovative new technologies are needed to address old and new problems. But these have to be deployed to enhance sustainability, rather than profit.

The Limits’ critique is ultimately of ‘growth’ in contemporary society. It goes much further than recent debates over measuring growth, recognizing greater output typically involves more resource use.

While not necessarily increasing exponentially, growth cannot be unlimited, due to its inherent resource and ecological requirements, even with materials-saving innovations.

This Earth for all

Thankfully, Limits’ fourth scenario – involving significant, but realistic transformations – allows widespread increases in human wellbeing within the planet’s resource boundaries.

This scenario has inspired Earth for All – the Club of Rome’s Transformational Economics Commission’s 2022 report – which more than updates Limits after half a century. Its subtitle – A Survival Guide for Humanity – emphasizes the threat’s urgency, scale and scope.

It argues that ensuring the wellbeing of all is still possible, but requires urgent fundamental changes. Major efforts are needed to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality, empower women, and transform food and energy systems.

The comprehensive report proposes specific strategies. All five need significant investments, including much public spending. This requires more progressive taxation, especially of wealth. Curbing wasteful consumption is also necessary.

More liquidity – e.g., via ‘monetary financing’ and International Monetary Fund issue of more special drawing rights – and addressing government debt burdens can ensure more policy and fiscal space for developing country governments.

Many food systems are broken. They currently involve unhealthy and unsustainable production and consumption, generating much waste. All this must be reformed accordingly.

Market regulation for the public good is crucial. Better regulation – of markets for goods (especially food) and services, even technology, finance, labour and land – is necessary to better conserve the environment.

Limited choice

The report includes a modeling exercise for two scenarios. ‘Too Little Too Late’ is the current trajectory, offering too few needed changes.

With growing inequalities, social trust erodes, as people and countries compete more intensely for resources. Without sufficient ‘collective action’, planetary boundaries will be crossed. For the most vulnerable, prospects are grim.

In the second ‘Giant Leap’ scenario, the five needed shifts are achieved, improving wellbeing all around. Everybody can live with dignity, health and security. Ecological deterioration is sufficiently reversed, as institutions serve the common good and ensure justice for all.

Broad-based sustainable gains in wellbeing need pro-active governance reshaping societies and markets. This needs sufficient political will and popular pressure for needed reforms.

But as the world moves ever closer to many limits, the scenario looming is terrifying: ecosystem destruction, gross inequalities and vulnerabilities, social and political tensions.

While regimes tend to bend to public pressure, if only to survive, existing discourses and mobilization are not conducive to generating the popular political demands needed for the changes.

Adnan A Hezri is an environmental policy analyst and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. He is author of The Sustainability Shift: Reshaping Malaysia’s Future.

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