Tag: Development & Aid

the Rich Prevail Over the Poor — Global Issues

  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 (IPS) – The 164-member World Trade Organization (WTO) has implicitly rubber-stamped a widely-condemned policy of “vaccine apartheid” which has discriminated the world’s poorer nations, mostly in Africa and Asia, depriving them of any wide-ranging intellectual property rights.

As Max Lawson, Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said at the conclusion of the WTO’s ministerial meeting last week: “The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful”.

“The European Union (EU) has blocked anything that resembles a meaningful intellectual property waiver. The UK and Switzerland have used negotiations to twist the knife and make any text even worse. And the US has sat silently in negotiations with red lines designed to limit the impact of any agreement.”

The Geneva-based WTO, whose members account for nearly 98 percent of world trade, takes decisions by consensus resulting in a rash of compromises on some of the disputed issues.

Lawson said: “This is absolutely not the broad intellectual property waiver the world desperately needs to ensure access to vaccines and treatments for everyone, everywhere. The EU, UK, US, and Switzerland blocked that text.”

This so-called compromise, he argued, largely reiterates developing countries’ existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances. And it tries to restrict even that limited right to countries which do not already have capacity to produce COVID-19 vaccines.

“Put simply, it is a technocratic fudge aimed at saving reputations, not lives”, he warned.

Summing up the conclusions of the meeting, the New York Times said last week that WTO members agreed to loosen intellectual property rights “to allow developing countries to manufacture patented Covid-19 vaccines under certain circumstances.”

”The issue of relaxing intellectual property rights for vaccines had become highly controversial. It pitted the pharmaceutical industry and developed countries that are home to their operations, particularly in Europe, against civil society organizations (CSOs) and delegates from India and South Africa.”

Oxfam’s Lawson said: “South Africa and India have led a 20-month fight for the rights of developing countries to manufacture and access vaccines, tests, and treatments. It is disgraceful that rich countries have prevented the WTO from delivering a meaningful agreement on vaccines and have dodged their responsibility to take action on treatments while people die without them.”

“There are some worrying new obligations in this text that could actually make it harder for countries to access vaccines in a pandemic. We hope that developing countries will now take bolder action to exercise their rights to override vaccine intellectual property rules and, if necessary, circumvent them to save lives.”

In a statement released last week, the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines have sparked worldwide debate, from Washington to Beijing and Davos to the World Trade Organization.

A group of Nobel laureates wrote to President Biden arguing that a temporary waiver of COVID-19 patent rights is essential to halting the global pandemic.

“Waiver advocates say that prioritizing the intellectual property rights of vaccine developers (many of whom have received governmental support) is making the vaccination rollout slow and unaffordable for billions of people in less-wealthy nations”.

Supporters of the status quo say a waiver would chill investment in the very pharmaceutical research that led to the vaccines’ creation, the Alliance said.

https://peoplesvaccinealliance.medium.com/open-letter-former-heads-of-state-and-nobel-laureates-call-on-president-biden-to-waive-e0589edd5704

The Alliance also pointed out that In October 2020, South Africa and India proposed a broad waiver of the Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement covering COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments.

The EU, UK, and Switzerland blocked that proposal. The US supported an IP waiver for only vaccines. The final text agreed is a watered-down waiver of one small clause of the TRIPS agreement relating to exports of vaccines. It also contains new barriers that are not in the original TRIPS agreement text.

Ben Phillips, author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’ told IPS that rich countries had acted to protect the monopolies of big pharmaceutical companies to determine production levels of pandemic-ending medicines.

In doing so, he said “they are not only causing deaths in developing countries, they are causing deaths in their own countries’ too. It’s not Northern interests vs Southern interests. It’s a handful of oligarchs who cannot share vs 8 billion people who want to be safe from pandemics.”

“Almost everyone in every country in the world”, he said, “would be better off if big pharmaceutical companies made slightly less obscene profits so that enough doses of pandemic-ending medicines could be made by multiple producers across the world to reach everyone who needs them on time.

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the rot of the system of monopolies over production of vital medicines. Everyone can see it, and it will fall. How quickly it falls is the only question left. People are organizing nationally and internationally and they won’t let this pass again,” Phillips declared.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs), told IPS “unequal access to vaccines is a global scandal that flies in the face of the economic, social and technological progress we claim to have made as humanity”.

He pointed out that CSOs around the world have long called for equity in health care and an end to excessive profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of people’s well-being.

“We need to closely examine the reasons for the lack of political will to meaningfully address these issues.”

Meanwhile, in a statement last March, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said more than 10.5 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, “enough to protect the entire world population from severe symptoms, hospitalization and death.”

But despite this achievement, Bachelet insisted that the “grim reality” was that only around 13 per cent of people in low-income countries have been vaccinated, compared with almost 70 per cent in high-income countries.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) ,has insisted that inaction risked penalizing the planet’s most vulnerable people and countries.

“We are at an inflection point in history”, he said. “We have the tools to end the acute phase of the pandemic, if we use them properly and share them fairly. But profound inequities are undermining that chance.

“Countries with high vaccination rates are reopening while others with low vaccination rates and low testing rates have been left behind. The result is more than 60,000 deaths per week, along with an increased risk of the emergence of new variants.”

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Bilingual Intercultural Education, an Endangered Indigenous Right in Peru — Global Issues

Children in an intercultural bilingual education primary school classroom in the district of Chinchaypujio, Anta province, in the southern Andean department of Cuzco, Peru. Each of these classrooms has between 10 and 13 students in different grades, at the kindergarten, primary and secondary levels. CREDIT: Courtesy of Tarea
  • by Mariela Jara (lima)
  • Inter Press Service

LIMA, Jun 16 (IPS) – “I always express myself in Quechua and I don’t feel I’m less of a person,” said Elías Ccollatupa, 47, who has been a bilingual intercultural teacher for more than two decades in the Chinchaypujio district, one of the nine that make up the province of Anta, in the department of Cuzco, in the southern Andean region of Peru.

Ccollatupa spoke to IPS by telephone from his Quechua farming community of Pauccarccoto, which is in the district of Chinchaypujio, while the laughter of children at recess resounded in the background. According to official figures, they are part of the 1,239,389 students receiving intercultural bilingual education in this South American country.

A teacher for 21 years, he expressed his concern about the government’s intention to relax the current policy that guarantees the right to intercultural bilingual education, i.e., that learning takes place respecting the student’s native language and cultural identity.

Peru approved the Bilingual Intercultural Education Sector Policy in 2016 and although implementation has been patchy, Ccollatupa, a member of the Tarea (Task) Educational Publications Association, said the existence of this regulatory framework is important.

“This way we ensure that our native languages do not disappear from the map and that our cultures remain alive,” he said.

In the middle of the 20th century, the Peruvian government began to adopt policies to guarantee the right to bilingual education for the indigenous population, within the framework of international mandates, but without putting a priority on their implementation.

The persistent demand of indigenous peoples’ organizations, other non-governmental organizations and the Ombudsman’s Office contributed to the institutionalization of these policies and to an increased budget until the National Intercultural Bilingual Education Plan was approved in 2016, after consultation with indigenous peoples.

The Plan, which includes the Sector Policy, is a five-year plan that officially expired in 2021, but will remain in effect until it is replaced.

At the national level, there are almost 27,000 schools authorized to provide bilingual early childhood, primary and secondary education in the 48 languages of Peru’s native peoples, where the teaching staff must demonstrate that they master the local language. As of February 2022, the Ministry of Education had filled 61 percent of the 44,146 bilingual teaching positions.

The alarm bells rang in January, at the beginning of the school year, when a directive of the General Directorate of Alternative Basic Education, Intercultural Bilingual and Educational Services in Rural Areas, under the Ministry of Education, requested the list of schools where there was a shortage of bilingual teachers in order to reclassify the schools, to make it possible to hire teachers who only speak Spanish.

Children in the courtyard of a school in the Andes highlands community of Pauccarccoto, Chinchaypujio district, in the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco, who receive bilingual intercultural education in Spanish and their mother tongue, Quechua. CREDIT: Courtesy of Tarea

A remnant of colonialism

The Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (Aidesep), which represents the indigenous peoples of the country’s Amazon region, issued a statement against what it described as a “policy of annihilation” of intercultural bilingual schools.

Alfredo Rodríguez, an advisor to Aidesep’s steering committee on the issue, criticized government officials for putting the right to work of non-bilingual (non-indigenous) teachers above the right of indigenous children to be educated in their mother tongue.

In an interview with IPS in Lima, he mentioned the case of the Urarina native communities, located in the Chambira river basin in the Amazonian department of Loreto, in the extreme north of the country. Twenty teaching positions were awarded there this year to monolingual Spanish-speaking teachers, even though the children at the schools in the area speak their mother tongue, Urarina.

“This is part of the colonial mentality in the minds of those people. They want to force everyone to speak only Spanish because they believe that indigenous languages are dialects without cultural importance and that the backwardness of Peru is due to diversity, that we must homogenize everyone,” said Rodriguez.

He asserted that the authorities’ lack of respect for and appreciation of the country’s cultural and linguistic diversity was part of the “political system” of the “criollos” (descendants of the Spanish colonizers).

He said that attitude was shared by President Pedro Castillo, who describes himself as a rural – but not indigenous – teacher of peasant farmer origins, who taught in villages in the northern department of Cajamarca and was a trade unionist, before entering politics.

“Those who believed that Pedro Castillo was an Indian were mistaken and today, in the educational administration, they are moving towards ethnocide, the annihilation of indigenous civilizations and cultures,” Rodríguez said.

In Peru, a country of more than 32 million inhabitants, almost a quarter of the population aged 12 and over self-identifies as Amazonian or Andean indigenous people. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, there are 5,771,885 indigenous people in the country.

Shipibo Konibo indigenous children taking part in an event held in the area of Cantagallo, a part of Lima where numerous families of that Amazonian people have settled since the 1990s. Communities of this native people are located in the Amazonian departments of Ucayali, Madre de Dios, Loreto and Huánuco. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Neglect of indigenous children

The Aidesep advisor argued that the right to intercultural bilingual education needs to be reinforced in order to reduce the inequalities affecting indigenous children and adolescents.

He referred, for example, to the fact that 94 percent of teachers in this area do not have teaching degrees, as documented by the Ombudsman’s Office. “The Ministry of Education does nothing about this. There are intercultural universities in name only, without economic resources due to the 500 years of neglect of these populations,” Rodríguez complained.

“It is valuable for children to learn in their mother tongue and then move on to a second language. Their cognitive structure is formed in the first five years of life and has to be strengthened in early and primary education. Teaching in the mother tongue boosts children’s intellectual development and when they learn the second language they do very well,” he added.

However, he considered that due to the lack of attention from the State, the current scenario is that they do not learn their mother tongue well and they learn Spanish in a distorted fashion, which is reflected in their writing and reading skills.

This situation reinforces discrimination and racism. Rodriguez explained that indigenous adolescents drop out of school or lose out on scholarships in universities because of the shortcomings of a secondary education provided by inadequately trained teachers.

Aidesep has submitted a set of proposals to the government.

These include not changing the classification of the institutions that provide intercultural bilingual education services, and implementing special training programs for indigenous teachers.

In addition, they propose the creation of a curriculum reform commission to design content appropriate to native peoples in accordance with Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), which refers to the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples.

According to the last National Population Census of 2017, 40.5 percent of the population that self-identified as indigenous or native in the Andean and Amazon regions had partial or complete secondary education, in a country with 55 officially recognized native peoples.

Of the total number of indigenous people, 23.4 percent had primary education and 26.3 percent had higher education, while 9.4 percent had received no education at all and 10.8 percent (mainly women) could not read or write.

Raising awareness among families and communities

Teacher Elías Ccollatupa was trained in intercultural bilingual education, as was his wife. Their mother tongue is Quechua and they taught the language to their son and two daughters, who he said “are proud to speak it.”

As a teacher and now as head of Chinchaypujio’s intercultural bilingual education network, he maintains a strong commitment to the right of children to be educated in their mother tongue. He is in charge of six schools from first to sixth grade, each with an average of 12 students.

“I see with concern that in the primary grades of six, seven, eight years old they only want to be taught in Spanish, and that’s because they are children of young mothers and fathers who left the community and have the idea that Quechua is no longer useful,” Ccollatupa said.

It is a kind of language discrimination, he added, a question of social status, as if people who spoke Spanish were superior to those who spoke their native language. “But when it is explained to them, they understand; it’s a question of raising awareness among the families and the authorities: Spanish is important, I tell them, but that does not mean you have to leave Quechua aside,” Ccollatupa said.

He proposed the incorporation of a component of awareness-raising and coordination with the educational community in each territory where intercultural bilingual education is provided, a task that, although it should be the responsibility of the teachers, is not being adequately carried out due to lack of time.

Ccollatupa also raised the need to understand the educational service from a cultural point of view in order to learn about the experiences in each locality where teachers work. To this end, he remarked, it is important to establish alliances with the community’s elders and to address the question of local knowledge with them and create connections with other kinds of knowledge.

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

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Guaranteeing Sufficient Food Production — Global Issues

The potential shortages of some commodities may generate internal instability in many countries, increasing internal and external migratory flows. Credit: FAO
  • Opinion by Mario Lubetkin (rome)
  • Inter Press Service

ROME, Jun 16 (IPS) – This is an op-ed by Mario Lubetkin, Assistant Director-General at FAOIf the war in Ukraine and other conflicts around the world continue, the challenge for 2022 will be to guarantee greater access to existing food supplies, and sufficient food production by 2023.

As we approach four months since the start of the war, data continues to show a trend of rising food prices, particularly in the poorest countries, while concern grows about the possible effects of these increases.

The potential shortages of some commodities may generate internal instability in many countries, increasing internal and external migratory flows.

Russia and Ukraine together account for 30% of world exports of wheat and corn, and 63% of sunflower seeds. According to experts, there is already a shortage of three million tons of these grains this year, despite increased exports from other countries, such as India.

Rising energy and fertilizer prices may cause an increase in hunger by several tens of millions of people, severely increasing the figure of 811 million already suffering from hunger in 2020.

That figure continued to increase due to the effects of COVID-19, by more than 100 million in 2021, putting the next global harvest at risk.

According to a recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), some 193 million people in 53 countries were already acutely food insecurity and in need of very urgent assistance in 2021, almost 40 million more than in 2020.

Famine warnings remain high in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

It will be the most fragile countries in Africa and Asia that will pay the highest price, even though many European countries are 100% dependent on Russian fertilizers, the world’s leading exporter.

This is the case of Estonia, Finland, Lithuania and Serbia, while countries such as Slovenia, North Macedonia, Norway and Poland, among others, are also heavily dependent on these fertilizers.

In addition, more than 50 nations in other parts of the world are at least 30% dependent on Russian fertilizers.

Egypt and Turkey are among the countries that may be most affected by their reliance on imported wheat and corn from warring European nations, as well as several African countries such as Congo, Eritrea, Madagascar, Namibia, Somalia and Tanzania.

In relation to the increase in food prices, there are countries like Lebanon where the increase has already exceeded 300%. However, even more developed countries are feeling the impact of the conflict, as in the case of Germany, where prices have risen by 12%, and the United Kingdom, where they have risen by more than 6%.

By the end of March, just over a month into the war, food products had already increased by 12.6%, the highest increase since 1990 according to FAO data.

Reduced production can lead to an immediate drop in food quality, causing an increase in the critical situation of obesity that already exceeds 600 million people, while more than 2 billion are overweight, which can also increase health risks, from cardiovascular conditions to diabetes.

“We need to keep the global trading system open and ensure that agrifood exports are not restricted or taxed,” said FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu.

According to Qu, it is necessary to increase investments in countries affected by current food prices, reduce food waste, and improve and make more efficient use of natural resources such as water and fertilizers.

There is also a need to promote social and technological innovations that will significantly reduce market disruptions in agriculture, as well as to improve social protection and personalized assistance for the farmers most affected by this crisis.

The Chief Economist of FAO, Máximo Torero, recalled the proposal of this specialized organization based in Rome to create a global instrument, called the Food Imports Financing Facility, worth 9,000 million dollars to cover 100% of the food costs for the most affected countries in 2022.

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Congos Oil Ministry Accused of Greenwashing — Global Issues

Peatland Forest in DRC. Credit: Daniel Beltrá / Greenpeace
  • Opinion by Tal Harris, Raphael Mavambu (kinshasa)
  • Inter Press Service

KINSHASA, Jun 16 (IPS) – Nine of the 16 oil blocks to be auctioned in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) next month overlap Protected Areas, according to a review of official government maps by Greenpeace Africa.

Minister Didier Budimbu, who had previously insisted that “none” of the blocks overlaps Protected Areas, confirmed Greenpeace’s findings in a statement yesterday.

Plans to auction rainforest for oil were reactivated in April, five months after the signature of a $500 million forest deal signed with the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) at COP26.

Greenpeace Africa and others have expressed alarm that three of the blocks overlap with the Cuvette Centrale peatlands, a biodiversity hotspot containing about 30 gigatons of carbon, equivalent to three years of global emissions. Oil drilling could release the immense stocks of carbon they store, warned Professor Simon Lewis of University College London.

That Protected Areas are also at risk became apparent last month when the Hydrocarbons Ministry itself published a video featuring a map of six of the 16 blocks : five of them are clearly shown to overlap Protected Areas.

The voice-over praises the “meticulousness” with which blocks had been “selected,” mindful of environmental “sensibilities,” and claiming input from unnamed environmentalists.

Peatland Forest in DRC. Credit: Daniel Beltrá / Greenpeace

Another official online source, the Environment Ministry Forest Atlas of the Democratic Republic of Congo, shows nine of the blocks overlapping Protected Areas, including a national park, nature reserves, and a mangroves marine park.

The Ministry’s statement to Greenpeace Africa asserts: “It’s been decided that Protected Areas containing mineral natural resources of high economic value will be degazetted.”

While it describes the overlaps as “very negligible,” a simple review of the map shows significant overlap in at least three cases, including that of Upemba National Park, part of which occupies about a third of the Upemba block.

Irene Wabiwa Betoko, International Project Leader for the Congo Basin forest at Greenpeace Africa said: “The auction of new oil blocks anywhere during a climate crisis that disproportionately affects African people is mad.

Greenwashing the auction of blocks overlapping peatlands and Protected Areas is the height of cynicism. Doing so with such amateurism is particularly disturbing.”

In its statement to Greenpeace Africa, the Ministry emphasizes that no areas inside UNESCO World Heritage sites are up for auction and that overlaps are restricted to other Protected Areas. Congolese law, however, makes no distinction, in terms of oil exploration, among Protected Areas.

Block 18, one of the few that doesn’t encroach on a Protected Area, is only about twenty kilometers from Salonga National Park, a UNESCO site. In July 2021, the DRC government succeeded in removing Salonga from the List of World Heritage in Danger after it promised to update UNESCO, no later than 1 February 2022, on “the progress made towards the definitive cancellation of the oil concessions” there.

Over two months after the deadline, the government reported that the park’s steering committee decided on 14 December 2021 to “initiate actions for the definitive cancellation.” Instead of finally acting, the government continues planning to act.

“The mouth that says all the right things about the climate and biodiversity crises works separately from the hand that signs the contracts that make them worse. This disconnect also characterizes DRC’s donors: their COP26 speeches in praise of the Congo rainforest have resulted in an agreement that is an open invitation to oil companies,” added Irene Wabiwa.

The agreement signed at COP26 does nothing to protect peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale from the oil and gas industry, and is hardly more demanding with regard to the integrity of Protected Areas.

Instead of banning extractive industries in them, the 2 November letter of intent seeks only damage control. It calls for a study “to determine to what extent the titles of hydrocarbons overlap with and/or have an impact on protected areas, with a view to adopting appropriate prevention or mitigation measures ”.

Greenpeace Africa calls on the DRC government to cancel the auction of new oil blocks: “Instead of auto-pilot steering Congo into a climate catastrophe, the government and the international community must invest in ending energy poverty by accelerating investments in clean and accessible renewable energies,” concluded Irene Wabiwa.

Tal Harris is International Communications Coordinator, Greenpeace Africa: and Raphaël Mavambu is Communications and Media Consultant, Greenpeace Africa.

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Researchers Strive for Technological Innovations to Achieve Food Security in Africa — Global Issues

Ingabire Muziga Mamy, Managing Director, Charis Unmanned Aerial Solutions Rwanda, provides drone services for spraying gardens with pesticides, among other farming activities in Rwanda. Technology is crucial to improving food security, researchers say. CREDIT: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
  • by Aimable Twahirwa (kigali)
  • Inter Press Service

KIGALI, Jun 15 (IPS) – A few years ago, after coming up with a project of launching the first-ever unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in Rwanda, entrepreneur Mamy Muziga Ingabire identified the need to provide farmers with information related to their activity – such as the health status of crops.

“Major focus was to leverage drone technology to support smallholder farmers in increasing their productivity,” Muziga told IPS in a recent interview.

Muziga is the Managing Director of CHARIS Unmanned Vehicle Solutions, one of the Rwandan-based companies providing drone-based solutions.

Several solutions and applications have been introduced to provide Rwandan farmers with innovative technology for accessing timely information on climate change, crop health, and diseases affecting them for informed decisions. Using ICTs gives farmers more access to market information, weather, and nutrition.

Several solutions have developed during the implementation phase, including the project for the Nitrogen fertilisation of wheat crops using drone technology in Musanze, a district in Northern Rwanda.

A drone with fixed cameras and sensors is sent across the field, takes accurate images of the plantations and the land, and collects precise data. This data provides specific indicators that enable operators to know the crop’s health and what it needs as fertilizer to grow properly.

While entrepreneurs and officials hail gains smallholder farmers enjoy by using these technological solutions for a sustainable food value chain; researchers say it’s important to raise awareness about what these technologies can do for actors along the agriculture value chains.

The importance of science, technology, and innovation (STI) as an important driver of African integration was the main topic of a recent scientific conference in Kigali, Rwanda, attracting researchers, members of the private sector, civil society, and farmers’ organisations from across Africa.

The conference focused on new applications such as drones, precision agriculture, and mobile applications or other hardware systems to automate redundant processes and reduce dependency on human labour in the agriculture value chain.

To bridge the STI policy and practice gaps to transform agricultural development and food systems within the continent, researchers agreed that the current impacts of climate change on food security in Africa should not allow anyone to relax.

Dr Canisius Kanangire, the Executive Director African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), observed that agriculture in Africa is characterised by low productivity, reflected in insufficient food production.

“We need to find the innovative solutions to key issues affecting food systems (…) Climate change is still having a growing impact on the African continent, hitting the most vulnerable hardest, and contributing to food insecurity,” Dr Kanangire told IPS.

While researchers seek to enhance the utilisation and adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies, value-adding processes, and loss-reducing practices among smallholder farmers in Africa, some experts in food systems believe that scaling these innovative solutions is still challenging.

“It is not only for the scientific community to develop solutions, but there is also a way to look at how end users can cope with these technologies,” said Claver Ruzindaza, an agricultural extension professional in Kigali.

With current efforts to deliver hi-tech services through public and private partnerships, researchers seek to equip smallholder farmers in Africa with knowledge of agronomic techniques and skills to improve their productivity, food security and livelihoods using innovative technologies.

“We need to change this narrative which maintains the farmer into the poverty status at a point where a farmer is always synonymous to a poor person,” Kanangire said.

Despite the vast agricultural potential, the latest estimates by the African Development Bank indicate that African countries are experiencing one of the highest prevalence of undernourishment in the world. Official reports show that out of about 795 million people suffering from chronic undernourishment globally, 220 million live in Africa.

Nevertheless, AAFT has developed seed varieties that are more productive and resistant to diseases and droughts, which could increase farm productivity and food availability on the continent has been executed in Malawi and Zimbabwe, while it is currently being expanded in Uganda and Ghana.

Martin Bwalya, Acting Director for Knowledge Management and Programme Evaluation at the Africa Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), told IPS that Africa needs to adopt innovations to reduce reliance on food imports.

“The continent is highly vulnerable because we are importing a massive amount. Close to 30 per cent of food in the continent is being imported,” Bwalya said.

As current efforts focus on mitigating the commodity disruptions caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, experts in Kigali unanimously acknowledged the importance of promoting intra-African trade. Growing Africa’s agribusiness sectors by using innovative solutions to help smallholder farmers to become more productive was crucial.

“This agricultural transformation in Africa requires the concerted effort of all stakeholders including policymakers, researchers, private sector and farmers,” Kanangire said.

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Disability Inclusion Lifts Rural Ugandan Families From Poverty — Global Issues

Lawrence Akena had never dreamt of owning a cow. BRAC believes ownership of assets like livestock can get people out of extreme poverty. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS
  • by Wambi Michael (oyam & gulu, uganda)
  • Inter Press Service

Oyam & Gulu, Uganda, Jun 14 (IPS) – Lawrence Akena was born 32 years ago with microcephaly. Because of his neurological condition, he didn’t go to school or benefit from skills training.

The exclusion meant Akena survived on handouts and was one of the young persons living in extreme poverty in Kamdini sub-county, Uganda.

“He would leave home early morning for Kamdini corner just to loiter in the township. At times he would spend nights there until I picked him (up and brought him) back,” says Akena’s mother, Lili Iram.

Akena’s condition, microcephaly, affects children born with a small head or a head that stops growing after birth. It can result in epilepsy, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, hearing loss and vision problems.

The 76-year-old mother says things have changed now. BRAC, the largest NGO in the Global South, selected him among persons with disabilities to benefit from Disability Inclusive Graduation (DIG) project.

BRAC Uganda, the National Union of Women with Disabilities of Uganda (NUWODU), and Humanity & Inclusion (HI, formerly Handicap International) have implemented DIG in selected districts in once war-torn Northern Uganda since 2018. UK Aid has funded DIG through the Inclusive Futures initiative, Cartier Philanthropy and Medicor Foundation, and Sight Savers.

DIG is designed to ensure that Graduation’s four key elements, including meeting people’s basic needs, providing training and assets for income generation, financial literacy and savings support, and social empowerment, are adapted to ensure inclusion for persons with disabilities.

BRAC supported Akena with primary livelihood assets like goats, cattle, pigs, and cash for petty trade. Humanity & Inclusion and NUWODU ensured that DIG’s services, including coaching, were effectively designed to support people with disabilities.

Ownership and control mean that people with disabilities, like Akena, can create a pathway out of extreme poverty and become socially included.

“DIG has helped us a lot. We did not own a cow. We didn’t have goats and chickens. Akena is (now) always at home looking after them,” Imran says when asked about how the program affected her son.

As Imran describes her son’s transformation, Akena enters the loading shed to set his goats free so they can graze alongside two brown zebu cows. According to Iram, he suffered a major setback when his pigs died of African Swine Fever last year.

But when IPS visited Iceme village, where he lives with his mother, Akena had bought another pig which now lives in the pigsty he constructed.

BRAC Project Assistant, Derick Baguma visits Lawrence Akena and his mother, Lili Iram, to assist with their farming ventures. Credit: BRAC

By owning the household assets like cows, goats, and chickens, Akena is graduating from the extremely poor,” says Derick Baguma, a Project Assistant with BRAC.

Baguma has provided household-based coaching to persons with disabilities in Iceme and other villages in Oyam’s Kamdini sub-county to record their assets.

Asked by IPS whether he had witnessed any changes, he said the difference was visible.

“This is not how this household was. And the way Akena appears now is not the same as he was. Do you see those shelters for goats and pigs? Lawrence Akena made over 80% of the contribution to ensure they are the way they are,” Baguma says. “And yet this is a person who was spending nights at verandas in Kamdini.”

Iram told IPS that she is working hard to ensure the assets multiply so that she can invest for her son’s future survival. She and her son are regular savers in their Village Saving Loan Association (VSLA), an informal, local financial institution that relies on its members’ savings to provide loans for emergencies and to support members’ enterprises.

“I had always wished to do something for my son, but I had no support. I plan to buy a piece (of land) and plant trees for his future from the savings in our village saving box,” she says.

Asked what lessons there were to learn from the DIG model, Baguma, who lives with Down syndrome, said there was a need for extra support for households with persons with disabilities.

“That when you are designing a project, you should include persons with disabilities. And it is possible. We shouldn’t look at the expenses. At times people say it is expensive. But we should look at the end results. How impactful is it going to be? If you don’t bring in that perspective of disability, then you are not reaching every person,” he said.

Uganda’s Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development 2020 study found that households with a person with a disability spent close to 39 percent more than other households.

“Future interventions to address poverty and wellbeing needs to ensure that the gap does not widen, leaving people with disabilities and their families behind. This may, therefore, necessitate the provision of additional resources to those households,” said the report.

Finding innovative solutions allows people living with a disability to support themselves and their families. Credit: BRAC

DIG has also provided rehabilitation, psychosocial support (PSS) needs and assistive devices for persons with disabilities, such as railings for entryways, modified latrines and artificial limbs.

One of such recipients is Denis Aboke, who lives in the village next to Akuna’s. Aboke, a cancer survivor, says that he now has an artificial limb 18 years after losing his leg to cancer.

He told IPS that without DIG’s intervention, he would still be using wooden crutches.

“Amputation from cancer had rendered me completely useless. I could not go into the garden. Now I can do some farming. I’m now able to support my family. The children are going to school,” he says.

Apart from the primary assets,  Aboke also received a diesel-powered grain milling machine as part of the DIG program, earning him extra income from fellow villagers. While Aboke sees a brighter future for himself, he hopes to see organisations continue to support people with disabilities.

“My brother, I can tell you that nobody cares about people with disabilities. Landmines disabled many people, but there was no support. Health centres here have nothing to offer,” shares Aboke.

Rwot Ma Miyo Village Savings Loan Association members meeting. BRAC ensures that meetings take place at residences of persons with disabilities, so they can be included. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Aboke’s rehabilitation was performed at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital, over 65 kilometres from his village. The hospital’s orthopaedic workshop serves clients from Northern Uganda and South Sudan.

Principle Orthopaedic Technologist Senvume Kavuma Abbey told IPS that the workshop is overwhelmed by demand, yet orthopaedic care services are least funded in Uganda.

“The government last supplied us with materials ten years ago. So, if DIG had not come in, we wouldn’t be able to provide services to those who benefitted,” explains Senvume.

Program staff arranged community outreach visits linking orthopaedic services with people with different forms of disabilities.

“We were able to see where those people were coming from, and so we designed appliances customised to their environment and their nature of work, and what they desire to do,” said Senvume

While the DIG model is relatively new to Uganda, the program partners think it can be adopted elsewhere as a tool for improving livelihoods for people with disabilities.

Shammah Arinaitwe, a Technical Specialist with BRAC Uganda, told IPS that Graduation is good for reaching poor households. She explained that it considers the recipient’s needs and what they can do and uses their experience to forge the path out of poverty.

“I will give an example. If you cannot afford 60-70 cents of a dollar per day, the project gives you a boost,” explains Arinaitwe. The comparison of someone who has benefitted from DIG is that the assets gained through their participation in the project mean they end up being able to support themselves and grow.

“If I have one cow, eleven goats, and thirty chickens, you can’t compare me with someone who does not have any,” explains Arinaitwe. “I’m glad to tell you that the same model of the project is being started in Tanzania, drawing from the lessons from Uganda.”

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Southern Winds in Magallanes Fuel Green Hydrogen in Chile — Global Issues

At the Haru Oni demonstration plant where the ecological fuel based on green hydrogen will be produced, the wind turbine that will provide wind energy to the project promoted by the HIF Global group in the southern Chilean region of Magallanes has been installed. CREDIT: HIF Global
  • by Orlando Milesi (santiago)
  • Inter Press Service

SANTIAGO, Jun 13 (IPS) – Patagonia’s strong winds are driving projects that will place Magallanes, in the extreme south of Chile, in a privileged position to produce and export green hydrogen and help the country move towards carbon neutrality.

The projects underway aim to produce green fuel to replace gasoline in any vehicle, competing with the efficiency of electromobility. Another goal is to produce green ammonia to replace, for example, the 350,000 tons of gray ammonia that Chile imports for the large copper mines in the north of the country.

President Gabriel Boric said on Jul. 8 at the IV Business Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, that Chile “is going to bet heavily on green hydrogen, both the State and the private sector.”

He encouraged U.S. businesspeople to invest in Chile while “linking production chains and raising environmental standards.”

“In the Patagonian region alone, if we do things right, the potential is enough to supply 13 percent of the world’s demand for green hydrogen,” said Boric, a native of Punta Arenas, the capital of the Magallanes region, popularly known as Chile’s Patagonia.

Julio Maturana, undersecretary of energy, told IPS that it is essential that green hydrogen be developed in harmony with Chile’s territories and ecosystems.

“We will push for hydrogen to be at the base of the creation of industry, and for Chile to participate in the entire value chain, including technological innovation,” he said.

Maturana said that the government is promoting studies to identify the greatest comparative advantages, “pushing for more sustainable mining, green fertilizers, green steel, zero-emission maritime and aviation fuels, or manufacturing processes so that Chile can add value not only with its winds in Magallanes and the desert sun, but also with its workers, universities and industry.”

According to the undersecretary, when the National Green Hydrogen Strategy was launched two years ago, there were 20 projects submitted – a number that has since risen threefold.

“There are more than 15 projects that have set their operational start date for green hydrogen production on an industrial scale before 2030,” he said, projecting “about 3.7 gigawatts (GW) of electrolysis operating by 2025 and 35 GW of electrolysis operating by 2030.”

In the extreme south of Chile, members of the Environmental Studies Group from the University of Magallanes carry out field work in Bahía Posesión to gather data for the environmental impact study for the H2 Magallanes project of the French group Total Eren. CREDIT: Erika Mutschke/University of Magallanes

Characteristics of the green hydrogen boom

Green hydrogen is obtained by electrolysis using only electrical energy from clean, renewable sources such as wind or sun.

Electrolysis involves using electricity to split the water molecule, consisting of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, H2O.

Of all the hydrogen produced in the world today, 95 percent is gray hydrogen obtained using natural gas, oil or coal, which causes the emission of large quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2), a major driver of global warming.

The use of electricity represents almost 70 percent of the cost of producing green hydrogen, which is why Chile is in a privileged location due to its enormous solar radiation potential in the northern Atacama Desert and the strong winds in the southern Patagonia region.

Magallanes is exceptionally windy because of the clash of high pressure systems caused by the Pacific anticyclone, which runs from Ecuador to Patagonia, and the low pressures and cold air masses originating from the polar front coming from Antarctica.

In 2019 Chile’s energy mix included 44 percent renewables. It is estimated that by 2030 renewables will make up 70 percent of the mix and that by 2050 the proportion will climb to 95 percent, as part of an energy transition that in addition to decarbonizing energy aims to free the country from costly hydrocarbon imports.

Producing a kilogram of green hydrogen today costs six dollars, but Undersecretary Maturana said that “Chile has the technical conditions to achieve production costs of less than a dollar per kilo.”

This would be important for bringing the cost of green hydrogen closer to that of fossil fuels, while now it is four times more expensive.

“To bring the price down, a series of measures will be required to provide certainty, access to financing and the promotion of a market or critical mass of local demand,” said the undersecretary.

Wind towers near Punta Arenas, capital of the Magallanes region, one of the best areas in the world for producing wind energy because a turbine can operate for more than 5,000 hours a year, according to Daniele Consoli of Enel Green Power, which is promoting the Haru Oni green hydrogen project in Chile’s southern Patagonia region. CREDIT: Ministry of Energy

Two flagship projects move ahead

A wind turbine has already been installed in Magallanes, part of an assembly platform built north of Punta Arenas at the Haru Oni demonstration plant.

The project, the first phase of which involves an investment of 51 million dollars, is being promoted by the international consortium HIF Global which, in parallel, will build a plant to produce green hydrogen that will then be treated to produce green gasoline.

“Little by little our project is taking shape and this turbine is a fundamental part of it,” said Clara Bowman, general manager of HIF Global, a company with 80 percent Chilean capital as well as the participation of German and U.S. firms.

“In parallel, in various places around the world, such as China, Germany and the United States, the equipment that will allow us to produce carbon-neutral eFuel is already being manufactured. We are working to start operations during the second half of this year,” explained the manager of the company, whose name is the abbreviation of Highly Innovative Fuels.

The French company Total Eren is developing the H2 Magallanes Project in the municipality of San Gregorio, near Punta Arenas, which will have up to 10 GW of installed wind power capacity and up to eight GW of electrolysis capacity, in addition to a desalination plant and an ammonia (NH3) production plant.

“The timeframe puts the start of the construction phase in 2025, and it is projected that by 2027 the first green hydrogen units could be operating,” said Macarena Toledo, environmental and social director of the H2 Magallanes Project.

The estimated investment is 20 billion dollars, she told IPS.

The Environmental Studies Group at the University of Magallanes is preparing the project’s environmental impact study, which includes variables of soil, water, fauna, flora, relief and strategies to inform the community about wind turbines and green hydrogen.

Claudio Gómez, dean of engineering at the university, told IPS that green hydrogen has unleashed “an explosive process that involves a revolution in the education of engineers, who must have a new kind of training to face new challenges.”

A sign reads “Welcome to the municipality of San Gregorio” in the extreme south of Chile, where the H2 Magallanes project is conducting environmental impact studies before starting construction of its project, the initial phase of which is scheduled for 2025. CREDIT: Total Eren

A cleaner future, not just on paper

The carbon-neutral fuel produced by Haru Oni will be tested in vehicles of the German brand Porsche, which is part of the consortium. The projection is that seven million cars will have green hydrogen cells by 2030 in China, Japan, the United States and South Korea.

The big goal is for green hydrogen to be incorporated into large trucks and machinery in mining, industrial sectors such as steel mills, refineries, fertilizer and ceramics factories, and ships and airplanes.

On Jun. 6, a group of companies launched a project to make Pudahuel International Airport, which serves the capital city of Santiago, the first in Latin America to use green hydrogen.

The group, which includes the company that manages the airport, will evaluate the development of a hydrogen ecosystem, including production and fueling infrastructure to serve the airport complex’s ground operations, as well as aircraft in the future.

An additional key advantage of green hydrogen is that its molecule has a high energy density per unit mass: it is three times higher than that of gasoline and 120 times higher than that of lithium batteries.

In Bahía Posesión in Patagonia, the Environmental Studies Group from the University of Magallanes carries out work for the environmental impact study for the H2 Magallanes project, one of the initiatives that aims to exploit the wind energy potential of Chile’s southern Patagonia region for the production of green hydrogen. CREDIT: Erika Mutschke/University of Magallanes

The key role of the State

Undersecretary Maturana stressed that the Boric administration, in office since March, wants the state-owned National Petroleum Company (Enap) and Copper Corporation (Codelco) to play an important role in the production of green hydrogen.

“We want Enap to play a role not only as an infrastructure facilitator, but also as a producer of green hydrogen to accelerate the development of our local and export industry. We expect it to take a leading role in projects given its experience in energy infrastructure,” he said.

And with regard to Codelco, he said it can play an important role in promoting the energy transition from the mining industry, testing and studying low-emission technologies in its operations.

“Public, private, academic and civil society collaboration will be key to expanding this industry,” he said.

Maturana ruled out problems with water use, indicating that the projects presented would include desalination and/or water reuse.

“The cost of water in the production of green hydrogen represents less than one percent, so raising the cost of water to meet sustainable standards would not have a high impact on the final price of energy,” he explained.

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Farmers in Senegal Adopt Farming as a Business to Beat Climate Change — Global Issues

Small holder farmers in Senegal are embracing sustainable agriculture practises to boost their productivity and income. Credit: Caroline Mwongera/ Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT
  • by Busani Bafana (bulawayo)
  • Inter Press Service

BULAWAYO, Jun 10 (IPS) – Onions and rice are a conspicuous part of every meal in Senegal, including the famous Poulet Yassa. However, climate change makes it hard for smallholder farmers to grow enough staple food with extra to sell for income.

Senegal is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change from droughts, flooding, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and bush fires, according to the Climate Change Knowledge portal of the World Bank.

“For some time, we have been facing climatic risks such as the scarcity of rains that persist more and more, high heat and a decline in productivity leading to food insecurity,” says Coumba Diallo, a smallholder farmer from Gourel Baydi village in the Tambacounda region.

Diallo, 47, is the President of the Kawral Women’s Group of Gourel Baydi, whose members have been trained to farm sustainably to beat climate change while increasing productivity and profits.

A regional project is helping farmers adapt to the impacts of climate change which has made agricultural production a gamble. Under the Adaptation and Valorization of Entrepreneurship in Irrigated Agriculture (AVENIR) project led by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA), in partnership with the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), smallholder farmers in Senegal are being trained in farming as a business in agroforestry, horticulture and rice.

The AVENIR project aims to improve the social and economic well-being and resilience of farming households in Senegal’s Sedhiou and Tambacounda regions. The two areas in the southwest and east of the country are vulnerable to climate change, experiencing drought spells, flooding, coastal erosion and soil salinity.

Commending the project, Diallo commented that demonstration activities had armed her with the tools to deal with climate change, such as using adapted seeds and learning new agricultural practices to increase her crop yields and income while being more resilient to the climate.

“Learning through practice has helped us to have a better knowledge of adapted varieties, a good mastery of fertility management practices, agroforestry and the drip system to make efficient production with good yields,” Diallo explained.

Another farmer, Clément Sambou, co-founder, and coordinator of Startup-sociale in the Sedhiou Region, says the water salinity, silting, loss of arable land and water erosion are major risks in his region. They are tackling these through the adoption of better agricultural practices.

The AVENIR project encourages women and young people to treat farming as a business by promoting climate-adapted irrigation and agricultural practices. It increases the profitability of agribusinesses in the production of baobab, mango, cashew, onion, okra, ditakh, madd, pepper and rice.

The project will benefit more than 10 000 women and youth from farming households and indirectly impact another estimated 35 000 individuals.

“We want to ensure that farmers have increased their ability to cope with the climate risks they face in the regions where they are producing food,” says Caroline Mwongera, a senior scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Mbene Diagne, a farmer from Thioro Bougou village in the Tambacounda region, has found practical training helpful. It’s boosted his knowledge of soil fertility management technologies, especially with moisture conservation techniques in an excessively hot area.

“There is a very big difference between our practices and those current conveyed through the demonstration sites,” said Diagne (29), vice-president of a group of young modern farmers in Tambacounda.

“With these new technologies, there is a reduction in workload for irrigation with better control of water and working time,” Diagne noted.

Farming is Good Business

The project has focused on adaptation and agribusiness after realizing that horticulture was an easy market entry option for women because of the high demand for horticulture products.

“We wanted to create opportunities for women and young people to engage and sell their produce in the local markets,” says Mwongera. “The varieties we selected for horticulture are locally demanded. For example, onion is a big part of the Senegalese diet,  tomatoes, pepper, and okra. In addition, horticulture is a good fit for women and youth with limited access to irrigated land,  which can measure as small as twenty square metres. “

The project has promoted salinity and drought-tolerant rice varieties. The Senegalese research organization, ISRA and the Africa Rice Centre developed the rice. For agroforestry, quick maturing mango, cashew and baobab varieties have been introduced.

“If you have food and income, you can cope with climate risks. We want the food system to be diversified. That is why we are focusing on the three commodity groups: rice, agroforestry, and horticulture because that helps you to withstand risks better, says Mwongera. She adds that farmers are also trained to intensify their production to grow short-season crop varieties under irrigation.

Farmers get high-yielding and drought-tolerant seeds and are trained using climate-smart technologies and efficient, affordable irrigation techniques.

Increasing Incomes through Irrigation

Farmers have been introduced to affordable and labour efficient water technologies to save on scarce water resources.

“We are now training farmers to use drip irrigation, which is water efficient and has low labour demand, especially for women,” Mwongera told IPS, explaining that farmers have shifted from manual flood irrigation, sprinklers and watering cans which used a lot of water.

Rice and onions are part of every meal in Senegal, but smallholders often face food insecurity. Now a project helps farms adapt to the impact of climate change, Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

To encourage farmers to use water-efficient technologies, the project has introduced an incentive-based purchase programme (e-voucher) to provide discounts for farmers. Farmers get technologies at a fraction of the value with an option to pay the balance when they produce and sell their crops.

A multi-actor platform brings together local actors, producer organizations, local administration, and researchers to help farmers share information and experiences on climate information services and equitable water resource management to improve their productivity.

Mwongera noted that farmers had poor access to viable markets, which meant they could not increase their production if they had nowhere to sell their produce. There is a need for a market value chain that includes producers, processors, transport providers and the financial sector.

“We need market-led development to enhance resilience and profitability of farmers,” says Mwongera noting that the project was also teaching farmers about integrated soil management, proper composting and using climate information services.

“We also provide weather information using SMS and integrated voice through a service provider who gets weather forecasts from the National Agency for Civil Aviation and Meteorology of Senegal (ANACIM). Farmers use this information to plan when to plant and what varieties to plant,” said Mwongera.

Climate change threatens Senegal’s social and economic development, which is vulnerable to droughts, floods, and high temperatures, which impact the agricultural sector. Agriculture employs 70 percent of the country’s workforce and contributes about 17 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.

Top climate scientists have warned of the urgency of reducing carbon emissions as human-induced climate change affects all development sectors, including agriculture. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather has reduced food and water security, hindering efforts to meet Sustainable Development Goals.

“Increasing weather and climate extreme events have exposed millions of people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security, with the largest impacts observed in many locations and/or communities in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Small Islands and the Arctic Jointly,” scientists said. They noted that sudden food production losses and access to food compounded by decreased diet diversity had increased malnutrition in many communities, especially small-scale food producers and low-income households.

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Cities in Brazil Reap Floods after Hiding Their Rivers Underground — Global Issues

The confluence of the waters with the distinct colors of the pollution of each one: darker waters reflect the urban sewage of the Arrudas River, while brown reflects erosion coming from the upper Velhas River, a natural effect or product of mining visible in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
  • by Mario Osava (rio de janeiro)
  • Inter Press Service

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 07 (IPS) – Acaba Mundo has fallen into oblivion, despite its apocalyptic name – which roughly translates as World’s End – and historical importance as an urban waterway. It is a typical victim of Brazil’s metropolises, which were turned into cemeteries of streams, with their flooded neighborhoods and filthy rivers.

The Acaba Mundo stream disappeared under the asphalt and concrete of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais in southeast Brazil. It was the main source of water for the first inhabitants of the city founded in 1897 and the first watercourse in the city to be culverted and hidden underground.

Interventions on the riverbed began a century ago, with modifications to adjust it to the geometric layout of the streets and canalizations, and ended with it being completely covered over, except for its headwaters, in the 1970s, geographer Alessandro Borsagli, a professor and researcher who specializes in water issues, told IPS.

It became invisible, like practically all the streams that flow into the Arrudas River, the axis of the main watershed of the planned city of Belo Horizonte, whose limits were exceeded decades ago by urban sprawl and which now has 2.5 million inhabitants.

The water is still dirty when it is returned to the Onça River after passing through the Wastewater Treatment Plant in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southern Brazil. Much remains to be decontaminated, as well as the Velhas River that it flows into. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Forgotten

The existence of the Acaba Mundo stream has also been erased from people’s memories. But its waters still run in clogged culverts under streets and avenues, including the city’s main avenue, Afonso Pena.

The city government does not even mention it in the presentation of the America Rene Giannetti Municipal Park, a large popular space for tourism and nature conservation in the center of the city, which was originally crossed by the stream before it was diverted by canals to another sub-basin.

Only elderly residents such as Carmela Pezzuti, who lived in Belo Horizonte for a few months in 1939, when she was six years old, still remember – as she told IPS – that the park then took its name from Acaba Mundo, when the stream still existed aboveground.

Today, the so-called Dry Bridge is still there, under which the now hidden and forgotten stream used to flow.

“This reflects the history of Belo Horizonte, of increasing interventions in the watercourses and ‘hydrophobia’ in response to the stench from the streams, which were used as sewage outfalls and turned into sources of diseases,” in addition to the increasingly frequent floods, said Borsagli.

Apolo Heringer, a physician and environmentalist who has raised awareness and mobilized local residents in defense of the Velhas River and its watershed with the Manuelzão Project, a university project named after an important literary figure in the culture of the state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Business vs streams

Covering up the streams and expanding the underground channels became a demand of society in general, in addition to responding to the interests of real estate businesses that have treated the watercourses as obstacles to the construction of new housing, he said.

The transportation sector, from the automotive industry to bus companies, also pushed for the conversion of riverbeds and their banks into avenues, as has been done since automobiles took over the cities.

“The urban mobility model adopted is incompatible with watercourses,” urban architect Elisa Marques, a researcher and activist on water issues, told IPS. “Avenues are built on the valley bottoms, the riverbeds are blocked and the soil becomes more impermeable. Improving public transport would reduce the space for cars and return it to the waters.”

A residential neighborhood in northern Belo Horizonte, with its distinctive dips and rises that accelerate torrents caused by rainfall, which flood the valleys. The steeper slopes of the Curral mountain range, in the south of this southern Brazilian city, aggravate water disasters. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Floods

The increasing impermeabilization of the soil, due to urban expansion and suppression of vegetation, makes the channels, no matter how much they are enlarged, unable to absorb the increased flow of torrents in the rainiest periods, usually in December and January, said Borsagli.

The topography of Belo Horizonte favors the existence of hundreds of fast-flowing streams and minor watercourses, due to the steep slopes.

The Curral mountain range, where the main tributaries of the Arrudas River rise, which cross the most urbanized part of the city, exceeds 1,400 meters above sea level, while the Arrudas is about 800 meters above sea level.

“It is not known for sure why the Acaba Mundo stream is so named, whether it is because its source is far from the center of the city like the end of the world or because of the destructive force of its torrent,” explained the geographer, author of the book “Invisible Rivers of the Mining Metropolis”.

Flooding worsened as the city grew, especially from the 1940s onwards, and interventions that replaced the streambeds with channels aggravated the problem, according to Borsagli. He explained that channelizing a stream almost always increases the flow that floods the watershed below.

Currently, the most severe flooding continues to be seen along some parts of the Arrudas River, but it has become more frequent in Belo Horizonte’s other basin, that of the Onça River (the Portuguese name for jaguar), in the northern part of the city, whose population has grown more recently and is poorer.

In general, Brazilian cities lack efficient drainage systems. The governmental National Sanitation Information System found that in 2020 only 45.3 percent of the 4107 municipalities that participated in its assessment – out of a national total of 5570 – have exclusive rainwater drainage systems. In the rest the rainwater is mixed with wastewater.

This shortfall exacerbates the recurrent water tragedies. São Paulo also suffers annual flooding in several neighborhoods. And on the outskirts of Recife, in the Northeast, torrential rains in the last days of May left at least 127 dead and 9,000 people affected.

The primacy of automobiles over public transport put pressure on the banks of urban rivers because of streets that invade the space of the water and make the soil impermeable with asphalt, aggravating the floods that recur every year in Brazil’s major cities, according to urban architect Elisa Marques. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Pollution

In addition to the failure of stormwater drainage, there is also the pollution of water resources. For decades Belo Horizonte used the streams as sewage channels, with little treatment of the drainage, spreading filth and disease.

The situation in Belo Horizonte improved with the construction of the Arrudas River Wastewater Treatment Plant (ETE) in 2001 and the Onça Wastewater Treatment Plant in 2006, but it is still insufficient, said Apolo Heringer, a physician, environmentalist and retired professor from the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

Heringer, who was a political exile during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, founded the Manuelzão Project at the university in 1997, with the aim of cleaning up and revitalizing the Velhas River, the source of half the water consumed in the areas on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte and the recipient of the rivers that cross the capital, the Arrudas and the Onça.

The ETEs respond in part to the strategy advocated by the environmentalist and his project of concentrating efforts where they are most productive.

“Along 30 to 40 kilometers of the Velhas River and the final stretches of the Arrudas and Onça rivers, 80 percent of the pollution produced by 80 percent of the population of the outlying neighborhoods is concentrated, both from sewage and garbage. It is the epicenter of pollution,” Heringer told IPS.

Focusing efforts in this area, which makes up only 20 percent of the city, would practically result in the decontamination of the Velhas River basin, which extends for 800 kilometers and flows into the São Francisco, one of the largest national rivers that crosses a large part of the semiarid Northeast region.

But the goal of being able to swim, fish and boat in the Velhas River requires 100 percent wastewater treatment, and the collection and proper management of all garbage so that the liquid runoff does not go into the rivers. This means it is still a distant dream, the expert acknowledged.

The treatment of sewage by the Minas Gerais Sanitation Company (Copasa) is still incomplete; the water that is returned to the rivers still contains impurities, the environmentalist lamented.

ETE Arrudas removes the main pollutants and complies with national legislation, as shown by laboratory tests. “It is possible to visually verify the difference in quality of the treated sewage in relation to the raw sewage,” Copasa replied to questions from IPS on the matter.

However, in the Onça River ETE, the water returned to the river does not appear to be clean.

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Global Community Urged Not to Relent in Final Push to Eliminate Leprosy — Global Issues

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, standing with Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, at the 75th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland in May 2022. Sasakawa was honored at the Global Health Leaders Awards.
  • by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
  • Inter Press Service

Nairobi, Jun 07 (IPS) – leWhen Yohei Sasakawa visited a remote village in South America, he found 23 people living there. It was no ordinary village because all the residents had been stigmatized and shunned by society because they were affected by leprosy.

Yet this is not a unique story, says Sasakawa, the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination. This is the story of persons affected by leprosy, where there are more than 100 laws globally that discriminate based on the disease.

In his journey to at least 122 countries in Africa and South America, he found that the story of persons affected by leprosy is characterized by stigma, discrimination, and ostracization.

Against this backdrop, Sasakawa had a message of hope and encouragement during the sixth ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign webinar series titled, Elimination of Leprosy: Initiatives in the Americas and Africa.

Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination during one of his many visits to communities where people affected by leprosy live. Credit: Joyce Chimbi

He said that eliminating leprosy was “in its last mile. A sustained push is much needed in spite of and because of ongoing challenges including COVID-19 pandemic as well as the myths and misconceptions around leprosy”.

“India has the highest number of leprosy cases, but they have also targeted to eliminate leprosy by 2030. This is an ambitious goal. I am encouraged by ongoing efforts, commitment, and passion to eliminate leprosy.”

With the universality of leprosy’s challenges in mind, under the Sasakawa Leprosy Initiative, the WHO Goodwill Ambassador, the Nippon Foundation, and Sasakawa Health Foundation work in a coordinated approach to achieve a leprosy free world.

Dr Carissa Etienne, Director, Pan American Health Organization, regional office for the Americas of WHO, stressed the need to sustain the fight to achieve zero leprosy cases by 2030. She called for a doubling of efforts. The Global Leprosy Strategy 2021 to 2030 is both a health and economic strategy because it aims at promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The webinar provided a platform for health officials, NGOs, and representatives of organizations of persons affected by leprosy. Participants heard how countries in the Americas and Africa are stepping up prevention initiatives in keeping with WHO guidelines to accelerate the annual decline in new leprosy cases.

Experts stressed that innovative approaches are much needed to sustain leprosy case detection, contact tracing, and treatment, especially against the backdrop of COVID-19, which continues to shift attention from the disease.

Speakers stressed that a WHO-recommended regimen of timely screening and treating eligible contacts with single-dose rifampicin was vital. When the single dose is given as post-exposure prophylaxis to contacts of newly diagnosed patients, it results in a 50 to 60 % reduction in the chances of developing leprosy over the next two years.

WHO recorded a total of 202,185 new leprosy cases globally in 2019. India, Indonesia, and Brazil register the highest number of new leprosy cases – more than 10,000 cases each.

Worldwide, 13 other countries reported 1,000 to 10,000 cases each. The Americas recorded 29,936 new cases, with Africa following closely with 20,205.

The webinar was held in line with the Global Leprosy Strategy for 2021-2030, on track with the new road map on neglected tropical diseases. To eliminate leprosy, new cases must reduce to about 63,000 globally.

Dr Carmelita Ribeiro Filha Coriolano from the Brazilian Ministry of Health spoke extensively about the spread of new cases in the Americas in 2020. department of chronic conditions and Sexually Transmitted Infections health surveillance secretariat

Coriolano provided a detailed sociodemographic profile of new leprosy disease cases and physical disability indicators picked up by the Department of Chronic Conditions and Sexually Transmitted Infections Health Surveillance Secretariat. She noted that Brazil recorded the highest new cases of leprosy in 2021.Yohei Sasakawa,

In Africa, too, the cases remain a cause of concern.

“In 2015, leprosy was eliminated as a public health concern in Angola. But the disease is still very much a priority because the most recent data shows 797 new cases were detected,” says Dr Ernesto Afonso, National Leprosy Program Coordinator, Ministry of Health in Angola.

Dr Joseph Ngozi Chukwu, medical advisor, German Leprosy Relief Association in Nigeria, updated the epidemiological situation, leprosy case management, achievements, and lessons learned.

“Over 30,000 persons are estimated to be living with leprosy-related disabilities across Nigeria,” he said.

Lucrecia Vasquez Acevedo, President, Felehansen-National Federation of the Associations of the Persons Affected by Leprosy in Colombia, said the stigma continued.

“We cannot forget about leprosy because of the myths, misconceptions, and lies created around leprosy. It is important to teach other people the truth about leprosy. During the pandemic, we learned how to use technology to teach and overcome the challenges of access to information presented by the pandemic,” says Acevedo, suggesting that the same should apply to leprosy.

Professor Takahiro Nanri, Executive Director, Sasakawa Health Foundation, facilitated a question-and-answer session, providing an opportunity to respond to questions from the participants. During the session, issues of myths, misconceptions, and stigma arose as they remained an obstacle to eliminating leprosy.

IPS UN Bureau Report


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