Tag: Development & Aid

Rise of the Super Rich & Fall of the World’s Poor — Global Issues

Women in Nigeria collect food vouchers as part of a programme to support families struggling under the COVID-19 lockdown. Credit: WFP/Damilola Onafuwa
  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, May 23 (IPS) – Michael Bloomberg, the three-term Mayor of New York city and a billionaire philanthropist, was once quoted as saying that by the time he dies, he would have given away all his wealth to charity – so that his cheque to the funeral undertaker will bounce for lack of funds in his bank account.

Sounds altruistic – even as the number of billionaires keep rising while the poorest of the world’s poor keep multiplying.

The latest brief by Oxfam International, titled “Profiting from Pain” and released May 23, shows that 573 people became new billionaires during the two-and-a half-year Covid 19 pandemic —while the world’s poverty stricken continued to increase.

“We expect this year that 263 million more people will crash into extreme poverty, at a rate of a million people every 33 hours,” Oxfam said.

Billionaires’ wealth has risen more in the first 24 months of COVID-19 than in 23 years combined. The total wealth of the world’s billionaires is now equivalent to 13.9 percent of global GDP. This is a three-fold increase (up from 4.4 percent) in 2000, according to the study.

Asked about the philanthropic gestures, Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International, told IPS wealthy individuals who use their money to help others should be congratulated.

“But charitable giving is no substitute for wealthy people and companies paying their fair share of tax or ensuring their workers are paid a decent wage. And it does not justify them using their power and connections to lobby for unfair advantages over others,” she declared.

Oxfam’s new research also reveals that corporations in the energy, food and pharmaceutical sectors —where monopolies are especially common— are posting record-high profits, even as wages have barely budged and workers struggle with decades-high prices amid COVID-19.

The fortunes of food and energy billionaires have risen by $453 billion in the last two years, equivalent to $1 billion every two days, says Oxfam.

Five of the largest energy companies (BP, Shell, Total Energies, Exxon and Chevron) are together making $2,600 profit every second, and there are now 62 new food billionaires.

Currently, the world’s total population is around 7.8 billion, and according to the UN, more than 736 million people live below the international poverty line.

A World Bank report last year said extreme poverty is set to rise, for the first time in more than two decades, and the impact of the spreading virus is expected to push up to 115 million more people into poverty, while the pandemic is compounding the forces of conflict and climate change, that has already been slowing poverty reduction.

By 2021, as many as 150 million more people could be living in extreme poverty.

Yasmeen Hassan, Global Executive Director at Equality Now, told IPS Oxfam’s report demonstrates systemic failings in the discriminatory nature of countries’ economies and underscores the urgent need for financial systems to be restructured so that they benefit the 99%, not the 1%.

“As with any crisis, Equality Now foresaw that gender would influence how individuals and communities experienced the pandemic, but even we were shocked at how exceptionally and intensely pre-existing inequalities and sex-based discrimination has been exacerbated”, she said.

While billionaires — the vast majority of whom are men — continue to amass vast sums of wealth, women around the world remain trapped in poverty. Wealthy elites are profiting off women’s labor, much of which is underappreciated, underpaid, and uncompensated, she pointed out.

“Economic hardship and inadequate policy responses to the pandemic have eroded many of the hard-won gains that have been achieved over recent years for women and girls. From increases in child marriage, sexual exploitation and human trafficking, to landlords demanding sex from female tenants who have lost their job, and domestic workers trapped inside with abusive employers, women and girls around the world have borne the brunt of the pandemic,” Hassan declared.

The Oxfam study has been released to coincide with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting—which includes the presence of the rich and the superrich—taking place in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland from 22-26 May. The meeting, whose theme is ‘Working Together, Restoring Trust’, will be the first global in-person leadership event since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020

“Billionaires are arriving in Davos to celebrate an incredible surge in their fortunes. The pandemic, and now the steep increases in food and energy prices have, simply put, been a bonanza for them. Meanwhile, decades of progress on extreme poverty are now in reverse and millions of people are facing impossible rises in the cost of simply staying alive,” said Oxfam’s Bucher.

She said billionaires’ fortunes have not increased because they are now smarter or working harder. But it is really the workers who are working harder, for less pay and in worse conditions.

The super-rich, she argued, have rigged the system with impunity for decades and they are now reaping the benefits. They have seized a shocking amount of the world’s wealth as a result of privatization and monopolies, gutting regulation and workers’ rights while stashing their cash in tax havens — all with the complicity of governments.”

“Meanwhile, millions of others are skipping meals, turning off the heating, falling behind on bills and wondering what they can possibly do next to survive. Across East Africa, one person is likely dying every minute from hunger. This grotesque inequality is breaking the bonds that hold us together as humanity. It is divisive, corrosive and dangerous. This is inequality that literally kills.”

Elaborating further, Hassan of Equality Now said women are more likely to be informally employed, low-wage earners, and this disadvantaged position has resulted in higher rates of women losing their jobs, particularly in sectors that were not prioritized in government relief packages.

“Women are also more likely to be primary caretaker and many have had to absorb increases in unpaid duties while schools and nurseries shut down. As a consequence, some women have been forced out of jobs as they found it impossible to juggle full-time work while also providing full-time childcare. This loss of income has been especially catastrophic for women in poverty and has made them more vulnerable to a range of human rights violations.”

She said world leaders must stop pursuing policy agendas that benefit the rich and hurt the poor.

“Instead, we urgently need a committed and coordinated response from governments and policymakers to reduce inequality and poverty, and address discrimination that is holding women and girls back while allowing the super-rich to get richer still,” she added.

The Oxfam study also says the pandemic has created 40 new pharma billionaires.

Pharmaceutical corporations like Moderna and Pfizer are making $1,000 profit every second just from their monopoly control of the COVID-19 vaccine, despite its development having been supported by billions of dollars in public investments.

“They are charging governments up to 24 times more than the potential cost of generic production. 87 percent of people in low-income countries have still not been fully vaccinated.”

“The extremely rich and powerful are profiting from pain and suffering. This is unconscionable. Some have grown rich by denying billions of people access to vaccines, others by exploiting rising food and energy prices. They are paying out massive bonuses and dividends while paying as little tax as possible. This rising wealth and rising poverty are two sides of the same coin, proof that our economic system is functioning exactly how the rich and powerful designed it to do,” said Bucher.

Oxfam recommends that governments urgently:

  • Introduce one-off solidarity taxes on billionaires’ pandemic windfalls to fund support for people facing rising food and energy costs and a fair and sustainable recovery from COVID-19. Argentina adopted a one-off special levy dubbed the ‘millionaire’s tax’ and is now considering introducing a windfall tax on energy profits as well as a tax on undeclared assets held overseas to repay IMF debt. The super-rich have stashed nearly $8 trillion in tax havens.
  • End crisis profiteering by introducing a temporary excess profit tax of 90 percent to capture the windfall profits of big corporations across all industries. Oxfam estimated that such a tax on just 32 super-profitable multinational companies could have generated $104 billion in revenue in 2020.
  • Introduce permanent wealth taxes to rein in extreme wealth and monopoly power, as well as the outsized carbon emissions of the super-rich. An annual wealth tax on millionaires starting at just 2 percent, and 5 percent on billionaires, could generate $2.52 trillion a year —enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, make enough vaccines for the world, and deliver universal healthcare and social protection for everyone living in low- and lower middle-income countries.

IPS UN Bureau Report


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



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By Deliberately Ignoring Risk, the World Is Bankrolling Its Own Destruction — Global Issues

“The good news is that human decisions are the largest contributors to disaster risk, so we have the power to substantially reduce the threats posed to humanity, and especially the most vulnerable among us”
Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
  • by Baher Kamal (madrid)
  • Inter Press Service

MADRID, May 20 (IPS) – It is often said that a pessimistic person is an optimistic but well-informed person. Here, a good number of people may believe that human wit and inventiveness are capable of facing both the current and the looming disasters, like the impact of climate change, for instance.

Others, instead, may think that such human ingenuity will once more address the symptoms rather than the causes provoking them. Thus, they would be right to want to be informed and aware of the root causes of such disasters in order to push for eradicating them.

Anyway, and regardless of people’s level of optimism or informed-optimism, the big problem may fall on the shoulders of ruling politicians, those who are so heavily influenced by big business that they act as mere decision-announcers rather than makers.

Likewise, the other international specialised bodies and the world’s scientific communities, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) reminds that human activity and behaviour is contributing to an increasing number of disasters across the world, putting millions of lives and every social and economic gain in danger.

The risks of optimism and underestimation

Its Global Assessment Report specifically blames these disasters on “a broken perception of risk based on optimism, underestimation and invincibility,” which leads to policy, finance and development decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and put people in danger.

“The world needs to do more to incorporate disaster risk in how we live, build and invest, which is setting humanity on a spiral of self-destruction,” said Amina J. Mohammed, United Nations Deputy Secretary General, who presented the report Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2022.

Stop ignoring the risk… deliberately

“Disasters can be prevented, but only if countries invest the time and resources to understand and reduce their risks,” said Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of UNDRR.

“By deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction. Critical sectors, from government to development and financial services, must urgently rethink how they perceive and address disaster risk.”

More disasters to come

Meanwhile, the scale and intensity of disasters are increasing, with more people killed or affected by disasters in the last five years than in the previous five, and the number of disaster events is projected to reach 560 a year – or 1.5 disasters a day – by 2030.

Adding to the long term impacts of disasters is the lack of insurance to aid in recovery efforts to build back better. Since 1980, just 40% of disaster-related losses were insured while insurance coverage rates in developing countries were often below 10%, and sometimes close to zero, the report said.

Reforming national budgets

A growing area of risk is around more extreme weather events as a result of climate change, recalls the group of experts from around the world who drafted the report as a reflection of the various areas of expertise required to understand and reduce complex risks.

In it, they called for reforming national budget planning to consider risk and uncertainty, while also reconfiguring legal and financial systems to incentivise risk reduction.

“The good news is that human decisions are the largest contributors to disaster risk, so we have the power to substantially reduce the threats posed to humanity, and especially the most vulnerable among us.”

Deaf ears

Such reiterated calls for reframing countries’ national budgets to address the priority areas, including disaster prevention and risk reduction, have been shockingly falling in deaf ears.

How else to explain that in 2021, the world military expenditure passed 2 trillion US dollars for the first time, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which has also informed that global nuclear arsenals grow as states continue to modernise, thus sharply increasing the dangers of an unimaginable number of victims of the most devastating death machinery?.

There is always enough money to fund destruction

Also, how to passively hear that a number of European countries have just doubled their military budgets amidst a looming economic and social crisis impacting their citizens?

And how else to explain that the world’s politicians continue to subsidise fossil fuel with six trillion dollars in just one year, being fully aware that such fuels harvest the lives of millions of humans?

The unwanted to be seen war on Nature

“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal. The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth,” said António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, in his forward to the recent report “Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies.”

Too many empty promises

Meanwhile, none of the agreed global goals for the protection of life on Earth and for halting the degradation of land and oceans has been fully met.

For instance, by deliberately ignoring the growing risks, three-quarters of the land and two thirds of the oceans are now impacted by human activities.

And one million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction, while many of the ecosystem services essential for human well-being are eroding.

Also, how do you understand that nearly 1 billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty and are disproportionately affected by stoppable and preventable land degradation, which threatens their shelter, food, water and income?

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

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What India Needs To Do To Achieve Net-Zero Status by 2070 — Global Issues

As India grows and develops, its economic production and energy consumption will increase. | Picture courtesy: Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
  • Opinion by R R Rashmi (new delhi)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW DELHI, May 20 (IPS) – The recent IPCC report that came out in the month of March 2022 says that, by the end of the century, the temperature rise is likely to be 2 to 3.7 degrees if global emissions, as they stand today, are not curtailed. In fact, according to the report, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions need to come down by 45 percent globally (compared with 2005) by the end of 2030.

And current trends show that the reduction is falling quite short, as the total impact of all the nationally determined contributions put together is still not more than 11 percent. So, there is a vast gap between what we need to be doing and where we are currently.

First, let us understand the global context

The urgency of curtailing emissions is not lost on the political class. However, what continues to be a fraught matter is the share of responsibility that different countries are willing to accept when it comes to minimising their CO2 emissions.

Developed nations, which have contributed the most to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and have the resources and capability to curtail emissions, are unwilling to take on the greater share of this responsibility going forward.

Most developing nations feel that this is unfair, given that they have contributed less (or minimally) to the problem and are still being forced to contribute equally. Moreover, fast-growing economies like Brazil, China, and India have ever-expanding energy needs, considering the stage of development they are at.

Their reliance on fossil fuels at this time will naturally be higher. The fundamental problem remains one of apportioning the responsibility or ownership of future efforts, as the available carbon space in the atmosphere needs to be vacated (by developed nations) for those who need it (many countries in the Global South), but that is not happening.

Against the backdrop of this global competition for capturing carbon space, at the COP 26 summit in Glasgow last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India will achieve net-zero status by 2070.

The focus for India will now be on increasing the share of renewable energy in energy production and generation both in relative terms and absolute volume so as to eventually phase down consumption of coal and fossil fuels taking place in the economy across various sectors, and improving the carbon sink.

Increasing the uptake of renewable energy in India

There will likely be a large degree of government mobilisation towards solar and wind energy as well as biomass. Each of these has a role to play in India’s energy transition. However, given our climate, solar will receive the largest push.

The prime minister has announced that, by 2030, India will create 500 gigawatts of solar capacity. Currently, the national peak demand for electricity is around 203 gigawatts, whereas we have a capacity of around 400 gigawatts, including the renewables already in place.

So, by creating 500 gigawatts of solar electricity capacity, we should be able to meet a large share of our electricity demand even as it continues to increase. The prime minister wanted this to be in the range of 50 percent, meaning 50 percent of the electricity needs would be met from renewables by 2030. But, in actual fact, this may need a still higher quantum of renewables electricity capacity to be created.

The difficulty is that the efficiency of renewables is low, which is why the actual uptake of solar energy in the energy system is not more than 10 percent. In other words, we are only able to use approximately 10 percent of the electricity capacity that is created with renewables.

Even if we include the generation from nuclear or large hydro power in the small renewables, the share of renewable energy in the total electricity generation is still at about 21–22 percent, as compared to 78 percent with coal, oil, and gas.

So the question before us, as we try to make an energy transition, is: How do we enhance the uptake of renewables in the electricity system and how do we stabilise the grid? And where will the funding come from?

Even if India is able to produce intermittent renewable energy at a low variable cost, there are other systemic fixed costs that need to be factored in. These include the need for meeting the baseload in the grid (that is, the minimum level of electricity demand over 24 hours), transmitting the energy, transporting it across different states and regions, and, in the case of solar, making it available when the sun is not shining.

All of these require considerable investment in infrastructure and systems. And today our domestic financial system alone is not capable of mobilising finance at this scale.

So, the primary problem in making this energy transition is twofold. First, India needs to create technology for energy storage, which can meet the baseload in the grid and stabilise it when solar or wind energy is not available.

And, second, we need to mobilise the finance at a scale that can help us create a capacity of 500 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, and more as we go along. Every single gigawatt of renewable energy is going to cost approximately INR 6 crore. And not only in terms of financial cost, this kind of investment in renewables requires a lot of land as well.

So, the question is: Can we really mobilise these funds and resources at this scale and overcome the technology hump of renewable energy storage?

There is another challenge that lies ahead. Certain industrial sectors in the economy—for instance, petrochemicals, steel, and cement—are extremely inflexible in terms of the kind of technology and energy that they need.

So, even if we are able to reduce the emissions intensity of our GDP by improving energy efficiency and the proportion of renewable energy in our energy system, it is not going to be enough. As India grows and develops, its economic production and energy consumption will increase.

And, for these sectors, replacing carbon will not be possible without the availability of alternative fuels, which are necessary for certain industrial production and processes. Such fuels are necessary for transport and cement and steel production, which are likely to grow by three times.

Therefore, to make the transition, we need heavy investment in alternate low-carbon fuels such as hydrogen and natural gas. We also require tech innovation at scale to bring down the cost of these fuels and enable the production of steel and cement at an affordable and competitive rate.

In summary, India’s mitigation efforts must revolve largely around mobilising funds and investing in tech innovation at scale.

What India needs to focus on when it comes to adaptation

Enhancing climate resilience is going to be critical for a country like ours. Given that many states face unique kinds of climate threats, each of them must have a climate resilience strategy, so that the productivity of the economic system does not get compromised in the process of addressing climate change.

While we focus on making changes to our energy system, we need to take simultaneous measures to ensure that agricultural productivity remains stable, water does not become scarce, coastal communities are not threatened by the rise in sea level, and so on.

One way to do this is by increasing the capacities of the communities to address climate change. Managing water resources is going to be the key to adaptation efforts, given that close to 80 percent of the water in India is consumed in agriculture.

At the same time, we need to insulate communities from climate disasters like floods, droughts, cyclones, and extreme heatwaves, which requires investment in infrastructure, for instance, roads and telecom structures.

Here, the challenge is that there are very few entities coming forward to make the kind of investments we need. In the case of mitigation efforts, there are business models that can generate returns for the investors. But, in the case of adaptation and resilient infrastructure, there are no financial returns, and it is only the government budget or public resources that we have to fall back on.

There is reason to be hopeful

While the task ahead of us entails massive systemic changes that may seem daunting, we should not lose hope.

The intensity of global discussions has permeated into national strategies, such as India’s. The successful execution of our strategies depends on political commitment, which already exists at the national and state level. State MPs and MLAs are now thinking and talking about climate change—this was not the case 10 years ago.

What we need now is for state climate action plans (many of which exist) to incorporate a framework for mobilising investments and measuring benefits and outcomes. Once this is done, it’s only a matter of time before a climate lens is fully integrated into our development policies too.

Corporate India has also woken up to their contributions to worsening climate change, and are beginning to shift their priorities accordingly. Many industry majors such as the Tatas, Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro, Shell India, and Dalmia have announced net-zero targets by 2040 or 2050.

The SEBI has mandated 1,000 top companies listed on the stock exchange to follow a mandatory framework of business sustainability and responsibility reporting and make disclosures on some of the key environmental parameters. This is a step in the right direction, and once we develop a robust disclosure system that includes penalties and rewards for actions taken, we will begin to see a lot more movement in this area.

When it comes to citizens, there are a few things that can be done. The first is to build our own awareness, and that of those around us, when it comes to climate change impacts. We must integrate the environmental consciousness into our education system.

Doing this can help build community action against policies and actions that have adverse consequences for the environment. This is difficult but not impossible to do, given that young people today are much more environmentally conscious than the previous generations.

The second course, of action, is to develop a deeper understanding of our own resource efficiency—how much we are consuming, recycling, or restoring. Earlier we would talk about three Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle); now there are six Rs (Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair).

We need to move towards a circular economy, which will require participation from all citizens as well as industry. India has a head start here, given that traditionally we have had a culture of recycling and reusing. Industry needs to move in this direction too and follow the norms for extended producers’ responsibility. Improving resource efficiency, even in our own homes, will go a long way in making a difference to how climate change progresses in the coming years.

Rajani Ranjan Rashmi is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Global Environmental Research, TERI, where he works on climate change, mitigation and adaptation strategies, carbon markets, and related issues

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

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

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Caring for Water Where Mining Leads to Wealth and Tragedies in Brazil — Global Issues

A mountainous landscape in the area of the headwaters of the Velhas River, where “barraginhas”, the Portuguese name for holes dug like lunar craters in the hills and slopes, prevent erosion by swallowing a large amount of soil that sediments the upper reaches of the river, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
  • by Mario Osava (belo horizonte/itabirito, brazil)
  • Inter Press Service

BELO HORIZONTE/ITABIRITO, Brazil, May 19 (IPS) – The southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais owes its name to the main economic activity throughout its history: mining – of gold since the 17th century and later iron ore, which took on an industrial scale with massive exports in the 20th century.

The so-called Iron Quadrangle, a mountainous area of some 7,000 square kilometers in the center of the state, concentrates the state’s minerals and mining activity, long questioned by environmentalists, who have been impotent in the face of the industry’s economic clout.

But the threat of water shortages in Greater Belo Horizonte, population six million, along with two horrific mining accidents, reduced the disparity of forces between the two sides. Now environmentalists can refer to actual statistics and events, not just ecological arguments.

Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state, experienced an unprecedented water crisis in 2014 and 2015, during a drought that affected the entire southeast of Brazil.

“For the first time we experienced shortages here that only the semi-arid north of the state was familiar with,” said Marcelo da Fonseca, general director of the Mining Institute of Water Management (Igam).

On Jan. 25, 2019, a tailings dam broke in Brumadinho, 35 kilometers from Belo Horizonte as the crow flies. The tragedy killed 270 people and toxic sludge contaminated more than 300 kilometers of the Paraopeba River, which provided 15 percent of the water for the Greater Belo Horizonte region (known as RMBH), whose supply has not yet recovered.

On Nov. 5, 2015, a similar accident had claimed 19 lives in Mariana, 75 kilometers from Belo Horizonte, and silted up more than 600 kilometers of the Doce River on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. (The river, whose waters run eastward, do not supply the RMBH.)

Two years of drought, in 2014 and 2015, frightened the population of Greater Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. For the first time the threat of water shortages was felt, said the director general of the Minas Gerais Water Management Institute, Marcelo da Fonseca. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Mining hazards

Minas Gerais has more than 700 mining tailings dams. The latest data from the State Environmental Foundation (Feam) show 33 in different degrees of emergency, four of which are at level three – high risk and mandatory evacuation of endangered residents – and nine at level 2 – recommended evacuation.

“We are hostages of the mining companies, they occupy the territory and make other economies unviable,” said Camila Alterthum, one of the founders and coordinators of the Cresce Institute and an activist with the Fechos, Eu Cuido movement, promoted by the Rio de las Velhas Watershed Committee.

Fechos is the name of an Ecological Station, a 603-hectare integral conservation area belonging to the municipality of Nova Lima, but bordering Belo Horizonte.

“There are mountains here that recharge the Cauê aquifer, which supplies more than 200,000 inhabitants of southern Belo Horizonte and a neighborhood in Nova Lima,” an adjoining municipality, said Alterthum, who lives in Vale do Sol, a neighborhood adjacent to Fechos.

Activist Camila Alterthum is opposed to mining, which she says is a permanent threat to the destruction of nature and water sources. She is fighting to expand the Fechos Ecological Station, whose forests contribute to the water supply for more than 200,000 inhabitants of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Her movement presented to the Minas Gerais state legislature a bill to expand Fechos by 222 hectares, to provide more water and preserve local biodiversity.

But Vale, Brazil’s largest mining company, aims to expand its two local mines in that area.

In order to acquire the land, it is offering double the number of hectares for conservation, a counterproposal rejected by the movement because it would not meet the environmental objectives and most of it is an area that the company must preserve by law anyway.

A fiercer battle was unleashed by the decision of the Minas Gerais government’s State Environmental Policy Council, which has a majority of business and government representatives, to approve on Apr. 30 a project by the Taquaril company to extract iron ore from the Curral mountain range.

Forestry engineer Julio Carvalho, of the Itabirito municipal government, stands next to a “barraginha” on a private rural property, whose owners joined the municipal effort to contain soil loss and river sedimentation in this area of southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

This mountain range is the most prominent landscape feature of Belo Horizonte, in addition to being important in terms of water and environmental aspects for the capital, although it is located on its border, on the side of the municipality of Nova Lima. The mining threat triggered a huge outcry from environmentalists, artists and society in general.

Droughts and erosion

There are other threats to the RMBH’s water supply. “We are very close to the springs, so we depend on the rains that fall here,” Fonseca told IPS at Igam headquarters in Belo Horizonte.

Two consecutive years of drought have seriously jeopardized the water supply.

Two basins supply the six million inhabitants of the 34 municipalities making up Greater Belo Horizonte.

The Velhas River accounts for 49 percent of the water supply and the Paraopeba River for 51 percent, according to Sergio Neves, superintendent of the Metropolitan Business Unit of the Minas Gerais Sanitation Company (Copasa), which serves most of the state.

The Paraopeba River stopped supplying water after the 2019 accident, but its basin has two important reservoirs in the tributaries. The one on the Manso River, for example, supplies 34 percent of the RMBH.

The phenomenon of “voçorocas” (gullies) is repeated in several parts of Itabirito and Ouro Preto, the municipalities where the Velhas river basin originates, in southeastern Brazil. The soil is vulnerable to erosion and measures to mitigate the damage are finally beginning to proliferate in a region dominated by iron ore mining. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The Velhas River only has a small hydroelectric power plant reservoir, with a capacity of 9.28 megawatts, but it is generating only four megawatts. It is run-of-river, that is, it does not store enough water to regulate the flow or compensate for low water levels.

In addition, sedimentation has greatly reduced its storage capacity since it began to operate in 1907. The soil upstream is vulnerable to erosion and has been affected by urban and agricultural expansion, local roads and various types of mining, not only of iron ore, which aggravate the sedimentation of the rivers, said Fonseca.

Decentralized solutions

The municipal government of Itabirito, which shares the headwaters of the Velhas basin with Ouro Preto, the gold capital in the 18th century, is promoting several actions mentioned by Fonseca to mitigate erosion and feed the aquifers that sustain the flow of the rivers.

Businessman and environmentalist Ronaldo Guerra stands on his farm where he promotes ecotourism and exhibits his proposal for a succession of small dams as a mechanism for storing water on the surface and in the water table, strengthening the forests and the hydrographic basin in a mining region of southeastern Brazil where there is growing concern about the water supply. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

It is intriguing to see craters in some rural properties in Itabirito, especially on hills or gently sloping land.

They are “barraginhas”, explained Julio Carvalho, a forestry engineer and employee of the Municipal Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development. They are micro-dams, holes dug to slow down the runoff of rainwater that causes erosion.

This system prevents a large part of the sediment from flowing into the rivers, as well as the phenomenon of “voçorocas” (gullies, in Portuguese), products of intense erosion that abound in several parts of Itabirito and Ouro Preto, municipalities where the first tributaries of the Velhas are born.

As these are generally private lands, the municipal government obtains financing to evaluate the properties, design the interventions and put them out to bid, in agreement with the committees that oversee the watersheds, Carvalho told IPS.

The municipality of Itabirito is the “water tank” of Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. The municipal government is promoting programs aimed at revitalizing the watershed that supplies nearly half of the six million inhabitants of Greater Belo Horizonte, explains Frederico Leite, environmental secretary of the municipality, which depends on mining activity. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

For country roads, which generate a great deal of erosion in the undulating topography, “dry boxes” are used, as well as small holes in the banks to retain the torrents or at least curb their speed, he said.

Other “mechanical land use and conservation practices” include recovering water sources through reforestation and fencing to prevent animals from invading water sources and trampling the surrounding areas.

Itabirito is also seeking to dredge the river of the same name, which crosses the city, to reduce sedimentation, which was aggravated by flooding in January, when the water level in the river rose unusually high.

Environmental education, a program of payments for environmental services and the expansion of conservation areas, in the city as well, are the plans implemented by Felipe Leite, secretary of environment and sustainable development of Itabirito since 2019.

“We want to create a culture of environmental preservation,” partly because “Itabirito is the water tank of Belo Horizonte,” he told IPS.

The municipal government chose to cooperate with the mining industry, especially with the Ferro Puro company, which decided to pave a road and reforest it with flowers as part of a tourism project.

In São Bartolomeu, a town in the municipality of Ouro Preto, Ronald Guerra, an ecotourism entrepreneur, proposes a succession of small dams and reservoirs as a way of retaining water, feeding the water table and preventing erosion.

On his 120-hectare farm, half of which is recognized as a Private Natural Heritage Reserve –a private initiative conservation effort – he has 13 small dams and raises fish for his restaurant and sport fishing.

The son of a doctor from Belo Horizonte, he opted for rural life and agroecology from a young age. He was secretary of environment of Ouro Preto and today he is an activist in several watershed committees, non-governmental organizations and efforts for the promotion of local culture.

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New Medicines May Help End AIDS — but High Prices & Monopolies Could Keep the Poor Locked Out — Global Issues

A man is tested for HIV at a health centre in Odienné, Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: UNICEF/Frank Dejongh
  • Opinion by Eamonn Murphy, Matthew Kavanagh (washington dc)
  • Inter Press Service
  • The writers are Deputy Executive Directors of the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)

WASHINGTON DC, May 18 (IPS) – Here’s the good news: there are a new set of breakthrough medicines to prevent and treat HIV, known as “long actings” because they can be taken every few months instead of every day, and they are coming on-stream. If, as they are rolled out, they are made available at scale, they could help save many lives and help end the AIDS pandemic.

But here’s the bad news: on the current trajectory, most people who need them will not be able to get them any time soon, because high prices and monopolies will keep people in low- and middle-income countries locked out. That’s where we are heading – again.

UNAIDS has been convening some of the world’s leading scientists and researchers. They have emphasised to us that long-acting drugs for prevention are available now – an injection every few months that very effectively protects against HIV transmission. It has been approved in the U.S. and the World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing it now.

And in the near term, there are in addition exciting medicines in development for long-acting treatment – which could make it far easier for people to stay on life-long HIV treatment, even when their lives make getting pills every day difficult.

New HIV prevention tools like long-acting pre-exposure prophylactic (PrEP) are particularly needed to fight the ongoing pandemic. In 2020, a year for which the world had set a collective goal of reducing new infections below 500,000, there were, in fact, 1.5 million; and in too many communities new HIV infections are rising.

Long-acting injectable PrEP could help fill critical HIV prevention needs for those facing the worlds’ highest HIV risks – particularly those whose lives, logistics, and legal contexts make accessing and taking oral prep challenging.

This includes people facing discrimination, including gay men, transgender people, sex workers, and people who use drugs in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. Young African women, facing far higher risks than young men of their age, also need new HIV prevention options.

Studies have shown many people want a long-acting option, and indeed an estimated 74 million people around the world use long-acting injections to prevent pregnancy. Carefully done studies presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) showed long-acting PrEP can prevent more new infections than taking a pill every day.

If and when WHO endorses its use, the world should move fast to make it available at scale. The best way to ensure this breakthrough science translates into a global game-changer it is to make it available free to all who choose it.

UN member states agreed a new Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS last year that sets an ambitious goal of getting access to PrEP for 11 million people by 2025. For this to be possible, the governments and institutions who will need to make large scale purchases will need to be able to do so at a price that they can afford.

Right now, in the U.S. long-acting PrEP costs tens of thousands of dollars. But members of UNAIDS’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) assess that long-acting prep can be manufactured affordably – tens of dollars instead of tens of thousands. It would be possible for prices to come down whilst ensuring continued profitability for producers.

For treatment, the science is also moving rapidly and promising technologies on the way could be transformative. As of last year, 28.2 million people were on HIV treatment – that’s over 10 billion times every year people living with HIV take a pill.

But 10 million more people still need access to HIV treatment. If people could choose a pill that lasted a week or an injection that lasted months it would make it easier for many to start and sustain treatment – saving lives and stopping HIV transmission.

One key structural barrier that jeopardizes widespread access is the fact that production of these medicines is so far monopolized by a tiny number of companies based in a tiny number of countries, keeping prices high and limiting (and concentrating) supply. We know from experience (on the first ARVs, on the second generation of ARVs, and with COVID-19 vaccines and medicines) that this barrier can only be overcome through intervention.

When treatment for HIV first became available in the late 1990s, ARV monopolies meant the price was over $10,000 per person per year, a price far out of reach for the millions of people living with HIV.

As a consequence,12 million Africans died. Mass use of antiretrovirals to stop AIDS came only when low- and middle-income countries defied pressure and triggered generic competition, and when global civil society pressured Western governments and companies to stop working to block them.

That experience led the world to say never again to allowing people in developing countries to be locked out access to life-saving medical technology. But the same exclusionary and deadly approach has denied Africa access to sufficient vaccines in the COVID-19 crisis.

And on the current trajectory we are on course to repeat the story with new HIV medicines. It could be years before new drugs becoming available in New York or London ever reach those who need them most in Manila, Freetown, Maputo, Sao Paolo and Port-au-Prince.

An alternative approach is available, that ensures the translation of science into impact. Manufacturers of HIV drugs can set prices at affordable levels for low- and middle-income countries. To secure this for the long term, generic production in low- and middle-income countries is essential.

To do that we have to overcome monopolies. Pooling patents and pro-actively transferring technology can make it possible for a wider set of manufacturers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to make long-acting ARVs at low costs. This must be standard practice – and the sharing of information can start even before regulatory approval for use.

Of course, price and local production are not the only barriers to ensuring effective use. Some public health systems may require global solidarity and support to purchase commodities, with logistics and storage, training for effective provision, and engaging communities to ensure demand and treatment literacy for retention. The joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and our partners, are providing support on all of these.

Building from emergency action on COVID-19, we need to end inequalities in access right across health technologies, by spurring the best science and getting it to everyone, investing in all health innovations as global public goods.

To stop today’s pandemics and to prevent future pandemics, it is vital to move from monopolizing knowledge about lifesaving health technologies to sharing it worldwide. We need to reform rules on the protection of intellectual property that have failed us in these pandemics, so that access to life-saving science is no longer dependent on the passport you hold or the money in your pocket.

We need governments to use their powers to compel sharing of pandemic science and technology and ways to compel companies and countries to use WHO-led mechanisms. We need to separate incentives for innovation from monopolies on manufacturing. Monopolies constrain supply, perpetuate unaffordable prices, widen inequalities, and have proven an unreliable driver of innovation, especially for those health issues that disproportionately impact people living in poverty.

We need to invest now in building health production capacity all over the world. We need to prioritise investment in universities and other public research institutions to enhance our technical capacity to develop medical technologies for all.

We can end the AIDS pandemic. And the COVID-19 pandemic. And stop the pandemics of the future. But we are not on track – in part because biomedical breakthroughs are not getting to those who need them most. If we act on long-acting ARVs, many people who would otherwise have acquired HIV will not. People living with HIV who would otherwise have died of AIDS will not. And the well-being and dignity of people at risk of or living with HIV can be enhanced.

Equitable global access to pandemic-fighting technologies cannot be achieved through the default operation of the market alone. It is policy and practice dependent. Work on those policies cannot wait until all those technologies have been rolled out at scale in rich countries, but needs to be accelerated now.

Leaders from civil society networks, especially those led by people living with HIV and by key populations, are calling for us to act now to ensure global access to new HIV technologies. We can and we should.

Shared science will save lives and stop pandemics.

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Africa Expected to Strongly Support Durban Call to Action on Child Labour — Global Issues

African Union Commission Department of Trade and Industry, head of industry Houssein Guedi highlighted how 92,2 million of the world’s children entrapped in child labour live in Africa, at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban. Credit: Lyse Comins/IPS
  • by Lyse Comins (durban)
  • Inter Press Service

Durban, May 17 (IPS) – Global goals to eradicate child labour will not be achieved without a breakthrough in Africa, where most of the world’s 160 million children entrapped in child labour work in rural regions, mostly in agriculture with their families.

This is why the “Durban Call to Action” to eradicate child labour, spearheaded by the African Union (AU), the International Labour Organization (ILO), civil society organisations and other world leaders, is crucial and must be implemented by the countries on the continent.

Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Africa of ILO Cynthia Samuel-Olonjuwon told delegates that the draft “Durban Call to Action”, expected to be finalised and formally adopted in the city on Friday, recognised the need to drive change in the world. She was speaking during a high-level panel discussion at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban.

Samuel-Olonjuwon concentrated on continental-specific challenges, policy priorities and strategic partnerships to end child labour in Africa.

Samuel-Olonjuwon said the ILO had already supported the adoption and implementation of the African Union Ten Year Action Plan on Eradication of Child Labour, Forced Labour, Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery in Africa (2020-2030), which was the first plan of its kind in the world.

She said stakeholders engaged in the drive to eliminate child labour had developed the foundation of the draft “Durban Call to Action” when they met in Johannesburg to prepare for the conference in November 2021.

“The ILO will support the implementation of the Durban Call to Action in line with ILO conventions and the AU action plan on child labour,” Samuel-Olonjuwon said.

She said efforts needed to be coordinated across regions to be effective.

“Africa has shown that it is ready to drive the change to accelerate action to end child labour. We recognise there is still a long way to go, but we also know the commitment, understanding and the resolve to take action now, is widely shared. The need to act with urgency, especially for making progress on an annual basis, is also widely shared. We must coordinate our efforts, especially with those of us who are development partners, in close collaboration with the private sector, civil society and we as social partners and agencies,” she said.

African Union Commission Department of Trade and Industry, head of industry Houssein Guedi, highlighted the current status quo of child labour on the continent and the foundational points of the draft Durban Call to Action plan.

He said 92,2 million of the world’s 160 million children entrapped in child labour live in Africa. This equates to  21,6% of the continent’s 400 million child population. Most of the children in child labour live in Eastern Africa (29,8%), Western Africa (22,8%), Central Africa (19,3%), Southern Africa (16,7%) and Northern Africa (6,1%).

“Most child labourers are very young – almost 60% are less than 12 years of age. Child labour is more prevalent among boys than girls. Child labour is predominantly a rural and agricultural phenomenon (81% of children in child labour),” Guedi said.

Some 45% of children in child labour are engaged in hazardous work. About 72% of children were combining school with work, although 32,2 million children of primary school-going age are not in school, despite a substantial improvement in access to education between 1990 and 2019.

Guedi said child labour often occurred in correlation with broader development challenges, such as in countries with high levels of informal employment, where populations received at least one social benefit, and a large percentage of the population is living below the poverty line.

He said there was now “unprecedented awareness, commitment and political will”, shown by a high level of ratifications on the continent and the implementation of policies and legislation to end child labour in recent years.

“We’ve seen some good practices emerging which could inspire Africa and the rest of the world,” Guedi said.

However, he added that there were still gaps in legislation, a lack of data for planning and weak enforcement, particularly in the agricultural sector and informal economy where child labour prevails.

“In Johannesburg, we discussed the importance of taking into account the salient features of child labour on the continent – young, rural, agriculture, family work, hazardous work, out of school/combining school and work – and key development challenges underlying child labour,” Guedi said.

He said stakeholders had agreed to actions which would form the basis of the Durban Call to Action.

These included the need to:

  • Focus on prevention and the root causes
  • Achieve impact at scale through adequately financing public policies and programmes
  • Focus on the most immediate major challenges and most actionable in terms of time frames for achieving results
  • Accelerate action to ensure quality universal education for all boys and girls
  • Expand social protection for workers in the informal economy and the agricultural sector
  • Secure decent work for adults
  • Focus on the school to work transition
  • Fill gaps in legislation for effective action against child labour, especially the worst forms
  • Take large scale action in agriculture and rural development
  • Develop measures to deal with child labour in conflict and crises
  • Increase financing for child labour activities
  • Mobilise political and social support to build momentum for accelerated action
  • Improve the availability of quality child labour data and research

Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) assistant director-general and Africa representative Abebe Haile Gabriel said the continent needed to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security, which had affected the most vulnerable families. He said the continent needed to promote mechanised agriculture to reduce reliance on children, expand social security to improve farmers’ resilience and provide free access to relevant education.

Ugandan Minister for Gender, Labour, and Social Development, Amongi Betty Ongom, said the pandemic had led to parents losing their jobs when economic sectors went into lockdown, many children had lost two years of schooling, and some had not returned due to a lack of affordability when schools eventually reopened.

African Union Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Industry and Mining, Albert Mudenda Muchangam, said child labour “destroyed the future of our children”.

“You find child labour in mining and in households – some are paid, but lowly paid, and others are completely unpaid, which is modern-day slavery. We have a test, each one of us, to ensure we end the scourge of child labour,”  Muchangam said.

“We have an obligation to eradicate child labour and to bring them up and give them the opportunity to learn and to play with their friends so they should grow up as decent human beings. The persistence of child labour undermines that, and it also contributes to destroying their lives. Let us join forces together to fight the scourge of child labour wherever we see it,” Muchangam said.

This is one of a series of stories that IPS will publish during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

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Call to Invest ‘Serious Resources’ in Education, to Stem Tide of Child Labour — Global Issues

Significant investments from the international community will be needed to get free quality education for every child. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS
  • by Cecilia Russell (durban)
  • Inter Press Service

Durban, May 17 (IPS) – “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to eliminate child labour.” So said Dennis Sinyolo, Director of Education International’s African Regional Office in Accra, Ghana adapting liberation icon and late South African president Nelson Mandela’s famous quote about how education can change the world.

Sinyolo was participating in a themed discussion on education at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour.

The panellists agreed that the investment in teachers was also crucial to ending child labour.

Sinyolo noted that teachers are the ones who identify those out of school, raise awareness about schooling and mobilise to get them into school.

Cornelius Williams, Director Child Protection for UNICEF, noted that a worrying trend in increased child labour has developed in the two years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 1.5 million learners were affected by school closures.

“This has been a huge setback against education and also a setback in child labour,” said Williams.

He said that 16.8 m more children in the age group from 5 to 11 were working, which was expected to rise. One-third of these were out of school, and for every child out of school – another balances work and school.

The role of teachers was also highlighted by Malawi’s Education Minister, Agnes NyaLonje.

In her country, two million children are in child labour.

She called on the “global education community to mobilise serious resources” as developing countries, with a large population of school-going children, struggled to pay for infrastructure and provide free quality education for at least 12 years.

“Funding is inadequate,” NyaLonje said. “The situation of Malawi, I think is a case in point, population increases at 3% a year and the majority of the young population, which is over three-quarters of the population, in the country is (aged) zero to 15 which are the clients of education.”

She said for developing countries like Malawi, there was never enough money to adequately fund both infrastructure and education.

“No matter how much we try to put aside part of budgets, it is never enough.”

NyaLonje said teachers need support. She told a story about the saddest thing she experienced after the country was devastated by Cyclone Ana. She had told teachers that they needed to go back to work within days of the cyclone, despite the impact on infrastructure.

However, the impact of her instruction was brought home by the plight of a disabled teacher, who was saved during the cyclone by being carried out of the house by his daughters. Now homeless and disabled, he was expected to prepare to return to teaching.

The impact of natural disasters was also apparent in Durban, where the conference is being held. Apart from already being behind with schools and infrastructure development due to historical apartheid-driven lack of development, Kwazi Mshengu MEC Education, Kwa-Zulu Natal, told the conference that the recent floods, where about 500 people lost their lives, also had wrecked schooling infrastructure.

Mshengu said that because of historical injustices, the disadvantaged settled wherever they could find land close to economic opportunities. The floods affected 630 schools were affected with 101 schools completely inaccessible.

“We are also sitting with learners with no families and homes and sheltering in community halls … their parents were swept away in the floods. We need to join hands to ensure that they don’t have to turn to forced labour in order to feed themselves,” Mshengu said.

All the delegates had strong words to add to the Durban Call to Action, which will be released on Friday when the conference closes.

Dawit David Moges Alemu of the Ethiopian Federation of Employers said it was important for leaders to stick to their commitments.

Sinyolo advised that closing the gap between policy and practice was crucial.

“Education should be free and genuinely free,” he said at least for the first 12 years. He called for support and investments in teachers and ensured their remuneration was fair.

Mshengu called for a system that engenders a value system that “loves their kids” and puts the children at the centre of the system.

Nguyen Thi Ha, Vice Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, Viet Nam called for enhanced quality vocational training.

NyaLonje reiterated her call for serious resources to be found for education but crucially too called for an investment in teachers, because sustainable development begins with education.

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Floods Drive Urban Solutions in Brazilian Metropolis — Global Issues

Pollution from urban sewage is visible in the Onça (jaguar, in Portuguese) River, near its mouth, seen here from the entrance bridge in the Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood that suffers frequent flooding when it rains heavily in Belo Horizonte, capital of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
  • by Mario Osava (belo horizonte, brazil)
  • Inter Press Service

BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, May 17 (IPS) – “We do everything through parties, we don’t want power, we don’t want to take over the role of the State, but we don’t just protest and complain,” said Itamar de Paula Santos, a member of the United Community Council for Ribeiro de Abreu (Comupra), in this southeastern Brazilian city.

Ribeiro de Abreu is one of the neighborhoods most affected by recurrent flooding in Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, as it is located on the right bank of the Onça (jaguar, in Portuguese) River, on the lower stretch, into which the water drains from a 212 square kilometer basin made up of numerous streams.

Cleaning up the river and preventing its waters from continuing to flood homes requires actions that also produce social benefits.

“We have so far removed 736 families who were living in high-risk situations, on the riverbank,” Santos told IPS in the same place where precarious and frequently flooded shacks gave way to the Community Riverside Park (Parque Ciliar, in Portuguese), which has a garden, soccer field, children’s playground and fruit trees.

The project, begun by local residents together with Comupra and the local government in 2015 and gradually implemented since then, aims to extend the community park 5.5 kilometers upstream through several neighborhoods by 2025.

This includes doubling the number of families resettled, cleaning up the Onça basin and its nine beaches, three islands and three waterfalls, preserving nature and developing urban agriculture, and creating areas for sports and cultural activities. All with participatory management and execution.

Itamar de Paula Santos, an activist with the United Community Council for Ribeiro de Abreu, longs to go back to swimming and fishing in the Onça River, as he did in his childhood. But its waters, polluted by urban waste, often flood the riverside neighborhoods in the rainy season as the river flows through the city of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Displaced within the same neighborhood

The families removed from the flood-prone riverbank now live mostly in safe housing in the same Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood, which had 16,000 inhabitants at the 2010 census, but is now estimated to be home to 20,000 people.

The Belo Horizonte city government has a rule to resettle families from risky areas in places no more than three kilometers from where they used to live, Ricardo Aroeira, director of Water Management of the Municipal Secretariat of Works and Infrastructure, told IPS.

That is the case of Dirce Santana Soares, 55, who now lives with her son, her mother and four other family members in a five-bedroom house, with a yard where she grows a variety of fruit trees and vegetables.

“It’s the best thing that could have happened to us,” she said. Five years ago she lived next to the river, which flooded her shack, almost always in the wee hours of the morning, every year during the rainiest months in Belo Horizonte – December and January.

“We had bunk beds and we piled everything we wanted to save on top of them. Then we built a second floor on the house, leaving the first floor to the mud,” she told IPS. “But I didn’t want to leave the neighborhood where I had been living for 34 years.”

She was lucky. After receiving the compensation for leaving her riverside shack, an acquaintance sold her their current home, at a low price, with long-term interest-free installments.

View of a beach on the Onça River, which the movement for clean rivers wants to recuperate as a recreational area for the local population in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. At this spot, the Onça River receives the waters of the Isidoro stream. There are another eight beaches to be restored as well. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Bad luck

Soares, who is now a domestic worker, had a daycare center that started losing money in the face of the increased offer of free nursery schools by the local government, and the COVID-19 pandemic over the last two years.

Itamar Santos, a 64-year-old father of three, has also lived in the neighborhood for almost four decades. Before that, he worked as a mechanical lathe operator in other cities and for three years in Carajás, the large iron ore mine in the eastern Amazon, 1,600 km north of Belo Horizonte.

In 1983, in Carajás, he lost his right leg when he fell into a 12-meter well. “It was night-time, and there was no electricity, just dark jungle,” he explained. After the first painful impact, he learned to live with his disability and regained the joy of living, with a specially adapted car.

He became an activist and among his achievements were free bus tickets for paraplegics and a gymnasium for multiple sports. “Creating conditions that enable the disabled to leave their homes is therapeutic,” he told IPS.

View of a community garden that local residents in the Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood cultivate on the banks of the Onça River. Some 140 families who suffered annual flooding were resettled and now live in safe housing in the same part of Belo Horizonte, a metropolis in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

But the cause that impassions him today is the river, which in January has a heavy flow due to the heavy rains that month, but dries up in September, in the dry season.

“Let the Onça drink clean water” is the slogan of a movement also promoted by Santos, to emphasize the protection and recovery of the thousands of springs that supply the river and its tributary streams.

Every year since 2008, this movement, driven by Comupra, organizes meetings for reflection and debate on the revitalization of the river in riverside venues in different neighborhoods in the basin.

The festivities are also repeated annually, or more often. Carnival brings joy to the local population on the beaches or squares along the banks of the Onça River, and giant Christmas trees are set up for the communities to come out and celebrate the holidays.

The basin, or more precisely sub-basin, of the Onça River comprises the northern half of the territory and the population of Belo Horizonte, which totals 2.5 million inhabitants. The south, which is richer, is where the Arrudas River is located.

Both emerge in the neighboring municipality to the west, Contagem, and flow east into the Das Velhas River, the main source of water for the six million inhabitants of Greater Belo Horizonte. As they cross heavily populated areas, they are the main polluters of the Velhas basin.

Major floods in the provincial capital occur mainly in the Onça sub-basin. The steep topography of Belo Horizonte makes the soil more impermeable, leading to more disasters.

Maria José Zeferino, a retired teacher from neighboring schools, at the Our Lady of Mercy Park, which was built to clean up a stream from urban pollution that was spreading diarrhea and parasites among the students of three nearby schools, in Belo Horizonte, a city in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Other riverbank parks

The Belo Horizonte city government has been working on drainage plans for years and has been implementing the Program for the Environmental Recovery of the Valley and Creek Bottoms since 2001.

In April it published the Technical Instruction for the Elaboration of Drainage Studies and Projects, under the general coordination of Aroeira.

Since the end of the last century there has been a “paradigm shift,” said Aroeira. Channeling watercourses used to be the norm, but this “merely shifted the site of the floods.” Now the aim is to contain the torrents and to give new value to rivers, integrating them into the urban landscape, cleaning them up and at the same time improving the quality of life of the riverside populations, he explained.

The construction of long, narrow linear parks, which combines the clean-up of rivers or streams with environmental preservation, riverside reforestation and services for the local population, is one of the “structural” measures that can be seen in Belo Horizonte.

The participation of students and teachers from three neighboring schools stood out in the implementation in 2008 of the Nossa Senhora da Piedad Park in the Aarão Reis neighborhood, home to 8,300 inhabitants in 2010, near the lower section of the Onça River.

Cleaning up the creek that gives the park its name was the major environmental and sanitary measure.

“Sewage from the entire neighborhood contaminated the stream and caused widespread illnesses among the children, such as diarrhea, verminosis (parasites in the bronchial tubes) and nausea,” Maria José Zeferino, a retired art teacher at one of the local schools, told IPS.

The medicinal herb garden in the Primer de Mayo Ecological Park was a demand of the local population in the southern Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. Creation of the park included the clean-up of a polluted stream and provides a gathering and recreational area for local residents. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The park, which belongs to the municipality, has an area of 58,000 square meters, a pond, three courts for different sports, a skateboarding area and a paved walkway for the elderly. A total of 143 families and one farm received compensation to vacate the area, leaving many fruit trees behind.

“A clean river was our dream. And the goal of the next stage is to have swimming, fishing and boating in the city’s streams,” said Zeferino.

The Primer de Mayo Ecological Park, in the neighborhood of the same name with 2,421 inhabitants according to the 2010 census, was built during the revitalization of the stream of the same name, covering 33,700 square meters along a winding terrain. The novelty is a medicinal herb garden, a demand of the local population.

“We discovered 70 springs here that feed the stream that runs into the Onça River,” said Paulo Carvalho de Freitas, an active member of the Community Commission that supports the municipal management of the park and carries out educational activities there.

“My fight for the future is to remove much of the concrete with which the park was built, which waterproofs the soil and goes against one of the objectives of the project,” which was inaugurated in 2008, said Freitas.

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No Quick End to Children Trapped in Tobacco Production — Global Issues

Children working on tobacco farms in Chipangali District in Eastern Province of Zambia. Credit: Brenda Chitindi, British Medical Journal, 2015.
  • Opinion by Judith Mackay, Leonce Dieudonne Leonce (hong kong / lome)
  • Inter Press Service

HONG KONG / LOME, May 17 (IPS) – Despite World Day Against Child Labour launched in 2002 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), little has changed over the past two decades for the millions of children who remain trapped.

To rescue children and achieve sustainable human and health rights improvements, laws that make corporations accountable and change power relations between workers and companies are needed, rather than voluntary industry codes and corporate charity.

The global tobacco industry, valued at 850B USD (2021) with the 6 largest companies earning 55 B USD in profit (2015), is profiting off the backs of an estimated 1.3 million children involved in tobacco production worldwide.

For many farming households in low-income countries, growing tobacco offers only a precarious livelihood, overshadowed by debt and the threat of poverty, in stark contrast to the profits of the big tobacco companies. Many smallholder farmers – who produce much of the world’s tobacco leaf – feel they have little choice but to enlist their children to work.

According to the global tobacco industry watch, STOP, tobacco companies have the power and resources to determine the level of wages and price of agricultural inputs, and can control the salaries that suppliers or contractors pay. However, their practices worsen children’s plight. They use layers of contracts to avoid direct responsibility for growers and workers, keep leaf prices low, and provide loans that keep farmers dependent.

To obscure the real problem, they use agricultural front groups, and partnerships with renowned organizations to undertake token community activities. All these effectively suppress progress towards diversification of strategies that would remove children from tobacco farming.

According to STOP, the first step to eliminating child labor in tobacco is to expose and remove tobacco industry interference.

Child labor in tobacco falls under “worst forms of child labor” due to the hazardous nature of handling tobacco. This mainly occurs in the tobacco fields and bidi factories, but can also occur throughout the whole tobacco cycle, for example, children selling cigarettes.

Children working with tobacco are placed at high risk of injury and illness, for example ‘Green Tobacco Sickness’ caused by nicotine poisoning through the skin. The absorption of nicotine causes symptoms which include nausea, weakness, dizziness, headaches and breathing difficulties. They are also exposed to large and frequent applications of pesticides, herbicides and fumigants that leads to a range of risks.

Child tobacco workers often labor 50 or 60 hours a week in extreme heat, use sharp and dangerous tools, lift heavy loads, and climb into the rafters of barns, risking serious injuries and falls.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 28% of children working in agriculture in general do not attend school at all, a blow to their best chance of avoiding the generational poverty trap.

Children’s voices drowned

Tobacco leaf is grown in more than 120 countries, but the incidence of child labor is under reported. In 2020, the US Department of Labor listed 19 countries which use child and forced labour in tobacco production is present.

Among them is Malawi from which tobacco imports to US were temporarily disallowed when Malawi children sued British American Tobacco (BAT) and Imperial Brands, seeking compensation for damages arising from child labor.

Meanwhile, tobacco industry corporate social responsibility (CSR) obscures the plight of children in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). Tobacco industry-backed publicity includes information of how 204,000 children were removed or kept away from child labor detracting from the legal and human rights of children exploited or the just compensation required to undo decades of harm.

Some governments have yet to resist so-called CSR of tobacco companies and realize that the tobacco industry is the problem and not partners in the elimination of child labor. The global treaty, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) recommends the adoption of farmer and worker-driven policies towards diversification that are sustainably financed and protected from tobacco industry interference.

Tobacco tax increases can potentially finance diversification programs, but advocates must struggle against the dilution of political will, brought on by token donations from the tobacco industry. According to the treaty, governments should ban and denormalize so-called CSR of the tobacco industry, as practiced in over 40 countries.

The Tobacco Industry’s Global Candy

The Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing (ECLT) Foundation, sponsored by big tobacco companies influence the anti-child labor narrative across the world. Through the ECLT, tobacco companies partnered with and funded the ILO and governments to position themselves as safeguarding the rights of child worker and “being part of the solution”.

While ECLT achieved little in reducing child labor, it added to the glossy sustainability reports of tobacco companies designed to attract more investors.

After coming to the conclusion that tobacco industry sponsorship has not led to much progress in eliminating child labor, in 2018 ILO announced it will not renew ECLT and tobacco industry funding. However, links between the ILO and the ECLT remains.

While the United Nations Global Compact delisted tobacco companies from its program, the ECLT remains in the program despite civil society protests that the UNGC participation is a violation of the compact’s policies, the Model Policy for Agencies of the UN System on Preventing Tobacco Industry Interference and WHO FCTC.

The ILO Decent Work Agenda and various Conventions are instruments to facilitate prohibition of forced or compulsory labor. But if these are not implemented, our children are betrayed and remain entrapped.

Footnote: The ILO’s 5th Global Child Labour Conference is taking place in Durban, South Africa, May 15-20.

Prof Judith Mackay is Asian is the Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control, Hong Kong, and Leonce Dieudonné Sessou is Executive Secretary of the African Tobacco Control Alliance, Togo

IPS UN Bureau


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



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When Saviours Are the Problem — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Anis Chowdhury (sydney and kuala lumpur)
  • Inter Press Service

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 17 (IPS) – Central bank policies have often worsened economic crises instead of resolving them. By raising interest rates in response to inflation, they often exacerbate, rather than mitigate business cycles and inflation.

Neither gods nor maestros
US Federal Reserve Bank chair Jerome Powell has admitted: “Whether we can execute a soft landing or not, it may actually depend on factors that we don’t control.” He conceded, “What we can control is demand, we can’t really affect supply with our policies. And supply is a big part of the story here”.

Anis ChowdhuryHence, decisionmakers must consider more appropriate policy tools. Rejecting ‘one size fits all’ formulas, including simply raising interest rates, anti-inflationary measures should be designed as appropriate. Instead of squelching demand by raising interest rates, supply could be enhanced.

Thus, Milton Friedman – whom many central bankers still worship – blamed the 1930s’ Great Depression on the US Fed. Instead of providing liquidity support to businesses struggling with short-term cash-flow problems, it squeezed credit, crushing economic activity.

Similarly, before becoming Fed chair, Ben Bernanke’s research team concluded, “an important part of the effect of oil price shocks on the economy results not from the change in oil prices, per se, but from the resulting tightening of monetary policy”.

Adverse impacts of the 1970s’ oil price shocks were worsened by the reactions of monetary policymakers, which caused stagflation. That is, US Fed and other central bank interventions caused economic stagnation without mitigating inflation.

Likewise, the longest US recession after the Great Depression, during the 1980s, was due to interest rate hikes by Fed chair Paul Volcker. A recent New York Times op-ed warned, “The Powell pivot to tighter money in 2021 is the equivalent of Mr. Volcker’s 1981 move” and “the 2020s economy could resemble the 1980s”.

Monetary policy for supply shocks?
Food prices surged in 2011 due to weather-related events ruining harvests in major food producing nations, such as Australia and Russia. Meanwhile, fuel prices soared with political turmoil in the Middle East.

Jomo Kwame SundaramHowever, Boston Fed head Eric Rosengren argued, “tightening monetary policy solely in response to contractionary supply shocks would likely make the impact of the shocks worse for households and businesses”.

Referring to Boston Fed research, he noted commodity price changes did not affect the long-run inflation rate. Other research has also concluded that commodity price shocks are less likely to be inflationary.

This reduced inflationary impact has been attributed to ‘structural changes’ such as workers’ diminished bargaining power due to labour market deregulation, technological innovation and globalization.

Hence, central banks are no longer expected to respond strongly to food and fuel price increases. Policymakers should not respond aggressively to supply shocks – often symptomatic of broader macroeconomic developments.

Instead, central banks should identify the deeper causes of food and fuel price rises, only responding appropriately to them. Wrong policy responses can compound, rather than mitigate problems.

Appropriate innovations
A former Philippines central bank Governor Amando M. Tetangco, Jr noted it had not responded strongly to higher food and fuel prices in 2004. He stressed, “authorities should ignore changes in the price of things that they cannot control”.

Tetangco warned, “the required policy response is not… straightforward… Thus policy makers will need to make a choice between bringing down inflation and raising output growth”. He emphasized, “a real sector supply side response may be more appropriate in addressing the pressure on prices”.

Thus, instead of restricting credit indiscriminately, financing constraints on desired industries (e.g., renewable energy) should be eased. Enterprises deemed inefficient or undesirable – e.g., polluters or those engaged in speculation – should have less access to the limited financing available.

This requires designing macroeconomic policies to enable dynamic new investments, technologies and economic diversification. Instead of reacting with blunt interest rate policy tools, policymakers should know how fiscal and monetary policy tools interact and impact various economic activities.

Used well, these can unlock supply bottlenecks, promote desired investments and enhance productivity. As no one size fits all, each policy objective will need appropriate, customized, often innovative tools.

Lessons from China
China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), developed “structural monetary policy” tools and new lending programmes to help victims of COVID-19. These ensured ample interbank liquidity, supported credit growth, and strengthened domestic supply chains.

Outstanding loans to small and micro businesses rose 25% to 20.8 trillion renminbi by March 2022 from a year before. By January, the interest rate for loans to over 48 million small and medium enterprises had dropped to 4.5%, the lowest level since 1978.

The PBOC has also provided banks with loan funds for promising, innovative and creditworthy companies, e.g., involved in renewable energy and digital technologies. It thus achieves three goals: fostering growth, maintaining debt at sustainable levels, and ‘green transformation’.

Defying global trends, China’s ‘factory-gate’ (or producer price) inflation fell to a one-year low in April 2022 as the PBOC eased supply chains and stabilized commodity prices. Although consumer prices have risen with COVID-19 lockdowns, the increases have remained relatively benign so far.

In short, the PBOC has coordinated monetary policy with both fiscal and industrial policies to boost confidence, promote desired investments and achieve stable growth. It maintains financial stability and policy independence by regulating capital flows, thus avoiding sudden outflows, and interest rate hikes in response.

Improving policy coordination
Central bankers monitor aggregate indicators, such as wages growth. However, before reacting to upward wage movements, the context needs to be considered. For example, wages may have stagnated, or the labour share of income may have declined over the long-term.

Moreover, wage increases may be needed for critical sectors facing shortages to attract workers with relevant skills. Wage growth itself may not be the problem. The issue may be weak long-term productivity growth due to deficient investments.

Input-output tables can provide information about sectoral bottlenecks and productivity, while flow-of-funds information reveals what sectors are financially constrained, and which are net savers or debtors.

Such information can helpfully guide design of appropriate, complementary fiscal and monetary policy tools. Undoubtedly, pursuing heterodox policies is challenging in the face of policy fetters imposed by current orthodoxies.

Central bank independence – with dogmatic mandates for inflation targeting and capital account liberalization – precludes better coordination, e.g., between fiscal and monetary authorities. It also undercuts the policy space needed to address both demand- and supply-side inflation.

Monetary authorities are under tremendous pressure to be seen to be responding to rising prices. But experience reminds us they can easily make things worse by acting inappropriately. The answer is not greater central bank independence, but rather, improved economic policy coordination.

IPS UN Bureau


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



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