Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 20 (IPS) – The growing and changing material requirements for new technologies have triggered natural resource scrambles for strategic minerals, generating dangerous rivalries fought out in the global South.
Scrambles for resources
Jayati Ghosh, Shouvik Chakraborty and Debamanyu Das have analyzed these new scrambles for mineral resources in developing countries triggered by major new innovations since the electronics boom.
Jomo Kwame SundaramNatural resources here refer to naturally occurring solid, liquid or gaseous materials in or on the Earth’s crust. When extracted and exported commercially, they are considered primary commodities.
All technologies – both peaceful and military – have specific material requirements. For example, energy transitions need particular minerals for renewable energy generation, transmission and storage.
New technologies, with specific material requirements, are changing the nature of rivalries – among states, corporations and individuals – seeking to control these mineral resources.
Feasible mass use of renewable energy requires extracting needed natural resources, which incurs costs and has adverse consequences. Commercial feasibility implies profitable extraction of desired minerals.
Thus, addressing global warming by generating more energy from renewable sources – while desirable and necessary – in turn generates new problems and challenges which need to be addressed.
Rare earths
Despite their name, rare earth elements (REE) may not actually be scarce. But most REE are difficult and costly to extract as they are usually found together with other minerals. Unsurprisingly, REE demand and supplies have changed greatly in recent years.
For the time being, demand for at least 17 ‘rare earth’ minerals is expected to grow. The inter-governmental International Energy Agency (IEA) projects supplies of some critical minerals will increase at least 30-fold over the next two decades.
Extracting lithium and other such minerals also has very problematic environmental implications. Mined all over the world, REE are usually processed and separated by several stages of often complex and costly extraction and chemical processing, with many harmful to the environment.
China currently leads the world in rare earth production, with over a third of the world’s known REE reserves. While Chinese companies dominate some supplies, China’s rare earth imports currently exceed its exports.
Nevertheless, China dominates ‘downstream’ processing of REEs. Chinese companies control over 85 per cent of the costly REE processing processes. Unsurprisingly, China also accounts for over 70% of the world’s photovoltaic solar panel production and over 90% of its silicon wafer manufacturing.
Lithium
Lithium is one of the minerals over which control has been hotly contested. Lithium is particularly needed for processes to replace mechanical energy generation using fossil fuels. It is also needed for many industrial, office and household appliances, including rechargeable batteries, electric vehicles and electronic goods.
Batteries – including rechargeable lithium-ion electrical grid storage devices – account for three-quarters of current supply. The IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario expects demand to rise 42-fold in less than two decades!
In 2021, there were almost 89 million tons of known lithium resources, mainly in developing countries. For decades, lithium mining has been very controversial, largely due to increasingly better known adverse environmental impacts.
As pure lithium is very chemically reactive, it is often mined as ore, as in West Australia. It is also obtained from salt flats and brine pools in the southern cone of South America, particularly in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
For decades, China has led the world in lithium mining. Australia and the US were second and third by the start of the pandemic, with 12% and 9% respectively. While Australia is the world’s largest exporter, lithium is mainly and increasingly mined in developing countries by a relatively few companies.
Undermining communities
REE mining has adversely impacted various ecosystems and communities. Mineral deposits may have to be raised from subterranean sources, or ‘concentrated’ by evaporation.
Such techniques typically deplete, contaminate and otherwise reduce access to fresh water. Local water systems – used by people, animals, including livestock, and plants, including crops – are often badly compromised as a consequence.
Extractive mining and related operations have worsened such environments. But mining companies can often get their way with impunity, often intimidating communities with the help of local politicians, government officials and police.
Such ecological damage has devastated forest and vegetation cover, caused biodiversity loss, and compromised hydrological systems. Thus, extractive operations often involve abuses, with adverse effects for local communities.
Economic gains to local communities are typically modest compared to mining’s adverse consequences. Benefits largely accrue to local ‘enablers’ while costs vary within communities with circumstances.
The authors also urge majority government ownership of mineral extracting and processing companies. This will reduce foreign reliance and meddling, including by big powers such as the United States and China.
Government transparency and accountability, including independent audits, can help ensure less adverse consequences and fairer compensation for all involved.
This also prevents elite capture, abuse and deployment of mineral rents in their own interest. Avoiding such abuses is necessary to ensure resource rents actually advance sustainable development, as Bolivia is striving to do.
Sustainability undermined?
New frontiers for mineral extraction are emerging, especially as innovation creates new extraction and processing possibilities. This implies a vicious circle as global warming becomes both cause and effect of such mineral extraction.
Mining practices threaten ecological fragility and vulnerability. Similarly, polar and seabed exploration and mining may well trigger disastrous environmental consequences, including mass extinctions of vulnerable polar and marine life.
LONDON, Sep 18 (IPS) – The author is Commonwealth Secretary-GeneralIn today’s increasingly interconnected world, marked by grave economic, environmental, and security crises that transcend global boundaries, it’s abundantly clear that our interdependence is an undeniable reality.
Rt Hon Patricia ScotlandThese challenges loom large as countries from across the world gather at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Our world is under pressure, and people are looking to its leaders for action.
Since world leaders last gathered in New York, we have seen a litany of natural disasters continue to devastate our world. Flooding, wildfires, storms and droughts have hit countries across the Commonwealth and the world. From Rwanda to India, the USA to New Zealand the whole world is feeling the impact of climate change.
If you listen to individuals from all walks of life, you can hear the fear and the desperation in their conversations, the anxiety that though we all recognise the problem, leaders are not taking the action we all need to tackle the challenges we face.
Our history serves as a poignant reminder that our choices boil down to two paths: cooperation, where we harness our collective humanity or to suffer in isolation.
The capacity to unite behind the moral force of our principles enshrined in our Commonwealth Charter, and the power of our practical purpose, is the foundation and beauty of the modern Commonwealth.
Our independent member states, stretched across five continents and home to one-third of humanity embody a remarkable blend of ingenuity and determination. This fusion of qualities not only propelled India to land a spacecraft on the moon but also instilled in us the shared resolve to stand united in confronting the challenges of climate change, instability, and economic adversity.
On the margins of the General Assembly, the citizens of the Commonwealth can be assured that our Foreign Affairs Ministers, and our Environment Ministers, will meet to further deepen their commitment to action on the threats to resilience and sustainability in our member states, and the wider world. Moreover, in a recent milestone, youth ministers, education stakeholders, and young leaders from across the Commonwealth convened in London just last week. Together, they forged agreements on policies and initiatives designed to bolster and empower our youth. At the core of these discussions were our young leaders, whose energy, passion and innovation we will need to take us forward.
United in purpose, we remain steadfast in our commitment to advancing pioneering initiatives, exemplified by the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub, an endeavour that has successfully mobilized over $250 million in crucial support for the countries most in need. Simultaneously, intensifying calls for reform in global development finance to equip the most vulnerable nations with the resources they need to tackle the long-term impacts of environmental breakdown.
When we gather this week in New York, we seek to bridge the gap between rhetoric and implementation, deepening the alliances which transcend borders and self-interest, and advance the vital work to build a resilient and sustainable future for all.
We will set the stage for the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which is to be held in Samoa in October 2024.
The road to CHOGM 2024 starts in New York and winds its way through the great capitals of our Commonwealth Family before culminating in Apia. And while we can never underplay the scale of the challenges we face, the fact that the Commonwealth nations sit together as partners with an equal voice and an equal stake in a shared mission means that we approach them – like India’s space mission – with the mindset of what is possible.
Our ministers will gather to reaffirm our dedication to resilience, sustainability, and equitable development. We are never just observers; we are active participants, ready to tackle the urgent issues of our time. We will act to bridge the gap between words and deeds, working together to build a better future.
In October next year when our Heads of Government meet in Samoa, we know that our strength will be in our unity. Progress is always difficult, and the challenges we face sometimes seem insurmountable, but we know that through the Commonwealth, and our unwavering commitment to unity and collective action, we shall prevail.
Alfalfa farmer Dionisio Antiquera stands in front of one of the wastewater treatment ponds at the modernized plant in Cerrillos de Tamaya, a rural community in the Coquimbo region of northern Chile. The thousands of liters captured from the sewers are converted into clear liquid ready for reuse in local small-scale agriculture. CREDIT : Orlando Milesi / IPS
by Orlando Milesi (coquimbo, chile)
Inter Press Service
COQUIMBO, Chile, Sep 18 (IPS) – The reuse of treated wastewater in vulnerable rural areas of Chile’s arid north is emerging as a new resource for the inhabitants of this long, narrow South American country.
The Coquimbo region, just south of the Atacama Desert, one of the driest in the world, is suffering from a severe drought that has lasted 15 years.
According to data from the Meteorological Directorate, a regional station located in the Andes Mountains measured 30.3 millimeters (mm) of rain per square meter this year as of Sept. 10, compared to 213 mm in all of 2022.
At another station, in the coastal area, during the same period in 2023, rainfall stood at 10.5 mm compared to the usual level of 83.2 mm.
Faced with this persistent level of drought, vulnerable rural localities in Coquimbo, mostly dedicated to small-scale agriculture, are emerging as a new example of solutions that can be replicated in the country to alleviate water shortages.
The aim is to not waste the water that runs down the drains but to accumulate it in tanks, treat it and then use it to irrigate everything from alfalfa fields to native plants and trees in parks and streets in the localities involved. It is a response to drought and the expansion of the desert.
“We were able to implement five wastewater treatment projects and reuse 9.5 liters per second, which is, according to a comparative value, the consumption of 2,700 people for a year or the water used to irrigate 60 hectares of olive trees,” said Gerardo Díaz, sustainability manager of the non-governmental Fundación Chile.
These five projects, promoted by the Fundación Chile as part of its Water Scenarios 2030 initiative, are financed by the regional government of Coquimbo, which contributed the equivalent of 312,000 dollars. Of this total, 73 percent is dedicated to enabling reuse systems, for which plants in need of upgrading but not reconstruction have been selected.
The common objective of these projects, which together benefit some 6,500 people, is the reuse of wastewater for productive purposes, the replacement of drinking water or the recharge of aquifers.
Díaz told IPS that the amount of reuse obtained is significant because previously this water was discharged into a stream, canal or river where it was perhaps captured downstream.
The Huatulame treatment plant in the rural municipality of Monte Patria in northern Chile is being completely repaired with the support of the local municipality. Waterproof plastic sheeting and rocks have been installed, and in the final stage sawdust and earthworms will be incorporated before receiving wastewater from local households for reuse. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS
A successful pilot experience
In Coquimbo, which has a regional population of some 780,000 people, there are 71 water treatment plants, most of which use activated sludge and almost all of which are linked to the Rural Drinking Water Program (APR) of the state Hydraulic Works Directorate.
Activated sludge systems are biological wastewater treatment processes using microorganisms, which are very sensitive in their operation and maintenance and rural sectors do not have the capacity to maintain them.
“Most of these treatment plants are not operating or are operating inefficiently,” Diaz acknowledged.
But one of the plants, once reconditioned, has served as a model for others since 2018. Its creation allowed Dionisio Antiquera, a 52-year-old agricultural technician, to save his alfalfa crop.
“We have had a water deficit for years. This recycled water really helps us grow our crops on our eight hectares of land,” he said in the middle of his alfalfa field in Cerrillos de Tamaya, one of the Coquimbo municipalities that IPS toured for several days to observe five wastewater reuse projects.
Raúl Ángel Flores stands in his nursery, where the plants and trees are irrigated with recycled water from the Punta Azul project in the town of Villa Puclaro, in Chile’s Coquimbo region. All profits from the town’s wastewater treatment are reinvested in its maintenance. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS
He explained that using just reused water he was able to produce six normal alfalfa harvests per year with a yield per hectare of 100 25-kg bales.
“That’s 4500 to 4800 bales in the annual production season,” he said proudly.
These bales are easily sold in the region because they are cheaper than those of other farmers.
The water he uses comes from an APR plant that has 1065 users, 650 of whom provide water, including Antiquera.
On one side of his alfalfa field is a plant that accumulates the sludge that is dehydrated in pools and drying courts, and on the other side, the water is chlorinated and runs into another pond in its natural state.
“This water works well for alfalfa. It is hard water that has about 1400 parts per million of salt. Then it goes through a reverse osmosis process that removes the salt and the water is suitable for human consumption,” the farmer explained.
In Chile, treated wastewater is not considered fresh water or water that can be used directly by people, and its reuse is only indirect.
Antiquera sold half a hectare to the government to install the plant and in exchange uses the water obtained and contributes 20 percent to the local APR.
He recently extended his alfalfa field to another seven hectares, thanks to his success with treated water.
Deysy Cortés, president of a rural drinking water system in Huatulame, stands in front of the dry riverbed of the town of the same name. Today there is no water in the river, where local residents swam and summer vacationers camped on its banks 15 years ago. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS
Flowers and trees also benefit
In Villa Puclaro, in the Coquimbo municipality of Vicuña, Raúl Ángel Flores, 55, has an ornamental plant nursery.
“I’ve done really well. My nursery has grown with just reuse water….. I have more than 40,000 ornamental, fruit, native and cactus plants. I deliver to retailers in Vicuña and Coquimbo,” a port city in the region, he told IPS.
The nursery is 850 square meters in size, and has an accumulation pond and pumps to pump the water. He has now rented a 2,500-meter plot of land to expand it.
Flores explained to IPS that he manages the nursery together with his wife, Carolina Cáceres, and despite the fact that they have two daughters and a senior citizen in their care, “we make a living just selling the plants…I even hired an assistant,” he added.
In the southern hemisphere summer he uses between 4,000 and 5,000 liters of water a day for irrigation.
“I have water to spare. Here it could be reused for anything,” he said.
Joining the project made it possible for Flores to make efficient use of water with a business model that in this case incorporates a fee for the water to the plant management, which is equivalent to 62 cents per cubic meter used.
Arnoldo Olivares operates the water treatment and recycling plant in Plan de Hornos, northern Chile. The plant’s infrastructure and operation have been upgraded, and it can now deliver water to rural residents to irrigate trees and plants, instead of using potable water. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS
Eliminating odors, and creating new gardens
In the community of Huatulame, in the municipality of Monte Patria, Fundación Chile built an artificial surface wetland to put an end to the bad odors caused by effluents from a deficient waste-eater earthworm vermifilter treatment plant.
“This wetland has brought us peace because the odors have been eliminated. For the past year people have been able to walk along the banks of the old riverbed,” Deysy Cortés, 72, president of the APR, told IPS.
The municipality of Monte Patria is financing the repair of the plant with the equivalent of 100,000 dollars.
“The sprinklers will be changed, the filtering system will be replaced, and sawdust and worms will be added. It will be up and running in a couple of months,” explained agronomist Jorge Núñez, a consultant for Fundación Chile.
As in other renovated plants, safe infiltration of wastewater is ensured while the project simultaneously promotes the protection of nearby wells to provide water to the villagers.
The Huatulame treatment plant in the rural municipality of Monte Patria in northern Chile is being completely repaired with the support of the local municipality. Waterproof plastic sheeting and boulders have been installed, and in the final stage sawdust and earthworms will be incorporated before receiving wastewater from local households for reuse. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS
Cortés warned of serious difficulties if no more rain falls in the rest of 2023, despite the relief provided by the plant for irrigation.
“I foresee a very difficult future if it doesn’t rain. We will go back to what we experienced in 2019 when in every house there were bottles filled with water and a little jug to bathe once a week,” she said.
During a recent crisis, the local APR paid 2500 dollars to bring in water from four 20,000-liter tanker trucks.
In Plan de Hornos, a town in the municipality of Illapel, irrigation technology was installed using reused water instead of drinking water to create a green space for the community to enjoy.
The project included water taps in people’s homes for residents to water trees and flowers.
Arnoldo Olivares, 59, is in charge of the plant, which has 160 members.
“I run both systems,” he told IPS. “I pour drinking water into the pond. After passing through the houses, the water goes into the drainage system, where there is a procedure to reclaim and treat it.”
“This water was lost before, and now we reuse it to irrigate the saplings. We used to work manually, now it is automated. It’s a tremendous change, we’re really happy,” he said.
Antiquera the alfalfa farmer is happy with his success in Cerrillos de Tamaya, but warns that in his area 150 to 160 mm of rainfall per year is normal and so far only 25 mm have fallen in 2023.
“The water crisis forces us to find alternatives and to be 100 percent efficient. Not a drop of water can be wasted. They have forecast very high temperatures for the upcoming (southern hemisphere) summer, which means that plants will require more water in order to thrive,” he said.
Díaz, the sustainability manager of Fundación Chile, said the Coquimbo projects are fully replicable in other water-stressed areas of Chile if a collaborative model is used.
He noted that “in Chile there is no law for the reuse of treated wastewater. There is only a gray water law that was passed years ago, but there are no regulations to implement it.”
He explained, however, that due to the drought, “rural localities today are already reusing wastewater or gray water. This is going to happen, with or without us, with or without a law. The need for water is so great that the communities are accepting the use of treated wastewater.”
The governor of Coquimbo, Krist Naranjo, argued that “a broader vision is needed to value water resources that are essential for life, especially in the context of global climate change.”
“We’re working on different initiatives with different executors, but the essential thing is to value the reuse of graywater recycling,” she told IPS from La Serena, the regional capital.
Youth rally at the UN for climate justice. Credit: Abigail Van Neely/IPS
by Abigail Van Neely (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 (IPS) – “What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!” youth chanted in an unusually lively conference at the United Nations Headquarters.
Earlier on Thursday morning (September 14), almost 500 young people had streamed into the room to a DJ’s upbeat soundtrack. Spirits were high despite the more somber rallying cry of this year’s International Day of Peace youth event: the planet is on fire. Many speakers focused on the idea that there cannot be peace without climate justice.
“We cannot begin to talk about peace without talking about the climate crisis,” environmental justice advocate Saad Amer said after leading the crowd in the kind of chants more likely heard at a protest. Fossil fuel disputes spark wars that disproportionately affect people of color, Amer explained. Youth must take charge to “re-write destiny.”
To 21-year-old Mexican climate justice activist Xiye Bastida, “Peace is the ability to drink clean air and clean water.” Bastida, a member of the Otomi-Toltec indigenous community, spoke of her community’s traditional commitment to living in harmony with the earth. Now, indigenous people are being displaced as regenerative practices are forgotten. Bastida called for a world free of extreme weather and exploitation. The climate crisis reflects a broken system, she said, but peace is the bravery to imagine a better world.
Young people are “creating a youth movement for climate action, seeking racial justice, and promoting gender equality,” the Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming, told the audience. In a recorded statement, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated that youth action has power. Still, only four governments have concrete plans to include young people in policymaking, Youth Envoy Jayathma Wickramanyake noted.
As she lived through brutal conflicts in her home country of Sri Lanka, Wickramanayake said she wondered why people around her continued to fight. Today, she told other young activists that the root causes of conflict always run deep – from inequality to poverty. She stressed that peace cannot be differentiated from development.
The event occurs days before the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Summit, a critical opportunity for world leaders to address failures to implement the goals so far.
“Next week there will be an important breakthrough in creating the conditions to rescue the sustainable development goals. I’m very hopeful that the SDG summit will indeed represent a quantum leap in the response to the dramatic failures that we have witnessed,” Guterres said during a news conference.
Meanwhile, youth are left with memories of their chants: “The oceans are rising, and so are we!” “We are unstoppable – another world is possible!”
Liberia is one of the last countries in West Africa to still have vast tracts of forest – but this valuable resource is disappearing at an alarming rate. Credit: Shutterstock.
Opinion by Silas Kpanan Ayoung Siakor (monrovia)
Inter Press Service
MONROVIA, Sep 15 (IPS) – The fate of Liberia and its forests are entwined. Yet a new climate change deal, set to be announced at the UN climate change talks in Dubai this November, would drive a wedge between our communities and their woodlands.
Currently, forests make up more than two-thirds of Liberia’s land area, and are crucial for people’s livelihoods. They were illegally plundered by the former President Charles Taylor to fund a civil war that left an estimated 150,000 dead.
And since 2003, when the war ended, vast swathes of forested land have been signed over to foreign investors, as a corrupt minority have enriched themselves through illegal logging at the expense of the impoverished majority. We have lost nearly one quarter of our forests to economic development projects since then—with most of the loss occurring in the last ten years. This is a disaster for the communities that live on these lands and for efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change.
Now another chapter is unfolding in the tangled history of Liberia’s forests.
At the end of March, Liberia’s Ministry of Finance signed a memorandum of understanding with a United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based consultancy called Blue Carbon LLC, giving it the exclusive right to manage an area of rainforest covering one tenth of our national land. The deal, which has been negotiated in secrecy, is reportedly in the process of being finalized.
Under the agreement Blue Carbon will pay Liberia to manage and preserve one million hectares of forest for 30 years, and sell carbon credits from the emissions ‘saved’ by protecting these forests to major polluters, who will use them to offset their own emissions.
That is a significant chunk of our country, set to be pawned to the planet’s major polluters, enabling them to continue extracting and burning fossil fuels while claiming to protect the planet.
If this deal proceeds, it is likely to do so under dubious legality and without the prior consent of the communities living in the forests.
What’s more, it is part of a global trend called ‘carbon colonialism’, where instead of taking concrete steps to decarbonise, corporations offset their greenhouse gas emissions by paying to preserve forests or other ecosystems—often against the wishes of the local or Indigenous communities who live there. A similar deal with Zimbabwe’s government was announced in the middle of August.
‘Greenwashing’
Money is desperately needed to support local communities protecting their forests in Liberia as much as anywhere and there may well be ‘offset projects’ that are truly beneficial for local or Indigenous communities—but this is not one of them.
The chairman of Blue Carbon LLC is Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, a member of the UAE royal family, which has major interests in the country’s oil and gas infrastructure.
The UAE—a fossil fuel state—is planning a huge expansion of oil and gas even though, at the end of the year, it will host the UN’s COP28 climate summit.
To burnish its environmental credentials ahead of the COP, the UAE’s government and various state-run companies have hired some of the world’s biggest PR companies to mount a greenwashing campaign.
The Blue Carbon deal—which is set to be unveiled at the COP to show how the UAE is fulfilling its commitments under the Paris Climate deal—is part of this greenwashing.
The deal, which ignores this body of research, is also a primary threat to rural Liberians and their hard-won land rights. Around 70 per cent of land in Liberia is owned by communities. Roughly one third of our people live in forested areas, and the local people who live on the land targeted under the deal will only be consulted about it after it has been signed – that is, if they are consulted at all.
As such, it represents a ‘climate land grab’ that reverses some of the steady progress that Liberia has made on recognising community rights.
The deal’s legality is also dubious, and the agreement appears to violate our constitution and a number of Liberian laws, notably the National Forestry Reform Law (2006), the Community Rights Law (2009), the Public Procurement and Concessions Act (2010), and the Land Right Act (2018).
One can only sell carbon if you own it. Liberian law is clear that communities own their customary forest lands and the resources on them.
The conditions of our people are worsening by the day. Liberia is one of the last countries in West Africa to still have vast tracts of forest – but this valuable resource is disappearing at an alarming rate.
Liberians must remain open to working with anyone, including corporations, who can help us protect our forests and our peoples’ rights. But we must remain resolute in our opposition to false climate solutions such as this deal.
Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor has championed community forest and land rights in Liberia for two decades. His efforts were recognized with the Whitley Award for Environment and Human Rights in 2002 (UK), the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2006 (US), Award for Outstanding Environmental and Human Rights Activism from the Alexander Soros Foundation (US), and the Mundo Negro Fraternity Award in 2018 (Spain).
A protest for women’s rights in Puebla, Mexico. Credit: Melania Torres/Forus
Opinion by Bibbi Abruzzini, Marie LHostis (new york)
Inter Press Service
The 2023 Special Edition of the SDG Progress Report emphasized that we’re falling short in implementing the SDGs. In April this year, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres deplored that “Progress on more than 50 per cent of targets of the SDGs is weak and insufficient; on 30 per cent, it has stalled or gone into reverse,” disproportionately impacting the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.
As we approach the halfway mark of the 2030 Agenda, we urge world leaders at the UN General Assembly to address the precarious state of SDG implementation. Here’s our 5 asks.
Walk the talk with clear implementation plans and benchmarks for the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.
“In Guatemala, there are two worlds, one for a small group that benefits from this macroeconomic stability, this weakness of democracy, this co-optation of state institutions, and a large majority of the population that faces poverty and inequality,” says Alejandro Aguirre Batres, Executive Director of CONGCOOP, the national platform of NGOs in Guatemala that recently published an alternative report on the implementation of the SDGs in the country.
Human rights activists in Cartagena, Colombia from the Coalition of Human Rights in Development at the Finance in Common Summit. Credit: Sebastian Barros/Forus
Governments must make specific national implementation plans to advance the Sustainable Development Goals, with clear benchmarks on when to achieve the targets set in 2015. Following the SDG Summit, we call on the United Nations and its partners to ensure that the “National Commitments to SDG Transformation” called for by the Secretary-General are adequately compiled and tracked, including by providing a transparent and inclusive platform for showcasing these commitments, helping to ensure adequate implementation, follow-up and accountability.
All efforts and commitments must focus on breaching the increassing gap in inequalities, healing polarisation and restoring socio-environmental rights at the core of Agenda 2030 implementation as no form of development should come at the cost of environmental degradation and injustice.
Presenting a viewpoint from Asia, Jyotsna Mohan Singh, representing the Asia Development Alliance, emphasizes that while the SDGs look good on paper, their real-world implementation remains far from satisfactory. She explains, “Governments should develop a policy coherence for sustainable development roadmap with timebound targets,” adding that it’s all about creating spaces grounded in equity where civil society and other stakeholders can join discussions and connect with local communities.
In regions like the Sahel, stretching 5,000 kilometers below the Sahara Desert from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, challenges like conflict, political instability, extreme poverty, and food insecurity affect nearly 26 million people. Yet, this region is teeming with opportunities, boasting abundant resources and a young population, including 50% young women and girls.
As civil society leader Mavalow Christelle Kalhoule, Forus Chair and President of SPONG, the Burkina Faso NGO network, puts it, “What unfolds in the Sahel and in so many other forgotten communities ripples across the globe, impacting us all even if we choose to look away.
Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals is vital to unlock a different future. But for global change to truly happen, we need countries to come together, we need solidarity, horizontal spaces, and for world leaders to start listening and acting accordingly.”
Commit to the protection of civic space and human rights.
“Although the state of Pakistan has ratified many global instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the SDGs, the irony is that none of them have been transformed into local policies and regulatory frameworks. Unfortunately, civil rights advocates and organizations have either transformed themselves into humanitarian organizations or practiced self-censorship to avoid state atrocities. Pakistan is failing to achieve SDGs due to disengagement with civil society and other stakeholders.
Ironically, the government is unable to provide reliable data on any of their own priority indicators to measure progress towards the implementation of SDGs, particularly on rights-based indicators,” says Zia ur Rehman, National Convener of the Pakistan Development Alliance. Their newly published Pakistan Civic Space Monitor reveals a generally restricted civic space, including restraints on freedom of speech, assembly, information, rule of law, governance, and public participation, with further deterioration. This rings true for 92% of Forus members – comprising national and regional civil society networks in over 124 countries – who consider the protection of civic space and human rights a top priority.
Fridays for Future activists during a Climate March in Brussels, Belgium. Credit: Both Nomads/Forus
Indeed, over the past decade, thousands of civil society organizations have faced increasing challenges due to restrictions on their formation and activities. Nine out of 10 people now live in countries where civil liberties are severely restricted, including freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, and expression, according to the CIVICUS Monitor. Forus reports confirm that civil society deals with increasing restrictions, involving extra-legal actions, misinformation and disinformation about their work both online and offline.
Research also highlights the insufficiency of current institutional mechanisms to ensure an enabling environment for civil society, including addressing impunity for attacks on civil society and human right defenders, implementing supportive laws and regulations, and facilitating effective and inclusive policy dialogue. A recent ARTICLE 19 report highlights the inadequate integration of crucial elements like freedom of expression and access to information into SDGs, hampering progress.
Journalist killings increased in 2022. Additionally, monitoring access to information mainly focuses on having a legal framework, ignoring its quality and adoption. Strengthening these rights is vital for advancing all SDGs. The growing number of human rights defenders being killed every year – at least 401 in 26 countries were murdered for their peaceful work in 2022 – is another worrying trend that needs to be reversed as the protection and promotion of human rights is the cornerstone of achieving sustainable development. Without human rights we will just move backwards.
Strengthen and Catalyze Robust Financing for the SDGs.
From the recent Summit for a new global financing pact to the Finance in Common initiative, it’s clear that the focus this year has been on increasing investment. But we need quality not just quantity, as expressed in a join civil society declaration aimed at public development banks signed by over 100 civil society organisations from 50+ countries.
While we welcome UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s call for a SDG Stimulus, we remind Governments, International Financial Institutions, public development banks and donors that more efforts must be done to scale up investments for the realization of the SDGs at all levels, including through additional support for civil society and by involving communities in all “development talks”.
The role of the private sector and financial institutions in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda must be talked about openly. It is important to include in all development projects being carried out specific budgets for actions linked to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Discussions about financial reforms that are being repeatedly undertaken by several countries cannot happen behind close doors and in non-inclusive forums such as the G7 and G20. Instead, they should be open, inclusive, and transparent, involving a broader spectrum of protagonists, including civil society, to ensure fairness and sustainability in shaping global financial policies.
“The SDGs are severely off track as we reach the critical half-way point of Agenda 2030. We need a renewed global ambition on financial commitments to make progress on the SDGs. Reforms of global financial architecture are a crucial part of this to ensure we have a fairer, more effective, inclusive and transparent system supporting lower-income countries that are at the forefront of the global climate, debt, poverty, food, and humanitarian crises. It’s not about a lack of finance, it is about political will and getting our priorities right,” says Sandra Martinsone, Policy Manager – Sustainable Economic Development at Bond UK.
Mobilize Transformative Commitments for SDG16+.
Recognizing the vital role of SDG16+ as a critical enabler for the entire 2030 Agenda, governments should come to the SDG Summit with targeted, integrated, focused and transformative commitments to accelerate action on SDG16+.
As developed in the #SDG16Now collective campaign, this includes domestic policies and resources, legal reforms and initiatives to advance SDG16+ at the international, national and local levels, as well as ambitious global commitments to strengthen multilateralism and international resolve to promote peace, justice, the rule of law, inclusion and institution-building.
Additionally, governments must use key moments – such as the 2024 High-Level Political Forum and the Summit of the Future – to advance implementation and delivery of the SDGs through similar commitments to action, and ensure adequate follow-up to these commitments going forward.
Ensure civil society participation and listen to communities, reinvigorate commitments to SDG17.
The 2030 Agenda overall cannot be achieved without building on the role of civil society and fostering a true global partnership. Every year at the fringes of the UN General Assembly, initiatives such as the Global People’s Assembly bring to the ears of world leaders the voices of communities historically marginalised. Governments need to reinvigorate engagement towards SDG17 to trengthen the means of implementing sustainable development goals and revitalising global partnerships for sustainable development.
It’s high time we move away from conducting discussions about the future of development in closed-door settings. Tokenistic participation of civil society, where their involvement is merely symbolic or superficial, undermines the core principles of nclusivity, hurting genuine progress and meaningful collaboration. A more inclusive approach must be embraced that actively involves civil society and communities. Let’s #UNmute their voices and perspectives by bringing about reforms to current participation mechanisms, and giving them a real platform to be heard.
In 2015 every government in the world agreed as a global community on what we want for our comon future for people and planet. So many efforts and work went on to reach such an agreement. Now is the time for governments and world leaders to walk the walk and prioritize people and the planet, delivering the 2030 Agenda, essential to secure our shared future. It is time for world leaders to act decisively and uphold their commitments to the SDGs.
LONDON, Sep 15 (IPS) – With hope and courage, we must rise to the challenges before us. We must rise to the challenge of a world set afire by climate change, forced displacement, armed conflicts and human rights abuses. We must rise to the challenge of girls being denied their right to an education in Afghanistan. We must rise to the challenge of a global refugee crisis that is disrupting development gains the world over. We must rise to the challenge of brutal and unconscionable wars in places like Sudan and Ukraine that are putting millions of children at risk every day.
By ensuring every single child has access to quality education and embracing the vast potential of the human spirit – especially the 224 million girls and boys caught in emergencies and protracted crises that so urgently need our support – we can rise to this challenge. It’s a chance for girls with disabilities like Sammy in Colombia to find a nurturing place to learn and grow, it’s a chance for girls that have been forced into child marriage like Ajak in South Sudan to resume control of their lives, it’s a chance for refugees like Jannat in Bangladesh to find hope and dignity once more.
As Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies, has successfully completed its first strategic plan period and now enters its second strategic period, we are seeing time and again the power of education in propelling global efforts to deliver on the promises outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other crucial international frameworks. By ensuring quality holistic education for the world’s most marginalized and vulnerable children in crisis settings, we invest in human capital, transform economies, ensure human rights, and build a more peaceful and more sustainable future for all.
The achievements outlined in ECW’s 2022 Annual Results Report tell a story of a breakout global fund moving with strength, speed and agility, while achieving quality. Together with a growing range of strategic partners, ECW reached 4.2 million children in 2022 alone. It was also the first time girls represented more than half of the children reached by ECW’s investments, including 53% of girls at the secondary level, which is a significant milestone in achieving the aspirational target of 60% girls reached. Now in its sixth year of operation, ECW has reached a total of 8.8 million children and adolescents with the safety, power and opportunity of a quality, inclusive education. An additional 32.2 million children and adolescents were reached with targeted interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are also seeing a global advocacy movement reaching critical mass, together with stronger political commitment and increased financing for the sector. In 2022, funding for education in emergencies was higher than ever before. Total available funding has grown by more than 57% over just three years – from US$699 million in 2019 to more than US$1.1 billion in 2022.
However, the needs have also skyrocketed over this same period. Funding asks for education in emergencies within humanitarian appeals have nearly tripled from US$1.1 billion in 2019 to almost US$3 billion at the end of 2022. This means that while donors are stepping up, the funding gap has actually widened, and only 30% of education in emergencies requirements were funded in 2022.
With support from key donors – including Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, as the top-three contributors among 25 in total, such as visionary private sector partners like The LEGO Foundation – US$826 million was announced at the ECW High-Level Financing Conference in early 2023. Collective resource mobilization efforts from all partners and stakeholders at global, regional, and country levels also helped unlock an additional US$842 million of funding for education in-country, which was contributed in alignment with ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programmes in 22 countries, and thus illustrates strong coordination by strategic donor partners who work in affected emergencies and protracted crises-contexts.
We must rise to this challenge by finding new and innovative ways to finance education. To date, some of ECW’s largest and prospective bilateral and multilateral donors have not yet committed funding for the full 2023–2026 period, and there remains a gap in funding from the private sector, foundations and philanthropic donors. In the first half of 2023, ECW faces a funding gap of approximately $670 million to fully finance results under the Strategic Plan, 2023–2026, to reach more than 20 million children over the next three years.
The investments will address the diverse impacts of crisis on education through child-centred approaches that are tailored to the needs of specific groups affected by crisis, such as children with disabilities, girls, refugees, and vulnerable children in host communities. These investments entail academic learning, social and emotional learning, sports, arts, combined with mental health and psycho-social services, school feeding, water and sanitation, as well as a protection component.
Since ECW became operational, we have withstood the cataclysmic forces of a global pandemic, a rise in armed conflicts that have disrupted social and economic security the world over, the unconscionable denial of education for girls in Afghanistan, floods and droughts made ever-more devastating by climate change, and other crises that are derailing efforts to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Now is the time to come together as one people, one planet to address the challenges before us. Now is the time to embrace the vast potential of the human spirit. With education for all, we can make sure girls like Sammy, Ajak and Jannat are able to reach their full potential, we can build a better world for generations to come.
Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown is United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education
Sara López (C) and other members of the Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil are seen here in a photo from 2020, while campaigning against the environmental problems posed by the Mayan Train, which will run through part of southern and southeastern Mexico. The Secretariat (ministry) of National Defense has been put in charge since September of the construction and administration of the Mexican government’s flagship project. CREDIT: Cripx
by Emilio Godoy (mexico cityhttps://ipsnoticias.net/2023/09/mexico-gira-hacia-los-militares-empresarios/)
Inter Press Service
MEXICO CITYhttps://ipsnoticias.net/2023/09/mexico-gira-hacia-los-militares-empresarios/, Sep 14 (IPS) – Courage, sadness and impotence are expressed by Mayan indigenous activist Sara López when she talks about the Mayan Train (TM), the Mexican government’s biggest infrastructure project, which will cross the town where she lives and many others in the Yucatan Peninsula.
“These are things that cause damage. In the communities, both the National Guard (a civilian security force, but made up mostly of military personnel) and the army are present. People tell us they have lost the peace they used to have. There are communities that have been invaded, there has been a very strong impact,” the member of the non-governmental Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil told IPS.
“The entire Yucatan peninsula is militarized,” she said from Candelaria, in the southeastern state of Campeche. Agriculture and livestock are the main activities in the municipality of some 47,000 inhabitants, which will be the site of a TM station.
The megaproject consists of seven sections along some 1,500 kilometers and will also cross the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan, which share the peninsula with Campeche together with the states of Chiapas and Tabasco.
The railway will run through 41 municipalities and 181 towns, with 20 stations and 14 stops.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who begins his sixth and final year in office on Dec. 1, has transferred the administration of ports, airports and rail transport to the Secretariat (ministry) of National Defense (Sedena).
This is despite the fact that there are no records of their performance in the management of these key areas in the recent history of the country, in which their experience has been limited to the production and sale of supplies.
Aleida Azamar, a researcher at the public Autonomous Metropolitan University, argued that uniformed personnel are not prepared for these tasks.
“The military are not trained for many functions. The government is concerned about economic growth and development, and to preserve that model it has put the military in charge. They think it will be achieved through infrastructure and extractive projects,” Azamar, who is coordinating a new book on the military and natural resources in Mexico, told IPS.
“In their view, the fastest way to finish them is with the army, because it is more difficult for the public to put up opposition when they see someone with a gun. It is not the most adequate solution.”
López Obrador announced on Sept. 4 the transfer of control of the Mayan Train from the state-owned National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur) to Sedena, in an intensification of the trend of ceding more civilian responsibilities to the military, by handing over his flagship megaproject.
The president’s argument for this strategy is that he aims to reduce corruption in public works. But actually it may be due to other reasons, such as the culture of discipline in following orders so that the works advance as quickly as possible and thus meet the deadlines set.
Sedena will be responsible for the completion of sections five, six and seven of the railroad, whose works were started by Fonatur in July 2020 and which López Obrador promised would begin to operate by Dec. 1. Other sections are being built by private companies.
The resistance to deploying the military into the TM and other civilian areas is also due to its actions since 2006, when then President Felipe Calderón launched the so-called “war against drugs” using the military, which led to extrajudicial executions, disappearances, human rights violations and impunity, according to local and international organizations.
In fact, so far this century the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the highest regional court attached to the Organization of American States, has condemned Mexico on at least five occasions for military crimes such as forced disappearance, sexual violence and arbitrary detention.
The government promotes the TM as a major new engine of socioeconomic development in the southeast of the country and its trains will transport thousands of tourists, and cargo such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, the main products in the area.
The administration claims that it will create jobs, boost tourism beyond traditional attractions, and invigorate the regional economy, which has sparked highly polarized controversies between its supporters and critics.
The Mayan Train will run 1,500 kilometers, through 41 municipalities and 181 towns in the south and southeast of Mexico, with a cost overrun that already exceeds 28 billion dollars. CREDIT: Fonatur
From the barracks to business
Historically, the armed forces had been limited to producing supplies and building government facilities, such as hospitals and other infrastructure.
However, thanks to the policies of the current government, Sedena has created the corporations Tren Maya, Aerolínea del Estado Mexicano, Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos Olmeca-Maya-Mexica (Gomm) and the Felipe Ángeles International Airport, located in the state of Mexico, adjacent to the Mexican capital.
Gomm is also involved in the operation of 12 airports, and will receive more in the future.
In addition, it will operate the revived Compañía Mexicana de Aviación, the country’s oldest airline and one of the first in the region, privatized in 2005 and closed since 2010. Under the new name Aerolínea del Estado Mexicano, the government resuscitated it in January, buying the brand. The armed forces will also manage hotels along the TM route.
At the same time, the Secretariat of the Navy (Semar) manages five shipyards in various areas of the country.
To run seven airports, including Mexico City’s, out of the 19 facilities under state control, Semar created the company Casiopea.
Mexico has 118 ports and terminals, of which 71 have been given in concession in 25 administrations of the National Port System. Since 2017, Semar has been administering the ports.
This scheme requires a lot of money, provided by the public budget. The clearest case is the TM, whose cost rose threefold, from the initial projected investment of 7.2 billion dollars to the current estimate of over 28 billion dollars.
For 2024, Sedena has already requested 6.7 billion dollars for the railroad, the second highest figure for the TM since 2020, when allocated funds totaled 349 million dollars.
Military requirements for all civilian sectors under their administration have grown, as Sedena requested 14.55 billion dollars, compared to 6.27 billion in 2023, and Semar asked for 4.02 billion, compared to 2.34 billion this year – in both cases more than double.
Behind this is the fact that state-owned companies under military management are not yet profitable, so they require subsidies. The non-governmental organization México ¿Cómo Vamos? calculates that it will take 17 years to recoup the investment in the TM and 22 years in the case of the Tulum International Airport, under construction in the state of Quintana Roo.
The Navy manages the Mexico City International Airport and six other airports, although it lacks experience in running this type of air transport infrastructure. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Potential threats
As in the case of military involvement in security and public safety, military business management poses risks of information concealment, corruption and economic losses.
The armed forces are the institutions that most violate human rights, including cases of murder, torture and sexual violence. Between 2007 and 2020, some 70,000 people suffered physical aggression after being apprehended by the army, according to the Citizen Security Program (PSC) of the private Ibero-American University.
The number of military personnel involved in public security already exceeds the total number of municipal and state police, in a proportion of 261,644 to 251,760, according to data reported by the PSC.
López the activist and Azamar the academic warned of the risks of military management.
“Only the government knows how much they have spent, how much is going to be spent,” said López. “There is no real report on what they are doing. Since the megaproject began, there has been no real information. They have never talked to us about environmental, cultural or economic impacts. It has caused us problems, it has been chaos for us. And once it is operating, the situation is going to get worse because of tourism.”
Azamar warned of increasing reliance on the military, the potential erosion of civil rights, a distorted perception of the approach to security and public safety and the undermining of trust in civilian institutions.
“There is a problem of lack of transparency and accountability: what is spent and how. It is risky, because there is no real, disaggregated data. This creates an environment of impunity that allows secrecy to continue and does not make it possible for other information to be made public. If there are no effective oversight mechanisms, abuses could be committed. We are in a gray area, because we do not know who controls them,” she argued.
In November 2021, López Obrador classified the TM as a “priority project” by means of a presidential decree, a strategy that facilitates the fast-tracking of environmental permits and thus hides information under the broad umbrella of national security.
This despite the fact that a month later, the Supreme Court reversed the national security agreements to annul the reservation of information, due to an appeal by the autonomous governmental National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data.
Mexico’s problems will not end in the short term, as pro-military policies will condition the next administration that will take office in December 2024, regardless of where it stands on the political spectrum, although the polls point to presidential hopeful Claudia Sheinbaum of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), López Obrador’s party, as the favorite.
OAKLAND, California, Sep 13 (IPS) – In the wake of the recent Africa Climate Summit, which convened in Nairobi from September 4-6, 2023, the world’s attention was drawn to the pressing challenges facing the African continent as it grapples with the devastating effects of climate change.
Accounting for less than 4 percent of global emissions, Africa is owed a significant climate debt by historical polluters, yet has received only 12 percent of the US$300 billion in annual financing it needs to cope with climate-related challenges.
The three-day Summit culminated in the adoption of the Nairobi Declaration, which articulates the shared position of African countries as they prepare for the upcoming COP28 climate change. Reflecting the deep historical injustices that have left the continent disproportionately vulnerable to worsening climate shocks, the declaration calls for “a new financing architecture that is responsive to Africa’s needs,” including debt restructuring and relief, as well as a “carbon tax on fossil fuel trade, maritime transport and aviation, that may also be augmented by a global financial transaction tax.”
However, these calls for justice ring hollow when examining the investments and initiatives actually prioritized at the Summit, revealing a striking paradox. During the gathering, the agenda primarily revolved around the expansion of carbon markets – a dangerous and false climate solution that opens up the continent to green colonialism and reinforces the status quo of North/South power imbalances.
In one of the event’s most anticipated deals, investors from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) committed to purchase US$450 million worth of carbon credits from the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI). Climate Asset Management – a joint venture of HSBC and climate investment firm Pollination – also announced a US$200 million investment in projects that produce ACMI credits.
Launched at COP27 by the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, Sustainable Energy for All, The Rockefeller Foundation, and UN Economic Commission for Africa, ACMI hands disproportionate control of Africa’s carbon markets to wealthy countries and oil interests, allowing polluters to continue emitting with impunity while Africa supplies them with carbon credits. Instead of serving the interests of the African continent, the financial pledges made during the Summit threaten to exacerbate existing inequalities and further extractivism.
However, heads of state and leaders celebrated these investments, advancing the flawed belief that carbon markets represent a viable source of climate financing. Kenyan President William Ruto described carbon sinks as an “unparalleled economic goldmine,” while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pitched “true carbon credits” as a “solution that would unlock huge resources for climate action in Africa.”
US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry similarly declared that “Africa needs a thriving carbon market as a tool to fight the climate crisis.” Contrary to these assertions, carbon markets mainly benefit foreign developers and financial intermediaries – wealthy individuals, firms, and organizations based in the Global North – with host countries and local communities often only receiving a small fraction of the revenues generated.
While the Africa Climate Summit was dominated by false solutions, the breakthrough came in the form of the alternative Real Africa Climate Summit, which brought together over 500 civil society groups – showcasing the power and vibrancy of the African climate movement.
In response to the failings of the official Summit, civil society groups organized an alternative People’s Assembly and March, which catalyzed conversations and collaboration among grassroots movements, farmer organizations, Indigenous communities, activists, and faith-based actors.
The outcome of this counter-mobilization is the African People’s Climate and Development Declaration, which provides a vision for African climate action that is far more ambitious than the Nairobi Declaration. Centered around African solutions, climate justice, and a people-centered approach, the People’s Declaration outlines the real solutions African leaders must demand at the upcoming COP28 and beyond.
These include a redefinition of development away from perpetual growth, people-centered renewable energy, agroecology and food sovereignty, ecosystem protection and restoration, a socially just transition away from fossil fuels, and the dismantling of transnational corporations’ power.
Addressing the climate emergency cannot come at the expense of those who contributed the least to it. Nor can it be tackled with the same extractive and neocolonial system that created it in the first place.
As we move forward towards COP28 in Dubai, African nations must reject false climate solutions that surrender control over their natural resources to wealthy countries in the Global North.
Instead, African leaders must listen to the calls of civil society and prioritize genuine solutions that pave the way for a just transition and prioritize the well-being of African people.
Eve Devillers is a Research Associate at the Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank bringing fresh ideas and bold action to the most pressing social, economic, and environmental issues of our time. www.oaklandinstitute.org
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Sep 12 (IPS) – While climate change is relentlessly progressing, threatening life on earth, world leaders continue to meet while planning for a future where this immense menace to human existence remains a minor item on the agenda.
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