A blue sea star (Linckia laevigata) photographed on a largely dead coral reef on the Coral Coast on Fiji’s largest island Viti Levu. IPBES estimates that nearly one-third of reefs are threatened with extinction. Credit: Tom Vierus / Climate Visuals
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
Nairobi, Nov 30 (IPS) – Up to 1 million species are threatened with extinction – many within decades – this includes nearly one-third of reef-forming corals, shark relatives, and marine mammals. Half of agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of forests, and 85% of wetlands that were present at the beginning of the 18th century had been lost by the year 2000, with the loss of wetlands considered to be happening three times faster, in percentage terms, than forest loss.
Dr Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES. Credit: IPBES
Speaking to IPS ahead of UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) about the urgent need to accelerate measures to stop biodiversity loss, Dr Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES, says the loss we hear about is just the tip of the iceberg.
“In 2019, IPBES alerted the world that a million species of plants and animals, out of an estimated total of eight million, now face extinction, many within decades. A third of coral reefs are threatened with extinction. Nature is being deteriorated at a rate and scale that is unprecedented in human history,” she cautions.
She said that the very first reason to conserve and use biodiversity sustainably is because this is the right thing to do from a moral and ethical standpoint, “it should not be to the purview of one species, the human species, to destroy the non-human species on our shared planet. But an important more selfish second reason is that conserving and using biodiversity sustainably are also a matter of ensuring human existence and good quality of life.”
Biodiversity is central to human development, and its conservation is critical to people in every corner of the world. Fifty thousand wild species, according to IPBES, meet the needs of billions of people worldwide, providing food, cosmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine, and inspiration.
One in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for their food and income; 2.4 billion rely on fuel wood for cooking, and about 90 percent of the 120 million people working in capture fisheries are supported by small-scale fishing.
This is just part of the material contribution Larigauderie says biodiversity makes to humanity, along with innumerable non-material and regulating contributions such as maintaining the quality of air and soil, the control of emerging diseases and the pollination of crops.
Against this backdrop, Larigauderie says COP 15, which will be held in Montreal, Canada, December 7-19, sets the stage for a new Global Biodiversity Framework, hoped to be a quantifiable and well-resourced plan that is meant to set the path to recovery of all life on Earth and the contributions it provides to people by 2030.
She speaks of the failed Aichi Biodiversity Targets 2011-2020, a strategic plan established to halt the loss of biodiversity and how none of the 20 targets agreed by governments for 2020 were fully achieved at the global level.
“COP15 is an opportunity to raise the bar—a renewal of the momentum of the ambitions for the global community. The most desirable outcome would be an agreement whose targets are supported by sufficient resources and quantified,” she emphasises.
For instance, Aichi target 11 called for the effective protection of 17 percent of land and inland waters and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas; now she says, “the bar is raised significantly in the new draft framework, to 30 percent to be protected by 2030. It is challenging but possible with adequate financial means.”
In addition to the 30%, measures need to be undertaken on the 70% which is not under protection. The text, therefore, includes targets to integrate biodiversity in key economic sectors, such as agriculture, fishing, and economic and financial systems, to decrease their impact on biodiversity.
IPBES research reveals that half of agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of forests. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
“Agriculture represents one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss because it competes for land with nature, and because it pollutes nature. Governments could help farmers to transition to agroecological practices that are more respectful of nature,” she observes.
Science, she adds, can inform transitions to new sustainable pathways for agriculture, fishing, and food systems, among others, to help conserve and sustainably use biodiversity. Larigauderie stresses the great need to transition into these new pathways for the good of nature and people for present and future generations.
She also emphasises the need to support developing countries that are now expected to develop while protecting their biodiversity, unlike their more developed counterparts, who ensured their development by leveraging their natural resources.
Speaking about the just-concluded UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), Larigauderie said it is critical to recognise and act on the interlinkages between climate change and biodiversity loss. Research has established that climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss.
“It is very important for the climate change community to take biodiversity into account. The topic of biodiversity is still very low on the agenda of climate change discussions. Yet, we know there can never be long-term solutions for climate change without better treatment of nature,” she says.
“Moreover, some measures proposed to mitigate climate change are harmful to biodiversity, exacerbating ongoing biodiversity crisis and ultimately the climate change crisis.”
She says these measures can include growing biofuel crops, also known as energy crops, such as sugarcane and soybeans, on a large scale to avoid using fossil fuels. Initially, such crops were meant to be grown on marginal lands.
But with very few marginal lands left, pieces of natural ecosystems are being converted into farmland, often for short-term profit, which in turn does further harm to biodiversity.
Another example of a strategy to combat climate change at the expense of biodiversity, she says, can be tree planting schemes. Rather than working to reduce emissions, “people contribute money for tree planting schemes to offset their carbon footprint. People plant trees and continue to do business as usual.”
“Tree planting schemes can also cause social problems where indigenous people are displaced or ecological problems where trees are planted without factoring in ecological principles such as planting trees that require a lot of water in dry areas, causing serious water scarcity.”
Instead, it is important to implement solutions that take both crises into account and combat climate change and biodiversity loss together.
As governments from around the world gather at COP 15, it is a vital chance to step up for nature. Doing so will call on the global community to leverage the established post-2020 biodiversity framework. The outcome could well be a framework to transform society’s relationship with biodiversity, heal the planet and ensure a sustainable existence for humankind.
After days of intense negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, countries at the latest UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, reached agreement on an outcome that established a funding mechanism to compensate vulnerable nations for ‘loss and damage’ from climate-induced disasters. 20 November 2022 Credit: United Nations
Opinion by Inge Kaul (berlin)
Inter Press Service
BERLIN, Nov 29 (IPS) – For decades, there have been non-conclusive deliberations regarding how the international community could support poor and vulnerable countries in their efforts to cope with and recover from the havoc wreaked on their territory by the ill-effects of global warming such as severe droughts, floods, storms, or rising sea levels.
At the COP27 climate summit, this issue figured for the first time as a separate item on the agenda; and, as one of their very last-minute decisions, delegations even agreed to establish a dedicated loss and damage fund (LDF). However, the question of how to operationalize, notably resource the fund was left open.
A “transitional committee” is to be created to examine possible funding options and report to COP28, which could then, eventually, decide on the LDF’s operationalization.
Remembering the many press photos showing the despair written into the faces of people, whose houses and fields were destroyed by floods, or the blank stares of those sitting next to the cadavers of their cattle killed by severe drought conditions,
I feel that business as usual—namely, taking it easy in delivering on funding promises (as we have seen it in the case of the $ 100 billion annual climate-finance promise) — would be an extremely immoral and unethical behavior in the present case.
Therefore, let’s waste no time and start to explore where one could find money fit for the purpose of loss and damage support.
In the following, I argue that only one – still to be established – source will generate on a relatively reliable and predictable manner the longer-term stream of public finance required, as a minimum, for creating a solid basis of LDF core funding.
The funding source to be agreed and established as a matter of highest urgency are UN assessed contributions for climate security.
Money fit for the purpose of loss and damage support
However, at the outset, it is perhaps important to clarify that support for loss and damage should not be confounded with humanitarian assistance delivered as a prompt crisis-response measure.
Disaster may strike countries haphazardly, irrespective of whether they are poor or rich, vulnerable or not. All countries may need or, at least, somehow benefit from immediate and fast-disbursing, short-term humanitarian assistance in cash or kind.
How best to organize such short-term humanitarian assistance is also an important issue that deserves more attention. However, it is an issue beyond the scope of this article.
Therefore, let’s now turn to the specific issue of what type of external support could be most useful for “climate victims”, notably poor and vulnerable countries struggling to rebuild their communities and economies.
An entity such as the newly established LDF and the money that, one day, it might have at its disposal, are governance tools. Like any other tools they should be fit for the purpose at hand.
Considering for now mainly the core funding that the LDF needs to have, it should perhaps have three key characteristics, namely be: (1) public finance; (2) patient, that is, designed for the longer-term; and (3) relatively predictable in its availability.
The reasons are that, typically, a country’s vulnerability to severe climate events is a complex multi-dimensional phenomenon to which both structural factors (e.g., the countries geographic position and size) and non-structural factors (such as its development level) contribute.
Thus, by implication, meaningful loss-and-damage support is likely to be required for several years, maybe, even for a decade or more. This should not come as a surprise, because even in developed countries rebuilding efforts have often been a lengthy process.
Moreover, in the case of small-island developing countries, it could even be that parts of the population need to be resettled to start their life anew.
Initially, patient, predictable public finance may constitute the most important source of funding. As the rebuilding process advances, the public funds could also play an important role in helping to mobilize other resource inflows, including private investments.
Or, they could be twinned with adaptation finance and other types of climate finance, as well as official development assistance.
Making the case for UN assessed contributions for climate-security, including loss and damage support
By now, there exists broad-based agreement that our security today depends on more than the security of our countries’ external borders and on more than the control of within-country conflicts and violence.
As US President Joe Biden, noted in his statement to COP27, military security today is only one dimension of our security, next to climate and food security; and, as COVID-19 taught us, next to global health security.
The security threats we are facing are global in their reach; they tie us together in a web of manifold interdependencies. They require all hands-on deck, or no one will be secure. The United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) is, therefore, correct in pushing for a “Climate Solidarity Pact.”
Thus, it is timely to ask: Why do we have, within the UN, only an established system of assessed contributions to support efforts aimed at keeping and restoring military security? Why not also assessed contributions – a solidarity-based pact – to climate security?
Among the reasons that strongly speak for this financing option are several. First, such contributions could be introduced for, say, an initial period of 20 years, subject, of course, to regular monitoring of their functioning and impact.
Evidently, they would provide the type of reliable and predictable long-term public finance that the LDF needs.
Second, agreement on a UN funding scale for climate security would help end the present continuous tussle among countries over who should contribute how much. The UN assessment scale for determining individual countries’ contributions to climate security would be based on a joint decision by member states.
Besides income (capacity to pay) one would, in the present case, certainly also consider past and current per-capita emission levels and other relevant factors.
Many aspects of the proposed funding source still need further élaboration and consultations. However, let’s start at the beginning and encourage a world-wide dialogue on the pros and cons of the following issues.
Should we: (1) consider climate security, notably that of vulnerable countries, as a global security issue; and (2) grant climate security the same financing privilege that military security enjoys, namely, to benefit from assessed contributions paid by all UN member states according to a formula that aims at promoting climate security and justice?
Why not ?
Inge Kaul is a fellow at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany.
The 17th Internet Governance Forum (IGF), to be hosted by the Government of Ethiopia with the support of UN ECA and UN DESA, will take place from 28 November to 2 December 2022 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, under the overarching theme “Resilient Internet for a Shared Sustainable and Common Future”. There are five themes that guide the agenda of the meeting, drawn from the Global Digital Compact found in the UN Secretary-General’s report on “Our Common Agenda”. Credit: United Nations
Opinion by Emma Gibson (addis ababa, ethiopia)
Inter Press Service
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Nov 28 (IPS) – The upcoming consultation on the Global Digital Compact presents a unique opportunity to ensure that human rights in the digital world are protected in international common standards.
The United Nations has proposed a Global Digital Compact, a set of shared principles for our digital future, which is scheduled to be agreed upon by Member States in September 2024. The Compact is expected to “outline shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all”, and the consultation being conducted by the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology presents a unique opportunity to ensure that these principles are rooted in human rights law and underpinned by an intersectional feminist, anti-discrimination analysis.
This is not the first time a range of countries have contributed to a document articulating a better way forward in the digital world. The Declaration for the Future of the Internet lays out priorities for an “open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure” Internet, and establishes a code of practice for how nation-states should act in the digital sphere. Sixty-one countries have signed on, and while this is a welcome step, it underscores how the world’s current patchwork of laws and policies are failing to adequately protect and promote human rights online.
The Declaration envisions a well-governed digital domain in which human rights and democracy are defended, privacy is protected, freedom of expression is upheld, and censorship condemned.
But all this cannot be achieved simply by making a statement of intent. Our human rights apply in the digital world too and our digital rights have to be protected in law.
Securing our human rights in the digital world. Credit: Millicent Kwambai / Equality Now
The Internet – a tool for great good and huge harm
Early predictions on how the Internet would remove barriers and usher in freedoms, connect people globally, and help achieve liberty, democracy, and equality, have only partially been realized.
While the Internet has been a conduit for much good, it has also become a powerful tool to commit harm, including facilitating the proliferation of disinformation, surveillance, and polarization, alongside an explosion in online crime, harassment, and abuse.
Digital dividends do not benefit people in the way they should, and the facade of the digital world that most people see conceals the rife existence of exploitative and often low-paid work.
The application of uneven regulations across jurisdictions, and the continuing use of standards and principles that are voluntary for the private sector, has resulted in multinational tech companies largely regulating themselves. But they have failed to stem the rising tide of harmful narratives, hate speech, and disinformation that is poisoning our digital ecosystem.
We need to rethink how we ensure that the Internet and digital technologies are available, safe and accessible to all.
The call for universal digital rights
To achieve a well-governed digital realm, international women’s rights organizations Equality Now and Women Leading in AI are calling for universal digital rights, rooted in human rights law and underpinned by an intersectional, feminist informed and anti-discrimination analysis. Clearly articulating how human rights apply in cyberspace would ensure accountability on the part of governments and companies.
Some laws and regulations exist, particularly around data privacy and freedom of expression. However, what is needed is an agreed understanding of fundamental digital rights.
Providing clarity on what constitutes universal digital rights would address the current critical failings arising from the misuse of the Internet and digital technology. It would protect people from human rights violations that are outside the framing of current laws, such as how the law applies in the virtual world of the Metaverse. And it would foster an inclusive digital landscape, including by promoting equitable and affordable access to the Internet and digital technology.
Clarity on universal digital rights would respond to existing challenges around protection of a person’s “digital twin” — their digital representation. It would ensure trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, and address the current uneven and ineffective regulation of the Internet.
Human rights apply in the digital world too and our digital rights must be protected in law
Achieving universal digital rights is ambitious in scope but the only way to truly guarantee an equitable Internet and use of digital technologies is through international, multi-sectoral cooperation. Just as the efforts of individual nations alone can never solve a worldwide environmental crisis, nor can we rely on separate national laws and policies to guide, regulate, and care for our global digital ecosystem.
The fact that over five dozen countries have signed up to the Declaration for the Future of the Internet is a sign that, even in these times of geopolitical instabililty, there is still an appetite to rally behind an ideal of how the digital world should function. The Digital Global Compact provides an opportunity for realization of this ideal at the global level.
Diverse voices need to be heard and contribute to global and multi-stakeholder discussions on how we will achieve universal digital rights This is why Equality Now and Women Leading in AI are taking part in the 2022 Internet Governance Forum in Addis Ababa and are excited to connect with others who want to co-create legal, ethical, and technical solutions to address current and future harms in the digital realm.
We want to make sure that the perspectives of women, girls, and other discriminated-against groups from every part of the world are fed into the consultation on the Global Digital Compact so that the Internet and digital technology works in everyone’s interests, not against them.
Emma Gibson is the Campaign Lead, Universal Digital Rights, for Equality Now.
For media inquiries please contact: Tara Carey, Equality Now Global Head of Media, E: [email protected]; M: +447971556340 (WhatsApp)
Equality Now is a feminist organization using the law to protect and promote the human rights of all women and girls. Since 1992, an international network of lawyers, activists, and supporters have held governments responsible for ending legal inequality, sexual exploitation, sexual violence, and harmful practices.
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 (IPS) – A sign outside the United Nations reads, perhaps half-seriously, that it is a “No Drone Zone”—and “launching, landing or operating Unmanned or Remote-Controlled aircraft in this area is prohibited”.
The “warning” comes even as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) – or drones – are some of the new weapons of war deployed mostly by the US, and more recently, by Iran, Ukraine and Russia in ongoing military conflicts.
But the unarmed versions continue to be deployed by UN peacekeeping forces worldwide and by national and international humanitarian organizations.
In a recently-released report, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says for women in Botswana, especially those living in remote communities where medical supplies and blood may not be in stock, giving birth can be life-threatening.
In 2019, the country recorded a maternal mortality rate of 166 deaths per 100,000 births, more than double the average for upper-middle-income countries.
Lorato Mokganya, Chief Health Officer in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, is quoted as saying that when a woman has lost a lot of blood during childbirth and may need to be transferred to a bigger medical facility, she first needs to be stabilized where she is before being driven out of that place. Timely delivery of blood can be lifesaving.
“A drone can be sent to deliver the blood so that the patient is stabilized,”
In an effort to curb the country’s preventable maternal deaths and overcome geographical barriers this innovative initiative will revolutionize the delivery of essential medical supplies and services across Botswana, says UNFPA.
Joseph Chamie, a former director of the UN Population Division and a consulting demographer., told IPS the increased use of drones for humanitarian and peacekeeping missions of the United Nations is certainly a good idea and should be encouraged.
“Why? Simply because the numerous benefits from the use of drones greatly outnumber the possible disadvantages”.
As is the case with all new technologies, he pointed out, resistance to the use of drones is to be expected. The public’s distrust in the use of drones is understandable given their use in military operations and surveillance activities.
Also, it should be acknowledged that drones could be misused and efforts are needed to ensure privacy, security and safety, said Chamie.
“In brief, the use of drones should be promoted and facilitated in the work of the UN’s humanitarian and peacekeeping operations as it will greatly enhance the effectiveness of their vital work,” he declared.
Credit: United Nations
Drones have been deployed in several UN peacekeeping missions, including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda—going back to 2013.
Although this technology is not a magic solution, “the promise of drones is really tremendous,” says Christopher Fabian, principal advisor on innovation at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
For UNICEF and other humanitarian and development agencies, he said, in an interview with UN News, drone technology can make a big difference in three ways.
First, drones can leapfrog over broken infrastructure in places where developed transportation networks or roads do not exist, carrying low-weight supplies.
Second, UAVs can be used for remote sensing, such as gathering imagery and data, in the wake of natural disasters like mudslides, to locate where the damage is and where the affected peoples are.
Third, drones can extend wi-fi connectivity, from the sky to the ground, providing refugee camps or schools with access to the Internet.
As big as a Boeing 737 passenger jet and as small as a hummingbird, a huge variety of drones exist. According to research firm Gartner, total drone unit sales climbed to 2.2 million worldwide in 2016, and revenue surged 36 per cent to $4.5 billion.
Although UNICEF’s use of drones has been limited, the agency is exploring ways to scale up the use of UAVs in its operations, Fabian said.
“Hardware itself does not violate human rights. It is the people behind the hardware,” said Fabian, stressing the need to “make sure that any technology we bring in or work on falls within the framing of rights-based documents,” such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
UNICEF has a set of guiding principles for innovation, which includes elements like designing with the end-user.
For drone applications to spread further, Fabian said, the UN has a strong role in advocating this technology and ensuring that policy is shared with different governments.
In addition, governments have to clearly define why they need drones and what specifically they will be used for, while also building up national infrastructure to support their use.
The private sector must understand that the market can provide them real business opportunities.
In 10 to 20 years, drones might be “as basic to us as a pen or pencil,” said Fabian.
“I believe this technology will go through a few years of regulatory difficulty but will eventually become so ubiquitous and simple that it’s like which version of the cell phones you have rather than have you ever use the mobile phone at all,” he said.
Meanwhile, armed UAVs are being increasingly used in war zones in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and most recently Ukraine.
The US has launched drone strikes in Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan targeting mostly terrorist groups. But the negative fallout has included the deaths of scores of civilians and non-combatants.
In recent months, the use of drones by both Russia and Ukraine has triggered a raging battle at the United Nations while Iran has launched drone attacks inside Iraq.
The US, France, UK and Germany have urged the UN to investigate whether the Russian drones originated in Iran. But Russia has denied the charge and insisted the drones were homemade.
Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, urged Secretary-General António Guterres and his staff on October 25 not to engage in any “illegitimate investigation” of drones used in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, going back to 2017, Malawi, in partnership with UNICEF, launched Africa’s first air corridor to test the humanitarian use of drones in Kasungu District.
Also with UNICEF, Vanuatu has been testing the capacity, efficiency and effectiveness of drones to deliver life-saving vaccines to inaccessible, remote communities in the small Pacific- island country, according to the United Nations.
Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 islands separated over 1,600 kilometres. Many are only accessible by boat, and mobile vaccination teams frequently walk to communities carrying all the equipment required for vaccinations – a difficult task given the climate and topography.
To extend the use of drones, UNICEF and the World Food Programmes (WFP) have formed a working group.
In addition, UNICEF, together with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), chairs the UN Innovation Network, an informal forum that meets quarterly to share lessons learned and advance discussions on innovation across agencies, the UN points out.
“Drones are also used in other parts of the UN system. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its partners have introduced a new quadcopter drone to visually map gamma radiation at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was damaged by the devastating 2011 tsunami”.
ROMEO, or the Remotely Operated Mosquito Emission Operation, met the competition’s aim of improving people’s lives. It was designed to transport and release sterile male mosquitoes as part of an insect pest birth control method that stifles pest population growth.
Some UN peacekeeping missions, such as those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali and the Central African Republic, have deployed unarmed surveillance UAVs to improve security for civilians, according to the UN.
The UN, however, warns that drone technology can be a double-edged sword. UN human rights experts have spoken out against the lethal use of drones.
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 (IPS) – Five years ago, the global #MeToo movement brought new urgency and visibility to the extent of violence against women and girls. Millions of survivors came forward to share their experience. They forced the world to recognise a reality that shames every one of us. Their courage and voice led to a powerful collective activism and a sea-change in awareness.
This wake-up call, alongside other invaluable initiatives around the world, continues to resonate. Grassroots activists, women’s human rights defenders and survivor advocates remind us every day, everywhere.
They are revealing the extent of that violence, they collect and shape statistics, document attacks and bring the violence that happens from the shadows into the light. Their work remains as crucial as it ever was. They offer us a path to bringing this violation of women’s rights to an end.
The work of women’s rights movements and activists is the bedrock of accountability and making sure that promises made many times become reality. They are mobilizing and they are powerful. We celebrate them today.
The evidence is clear. We have to invest urgently in strong, autonomous women’s rights organizations to achieve effective solutions.
This lesson was taught to us most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries with powerful feminist movements, stronger democracies and more women in parliament were the most effective in responding to the surge in gender-based violence, the shadow pandemic of COVID.
In this area as in others, we see time and again that when women lead everyone wins. We all benefit from a more inclusive and effective response to the challenges we face. We all profit from more resilient economies and societies.
Alongside these efforts, men must step up and push forward. They must play their part in change. They can begin where they live. It is an uncomfortable truth that for some women and girls rather than being a place of safety, as it should be, home can be deadly.
The latest global femicide estimates presents an alarming picture, one made worse by COVID-19 lockdowns. Our new report, released with UNODC, shows that on average worldwide, more than five women or girls are killed every hour by someone in their own family.
These deaths are not inevitable. This violence against women does not need to happen. Solutions are tried, tested and proven, and include early intervention, with trained, supportive policing and justice services, and access to survivor-centred support and protection.
I have three calls to action. I believe these are our priorities and our essentials. They are the basis on which we can push forward and make a reality of stated commitments to end violence against women and girls.
First, I call upon governments and partners across the world to increase long-term funding and support to women’s rights organizations, to make commitments to the Generation Equality Action Coalition on Gender-based Violence and donations to civil society organizations through the UN Trust Fund and support to the Spotlight Initiative. Resources matter and the scale of financial support for this cause does not match either the scale of the issue or the statements of concern made by those in leadership roles.
Second, I ask that we all, in our own ways, resist the rollback of women’s rights, amplify the voices of feminist women’s movements and mobilize more actors. We can all be advocates and our voices combined can drive the change we seek. In doing so, we must also ensure the promotion of women’s and girls’ full and equal leadership and participation at all levels of political, policy-making and decision-making spaces. Accelerated progress toward ending violence against women and girls is just one of the dividends.
Third, I ask for the strengthening of protection mechanisms for women human rights defenders and women’s rights activists. No one anywhere, ever, should face violence or harassment for standing up for what is right and calling for what is necessary.
We cannot let our determination to keep “pushing forward” for gender equality waver. Our goal of a world where violence against women and girls is not just condemned but stopped is possible. By pushing forward together we can attain it.
Sima Bahous is UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director.
Around 7,500 litres of water are used to make a single pair of jeans, equivalent to the amount of water the average person drinks over seven years. Credit: pexels
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Nov 25 (IPS) – Please take a quick look at this short report before rushing to shop on a Black Friday, Christmas sales and all those long chains of big discounts and wholesales, most of them are fake, as often denounced by consumers organisations that report that the business usually inflates prices before launching such deals.
Just a couple of figures to start with: the fashion industry is responsible for more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Consequently, it is widely believed that this business is the second major producer of greenhouse gases, just after the other industries using fossil fuels.
And it is a big business, which is estimated as valued at upward of 3 trillion dollars.
Did you know all this?
Now back to its worrying impacts. According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and other UN agencies, and non-governmental organisations worldwide:
Wastewater: The fashion industry is responsible for producing 20% of global wastewater and 10% of the global carbon emissions – more than the emissions of all international flights and maritime shipping combined,
Seven years of needed drinking water for an average person are consumed for producing just one single pair of blue jeans: 7.500 litres,
Enough water to quench the thirst of five million. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), some 93 billion cubic metres of water, is used by the fashion industry annually,
Around half a million tons of microfibre, which is the equivalent of 3 million barrels of oil, is now being dumped into the ocean every year, polluting the oceans, the wastewater, and toxic dyes,
Plastic microfibres: The textiles industry has recently been identified as a major polluter, with estimates of around half a million tonnes of plastic microfibers ending up in the world’s oceans as polyester, nylon or acrylic are washed each year,
A truckload of abandoned textiles is dumped in landfill or incinerated every second, according to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, partner of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). This means that of the total fibre input used for clothing, 87% is incinerated or sent to landfill.
Dangerous working conditions: Fashion is often a synonym for dangerous working conditions, unsafe processes and hazardous substances used in production, with continued cruel abuses of modern slavery and child labour, and the exploitation of underpaid workers.
Fast fashion, fast money, fast destruction
The business of fashion years ago ‘invented’ what is known as ‘fast fashion,’ i.e, nice-looking clothing and footwear at low-price.
In fact, the dominant business model in the sector is that of “fast fashion”, whereby consumers are offered constantly changing collections at low prices and encouraged to frequently buy and discard clothes.
Many experts, including the UN, believe the trend is responsible for a plethora of negative social, economic and environmental impacts and, with clothing production doubling between 2000 and 2014, it is crucially important to ensure that clothes are produced as ethically and sustainably as possible.
The consequence is that it is estimated that people are buying 60% more clothes and wearing them for half as long.
“New season, new styles, buy more, buy cheap, move on, throw away waste, and emissions of fast fashion are fueling the triple planetary crisis,” UNEP warned on 24 November, just one day before the usual ‘Black Friday.’
According to the world’s leading environmental organisation, the annual Black Friday sales on 25 November are a reminder of the need to rethink what is bought, what is thrown away, and what it costs the planet.
In a bid to halt the fashion industry’s environmentally and socially destructive practices, and harness the catwalk as a driver to improve the world’s ecosystems, 10 different UN organisations established the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, which was launched during the 2019 UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi
Elisa Tonda, Head of the Consumption and Production Unit at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), one of the 10 UN bodies involved in the Alliance, explained the urgency behind its formation:
“The global production of clothing and footwear generates 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and, with manufacturing concentrated in Asia, the industry is mainly reliant on hard coal and natural gas to generate electricity and heat.”
“If we carry on with a business-as-usual approach, the greenhouse gas emissions from the industry are expected to rise by almost 50% by 2030.”
DOHA, Qatar, Nov 25 (IPS) – The sun is shining, and the temperature sits at an idyllic 28 degrees Celsius. The Uber driver taking me to work is from Pakistan and devastated about the recent loss to England in the T20 Cricket World Cup final in Australia.
On route to the office, I stop to get a coffee and the barista is from Gambia, the server from Uganda and the cashier from Nigeria. They all smile and greet me as I travel through the line. As I enter the office, I am greeted by the Indian and Bangladeshi security guards and then pass the Filipino, Togolese and Algerian cleaning staff who are preparing for the rush of staff on what will undoubtedly be a busy morning.
The world’s real melting pot is not London, Melbourne or Los Angeles. It’s here in the Middle East. The representation of cultures here in Doha dwarfs anything outside of the Arab Gulf and many are here for the prospect of work and the opportunity brought about by the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Qatar’s open door
As an underlying groundswell of xenophobia has permeated through much of the world – the Global West has shut its borders, limited migration and made the process of entering, let alone working, more difficult – Qatar has opened its doors. The people working here are searching for a way to improve the situation for their families.
Many are from some of the poorest places on the planet where the people are most in need. The media have filled newspapers and TV screens with negative stories about Qatar, a country they have never visited and a culture they have never experienced.
When the majority have turned their backs on these poorer countries, could the conversation surrounding workers for this World Cup not have been about opportunity? About the incredible impact and lasting legacy, the jobs generated here will have on families and communities across the globe? About the dissemination of wealth back to the areas and communities who really need it?
For decades the world has shifted industry towards regions that can provide cheaper labour. The movement of whole sectors to Asia and the sub-continent have kept many organizations afloat. This was seen as a creative way to save money, drive higher dividends for shareholders and keep prices low for consumers despite the effect it would have on local jobs.
This paradigm is alive and well. Salaries and wages are much lower in Eastern European countries like Poland, Hungary or Bulgaria than in countries like Germany, Austria or France. In many cases, this has led companies based in Western Europe to build subsidiaries in Eastern Europe to take advantage of lower labour costs. Western European economies heavily depend on working migrants from the East earning low wages and working in poor, unregulated conditions. That isn’t particularly controversial in Europe.
The same can be said for Eastern European countries who replace the workforce that has departed with workers from Central Asian countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. So, for all the outrage and condemnation that has been aimed at Qatar, a quick google search would show the very thing they are advocating against is happening under their own nose.
Uniting instead of dividing
However, hypocrisy is not limited to Europe. Australia, for example, became the first 2022 World Cup team to release a collective statement against Qatar’s human rights record, compiling a video message critiquing the World Cup host’s treatment of migrant workers. It may surprise those individuals to learn that Australia’s track record on human rights is not exactly squeaky clean.
More than 40 nations at the UN Human Right Council, including Germany, South Korea and the USA, have questioned Australia’s policies toward asylum seekers and refugees. Among the issues raised are Australia’s continued use of offshore processing and prolonged detention for asylum seekers.
The council accuses the Australian government of not following through on some of its key past pledges and of still subjecting refugees to immense harm.
The World Cup in Qatar is the 22nd iteration of the international tournament which was first held in Uruguay in 1930. In the 92 years since, the ‘world game’ – despite its interest across the globe – has held 15 out of 20 World Cups in Europe and South America.
Five nations have already hosted the event on more than one occasion. An incredible concentration given the participation and interest. This time things are different. The world game is branching out and reaching a new audience.
The World Cup in Qatar represents the first major sporting event in the Arab and Muslim world. The impact will not just be felt amongst the 2.7 million population of Qatar, or even across the 475 million people who call the Middle East home. This event will resonate with the 1.9 billion Muslims across the globe.
From Indonesia to Morocco, the Maldives to Egypt, roughly one quarter of the world’s population, who in almost 100 years of World Cup football have been in the background, will be front and centre.
If the focus of the next four weeks can be the incredible football played on the pitch, the generosity and kind-hearted nature of the hosts and the collective joy that bringing cultures, religions and people together – not just those from Europe and South America – this World Cup may end up being a turning point for a truly world game.
They say that World Cups are a life-changing experience for the players and teams that compete in them, and even more so for the winner. However, for this World Cup, for the first time in history, the real winners won’t be on the pitch at Lusail Stadium on December 18.
They’ll be behind the scenes, in the Ubers, coffee shops and security points across the country, taking the opportunity, the generational-altering opportunity, only the World Cup in Qatar was offering them.
Myles Benham is a Freelance Event Manager with 15 years’ experience working in Global Mega Events and is currently in Doha for the World Cup.
After days of intense negotiations that stretched into early Sunday morning in Sharm el-Sheikh, countries at the latest UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, reached agreement on an outcome that established a funding mechanism to compensate vulnerable nations for ‘loss and damage’ from climate-induced disasters.
Opinion by Felix Dodds, Chris Spence (sharm el sheikh, egypt)
Inter Press Service
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 24 (IPS) – COP 27 was both better and worse than expected, say Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris SpenceIt’s finally over. After the anticipation and build-up to COP27, the biggest climate meeting of the year is now in our rear-view mirror. The crowds of delegates that thronged the Sharm el-Sheikh international convention center for two long weeks have all headed home to recover. Many will be fatigued from long hours and sleepless nights as negotiators tried to seal a deal that would move the world forwards. Did all this hard work pay off? In our opinion, COP 27 was both better and worse than we’d hoped.
Failing to Follow the Science
First, the bad news. COP 27 failed to deliver what the science tells us was needed. With the window of opportunity closing fast on our goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C or less, COP 27 did far too little on the all-important issue of mitigation—that is, cutting emissions.
The case for urgent action keeps getting stronger. The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make for grim reading about what to expect if we let temperatures rise too much. Nowadays, though, we just need to read the newspapers to catch a glimpse of the future.
The head of the key negotiating Group of 77 – 134 developing countries – was Pakistan which has been dealing with the worst floods in its history, leaving 1717 people dead and dealing an estimated $US40 billion in damage. In 2022 in the USA, there were 15 climate-related disasters which each exceeded $1 billion in costs.
Meanwhile, in Africa, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis of disaster records, “extreme weather events have killed at least 4,000 people and affected a further 19 million since the start of 2022.”
Since this COP was billed by some as the “Africa COP”, one could expect a strong response to such news.
The pressure was therefore on at COP 27 to respond to such disasters. Attending COP27 were 112 world leaders and over 300 government ministers: not as many as at COP 26, but still a good number. Something like 27,000 people from governments, intergovernmental, stakeholders, and journalists also attended the COP. This was to the backdrop of the UN Secretary General warning us that we needed to “cooperate or perish,” to take urgent action to take us off “a highway to climate hell”.
Messing up on mitigation: And yet progress on mitigation was modest, at best. While some delegations pushed hard for stronger commitments on cutting emissions, the appetite in some quarters just didn’t seem to be there. After being pressured to do more in Paris and Glasgow, China, India, and some of the oil-producing countries appeared reluctant to take much more in Sharm el-Sheikh.
They feel developed countries, which are historically responsible for the bulk of emissions, should be doing more themselves, rather than coercing others. The result was a negotiated outcome with little more on the table than we had in Glasgow. For instance, delegates could not agree to ramp up their language on fossil fuels, much to many people’s disappointment.
Finance: Likewise, there was not too much to report on the issue of climate finance. The $US100 billion annual support for developing countries initially promoted by Hilary Clinton at the 2009 Copenhagen COP and enshrined in the Paris COP in 2015 will be reviewed in 2024 with a new figure being hopefully agreed then for 2025 implementation.
The Global South has been talking of this new sum numbering in the trillions to help adapt and mitigate against climate change. And yet there were few signs of movement towards anything of that magnitude.
Given that the North has still not met its pledge of US$100 billion by 2020, it’s clear a lot of movement is needed in the next couple of years. Yet news from outside the conference, such as the US House of Representatives now having a Republican majority, does not bode well.
For a meeting billed as the “implementation COP” where climate action was taken to another level, the news on mitigation and finance was therefore disappointing.
Just prior to the start of COP27 the lead negotiator for Egypt Mohamed Nasr underscored: “science reports were telling us that yes, planning is not up to expectations, but it was implementation on the ground that was really lagging behind.”
For a meeting billed as the “implementation COP” where climate action was taken to another level, the news on mitigation and finance was disappointing. Credit: Shutterstock
Exceeding Expectations—the Loss and Damage Fund
There were some bright spots, however.
Perhaps most surprising was the agreement to create a ‘Loss and Damage’ fund to help the most vulnerable countries. This has been a key issue for almost 30 years, particularly for small island developing countries.
In Glasgow this looked very unlikely to be resolved in the Sharm COP, but with a late change of heart by the Europeans and eventually by the USA and others in the OECD, this is perhaps the most significant and surprising outcome from COP 27. Even as recently as October, the signs were that OECD countries were not on board with calls for a new fund. However, at COP 27 the “trickle” of earlier action in this area turned into a flood.
Interestingly, it was Scotland at COP 26 that started things off, with a modest, voluntary contribution. More recently, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Belgium had also financial commitments to loss and damage, now amounting to $US244.5 million. Mia Mottley Barbados’ Prime Minister has called for a 10% windfall tax on oil companies to fund loss and damage caused by climate change, which could raise around $US31 billion if it had been introduced for 2022. Still, the signs a fund would be agreed at COP 27 had not been good.
This makes the final outcome all the more welcome. The idea, the door is now open for the most vulnerable countries to receive more support. A goal has now been set to fully operationalize the fund at COP 28 in a year’s time. For the most vulnerable nations, this cannot come quickly enough.
Global Goal on Adaptation: Another positive development, albeit on a more modest scale, was in the area of the ‘Global Goal on Adaptation’. Here, delegates agreed to “initiate the development of a framework” to be available for adoption next year.
A lot of work will need to be done at the intersessional meeting of the UN Climate Convention’s subsidiary bodies in Bonn in June next year to prepare for this, including how to measure progress towards this Goal. An approach similar to the development of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 might be appropriate, perhaps?
Article 6: Another of the Glasgow breakthroughs was that on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement on carbon markets and international cooperation. COP 27 saw some solid work undertaken on how to operationalize this both in market and non-market approaches.
There are still a lot of sceptics on this will have a genuine impact and how to ensure not double counting or even that any offsets are real. An approach that is more ecosystem-based than just trees is gaining momentum. Such a change, if it happens, also offers a real chance to link the two major UN conventions on climate and biodiversity.
Agriculture: The work on the Koronivia Work Programme on Agriculture went down to the wire. The outcome was a four-year open-ended working group reporting at COP31 (2026). Some controversy on the term ‘food systems’ may see its first workshop address this issue.
It will also look at how we can better integrate the programme’s work into other constituted bodies such as the financial mechanisms of the convention. The Green Climate Fund has given only $US1.1 billion for adaptation on agriculture. It says one of the major reasons for this is the:
“Lack of integrated agricultural development planning and capacities that consider maladaptation risks and investment needs across the agricultural sector, climate information services and supply chains.”
While these outcomes on agriculture, adaptation and Article 6 may seem modest, they should be welcomed as steps in the right direction.
Coalitions of the Willing: One of the outcomes from the Glasgow COP was the launch of ‘Coalitions of the Willing’; groups of countries and stakeholders wanting to move quicker on an issue than they might under the official UN negotiations, which are consensus-driven and involve more than 190 countries. In Sharm el-Sheikh we saw a number of countries join the Methane Pledge, including Australia and Egypt. China joined the meeting on the Pledge and committed to its own national methane strategy.
In Glasgow, 137 countries had taken a landmark step forward by committing to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. With the imminent return to leadership in Brazil of President-elect Lula da Silva, there is renewed hope that real action on the Amazon forests is possible again. Lula committed Brazil to reaching zero deforestation and was hailed as a hero by many when he turned up at COP 27 during the second week.
Meanwhile, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ)—the global coalition of leading financial institutions—committed to accelerating the decarbonization of the economy. GFANZ, which includes over 550 of the world’s leading financial institutions, has committed to reduce their financed emissions in line with 1.5 degrees C.
With $US150 trillion of combined balance sheets, the accountability mechanism announced of a new Net-Zero Data Public Utility is yet to prove if it is effective in holding the finance sector to their commitments. However, if it can deliver on its potential, this could be a game changer.
There was plenty more activity at COP 27 where the results are harder to measure. Most people at these large UN climate summits are not negotiators and COP 27 was full of “side events” and government and stakeholder pavilions each with its own set of events and agendas.
Country pavilions provided a venue to talk about their challenges, issue pavilions on oceans, food, water, health, education, and resilience highlighted their issues and how they fit into the climate agenda. These enable critical issues to be discussed in a more open way than could be undertaken in negotiations.
Ideas were shared, connections made, and partnerships for further action shared. The upshot of all of this activity is hard to measure, but probably considerable. The thematic days organized by the Egyptian Presidency also gave space to these issues and helped bring together ideas that may ultimately find their way into future UN decisions. In this respect, too, the quality of the side events and pavilions at COP 27 exceeded our expectations.
On to Dubai and COP28
Was COP27 a success or failure? When it comes to keeping up with the science, the answer can hardly be positive. The call to “keep 1.5 alive” hangs in the balance and is still on “life support”. In that sense, COP 27 had very little impact on our current trajectory, which is a likely warming of 2.4-2.8 C by the end of the century.
On the other hand, the promise of a loss and damage fund, as well as modest successes on adaptation, Article 6, agriculture, and actions outside the official negotiations, mean COP 27 delivered some bright spots of success.
Looking ahead to next year, COP 28 will be important as it marks the first “global stocktake” to judge where things now stand. We hope this will focus world leaders to increase their pledges (or “nationally determined contributions”) significantly. It will be interesting to see how the United Arab Emirates, as COP 28 host, performs. As a major oil producer, it faces some serious challenges in transitioning to a net zero world.
At COP 27, there were rumours the UAE was ramping up its team and bringing in additional external expertise ahead of next year. This is certainly a good sign if COP 28 is to deliver the kind of groundbreaking outcomes the science now demands.
Felix Dodds and Chris Spence are co-editors of the new book, Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage (Routledge Press, 2022). It includes chapters on the climate negotiations held in Kyoto (1997), Copenhagen (2009) and Paris (2015).
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November, followed by the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence, is a moment to reflect on, renew, amplify, and strategize to achieve commitments to eliminate violence against women by 2030. Ending violence against women is possible, but only if we act together, now, says the United Ntions.
Opinion by Jacqui Stevenson (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 23 (IPS) – Violence against women is a global crisis, prevalent in every community and society around the world. Globally, estimates published by WHO indicate that about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Yet, there is limited coordination and insufficient funding to truly address the scale of the issue.
This has catastrophic consequences for the individual women affected, who have their rights violated, bodily integrity and psychological wellbeing undermined and health harmed. It also has ramifications across society, including the costs of providing services to respond to violence and the financial impact of violence itself.
While these costs are borne across sectors, including health, policing, social services and education, among others, often efforts to reduce or prevent violence against women suffer from limited budgets and siloed funding streams. The invisible costs borne by women, and their children, families and communities, are also missing from many responses.
While nearly three out of four countries have policy infrastructure in place to support multisectoral action to address violence against women and girls, only 44 percent of countries report having a national budget line item to provide health services to address violence against women. Recent analysis indicates that foreign donors play a critical role in financing GBV interventions but funding is limited and uncertain, and fails to comply with human rights principles.
Bridging the gap between policy and implementation is critical if efforts to reduce violence against women are to meet the urgency and scale required.
Ending violence against women is an urgent legal, moral and ethical imperative. Effective interventions to reduce, prevent and respond to gender-based violence in all its forms must be a priority for all governments. In addition to ending the violation of women’s human rights and the perpetuation of gender inequality that violence against women represents, interventions to end gender-based violence contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals and more broadly to furthering the development of societies.
Effective coordinated investments are a key part of achieving this necessary aim, but it is important to underscore that the case for ending violence does not turn on return for investment.
Recognising the challenges introduced by siloed budgets, UNDP and UNU-IIGH collaborated on a project, with the support of the Republic of Korea, to produce new tools and evidence on “participatory planning and paying models”. These models engage diverse community stakeholders in defining their own solutions and establishing sustainable financing for local GBV action plans.
The approach prioritises the need to engage with diverse policymakers and stakeholders at the local level to generate effective solutions to address violence against women that are both contextually relevant and locally led. The pilots were implemented in Indonesia, Peru and the Republic of Moldova.
Findings from these pilot projects have been published to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Importantly, the models centre the participation and leadership of women and women’s civil society, embedding women’s rights activists in local structures that develop the plans and budgets to address gender-based violence.
The core idea underpinning the participatory planning and paying approach is simple: the benefits of reducing violence are shared by everyone, so the costs can also be shared. Different sectors stand to gain from the financial benefits of reducing violence against women, but are unlikely to adequately fund a comprehensive programme of prevention and response if each acts separately.
Instead, bringing these sectors together along with local communities and other stakeholders, the project facilitated the development of local action plans (LAPs) to address GBV, using participatory methods. Each LAP addressed locally defined priorities to prevent and respond to violence with targeted benefits across a range of health, economic and social sectors and issues.
The LAPs are costed, and, just as the plan itself is participatory, so too is paying for its implementation, with ‘payers’ identified across sectors, and budgets pooled to maximise impact. Rather than siloed budgets funding a mixture of interventions and services with no coherent structure, funding streams are pooled to support a coordinated plan. Through collaboration, shared expertise and decision-making, and local community accountability, the total is greater than the sum of its parts.
Implementing this innovative model is inherently challenging. Particularly in resource-constrained settings such as the settings for these pilots, there are competing demands for limited budgets, and multiple priorities that struggle for attention and funding.
Breaking down siloes to achieve shared financing is a political, contested process, and centring the voices, priorities and rights of women, especially those most marginalised, is a challenge. A key learning from the pilot projects is the need to ensure that senior decision-makers who have budget responsibilities in key sectors and government departments, are engaged early in the process of developing LAPs to gain their support.
Despite the challenges, the benefits of shared budgeting and resource mobilisation are clear. In Peru, UNDP undertook a ground-breaking study to estimate the costs associated with failing to prevent gender based violence. The “Cost of No Prevention” study estimated the annual costs of GBV in the Villa El Salvador community (where the project pilot was implemented) at nearly $72.9 million USD (in 2018 figures), including direct costs such as health care and indirect costs such as absence from work and loss of income, borne by affected women, their children and families, networks and wider communities.
Cost estimates for the participatory planning process to prevent and respond to GBV were estimated at $256,000 USD over 2.8 years (including the costs of project initiation and development of tools and products, so will reduce over subsequent years). This is a clear demonstration of the value for money of participatory approaches to planning and paying models to address gender-based violence.
Failure to adequately prevent and respond to violence places the costs squarely on women’s shoulders. The “Cost of No Prevention” study estimated that 45% of the costs of GBV are absorbed by the affected women themselves, including the costs of increased physical and mental health problems, out of pocket expenses and lower income.
A further 11% is subsidised by households and 44% by the community, including missed school days for children affected by violence in the home, and provision of emotional support, shelter and personal loans by others in the community. Inadequate funding, siloed budgets and limited resources only increase the costs for women, communities, and societies.
Participatory planning and paying models offer a blueprint to fund and provide the services and interventions women need, want and are entitled to. Ultimately, someone must pay the price of violence against women.
Dr Jacqui Stevenson is a research consultant, leading work to generate new evidence on the intersections of gender and health, including GBV and COVID-19, at the UN University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH).
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 22 (IPS) – COP 27 delivered on what was the ‘litmus test’ for its success – consensus on the establishment of a fund on loss and damage. What seemed impossible was made possible, largely due to the unity of the G77 and China and the role of the Egyptian Presidency. Also important were efforts by civil society groups who put pressure on the United States, the main blocker to having the fund.
Until the final hours of the climate talks, it was uncertain whether the deal would be sealed, given behind the scenes diplomacy by the COP Presidency team. The G77/China was led by Pakistan, that wielded a strong moral voice at the conference, following the catastrophic and devastating floods which was attributed to climate change.
It was a big win for loss and damage issues at Sharm el-Sheikh, to spotlight what was once seen as an ‘orphan child’ of the process, with usual priority given to mitigation (emissions reductions), while adaptation to climate impacts is treated as the ‘step child’.
However, there is nothing significantly meaningful on finance, given the overall stance of developed countries in the process, with the loss and damage fund remaining empty for now, with the hope that it will deliver more in the coming years when the fund is set up and is resourced.
The Santiago Network on Loss and Damage (SNLD), which is to be a technical assistance facility for developing countries also was devoid of any financial commitments. The finance decisions adopted only exhorted developed countries to deliver on the USD 100 billion per year by 2020 pledges and to double adaptation funding.
New pledges, totalling more than USD 230 million, were made to the Adaptation Fund at COP27, a small sum given the scale of the needs in developing countries.
An overarching alarm and agony of many developing countries at the Sharm el-Sheikh talks were the persistent efforts by developed countries to not own up to their historical responsibilities for past emissions, and to delete or dilute the foundational principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC) between developed and developing countries under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.
This attempt was repeatedly called out by developing countries, especially from the Like-minded developing countries (LMDC), the African Group, the Arab Group and ABU (Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay). The effort to remove this differentiation was at the heart of the fight on many fronts, especially on the issue of mitigation and finance, which seemed like a repeat of negotiations in Paris.
Developed countries continued their efforts at using terms such as ‘major emitters’, ‘major economies’, and the ‘G20’ in relation to who should show more ambition on mitigation, while in the discussion on finance, it was about “broadening the donor base”.
The retort from developing countries was that these issues were already settled under the Paris Agreement and that the principles and provisions of the Agreement should be respected and implemented.
The climate talks which began on Sunday, 6 Nov, were supposed to end Friday, 18 Nov, but decisions were only gavelled early morning of Sunday, 20 Nov, when the official plenary began at 4 am. Delegates were visibly exhausted and bleary-eyed following long days and nights of negotiations which were particularly intense since Wed, 16 Nov.
Apart from the loss and damage fund, other issues that were deadlocked during the week were the cover decisions (as to what they should contain), the mitigation work programme, the global goal on adaptation and matters related to finance.
Among the sticky issues in relation to mitigation were on how the temperature goal of 1.5°C should be reflected, how to advance efforts following the controversial paragraph adopted on the phase down of unabated coal and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies from COP 26 decision in Glasgow, and the peaking of emissions by 2025.
In order to avoid spats in public given the wide divergence between Parties in the full glare of the public and world media, the COP 27 Presidency team resorted to informal consultations and diplomatic efforts behind the scenes to find compromises on the difficult issues with draft texts which were reviewed by Parties.
This was the reason for the delay in convening the final plenary, as Parties also wanted to gauge if they could live with the draft decisions, as they assessed the overall balance of the package of decisions among the key issues of mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage and finance.
COP 27 President Sameh Shoukry convened plenary and gavelled the adoption of the various decisions. Following the adoption of the decisions, he said that “despite the difficulties and challenges of our times, the divergence of views, level of ambition or apprehension, we remain committed to the fight against climate change…. and that as much as sceptics and pessimists thought that climate action will be taking a back seat on the global agenda, we rose to the occasion, upheld our responsibilities and undertook the important decisive political decisions that millions around the world expect from us.”
Minister Shoukry added that “We listened to the calls of anguish and despair resonating from one end of Pakistan to the other, a country with literally more than a third of its area flooded, a resounding alarm of the future that awaits us beyond 1.5 degrees. A bleak future…, a future that I do not wish for my grandchildren nor for any child on this planet.”
“Today, here in Sharm el-Sheikh, we establish the first ever dedicated fund for loss and damage, a fund that has been so long in the making. It was only appropriate that this COP, the implementation COP in Africa, is where the fund is finally established.”
“Millions around the globe can now sense a glimmer of hope that their suffering will finally be addressed, swiftly and appropriately,” he said further, adding that “We leave Sharm el-Sheikh with renewed hope in the future of our planet, with an even stronger collective will and more determination to achieve the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.”
Among the significant decisions adopted are highlighted below.
The cover decisions – Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan
The cover decisions adopted under the COP (Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC) and CMA (Conference of Parties to the Paris Agreement) are referred to as the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan. The COP and CMA decisions are similar in many respects. Highlights of some of the main aspects of the decisions adopted under the CMA are as follows:
The decision “Stresses that the increasingly complex and challenging global geopolitical situation and its impact on the energy, food and economic situations, as well as the additional challenges associated with the socioeconomic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, should not be used as a pretext for backtracking, backsliding or de-prioritizing climate action.”
It “Reaffirms the Paris Agreement temperature goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;” and “Reiterates that the impacts of climate change will be much lower at the temperature increase of 1.5 °C compared with 2 °C7 and resolves to pursue further efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C”.
On enhancing ambition and implementation, the decision “Resolves to implement ambitious, just, equitable and inclusive transitions to low-emission and climate-resilient development in line with the principles and objectives of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, taking into account this decision, the Glasgow Climate Pact (GCP) and other relevant decisions of the COP and the CMA.”
(The developed countries of late, have been mainly focussing on the GCP, and much less on the Paris Agreement and even less of the Convention. Some major developing countries have raised concerns that the GCP is being put at the same level as the Convention and the Paris Agreement.)
On mitigation, the decision “Notes with serious concern the finding in the latest synthesis report on nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that the total global greenhouse gas emission (GHG) level in 2030, taking into account implementation of all latest NDCs, is estimated to be 0.3 per cent below the 2019 level, which is not in line with least-cost scenarios for keeping global temperature rise to 2 or 1.5 °C” and “Emphasizes the urgent need for Parties to increase their efforts to collectively reduce emissions through accelerated action and implementation of domestic mitigation measures in accordance with Article 4.2 of the Paris Agreement.” (Article 4.2 of the Paris Agreement states: “Each Party shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive NDCs that it intends to achieve. Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions.”)
The decision also “Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, while providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards a just transition.” (This is a repeat of the decision from the GCP).
A new and significant outcome on “pathways to just transition”, where there is a decision to “establish a work programme on just transition for discussion of pathways to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement”. It also decided “to convene, as part of the work programme on just transition, an annual high-level ministerial round table on just transition, beginning at its fifth session”.
On finance, the decision “Notes with concern the growing gap between the needs of developing country Parties, in particular those due to the increasing impacts of climate change and their increased indebtedness, and the support provided and mobilized for their efforts to implement their NDCs, highlighting that such needs are currently estimated at USD 5.8–5.9 trillion26 for the pre-2030 period.”
It also “Expresses serious concern that the goal of developed country Parties to mobilize jointly USD 100 billion per year by 2020…has not yet been met.
The decision also “Calls on the shareholders of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and international financial institutions (IFIs) to reform MDB practices and priorities, align and scale up funding, ensure simplified access and mobilize climate finance from various sources and encourages MDBs to define a new vision and commensurate operational model, channels and instruments that are fit for the purpose of adequately addressing the global climate emergency…”.
Loss and damage fund
In a separate decision, Parties agreed to “establish new funding arrangements for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, in responding to loss and damage, including with a focus on addressing loss and damage by providing and assisting in mobilizing new and additional resources, and that these new arrangements complement and include sources, funds, processes and initiatives under and outside the Convention and the Paris Agreement.”
It was also decided “to establish a fund for responding to loss and damage whose mandate includes a focus on addressing loss and damage.” Parties also agreed to “Establish a transitional committee on the operationalization of the new funding arrangements for responding to loss and damage.
Mitigation work programme
Parties decided “that the work programme shall be operationalized through focused exchanges of views, information and ideas, noting that the outcomes of the work programme will be non-prescriptive, non-punitive, facilitative, respectful of national sovereignty and national circumstances, take into account the nationally determined nature of NDCs and will not impose new targets or goals.” (This was a grave concern to many developing countries).
It was also decided “that the work programme shall function in a manner that is consistent with the procedures and timelines for communication of successive NDCs established in the Paris Agreement,” and “that the scope of the work programme should be based on broad thematic areas relevant to urgently scaling up mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade…”
Meena Raman is Head of Programmes at Third World Network – headquartered in Penang, Malaysia.
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