Tag: Latin America & the Caribbean

Oil Exporters Make Markets, Not War — Global Issues

View of the bulk fuel plant in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Because the kingdom needs oil prices to remain high to balance its budget, it pushed OPEC and its allies to decide on a production cut as of Nov. 1. CREDIT: Aramco
  • by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
  • Inter Press Service

CARACAS, Nov 01 (IPS) – The decision to cut oil production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies as of Nov. 1 comes in response to the need to face a shrinking market, although it also forms part of the current clash between Russia and the West.

The OPEC+ alliance (the 13 members of the organization and 10 allied exporters) decided to remove two million barrels per day from the market, in a world that consumes 100 million barrels per day. The decision was driven by the two largest producers, Saudi Arabia – OPEC’s de facto leader – and Russia.

The cutback “is due to economic reasons, because Saudi Arabia depends on relatively high oil prices to keep its budget balanced, so it is important for Riyadh that the price of the barrel does not fall below 80 dollars,” Daniela Stevens, director of energy at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, told IPS.

The benchmark prices at the end of October were 94.14 dollars per barrel for Brent North Sea crude in the London market and 88.38 dollars for West Texas Intermediate in New York.

“At the time of the cutback decision (Oct. 5) oil prices had fallen 40 percent since March, and the OPEC+ countries feared that the projected slowdown in the global economy – and with it demand for oil – would drastically reduce their revenues,” Stevens said.

With the cut, “OPEC+ hopes to keep Brent prices above 90 dollars per barrel,” which remains to be seen “since due to the lack of investment the real cuts will be between 0.6 and 1.1 million barrels per day and not the more striking two million,” added Stevens from her institution’s headquarters in Washington.

A month ago, the alliance set a joint production ceiling of 43.85 million barrels per day, not including Venezuela, Iran and Libya (OPEC partners exempted due to their respective crises), which would allow them to deliver 48.23 million barrels per day to the market.

But market operators estimate that they are currently producing between 3.5 and five million barrels per day below the maximum level considered.

The alliance is made up of the 13 OPEC partners: Algeria, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, plus Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, Sudan and South Sudan.

The giants of the alliance are Saudi Arabia and Russia, which produce 11 million barrels per day each, followed at a distance by Iraq (4.65 million), United Arab Emirates (3.18), Kuwait (2.80) and Iran (2.56 million).

In July, U.S. President Joe Biden met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he discussed human rights and abundant oil supplies for the global market. A few months later Riyadh led the decision for an oil cut that has been seen as a betrayal by Washington. CREDIT: Bandar Algaloud/SRP
In July, U.S. President Joe Biden met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he discussed human rights and abundant oil supplies for the global market. A few months later Riyadh led the decision for an oil cut that has been seen as a betrayal by Washington. CREDIT: Bandar Algaloud/SRP

United States takes the hit

U.S. President Joe Biden was “disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC+ to cut production quotas while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” a White House statement said.

The price of gasoline in the United States has soared from 2.40 dollars a gallon in early 2021 to the current average of 3.83 dollars – after peaking at five dollars in June – a heavy burden for Biden and his Democratic Party in the face of the Nov. 8 mid-term elections for Congress.

Biden visited Saudi Arabia in July, while the press reminded the public that during his 2020 election campaign he talked about making the Arab country “a pariah” because of its leaders’ responsibility for the October 2018 murder in Istanbul of prominent opposition journalist in exile Jamal Khashoggi.

The U.S. president said he made clear to the powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman his conviction that he was responsible for the crime. But the thrust of his visit was to urge the kingdom to keep the taps wide open to contain crude oil and gasoline prices.

Hence the U.S. disappointment with the production cut promoted by Riyadh – double the million barrels per day predicted by market analysts – which, by propping up prices, favors Russia’s revenues, which has had to place in Asia, at a discount, the oil that Europe is no longer buying from it.

Biden then announced the release of 15 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserve – which totaled more than 600 million barrels in 2021 and just 405 million this October – completing the release of 180 million barrels authorized by Biden in March, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that was initially supposed to occur over six months.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and President Vladimir Putin chat cordially during a visit by the Russian leader to Riyadh in October 2019. The two major oil exporters lead the 23-state alliance that upholds production cuts to prop up prices. CREDIT: SPA

Shift in Washington-Riyadh relations

Karen Young, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York, wrote that “oil politics are entering a new phase as the U.S.-Saudi relationship descends.”

“Both countries are now directly involved in each other’s domestic politics, which has not been the case in most of the 80-year bilateral relationship,” she wrote.

“….(M)arkets had anticipated a cut of about half that much. Whether the decision to announce a larger cut was hasty or politically motivated by Saudi political leadership (rather than technical advice) is not clear,” she added.

Saudi leaders could apparently see Biden as pandering to Iran, its archenemy in the Gulf area, with positions adverse to Riyadh’s in the conflict in neighboring Yemen, and would resent the accusation against the crown prince for the murder of Khashoggi.

Young argued that “the accusation that Saudi Arabia has weaponized oil to aid Russian President Vladimir Putin is extreme,” and said “The Saudi leadership may assume that keeping Putin in the OPEC+ tent is more valuable than trying to influence oil markets without him.”

Gasoline prices in the United States, while down from their June level of five dollars per gallon, are still at a high level for many consumers ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS

More market, less war

OPEC’s secretary general since August, Haitham Al Ghais of Kuwait, said on Oct. 7 that “Russia’s membership in OPEC+ is vital for the success of the agreement…Russia is a big, main and highly influential player in the world energy map.”

Writing for the specialized financial magazine Barron’s, Young stated that “What is certainly true is that energy markets are now highly politicized.”

“The United States is now an advocate of market manipulation, asking for favors from the world’s essential swing producer, advocating price caps on Russian crude exports and embargoes in Europe,” Young wrote.

For its part, the Saudi Foreign Ministry rejected as “not based on facts” the criticism of the OPEC+ decision, and said that Washington’s request to delay the cut by one month (until after the November elections, as the Biden administration supposedly requested) “would have had negative economic consequences.”

In its most recent monthly market analysis, OPEC noted that “The world economy has entered into a time of heightened uncertainty and rising challenges, amid ongoing high inflation levels, monetary tightening by major central banks, high sovereign debt levels in many regions as well as ongoing supply issues.”

It also mentioned geopolitical risks and the resurgence of China’s COVID-19 containment measures.

The two million barrel cut was decided “In light of the uncertainty that surrounds the global economic and oil market outlooks, and the need to enhance the long-term guidance for the oil market,” said the OPEC+ alliance’s statement following its Oct. 5 meeting.

Oil analyst Elie Habalian, who was Venezuela’s governor to OPEC, also opined that “notwithstanding Mohammed bin Salman’s sympathy for Putin, the cut was due to his concern about the balance of the world oil market, and not to support Russia.”

Latin America, pros and cons

Stevens said the oil outlook that opens up this November will mean, for importers in the region, that their fuels will be more expensive but probably not by a significant amount, and net importers in Central America and the Caribbean will be the hardest hit.

Exporters will benefit from higher prices. Brazil and Mexico have already increased their exports of fuel oil, and Argentina and Colombia have hiked their exports of crude oil. And higher prices would particularly benefit Brazil and Guyana, which are boosting their production capacity.

Argentina could have benefited if it had begun to invest in production years ago, but its financial instability left it with little capacity to take advantage of this moment. And Venezuela not only faces sanctions, but upgrading its worn-out oil infrastructure would require investments and time that it does not have.

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

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Migration for Many Venezuelans Turns from Hope to Nightmare — Global Issues

Venezuelan migrants stranded in Guatemala after their journey to Mexico was cut short by new restrictions issued by the United States. Most of them, unable to afford to return to their home country, await possible humanitarian return flights. CREDIT: IMG
  • by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
  • Inter Press Service

CARACAS, Oct 28 (IPS) – Thousands of Venezuelans who have crossed the treacherous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, or who have made the perilous journey through Central America and Mexico to reach the United States, have found themselves stranded in countries that do not want them, unable to continue their journey or to afford to return to their country.

Unexpectedly, on Oct. 12, the U.S. government announced that it would no longer accept undocumented Venezuelans who crossed its southern border, would deport them to Mexico and, in exchange, would offer up to 24,000 annual quotas, for two years, for Venezuelan immigrants to enter the country by air and under a new set of requirements.

“We were already in the United States when President Joe Biden gave the order, but they put us in a van and sent us back to Mexico. It’s not fair, on the 12th we had already crossed into the country,” a young man who identified himself as Antonio, among the first to be sent back to the border city of Tijuana, told reporters in tears.

He was one of approximately 150,000 Venezuelans who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border this year to join the 545,000 already in the U.S. by the end of 2021, according to U.S. authorities.

Raul was in a group that took a week to cross the jungle and rivers in the Darien Gap, bushwhacking in the rain and through the mud, suffering from hunger, thirst, and the threat of vermin and assailants. When he arrived at the indigenous village of Lajas Blancas in eastern Panama, he heard about the new U.S. regulation that rendered his dangerous journey useless.

There he told Venezuelan opposition politician Tomás Guanipa, who visited the village in October, that “the journey is too hard, I saw people die, someone I could not save because a river swept him away, and it was not worth it. Now what I have to do is return, alive, to my country.”

In Panama, as in Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and of course Mexico, there are now thousands of Venezuelans stranded, some still trying to reach and cross the U.S. border, others trying to get the funds they need to return home.

They fill the shelters that are already overburdened and with few resources to care for them. Sometimes they sleep on the streets, or are seen walking and begging for food or a little money, abruptly cut off from the dream of going to live and work legally in the United States.

That aim was fueled by the fact that the United States made the possibility of granting asylum to Venezuelans more flexible, as part of its opposition to the government of President Nicolás Maduro, which U.S. authorities consider illegitimate.

In addition, it established a protection status that temporarily allowed Venezuelans who reached the U.S. to stay and work.

Venezuela has been in the grip of an economic and political crisis over the last decade which, together with the impoverishment of the population, has produced the largest exodus in the history of the hemisphere: according to United Nations agencies, 7.1 million people have left the country – a quarter of the population.

Venezuelan migrants walk in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez between the Rio Grande and the wall that separates them from the United States, a border that they will no longer be able to cross on foot but only by air and with express permission from Washington. CREDIT: Rey R. Jáuregui/Pie de Página

Caught up in the elections

The flood of Venezuelan immigrants pouring across the southern border coincided with the tough campaign for the mid-term elections for the U.S. Congress in November, which could result in the control of both chambers by the Republican Party, strongly opposed to Democratic President Biden.

Republican governors and candidates from the south, strongly opposed to the government’s immigration policy and flexibility towards Venezuelans, decided to send busloads and even a plane full of Venezuelan asylum seekers to northern localities governed by Democratic authorities.

Thus, through misleading promises, hundreds of Venezuelans were bussed or flown and abandoned out in the open in New York, Washington, D.C. or Martha’s Vineyard, an island where millionaires spend their summers in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International denounced the use of migrants as political spoils or as a weapon in the election campaign.

Against this backdrop, the Biden administration changed its policy towards Venezuelans, closing the country’s doors to them at the southern border, reactivating Title 42, a pandemic public health order that allows for the immediate expulsion of people for health reasons, and reached an agreement with Mexico to return migrants to that country.

The 24,000 annual quotas provided as a consolation, for migrants who have sponsors responsible for their support in the United States, plus requirements such as not attempting illegal border crossings or not having refugee status in another country, is almost equivalent to the monthly volume of Venezuelans who tried to enter the U.S. this year.

A family of migrants reaches the end of their journey through the dangerous Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama, on their long journey to reach the border between Mexico and the United States. But a new U.S. immigration measure prohibits access to the U.S. for Venezuelans. CREDIT: Nicola Rosso/UNHCR

What happens now?

In the immediate future, those who were on their way will be left in limbo and will now have to return to their country, where many sold everything – from their clothes to their homes – to pay for their perilous journey.

Hundreds of Venezuelans have begun to arrive in Caracas on flights that they themselves have paid for from Panama, while in Mexico and other countries they await the possibility of free air travel, of a humanitarian nature, because thousands of migrants have been left destitute.

There are entire families who were already living as immigrants in other countries, such as Chile, Ecuador or Peru – where there are one million Venezuelans in Lima for example – but decided to leave due to a hostile environment or the difficulties in keeping jobs or finding decent housing, in a generalized climate of inflation in the region.

This is the case told to journalists by Héctor, who with his wife, mother-in-law and three children invested almost 10,000 dollars in tickets from Chile to the Colombian island of San Andrés, in the Caribbean, from there by boat to Nicaragua, and by land until they were taken by surprise by the U.S. government’s announcement, when they reached Guatemala.

Now, in contact with relatives in the United States, he is considering the possibility of returning to the country he left three years ago for Chile, or trying to continue on, while waiting for another option to enter the U.S.

The United States has reported that crossings or attempts to cross its border by undocumented migrants have decreased significantly since Oct. 12.

Among the justifications for its action at the time, Washington said it sought to combat human trafficking and other crimes associated with irregular migration, and to discourage dangerous border crossings in the Darien Gap.

According to Panamanian government data, between January and Oct. 15 of this year, 184,433 undocumented migrants reached Panama from the Darien jungle, 133,597 of whom were Venezuelans.

After his return to the country on Oct. 25, Guanipa the politician told IPS that at least 70 percent of the migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in the last 12 months were Venezuelans, along with other Latin Americans and people from the Caribbean or African nations.

And, after collecting personal accounts of the death-defying crossing, he urged his fellow Venezuelans to “for no reason risk their lives” on this inhospitable stretch that is the gateway from South America to Central America.

At every Latin American border, migration rules are becoming more restrictive and Venezuelans wait patiently to be allowed access, often to try to reach the farthest destinations in the hemisphere, such as Chile or the United States. CREDIT: Gema Cortés/IOM

The Venezuelan government blames the massive exodus and the dangers faced in the Darien Gap on its political and media confrontation with the United States, while claiming that the numbers of reported migrants are wildly inflated and that, on the contrary, more than 360,000 Venezuelans have returned to the country since 2018.

Heads of United Nations agencies and international humanitarian organizations believe that given the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, the flow of migrants will continue, and they therefore call on host countries to establish rules and mechanisms to facilitate the integration of the migrants into their communities.

While the United States has slammed the door shut on Venezuelan migrants, in countries such as Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and some Central American nations, new rules are also being prepared to modify the policy of extending a helping hand to Venezuelans.

For example, Ecuador overhauled the Human Mobility Law to increase the grounds for deportation, such as “representing a threat to security”, and Colombia – which has received the largest number of Venezuelans – eliminated the office for the attention and socioeconomic integration of the migrant population.

Panama will require visas for those deported from Central America or Mexico, Peru is working to change regulations for the migrant population, and the government of Chile, which in the past has expelled hundreds of migrants on flights, announced that it will take measures to prevent unwanted immigration.

Of the 7.1 million Venezuelans registered as of September as migrants by U.N. agencies, the vast majority of them having left the country since 2013, almost six million were in neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Entire families have not only sought to reach the United States or Europe, but have traveled thousands of kilometers, in journeys they could never have dreamed of, with stretches by bus but often on foot, through clandestine jungle passes or cold mountains, to reach Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina or Chile.

Others tried their luck in hostile neighboring Caribbean islands and dozens lost their lives when the overcrowded boats in which they were trying to reach safe shores were shipwrecked.

Faced with the explosive phenomenon, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) established a platform for programs to help migrants in the region and host communities, which is coordinated by a former Guatemalan vice-president, Eduardo Stein.

Of their budget for 2022, based on pledges from donor countries and institutions, for 1.7 billion dollars, they have only received 300 million dollars, in another sign that Venezuelan migrants have ceased to play a leading role on the international stage.

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

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Local Solutions Boost Sustainable Micro-Mobility in Cuba — Global Issues

Residents of the Fontanar neighborhood in the Cuban capital are pleased with the incorporation of electric three-wheel vehicles to shorten distances between sectors within Boyeros, one of the municipalities that make up Havana. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
  • by Luis Brizuela (havana)
  • Inter Press Service

HAVANA, Oct 17 (IPS) – The incorporation of small electric vehicles for public transport, together with initiatives that encourage the use of bicycles, represent opportunities and challenges for Cuba to sustainably and inclusively combat the chronic problems in urban mobility.

“Connecting nearby places with electric means of transportation has been very timely and a relief,” said Dania Martínez, referring to the well-known Ecotaxis, six-seater vehicles that since June have been providing transportation between neighborhoods within the municipality of Boyeros, one of the 15 that make up Havana.

The teacher and her son were waiting for one of these vehicles at the Fontanar shopping center to take them to Wajay, their neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana, when IPS asked them what they thought about the service.

“Public transportation is not good in this area, far from the city center, and private taxis charge you a high fee. Just getting somewhere else five kilometers away can be difficult. Hopefully the three-wheelers will spread to other places,” Martinez said.

She was referring to light motorized vehicles that resemble some kinds of Asian autorickshaws, which are also known locally as motocarro or mototaxi, with a capacity for six people in the back.

With a range of 120 kilometers, these three-wheeled electric vehicles cover three two- to four-kilometer routes for a price of four pesos, or 17 cents at the official exchange rate in a country with an average monthly salary equivalent to about 160 dollars.

The fleet of 25 vehicles is part of the Neomovilidad project, implemented by the General Directorate of Transportation of Havana (DGTH) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) office in Cuba.

For its implementation until 2023, it has a budget of 1.9 million dollars donated by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

“From its start in 2019, Neomovilidad has aimed to strengthen the regulatory framework for an efficient transition to a low-carbon urban transport system in Havana, with a positive environmental impact,” Reynier Campos, director of the project, told IPS.

During the first three months of operation, more than 135,000 people were transported, with an estimated monthly emission reduction potential of 6.12 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

On the downside, Ecotaxis can only recharge at night by connecting to the national power grid, 95 percent of which depends on the burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity. Recharging is carried out at the three-wheel vehicles’ parking area and is done at night because it takes about six hours.

However, there are plans to contract power from solar parks of the state-owned electric utility Unión Eléctrica de Cuba, in order to offset consumption, executives said.

Other fleets of Ecotaxis provide service in the municipalities of La Habana Vieja, Centro Habana and Guanabacoa, also with UNDP support, and contribute to the national commitment to climate change mitigation actions.

Campos explained that Neomovilidad is a pilot project in Boyeros that could be extended to other Havana municipalities and cities of this Caribbean island nation of 11.1 million people, where public transportation is one of the most pressing long-term issues.

Reynier Campos, head of the Neomovilidad project, stressed that the initiative proposes to strengthen the legislative framework and promote public policies based on four lines that contribute to Sustainable Urban Mobility and help reduce carbon emissions in Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Long-standing problem

With its 2.2 million residents and tens of thousands of people who live here on a short-term basis, Havana has 1.4 million people using transportation daily, one million of whom use the state-owned bus company Empresa de Ómnibus Urbanos, according to the Ministry of Transportation.

But the most recent official reports acknowledge that less than 50 percent of the fleet of public buses are currently operating in the capital.

The Cuban government blames the U.S. embargo as the main obstacle to the purchase of spare parts, as well as the lack of access to credit to repair and renovate buses, the main form of public transportation.

Problems with the availability of fuel and the number of drivers who find work in sectors with greater economic benefits also undermine an irregular service whose most visible face is the overcrowded stops at peak hours.

Figures indicate that 26 percent of the total estimated passengers in Havana use private taxis, which charge higher rates that not everyone can afford.

There are also non-agricultural transportation cooperatives with cabs and minibuses, as well as buses of the state-owned Transmetro Company, that provide services with set schedules.

About 80 percent of Latin America’s inhabitants live in towns and cities, and urban public transport remains essential in regional mobility plans.

Cuba is quietly taking steps to encourage the use of alternative vehicles and increase electricity production from renewable sources, which plans aim to raise from the current five to 37 percent by 2030.

As a result of flexible customs regulations for their importation, as well as assembly, it is estimated that half a million bicycles, motorcycles and electric three-wheelers are in circulation on the island, helping families get around.

However, high prices and sales only in foreign currency hinder their spread. Some of the most economical ones cost over 1,000 dollars, while others range from 2,000 to 5,000 dollars in government stores.

Mirelis Cordovés, driver of one of the electrocycles, makes 11 trips a day on the Fontanar-Wajay route, in the Boyeros municipality of the Cuban capital. She is pleased to have a job and a higher income to support her nine-year-old son, whom she is raising on her own. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Gender focus to reduce gaps

Neomovilidad stands out for encouraging the incorporation of women as drivers and promoting female employment.

“In addition to giving me a job, my income is higher, helping me support my nine-year-old son,” Mirelis Cordovés, a single mother who is one of the 13 women who now form part of the project’s team of drivers, told IPS.

Latin American nations such as Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama have adopted national policies related to the development of electric mobility.

In the case of Cuba, the proposal is “a vision for the development of electromobility from the Ministries of Transport, Energy and Mines and Industry, with guidelines and priority lines in public transport, including the conversion of vehicles,” said Campos.

He said that Neomovilidad proposes to promote public policies that contribute to Sustainable Urban Mobility.

The project urges considering the specific mobility needs of each social group and mainstreaming variables such as gender, age and accessibility, in order to reduce gaps.

The National Gender Equality Survey, conducted in 2016 but whose results were released in February 2019, showed that women primarily bear the burden of care work.

They are the ones who spend the most time taking children, family members or other people under their care to schools, hospitals or to buy food, the survey showed.

Transportation was identified as one of the top three problems for Cuban women, second only to low incomes and housing shortages.

The study drew attention to the correlation between time use and income inequality, because cheaper transportation options (public buses) increase travel delays.

Experts consulted by IPS consider that in the case of Cuba, a developing nation shaken by a three-decade economic crisis and pressing financial problems, there is no need to wait for solutions that demand large resources, if small and accessible alternatives can be devised to organize and facilitate mobility.

The Neomovilidad stand during the 2022 International Transport Fair at the Pabexpo fairgrounds in Havana. The project includes a pilot system of public bicycles, with six bicycle stations and 300 bikes, which should start offering its services before the end of 2022. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Integrating bicycles

As part of Neomovilidad, a pilot system of public bicycles should be inaugurated before the end of 2022, with six stations and 300 bicycles, also in the municipality of Boyeros.

The autonomous venture Inteliforja will operate the bicycle mobility system as a local development project, in conjunction with the DGTH, after winning a bidding process.

“The main activity will be the rental of bicycles at affordable prices. It will include other services such as parking, mechanical workshops, as well as complementary activities such as bicycle touring, package delivery and community activities to encourage the use of this means of transport,” explained Luis Alberto Sarmiento, one of the managers of Inteliforja.

Sarmiento told IPS that the central workshop will be located at the José Antonio Echeverría Technological University of Havana, where there are several engineering and architecture courses.

“We plan to install a solar panel-powered station there to charge students’ motorcycles and electric bicycles,” said the young entrepreneur.

“Farther in the future, when we have more resources, we plan to introduce bicycles or three-wheelers for the transportation of elderly and disabled people,” Sarmiento added.

Although electric mobility and the use of bicycles are seen as promoting more open, safer, cleaner and healthier cities, Cuba faces multiple challenges in this regard, starting with the need to lower the price of vehicles and ensure the stable availability of parts and components.

Other pending issues are the lack of recharging points for refueling outside the home, the lack of bicycle lanes or green lanes, in addition to the urgent need to repair a road network, 75 percent of which is classified as in fair or poor condition.

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

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We Stand Ready for Peaceful Transition of Leadership — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Harvey Dupiton (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Oct 17 (IPS) – Talks of an inevitable U.S. military intervention in Haiti are brewing within diplomatic circles. Without any constitutional or legal authority, our Haitian de facto government gave the green light for special forces to be sent to Haiti to combat our poor people-forgotten, jobless, left with no other choice for survival but the gang violence and insurrection ravaging the country.

The last time the Haitian community was misled into the proposition of a surgical strike, as it was called, under the guise of assistance, was in 1994, 28 years ago. Our Haitian president at that time was the culprit behind that betrayal of our constitution.

At his urging, the U.S. led 20,000 American troops into our sovereign land supposedly to uphold a fledgling democracy, but instead resulting in the dismantlement of our Haitian military and the breakdown of our society.

Our Haitian president said the U.S.-led invasion was to be a quick fix. However, let us not forget that this military operation violated our constitution and the United Nations Charter. The mission quickly became a prolonged United Nations peacekeeping and peacebuilding operation.

Twenty-eight years later, our country is in ruins like never before, right under the surveillance of the United Nations. Our Haiti of today has become a country of beggars, where the government is entirely at the mercy of foreign assistance.

There are no viable institutions left; the political establishment in Haiti exists only on paper as shell organizations, with a parliament out of commission and a powerless judiciary branch. Even more alarming is that the replacement police force to the military is overrun and in despair, having ceded control to violent street gangs.

Those of us in the diaspora want to help our country. Still, this reminds us of another failed nation-building experiment in Afghanistan. There is a lesson to be learned in all of this. Democracy can neither be interrupted nor forced upon a country.

These days, it is with shame that we admit to our African friends and our neighbors from Cuba how we have failed our country, each of us living in the diaspora, simply by our inaction. To them, Haiti, having gained its independence over 218 years ago, was a beacon of hope for the enslaved.

It would be foolish to think that Haiti’s problems are simply that of the gangs. Our Haitian leaders are responsible for the carnage and violence in the streets. They will do anything to get into office. Yet, these wannabe leaders cannot deliver as promised, often betraying the public’s trust, and pointing the finger of blame to absolve themselves of their failings.

We have been failed and disappointed so many times by our leaders of late. Haitians are fed up with their leadership and the broken political system that brought them to power. Today, people are taking to the streets to say enough is enough.

The majority are young people under the age of 25. They are ready to die at the hands of foreign troops, if need be, to take their country back. Haitians are resilient and are willing to pay the price with their lives. Behind the crime of opportunity, they commit in the absence of a law-and- order government, these are ordinary citizens who have been marginalized if not totally abandoned, and left disillusioned.

We call for solidarity to say no to the proposed intervention in Haiti.

We condemn the Haitian de Facto government for inviting foreign troops into our homeland against our people. We view this as an act of cowards, which is shameful, unpatriotic, and treasonous.

We, at United Nations Association Haiti, represented by the diaspora, are ready to provide the transition leadership our country desperately needs to get out of this crisis and beyond.

Our action plan is threefold:

• On the question of security stabilization, a more peaceful approach to a forceful intervention would instead involve honest discussions with those occupying the streets. If they are not the chief problem behind the senseless violence and the terrorizing kidnappings, then they must be part of the solution.

• Secondly, to address the concern of food security, we propose massive relief assistance as the centerpiece of our community engagement strategy. There are enough resources within our diaspora community to do without begging.

• Lastly, on the most critical issue of future elections, we are prepared to take a different and unique approach to make fundamental adjustments to our democratic system, which might alleviate the chronic political instability seen in Haiti and throughout the African continent. We seek to find answers from the science driving our elections in the last 36 years. 1987 was the year we adopted a new electoral law. It was a significant piece of legislation that officialized our departure from dictatorship and military-backed ruling to a new democratic order.

Somewhere along that reversal of order lies the fault lines that explains why our elections since, look more like the reality TV show, American Idol, than a construct grounded in institutional checks and balances.

Haiti can no longer afford divisiveness but must embrace a path to stability and institutional norms. To get our next election right, Haitians may be required to welcome amends wherever necessary to achieve a democratic process that reconciles popular will with stakeholder confidence.

We call on the Haitian community and all friends of Haiti to work with us. This is our opportunity to take our country back. This is your chance to be actively involved in the major decisions of your country.

We call on the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, to respect the sovereignty of Haiti. There is no justification for intervention. There is not a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) a de facto government from its own people.

We seek a peaceful solution for our country and the Haitian people. That is the Future We Want. That is the future we should all deserve.

We stand ready to provide the leadership Haitians will trust to emerge out of this stalemate and move our nation forward united.

It is time to right the wrongs.

Harvey Dupiton is President, United Nations Association Haiti (NY); Chair, NGO Committee on Private Sector Development (ECOSOC NGOs); and former UN Press Correspondent, NTS News (Haiti)

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Agroecological Women Farmers Boost Food Security in Perus Highlands — Global Issues

Lourdes Barreto squats in her greenhouse garden in the village of Huasao in the municipality of Oropesa, in the Andes highlands of the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco, proudly pointing to her purple lettuce, grown with natural fertilizers and agroecological techniques. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
  • by Mariela Jara (cuzco, peru)
  • Inter Press Service

CUZCO, Peru, Oct 13 (IPS) – This article forms part of IPS coverage of International Day of Rural Women, Oct. 15.Lourdes Barreto, 47, says that as an agroecological small farmer she has improved her life and that of Mother Earth. “I love myself as I love Mother Earth and I have learned to value both of us,” she says in her field outside the village of Huasao, in the highlands of the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco.

On the occasion of the International Day of Rural Women, commemorated Oct. 15, which celebrates their key contribution to rural development, poverty eradication and food security, Barreto’s story highlights the difficulties that rural women face on a daily basis, and their ability to struggle to overcome them.

“I was orphaned when I was six years old and I was adopted by people who did not raise me as part of the family, they did not educate me and they only used me to take their cow out to graze,” she said during a visit by IPS to her village.

“At the age of 18 I became a mother and I had a bad life with my husband, he beat me, he was very jealous. He said that only he could work and he did not give me money for the household,” she said, standing in her greenhouse outside of Huasao, a village of some 200 families.

Barreto said that beginning to be trained in agroecological farming techniques four years ago, at the insistence of her sister, who gave her a piece of land, was a turning point that led to substantial changes in her life.

Of the nearly 700,000 women farmers in Peru, according to the last National Agricultural Census, from 2012, less than six percent have had access to training and technical assistance.

“I have learned to value and love myself as a person, to organize my family so I don’t have such a heavy workload. And another thing has been when I started to grow crops on the land, it gave me enough to eat from the farm to the pot, as they say, and to have some money of my own,” said the mother of three children aged 27, 21 and 19.

Something she values highly is having achieved “agroecological awareness,” as she describes her conviction that agricultural production must eradicate the use of chemical inputs because “the Pacha Mama, Mother Earth, is tired of us killing her microorganisms.”

“I prepare my bocashi (natural fertilizer) myself using manure from my cattle. And I also fumigate without chemicals,” she says proudly. “I make a mixture with ash, ‘rocoto’ chili peppers, five heads of garlic and five onions, plus a bit of laundry soap.”

“I used to grind it with the batán (a pre-Inca grinding stone) but now I put it all in the blender to save time, I fill the backpack with two liters and I go out to spray my crops naturally,” she says.

The COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021 prompted many rural municipal governments to organize food markets, which became an opportunity for Barreto and other women farmers to sell their agroecological products.

Lourdes Barreto (L) began to learn agroecological farming techniques four years ago, which improved her life in many aspects, including relationships in her family. At the Saturday open-air market in Huancaro, in the city of Cuzco, she wears the green apron that identifies her as a member of the Provincial Association of Agroecological Producers of Quispicanchi. CREDIT: Courtesy of Nadia Quispe

“I sold green beans, zucchini, three kinds of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, Chinese onions, coriander and parsley,” she says, pausing to take a breath and look around in case she forgot any of the vegetables she sells in the city of Cuzco, an hour and a half away from her village, and in Oropesa, the municipal seat.

Another less tangible benefit of her agroecological activity was the improvement in her relationship with her husband, she says, because she gained financial security with the sale of her crops, in which her children have supported her. Now her husband also helps her in the garden and the atmosphere in the home has improved.

Barreto, along with 40 other women farmers from six municipalities, is part of the Provincial Association of Ecological Producers of Quispicanchi, known by its acronym APPEQ – a productive and advocacy organization formed in 2012.

The six participating municipalities are Andahuaylillas, Cusipata, Huaro, Oropesa, Quiquijana and Urcos, all located in the Andes highlands in the department of Cuzco, between 3100 and 3500 meters above sea level, with a Quechua indigenous population that depends on family farming for a living.

Training to strengthen the organization is part of the activities of the Provincial Association of Ecological Producers of Quispicanchi. Maribel Palomino (2nd-R, wearing a headband), the association’s president, talks with fellow members at a workshop held on Sept. 28, 2022. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Spreading agroecology

The president of APPEQ, Maribel Palomino, 41, is a farmer who lives in the village of Muñapata, part of Urcos, where she farms land given to her by her father. The mother of a nine-year-old son, Jared, her goal is for the organization and its products, which the rural women sell under the collective brand name Pacharuru (fruits of the earth, in Quechua), to be known throughout Cuzco.

“I recognize and am grateful for the training we received from the Flora Tristán institution to follow our own path as agroecological women farmers, which is very different from the one followed by our mothers and grandmothers,” she tells IPS during a training workshop given by the association she presides over in the city of Cuzco.

The Flora Tristan Peruvian Women’s Center disseminates ecological practices in agricultural production in combination with the empowerment of women in rural communities in remote and neglected areas of this South American country of 33 million people, where 18 percent of the population is rural according to the 2017 national census.

Now, Palomino adds, “we are part of a generation that is leading changes that are not only for the betterment of our children and families, but of ourselves as individuals and as women farmers.”

She is referring to the inequalities that even today, in the 21st century, limit the development of women in the Peruvian countryside.

“Without education, becoming mothers in their adolescence, without land in their own name but in their husband’s, without the opportunity to go out to learn and get training, it is very difficult to become a citizen with rights,” she says.

According to the National Agricultural Census, eight out of 10 women farmers work farms of less than three hectares and six out of 10 do not receive any income for their productive work. In addition, their total workload is greater than men’s, and they are underrepresented in decision-making spaces.

In addition, women in rural areas experience the highest levels of gender-based violence between the ages of 33 and 59, according to the National Observatory of Violence against Women.

Maribel Palomino (L), president of the Provincial Association of Ecological Producers of Quispicanchi, sells chemical-free vegetables every week at the agroecological market in the neighborhood of Marcavalle in the city of Cuzco, Peru. CREDIT: Courtesy of Maribel Palomino

In this context of inequality and discrimination, Palomino represents a new kind of rural female leadership.

“I am a single mother, my son is nine years old and through my work I give him education, healthy food, a home with affection and care. And he sees in me a woman who is a fighter, proud to work in the fields, who defends her rights and those of her colleagues in APPEQ,” she says.

Palomino says it is crucial to contribute “to change the chip” of the elderly and of many young people who, if they could look out a window of opportunity, could improve their lives and their environment.

“With APPEQ we work to share what we learn, so that more women can look with joy to the future,” she said.

María Antonieta Tito, a farmer from the Andes highlands village of Secsencalla in the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco, shows her seedbeds of lettuce and celery plants. In March 2022 she began learning agroecological practices and is happy with the results that have allowed her to improve the quality of her family’s nutrition while generating her own income from the sale of vegetables at the local market. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

This is the case of María Antonieta Tito, 32, from the municipality of Andahuaylillas, who for the first time in her life as a farmer is engaged in agroecological practices and whom IPS visited in her vegetable garden in the village of Secsencalla, as part of a tour of several communities with peasant women who belong to the association.

“I am a student of the APPEQ leaders who teach us how to work the soil correctly, to till it up to forty centimeters so that it is soft, without stones or roots. They also teach us how to sow and plant our seeds,” she says proudly.

Pointing to her seedbeds, she adds: “Look, here I have lettuce, purple cabbage and celery, it still needs to sprout, it starts out small like this.”

Tito describes herself as a “new student” of agroecology. She started learning in March of this year but has made fast progress. Not only has she managed to harvest and eat her own vegetables, but every Wednesday she goes to the local market to sell her surplus.

“We have eaten lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and chard; everyone at my house likes the vegetables, I have prepared them in salads and in fritters, with eggs. I am helping to improve the nutrition of my family and also of the people who buy from me,” she says happily.

Every Tuesday evening she picks vegetables, carefully washes them, and at six o’clock the next morning she is at a stall in the open-air market in Andahuaylillas, the municipal capital, assisted by her teenage son.

“The customers are getting to know us, they say that the taste of my vegetables is different from the ones they buy at the other stalls. I have been selling for three months and they have already placed orders,” she adds.

But the road to the full exercise of rural women’s rights is very steep.

As Palomino, the president of APPEQ, says, “we have made important achievements, but there is still a long way to go before we can say that we are citizens with equal rights, and the main responsibility for this lies with the governments that have not yet made us a priority.”

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Doubts about Chiles Green Hydrogen Boom — Global Issues

The administration of President Gabriel Boric, a self-described environmentalist, is facing a growing rift between scientists, social leaders and energy companies that have differences with regard to the production of green hydrogen in Magallanes. The first wind turbines have already been installed in the Magallanes region, in the far south of Chile, such as these in Laredo Bay, east of Cabo Negro, where companies are pushing green hydrogen projects in a scenario where environmental costs are beginning to take center stage. CREDIT: Courtesy of Erika Mutschke
  • by Orlando Milesi (santiago)
  • Inter Press Service

SANTIAGO, Oct 12 (IPS) – In Magallanes, Chile’s southernmost region, doubts and questions are being raised about the environmental impact of turning this area into the world’s leading producer of green hydrogen.

The projects require thousands of wind turbines, several desalination plants, new ports, docks, roads and hundreds of technicians and workers, with major social, cultural, economic and even visual impacts.

This long narrow South American country of 19.5 million people sandwiched between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean has enormous solar and wind energy potential in its Atacama Desert and southern pampas grasslands. This has led to a steady increase in electricity generation from clean and renewable sources.

In 2013, only six percent of the country’s total electricity generation came from non-conventional renewable sources (NCREs) – a proportion that climbed to 32 percent this year. Installed NCRE capacity in September reached 13,405 MW, representing 40.7 percent of the total. Of the NCREs, solar energy represents 23.5 percent and wind power 12.6 percent.

In Chile, NCREs are defined as wind, small hydropower plants )up to 20 MW), biomass, biogas, geothermal, solar and ocean energy.

According to the authorities, the wind potential of Magallanes could meet 13 percent of the world’s demand for green hydrogen, with a potential of 126 GW.

Green hydrogen is generated by low-emission renewable energies in the electrolysis of water (H2O) by breaking down the molecules into oxygen (O2) and hydrogen (H2). It currently accounts for less than one percent of the world’s energy.

However, it is projected as the energy source with the most promising future to advance towards the decarbonization of the economy and the replacement of hydrocarbons, due to its potential in electricity-intensive industries, such as steel and cement, or in air and maritime transportation.

The National Green Hydrogen Strategy, launched in November 2021 by the second government of then right-wing President Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022), seeks to increase carbon neutrality, decrease Chile’s dependence on oil and turn this country into an energy exporter.

The government of his successor, leftist President Gabriel Boric, in office since March, created an Interministerial Council of the Green Hydrogen Industry Development Committee, with the participation of eight cabinet ministers.

A spokesperson from the Ministry of Energy told IPS that “this committee has agreed to bring forward, from 2025 to 2022, the update of the National Green Hydrogen Strategy and the new schedule for the allocation of state-owned land for these projects.”

“We will promote green hydrogen in a cross-cutting manner, with an emphasis on harmonious, fair and balanced local development. By bringing forward the update of the strategy, we seek to generate certainty for investors and to begin to create the necessary regulatory framework for the growth of this industry in our country,” he said.

In the area known as Cabo Negro, in the Chilean region of Magallanes, several companies have installed wind turbines to generate wind energy. The installation of thousands of turbines will affect the landscape of Magallanes and environmentalists believe it will impact many birds that migrate annually to this southern region. CREDIT: Courtesy of Erika Mutschke

Warnings from environmentalists

In a letter to the president, more than 80 environmentalists warned of the risk of turning “Magallanes y La Antarctica Chilena” – the region’s official name – into an environmental sacrifice zone for the development of green hydrogen.

“The energy transition cannot mean the sacrifice of migratory routes of birds that are in danger of extinction, otherwise it would not be a fair or sustainable transition,” said the letter, which has not yet received a formal response.

Environmentalists argue that the impact is not restricted to birds, but also affects whales that breed there, due to the effects of desalination plants, large ports and harbors.

Carmen Espoz, dean of science at the Santo Tomás University, who signed the letter, told IPS that “the main warning that we have tried to raise with the government, and with some of the companies with which we have spoken, is that there is a need for zoning or land-use planning, which does not exist to date, and for independent, quality baseline information for decision-making” on the issue.

Espoz, who also heads the Bahía Lomas Center in Magallanes, based in Punta Arenas, the regional capital, clarified that they are not opposed to the production of green hydrogen but demand that it be done right.

It is urgently necessary, she said in an interview in Santiago, to “stop making decisions at the central level without consultation or real participation of the local communities and to generate the necessary technical information base.”

The signatories asked Boric to create a Regional Land Use Plan with Strategic Environmental Assessment to avoid unregulated development of projects.

“We are not only talking about birds, but also about profound social, cultural and environmental impacts,” said Espoz, who argued that the model promoted by the government and green hydrogen developers “does not have a social license to implement it.”

Sunset at Laredo Bay in the Magallanes region where the Chilean government will have to decide on what changes in the grasslands are acceptable, in the face of a flood of requests to use the area for largescale green hydrogen projects. CREDIT: Courtesy of Erika Mutschke

The bird question

Prior to this letter to Boric, the international scientific journal Science published a study by Chilean scientists warning about potential impacts of wind turbines on the 40 to 60 species of migratory birds that visit Magallanes.

“It is estimated that the installation of wind turbines along the migratory paths of birds could affect migratory shorebird populations, which is especially critical in the cases of the Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa) and the Magellanic Plover (Pluvianellus socialis),” said Espoz.

Both species, she said, “are endangered, as is the Ruddy-headed Goose (Chloephaga rubidiceps).”

She added that if 13 percent of the world’s green hydrogen is to be generated in southern Chile, some 2,900 wind turbines will have to be installed by 2027, “which could cause between 1,740 and 5,220 collisions with bird per year.”

Jorge Gibbons, a marine biologist at the University of Magallanes, based in Punta Arenas, said the big problem is that Magallanes does not have a baseline for environmental issues.

“The scale of production creates uncertainties, heightened because there is no baseline. The question is whether Chile currently has the capacity to carry out large-scale green hydrogen projects,” he told IPS from the capital of Magallanes.

Gibbons believes it would take about two years to update the data on the dolphin and Southern Right Whale (Eubalaena australis) populations

“The greatest risks to dolphins will be seen in the Strait of Magellan. I am talking about Commerson’s Dolphins (Cephalorhynchus commersonii), which are only found there in Chile and whose population is relatively small,” he said.

He proposed studying the route to ports and harbors of these species and to analyze how they breed and feed.

“The issue is how noise disturbs them or interrupts their routes. These questions are still unanswered, but we know some things because it is the best censused species in Chile,” he explained.

According to Gibbons, the letter to Boric is timely and will help reduce uncertainty because “the process is just beginning and the scientific and local community are now wondering if the plan will be well done.”

Conflict of interests

The partnership between HIF Chile and Enel Green Power Chile withdrew from the Environmental Evaluation System the study of the Faro del Sur Wind Farm project, involving an investment of 500 million dollars for the installation of 65 three-blade wind turbines on 3,791 hectares of land in Magallanes.

The study was presented in early August with the announcement that it was “a decisive step for the future of green hydrogen-based eFuels.”

But on Oct. 6, its withdrawal was announced after a series of observations were issued by the Magallanes regional Secretariat of the Environment.

“The observations of some public bodies in the evaluation process of this wind farm exceed the usual standards,” the consortium formed by the Chilean company HIF and the subsidiary of the Italian transnational Enel claimed in a statement.

The companies argued that “the authorities must provide clear guidelines to the companies on the expectations for regional development, safeguarding the communities and the environment.

“In light of these exceptional requirements, it is necessary to understand which requirements can be incorporated and which definitely make projects of this type unfeasible in the region,” they complained.

The government reacted by stating that it is important to remember that Faro del Sur is the first green hydrogen project submitted to the environmental assessment process in Magallanes.

“During the process, some evaluating entities made observations on the project, so the owners decided to withdraw it early, which does not prevent them from reintroducing it when they deem it convenient,” the Ministry of Energy spokesperson told IPS.

He added that the ministry stresses “the conviction to develop the green hydrogen industry in the country and that this means sending out signals, but in no case should this compromise environmental standards and citizen participation in the evaluation processes.”

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Biomethane from Garbage: Turning a Climate Enemy into Clean Energy

A view of the new Caucaia landfill, near Fortaleza, capital of the state of Ceará in northeastern Brazil, which receives about 5,000 tons of garbage a day. It already produces biogas, but will do so on a larger scale in a few years. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
  • by Mario Osava (fortaleza, brazil)
  • Inter Press Service

FORTALEZA, Brazil, Oct 07 (IPS) – Garbage that has accumulated since 1991 in the two landfills in the municipality of Caucaia has become a biomethane deposit that supplies industrial and commercial companies, thermoelectric plants and homes in Ceará, a state in northeastern Brazil.

The GNR Fortaleza plant extracts biogas from 700 wells installed in the landfills and refines it to obtain what it calls renewable natural gas – which gives the company its name – as opposed to fossil natural gas.

The plant, with a total area of 73 hectares, is located between two open-air landfills that resemble small plateaus in Caucaia, a municipality about 15 kilometers from the state capital Fortaleza, whose outskirts it forms part of, and produces about 100,000 cubic meters of biogas per day.

In addition to the climate benefit of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, biomethane today costs 30 percent less than its fossil equivalent, said Thales Motta, director of GNR Fortaleza as representative of Ecometano, a Rio de Janeiro-based company specializing in the use of biomass gases.

“It is a good business” because its price is adjusted according to national inflation and is not subject to exchange rate fluctuations and international hydrocarbon prices, as is the case with fossil gas, he told IPS.

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Ecometano partnered with Marquise Ambiental, a company that manages landfills locally and in other parts of Brazil, to create the GNR in Caucaia.

Another decisive collaboration came from the state-owned Ceará Gas Company (Cegás), which agreed to incorporate biomethane into its natural gas distribution network, right from the start, in 2018, when the new fuel cost 30 percent more than fossil natural gas and faced misgivings about its quality and stability of supply, Motta said.

The agreement allows for the direct injection of biomethane into the Cegás grid and a share of around 15 percent of the consumption of the distributor’s 24,000 customers.

Industry is the main consumer, accounting for 46.26 percent of the total, followed by thermal power plants and motor vehicles. Residential consumption amounts to just 0.73 percent. Cegás prioritizes large consumers.

Ecometano is a pioneer in the production of biomethane from waste. It started in 2014 with a smaller plant, with a capacity for 14,000 cubic meters per day, GNR Dos Arcos, located in São Pedro da Aldeia, a coastal city of 108,000 people 140 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro.

In Caucaia, a municipality of 370,000 people near the coast of Ceará, the new landfill, in operation since 2019, receives 5,000 tons of garbage daily from Greater Fortaleza and its 4.2 million inhabitants.

The old landfill, which opened in 1991 and is now closed, is still the main source of biogas. But production is in continuous decline, unlike the new one, which is growing with the daily influx of garbage brought in by hundreds of trucks.

GNR Fortaleza’s experience has encouraged the dissemination of similar plants in metropolitan regions and large cities, due to the profitability of the business and because reducing methane emissions is key to mitigating the climate crisis.

Methane is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the gas with the highest emissions, in terms of global warming. The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) on climate change, held in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, set a goal of cutting methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

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Small Farmers in Peru Combat Machismo to Live Better Lives — Global Issues

On the suspension bridge that crosses the Vilcanota River, in the village of Secsencalla, in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco, Peru, a group of men who have been taking steps towards a new form of masculinity without machismo pose for a photo. From left to right: Saul Huamán, Rolando Tito, Hilario Quispe and Brian Junior Quispe. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
  • by Mariela Jara (cuzco, peru)
  • Inter Press Service

CUZCO, Peru, Oct 06 (IPS) – “My father was very ‘machista’, he used to beat my mother… It was a very sad life,” said Dionisio Ticuña, a resident of the rural community of Canincunca, on the outskirts of the town of Huaro, in the southern Peruvian highlands region of Cuzco more than 3,000 meters above sea level.

Today, at 66 years of age, he is happy that he managed to not copy the model of masculinity that his father showed him, in which being a man was demonstrated by exercising power and violence over women and children.

“Now I am an enemy of the ‘wife beaters’, I don’t hang out with the ones who were raised that way and I don’t pay attention to the taunts or ugly things they might say to me,” he said in an interview with IPS in his new adobe house, which he built in 2020 and where he lives with his wife and their youngest daughter, 20. Their three other children, two boys and a girl, have already become independent.

In this South American country of 33 million people, tolerance of violence, particularly gender-based violence, is high, and there is a strong division of roles within couples.

A nationwide survey on social relationships, conducted in 2019 by the governmental National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), showed that 52 percent of women believed they should first fulfill their role as mothers and wives before pursuing their dreams, 33 percent believed that if they were unfaithful they should be punished by their husband, and 27 percent said they deserved to be punished if they disrespected their husband.

The survey also found that a high proportion of Peruvians agreed with the physical punishment of children. Of those interviewed, 46 percent thought it was a parental right and 34 percent believed it helped discipline children so they would not become lazy.

Katherine Pozo, a Cuzco lawyer with the rural development program of the Flora Tristán Peruvian Women’s Center, told IPS that masculinity in Peru, particularly in rural areas, is still very machista or sexist.

“The ideas acquired in childhood and transmitted from generation to generation are that men have power over women, that women owe them obedience, and that women’s role is to take care of their men and take care of the home and the family. This thinking is an obstacle to the integral experience of their masculinities and to the recognition of women’s rights,” she said in an interview at her home in Cuzco, the regional capital.

Dionisio Ticuña, a resident of the rural community of Canincunca, in the Andean region of Cuzco in southern Peru, stands in front of his new adobe house, built in 2020. At the age of 66, he has achieved the tranquility of a life without machismo, which he experienced as a child in his family. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Based on that analysis the Center decided to involve men in the work they do in rural communities in Cuzco to help women exercise their rights and have greater autonomy in making decisions about their lives, promoting the approach to a new kind of masculinity among men.

In 2018 the Center launched this process, convinced that it was necessary to raise awareness among men about gender equality so that women’s efforts to break down discrimination could flourish. The project will continue until next year and is supported by two Spanish institutions: the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation and Muguen Gainetik.

IPS visited different Quechua indigenous villages in Cuzco´s Andes highlands to talk to farmers who are working to shed gender prejudices and beliefs that, they acknowledge, have brought them unhappiness. Now, they are gradually taking significant steps with the support of the Center, which is working to generate a new view of masculinity in these communities.

“I have been married to my wife Delia for 35 years, we have raised our children and I can say that you feel great peace when you learn to respect your partner and to show your innermost emotions,” said Ticuña, a participant in the initiative.

“Being head of household is hard, but it doesn’t give me the right to mistreat. I decided not to be like my father and to be a different kind of person in order to lead a happy life with her and our children,” he said, sitting at the entrance to his home in Canincunca.

Hilario Quispe, a farmer from the Secsencalla farming community in the town of Andahuaylillas, in the Peruvian highlands region of Cuzco, poses for a photo with his wife Hilaria Mena. For him it was a revelation to understand that the tasks she performs at home are work, and his commitment now is to share them. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Recognizing that women do work

Hilario Quispe, a 49-year-old farmer from the Secsencalla community in the town of Andahuaylillas, told IPS that in his area there is a great deal of machismo.

In his home, at 3100 meters above sea level, he said that he has been able to understand that women also work when they are at home.

“Actually, they do more than men, we have only one job, but they wash, cook, weave, take care of the children, look after the animals, go out to the fields…And I used to say: my wife doesn’t work,” he reflected.

Because of the distribution of tasks based on stereotyped gender roles, women spend more time than men on unremunerated care tasks in the household.

INEI reported in 2021 that in the different regions of the country, Peruvian women have a greater overall workload than men because the family responsibilities fall on their shoulders.

In rural areas, women work an average of 76 hours per week, 47 of which are in unpaid activities involving work in the home, both caring for their families and their crops.

In the case of men, their overall workload is 64 hours per week, most of which, 44 hours, are devoted to paid work.

Saúl Huamán is a family farmer in the rural community of Secsencalla. He recognizes that machismo is still a daily reality in Peru’s Andes highlands regions, but he strives to demonstrate day by day that he can be different and can achieve a life based on respect with his partner and their six-month-old son, Luas. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Breaking down stereotypes

Pozo, with the Flora Tristán Center, cited data from the official report that found that in the countryside, married women spend 17 hours a week in kitchen activities and men only four; in housekeeping seven and their partners three; and in childcare 11 and their husbands seven.

Quispe, who with his wife, Hilaria Mena, has four children between the ages of six and 17, said it was a revelation to understand that the different activities his wife performs at home are work.

“If she wasn’t there, everything would fall apart. But I am not going to wait for that to happen, I am committed to stop being machista. Those ideas that have been put in our minds as children do not help us have a good life,” he remarked.

The department of Cuzco is a Peruvian tourist area, where the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is the main attraction. It has more than 1.3 million inhabitants, of which 40 percent live in rural areas where agriculture is one of the main activities. Much of it is subsistence farming, which requires the participation of the different members of the family.

This is precisely the case of the Secsencalla farming community, where, although the new generations have made it to higher education, they are still tied to the land.

Rolando Tito sits next to his mother Faustina Ocsa. He believes that men can experience their masculinity differently, without machismo or violence, with equal relationships with women. The university student is also actively involved in agricultural work in his rural village of Secsencalla, in the Andean region of Cuzco, in southern Peru. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Rolando Tito, 25, is in his third year of systems engineering at the National University of Cuzco, and helps his mother, Faustina Ocsa, 64, with the agricultural work.

“I want to better myself and continue helping my mother, she is a widow and although she was unable to study, she always encouraged me to do so. Times are no longer like hers when women didn’t have opportunities, but there are still men who think they should stay in the kitchen,” he told IPS, with his Quechua-speaking mother at his side.

Sitting by the entrance to the community’s bodega, which is often used as a center for meetings and gatherings, with the help of a translator, his mother recalled that she experienced a lot of violence, that fathers were not supportive of their daughters and that they mistreated their wives. And she said she hoped that her son would be a good man who would not follow in the footsteps of the men who came before him.

“I have learned about equality between men and women,” her son said. “For example, I am helping in the house, I am cooking and washing, that does not make me less of a man, and when I have a partner I will not have the idea that she has to serve me. Together we will work in the house and on the farm.”

The same sentiment was expressed by Saúl Huamán, 35, who has become a father for the first time with his baby Luas, six months old.

“Now I have to worry about three mouths to feed. I used to be a machine operator but now I only work in the fields and I have to work hard to make it profitable. With my wife Sonia we share the chores, while she cooks I watch the baby, and I am also learning to prepare meals,” he says as his smiling wife listens.

Pozo the attorney recognized that it is not easy to change cultural patterns so strongly rooted in the communities, but said that it is not impossible.

“It is like sowing the seed of equality, you have to water and nurture it, and then harvest the fruits, which is a better life for women and men,” she said.

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

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Women in Argentine Slum Confront Violence Together — Global Issues

Women gather at the Punto Violeta, a center where different government agencies and social organisations seek to address the gender-based violence suffered by women in the Padre Mugica neighborhood, or Villa 31, a shantytown in Argentina’s capital city. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
  • by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
  • Inter Press Service

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 04 (IPS) – The Padre Carlos Mugica neighborhood looks like another city within the Argentine capital, which most people usually see from up above as they drive past on the freeway but have never visited. It is a shantytown in the heart of Buenos Aires, of enormous vitality and where women are organizing to confront the various forms of violence that affect them.

“I have a history of gender violence. And what I found here is that many other women have experienced similar situations in their lives,” says Graciela, seated at the table of the weekly Women’s Meeting, in a small locale in the most modern sector of the neighborhood, called Punto Violeta, which has become a reference point for victims of violence.

Traditionally known in Buenos Aires as Villa 31 and home to more than 40,000 inhabitants, the neighborhood’s name honors a Catholic priest and activist who worked with poor families, who was killed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

The slum is located on more than 70 hectares of publicly owned railway land just a few minutes from the center of the capital and separated by the train tracks from Recoleta, one of the city’s most upscale neighborhoods. Families started to occupy the area 90 years ago and the shantytown grew as a result of the successive crises that hit the Argentine economy and with the influx of poor immigrants from Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru.

Different governments have tried to eradicate the slum throughout its history, but in recent years the official view of the neighborhood has changed. Today Villa 31 is halfway through a slow and laborious process of urbanization and integration into Buenos Aires that the city government launched in 2015.

Thus, it has become a strange place, which mixes hope for a better future with the social woes of poverty and overcrowding.

There are wide streets with public transport and modern concrete housing blocks where once there was only a total absence of the state. But there are also still many narrow, dark passageways, where precarious brick and sheet metal houses up to four stories high seem on the verge of crumbling on top of each other.

View of one of the passageways in the Padre Mugica neighborhood, a slum located in the heart of Buenos Aires. The process of regularizing the informal settlement and integrating it with the city began in 2015, but it is only halfway done and narrow passageways lined with precarious housing coexist with modern roads and buildings. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The struggle for a better life

Graciela, who became a single mother at 18 and now has six children she has had to raise on her own, says she lived in the western province of Santa Fe and decided to move to Buenos Aires in search of a better life, after an accident at work in which she lost a hand. “In order to get a disability pension, I had to be here,” she explains. That’s how she ended up in Villa 31.

She says that this year her ex-partner tried to kill her, cutting her neck several times with a knife, so today she has a panic button given to her by the police.

She shares the things that happen to her at the Women’s Meeting every Wednesday, a space where collective solutions are sought for complicated lives, marked by economic difficulties, overcrowded housing, interrupted studies, lack of opportunities, families with conflicts and a permanent struggle to get ahead.

“It is a weekly meeting where we invite all the women of the neighborhood and we work on emotional strength as a preventive strategy against violence. Sometimes women start to feel that what they experience at home is normal,” says Carolina Ferro, a psychologist of the Women’s Encounter Program of the Undersecretariat of Public Safety and Order of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Justice and Security.

Ferro explains that the goal is to bolster the self-esteem of the women victims of violence. “Once they are empowered, they can go out to work to become economically independent or go back to school. We help them to be themselves,” she says during the last meeting in September, in which IPS was allowed to participate.

“This is part of a comprehensive care project. We centralize the care at the Punto Violeta because, although the violence here is no different from that in other parts of the city, many women find it difficult to leave the neighborhood because they don’t know how,” she adds.

Graciela, a mother of six children whom she has had to raise on her own, is one of the participants in the Punto Violeta in Padre Mugica, where women come together to find solutions to the violence they have experienced and to empower themselves to improve their lives, those of their families and the community. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

When the psychologist asks the women what has been the greatest achievement in their lives, excited responses emerge. One says, “Raising my children on my own”; another says, “Going back to school as an adult, and graduating”; and another says, “Having stopped working as a house cleaner to open my own little salon where I do therapeutic massage.”

“This is the first time in my life that I have spoken to a psychologist,” says one of the participants in the meeting, who is anguished because her son, whom she dreamed would become a university graduate and professional, dropped out of school. The group coordinator and her fellow participants insist on the need not to place expectations on another person, whose life cannot be controlled, in order to avoid frustration.

Unceasing violence

In 2021, in this South American country of 45 million people, 251 women were killed by gender violence, an average of one murder every 35 hours, according to the National Registry of Femicides, kept by the Supreme Court of Justice since 2015. In 88 percent of the cases, the victim knew her aggressor, and in 39 percent she lived with him. In 62 percent of the cases she was killed by her partner or ex-partner.

The Supreme Court has been conducting the survey since 2015 and the figures have not varied much, with approximately 20 percent of femicides in the city of Buenos Aires committed in shantytowns and slums. In any case, during 2020, the most critical year of the COVID-19 pandemic, calls to emergency numbers increased fivefold.

Aerial view of the Padre Mugica neighborhood, or Villa 31, as many still call it, with downtown Buenos Aires in the background. The 90-year-old informal settlement now straddles a freeway and has more than 40,000 inhabitants, just minutes from the heart of the Argentine capital. CREDIT: City of Buenos Aires

It was precisely during the pandemic that the Punto Violeta was born, as a government response to a longstanding concrete demand in the neighborhood for a women’s center.

“When the pandemic began and mobility restrictions were imposed, it was a very difficult time in the neighborhood, when some local women told us that we should not forget the women victims of violence, who had been locked in their homes with their aggressors,” Bárbara Bonelli, deputy ombudsperson in the Buenos Aires city government and a driving force behind the creation of the center, told IPS.

Punto Violeta is the name given in Argentina and other countries to spaces designed to promote the defense of the rights of women and sexual minorities, in which public agencies work together with social organizations.

The program in Mugica involves several public agencies, which take turns on different days of the week, with the mission of providing a comprehensive approach to the problem of violence.

At the center victims can file a criminal complaint of gender violence with representatives of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, obtain a protection measure or gain access to psychological care or a social worker.

“Punto Violeta was created to respond to a demand that existed in the neighborhood. I would say that the problem of violence against women is no different in poor neighborhoods, but it does need to be addressed at a local level,” says Bonelli.

“Since it is very difficult for them to leave the neighborhood, the state did not reach these women. We hope that the Punto Violeta will contribute to the effective insertion of women from the neighborhood in terms of employment, education, finance, economic and social issues,” she adds.

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

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Cuban Innovator Uses Sunlight to Create a Model Sustainable Space — Global Issues

Félix Morffi, an 84-year-old retiree, shows a self-made solar heater and solar panels installed on the roof of his house in the municipality of Regla in Havana. His hope is that his house will soon become an experimental site for the use of renewable energies and that students will learn about the subject in situ. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
  • by Luis Brizuela (havana)
  • Inter Press Service

HAVANA, Sep 23 (IPS) – After making a model for a solar heater, installing solar panels and creating a device to dehydrate food with the help of the sun, Félix Morffi is turning his home into a space for the production and promotion of renewable energies in Cuba.

With two tanks, glass, aluminum sheets, as well as cinderblocks, sand and cement, the 84-year-old retiree created, in 2006, a solar heater that meets his household needs, which he proudly displays.

“You build it today and tomorrow you have hot water; anyone can do it, and if they have a bit of advice, all the better,” said the retired mid-level machine and tool repair technician.

A magnet magnetically treats the water by means of a system that purifies it and makes it fit for human consumption, without additional energy costs.

Also on the roof of the house, a cluster of 16 photovoltaic panels imported in 2019 provide five kilowatts of power (kWp) and support the work of his small automotive repair shop where he works on vehicles for state-owned companies and private individuals.

This is an independent enterprise carried out by Morffi on part of his land in Regla, one of the 15 municipalities that make up Havana.

In addition to covering his family’s household needs, he provides his surplus electricity to the national grid, the National Electric Power System (SEN).

As part of a contract with the Unión Eléctrica de Cuba under the Ministry of Energy and Mines, for the surplus energy “we receive an average of more than 2,000 pesos a month (about 83 dollars at the official rate), more or less the amount we pay for our consumption during the same period,” Morffi told IPS in an interview at his home.

But he said that the rate of 12.5 cents per kilowatt of energy delivered to the SEN perhaps should be increased if the government wants more people to produce solar energy.

Since 2014, Cuba has had a Policy for the Development of Renewable Energy Sources and their Efficient Use, and in 2019, Decree Law 345 established regulations to increase the share of renewables in electricity generation and steadily decrease the proportion represented by fossil fuels.

Other regulations have been added, such as the one that exempts foreign companies that carry out sustainable electricity generation projects from paying taxes on profits for eight years.

Other decisions seek to encourage self-sufficiency through decentralized generation with the sale of surplus energy to the SEN, as well as tariff exemptions to import photovoltaic systems, their parts and components for non-commercial purposes.

View of a solar dryer to dehydrate fruits, spices and tubers, made with recycled products by Cuban innovator Félix Morffi at his home in the municipality of Regla in Havana. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Great solar potential

According to studies, Cuba receives an average solar radiation of more than five kilowatts per square meter per day, considered to be a high level. There is enormous potential in this archipelago of more than 110,800 square kilometers which has an annual average of 330 sunny days.

By the end of 2021, some 500 million dollars were invested in expanding the share in the energy mix of solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric sources, according to data from the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

The solar energy program appears to be the most advanced and with the best opportunities for growth.

The solar parks operating in the country contribute 238 megawatts, more than 75 percent of the renewable energy produced locally.

In addition, more than 160,000 of the nation’s 3.9 million homes, mostly in remote mountainous areas, receive electricity from solar modules, statistics show.

But clean sources account for barely five percent of the island’s electricity generation, an outlook that the authorities want to radically transform, setting an ambitious goal of 37 percent by 2030.

It is a matter of national security to substantially modify the energy mix in Cuba, which is highly dependent on fossil fuel imports and hit by cyclical energy shortages.

The island is in the grip of an energy crisis with blackouts of up to 12 hours or more in some areas, due to the deterioration of the network of 20 thermoelectric generation blocks with an average operating life of 30 years and in need of frequent repairs.

Added to this is the rise in the international prices of diesel and fuel oil, as well as the shortage of parts to keep the engines and generators powered by these fuels operational in Cuba’s 168 municipalities.

Solar energy is also used by Félix Morffi for aquaculture at his home in a Havana municipality: a photovoltaic panel feeds a solar hydraulic pump that maintains the flow of water in the pond for breeding varieties of ornamental fish and tilapia for family consumption. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Putting on the brakes

Government authorities point to the U.S. embargo as a factor holding back the growth of renewable energies, blaming it for discouraging potential investors and hindering the purchase of modern components and technologies.

On the other hand, inflation, the partial dollarization of the economy and the acute shortage of basic necessities, including food, leave most families without many options for turning to the autonomous production of clean energy, even if they recognize its positive environmental impact.

One of the authorized state-owned companies markets and assembles 1.0 kWp solar panel systems for the equivalent of about 2,300 dollars in a country where the average monthly salary is estimated at 160 dollars, although it is possible to apply for a bank loan for their installation.

People who spoke to IPS also mentioned the difficulties in storing up solar energy for use at night, during blackouts or on cloudy or rainy days, considering the very high price of batteries.

Morffi said more training is needed among personnel involved in several processes, and he cited delays of more than a year between the signing of the contract with Unión Eléctrica and the beginning of payment for the energy surpluses contributed to the SEN, as well as “inconsistency with respect to the assembly” of the equipment.

Although there is a national policy on renewable energy sources, “there is still a lot of ignorance and very little desire to do things, and do them well. Awareness-raising is needed,” he argued.

A prototype of an energy meter that records electricity generation and consumption at Félix Morffi’s house, in the Havana municipality of Regla. In recent years, several regulations have sought to encourage Cuba’s self-sufficiency in renewable energies, the sale of surpluses, as well as tariff exemptions to import photovoltaic systems, their parts and components for non-commercial purposes. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Combining renewable energies

Morffi believes that despite the economic conditions, with a little ingenuity people can take advantage of the natural elements, because “the sun shines for everyone; the air is there and costs you nothing, but your wealth is in your brain.”

He shows a dryer that uses the heat of the sun to dehydrate fruits, spices and tubers, which he assembled mostly with recycled products such as pieces of wood, nylon, acrylic and aluminum sheets.

Other equipment will require a significant investment, such as the three small wind turbines of 0.5 kWp each that he plans to import and a new batch of 4.0 kWp photovoltaic solar panels, for which he will have to apply for a bank loan.

At the back of his house, a small solar panel keeps the water flowing from a well for his barnyard fowl and an artificial pond holding a variety of ornamental fish as well as tilapia for the family to eat.

The construction of a small biodigester, about four cubic meters in size, is also at an advanced stage on his land, aimed at using methane gas from the decomposition of animal manure, for cooking.

According to Morffi, who manages these activities with the support of several family members, his home is on its way to becoming an experimental site for the use of renewable energies.

A specialized classroom may be built there, so that students can learn about the subject in situ.

So far in the design phase and in discussions with potential supporters, this local development project could even install “solar heaters in places in the community such as the doctor’s office, a day center and a cafeteria for the elderly,” said Morffi.

He said the idea should receive support from international donors, the government of the municipality of Regla, and Cubasolar, a non-governmental association dedicated to the promotion of renewable sources and respect for the environment, of which Morffi has been a member since 2004.

“We are willing to advise anyone who wants to install solar panels, heaters or dryers, everything related to renewable energies. We have knowledge and experience and have something to contribute,” he said.

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

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