Tag: Latin America & the Caribbean

New Political Agreement Finally Tackles Venezuela’s Social Crisis — Global Issues

The World Food Program has been active in Venezuela since last year, delivering bags of food to families of schoolchildren in some poor areas, such as remote areas accessed by river in the Arismedi municipality, in the southwestern plains state of Barinas. CREDIT: Gabriel Gómez/WFP
  • by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
  • Inter Press Service

CARACAS, Dec 15 (IPS) – The social crisis and humanitarian emergency in Venezuela became international headline news again once the government and the opposition, bitter adversaries for two decades, agreed to direct three billion dollars in state funds held abroad to social programs.

When the pact was signed on Nov. 26, renowned nutritionist Susana Raffalli published a photograph of the legs of a girl whose height is eight centimeters shorter than what is appropriate for her age. “I measured her today. Her growth has been irreversibly stunted,” she said.

“Between the first announcement of the social roundtable (meetings to that purpose were already held in 2014) and the one signed today in Mexico, a generation of Venezuelans like her was born. The agreement is not a trophy. It is a commitment to hope,” Raffalli stated.

The Social Agreement signed in Mexico “is an important contribution, which could mean urgent aid for children, the elderly, the disabled and indigenous people, whose situation is extremely critical,” Roberto Patiño, founder of Alimenta la Solidaridad, a network of soup kitchens for children, told IPS.

The resources involved in the agreement are Venezuelan state funds frozen in the United States and European nations that in 2019 refused to accept the re-election of President Nicolás Maduro, in power since 2013, adopted sanctions and recognized opposition lawmaker Juan Guaidó as president.

Now, in talks between the government and the opposition, with the mediation of governments from this region and Norway, an agreement was reached to unfreeze part of the funds and allocate them to social programs under United Nations supervision.

The United States and European countries are participating in the deal as sanctioning parties and the UN as manager of the released funds and social programs covered by them.

“These are absolutely insufficient resources in the face of the crisis, but well-managed they can have a positive impact given the country’s complex humanitarian emergency,” Piero Trepiccione, coordinator of the network of social centers in Latin America and the Caribbean run by the Catholic Jesuit order Society of Jesus, told IPS.

The HumVenezuela Platform, made up of dozens of civil society organizations, has maintained since 2019 that the social situation in this South American country is a complex humanitarian emergency, based on its records on food, water and sanitation, health, basic education and living conditions.

The sharp deterioration in the living conditions in this country over the last decade has gone hand in hand with the decline of the Venezuelan economy – a collapsed oil industry and several years of hyperinflation – whose most visible international consequence has been the migration of seven million Venezuelans.

Renowned nutritionist Susana Raffalli published, as an example of a generation of children born and growing up with malnutrition and other problems in Venezuela, a photograph of the legs of a girl who, the day the government-opposition agreement was reached, was eight centimeters shorter than the appropriate size for her age. CREDIT: Susana Rafalli/Twitter
Renowned nutritionist Susana Raffalli published, as an example of a generation of children born and growing up with malnutrition and other problems in Venezuela, a photograph of the legs of a girl who, the day the government-opposition agreement was reached, was eight centimeters shorter than the appropriate size for her age. CREDIT: Susana Rafalli/Twitter

Barrier against life

In recent years, U.S. sanctions and the political clash with other governments, as in the case of Colombia, a neighbor with which the borders and the transit of people and goods were closed, have had a major impact.

For example, tragedy struck the low-income family of Michel Saraí, a five-year-old girl with pneumonia who was treated at a small hospital in La Fría, a small town in the southwest near the border with Colombia, which lacked the equipment needed for the necessary tests and treatment.

When her health took a turn for the worse on Nov. 30, her parents decided not to take her to the public hospital in the regional capital, San Cristóbal, because they did not have the dozens of dollars charged there to accept patients, who must bring their own supplies and pay for tests.

A Civil Defense ambulance, with fuel donated by a neighbor – gasoline is scarce in the state of Táchira and others – took the girl and her mother some 25 kilometers to the border bridge in the town of Boca de Grita, so that she could be treated free of charge in the cities of Cúcuta or Puerto Santander, on the Colombian side.

With the border formally closed, the Colombian military agreed to receive the ambulance due to the emergency, but the Venezuelan National Guard refused to allow passage of the vehicle carrying the little girl connected to oxygen.

“We had no money to offer them to see if they would let her get through,” the father, Jonathan Pernía, told local reporters a few days later.

In desperation, the mother and an aunt accepted what seemed like the only alternative: disconnecting her from the oxygen, placing her on a wheelbarrow – “as if she were a sack of potatoes,” Pernía lamented – and running with her through the rain to the Colombian side of the bridge, where another ambulance was waiting for them. But the little girl arrived without vital signs.

At the morgue of the hospital in San Cristobal her parents picked up the body. A week later they were still trying to find the money needed to pay the burial expenses.

Jonathan Pernía, the impoverished father of a little girl who died when an ambulance was prevented from crossing the border between Venezuela and Colombia to give her emergency treatment, shows journalists the bill for the funeral expenses, which he has not been able to cover either. CREDIT: Courtesy of Bleima Márquez

Figures behind the crisis

In Venezuela, poverty – defined as those who cannot afford the basic food basket – currently affects 81.5 percent of the population (90.9 percent in 2021), according to the Living Conditions Survey of the Andrés Bello Catholic University, which surveyed 2300 households throughout the country. This is the first time in seven years that it has gone down, partly attributable to a rebound in the economy and remittances from migrants.

Meanwhile, multidimensional poverty – which takes into account housing, education, employment, services and income – fell from 65.2 percent in 2021 to 50.5 percent in 2022, and extreme poverty dropped from 68 percent in 2021 to 53.3 percent in 2022.

Venezuela is the most unequal country in the Americas, and along with Angola, Mozambique and Namibia is one of the most unequal in the world, as the richest 10 percent earn 70 times more (553.20 dollars per month on average) than the poorest 10 percent (7.90 dollars).

Seven million children are in school, down from 7.7 million in 2019, and an estimated 1.5 million children and adolescents are not in the educational system. Preschool and daycare coverage is just 56 percent.

The survey reported an improvement in formal employment and income this year, with average monthly earnings of 113 dollars for public employees, 142 dollars for the self-employed, and 150 dollars for people working in private sector companies.

As a consequence, food insecurity declined from 88 percent of Venezuelans worried about running out of food in 2021, to 78 percent, while the proportion of people who have gone a whole day without eating dropped to 14 percent, from 34 percent in 2021.

More than 90 percent of poor households have received food assistance from the government -especially carbohydrates- but only one third receive these products monthly.

In health, according to the survey, the use of public services is decreasing (70 percent) and health care is becoming more expensive because, while prices in private clinics are skyrocketing, 13 percent of those who turned to public services had to pay in outpatient clinics and 16 percent in hospitals, and in 65 percent of the cases they had to pay themselves for the medicine that was prescribed for them.

Venezuelan government and opposition negotiators, meeting in Mexico with that country’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and Norwegian mediator Dag Nylander, agreed to help address social needs in their country, as a preliminary step to a possible agreement to solving the political crisis. CREDIT: National Assembly of Venezuela

Mexican formula

Jorge Rodríguez, president of the legislative National Assembly and the ruling party’s lead negotiator, said that with the funds released after the agreement reached in Mexico, the infrastructure and materials in 2300 schools will be covered, and the vaccines required in accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines will be purchased.

Medicine for oncological and HIV patients will be obtained, radiotherapy programs, blood banks and at least 21 hospitals will be revived, while more than one billion dollars will be allocated to the national electricity grid.

The World Food Program (WFP), meanwhile, which now delivers food to families of 100,000 schoolchildren in poor areas in the north of the country, hopes to raise funds to provide meals to more than one million people by the end of 2023.

According to Trepiccione, of the Jesuit network, resources should be directed “to the recovery of the infrastructure of hospitals and schools, which are in terrible condition, because that generates a chain of jobs, services and economic activity along with the obvious improvements in the provision of health care and the quality of education.”

“The same can be said of reactivating the electrical system, hit by blackouts that affect above all the economy and the life of people in the western part of the country,” he added.

Patiño, from the network of soup kitchens, said priorities were “programs for early childhood care, pregnant women, school feeding, as well as care for the elderly and indigenous communities, segments where many are dying too young due to lack of urgent health care.”

Groups of retirees and pensioners hold constant demonstrations in Caracas and other cities in protest against their tiny pensions, which in Venezuela are equal to the legal minimum wage and this December barely reached the equivalent of nine dollars for the entire month. CREDIT: Courtesy of Efecto Cocuyo

Government pensions, which are equal to the minimum wage, were equivalent to 30 dollars at the beginning of the year, but with the depreciation of the local currency they are equivalent to just nine dollars per month as of this December.

“We must also emphasize that this social agreement is absolutely insufficient in the face of the precarious conditions that exist in our country. These are resources that will be exhausted and the needs will not disappear,” said Patiño.

In his view, “the only thing that can really solve the crisis, the best possible social program, is a decent job, with a sufficient income and with a social security and public health program that takes care of the most needy.”

Funds for the agreement, frozen in banks in industrialized countries, will be released gradually under the supervision of a government-opposition committee and with UN agency management to tender, implement and oversee the programs, in 2023 and 2024.

And over the coming year new meetings will be held and further political agreements are expected, which may lead to an easing or lifting of sanctions and, eventually, to an improvement in the living conditions of Venezuela’s 28 million people.

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

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Unsustainable Infrastructure Threatens Biodiversity — Global Issues

Francis Ogwal (L) of Uganda and Basile van Havre (C) of Canada, co-chairs of the group responsible for drafting the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, explain the status of negotiations at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal on Dec. 14, 2022. Discussions are entering the final stretch to approve the new biodiversity protection targets. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
  • by Emilio Godoy (montreal)
  • Inter Press Service

MONTREAL, Dec 15 (IPS) – Created in 2016, the Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve (MCBR) hosts 1900 species of animals and plants and contains half of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the second largest in the world after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

This ecosystem is under pressure from the construction of two of the seven routes of the Maya Train (TM), the Mexican government’s flagship megaproject, whose construction, which began in 2020, alters the environment of the Maya Forest, the largest tropical rainforest in Latin America after the Amazon.

This is recognized in two technical reports obtained in Mexico by IPS through public information requests, which state that, although the project is outside the marine area itself, it is located within its zone of influence.

Regarding the 257-km section 4, a document from October 2021 acknowledges the impact on two high priority hydrological regions.

And with respect to the impact on the 110-km section 5, another document dated from May 2022 states that “there is no previous study or information on the monitoring and sampling sites. The presence and state of the fauna that inhabit the trees are unknown.”

The MCBR administration recognizes impacts on two priority marine regions and on the coastline of the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, which is protected by the reserve.

For this reason, the MCBR refused to issue a technical opinion on section 5 due to lack of “sufficient information and elements” and, for T4, issued an opinion that demanded the presentation of additional data and prevention, management, and oversight measures.

Despite the impact that the railroad will have in the region, the government’s National Fund for Tourism Development (Fonatur) did not request reports from at least four other nature reserves.

Fonatur will be in charge of the TM, which will run for some 1,500 kilometers, with 21 stations and 14 stops, through five states in southern and southeastern Mexico.

The case of the railway exemplifies the contradictions between the attempt to protect nature and the development of infrastructure that sabotages that aim, a theme present at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which began on Dec. 7 in the Canadian city of Montreal and is due to end on Dec. 19.

Moreover, the railway’s cost of some 15 billion dollars is classified as forming part of the harmful subsidies to biodiversity, which total 542 billion dollars a year globally. The investment needed for the conservation and sustainable use of nature is estimated at 967 billion dollars a year.

In the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, which is due to be adopted at the summit, one of the main 21 measures being negotiated is called in UN jargon 30×30: the protection of 30 percent of the planet’s marine and terrestrial areas through conservation measures by 2030, in an attempt to halt the loss of biodiversity on the planet.

The plan has attracted support from more than 100 countries but has awakened distrust among indigenous peoples, who have suffered from the imposition of natural protected areas without due information and consultation.

The summit, which has brought together some 15,000 people representing governments, non-governmental organizations, academia, international organizations and companies, will also discuss the post-2020 global framework, financing for conservation and guidelines on digital sequencing of genetic material, degraded ecosystems, protected areas, endangered species, the role of corporations and gender equality.

The 196 States Parties to the CBD, in force since 1993 and whose slogan at this year’s COP is “Ecological civilization. Building a shared future for all life on earth”, have not yet agreed in Montreal on the percentage of the oceans that should be protected and whether it should include waters under international jurisdiction.

The global framework is to succeed the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, adopted in 2010 in that Japanese city during the CBD COP10 and due to be met by 2020, which have failed. Target 11 stipulated the protection of 17 percent of terrestrial areas and inland waters and 10 percent of marine and coastal areas.

The Maya Train, the Mexican government’s main megaproject, threatens protected natural areas, such as the Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, according to a Google Earth capture. In the COP15 negotiations in Montreal, a central issue is the declaration of more natural protected areas, but one of the threats is infrastructure works. Image: Google Earth

Insufficient rules

Manuel Pulgar Vidal of Peru, WWF global leader of Climate and Energy, who is attending COP15, said the problem lies in the regulation of protected areas.
“Nations such as Colombia, Ecuador and Chile have strengthened the system of natural areas. But in general the systems are weak and need to be reinforced, and money, staff and regulations are needed,” he told IPS.

Mexico has 185 protected areas, covering almost 91 million hectares -19 percent of the national territory-, six of which are marine areas, encompassing 69 million hectares. Despite their importance, the Mexican government dedicated less than one dollar per hectare to their protection in 2022.

In addition, management plans have not been updated to cover works such as the Maya Train.

Colombia, meanwhile, protects 15 percent of its territory in 1,483 protected areas covering 35.5 million hectares, including 12 million hectares in marine areas.

Chile, for its part, has 106 protected areas covering 15 million hectares of land – 20 percent of the total surface area – and 105 million hectares in the sea, in 22 of the conservation areas.

Among the 49 governments that make up the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, aimed at promoting 30×30, are 10 Latin American countries: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.

Of the 586 commitments that organizations, companies and individuals have already made voluntarily at COP15, held at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal, only 93 deal with marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems, while 294 address terrestrial ecosystem conservation and restoration; 185 involve alliances and partnerships; and climate change adaptation and emission reductions are the focus of 155.

A group of government delegates discuss the post-2020 global biodiversity framework with new biodiversity protection targets to be approved at COP15, which is being held at the Palais des Congrès in the Canadian city of Montreal. CREDIT: IISD

Aleksandar Rankovic of the international NGO Avaaz said the key challenge goes beyond a specific protection figure.

“The hows are not in the debate. It’s up to each country how it will implement it. It’s left to each country to decide what’s appropriate. There is little openness on how to achieve the goals,” the activist from the U.S.-based organization dedicated to citizen activism on issues of global interest, such as biodiversity, told IPS.

Only eight percent of the world’s oceans are protected and only seven percent are protected from fishing activities. Avaaz calls for the care of 50 percent of marine and terrestrial areas, with the direct participation of indigenous peoples.

The protection of marine areas is tied to other international instruments, such as the Global Ocean Treaty, which nations have been negotiating since 2018 within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and which aims to protect 30 percent of these ecosystems by 2030.

Pulgar Vidal, for his part, called for the approval of the 30×30 scheme. “Implementing these initiatives takes time. And you need an international financing mechanism,” he stressed.

In Rankovic’s view, a strong global framework is needed. “The issue is broader, because fisheries are not well regulated. Without this, marine areas will be part of a weak program,” he warned.

COP15 has also coincided with the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the 4th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization, both components of the CBD and part of its architecture for preserving biodiversity.

IPS produced this article with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

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

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Solar Energy Benefits Children and Indigenous People in Northern Brazil — Global Issues

Aerial view of the Municipal Theater of Boa Vista and its parking lot covered by solar panels, near the center of a city of wide avenues, empty spaces, abundant solar energy and high quality of life compared to other cities in Brazil’s Amazon region. In the background is seen the Branco River, which could be dammed 120 kilometers downstream for the construction of a hydroelectric plant that would flood part of the capital of the state of Roraima. CREDIT: Boa Vista city government
  • by Mario Osava (boa vista, brazil)
  • Inter Press Service

BOA VISTA, Brazil, Dec 13 (IPS) – Solar energy is booming in Roraima, a state in the far north of Brazil, to the benefit of indigenous people and children in its capital, Boa Vista, and helping to provide a stable energy supply to the entire populace, who suffer frequent electricity shortages and blackouts.

The local government of Boa Vista, a city of 437,000 people, installed seven solar power plants that bring annual savings of around 960,000 dollars.

“We have used these savings to invest in health, education and social action, which is the priority of the city government because we are ‘the capital of early childhood’,” said Thiago Amorim, municipal secretary of Public Services and Environment.

Solar panels have mushroomed on the roofs of public buildings and parking lots around the city. The largest unit was built on the outskirts of Boa Vista – a 15,000-panel power plant with an installed capacity of 5,000 kilowatts.

In the city, the parking lot of the Municipal Theater, a bus terminal, a market and the mayor’s office itself stand out, covered with panels. There are also 74 bus stops with a few panels, but many were damaged when parts were stolen, Amorim told IPS in an interview in his office.

In total, the city had a solar power generation capacity of 6700 KW at the end of 2020, equivalent to the consumption of 9000 local households. It also promotes energy efficiency in the areas under municipal management.

“Eighty percent of the city is now lit up by LED bulbs, which are more efficient. The goal is to reach 100 percent in 2023,” said the municipal secretary.

The solar energy park about 10 kilometers from downtown Boa Vista has 15,000 panels with an output of 5,000 KW. It is one of the seven electricity generation units built by the city government to save some 960,000 dollars a year in energy and thus increase the social spending that makes Boa Vista “the capital of early childhood”. The plant is located on the plains of northeastern Roraima, an extensive savannah of 42,706 square kilometers, which stands in contrast with the image of the Amazon jungle. CREDIT: Boa Vista city government

The mayor’s office, during the administration of Teresa Surita (2013-2020), was a pioneer in the installation of solar power plants and also in comprehensive care for children from pregnancy to adolescence, for youngsters in the public educational system.

The city’s Welcoming Family program provides coordinated health, education, social assistance and communication services for mothers and children, from pregnancy through the first six years of the children’s lives. The day-care centers are called Mother Houses.

In recent years, students in the local municipal elementary schools have performed above the national average, coming in fifth place in student testing among Brazil’s 27 state capitals.

This was an especially outstanding achievement because the influx of Venezuelan migrants more than doubled the number of students in Boa Vista schools in the last decade.

Despite this, the quality of teaching was not affected, according to the indicators of the Education Ministry’s Basic Education Evaluation System.

A “little Amazon jungle” in the center of the city of Boa Vista with giant animal sculptures is the main children’s park of the three dozen in the city, with animal playground toys and structures. The playgrounds in the capital of Roraima, a state in the extreme north of Brazil, aim to educate children about the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The results of the local early childhood policy have been recognized by several national and international specialized entities, including the United Nations Children’s Fund, which awarded it the Unicef Seal of Approval in 2016 and 2020.

More visible than the solar panels are the 30 playgrounds of varying sizes scattered around the city, in some cases featuring large playground equipment and structures in the shape of national wild animals, such as crocodiles and jaguars. They are called “selvinhas” (little jungles).

The use of solar power has spread to other sectors of life in Roraima, a state with only 650,000 inhabitants, despite its large area of 223,644 square kilometers, twice the size of Honduras, for example.

In May, there were 705 solar plants in homes, businesses and private companies, in addition to public buildings, in the state, with a total installed capacity of 15,955 KW (just under one percent of the region’s total).

In Roraima there are solar plants in the courthouses in four cities, in an aim to cut energy costs through a program called Lumen.

The secretary of Public Services and Environment of Boa Vista, Thiago Amorim, stands next to a map of the city which shows the areas already illuminated by energy-efficient LED bulbs. They now light up 80 percent of the city, which stands out for its solar energy generation and for programs that prioritize children, coordinating and combining educational, health and social action policies. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The Federal University of Roraima (UFRR) is also building a 908-panel plant, to be inaugurated by March 2023, with the capacity to generate 20 percent of the electricity consumed on its three campuses.

“The main objective is to save energy costs, and the goal is to expand to cover 100 percent of consumption. But it will also be useful for electrical engineering studies,” Emanuel Tishcer, UFRR’s head of infrastructure, told IPS.

The training of specialists in renewable sources, research into more efficient and cheaper panels, the comparison of technologies and innovations all become more accessible with the availability of an operating solar power plant, which serves the university’s electrical energy laboratory.

Edinho Macuxi, general coordinator of the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR), the largest organization of native peoples in the state, said “the great objective (of solar energy) is to prove that Roraima and Brazil do not need new hydroelectric plants.”

The Bem Querer (Portuguese for “good will”) plant on the Branco River, Roraima’s main river, “will have direct impacts on nine indigenous territories” and will also affect other nearby indigenous areas if it is built, as the central government intends, he told IPS.

That is why the CIR is involved in three projects – two solar energy and a wind energy study – in territories assigned to different indigenous ethnic groups, he said.

A view of the Branco River, some five kilometers upstream of the point where the Brazilian government plans to build the Bem Querer hydroelectric power plant. Because the river has little gradient on the central plains of the northern state of Roraima, the reservoir would flood an extensive area, including part of the capital Boa Vista, which has 436,000 inhabitants. This has triggered heavy opposition to the project, by the local indigenous population as well. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The government’s hydroelectric plans, which currently prioritize Bem Querer, but include other uses of local rivers, have sparked a renewed debate on energy alternatives in Roraima, which has an installed electricity capacity of only 300 megawatts, since it has almost no industry.

From 2001 to 2019, Roraima relied on electricity from neighboring Venezuela, generated by the Guri hydroelectric plant in eastern Venezuela, the deterioration of which caused a growing shortage over the last decade, until the supply completely ran out in 2019, two years before the end of the contract.

Diesel thermoelectric plants had to be reactivated and new plants had to be built, including one using natural gas transported by truck from the Amazon jungle municipality of Silves, some 1,000 kilometers away, in order to guarantee a steady supply of electricity that the people of Roraima did not have until then.

It is costly electricity, but its subsidized price is one of the lowest in Brazil. The subsidy drives up the cost of electric power in the rest of the country. That is why there is nationwide pressure for the construction of a 715-kilometer transmission line between Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, also in the north, and Boa Vista.

With this transmission line, Roraima will cease to be the only Brazilian state outside the national grid, and local advocates believe it will be indispensable for a secure supply of electricity, a long-desired goal.

The three members of the board of the Roraima Renewable Energy Forum, Conceição Escobar (L), Ciro Campos and Rosilene Maia (R), which discusses with the local society the energy alternatives that would make it possible to avoid the construction of the Bem Querer hydroelectric plant and the environmental and social impacts of the reservoir. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

To discuss this and other alternatives, a group of stakeholders created the Roraima Alternative Energies Forum in September 2019, to promote dialogue between all sectors, in search of “the strategic construction of solutions to make the use of renewable energies viable in the state.”

“Our focus is energy security. The Forum is focused on photovoltaic sources and distributed generation. But it seeks a variety of renewable energies, including biomass,” said Conceição Escobar, one of the Forum’s coordinators and president of the Brazilian Association of Electrical Engineers in Roraima.

“There is an opportunity for everyone to be involved in the discussion. The construction of transmission lines and hydroelectric plants takes a long time, we have perhaps ten years to develop alternatives,” she told IPS.

“I am against Bem Querer, but the government of Roraima supports it. The Forum listens to all parties, it does not want to impose solutions. We want to study the feasibility of combined sources, with solar, biomass and wind, and encourage the use of garbage,” said biologist Rosilene Maia, who also forms part of the three-member board of the Forum.

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

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For this Caribbean Island, Ozone Protection is a Year-Round Mission — Global Issues

Discarded refrigerators. Scientists continue to stress the need for proper disposal of old fridges as some emit ozone-destroying chemicals. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS
  • by Alison Kentish (dominica)
  • Inter Press Service

DOMINICA, Nov 24 (IPS) – The world celebrates the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer once a year, but for Saint Lucia, the annual month-long observance highlights year-round work on ozone protection.For countries across the globe, September 16th is a day to reflect on progress in protecting the ozone layer. The United Nations designated day for the preservation of the ozone layer is marked by speeches, and educational and social media campaigns.

For the Caribbean Island of Saint Lucia, one day is not sufficient to highlight the gains made or to celebrate the 1987 signing of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer, a landmark, universally ratified treaty.

For that country, Ozone ‘day’ caps a month-long observance, and ozone protection is a year-round effort.

“The National Ozone Unit was established in 1997 and is responsible for coordinating our activities and programmes to ensure that we meet our targets under the Montreal Protocol,” Sustainable Development and Environment Officer in Saint Lucia’s Department of Sustainable Development Kasha Jn Baptiste told IPS.

“Our main obligation is reporting on our progress with the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances and coordinating relevant projects. Other duties include education and awareness, technician training, implementation and enforcement of legislation, and coordinating partners to ensure that we meet our obligations under the convention. This is a year-round job.”

Following summer activities with youth aged 15-18, the Department of Sustainable Development held a month-long observance in September. Events included media appearances and updates on Saint Lucia’s progress toward achieving the model protocol. The Department has held awareness events at all school levels, with more activities scheduled for October.

It is part of a year-round effort to educate the public and put youth at the center of ozone protection.

“One of the most important ways to continue to highlight the ozone layer is through increased awareness. We started with ozone day and usually concentrated on education activities around that day, but we realised that we must have activities year-round. We are also encouraging the teaching of ozone issues as part of our science curriculum,” said Jn Baptiste, who is the Focal Point for the Montreal Protocol in Saint Lucia.

Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Sector

A major component of maintaining compliance with the Montreal Protocol involves stringent monitoring of the refrigeration and air conditioning sector. This includes refrigerants such as chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, a group of ozone-depleting chemicals that have been banned but remain in older fridge and air condition models.

In Saint Lucia, the Sustainable Development Department conducts year-round training for technicians.

“The refrigeration air conditioning sector is where we use the bulk of those products and technicians are the ones servicing these items. We want them to be aware of what is happening, how the sector is transitioning, and what new alternatives are available,” Jn Baptiste told IPS.

In a 2016 amendment to the Montreal Protocol, nations agreed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which were being used as substitutes to CFCs. Known as the Kigali Amendment, its signatories agreed that these HFCs represent powerful greenhouses gases (hydrogen, fluorine, and carbon) and contribute to climate change.

“What is really important now is that countries like Saint Lucia have targets on the Montreal Protocol. We have been saying ‘HFC-free by 2030,’ so in October, Saint Lucia will launch phase two of our HPMP, the HFC Phase Out Management Plan. That will include activities needed to help us achieve that 2030 target. We will expand on what has been done in the past and include activities for training of technicians.”

Legislative changes

Officials are currently reviewing the country’s legislation to ensure compliance with Kigali Amendment targets.

“Our legislation needs to be updated to expand our licensing and quota system to include HFCs so that we can target these gases and control them under the Montreal Protocol,” Jn. Baptiste said.

“What is interesting is that the HFC phase-down can contribute to prevention of 0.4 degrees of warming by the end of the century. That’s important. 0.4 degrees is small, but we know that the Paris Agreement targets a 1.5 degree. The Kigali Amendment, if countries implement it, will be doing some of the work of the climate agreement. The Montreal Protocol started off with the goal of preserving the ozone layer, but it has evolved to address climate change issues – global warming issues.”

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



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Arbitrary Arrests in El Salvador Hit the LGBTI Community — Global Issues

A couple participate in the gay pride parade in San Salvador, held before the state of emergency was declared on Mar. 27, under which the government is carrying out massive raids in search of suspected gang members. Members of the LGBTI community are among those arbitrarily detained, victims of police homophobia and transphobia. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
  • by Edgardo Ayala (san salvador)
  • Inter Press Service

SAN SALVADOR, Nov 21 (IPS) – Police raids against gang members in El Salvador, under a state of emergency in which some civil rights have been suspended, have also affected members of the LGBTI community, and everything points to arrests motivated by hatred of their sexual identity.

Personal accounts gathered by IPS revealed that some of the arrests were characterized by an attitude of hatred towards gays and especially transsexuals on the part of police officers.

“Cases like this, which reveal hatred towards gay or trans people, are happening, but the organizations are not really speaking out, because of the fear that has been generated by the ‘state of exception’,” an activist with Cultura Trans, a San Salvador-based organization of the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) community, told IPS.

Hatred of homosexuals and transgender people

The activist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that another member of his organization, a gay man known as Carlos, has been detained since Jul. 13, after he complained about the arrest two months earlier of his sister Alessandra, a trans teenager.

The authorities have accused them of “illicit association,” the charge used to arrest alleged gang members or collaborators, under the state of emergency.

“The case against Carlos was staged, it was invented,” said the source. “He is a human rights activist in the trans community, we have documents that show that he participates in our workshops, in our activities.”

A police officer stops a young man in San Salvador and checks his back and other parts of his body for gang-related tattoos, one of the elements used by authorities to track down gang members in El Salvador. Since the state of emergency was declared, 58,000 people have been detained, in many cases arbitrarily, among them members of the LGBTI community. CREDIT: National Civil Police

The state of exception, under which some civil rights are suspended, has been in force in El Salvador since Mar. 27, when the government of Nayib Bukele launched a crusade against criminal gangs, with the backing of the legislature, which is controlled by the ruling New Ideas party.

Gangs have been responsible for the majority of crimes committed in this Central American country for decades.

According to the constitution, a state of exception can be in place for 30 days, and can be extended for another 30. But a legal loophole has allowed the government and Congress to renew the measure every month, under the argument that this was already done during the 1980-1992 civil war.

This interpretation could only be modified by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice. But Bukele, with the backing of the legislature, named five hand-picked magistrates to that chamber in May 2021, in what his critics say marked the beginning of a shift towards authoritarianism, two years into his term.

Since Mar. 27, the police and military have imprisoned some 58,000 people.

In most cases no arrest warrants were issued by a judge, and the arrests are generally based on gang members’ police files.

In addition, anonymous tips by the public to a hotline set up by the government have gradually expanded the number of people arrested.

“The state of emergency exposes you to an inefficient prosecutor, incapable of investigating and linking people to crimes,” William Hernández, director of Entre Amigos, an LGBTI organization founded in 1994, told IPS.

He added: “If a police officer decides to detain someone and make a report of the arrest, they go out to look for them, but there’s no record of who reported that individual, where the information came from, and no one knows who investigated them.”

Among the 58,000 detainees are some 40 people from the LGBTI community, according to a report made public in October by Cristosal and other human rights organizations that monitor abuses committed by the Salvadoran authorities under the state of exception.

These organizations have collected some 4,000 complaints of arbitrary detentions and other abuses, including torture, committed against detainees. Some 80 people have died in police custody and in prison.

Carlos is a gay man who spoke out against the arrest of his younger sister Alessandra, a trans woman seized in May by Salvadoran police, accused of belonging to a gang. In July he was also arrested and so far little is known about their situation, under the state of emergency in El Salvador, which has led to the imprisonment of 58,000 people. CREDIT: Courtesy of Cultura Trans

Police homophobia

In the case of Carlos, 32, and his sister Alessandra, 18, the information available is that she was arrested in May in one of the police sweeps, in a poor neighborhood in the north of San Salvador.

She was arrested for not having a personal identity card. She had recently turned 18, the age of majority, and she should have obtained the document, which is needed for any kind of official procedure.

The police officers who arrested Alessandra told her mother that she was only being taken for 72 hours, while the situation was clarified.

However, something that could have been easily investigated and resolved turned into an ordeal for her and her family, especially her mother, who was facing several health ailments, said the Cultura Trans activist.

“She was in the ‘bartolinas’ (dungeons) of the Zacamil (a police station in that poor neighborhood),” the source said. “We went to leave food for her, then they sent her to the Mariona prison. We realized that she had been beaten and sexually abused, because she was being held in a men’s facility.”

He added: “When they took Alessandra, her mother told us that the police told the girl ‘culero, we are going to take you to be raped, to be f**ked,’ which is what actually did happen. ‘We’re going to take you so that you learn not to dress like a woman’.”

Culero is a pejorative term used in El Salvador against gays.

Meanwhile, her brother Carlos spoke out against Alessandra’s arrest, during activities carried out by the LGBTI community.

In May, in a march against “homo-lesbo-transphobia” – hatred of gays, lesbians and trans people – he carried several handmade signs calling for his sister’s release from prison.

The authorities visited Carlos’ house, and threatened to arrest him as well, which they did on Jul. 13.

According to the source, the police and prosecutors put together a case and accused him of illicit association. They are asking for a 20-year prison sentence.

“It’s not because of illicit association, we know that very well. It’s because he’s a human rights activist in the LGBTI community, and because he has been demanding the release of his sister,” said the Cultura Trans activist.

“We want him back with us, and his sister too,” he said.

William Hernández, director of the association Entre Amigos, said that the police and the Attorney General’s Office stage raids against alleged gang members without carrying out proper investigations to substantiate the arrests or to release detainees if they are innocent. The Salvadoran government has been on a crusade against gangs since March, but in the process there have been numerous abuses and illegal detentions, according to human rights organizations. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Underreporting hides the real number of cases

According to reports by the NGOs, while the 40 people from the LGBTI community who have been detained represent a small proportion of the total number of people arrested, there could be an underreporting of undocumented cases, especially in rural areas.

“In this country, although it’s small, there may be cases in remote places involving people who have never contacted an NGO. These are cases that remain invisible,” Catalina Ayala, a trans woman activist with Diké, an LGBTI organization whose name refers to justice in Greek mythology, told IPS.

Ayala said that, although she has not personally experienced transphobia from the authorities on the streets of San Salvador, and her organization has not received concrete reports of cases like Alessandra’s, she did not rule out that they could be happening.

“I think it’s a positive thing that the authorities are arresting gang members, but not people who have nothing to do with crime, or just because they are LGBTI,” she said.

The organization’s lawyer, Jenifer Fernández, said Diké has provided legal assistance to 12 people from the LGBTI community who have been detained, mainly because they were not carrying their identity documents.

In one of the cases, the police said things that could be construed as transphobic, although there was also a basic suspicion, since she was a trans woman without an identity document.

“She was a 25-year-old woman who had never had a DUI, an identity document, because she suffered from gender dysphoria and was afraid to go to register, afraid of being asked to cut her hair or to remove her make-up,” said Fernández.

Gender dysphoria is a sense of unease caused by a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity and has repercussions on their ability to function socially.

“The arrest report said that she was a gang member disguised as a woman, that they did not know who she was, that she gave a name but that it could not be proven without a DUI,” the lawyer explained.

But Fernández added that, in general, with or without a state of exception, trans women suffer the most from harassment, mockery and aggression.

Of the 12 cases, 11 of the individuals were released, and only one remains in custody because, according to the police, there is evidence that the person may have had ties to a gang, although the details of that evidence are unknown.

Call to stop abuses

On Nov. 11, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern over “the persistence of massive and allegedly arbitrary arrests” by Salvadoran authorities under the state of emergency.

It also reported non-compliance with judicial guarantees, and called on the government “to implement citizen security actions that guarantee the rights and freedoms established in the American Convention on Human Rights and in line with Inter-American standards.”

Among the constitutional rights suspended since the beginning of the state of emergency on Mar. 27 are the rights of association and assembly, although the government says this only applies to criminal groups meeting to plan crimes.

It also restricts the right to a defense and extends the period in which a person can be detained and presented in court, which Salvadoran law sets at a maximum of three days.

On Nov. 16, Congress, which is controlled by the governing party, approved a new extension of the state of emergency, which it has done at the end of each month.

New Ideas lawmakers have said that the restriction of civil rights will be extended as long as necessary, “until the last gang member is arrested.”

In this country of 6.7 million people, there are an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 gang members.

Bukele’s party holds 56 seats in the 84-member legislature, and thanks to three allied parties they have a total of 60 votes, which gives them a large absolute majority.

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

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Loss and Damage Fund Saves COP27 from the Abyss — Global Issues

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, chair of COP27, reads the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the document that concluded the climate summit on Sunday Nov. 20, to an exhausted audience after tough and lengthy negotiations that finally reached an agreement to create a fund for loss and damage, a demand of the global South. CREDIT: Kiara Worth/UN
  • by Daniel Gutman (sharm el sheikh)
  • Inter Press Service

SHARM EL SHEIKh, Nov 20 (IPS) – They were on the brink of shipwreck and did not leave happy, but did feel satisfied that they got the best they could. The countries of the global South achieved something decisive at COP27: the creation of a special fund to address the damage and loss caused by climate change in the most vulnerable nations.

The fund, according to the Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the official document approved at dawn on Sunday Nov. 20 in this Egyptian city, should enable “rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction” following extreme weather events in these vulnerable countries.

Decisions on who will provide the money, which countries will benefit and how it will be disbursed were left pending for a special committee to define. But the fund was approved despite the fact that the issue was not even on the official agenda of the summit negotiations, although it was at the center of the public debate before the conference itself.

“We are satisfied that the developed countries have accepted the need to create the Fund. Of course, there is much to discuss for implementation, but it was difficult to ask for more at this COP,” Ulises Lovera, Paraguay’s climate change director, told IPS, weary from a longer-than-expected negotiation, early Sunday morning at the Sharm El Sheikh airport.

“This COP has taken an important step towards justice. I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. He also described as an achievement that a “red line” was not crossed, that would take the rise in global temperature above the 1.5-degree limit.

More than 35,000 people from nearly 200 countries participated in the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change in Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian seaside resort on the Red Sea, where the critical dimension of global warming in the different regions of the world was on display, sometimes dramatically.

Practically everything that has to do with the future of the modes of production and life of humanity – starting with energy and food – was discussed at a mega-event that far exceeded the official delegations of the countries and the great leaders present, such as U.S. President Joe Biden and the Brazilian president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Hundreds of social organizations, international agencies and private sector stakeholders came here to showcase their work, seek funding, forge alliances, try to influence negotiations, defend their interests or simply be on a stage that seemed to provide a space for all kinds of initiatives and businesses.

At the gigantic Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center there was also a global fair with non-stop activities from morning to night in the various pavilions, in stands with auditoriums of between 20 and 200 seats, where there was a flurried program of presentations, lectures and debates, not to mention the more or less crowded demonstrations of activists outside the venue.

In addition, government delegates negotiated on the crux of the summit: how to move forward with the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which at COP21 in 2015 set global climate change mitigation and adaptation targets.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres (3rd-R) walks hurriedly through the Sharm El Sheikh Convention Center during the last intense hours of the COP27 negotiations, when there were moments when it seemed that there would be no agreement and the climate summit would end in failure. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

On the brink of failure

Once again, the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan did not include in any of its pages a reference to the need to abandon fossil fuels, but only coal.

The document was the result of a negotiation that should have ended on Friday Nov. 18, but dragged on till Sunday, as usually happens at COPs. What was different on this occasion was a very tough discussion and threats of a walkout by some negotiators, including those of the European Union.

But in the end, the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, established in the Paris Agreement, was maintained, although several countries tried to make it more flexible up to 2.0 degrees, which would have been a setback with dramatic effects for the planet and humanity, according to experts and climate activists.

“Rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions (are) required – lowering global net greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by 2030 relative to the 2019 level – to limit global warming to 1.5°C target,” reads the text, although no mention is made of oil and gas, the fossil fuels most responsible for those emissions, in one of the usual COP compromises, since agreements are reached by consensus.

The Bolivian delegation in Sharm El Sheikh, which included officials as well as leaders of indigenous communities from the South American country, take part in a meeting with journalists at COP27 to demand more ambitious action. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The priorities of the South

Developing countries, however, focused throughout the COP on the Loss and Damage Fund and other financing mechanisms to address the impacts of rising temperatures and mitigation actions.

“We need financing because we cannot deal with the environmental crisis alone. That is why we are asking that, in order to solve the problem they have caused, the rich nations take responsibility,” Diego Pacheco, head of the Bolivian delegation to Sharm El Sheikh, told IPS.

Environmental organizations, which showed their power in Egypt with the presence of thousands of activists, also lobbied throughout COP27 for greater commitments, including mitigation actions.

“This conference cannot be considered an implementation conference because there is no implementation without phasing out all fossil fuels,” the main cause of the climate crisis, said Zeina Khalil Hajj of the international environmental organization 350.org.

“Together for implementation” was precisely the slogan of COP27, calling for a shift from commitments to action.

“A text that does not stop fossil fuel expansion, that does not provide progress from the already weak Glasgow Pact (from COP26) makes a mockery of the millions of people living with the impacts of climate change,” said Khalil Hajj, head of global campaigning at 350.org.

One of the demonstrations by climate activists at COP27 held in Egypt Nov. 6-20, demanding more ambitious climate action by governments, as well as greater justice and equity in tackling the climate crisis. CREDIT: Busani Bafana/IPS

The crises that came together

Humanity – as recognized by the States Parties in the final document – is living through a dramatic time.

It faces a number of overlapping crises: food, energy, geopolitical, financial and economic, combined with more frequent natural disasters due to climate change. And developing nations are hit especially hard.

The demand for financing voiced by countries of the global South thus takes on greater relevance.

Cecilia Nicolini, Argentina’s climate change secretary, told IPS that it is the industrialized countries, because of their greater responsibility for climate change, that should finance developing countries, and lamented that “the problem is that the rules are made by the powerful.”

However, 80 percent of the money now being spent worldwide on climate change action is invested in the developed world, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world’s largest funder of climate action, which has contributed 121 billion dollars to 163 countries over the past 30 years, according to its own figures.

In this context, the issue of Loss and Damage goes one step further than adaptation to climate change, because it involves reparations for the specific impacts of climate change that have already occurred, such as destruction caused by droughts, floods or forest fires.

“Those who are bearing the burden of climate change are the most vulnerable households and communities. That is why the Loss and Damage Fund must be established without delay, with new funds coming from developed countries,” said Javier Canal Albán, Colombia’s vice minister of environmental land planning.

“It is a moral and climate justice imperative,” added Canal Albán, who spoke at a press conference on behalf of AILAC, a negotiating bloc that brings together several Latin American and Caribbean countries.

But the text of the outcome document itself acknowledges that there is a widening gap between what developing countries need and what they actually receive.

The financing needs of these countries for climate action until 2030 were estimated at 5.6 trillion dollars, but developed countries – as the document recognized – have not even fulfilled their commitment to provide 100 billion dollars per year, committed since 2009, at COP15 in Copenhagen, and ratified in 2015, at COP21 which adopted the Paris Agreement.

It was the absence of any reference to the need to accelerate the move away from oil and natural gas that frustrated several of the leaders at the COP. “We believe that if we don’t phase out fossil fuels there will be no Fund that can pay for the loss and damage caused by climate change,” Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who was at the two-week conference in Sharm El Sheikh held Nov. 6-20, told IPS.

“We have to put the victims first in order to make an orderly and just transition,” she said, expressing the sentiments of the governments and societies of the South at COP27.

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

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Indigenous Peoples Have Their Own Agenda at COP27, Demanding Direct Financing — Global Issues

Representatives of native women from Latin America and other continents pose for pictures at COP27, taking place in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh. Some 250 indigenous people from around the world are attending the 27th climate conference. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
  • by Daniel Gutman (sharm el-sheikh)
  • Inter Press Service

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Nov 12 (IPS) – Indigenous peoples are no longer content just to attend as observers and to be seen as victims of the impacts of the current development model, at the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change. That is why they came to the summit in Egypt with an agenda of their own, including the demand that their communities directly receive funding for climate action.

Billions of dollars in aid funds are provided each year by governments, private funds and foundations for climate adaptation and mitigation. Donors often seek out indigenous peoples, who are now considered the best guardians of climate-healthy ecosystems. However, only crumbs end up actually reaching native territories.

“We are tired of funding going to indigenous foundations without indigenous people,” Yanel Venado Giménez told IPS, at the indigenous peoples’ stand at this gigantic world conference, which has 33,000 accredited participants. “All the money goes to pay consultants and the costs of air-conditioned offices.”

“International donors are present at the COP27. That is why we came to tell them that direct funding is the only way to ensure that climate projects take into account indigenous cultural practices. We have our own agronomists, engineers, lawyers and many trained people. In addition, we know how to work as a team,” she added.

Giménez, a member of the Ngabe-Buglé people, represents the National Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples in Panama (CONAPIP) and is herself a lawyer.

That indigenous peoples, because they often live in many of the world’s best-conserved territories, are on the front line of the battle against the global environmental crisis is beyond dispute.

For this reason, a year ago, at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, the governments of the United Kingdom, Norway, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and 17 private donors pledged up to 1.7 billion dollars for mitigation and adaptation actions by indigenous communities.

However, although there is no precise data on how much of that total has actually been forthcoming, the communities say they have received practically nothing.

“At each of these conferences we hear big announcements of funding, but then we return to our territories and that agenda is never talked about again,” Julio César López Jamioy, a member of the Inga people who live in Putumayo, in Colombia’s Amazon rainforest, told IPS.

“In 2021 we were told that it was necessary for us to build mechanisms to access and to be able to execute those resources, which are generally channeled through governments. That is why we are working with allies on that task,” he added.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro (grey suit) poses for pictures with a group of Latin American indigenous people at the end of a meeting they held in Sharm el-Sheikh during COP27. CREDIT: Courtesy of Jesús Amadeo Martínez

López Jamioy, who is coordinator of the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), believes it is time to thank many of the non-governmental organizations for the services they have provided.

“Up to a certain point we needed them to work with us, but now it is time to act through our own organizational structures,” he said.

Latin American presence

There is no record of how many indigenous Latin Americans are in Sharm el-Sheikh, a seaside resort in the Sinai Peninsula in southern Egypt, thanks to different sources of funding, but it is estimated to be between 60 and 80.

Approximately 250 members of indigenous peoples from all over the world are participating in COP27, in the part of the Sharm el-Sheikh Convention Center that hosts social organizations and institutions.

From there, they are raising their voices and their proposals to the halls and stands that host the delegates and official negotiators of the 196 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the organizer of these annual summits.

The space shared by the indigenous people is a large stand with a couple of offices and an auditorium with about 40 chairs. Here, during the two weeks of COP27, from Nov. 6 to 18, there is an intense program of activities involving the agenda that the indigenous people have brought to the climate summit, which has drawn the world’s attention.

Panamanian indigenous activist Yanel Venado Giménez poses for a photo at the stand that indigenous peoples from around the world share at COP27, at the Sharm el-Sheikh Convention Center in Egypt. She leads a fund to help indigenous women, one of the few that receive direct financing for Latin American indigenous peoples. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

At the start of the Conference, a group of Latin American indigenous people were received by Colombian President Gustavo Petro. They obtained his support for their struggle against extractive industries operating in native territories and asked him to liaise with other governments.

“Generally, governments make commitments to us and then don’t follow through. But today we have more allies that allow us to have an impact and put forward our agenda,” Jesús Amadeo Martínez, of the Lenca people of El Salvador, told IPS.

The indigenous representatives came to this Conference with credentials as observers – another crucial issue, since they are demanding to be considered part of the negotiations as of next year, at COP28, to be held in Dubai.

The proposal was led by Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, a representative of the Kurripaco people in Peru’s Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), who told a group of journalists that “We existed before the nation-states did; we have the right to be part of the debate, because we are not an environmental NGO.”

Eric Terena of the indigenous people of the same name, who live in southern Brazil, stands in the corridors of the 27th Climate Change Conference in Egypt. He is hopeful about President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s return to power, but argues that indigenous peoples must have direct access to environmental and climate funds. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

From beneficiaries to partners?

Native communities have always been seen as beneficiaries of climate action projects in their territories, channeled through large NGOs that receive and distribute the funds.

But back in 2019, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) issued a Policy for Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (PRO-IP), which explores the possibility of funding reaching native communities more effectively.

Among the hurdles are that project approval times are sometimes too fast for the indigenous communities’ consultative decision-making methods, and that many communities are not legally registered, so they need an institutional umbrella.

Experiments in direct financing are still in their infancy. Sara Omi, of the Emberá people of Panama, told IPS that they were able to receive direct financing for Mexican and Central American communities from the Mesoamerican Fund for capacity building of indigenous women.

“We focus on sustainable agricultural production and in two years of work we have supported 22 projects in areas such as the recovery of traditional seeds. But we do not have large amounts of funds. The sum total of all of our initiatives was less than 120,000 dollars,” she explained.

Omi, a lawyer who graduated from the private Catholic University of Santa María La Antigua in Panama and was able to study thanks to a scholarship, said indigenous peoples have demonstrated that they are ready to administer aid funds.

“Of course there must be accountability requirements for donors, but they must be compatible with our realities. Only crumbs are reaching native territories today,” she complained.

Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will participate in the second week of COP27, and this is cause for hope for the peoples of the Amazon jungle, who in the last four years have suffered from the aggressive policies and disregard of outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro regarding environmental and indigenous issues.

“In the Bolsonaro administration, funds that provided financing were closed,” Eric Terena, an indigenous man who lives in southern Brazil, near the border with Bolivia and Paraguay, told IPS. “Now they will be revived, but we don’t want them to be accessed only by the government, but also by us. The systems today have too much bureaucracy; we need them to be more accessible because we are a fundamental part of the fight against climate change.

“We see that this COP is more inclusive than any of the previous ones with regard to indigenous peoples, but governments must understand that it is time for us to receive funding,” said Terena, one of the leaders of the Terena people.

IPS produced this article with the support of Climate Change Media Partnership 2022, the Earth Journalism Network, Internews, and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.

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Former War Zones in El Salvador Obtain Water with the Help of the Sun — Global Issues

A local resident of the Sitio el Zapotal community in El Zapote canton, El Salvador, turns on the tap to fill his sink to collect the water he will need for the day. A total of 10,000 people have benefited from the five solar-powered community water projects in El Salvador since 2010. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
  • by Edgardo Ayala (suchitoto, el salvador)
  • Inter Press Service

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador, Nov 11 (IPS) – Several community-run water projects powered by solar energy have improved the quality of life of thousands of rural families in areas that were the scene of heavy fighting during El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s.

The families now have running water, thanks to a collective effort launched when the war ended in 1992, after they returned to their former homes, which they had fled years earlier because of the intense fighting.

The largest of these community water systems driven by solar power is located in the canton of El Zapote, Suchitoto municipality, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.

“The first step was to come together and buy this place to drill the well, do tests and build the tank, and we had a lot of help from other organizations that supported us,” Ángela Pineda, president of the Zapote-Platanares Community-Rural Association for Water, Health and the Environment, told IPS.

The association is a “junta de agua” or water board, which are community organizations that bring water to remote areas of El Salvador where the government does not have the capacity to supply it, such as the one installed in the canton of El Zapote.

There are an estimated 2,500 water boards in the country, providing service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people. The vast majority of them operate with energy from the national power grid.

But five of the boards, located in the vicinity of Suchitoto, obtained financial support from organizations such as Companion Communities Development Alternatives (CoCoDA), based in Indianapolis, Indiana, for taking a technological leap towards operating with solar energy.

“The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment,” Karilyn Vides, director of operations in El Salvador for the U.S.-based CoCoDA, told IPS.

Four previous projects of this type, supported since 2010 by CoCoDA, were small, with less than 10 solar panels. But the one mounted in the canton of El Zapote was planned to be equipped with 96 panels, when it was conceived in 2021.

It was inaugurated in June 2022, although it had been operating since 2004, with hydropower from the national grid.

This effort benefits more than 2,500 families settled around Suchitoto and on the slopes of Guazapa mountain which during the 12-year civil war was a stronghold of the then guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party that governed the country between 2009 and 2019.

However, when including the four other small solar water projects, plus five that continue to operate with electricity from the national grid, all financially supported by CoCoDA after the end of the war, the total number of beneficiaries climbs to 10,000 people.

El Salvador’s bloody armed conflict left some 75,000 people dead and more than 8,000 missing. between 1980 and 1992.

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Solar Power Brings Water to Families in Former War Zones in El Salvador — Global Issues

Aerial view of the community water system located in the canton of El Zapote, in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador. Mounted on the roof are the 96 solar panels that generate the electricity needed to power the entire electrical and hydraulic mechanism that brings water to more than 2,500 families in this rural area of the country, which in the 1980s was the scene of heavy fighting during the Salvadoran civil war. CREDIT: Alex Leiva/IPS
  • by Edgardo Ayala (suchitoto, el salvador)
  • Inter Press Service

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador, Nov 03 (IPS) – The need for potable water led several rural settlements in El Salvador, at the end of the 12-year civil war in 1992, to rebuild what was destroyed and to innovate with technologies that at the time seemed unattainable, but which now benefit hundreds of families.

Several communities located in areas that were once the scene of armed conflict are now supplied with water through community systems powered by clean energy, such as solar power.

“The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment,” Karilyn Vides, director of operations in El Salvador for the U.S.-based organization Companion Community Development Alternatives (CoCoDA), told IPS.

Hope where there was once war

The organization, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, has supported the development of 10 community water systems in El Salvador since 1992, five of them powered by solar energy.

These initiatives have benefited some 10,000 people whose water systems were destroyed during the conflict. Local residents had to start from scratch after returning years later.

A local resident of the Sitio el Zapotal community in El Zapote canton, El Salvador, turns on the tap to fill his sink to collect the water he will need for the day. A total of 10,000 people have benefited from the five solar-powered community water projects in El Salvador since 2010. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

This small Central American country experienced a bloody civil war between 1980 and 1992, which left some 75,000 people dead and more than 8,000 missing.

“Before leaving their communities, some families had water systems, but when they returned they had been completely destroyed, and they had to be rebuilt,” Vides said, during a tour by IPS to the Junta Administradora de Agua Potable or water board in the canton of El Zapote, Suchitoto municipality, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.

In El Salvador, the term Junta Administradora de Agua Potable refers to community associations that, on their own initiative, manage to drill a well, build a tank and the entire distribution structure to provide service where the government has not had the capacity to do so.

There are an estimated 2,500 such water boards in the country, which provide service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people, according to local environmental organizations.

But most of the water boards operate with hydroelectric power provided by the national grid, while the villages around Suchitoto have managed, with the support of CoCoDA and local organizations, to run on solar energy.

The community water project in the Salvadoran community of Sitio El Zapotal was driven by the efforts of local residents and international donors. At the foot of the catchment tank stand Karilyn Vides of CoCoDA, consultant and former guerrilla fighter René Luarca (front) – a member of the project’s water board – and former guerrilla Luis Antonio Landaverde (left), together with two technicians. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

This area is located on the slopes of the Guazapa mountain north of San Salvador, which during the civil war was a key stronghold of the then guerrilla Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party that governed the country between 2009 and 2019.

Some of the people behind the creation of the water board in the canton of El Zapote were part of the guerrilla units entrenched on Guazapa mountain.

“This area was heavily bombed and shelled, day and night,” Luis Antonio Landaverde, 56, a former guerrilla fighter who had to leave the front lines when a bomb explosion fractured his leg in July 1985, told IPS.

“A bomb dropped by an A37 plane fell nearby and broke my right leg, and I could no longer fight,” said Landaverde, who sits on the El Zapote water board.

The Junta de Agua del Cantón El Zapote, in central El Salvador, is the largest solar-powered community water project in the country, although it uses electricity from the national grid, from hydroelectric sources, as backup. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Peasant farmers in the technological vanguard

At the end of the war in 1992, communities in the foothills of Guazapa began to organize themselves to set up their community water systems, at first using the national power grid, generated by hydroelectric sources.

Then they realized that the cost of the electricity and bringing the grid to remote villages was too high, and necessity and creativity drove them to look for other options.

“I was already very involved in alternative energy, and we thought that bringing in electricity would be as expensive as installing a solar energy system,” René Luarca, one of the architects of the use of sunlight in the community systems, told IPS.

The first solar-powered water system was built in 2010 in the Zacamil II community, in the Suchitoto area, benefiting some 40 families.

And because it worked so well, four similar projects followed in 2017.

Two were carried out around that municipality, and another in the rural area of the department of Cabañas, in the north of the country.

Given the project’s success, an effort was even made to develop a similar system in the community of Zacataloza, in the municipality of Ciudad Antigua, in the department of Nueva Segovia in northwestern Nicaragua.

The total investment exceeded 200,000 dollars, financed by CoCoDA’s U.S. partner organizations.

However, these were smallscale initiatives, benefiting an average of 100 families per project.

“There were eight panels, they were tiny, like little toys,” said Luarca, 80, known in the area as “Jerry,” his pseudonym during the war when he was a guerrilla in the National Resistance, one of the five organizations that made up the FMLN.

Then came the big challenge: to set up the project in the canton of El Zapote, which would require more panels and would provide water to a much larger number of families.

“This has been the biggest challenge, because there are no longer four panels – there are 96,” said Luarca.

A valve connected to the pump of the community water system in central El Salvador measures the pressure at which the liquid is being pumped to a catchment tank, located on a hill five kilometers away. The water flows down by gravity to the beneficiary families, who pay a monthly fee of six dollars for 12 cubic meters of water. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The water system in El Zapote is a hybrid setup. This allows it to use solar energy as the main source, but it is backed up by the national grid, fueled by hydropower, when there is no sunshine or there are other types of failures.

“Since it is a fairly large system, it is not 100 percent solar, but is hybrid, so that it has both options,” explained Eliseo Zamora, 42, who is in charge of monitoring the operation of the equipment.

Using the pump, driven by a 30-horsepower motor, water is piped from the well to a tank perched on top of a hill, about five kilometers away as the crow flies.

From there, water flows by gravity down to the villages through a 25-kilometer network of pipes that zigzag under the subsoil, until reaching the families’ taps.

The project started when the armed conflict ended, but it took several years to buy the land, with resources from the six communities involved, and to acquire the machinery for the hydraulic system. It began operating in 2004 with electricity from the national grid, before CoCoDA switched to supporting the solar infrastructure.

For the installation of the panels and the adaptation of the system, the water board contributed 14,000 dollars, part of it from the hours worked by the villagers.

The new solar power system was inaugurated in June 2022 and benefits some 10 communities in the area – more than 2,500 families.

The service fee is six dollars per month for 12 cubic meters of water. For each additional cubic meter, the users are charged 0.55 cents.

“Our water is excellent, it is good for all kinds of human consumption,” the president of the water board, Ángela Pineda, told IPS.

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

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Mexican Environmental Prosecutor’s Office Dodges Charges against Mayan Train — Global Issues

The laying of the Mayan Train along 1500 kilometers through five states in the south and southeast of Mexico, mostly through the Yucatan Peninsula, will damage the fragile jungle ecosystem, with the removal of vegetation and animal species. The photo shows an area cleared of vegetation near the municipality of Valladolid, in the state of Yucatan. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
  • by Emilio Godoy (mexico city)
  • Inter Press Service

MEXICO CITY, Nov 02 (IPS) – A beige line slashes its way through the Mayan jungle near the municipality of Izamal in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán. It is section 3, 172 kilometers long, of the Mayan Train (TM), the most important megaproject of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration.

The metal scrape of the backhoes tears up the vegetation to open up arteries in the jungle for the laying and construction of the five stops of this part of the future railway network, which is being built at a cost currently estimated at more than 15 billion dollars, 70 percent more than initially planned.

Pedro Uc, an indigenous member of the non-governmental Assembly of Defenders of the Múuch’ Xíinbal Mayan Territory, summed up the environmental impact of the TM in an area of milpa – a traditional system of cultivation of corn, squash, beans and chili peppers – and poultry farming.

“Everything that is happening in the Yucatán peninsula is affecting the Mayan people, damaging the trees, the water, the animals. It is a part of our territory that is being destroyed. Those who don’t produce their own food have to depend on others,” he told IPS from Buctzotz (Mayan for “hair dress”), in Yucatán, some 1,400 km from Mexico City.

Without land, there is no food, stressed the activist, whose organization works in 25 municipalities on the peninsula, which includes the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, and is home to the second most important jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon.

Despite multiple complaints of environmental damage, the Federal Attorney’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) has yet to resolve these complaints, more than two years after construction began.

“It has never carried out its role. It has not addressed the issue, it is merely ornamental. Profepa should attend to the complaints,” said Uc, whose town is located 44 kilometers southeast of Izamal, where one of the railroad stations will be located.

Profepa, part of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), received two complaints in 2020, one in 2021 and 159 in the first five months of this year for “acts or omissions in contravention of environmental laws,” according to public information requests submitted by IPS.

Profepa oversees the megaproject through its “Mayan Train Inspection Program, in the areas of environmental impact, forestry, wildlife and sources of pollution”, the results of which are unknown.

In December last year, the agency carried out an inspection of hazardous waste generation and management in the southern state of Chiapas, which, together with the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatán, is part of the route for the railway.

In addition, in June and July, two other visits were made to verify measures to mitigate pollutant emissions and waste management. Profepa is still analyzing the results of these visits.

The environmental prosecutor’s office has carried out exploratory visits in nine municipalities of section 2, eight of section 4 and 16 of section 5. The laying of lines 6 and 7 began last April, but the agency has not yet inspected them. The megaproject consists of a total of seven sections, which are being built in parallel.

The TM, to be built by the governmental National Tourism Fund (Fonatur), will cover some 1,500 kilometers, with 21 stations and 14 stops, according to López Obrador, who is heavily involved in the project and is its biggest supporter.

To lay the railway, whose trains will transport thousands of tourists and loads of cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, 1,681 hectares of land will be cleared, involving the cutting of 300,000 trees, according to the original environmental impact study. The laying of sections 1, 2 and 3, which require 801 hectares, began without environmental permits.

The government sees the megaproject as an engine of social development that will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional tourist attractions and bolster the regional economy, which has sparked controversy between its supporters and critics.

The construction of the Mayan Train has involved logging in several jungle areas in southeastern Mexico. The photo shows a breach opened by a backhoe on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, in the state of Quintana Roo, in March 2022, without the required intervention by the environmental prosecutor’s office. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Free way

In November of last year, López Obrador, who wants trains running on the peninsula by the end of 2023, classified the TM as a “priority project” by means of a presidential decree, thus facilitating the delivery of environmental permits. On Oct. 25 the president promised that the test runs would begin next July.

This classification reduces Profepa’s maneuvering room, according to Carlos del Razo, a lawyer specializing in environmental cases, of the law firm Carvajal y Machado.

“Some of the early complaints could be filed for works where permit exemptions were issued because they were done on existing rights-of-way. But if it decides not to act, it has to argue that decision. The environmental prosecutor’s office will not have a particular interest in approving government works,” he told IPS.

In its authorizations, Semarnat ruled that Fonatur must implement programs for integrated waste management, soil conservation and reforestation, air quality monitoring, flora management and rescue and relocation of wildlife.

Profepa must supervise that these measures comply with the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection, in force since 1988 and which environmentalists say has been violated.

López Obrador denies that there is deforestation, and promised the construction of three natural parks in eastern Quintana Roo and the reforestation of some 2,500 hectares in the vicinity of the railroad route.

In a tacit acknowledgement of logging in the project area, the Ministry of National Defense will plant trees, at a cost of 35 million dollars, according to an agreement between Fonatur and the ministry contained in the massive leak of military emails made by the non-governmental group Guacamaya and consulted by IPS.

Viridiana Mendoza, Agriculture and Climate Change specialist for Greenpeace Mexico, criticized “the lack of action” by Profepa.

“They had already deforested without an environmental impact assessment, which is a crime. We are not surprised, because it is part of the dynamic that has characterized the Mayan Train: illegalities, omissions, false information, violation of procedures. There is a conflict of interest because Profepa answers to Semarnat,” she said.

The international non-governmental organization has found “insufficient, false and inaccurate” information on sections 5, 6 and 7, so it is not possible to assess the dangers and damage to local populations and ecosystems.

Parts of the jungle of the Yucatan peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, have been cut down to make way for the construction of the Mayan Train. But the environmental prosecutor’s office, failing to comply with its legal duty, has turned a deaf ear to complaints of alleged ecological crimes. CREDIT: Guacamaya Leaks

Risks

The project is a paradox, because while the government promises sustainable tourism in other areas of the peninsula, it threatens the very attractions of this influx of visitors, such as the cenotes – deep, water-filled sinkholes formed in limestone – cave systems and the entire ecosystem in general.

The TM endangers the largest system of underground and flooded grottoes on the planet, a complex of submerged caves beneath the limestone terrain.

The porous (karst) soil of the peninsula sabotages the government’s plans, as it has forced Fonatur to change the route of the megaproject several times. For example, section 5 has experienced three modifications between 2021 and January 2022.

Faced with the wave of impacts, the last hope lies in organization by local residents, according to the Mayan activist Uc.

“Between the possible and the impossible, we inform people so that in their own community, they can make the decision they want to make. People do not have the necessary information. Let them take up the struggle from their own communities and make the decisions about what comes next,” he said.

But attorney Del Razo and environmentalist Mendoza said the courts are the last resort.

“The judiciary continues to be the most independent branch of power in Mexico. Interested parties could seek injunctions that order Profepa to correct the process. A strategy of specific details is needed to demonstrate the infractions. The effective thing is to go into the details of the challenges,” explained Del Razo.

Mendoza said there is a lack of access to information, respect for public participation and environmental justice.

“Profepa should have stopped the works for the simple fact of not having the environmental authorization when the removal of vegetation began,” she said. “We don’t see it as likely that it will seek to stop the construction, because we have seen its reaction before. Semarnat supports the project, regardless of the fact that it has failed to comply and is in contradiction with the laws.”

While its opponents seek to take legal action, the TM runs roughshod over all obstacles, which are dodged with the help of the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office, at least until now.

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

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