KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 17 (IPS) – Global Public Investment. A short and simple phrase. But one that means so much.
At its most basic, GPI means public money being used to invest in goods and services that are of global benefit. There is no shortage of goods and services that need GPI, whether they be used to prevent or respond to environmental catastrophe, international war and conflict, or the next pandemic.
We live on a single, small and fragile planet and greater levels of GPI are needed to help us look after our planet; and invest in the global institutions and services needed to provide security and health for all.
This is why over the last few years a group of committed individuals and organizations have worked to establish new ideas and thinking around GPI. Following an extensive period of consultation and discussion, an Expert Working Group has just produced a report on how we make GPI a reality.
The report describes the need for GPI, and how governments may contribute and participate in the governance and effective use of public finance for the common good.
Importantly, GPI offers a new model of development finance that can replace the ineffective and colonial forms of donor aid with an approach that is based on true multilateralism, fairness and shared benefit. Central to the idea of GPI is a simple slogan: all contribute, all benefit, all decide.
Nothing perhaps illustrates the need for GPI than the new fund being created to finance pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The fund, to be managed by the World Bank, has been built to fail according to many experts because of structural flaws that consolidate decision-making power in the hands of a small group of wealthy nations and philanthropies.
The English-language launch of the Expert Working Group’s report on July 27th took the form of a brief presentation of the history and principles of GPI followed by a three-woman panel discussion. Helen Clark (former prime minister of New Zealand), Jayati Ghosh (Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts) and Marianna Mazzucato (Professor of the Economics of Innovation and Public Value) each spoke to the relevance of GPI.
Importantly, the panel noted that for the GPI funding model to work, it must be accompanied by other political and economic efforts. These include restoring and rebuilding the status and capabilities of public departments and institutions after decades of neoliberal attacks on the public sector as well as ‘in-sourcing’ critical public functions that have been commercialized and privatised.
The panel also noted the need to rise to the political challenge of reforming the financial system so that enough public funding can be generated and so that we can better redistribute wealth across society.
This will require, among other things, an end to the tax abuses perpetrated or enabled by trans-national corporations, banks, accountancy firms and corrupt officials.
While the panel focused its discussion on GPI, the broader financialization of society and the role of private finance was not neglected. Indeed, it was argued that private finance needs to be part of the solution to meeting society’s needs. But equally, laws and regulations are needed to stop the social and environmental caused by the rapacious, short-term and unregulated flows of private finance capital that have grown over the past few decades.
It’s clear that transformative and structural social, political and economic is needed if we are to succeed in rescuing the planet, democracy and civilization from further degradation.
Is GPI one element of the new social, political and economic structural settlement that we need? I think it is. But see for yourself.
Professor Dr David McCoy is a public health doctor and currently a Research Lead at the UN University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH). Follow him on Twitter @dcmccoy11.
Food and energy prices have increased to their highest levels in decades. And 62 new food billionaires have been created. Credit: Bigstock.
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Aug 12 (IPS) – While often too quickly attributing -quasi exclusively- the world unprecedented hunger tragedy to the current proxy war in Ukraine, other major causes remain hidden in plain sight.
Like the legend of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the modern ones are a mix of combined causes: inequality; speculation; indebtedness, and the crushing impacts of climate emergency.
1. Inequality
Further to IPS article: Inequality Kills One Person Every Four Seconds, explaining how deadly inequality is and how it contributes to the deaths of at least 21,300 people each day—or one person every four seconds.
Here are some of the major findings of is May 2022 report Profiting from Pain, elaborated by this global movement of people working together with more than 4,100 partner organisations, allies, and communities in over 90 countries:
Billionaires have seen their fortunes increase as much in 24 months as they did in 23 years. Those in the food and energy sectors have seen their fortunes increase by a billion dollars every two days. Food and energy prices have increased to their highest levels in decades. And 62 new food billionaires have been created.
The combined crises of COVID-19, rising inequality, and rising food prices could push as many as 263 million people into extreme poverty in 2022. This is the equivalent of one million people every 33 hours. At the same time a new billionaire has been minted on average every 30 hours during the pandemic.
2. Speculation
Speculation is the likely engine moving the world’s markets, which is driven by the dominating neoliberal economy.
COVID-19 hit a world that was already deeply unequal, adds Oxfam. Decades of neoliberal economic policies have ripped away public services into private ownership and have encouraged the move toward massive concentration of corporate power and tax avoidance on a huge scale.
“These policies have worked to deliberately erode workers’ rights and reduce tax rates for corporations and the rich. They have also opened up the environment to levels of exploitation far beyond what our planet can bear.”
As COVID-19 spread, Central Banks injected trillions of dollars into economies worldwide, aiming to keep the world economy afloat, the report goes on. This was essential because it prevented a total economic collapse.
“Nevertheless, in turn, it dramatically drove up the price of assets, and with this the net worth of billionaires and the asset-owning classes. An enormous increase in billionaire wealth has been the direct by-product of this cash injection.”
The monopolies of food, energy, pharmaceutical, and technology
On top of soaring billionaire wealth, during the pandemic there has also been a profits bonanza in the food, energy, pharmaceutical, and technology sectors, says Oxfam, adding that corporate monopolies are particularly prevalent in these sectors, and billionaires who own large stakes in companies within them have seen their wealth balloon even more.
“Meanwhile, excessive corporate profit and power are contributing to price rises; in the USA, for instance, it is estimated that expanding corporate profits are responsible for 60% of increases in inflation.”
“While blanket energy subsidies may help in the short term, in the longer term they drive inequality, further exacerbate the climate crisis, and do not soften the immediate blow of the cost-of-living increase as much as targeted cash transfers do,” said the report’s author George Gray Molina.
The report shows that “energy subsidies disproportionately benefit wealthier people, with more than half of the benefits of a universal energy subsidy favouring the richest 20% of the population.”
Record profits: 100 billion dollars in just 3 months
“As the war in Ukraine continues to rage, skyrocketing energy prices are compounding an existential cost-of-living crisis for hundreds of millions of people,” on 3 August 2022 warned the UN Secretary-General’s Global Crisis Response Group (GCRG) on Food, Energy and Finance.
Despite this alarming situation, major oil and gas companies recently reported record profits, which UN chief António Guterres called “immoral.”
“The combined profits of the largest energy companies in the first quarter of this year are close to $100 billion. I urge governments to tax these excessive profits, and use the funds to support the most vulnerable people through these difficult times,” he said.
An article produced as part of: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting specifies that low-income countries and households suffer the most from high debt levels, experts warn.
External debt is the portion of a country’s debt that is borrowed from foreign lenders through commercial banks, governments, or international financial institutions, they explain.
4. Climate catastrophe
The world’s dangerous climate emergency did not start with the war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
In fact, it began long decades ago and has been the focus of the world’s scientific community, whose strong and loud alerts did not have the required echo in the so many successive, highly expensive summits and meetings.
One of the harsh consequences of the human-made climate catastrophe is drought. In fact, drought is now pervasive in all regions, including the most industrialised ones, leading to a great loss of harvests, thus less food supplies, mounting markets’ speculation.
All this in addition to the dominating profit-making system of intensive farming, industrial mono-cultures, distribution chains, forest depletion for more farming, livestocks for meat business, etc.
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Aug 10 (IPS) – The upcoming summit on Education, part of the UN Secretary General’s ambitious agenda, can truly bring accountability and participation to the inevitably new ways education will be imparted in the future.
With scorching temperatures, uncontrolled flames and floods devastating our planet, millions of people are realizing that we are all going to pay a high price for climate inaction.
The current climate crisis is furthering compounding the other emergency that is still affecting all of us, a public health crisis fully exposed by the Covid pandemic.
Amid this gloomy scenario, the international community cannot forego its duties not only to strengthen the global education system but also its moral obligation to re-think it and re-imagine it.
While it is easy to criticize the UN as a system incapable of effectively tackling these multidimensional challenges, we cannot but praise Secretary General Antonio Guterres for his far sighted vision encapsulated in his global blue print, Our Common Agenda.
It’s a bold statement that contains multiple proposals including the ambitious goal of reinventing the global education.
In this context, and on September, the UN will host the most important forum to discuss how education can emerge as the thread that can equip the citizens of the world with the right tools to thrive in a truly sustainable and equitable planet.
The Transforming Education Summit, scheduled to take place at the UN September 19, should be seen as a stand-alone effort while it is intended to be the beginning of an ambitious global brainstorming. It is also the culmination of several other major events in the past few years.
In 2015 the Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action provided the vision for implementing the SDG 4, the global sustainable goal focused on inclusive and quality education.
We know how brutal the effects of the pandemic were on learners worldwide especially in developing and emerging nations.
In face of these challenges, with the global headlines focused on the public health emergency and the futile attempts at negotiating a breakthrough climate change agreement at the COP 26, few noticed that the international community tried to take action.
The fact that our attention was totally focused to other existential crises should not deter us from reflecting on how such events were neglected by world media and, as a consequence, how little discussion about the future of education happened.
I am not just talking about discussions among professionals on the ground but also a debate that involves teachers and students alike. The upcoming Transforming the Education Summit will try to revert this lack of attention and overall weak engagement among the people.
The Secretariat of the event, hosted by UNESCO, one of the agencies within the UN system that lacks financial support but still proves to be real value for money, is trying its best to enable a global conversation on how the future of education should be.
It is in this precise context that UNESCO has set up an interactive knowledge and debate hub, the so-called Hub that, hopefully, will become a permanent global platform for discussing education globally.
Imagine a sort of civic agora where experts, students, parents, policy makers alike can share their best practices and bring forwards their opinions on how to follow up on the decisions that will be taken in September.
It is also extremely positive that a Pre-Summit event at the end of June in Paris, laid out some grounds for the September’s gathering especially because youths also had a chance to speak and share their views.
It is not the first-time youths are involved, but the full involvement of the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth in the preparation of the Transforming the Education Summit could be a turning point, shifting from mere and tokenistic engagements to real shared power with the youth.
That’s why the existence of a specific process within the preparation of the summit, focused on youth, is extremely important and welcome not just because it will generate a special declaration but because it could potentially become a space where youths can have their voices and opinions heard permanently.
It is truly transformative because the title itself is aligned to the aspirational vision of Secretary General Guterres to establish a new social contract.
A new social contract in the field of education really needs to rethink the domains of learning and its established but now outdated goals. Learning should become, according to this report, a holistic tool to create personal agency and sustainable and just development.
For example, education for sustainable development and lifelong education together with global citizenships should stopped being considered as “nice” but burdensome adds on.
Today’s challenges, the report explains, must be focused on “reinventing education” and the knowledge it provides must be “anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.”
Wisely, Guterres intends the summit in September to be the starting point for a much longer conversation that will build on the insights and knowledge emerged in these last few years.
Governance of the global education system will also be central and with this, we will have an opportunity to find creative ways, ways that just few years ago were imaginable, to include people, especially the youths.
No matter the efforts now put in place to create awareness and participation for the summit, no matter how inclusive the Youth Process will be, the fact that there is still a very long way before creating spaces where persons on the ground can truly participate.
While there is no doubt that such inclusive format is itself innovative, the challenges ahead require a much more accessible and holistic set-up.
The existence of a global accountability mechanism was one of the key points discussed and emerged in the Youths Consultations during the Pre-Summit in Paris.
The High-Level Steering Committee needs not only more visibility because of its “political” aim of galvanizing global attention and energizing and influencing global leaders so that education can become a global priority at the same levels of climate action and public health.
It should also have a stronger representation of youths, teachers and NGOs and it can evolve into a real permanent forum for discussions and even decision making.
As difficult as it to imagine a new global governance for education, what we need is a space, virtual and as well formally established as an institution, where not only experts and governments’ representatives gather and decide.
A space for accountability but also for enhanced participation.
There is still a long way before reaching a consensus on how education will look like in the years to come but there is no doubt that bold decisions must be taken also to reimagine its governance.
The Transforming the Education Summit can herald the beginning of a new era.
Media will have a special role to play: not only on reporting on the summit and its following developments but also for giving voices to the youths and for bringing forward the most progressive ideas that should define how education will shape this new era.
Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.
The female guardians of Venezuela’s Imataca Forest Reserve | An FAO-GEF project, which also aims to increase gender equality in the forestry sector, has continued supporting the Kariña women in actively leading the development of their territories and the conservation of the area’s biodiversity. Credit: FAO
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Aug 08 (IPS) – Nothing –or too little– has changed since Hollywood started producing its spectacular western movies. Rough men, ranchers, mercenary killers, saloons, cowboys, guns, gold fever, the ‘good sheriff’… and the ‘bad indians”. Those movies were anything but fiction–they were real history.
Add to this mix, the deeply-rooted, widely dominating culture of the so-called “white supremacy.”
Consequently, the hollywoodian production has constantly depicted the “indians” as savage and ruthless, uncivilised people who devastate the lands of well-intentioned colonisers, burn their homes, steal their horses, kill them, and hang their skulls as trophies.
The show goes on. And the victims are the same ones: the Indigenous Peoples.
Century after century, the indigenous peoples have been living in their lands in a perfect harmony with Nature, on which their life dependens. They know how to guard precious natural resources and are the custodians of 80% of biodiversity.
But, tragically, the very richness in natural resources which the original people of Planet Earth have been keen to conserve and preserve, soon stood behind their dramatic fate.
The modern cowboys
Exactly like in those movies, the world’s biggest modern, intrepid cowboys–the giant private corporations, have been systematically depleting those natural resources for the sake of making profits.
The current world ranchers and their cowboys appear to be the big business of timber, livestock, intensive agriculture, mono-culture, mining, carbon, oil, dams, land grabbing, luxurious resorts, golf camps, wild urbanisation, and a long etcetera.
The consequences such depletion are, among many others:
While humanity used to cultivate more than 6.000 plant species for food, now instead fewer than 200 of these species make major contributions to food production, now only 9% account for 66% of total crop production. Once depleted, big business supplants Nature with synthetic food.
Over the last 50 years, the global economy has grown nearly fivefold, due largely to a tripling in extraction of natural resources and energy that has fuelled growth in production and consumption.
Three quarters of the land and two thirds of the oceans are now impacted by humans. One million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction, and many of the ecosystem services essential for human well- being are eroding.
Around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction.
The Planet is losing 4.7 million hectares of forests every year – an area larger than Denmark.
They are the ancestors
The number of indigenouos peoples is estimated at nearly 500 million, similar to the combined population of the European Union’s 27 member countries, or the total inhabitants of two of the world’s biggest nuclear powers–the United States and the Russian Federation.
The figure refers to those who identify themselves as being indigenous or indegenous descendents. Many others opt for no admitting themselves as such, due to worldwide growing wave of xenophobia.
According to the United Nations, Indigenous Peoples consider 22% of the world’s land surface their home. They live in areas where around 80% of the Planet’s biodiversity is found on not-commercially-exploited land.
And at least 40% of the 7,000 languages used worldwide are at some level of endangerment. Indigenous languages are particularly vulnerable because many of them are not taught at school or used in the public sphere.
Key facts:
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that:
There are in fact more than 476 million Indigenous Peoples in the seven socio-cultural regions of the world, in 90 countries, belonging to more than 5,000 different groups.
Asia has the largest concentration of Indigenous Peoples with 70.5 %, followed by Africa with 16.3 %, and Latin America with 11.5 %. In Canada and the United States of America, Indigenous Peoples represent 6.7 % of the total population.
Indigenous Peoples make up 6.2% of the global population with the majority living in middle-income countries.
Indigenous Peoples represent more than 19% of the extreme poor.
Indigenous Peoples’ territories encompass 28% of the surface of the globe and contain 11% of the world’s forests.
Indigenous Peoples’ food systems have high levels of self-sufficiency ranging from 50 % to 80% in food and resources generation.
Globally, 47% of all Indigenous Peoples in employment have no education, compared to 17% of their non-indigenous counterparts. This gap is even wider for women.
More than 86% of Indigenous Peoples globally work in the informal economy, compared to 66% for their non-indigenous counterparts.
Indigenous Peoples are nearly three times as likely to be living in extreme poverty compared to their non-indigenous counterparts.
They have an integral collective and community role as carers of natural resources and keepers of scientific knowledge. And many indigenous women are also taking the lead in the defence of Indigenous Peoples’ lands and territories and advocating for their collective rights worldwide, the UN further explains.
“However, despite the crucial role indigenous women play in their communities as breadwinners, caretakers, knowledge keepers, leaders and human rights defenders, they often suffer from intersecting levels of discrimination on the basis of gender, class, ethnicity and socio-economic status.”
Poverty, illiteracy, no sanitation, no health services, no jobs…
Indigenous women particularly suffer high levels of poverty; low levels of education and illiteracy; limitations in the access to health, basic sanitation, credit and employment; limited participation in political life; and domestic and sexual violence, reports the World Day.
Besides, their right to self-determination, self-governance and control of resources and ancestral lands have been violated over centuries.
Small but significant progress has been made by indigenous women in decision-making processes in some communities, achieving leadership in communal and national roles, and standing on the protest frontlines to defend their lands and the planet’s decreasing biodiversity.
“The reality, however, remains that indigenous women are widely under-represented, disproportionately negatively affected by decisions made on their behalf, and are too frequently the victims of multiple expressions of discrimination and violence.”
In short, the world’s human ancestors have systematically fallen defenseless victims to subjugation, marginalisation, dispossession, exclusion, stigmatisation and discrimination.
Simply, claiming their due rights implies losing business profits.
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 08 (IPS) – The writer is Manager, UNDP’s Global Programme on Nature for DevelopmentThe International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, commemorated annually on August 9, is a day to celebrate the many contributions of the 476 million Indigenous peoples worldwide.
As the world grapples with a planetary crisis of both biodiversity loss and climate change, scientists and policy makers are racing to find viable solutions. Increasingly, they are recognizing that the traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples could well provide cost-effective nature-based solutions.
This is a radical departure from the past, when the knowledge and efforts of Indigenous peoples has traditionally been marginalized or discredited.
The emerging recognition of the importance of Indigenous knowledge of the natural world is part of a broader dawning awareness that there are cracks in our global capitalist system – cracks that if allowed to continue to grow, pose an existential threat to humanity.
The front page headline from the Financial Times in 2019, “Capitalism. Time for a Reset,” summarizes what is needed – a profound transformation in the global status quo on how we protect, restore and manage natural resources, and a reset on our relationship with Indigenous peoples, especially women and youth.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first Equator Prize, a UNDP-led partner initiative that recognizes Indigenous peoples and local communities from around the world who use sustainable nature-based solutions to achieve their local development needs.
Joining 264 winners from the past, among this year’s ten winners, selected from a pool of over 500 nominations from 109 countries, are several examples that illustrate the social and economic transformations needed to put Indigenous knowledge, and Indigenous women, at the forefront of a new pact with nature.
At the forefront of restoration knowledge
The Associação Rede de Sementes do Xingu from Brazil brings together women from 25 Indigenous and agricultural communities to collect and commercialize over 220 different species of native seeds for large-scale ecological reforestation of the Amazon and the Cerrado.
In doing so, they have generated more than $700,000 in local incomes, financially empowering Indigenous women throughout the region. The organization also partners with local research institutions to exchange and blend local and technical knowledge, practices, and research to combat industrial agriculture and mass deforestation, seed by seed.
Restoration is a social and ecological imperative; the latest Global Land Outlook found that as much as 40% of the world’s lands are degraded. And while the global community has pledged to restore a billion hectares of degraded land by 2030, it is through the knowledge and action of community members such as those from the Associação Rede de Sementes do Xingu that can help make these pledges a reality.
The recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by the International Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystems found that more than a million species are at risk of extinction, and large predators such as jaguars are especially vulnerable to disruptions in habitat connectivity, particularly in a place such as Panama, which serves as a narrow connectivity corridor between continents.
The Indigenous knowledge and actions of OMIUBP play an essential and outsized role in safeguarding the future of jaguars in the Americas.
At the forefront of sustainable supply chains
The Sunkpa Shea Women’s Cooperative of Ghana, an Indigenous, women-led cooperative, is setting an example for sustainable commodity production through their shea butter production cooperative. The cooperative has redefined production practices in the region by developing a Community Resource Management Area that includes zones of for production areas, no-take zones and limited-use areas.
Their management plan also includes ecosystem restoration with Indigenous food forests, as well as traditional fire management practices that mitigate wildfire risk in this drought-prone region of Ghana. By integrating their organic production into international supply chains, they are improving the lives of 800 women, while safeguarding biodiversity and eliminating deforestation.
While hundreds of companies have pledged to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains, few have achieved this goal. It is through progressive groups such as the Sunkpa Shea Women’s Cooperative of Ghana that we see true progress.
The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, commemorated annually on August 9, with the theme of the role of Indigenous women in the preservation of traditional knowledge, is a timely reminder of the profound transformations we need now, and the need to foster the vital role of women in the intergenerational transmission of knowledge at the core of Indigenous identity, culture, and heritage.
This year’s Equator Prize winners are an inspiration that these transformations are already underway, and that effective women-led solutions to our planetary crises are at hand.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten
Opinion by Antonio Guterres (united nations)
Inter Press Service
Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in his address to the UN press corps while launching the third brief by the Global Crisis Response Group on Energy.
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 04 (IPS) – The war in Ukraine continues to have a devastating impact on the people of that country. Civilians are dying in the most tragic circumstances every day. Millions of lives have been destroyed or put on hold.
This war is senseless, and we must all do everything in our power to bring it to an end through a negotiated solution in line with the UN Charter and international law.
We are doing all we can to reduce suffering and save lives in Ukraine and the region, through our humanitarian operations. And Martin Griffiths will be able to soon brief you on those developments.
But the war is also having a huge and multi-dimensional impact far beyond Ukraine, through a threefold crisis of access to food, energy and finance.
Household budgets everywhere are feeling the pinch from high food, transport and energy prices, fueled by climate breakdown and war.
This threatens a starvation crisis for the poorest households, and severe cutbacks for those on average incomes.
Many developing countries are drowning in debt, without access to finance, and struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and could go over the brink.
We are already seeing the warning signs of a wave of economic, social and political upheaval that would leave no country untouched.
That is the reason why I set up the Global Crisis Response Group: to find coordinated global solutions to this triple crisis, recognizing its three elements – food, energy and finance – that are deeply interconnected.
The GCRG has presented detailed recommendations on food and finance. I believe we are making some progress, namely on food.
Today’s report looks at the energy crisis, with a wide array of recommendations.
Simply put, it aims to achieve the energy equivalent of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, by managing this energy crisis while safeguarding the Paris Agreement and our climate goals.
I would like to highlight four of the recommendations of the report.
First, it is immoral for oil and gas companies to be making record profits from this energy crisis on the backs of the poorest people and communities and at a massive cost to the climate.
The combined profits of the largest energy companies in the first quarter of this year are close to $100 billion.
I urge all governments to tax these excessive profits and use the funds to support the most vulnerable people through these difficult times.
And I urge people everywhere to send a clear message to the fossil fuel industry and their financiers that this grotesque greed is punishing the poorest and most vulnerable people, while destroying our only common home, the planet.
Second, all countries – and especially developed countries – must manage energy demand. Conserving energy, promoting public transport and nature-based solutions are essential components of that.
Third, we need to accelerate the transition to renewables, which in most cases are cheaper than fossil fuels.
Earlier this year, I outlined a 5-point plan to spark the renewables revolution.
Storage technologies including batteries should become public goods.
Governments must scale up and diversify supply chains for raw materials and renewable energy technologies.
They should eliminate red tape around the energy transition, and shift fossil fuel subsidies to support vulnerable households and boost renewable energy investments.
Governments must support the people, communities and sectors most affected, with social protection schemes and alternative jobs and livelihoods.
Fourth, private and multilateral finance for the green energy transition must be scaled up.
Renewable energy investments need to increase by factor of seven to meet the net zero goal, according to the International Energy Agency.
Multilateral development banks need to take more risks, help countries set up the right regulatory frameworks and modernize their power grids, and mobilize private finance at scale.
I urge shareholders in those banks to exercise their rights and make sure they are fit for purpose.
Today’s report expands on these ideas, and Rebeca Grynspan will elaborate on them in a moment.
Every country is part of this energy crisis, and all countries are paying attention to what others are doing. There is no place for hypocrisy.
Developing countries don’t lack reasons to invest in renewables. Many of them are living with the severe impacts of the climate crisis, including storms, wildfires, floods and droughts.
What they lack are concrete, workable options. Meanwhile, developed countries are urging them to invest in renewables, without providing enough social, technical or financial support.
And some of those same developed countries are introducing universal subsidies at gas stations, while others are reopening coal plants. It is difficult to justify such steps even on a temporary basis.
If they are pursued, such policies must be strictly time-bound and targeted, to ease the burden on the energy-poor and the most vulnerable, during the fastest possible transition to renewables.
Footnote: Launching the third brief of the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres thanked the GCRG Task Team, coordinated by Rebeca Grynspan, and the Energy Workstream, for making this report possible.
Venezuelan migrant Manuela Molina (not her real name) was promised a decent job in Trinidad, but minutes after her arrival she was forced into a van and taken to a secret location. Credit: IOM Port of Spain
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Aug 03 (IPS) – Human beings have proved to be capable of producing innumerable practical inventions while much too often making the worst use of them. Take the case, per example, of how criminal groups heavily rely on digital platforms to trap and enslave their victims also for extracting and selling their organs.
Yes, technology now dominates most of human activities and, surprisingly enough, it is now presented as the perfect life-saving solution for the smallest and poorest households worldwide. Simply, it has replaced the precious human knowledge, which has been acquired over thousands of years.
And technology is now utilised by the world’s biggest ‘warlords’ to bomb unarmed civilians with drones, also carrying nuclear heads.
Meanwhile, internet and digital platforms are used by criminal gangs to recruit, exploit and control the victims of their human trafficking lucrative business. Among other crimes, victims of trafficking are also targeted for “organ harvesting.”
No wonder then that the 2022 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons (30 July) has focused on the use and abuse of technology as a tool that can both enable and impede human trafficking.
What’s behind human trafficking?
“Conflicts, forced displacement, climate change, inequality and poverty, have left tens of millions of people around the world destitute, isolated and vulnerable,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres ahead of World Day.
The COVID-19 pandemic has separated children and young people in general from their friends and peers, pushing them into spending more time alone and online, said Guterres.
“Human traffickers are taking advantage of these vulnerabilities, using sophisticated technology to identify, track, control and exploit victims.”
Slave markets, also in refugee camps
Obviously, given the clandestinity of these inhuman operations–and the negligent complicity of official authorities–, the number of victims is practically impossible to calculate.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that the number of “detected” trafficked persons amounts to over 150,000. Other estimates talk about as many as one million.
More than 60% of known human trafficking victims over the last 15 years have been women and girls, most of them trafficked for sexual exploitation.
Meanwhile, the criminal gangs’ operations have been extended everywhere, even in refugee camps.
In the article: Slave Markets Open 24/7: Refugee Babies, Boys, Girls, Women, Men…, IPS reported that, in addition to slave selling and buying deals in public squares, as reported time ago in ‘liberated’ Libya, a widespread exploitation of men, women, and children has been carried out for years at refugee camps worldwide.
One of them is a Malawi refugee camp, where such inhumane practice has been reported by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Malawian Police Service.
“I even witnessed a kind of Sunday market, where people come to buy children who were then exploited in situations of forced labour and prostitution,” said UNODC’s Maxwell Matewere.
The camp is also being used as a hub for the processing of victims of human trafficking. Traffickers recruit victims in their home country under false pretences, arrange for them to cross the border into Malawi and enter the camp.
Many other refugee camps, as it is the case of the Za’atari camp in Jordan, where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees are located once they had to flee the 11-years long devastating war on their country, are also suspected of being stage for human trafficking. And the list goes on.
The Dark Web
Often using the so-called “dark web”, online platforms allow criminals to recruit people with false promises, informs the UN, adding that technology anonymously allows dangerous and degrading content that fuels human trafficking, including the sexual exploitation of children.
On this, the UNODC explains that as the world continues to transform digitally, internet technologies are increasingly being used for the facilitation of trafficking in persons.
With the rise of new technologies, some traffickers have adapted their modus operandi for cyberspace by integrating technology and taking advantage of digital platforms to advertise, recruit and exploit victims.
Recruited through social media
Everyday, digital platforms are used by traffickers to advertise deceptive job offers and to market exploitative services to potential paying customers, explains UNODC.
“Victims are recruited through social media, with traffickers taking advantage of publicly available personal information and the anonymity of online spaces to contact victims.”
Patterns of exploitation have been transformed by digital platforms, as webcams and live streams have created new forms of exploitation and reduced the need for transportation and transfer of victims.
Trafficking in armed conflicts
A group of UN-appointed independent human rights experts, known as Special Rapporteurs, has recently underscored that the international community must “strengthen prevention and accountability for trafficking in persons in conflict situations”.
Women and girls, particularly those who are displaced, are disproportionately affected by trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation, forced and child marriage, forced labour and domestic servitude, they warned.
“These risks of exploitation, occurring in times of crisis, are not new. They are linked to and stem from existing, structural inequalities, often based on intersectional identities, gender-based discrimination and violence, racism, poverty and weaknesses in child protection systems,” the experts said.
Structural inequalities
According to the independent human rights experts, refugees, migrants, internally displaced and Stateless persons are particularly at risk of attacks and abductions that lead to trafficking.
And the dangers are increased by continued restrictions on protection and assistance, limited resettlement and family reunification, inadequate labour safeguards and restrictive migration policies.
“Such structural inequalities are exacerbated in the periods before, during and after conflicts, and disproportionately affect children”, they added.
Targeting schools
Despite links between armed group activities and human trafficking – particularly targeting children – accountability “remains low and prevention is weak,” the UN Special Rapporteurs underlined.
Child trafficking – with schools often targeted – is linked to the grave violations against children in situations of armed conflict, including recruitment and use, abductions and sexual violence, they said.
“Sexual violence against children persists, and often leads to trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and forced marriage, as well as forced labour and domestic servitude”.
Organ harvesting
The independent human rights experts also highlighted that in conflict situations, organ harvesting trafficking is another concern, along with law enforcement’s inability to regulate and control armed groups and other traffickers’ finances – domestically and across borders.
“We have seen what can be achieved through coordinated action and a political will to prevent trafficking in conflict situations,” said the group of Special Rapporteurs, advocating for international protection, family reunification and expanded resettlement and planned relocation opportunities.
Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country’s situation. The positions are honorary, and the experts are not paid for their work.
Protection services ‘severely lacking’
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, on 29 July warned that protection services for refugees and migrants making perilous journeys from the Sahel and Horn of Africa towards North Africa and Europe, including survivors of human trafficking, are “severely lacking”.
“Some victims are left to die in the desert, others suffer repeated sexual and gender-based violence, kidnappings for ransom, torture, and many forms of physical and psychological abuse.”
All the above is just another tragic evidence of how big is the ‘dark web’ of the world’s so-called decision-makers.
A UNFPA staff member walks to a damaged health centre in General Santos on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Credit: UNFPA Philippines
Opinion by Barry Mirkin (davao city, philippines)
Inter Press Service
DAVAO CITY, Philippines, Aug 03 (IPS) – With the national election and transfer of power in the Philippines from outgoing President Duterte to incoming President Marcos Jr. in July 2022, it seems an appropriate time to briefly take stock of the country’s current demographic situation, as well as recent related developments.
According to the biennial global estimates and projections of world population issued by the United Nations Population Division in 2022, the Philippines population climbed to 114 million by mid-2021.
A global milestone will be achieved in November 2022, when world population is expected to breach the 8 billion mark. Population projections foresee that by 2050, the rise in world population will be concentrated in eight countries, one of which is the Philippines.
The country’s total fertility continues its gradual decline, falling to 2.5 births per woman in 2021. Some staggering statistics for the Philippines reveal that from the years 2004 to 2020, 36 in every 1,000 Filipino girls aged 15 to 19 years had already given birth.
A UNFPA staff member walks to a damaged health centre in General Santos on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Credit: UNFPA Philippines
Furthermore, during that period, one-half of all births were unintended. In comparison, world fertility is estimated at 2.3 births per woman and 1.5 births per woman in South-East Asia, of which the Philippines is part.
Abortion remains illegal in the Philippines, despite the over one million illegal and unsafe procedures estimated to be carried out annually. Anyone undergoing or performing an abortion risks up to six years in prison. It is the only country in the world, other than the Vatican where abortion remains illegal under any grounds.
While the Philippines is a global outlier concerning its stance on abortion, it should be noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 struck down Roe versus Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States and thus creating a firestorm of protests.
As a consequence, a number of state governments are seeking to severely restrict abortion access.
In one of the few recent legislative successes regarding population, the Philippine Parliament in 2021 raised the legal age of sexual consent from 12 years, the lowest in Asia to 16 years. Nevertheless, the law contains a “Romeo and Juliet exemption” to protect younger lovers.
Other Parliamentary developments have proven to be unsuccessful. For example, in a country wrought with conservative values and a powerful Church, divorce continues to be illegal, except for the minority Muslim population (eight per cent of the total population), despite a number of attempts over the years to legalize divorce.
Annulment, an option to divorce can take up to four years, may only be granted on narrow legal grounds and at great financial expense. A Civil Partnership Bill has recently been introduced in Parliament, as a means of affording some legal protections to gay couples in a country that forbids same-sex couples from marrying. The bill, however, faces stiff Parliamentary opposition.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there were a record number of repatriated overseas Filipinos (OFWs), some 792,000 in 2020, due to COVID-related lockdowns and restrictions.
Under this program administered by the Philippine government, Filpinos work abroad on fixed-term contracts, usually in the oil-exporting countries of the Arab Region and generally for periods of one to two years, but with the possibility of renewal.
On a more positive note, the Filipino diaspora, i.e., those living and working abroad in 2021, estimated at between 10 to 12 million, remitted US$ 37 billion to the Philippines, a 5 per cent increase from the previous year.
The Philippines benefitted directly from the job creation and wage gains in the United States, which accounted for almost 40 per cent of remittance receipts. Other major remittance sources were Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Japan.
The top four global remittance recipients are India, Mexico, China and the Philippines, The United States has been the major source of global remittance outflows, amounting to US$ 75 billion in 2021.
Despite the ravages of the global COVID pandemic, remittances have proven to be highly resilient, as well as a major contributor to Philippine economic growth. According to World Bank projections, despite the ravages and uncertainty of the Ukraine crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, remittance flows to low and middle-income countries are expected to grow by four per cent in 2022.
Always a source of nurses for other nations, the significant exodus of nurses from the Philippines, amid the coronavirus pandemic has climbed, as 25 per cent more Filipino nurses migrated to the United States during the first nine months of 2021 than during the same period in 2020.
Based on the recent increases in COVID cases in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world, the departure of Filipino nurses is likely to continue and grow.
Given the country’s current demographic trends and future population projections, combined with the various failed legislative initiatives, the Philippines is unlikely to experience major demographic changes, at least in the near term.
In other words, same old, same old.
Barry Mirkin is former chief of the Population Policy Section of the United Nations Population Division.
CAMBRIDGE, UK, Aug 02 (IPS) – The world needs tens of millions of new teachers by 2030, according to UNESCO – an order of magnitude that requires “frugal innovation.” I’ve studied frugal innovation for more than a decade, and it holds a vital key to this global challenge. A model created by BRAC in Bangladesh deserves special attention in this worldwide pursuit.
Frugal innovation is not innovation on the cheap. Rather it’s innovation that is designed from the outset to be affordable, scalable – and better performing than traditional models. That’s why it’s so important to achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
That goal requires that education be both universally available and able to meet quality standards. It must, therefore, be affordable, or it won’t be scalable globally.
I co-authored an early book on frugal innovation in emerging markets 10 years ago, titled Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth. It focuses on the private sector in emerging markets like India, China, and Bangladesh. Its thesis is that in such markets, innovation – the creation of new products and services – needs to be very different from innovation in the West, where it is synonymous with high technology, typically expensive and highly structured, and often elitist. In contrast, we argued that to reach large numbers of people on low incomes in informal economies of emerging markets, firms need products and services that are affordable and an approach that is frugal, flexible, and inclusive.
At that time, I was introduced for the first time to the founder of BRAC, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, and many other inspiring people at BRAC. From them I learned that the ideas we had written about in 2012 had been discovered and perfected by BRAC over four decades, and not for private profit but for social impact instead.
When BRAC started its work in education in 1985, poverty was widespread in Bangladesh. Forty percent of Bangladesh’s primary-aged children were not in school, and only 30 percent went on to complete primary education.
At that time, like elsewhere in the world, delivering education at scale in Bangladesh prioritized developing new infrastructure: building schools and hiring credentialed teachers to meet the demand. But building new schools in every community was impossible, and highly trained teachers were scarce.
Many children could not arrange to travel the distance to school because it was too far or unsafe – or they were needed at home during harvests. Children in ethnic minority groups faced additional obstacles, as did those with disabilities. Most teachers were men, which made parents unwilling to send young girls to school.
The key to BRAC’s approach to providing education at scale was not new infrastructure, but a new mindset. Indeed, the hallmarks of the BRAC approach were more or less exactly those we had written about in our book Jugaad Innovation: it was all about being frugal, flexible and inclusive. It was all about lateral thinking and working backwards from a deep understanding of the problem as faced by the people in the communities being served. And it was all about empowering those communities to be part of the solution.
BRAC’s eventual solution was ingenious. Instead of requiring students to go to distant schools, with all the related burdens and costs, BRAC brought schools to the students.
Instead of building expensive school infrastructure, BRAC took already existing infrastructure. It stitched together an extensive system of rented one-room schools in almost every community.
Instead of taking urban trained teachers, it trained local women to teach grades one through five, with up to 30 children maximum per classroom, instead of 50 to 60. Training non-formal women teachers from within the communities made scaling possible.
The outcomes were impressive. Almost 100 percent of students completed fifth grade, and BRAC students consistently did better than public school students on government tests. At its peak, this network consisted of 64,000 schools, and it has graduated 14 million students, mostly at the pre-primary and primary levels.
That is frugal innovation at its best: affordable, scalable, and better. It is community-based and locally led.
It is transformational on many levels: the number of children educated; the number of girls educated; the number of communities with schools; the number of women trained as teachers; the pipeline of students prepared for ongoing education.
Making significant progress toward achieving SDG 4 will require that kind of frugal innovation. BRAC is pointing the way.
LONDON, Aug 01 (IPS) – It is often those least responsible for causing climate change that suffer the most from the impacts. And such is the case with women and girls in Malawi – one of the world’s poorest and lowest carbon-emitting countries but ranked fifth in the Global Climate Index 2021 list of nations worst affected by climate-related extreme weather.
Climate change exacerbates sexual and gender-based violence in numerous ways, pushing people further into poverty, enflaming conflict over depleting natural resources, forcing migration, and compounding pre-existing gender discrimination. All these and many other forces conspire to put vulnerable women and girls in greater danger of sexual abuse and exploitation.
A recent study by Cambridge University analyzing scientific literature on extreme weather events found that gender-based violence — such as sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or trafficking, both during and after disasters — are recurring issues in studies worldwide.
In Malawi, the climate crisis is already triggering more erratic and extreme weather, resulting in chronic water, food, and financial insecurity for millions. Over the past twenty years, droughts and floods have increased in intensity, frequency, and scale, causing devasting environmental, social, and economic damage.
The economic downturn triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has disrupted global supplies of cereals and fertilizers, have pushed prices up further.
According to World Bank data, 82% of Malawi’s population live in rural areas, and women account for 65% of smallholder farmers, making them particularly exposed to food insecurity. Women are often dependent on natural resources, and many earn a living in the informal sector, leaving them less able to withstand economic and environmental shocks.
Climate change is a threat multiplier
Climate change is not just an environmental problem – it acts as a “threat multiplier” interacting with social systems to exacerbate systemic inequalities. So, although everyone is affected by the ravages of the climate crisis, the vulnerability of individuals varies depending on their gender, geography, class, ethnicity, and age.
Global warming and environmental damage are gendered because the ability of women to adapt is hampered by their social status and limited income, education, and resources. Women are more likely to live in poverty than men and commonly have less schooling, decision-making power, and access to finance.
When yields from harvests are reduced, this leaves subsistence farmers with little or no surplus produce to sell to earn money for purchasing basics like medicine, clothes, sanitary products, schooling, and agricultural inputs for bolstering farming production.
Being unable to produce enough food to feed their families or pay for other essentials puts women under intense pressure to find alternative sources of income. This renders them more susceptible to sexual exploitation, which can take various forms such as transactional sex in exchange for goods, and being trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.
Family financial hardship also disproportionately affects girls, who are frequently pressured to drop out of school to do domestic work and find paid employment. This, in turn, increases their susceptibility to exploitation, including false promises made by traffickers about jobs and education further afield.
In addition, girls experience higher rates of child and forced marriage, as parents may view marriage as a coping strategy to elevate monetary difficulties and shield daughters from sexual violence. It is estimated that around 1.5 million girls in Malawi are at risk of becoming child brides as a direct result of climate change.
There are other ways that existing gender roles interplay with climate change and sexual violence. In Malawi and across sub-Saharan Africa, gathering water and firewood is widely deemed the responsibility of women and girls. A lack of clean water and depletion of natural resources caused by environmental degradation means they often have to travel further to acquire scarce resources.
Not only does this use up precious unpaid time that could be spent on beneficial activities such as income generation or schooling, but it also heightens their exposure to rape and sexual assault. And in some instances, women and girls must contend with sexual exploitation and abuse by those who control access to limited natural resources, such as at water collection points.
The system is failing victims of sexual and gender-based violence
For the vast majority of victims of trafficking, sexual violence, and exploitation, justice goes unserved. Caleb Ng’ombo runs People Serving Girls at Risk (PSGR), a frontline organization in Malawi that works to end human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, prostitution, and child marriages.
Caleb explains, “Victims are being failed by Malawi’s criminal justice system. Few cases make it to court. Those that do are plagued by multiple delays, and perpetrators are rarely punished.”
“Child marriage, sexual exploitation, and trafficking have blighted the lives of thousands of women and girls across Malawi, and the worsening climate crisis is putting more at greater risk. The government should not turn a blind eye to gender-based human rights violations. Addressing these problems must be central to climate response, including disaster and adaption planning.”
Malawi is a source, transit, and destination country for sex trafficking, and climate crisis is fueling it. PSGR and international women’s rights organization Equality Now have submitted a joint complaint to the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) highlighting the poor implementation of anti-trafficking legislation by the Government of Malawi is leaving girls unprotected against sex trafficking.
Malawi’s criminal justice system needs to respond better to the realities and needs of survivors, including safeguarding them against further exploitation and ensuring support services are readily available.
Effectively addressing this crisis requires a gender-responsive, human rights-based approach from the state, one that targets the root causes of gender discrimination.
Climate change also demands action from wealthy industrialized nations that bare the largest responsible for global warming due to their high emissions, both historical and current.
Around the world, a growing climate justice movement is calling for Global North governments to provide countries like Malawi with international finance for climate adaption, restitution for damages already caused, and national debt cancellation so money can be redirected towards supporting those in need, in particular women and girls and other marginalized groups.
With global temperatures continuing to rise, it is vital that laws, policies, and funding deliver on the distinct vulnerabilities and requirements of women and girls so they are protected against gender-based violence and better able to cope with future climate shocks.
Tsitsi Matekaire is the Global Lead on End Sexual Exploitation at Equality Now and Tara Carey Head of Media.
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