Tag: Poverty & SDGs

In the Race to Mitigate Extreme Heat, We Must not Forget Strengthening Agriculture — Global Issues

Heat waves increase the risks of crop failures, threatening food security for billions of people. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
  • Opinion by Esther Ngumbi (urbana, illinois, usa)
  • Inter Press Service

URBANA, Illinois, USA, Jul 29 (IPS) – Across the U.S., and around the world, particularly Europe, heat records are being shattered. Accompanying these extreme temperatures are fires caused by the heat that are burning both homes and forests. While extreme heat is impacting some areas of the world, flooding is impacting other areas including Colorado and Virginia in the U.S., and in other countries around the world including Brazil and Ecuador.

These climate-linked events that are occurring in regions and areas that have never been impacted before send the signal that no one is immune to climate change. All countries and citizens must act with urgency to mitigate this existential threat.

Indeed, these historical catastrophes create an important moment for all of us, including policy makers at both the state and federal level, to roll out bold reforms on many issues, including heat and agriculture.

As countries consider climate mitigation initiatives, they need to be sure to strengthen agricultural crops’ resilience to extreme heat, drought, insect herbivory and flooding, that have become increasingly common. These crops include maize, rice, soybeans, wheat and tomatoes.

Like humans, crops are sensitive to extreme heat. When temperatures increase, crops wither, their health deteriorates, and normal development is affected. Studies have shown that crops and crop varieties that are susceptible to heat stress are impacted the most.

Heat stress causes the deterioration of several important plant physiological processes including photosynthesis, respiration, and transpiration. Further, it causes the accumulation of toxic substances in plant cells including phenolic compounds and reactive oxygen species.

Plants’ ability to grow is affected and their life cycle is shortened. Ultimately, crop yields are reduced with consequences for food supply and agriculture, an important sector of the economies of many countries including the US, the UK, Spain, France and many African countries.

In the US, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, agriculture and related industries contributed $1.055 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020. In the UK, in 2021, agriculture contributed around 0.5% to the economy.

In China, the agricultural sector contributes 8.9% to China’s GDP.  In African countries and other emerging countries, agriculture can account for more than 25% of GDP according to the World Bank.

Heat waves increase the risks of crop failures, threatening food security for billions of people.

Indeed, scientists around the world have generated evidence of the crop and yield losses associated with heat waves and extreme temperatures. A 2017 study that examined extensive published results showed that temperature increase reduces global yields. Similarly, a 2018 study that examined more than 82,000 yield data from 17 European countries also found the same trend.

Crop failures and productivity losses due to excessive heat, drought and flooding are taking place in many countries.  The magnitude of these crop failures, however, varies enormously depending on the region and its wealth.

African countries, for example, suffer the most. A 2022 report prepared by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on climate change reported that intense heat waves, frequent droughts and floods have reduced agricultural productivity in African countries by 34 percent.

Worrying is the fact that crop devouring pests such as the fall armyworm and locusts, pests that have emerged to be serious pests also thrive when temperatures exceed the normal. Because insects are poikilothermic (meaning their temperature varies with the environment), elevated temperatures are associated with increased metabolic rate and an increased consumption of plants, leading to greater damage.

Additionally, insects like the fall armyworm can adjust their life-history strategies, further allowing them to thrive across a wide range of stressful temperatures. What’s more is that recent models suggest that each additional degree of warming will increase crop losses to insects by 10-25 percent.

It’s clear that as governments begin to strategize on how to mitigate heat waves, and other climate change brought about extremes, they must not forget agriculture.

Strengthening agricultural resilience can include developing disaster preparedness and response plans, continuing to fund agricultural research and other climate change research and accelerating outreach and education about climate-smart practices.

Climate-smart practices that can alleviate crop failures when extreme temperatures arise are diverse and include:

  1. Planting heat and drought tolerant crop varieties that have been bred to enhance their photosynthetic capacities and water use efficiencies when periods of stress occur
  2. Applying products such as silicon and silicone nanoparticles,  and
  3. Using inoculants made from naturally occurring beneficial soil microbes that can confer tolerance to heat and drought among other stressors.

Thankfully science researchers around the world continue to advance our understanding of crops response to climate-linked stresses. We can learn from them.

In the race to mitigate climate change brought about heat waves, we must not forget strengthening agriculture.

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

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

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Canada Lags in Providing for Children, Especially Marginalized Kids — Global Issues

  • by Marty Logan (kathmandu)
  • Inter Press Service

KATHMANDU, Jul 28 (IPS) – Canada and its major cities consistently appear in Top 10 lists of best places in the world to live. But delve into figures about children’s lives in the northern nation known for ice hockey heroics and you see a different picture.

For example, one in five children in the North American country of 38 million people lives in conditions of poverty. That rises to one in two for First Nations children (First Nations people account for about half of Canada’s Indigenous population of 1.7 million).

Also, Canada ranks 30th among 38 of the world’s richest countries in the well-being of children and youth under age 18, according to UNICEF. “Canada’s public policies are not bold enough to turn our higher wealth into higher child well-being,” suggests UNICEF to explain the gap.

“Canada is not using its greater wealth for greater childhoods: Canada ranks 23rd in the conditions for good childhood but 30th in children’s outcomes,” adds the United Nations agency, in its 2019 report Worlds Apart, the Canadian companion to a global survey of the world’s richest countries.

UNICEF suggests that rising inequality might be reflected in the low scores for children’s well-being. “More equal societies tend to report higher overall child well-being and fewer health and social problems, such as mental illness, bullying and teenage pregnancy,” says Worlds Apart.

Activist Leila Sarangi goes a step further to explain the inequality. “Canada is still a colonized nation and that is a strategy for maintaining structure and systems that perpetuate things like poverty,” says Sarangi, National Director of Campaign2000, a non-partisan coalition of 120 organizations.

She refers to a 2016 decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that found the Canadian Government had discriminated against First Nations children in providing child welfare benefits. It ordered the government to pay each affected child $40,000. Earlier this month the government agreed to total compensation of $20 billion for children and caregivers affected by that discrimination.

On 23 June 2002 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child wrote that it was “deeply concerned” about “discrimination against children in marginalized and disadvantaged situations in the State party (Canada) such as the structural discrimination against children belonging to indigenous groups and children of African descent, especially with regard to their access to education, health and adequate standards of living.”

In its concluding observations of reports submitted in May, the committee recommended that Canada “put an end to structural discrimination against children belonging to indigenous groups and children of African descent and address disparities in access to services by all children.”

Sarangi says Campaign2000 hoped that the federal government budget in April would act on the government’s post-Covid-19 ‘build back rhetoric’ and provide relief to the poorest Canadians. “We really believe that big spending and big change is possible and we saw that in the pandemic, the way that the government moved really quickly to provide different kinds of support and services,” she added in a Zoom interview.

“Unfortunately the budget missed out. It talks a lot about the deficit and trying to reduce the deficit. One of the things that was really absent from that budget — there was really nothing on income security.”

Instead, poor families have fallen into even deeper poverty says Campaign2000’s 2021 report card on child and family poverty, the first time that has happened since 2012. “When the (monthly, tax-free) Canada Child Benefit was implemented in 2016 and 2017 you can see the rate of child poverty drop pretty significantly — you see a real drop in that rate of child poverty,” says Sarangi. “But in the last two years it’s stalling, and that’s because there’s not been new investment into that benefit… it is frustrating because we know that those kinds of transfers work.”

Non-profit organization Canada Without Poverty (CWP) noted that the budget mentioned poverty 4 times, compared to 90 times for its 2021 counterpart. “It is a policy choice not to invest in social programmes that will serve marginalized communities and alleviate and reduce poverty,” says National Coordinator Emilly Renaud in an email interview. “It is not about less money, it is about a lack of political will to deal with issues of poverty.

“The federal government has committed to a 50 percent poverty reduction by 2030, but there is no clear answer as to what that 50 percent will look like, and if it will look equitable,” she added.

CWP’s Just the Facts webpage lists startling statistics such as:

  • Between 1980 and 2005, the average earnings among the least wealthy Canadians fell by 20%.
  • People living with disabilities (both mental and physical) are twice as likely to live below the poverty line.
  • Precarious employment increased by nearly 50 percent over the past two decades.

The situation won’t improve without structural change, says Campaign2000’s 2021 report card: “Dismantling systemic racism, particularly anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism, is needed to eradicate poverty and inequality. Policies meant to address higher poverty rates in marginalized communities need to be developed with the communities they target and incorporate trauma-informed principles to policymaking.”

One in five children in Canada lives in conditions of poverty. That rises to one in two for First Nations children. First Nations people account for about half of Canada’s Indigenous population of 1.7 million

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



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Fear Returns to Argentina, Once Again on the Brink — Global Issues

View of a demonstration by social organizations in a Buenos Aires square in July. The scene occurs almost every day in the capital of Argentina, a country where poverty has held steady at around 40 percent of the population since before the COVID-19 pandemic. The possibility of a social uprising is one of the fears in the face of the deepening socioeconomic crisis. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
  • by Daniel Gutman (buenos aires)
  • Inter Press Service

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 27 (IPS) – Darío is a locksmith in Flores, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in the Argentine capital, who will have to stop working in the next few days. “Suppliers have suspended the delivery of locks, due to a lack of merchandise or because of prices,” he laments. His case is an illustration of an economy gone mad in a country that once again finds itself on the brink of the abyss.

The problems that have been dragging on in this South American country, where the vast majority of the population has become poorer over the last four years and social unrest is on the rise, exploded this month with an exchange and financial crisis that created enormous uncertainty about what lies ahead.

The Central Bank ran out of dollars, and imports, which in large part are a source of inputs for domestic production, were restricted to the maximum. The result is fear, speculation, increased social unrest and out-of-control inflation, which is causing price references to be lost and some companies and businesses are hedging their bets with preventive increases, or they even decide not to sell.

Today, in the streets and in the media, the questions raised are whether the country is on the eve of a social outbreak and whether President Alberto Fernández, so politically isolated that he is questioned by his own government coalition, will reach the end of his term in December 2023.

At that time, Argentina will be celebrating 40 years of democracy, marked by a succession of economic crises that have left an aftermath of growing inequality and have caused distrust to spread easily in society at the first signs that things are not going well.

The crisis deepened at the beginning of the month, when the Jul. 2 resignation of then Economy Minister Martín Guzmán triggered a 50 percent drop in the parallel exchange rate — known locally as the dollar blue — the only one that can be freely acquired in a country with exchange controls, and this, in turn, further fuelled inflation, which in 2021 stood at 50 percent and this year is already expected to end above 90 percent.

“There has been a series of imbalances in Argentina’s macroeconomy for years, which means that today the government does not have the tools to deal with exchange rate and financial pressures,” Sergio Chouza, an economist who teaches at the public University of Buenos Aires (UBA), told IPS.

“In this country the value of the dollar dominates expectations about prices and as a result it is increasingly difficult to avoid a ‘spiral’ of inflation. At the same time, government bonds have collapsed and are already yielding less than those of Ukraine,” he adds.

Chouza says that the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the major contributing factors in triggering a situation that seems to have gotten out of control.

“There was an expansion of public spending, as in most of the world. But the problem is that while most countries financed it with credit, Argentina could not do so because it was already over-indebted,” the expert explains.

Homeless people who survive by picking through garbage in Buenos Aires sleep on the corner of a central street in Argentina’s capital. In 2021 the country experienced an economic recovery after the first year of the pandemic, but a rise in inflation in 2022 has aggravated the crisis once again. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Social protests

The square in front of the Palacio de Tribunales, in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires, is overflowing with people. The youngest protesters hold banners from social movements from poor outlying neighborhoods, but there are also entire families with small children in their arms. Traffic in the surrounding area is completely cut off as the columns of marchers continue to pour in.

It is a Thursday in July, but this is an image that can be seen practically every day in the Argentine capital, where the most vulnerable social sectors are staging a series of protests because, in the midst of the crisis, the government has suspended the expansion of the Potenciar Trabajo program.

This is the name of the National Program for Socio-productive Inclusion and Local Development, which offers a stipend from the government in exchange for four hours of work in social enterprises, such as soup kitchens or urban waste recyclers’ cooperatives.

“In our neighborhoods things have been very hard for many years, but now it’s getting worse because we can no longer afford to put food on the table,” Fernando, who preferred not to give his last name, told IPS. He is a young man from Laferrere, one of the poorest localities on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, who was a waiter in a bar before becoming unemployed in 2021. Today he does occasional construction work.

Santiago Poy, a researcher at the Observatory of Social Debt at the private Argentine Catholic University (UCA) tells IPS that, with the combination of currency devaluation and inflation since 2018, wages have lost around 20 percent of their purchasing power.

“Poverty stood at around 25 percent in 2017, climbed to 40 percent in 2019 and remained steady after that. Today there is a feeling of widespread impoverishment, despite the fact that the unemployment rate is only seven percent, because 28 percent of workers are poor,” says Poy, describing the situation in this Southern Cone country of 47.3 million people.

After the height of the pandemic in 2020, social indicators improved in 2021 but are worsening again this year and the vast social assistance network does not seem to be sufficient to curb the decline.

“Social aid is not going to solve things in Argentina, because the macroeconomy is a permanent factory of poverty,” says Poy.

One of the operations carried out last weekend by Economy Ministry personnel in supermarkets in Buenos Aires, in order to control price hikes on basic products and “dismantle speculative maneuvers,” as reported. CREDIT: Economy Ministry

The price race

“I am ashamed to set some prices at which I have to sell such basic things as bread, flour or sugar,” Fernando Savore, president of the Federation of Grocery Stores of the province of Buenos Aires, which groups 26,000 businesses in the country’s most populous region, tells IPS.

Savore says that since the beginning of the year the price hikes by suppliers have been constant, but that they skyrocketed in the first week of July, after the economy minister resigned.

“We have seen increases of more than 10 percent in food and more than 20 percent in cleaning products. I don’t think they are justified, but every time the dollar goes up, prices go up,” says Savore, who adds that grocers are hesitant to sell some products because of uncertainty about the costs of restocking them.

And in a context of overall jitters, the government unofficially leaks rumors about economic measures, which do not then materialize but fuel the sense of uncertainty.

President Fernández said that the lack of dollars would be solved if agricultural producers sold a good part of their soybean harvest, which they are currently withholding, worth 20 billion dollars.

They are obliged to export at the official exchange rate, whose gap with the parallel dollar has reached a record level of more than 150 percent, and they are apparently waiting for a devaluation.

On Jul. 25, the new economy minister, Silvina Batakis, met in Washington with the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, to assure her that this country will comply with the agreement signed with the multilateral lender this year, which includes goals to reduce the fiscal deficit and increase the Central Bank’s reserves.

But in Argentina, few people dare to predict where the crisis is heading, and how quickly it will evolve.

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

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Feudalism Camouflaged as Democracy — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Nadeem Qureshi (karachi, pakistan)
  • Inter Press Service

KARACHI, Pakistan, Jul 27 (IPS) – In recent days, as Pakistan’s economic woes have intensified, a veritable cottage industry has developed to suggest ways of putting the country back on track.

The latest entrant in this field is the eminent Harvard Economics professor Asim Khwaja. In a long and widely circulated tweet he outlines his analysis of the problem. He argues that the way out is to work to increase productivity. He is not wrong. Indeed, increased productivity is a useful and necessary objective.

The problem however, is that Dr.Khawja and all the other illustrious academics who have contributed to the debate of what has to be done, are missing the point. There is really no dispute about what has to be done. It has been clear for some time.

I outlined the main elements some three years ago in a piece for Daily Times: “Slash imports, boost exports, invest in vital infrastructure, rejuvenate local industry by sharply raising tariff barriers, work on aligning the education system with the job market, the list goes on and on.” This prescription is just as valid, possibly more so, today than it was three years ago.

The point that the academics are missing is not “what has to be done” rather it is “who will do it”. In normal countries, the responsibility would fall on the elected representative of those countries. But in our case, the people who sit in our assemblies simply do not have the ability or desire to do what is necessary.

Sadly, our problem is that whenever there are elections, we succeed brilliantly in putting the worst of our people in parliament. This is the exact opposite of what successful democracies do, or at least endeavour to do, which is to send the best of their people to parliament. And this is why they are successful.

So, why do we in Pakistan get this so wrong? Genuine democracy is conditioned on two important precepts. One, that voters understand the issues. And two, that they are free to vote for the candidates of their choosing. Neither condition obtains in Pakistan.

Feudal control of the levers of power has ensured widespread illiteracy. And vast swathes of the population are obliged to vote the way they are told to vote by their feudal lords. So, voters do not understand the issues and they cannot vote the way they want to.

What we have is not democracy. It is feudalism camouflaged as democracy. This is why the same people or their ilk – the feudal lords and their families – always get elected. And by and large they tend to be corrupt and incompetent. They get elected to parliament to plunder the state not to build it.

And until such time as we replace these “representatives” arguably the worst of our people, with the best nothing, in terms of our economic reality will change. We will continue to decline rather than progress.

So, the challenge for all the well-meaning people, academics and others, is to shift their focus from what needs to be done to the central issue of how do we get genuine democracy in the country.

In previous articles I have suggested a possible solution: Limit the vote to those who have had at least 10 years of schooling. People who are educated have minds of their own. They understand the issues. And they are usually, in my experience, not slave to the feudals.

This is a simple change. It will lead to genuine democracy. And, if enacted, it will change our destiny by truly empowering people and opening the doors of parliament to those who have the competence, energy, desire and will to build the country.

Nadeem Qureshi is founding chairman of the political party Mustaqbil Pakistan and has had a long career in business, mainly in the Middle East. He studied engineering at MIT, and business at Harvard Business School, is fluent in classical Arabic and has published a translation from Arabic to English of a book entitled: Why Muslims Lagged Behind and Others Progressed.

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Both UK & Congo Think They’re Climate Leaders COP26s Fallout Shows How Far Adrift They Are — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Irene Wabiwa Betoko (kinshasa)
  • Inter Press Service

KINSHASA, Jul 26 (IPS) – The writer is the International Project Leader for the Congo Basin Forest, Greenpeace AfricaFrom the fall-out of the pandemic to the interlocking cost of living and energy security crises currently gripping the world, it has been fascinating to see the world’s richest governments bending over backwards to help fossil fuel companies.

Meanwhile households are battling a cost of living crisis while the climate crisis is raging on, threatening lives and livelihoods everywhere – from north to south.

After oil demand and prices briefly fell during the lockdowns of 2020, we’re seeing Big Oil enjoying unprecedented war-time profits, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drives up prices. Recall BP’s boss Bernard Looney crassly comparing his company to a “cash machine”.

This latest boon for fossil fuel companies makes the pledges from last year’s COP26 climate talks in Glasgow seem like a distant memory. Indeed, a £420m ($500m) deal for the Democratic Republic of Congo has become increasingly useless in protecting its forests, with oil companies set to cash in and eventually paved the way for more forest destruction.

The DRC, home to most territory of the world’s second largest rainforest, prides itself in being a “solution country” for the climate crisis. However, the country, which already sees deforestation rates second only to Brazil, has already stated last year its intention to lift a 20 year ban on new logging concessions.

As of April this year, the DRC is set on trashing huge areas of the rainforest and peatland and – as of this week – it’s set to auction no less than 27 oil and three gas blocks.

Oil exploration and extraction would not only have devastating impacts on the health and livelihoods of local communities, but the oil driven “resource curse” raises the risk of corruption and conflict.

This auction also is sacrificing at least four parts of a mega-peatland complex, often labelled a carbon bomb, along with at least nine Protected Areas (contrary to denials by the Congolese Oil Ministry).

Following the enlargement of the auction this week, it also poses a direct threat (https://www.ft.com/content/5ea6f899-bb55-478f-a14a-a6dd37aae724) to the Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site made famous thanks to a Netflix documentary on a previous campaign to keep the oil industry out of it.

Instead of steering us into a climate catastrophe,the international community must stop serving as the handmaiden of Big Oil. Instead, let’s see them focus on ending energy poverty by supporting clean, decentralised renewable energies. Whether it’s the cost of living crisis unfolding on our doorsteps or climate destruction sweeping the globe – the solutions are the same.

Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi must abandon the colonial notion of development through extractivism and look at its legacy in Africa, which has only deepened poverty and hardship for Africans. It has only served to enrich a small and closed circle of local beneficiaries and foreign nations.

It is telling that Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria, is also the one with the highest number of people suffering extreme poverty (just behind India) and with the highest number of people without access to electricity. Instead of following an economic model that hurts both people and nature, the DRC should resist pressures from greedy multinationals and prioritise connecting 72 million of its people to the grid.

You can bet Big Oil is salivating at the chance to seize yet more profits from climate destruction. Yet shamefully, none of the eight members who are part of the Central African Forest Initiative that is paying £420m of taxpayers’ money to protect DRC’s forests – the UK, the EU, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea – have uttered one word against this prospective oil auction.

That’s not surprising, given the “forest protection” deal does nothing to prevent oil activity in peatlands or anywhere else.

As Boris Johnson approaches his final weeks in office, his own environmental legacy and that of the COP26 risk being all targets, no action. Speeches are made and press releases are disseminated, while the rights of vulnerable people everywhere are being run over by short-sighted extractive industries.

Instead, I would like to see donor countries like the UK government, as host of the COP26 and one of the chief architects behind the DRC forest protection deal, to work with my country to move beyond the model of destructive extractivism and leapfrog towards a future of renewable and clean energy for all.

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Where is the Global Response? — Global Issues

A child eating WFP high-energy biscuits as part of WFP’s nutrition assistance in Batangafo town, northern Central African Republic. Credit: WFP/Bruno Djoyo
  • Opinion by Alexander Muller – Adam Prakash – Elena Lazutkaite (berlin / terni, italy)
  • Inter Press Service

BERLIN / TERNI, Italy, Jul 25 (IPS) – A growing mountain of data and analysis points to an unprecedented global crisis in the making, due to the convergence of “Four Cs” (Conflict, Covid, Climate and Costs).

As most recently highlighted at the recent UN High-Level Political Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals (HLPF), the intersection of poverty, climate vulnerability and geopolitical dynamics could unleash the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.

Why is this crisis different?

All food crises are intrinsically linked to spikes in fossil fuel prices. Recent episodes (such as the food price crises of 2007-2009 and 2012) display several common characteristics: increased demand for biofuels as an alternative energy source; and the diversion of massive amounts of food grains to intensive, and unsustainable livestock sectors in countries with an already high and unhealthy consumption of animal protein.

However, until now, severe impacts on food availability have been avoided thanks to favourable weather conditions that have helped to quickly restore market equilibria.
Not this time.

While the root of the current crisis is strongly linked to incessant pressure on food systems to deliver energy and meat, high fertilizer prices mean that production costs are outpacing farmgate prices of food, discouraging farmers from maintaining or increasing production.

This adds yet another layer of complexity to the “perfect storm” that has already been gathering. Covid-19 looms large over the ability of supply chains to deliver food. Conflict (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) has siphoned-off enormous amounts of food destined for international markets as well as driving up the price of crude oil, which is highly influential in determining prices of fertilizer – the critical input in global agri-food value chains.

(Note: On July 22, The United Nations, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine signed an agreement in Istanbul aimed at delivering Ukrainian grain to world markets. The deal was the result of months of negotiations as world food prices skyrocketed amid increasing grain shortages connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres heralded the agreement as a major diplomatic breakthrough. “Today there is a beacon on the Black Sea. A beacon of hope—a beacon of possibility, a beacon of relief—in a world that needs it more than ever.”)

Due to our energy-hungry and inefficient food systems, over seven units of fossil fuel energy are required to produce one unit of food – from farm to retail.

Adding to the complexity of these developments is the accelerated impact of the climate crisis on global agriculture. The upshot is that the world is facing record food costs in 2022.

These “Four Cs” are instigating a scenario that could be more severe than anything we’ve seen in the past five decades, mirroring the hunger crisis of the 1970s in which millions perished from hunger.

Moreover, overall prospects for a global bumper grain crop are increasingly dim. Recent satellite surveillance shows that excessive dryness and heat stress could lead to a five million tonne shortfall in the EU wheat harvest and a combined eight million tonne contraction of wheat output in the US and India.

This adds to uncertainty about continued blockage of wheat supplies from Ukraine, which had a pre-conflict capacity of storing 60 million tonnes of grains and oilseeds.

One hopeful sign is that Ukraine has begun shipping small but increasing quantities of food via land routes, with significant volumes also passing through the Danube River. Several international initiatives are also underway to unblock supply chains and compensate for storage infrastructure destroyed by Russia.

These include US support for new silos along the border with Romania and Poland, and Turkey’s offer to help reinstate Ukraine’s exports from the Black Sea. However, any delays to these initiatives could force many Ukrainian farmers into bankruptcy, jeopardizing global food security for years to come.

Can we crisis-proof our food systems?

The war in Ukraine has thrown into sharp focus – yet again – to just how vulnerable our energy and food systems are to shocks, including geopolitical tensions. Dependence on a few countries for energy and fertilizer needs, poses exceptional and unacceptable risks.

Faced with severe food shortages, many countries will undoubtedly turn to Russia, which is set for an excellent food harvest this season, raising prospects of “weaponizing grain” in retaliation against sanctions.

Behind the geopolitics of blockades on Ukrainian grain is an untold story of a fragile, overly-centralized global food system, constructed and promoted by the richer nations and their corporations, that was already vulnerable to shocks long before the tanks rolled in.

Added to these continuing uncertainties, is the increasing impact of climate extremes to global food production. Once largely associated with the African region, drought is wreaking havoc to food systems around the world. A record-breaking drought reordered plantings in the United States, heat stress in India has led to a reported 10-35 percent decline in crop yields with more heatwaves predicted prompting a ban on the country’s wheat exports, with restrictions on food shipments instigated by another 34 countries.

Devastating heatwaves and the worst drought in 70 years are also being felt in northern regions of Italy driving up prices by as much as 50% , while the Horn of Africa is being ravaged by the worst drought in four decades. With only one percent of arable land equipped for irrigation in the region, the longer-term prognosis for strengthening climate resilience is disturbing, to say the least.

Unfortunately, the global response so far has largely taken the same laissez faire approach that was proposed in the wake of previous crises. In Einstein’s words, it is tantamount to “doing the same thing(s) over and over again and expecting different results.”

To achieve the fundamental reform needed, our food systems need to be set on a transformative pathway, necessitating the redesign around intertwined action.

Restoring sanity

It would be wishful thinking to expect that the world will ever be free of multiple crises. The question, therefore, is how to construct a more resilient global food system to shocks from wherever they might arise.

In the short-term, emergency measures are needed to safeguard access to food for those who are hardest hit from high food prices. Moratoriums on the biofuel and livestock feed sectors would free up sufficient quantities of grain to avoid a hunger crisis. Food stocks, where abundant, should also be released to ensure that the most at risk have affordable and open access to food.

A communiqué issued at the close of the recent G7 Summit in Germany unveiled plans to boost fertilizer production and promote the supply of organic fertilizers. G7 leaders also encouraged the release of food from stockpiles and agreed not to introduce any new public subsidies for fossil fuel sectors, even as they called for additional temporary investment in the natural gas industry to mitigate current supply shortages.

In parallel to these emergency measures, we urgently need to embark a more resilient pathway in the medium- to long-term. Even were the war in Ukraine to end tomorrow and supply chains to return to “normal” we must shift the current paradigm of dependency on climate-destroying mineral fertilizers. We must make hard choices to wean ourselves off conventional monocultural agriculture towards more diverse, localized and ecosystem-sensitive food systems.

Science tells us that nitrogen-based fertilizers derived from fossil fuels, can contribute to 40 percent of cereal yields. Continuing to depend on fertilizer supplies from a few countries is therefore tantamount to holding nearly 8 billion people to ransom.

It is increasingly clear that to avert the impact of such geopolitics, policy makers must make serious attempts to delink world food security from fossil fuel-based and climate-destroying inputs. Incentivizing inexpensive and readily available and proven technologies – such as agroforestry and other agroecological practices – boosts soil health, improves the availability of nutritious food, and strengthens climate resilience.

Repurposing a mere fraction of current perverse subsidises for the fossil fuel sector, which amount to an astounding US$ 7 trillion per year, is a critical step towards enabling such a transformation.

Ultimately, however, we need to value our food systems differently by including their total footprint on human health and the environment. Ignoring the “true cost” of food production has led to a focus on cheap and non-nutritious food that is linked to the global obesity pandemic and a greater risk of zoonotic disease spillovers.

The benefits of such a True Cost Accounting (TCA) approach would be manifold: a reduction in food waste, a far more productive and sustainable agricultural sector that respects our natural capital, and a sense of realism in achieving greenhouse gas targets under the Paris Agreement.

Dismantling the 4 Cs

Decoupling the world’s food systems from fossil fuel-based inputs would be a major step forward in solving long-term global hunger. A necessary first step towards such transformation is to design pathways in which the global north shares its food stockpiles instead of diverting grains to fuel cars and promoting unsustainable livestock production.

Such repurposing requires immediate investment in renewable energy and the manufacture of bio-fertilizers. Organic fertilizers are integral to the circular economy, which is an increasingly important model for planetary sustainability.

Equally, the overuse of mineral fertilizers needs to be addressed, especially given their role in creating additional input demand, which in turn leads to higher prices, while compounding environmental degradation.

While the G7 Leaders’ communiqué is a refreshing breakaway from tradition, the world still has much to learn from history. The world was ill-prepared in the 1970s, the 2000s as well as today. Arguably, solutions to fix increasingly complex and intertwined food systems are difficult.

Vested interests, a lack of governance and a system of economic accounting that undervalues our natural and societal capital are challenges under which transformation of our food systems needs to happen. This task is by no means underestimated, but bold action is needed to ensure food systems become more crisis-proof.

As an emergency step, prioritizing food for people “over all else” would build up trust especially between developing regions in need and the G7. And trust is also a very scarce resource in the world of today.

Alexander Müller is Managing Director (based in Berlin), Adam Prakash is Research Associate (based in the UK), Elena Lazutkaite is Research Associate (based in Berlin)

Töpfer Müller Gaßner, a Think Tank for Sustainability, based in Berlin.

About TMGTMG Research gGmbH is a Berlin-based research organization with an African regional hub in Nairobi and projects across several countries in Africa. Together with partners at the local, national and international levels, TMG explores transformative solutions for entrenched sustainability challenges, with a focus on four thematic clusters: Food Systems, Land Governance, Nature-Based Solutions and Urban Futures.

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An Integrated Regional Response for the Sahel Crisis — Global Issues

Benoit Thierry
  • Opinion by Benoit Thierry (dakar, senegal)
  • Inter Press Service

DAKAR, Senegal, Jul 25 (IPS) – Benoit Thierry, is Sahel Office Director of International Fund for Agriculture Development, DakarThe current Ukraine-Russia conflict is dominating the global media to the point of overshadowing longer protracted crisis that no longer make headlines, but are still rife. Such is the case with the on-going Sahel crisis, one of the world’s most neglected ones, where acute poverty, the dramatic effects of climate change and rising armed conflicts have become the norm for more than a decade. A situation further exacerbated by the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.

Benoit ThierryThe Sahel region, known for its nomadic herders and resilient agriculture systems, spans 6000 km across a dozen of countries south of the Sahara desert, which include Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad for a population of approximately 150 million. They share a common geography, a similar climate and way of life, but they are also among the poorest countries in the world, ranking last in the Human Development Index. According to the UN Refugee Agency, the region counts more than 4.6 million people who have lost their home today, including 2.7 million people who are internally displaced and running away from conflict and drought. They no longer have a livelihood and need to rely on humanitarian aid for their survival.

However, as vital as it is, humanitarian aid cannot provide a long-term solution. More coordinated responses that address the underlying causes of the crisis are required. For this reason, the three UN agencies specialised in food and agriculture, namely the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), have joined forces with the G5 Sahel, the regional organisation established in 2014 by the five most affected Sahel countries. Together and with the participation of Senegal, they have launched a US$180 million programme to improve the livelihoods and economic means of rural producers in the region and scale up successful pilot activities. Through it, a common approach is implemented, capitalizing on rural development work of past decades, particularly in supporting farmers and herders’ associations.

At IFAD we have a long experience working with rural producers in the region, however, until now, we tended to implement programmes nationally, in agreement with national governments. Currently, IFAD is financing 20 programmes and projects in G5 Sahel countries plus Senegal for a total of US$1 billion.

With the existence of regional Sahel organisations, we can now focus our efforts at regional level, knowing that many of the issues cut across national borders, and work in partnership with all the governments and international agencies concerned. This is for the benefit of the poorest, which is the purpose of the joint Sahel programme, known as the Regional Joint Programme Sahel in Response to the Challenges of COVID-19, Conflict and Climate Change (SD3C). In addition to financing, IFAD is contributing its long experience in implementing agricultural projects at local level, FAO is bringing its in-depth knowledge and research in agriculture, and WFP its expertise working in conflict areas.

An estimated 25 million people in the Sahel are nomadic pastoralists who are increasingly more desperate to find grazing areas for their cattle herds because of the effect of climate change. As they expand grazing areas into farming land, conflicts with sedentary farmers are on the rise leading to a decline in food production, when at the same time the population is increasing. According to UN forecast, population in the Sahel should more than double to 330 million people by 2050. How will they eat if the issue of food production and productivity is not addressed today through agriculture investment and adequate planning?

The programme looks to increase food production and yields through climate-resilient agricultural practices, a key aspect in a region where 80 percent of agriculture is estimated to be affected by climate change. With climate experts forecasting temperatures in the region, currently averaging 35 degrees Celsius, to rise by at least 3 degrees by 2050, there is even more urgency to implement climate resilient measures today.

Beyond the key issue of agriculture, the programme is also focussing on promoting cross-border trade and transactions and peace building at community level. Women, who typically have limited access to land and finance, are making up to 50 per cent of the programme’s participants. About 40 per cent are young people, who face high rates of unemployment and receive help in launching productive activities to create jobs and generate decent incomes. Landless people and transhumant pastoralists also benefit. The overall strategy is designed to meet the challenges of emergency, development and peace following a rapid intervention approach based on the scaling up of existing and efficient responses and approaches. Under implementation since 2021, the program will continue up to 2027 and expand to other countries in the Sahel region.

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Time for a UN Human Rights Leader — Global Issues

Michelle Bachelet, the outgoing High Commissioner for Human Rights. Credit: OHCHR
  • Opinion by Andrew Firmin (london)
  • Inter Press Service

LONDON, Jul 22 (IPS) – The writer is Editor-in-Chief at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance. He is one of the lead authors for CIVICUS Lens and the 2022 State of Civil Society ReportThe UN High Commissioner for Human Rights sits at the top of the UN’s human rights system. It’s a crucial role for the victims of violations and the many civil society activists who look to the UN system to set and apply human rights norms, monitor the human rights performance of states and hold rights violators to account.

And there’s a job vacancy. In June, the current High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, announced she wouldn’t be seeking a second term when her current time in office ends in August.

Her announcement was unsurprising: no one has held the role for two full terms. The High Commissioner can find themselves trying to strike impossible compromises between upholding rights, keeping powerful states onside and respecting the UN’s cautious culture.

They can end up pleasing no one: too timid and cautious for civil society, too critical for states that expect to get away with violating rights.

Bachelet is no stranger to the charge of downplaying human rights criticism. Most recently her visit to China attracted huge controversy. Bachelet long sought to visit China, but when the trip went ahead in May, it was carefully stage managed by the Chinese state, which instrumentalised it for PR and disinformation purposes.

Key qualities for the job

Looking ahead, it’s time to think about who should do the job next. The UN system doesn’t have long to identify and appoint Bachelet’s successor, and candidates are already putting themselves forward.

But the process must be inclusive. There’s a clear danger of the selection process leading to the hurried appointment of a candidate acceptable to states because they will not challenge them.

To avoid this, civil society needs to be fully involved. Candidates should face civil society questioning. The criteria by which the appointment is made should be shared and opened up to critique.

Michelle Bachelet, the outgoing High Commissioner for Human Rights. Credit: OHCHRCivil society has plenty of ideas about the qualities the ideal candidate must have. Above all, the holder of the role must be a fearless human rights champion who promises to stand independent of states and not be afraid of upsetting rights-violating states or the UN’s bureaucratic niceties. They should be a public figure and leader prepared to cause a stir if necessary.

This means they should have a strong grounding in international human rights law, crucial at a time when several states are reasserting narrow concepts of national sovereignty as overriding long-established international norms. The UN system needs to get better at defending international laws against this creeping erosion.

The successful candidate should also have a proven background in human rights advocacy and working with the victims of rights violations. The candidate should be fully committed to social justice and to defending and advancing the rights of excluded groups that are most under attack – including women, LGBTQI+ people, Black people, Indigenous people, migrants and refugees, and environmental rights defenders.

They must always be on the side of those who experience rights abuses, acting as a kind of global victims’ representative.

The style they should adopt in office should be one of openness and honesty. They should be willing to work with civil society and listen to criticism.

They should work to embed human rights in everything the UN does, including its work on peace and security, sustainable development and climate change. They should develop the currently underutilised mandate of the office to act on early warning signs of human rights emergencies and bring these to the attention of other parts of the UN to help prevent crises, particularly since the UN Security Council is so often deadlocked.

They should stand up for the UN’s various human rights mandate holders and special experts, and push for them to be able to make genuinely unimpeded visits to states where they can scrutinise rights that are under attack.

While diplomatic skills are important, the approach of backroom negotiations and trade-offs, the style of which Bachelet was accused, should be avoided. This is not a technocratic role. It is about showing moral leadership and taking a stand. The next High Commissioner should not try to negotiate with states like China. They should lead the condemnation of them.

A pivotal moment

This is a potentially pivotal moment. The need has never been greater. Human rights are being attacked on a scale unprecedented in the UN’s lifetime. When it comes to the key civic rights – the rights to association, peaceful assembly and expression – the global situation deteriorates year on year.

Around the world, 117 out of 197 countries tracked by the CIVICUS Monitor now have serious violations of these rights.

If civil society’s calls are not heeded, the danger seems clear: the position could drift into irrelevance, becoming hopelessly compromised and detached from the moral call that should be at its centre.

It’s time for the UN to show it’s serious about human rights, and guarantee that rights are at the core of what it stands and works for. This also means it must revisit the funding situation: the UN human rights system may have well-developed mechanisms but they’re chronically underfunded.

Human rights get just over four per cent of the UN’s regular budget despite it being one of the UN’s three pillars, alongside development and peace and security, making the work highly dependent on voluntary contributions, which are never sufficient.

The next High Commissioner must push for progress in funding and in the realisation of the UN’s Call to Action on Human Rights. To help ensure this, the UN’s human rights commitment must first be signalled by the appointment of a fearless human rights champion to its peak human rights role.

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Amplifying the SDGs Requires Fresh Storytelling Tactics — Global Issues

The media could play a vital role in the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) a webinar on the media and SDGs heard. Credit: Juliet Morrison/IPS
  • by Juliet Morrison (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

New York, Jul 20 (IPS) – With the latest United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Report revealing that much progress toward the SDGs has been reversed, the UN has focused on how to amplify the goals and hold member states accountable for tackling them amid current crises.

A webinar in July 2022 on the power of the media for achieving the SDGs sought to answer these questions. Organized by the Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), the forum featured a discussion about best practices for covering SDG topics and ensuring coverage of global issues resonated with local audiences.

UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) President Colleen Vixen Kelapile stressed that the media plays a pivotal role in tackling the goals.

“The media industry is a vital stakeholder in achieving the SDGs. It is key in promoting solidarity and reinforcing accountability from the global leaders so that they take the necessary bold decisions to realize the transformation we urgently need,” he said.

But getting the message across effectively to the public requires making policy concepts accessible to readers, Steve Herman, Voice of America (VOA) Chief National Correspondent, said. He noted that policy could often be relayed in high language, which can be difficult to understand without prior knowledge of the issue.

“We cannot just pare at all these acronyms that are used by the United Nations and other agencies. What we need to do is relate the story to people’s lives,” he said.

Former BBC News Science Editor David Shukman asserted that journalists need to be innovative when writing to ensure that concepts are understandable to the public.

“The whole sustainability agenda is cursed with appalling terminology. So, there’s a premium of finding ways of stripping that up,” he said.

Audiences need to understand the implications of complex concepts involved in measuring SDGs. By making these accessible, like with a football field deforestation analogy, they will resonate with audiences. Credit: Unsplash

He pointed to his football pitch analogy as a tactic that has helped people understand the severity of deforestation rates.

The football field analogy represents the average amount of Amazon rainforest destroyed every minute. In 2019, the rate was three football fields.

Metaphorical devices like the football pitch are useful because the reader can better contextualize the situation and make sense of it, Shukman noted.

Comparisons are also helpful for comprehending the scale of crises. Large numbers alone are hard for human brains to grasp.

“By making connections and by using language that resonates, the message does get through,” he said.

Incorporating more connections and context should also apply to international stories, Angelina Kariakina, Head of News of Ukraine’s public broadcaster UA: PBC.

When reporting on foreign events, she stressed that journalists should consider how their native region will be impacted. This can improve public understanding of the scale of crises.

“For some countries is quite far away, but it is our job, the global media, to explain how the global economy works, how we are connected, and what are the risks. I think it is the same challenge in terms of any coverage,” she said.

She pointed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has severely affected the global food supply.

Ukraine provides 10% of the world’s wheat supply and nearly half its sunflower oil. But Russian blockades have cut off access to key ports where Ukraine ships its exports, resulting in the world being cut off from the supply.

The impacts are far-reaching. Food prices have risen significantly, deepening global food insecurity. UN food agencies have warned that 49 million people in 43 different countries are at risk of falling into famine conditions.

“It’s not just a breaking news story in part of Europe,” she said.

Panelists also discussed the need for fresh angles on stories about longstanding global issues, such as climate change or pollution.

Herman mentioned that highlighting the voices of those affected as opposed to experts can be helpful because it resonates with the audience.

“You need to relate it to the individual and tell personal stories. I like to give up the reliance on experts who are sitting behind a desk somewhere. It has much more of an impact if you are on the ground telling these stories with a lens that’s focused on the people that are affected,” he said.

Sharing stories of success or resilience is another way to reframe topics.

By reporting on SDG issues in fresh ways, ECOSOC President mentioned that the media can help propel action toward the goals, which is vital for “humanity’s hope for survival.”

“Journalists can be the inspiration and can inject motivation and energy to scale up efforts in achieving the human prosperity that the world is yearning for,” he said.

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U.S.-Latin America Immigration Agreement Raises more Questions than Answers — Global Issues

A hundred Central American migrants were rescued from an overcrowded trailer truck in the Mexican state of Tabasco. It has been impossible to stop people from making the hazardous journey of thousands of kilometers to the United States due to the lack of opportunities in their countries of origin. CREDIT: Mesoamerican Migrant Movement
  • by Edgardo Ayala (san salvador)
  • Inter Press Service

SAN SALVADOR, Jul 19 (IPS) – The immigration agreement reached in Los Angeles, California at the end of the Summit of the Americas, hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden, raises more questions than answers and the likelihood that once again there will be more noise than actual benefits for migrants, especially Central Americans.

And immigration was once again the main issue discussed at the Jul. 12 bilateral meeting between Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Biden at the White House.

At the meeting, López Obrador asked Biden to facilitate the entry of “more skilled” Mexican and Central American workers into the U.S. “to support” the economy and help curb irregular migration.

Central American analysts told IPS that it is generally positive that immigration was addressed at the June summit and that concrete commitments were reached. But they also agreed that much remains to be done to tackle the question of undocumented migration.

That is especially true considering that the leaders of the three Central American nations generating a massive flow of poor people who risk their lives to reach the United States, largely without papers, were absent from the meeting.

Just as the Ninth Summit of the Americas was getting underway on Jun. 6 in Los Angeles, an undocumented 15-year-old Salvadoran migrant began her journey alone to the United States, with New York as her final destination.

She left her native San Juan Opico, in the department of La Libertad in central El Salvador.

“We communicate every day, she tells me that she is in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and that everything is going well according to plan. They give them food and they are not mistreating her, but they don’t let her leave the safe houses,” Omar Martinez, the Salvadoran uncle of the migrant girl, whose name he preferred not to mention, told IPS.

She was able to make the journey because her mother, who is waiting for her in New York, managed to save the 15,000-dollar cost of the trip, led as always by a guide or “coyote”, as they are known in Central America, who in turn form part of networks in Guatemala and Mexico that smuggle people across the border between Mexico and the United States.

The meeting of presidents in Los Angeles “was marked by the issue of temporary jobs, and the presidents of key Central American countries were absent, so there was a vacuum in that regard,” researcher Silvia Raquec Cum, of Guatemala’s Pop No’j Association, told IPS.

In fact, neither the presidents of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, or El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, attended the conclave due to political friction with the United States, in a political snub that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

Other Latin American presidents boycotted the Summit of the Americas as an act of protest, such as Mexico’s López Obrador, precisely because Washington did not invite the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which it considers dictatorships.

From rural communities like this one, the village of Huisisilapa in the municipality of San Pablo Tacachico in central El Salvador, where there are few possibilities of finding work, many people set out for the United States, often without documents, in search of the “American dream”. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

More temporary jobs

Promoting more temporary jobs is one of the commitments of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection adopted at the Summit of the Americas and signed by some twenty heads of state on Jun. 10 in that U.S. city.

“Temporary jobs are an important issue, but let’s remember that economic questions are not the only way to address migration. Not all migration is driven by economic reasons, there are also situations of insecurity and other causes,” Raquec Cum emphasized.

Moreover, these temporary jobs do not allow the beneficiaries to stay and settle in the country; they have to return to their places of origin, where their lives could be at risk.

“It is good that they (the temporary jobs) are being created and are expanding, but we must be aware that the beneficiaries are only workers, they are not allowed to settle down, and there are people who for various reasons no longer want to return to their countries,” researcher Danilo Rivera, of the Central American Institute of Social and Development Studies, told IPS from the Guatemalan capital.

The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection states that it “seeks to mobilize the entire region around bold actions that will transform our approach to managing migration in the Americas.”

The Declaration is based on four pillars: stability and assistance for communities; expansion of legal pathways; humane migration management; and coordinated emergency response.

The focus on expanding legal pathways includes Canada, which plans to receive more than 50,000 agricultural workers from Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean in 2022.

While Mexico will expand the Border Worker Card program to include 10,000 to 20,000 more beneficiaries, it is also offering another plan to create job opportunities in Mexico for 15,000 to 20,000 workers from Guatemala each year.

The United States, for its part, is committed to a 65 million dollar pilot program to help U.S. farmers hire temporary agricultural workers, who receive H-2A visas.

“It is necessary to rethink governments’ capacity to promote regular migration based on temporary work programs when it is clear that there is not enough labor power to cover the great needs in terms of employment demands,” said Rivera from Guatemala.

He added that despite the effort put forth by the presidents at the summit, there is no mention at all of the comprehensive reform that has been offered for several years to legalize some 11 million immigrants who arrived in the United States without documents.

A reform bill to that effect is currently stalled in the U.S. Congress.

Many of the 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States come from Central America, especially Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, as well as Mexico.

While the idea of immigration reform is not moving forward in Congress, more than 60 percent of the undocumented migrants have lived in the country for over a decade and have more than four million U.S.-born children, the New York Times reported in January 2021.

This population group represents five percent of the workforce in the agriculture, construction and hospitality sectors, the report added.

Despite the risks involved in undertaking the irregular, undocumented journey to the United States, many Salvadorans continue to make the trip, and many are deported, such as the people seen in this photo taken at a registration center after they were sent back to San Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

More political asylum

The Declaration also includes another important component of the migration agreement: a commitment to strengthen political asylum programs.

For example, among other agreements in this area, Canada will increase the resettlement of refugees from the Americas and aims to receive up to 4,000 people by 2028, the Declaration states.

For its part, the United States will commit to resettle 20,000 refugees from the Americas during fiscal years 2023 and 2024.

“What I took away from the summit is the question of creating a pathway to address the issue of refugees in the countries of origin,” Karen Valladares, of the National Forum for Migration in Honduras, told IPS from Tegucigalpa.

She added: “In the case of Honduras, we are having a lot of extra-regional and extra-continental population traffic.”

Valladares said that while it is important “to enable refugee processes for people passing through our country, we must remember that Honduras is not seen as a destination, but as a transit country.”

Raquec Cum, of the Pop No’j Association in Guatemala, said “They were also talking about the extension of visas for refugees, but the bottom line is how they are going to carry out this process; there are specific points that were signed and to which they committed themselves, but the how is what needs to be developed.”

Meanwhile, the Salvadoran teenager en route to New York has told her uncle that she expects to get there in about a month.

“She left because she wants to better herself, to improve her situation, because in El Salvador it is expensive to live,” said Omar, the girl’s uncle.

“I have even thought about leaving the country, but I suffer from respiratory problems and could not run a lot or swim, for example, and sometimes you have to run away from the migra (border patrol),” he said.

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