Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tours Eric Cress' farm to examine crop damage caused by the drought near Center Point, Iowa. Eric and his father Dale said their farm in eastern Iowa is running around seven inches behind normal rain levels for this time of year. Credit: USDA photo by Darin Leach

By Carlota Cortes
NEW YORK, Aug 11 2012 (IPS)

The historic drought withering much of the United States this summer has revealed a need for strategies to better manage water supplies that could remain under severe pressure both this year and in the longer term.

On Friday, the U.S. Agriculture Department said that corn yields – which account for nearly 40 percent of the global harvest – would be 17 percent lower than expected, contributing to an overall rise in food prices of three to four percent next year.

Van Ayers, an agriculture and rural development specialist with the University of Missouri Extension in Bloomfield, predicts a continued expansion of irrigation systems.

“When I first moved to southeast Missouri over 20 years ago, there were approximately 300,000 acres with irrigation,” he told IPS. “Now there is over one million. This trend will not change.”

The main problem this year is that farmers in southeast Missouri had to irrigate more land than they expected, and some of the systems failed.

“I don’t think anybody expected a drought this severe throughout the growing season,” said Ayers.

According to a July report from the National Climatic Data Center, 33 percent of the country was classified as experiencing a moderate to extreme drought and 55 percent fell in the category of moderate to extreme. The high plains, the midwest and the south are the areas most affected.

July 2012 was the hottest month on record for the U.S., with the average temperature at 77.6 degrees F, 3.3 degrees above the 20th century average.

On Aug. 2, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a 383-million-dollar emergency drought aid package for livestock producers and farmers. The Agricultural Disaster Assistance Act of 2012 will extend expired programmes such as the Emergency Livestock Assistance Program to help farmers to deal with the current drought.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama announced new measures to aid the drought-stricken areas. This additional funding would provide nearly 30 million dollars.

States are also taking action. In Missouri, Governor Jay Nixon established an emergency cost-share programme to provide water for farmers and livestock producers. Some 3,712 applications have been approved, which equals 18.7 million dollars in assistance.

But emergency relief is just a bandaid on the much bigger problem of changing climate patterns and extreme weather events that will continue to impact water supplies for the foreseeable future, environmentalists say.

Gerrit Jöbsis, southeast regional director of American Rivers, calls it the “hydro-illogical cycle” – a “jargon to convey that we are illogical in our approach to managing water supply shortages.”

The cycle consists of panicking when there is a drought, failing to address the shortages with preventive measures for the future and then, once it rains, returning to the previous mismanagement of supplies until the next drought.

“This illogical approach is a cycle of ineffectiveness that we need to end,” Jöbsis told IPS.

He stressed the importance of distinguishing between water efficiency and water conservation. While water efficiency focuses on reducing waste, conservation restricts water use overall.

For the southeast region, American Rivers says water efficiency is the solution.

“In the southeast of the United States, we have a long history of taking for granted the amount of water that we have,” Jöbsis said. But in the last 40 years, cities have extended their boundaries and the population has increased, putting added pressure on water supplies.

The metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia is dealing with precisely these challenges.

“We generally oppose the construction of more reservoirs for water supply until communities have maximised their existing supplies through water efficiency and other means first,” Ben Emanuel, southeast associate director of water supply of American Rivers, told IPS.

The area has nearly four million residents and consumes 652 million gallons of water per day. American Rivers estimates that through water efficiency measures, Metro Atlanta would save 300 million to 700 million dollars, and there would be no need to build new dams.

Ayers also believes that in the mid-south, another area hit by drought, there is a need to efficiently manage the supply of water. Ayers’ focus is primarily on irrigation, and “the efficient use of these irrigation systems is paramount,” he told IPS.

But even in areas where the drought is not as severe, there is a need to better manage water supplies. In Washington state, a clear example of this is the Yakima basin.

Negotiations among stakeholders started back in 2009 and now environmentalists, farmers, the Yakima native nation, and state and federal governments have reached general agreement on an integrated plan.

Michael Garrity, conservation director of for Washington state from American Rivers, told IPS: “Water conservation and efficiency are an important part of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan.”

But the plan also has other elements that need to be implemented in order to meet its goals, such as better groundwater management and renovation of existing dams.

The common thread in all these measures is simple, conservationists say: you may not be able to predict a drought, but you can be prepared when it comes.

By Carlota Cortes
NEW YORK, Aug 2 2012 (IPS)

Roasted foie gras fillet, with fresh chestnuts and soymilk skin. This dish from Mugaritz, considered the third-best restaurant in the world, sounds exotic. But how this “delicacy” – foie gras means “fat liver” – is produced and at what cost have been unmasked in an investigation led by Animal Equality.

The organisation exposed the internal management of multiple foie gras farms – six in Spain and four in France. In the undercover study, which began in July 2011, activists shot footage and photographs and conducted interviews by pretending to be interested in the industry.

“They want to hide what they do, because foie gras implies so much suffering to animals,” Sharon Núñez, general coordinator of the organisation, told IPS. All the footage was acquired legally because they did not use hidden cameras.

The Committee of the European Convention for the Protection of Animals Kept for Farming Purposes established recommendations concerning the welfare of ducks and geese. Adopted in 1999 by the Council of Europe, these guidelines’ key points concerned the health and behaviour of ducks and geese.

Article 7 of the document states: “At the inspection it must be borne in mind that the healthy bird has sounds and activity appropriate to its age” including “clear bright eyes, good posture, vigorous movements if unduly disturbed…good plumage…effective walking, bathing and preening, and active feeding and drinking behaviour.”

Article 10 requires that housing system allow the animals to “flap the wings, turn around without difficulty and stand up in a normal posture”.

But as one of the videos from Animal Equality shows, the animals do not exhibit what is considered appropriate behaviour. Some of them drop their heads in water containers and are unable to move, sometimes due to their weight and at other times because of individual cages.

A European Commission spokesperson, Frederic Vincent, told IPS that according to the recommendations, “until new scientific evidence on alternative methods and their welfare aspects is available, the production of foie gras shall be carried out only where it is current practice and then only in accordance with standards laid down in domestic law”.

But since foie gras farms are apparently not following these recommendations, in January, the European Commission adopted a new strategy where effective implementation is a high priority.

“The recommendations explicitly acknowledge the legality of the production of foie gras as such and only put countries allowing foie gras production under certain obligations,” said Vincent.

Today, only five countries produce foie gras: France, Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary and Belgium. France, the biggest manufacturer, produced around 20,000 tons of foie gras in 2011, according to the report by the ministry of agriculture.

Foie gras in the United States

In the United States, the debate reached the U.S. Department of Agriculture in early July, when the Animal Legal Defence Fund filed a lawsuit.  The key point of the group’s argument is that in order to get foie gras, ducks and geese are force-fed in order to enlarge their livers up to ten times their normal size.

Carter Dillard, director of litigation for the Animal Legal Defence Fund, told IPS, “It’s a simple principle: healthy animals make healthy food, and unhealthy animals make unhealthy food.”

“They are literally willing to torture the animal just to make them taste better and that’s really barbaric,” said Dillard.

On Jul. 1, the state of California banned force-feeding. As a result, foie gras may no longer be consumed, produced, or sold there. Since the closing of Sonoma Farm in California, only two foie gras farms remain in the United States. Both are in the state of New York – La Belle Farm and Hudson Valley Foie Gras.

The organisation Humane Society has been very active in this debate. Paul Shapiro, the group’s vice president for farm animal protection, told IPS that ” cutting off the California market for this cruel and inhumane product is an important move forward for the humane movement”.

The more Americans learn about “how abusive and inhumane…force-feeding is,” Shapiro added, “the more horrified they would be.”

Artisan Farmers Alliance, a group representing American foie gras farmers, has been actively fighting the California ban and supports a lawsuit filed in federal court against the state. This case is led by Association des Eleveurs de Canards et D’Oies from Quebec, Hudson Valley Foie Gras and Hot’s Kitchen Restaurant Group of California.

“The primary effort is a legal effort,” Marcus Henley, the secretary for Artisan Farmers Alliance, told IPS.

The Humane Society, however, has also intervened in this lawsuit. They are working primarily to keep the California ban in force, said Shapiro. On July 18, the judge ruled that the law would remain in force during course of the case.

The latest development in this debate is the amendment introduced by Congressman Steve King (R-IA), to the 2012 farm bill, which will prevent states from imposing their own standards on agricultural products imported from other states. This amendment will affect directly to the foie gras ban.

“California has no right constitutionally to tell a New York farmer or an Iowa farmer that they can’t sell their product, legally produced under federal regulations, in the state of California,” said Henley.

While organisations like Artisan Farmers Alliance or Hudson Valley Foie Gras are trying to fight bans on the consumption of foie gras, maintaining that force-feeding is not a practice that causes animals to suffer, Humane Society and Animal Legal Defence Fund are focusing on the law’s effective implementation, emphasising the cruelty of the activity.

The debate is ongoing. Indeed, foie gras production is not going to stop soon, as there is some evidence of an emergent black market in California. For others, this product has an expiration date.

“I think 50 years from now people will be horrified that we ever did this,” Dillard said.

Each year, 16 million girls aged 15-19 give birth. 50,000 of them die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. And 95 percent of those births occur in developing countries.

Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa lead the world in this department, with 80 and 120 births, respectively, per 1,000 adolescent females in 2009. But young girls’ bodies are not ready for childbirth, and getting pregnant before the age of 18 is a risk to both mother and child, as a UNICEF report, “Progress for children”, has shown. In fact, childbirth is the leading killer of adolescent girls in Africa.

Better access to and more effective use of contraceptives would help prevent 272,000 maternal deaths worldwide each year, according to a recent Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study. But in ensuring that girls can access and know how to use contraception, education is key, despite various cultural challenges that educating girls often faces.

Studies have shown that keeping girls in school improves their sexual and reproductive health. A recent released report by Save the Children shows that the higher a mother’s level of education, the lower children’s under-five mortality rate.

Laura Laski, chief of the sexual and reproductive health technical division at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS that some families “believe that more education will not contribute to what (young girls) would…become later in life”.

Cultural barriers

Winifride Mwebesa, senior director of family planning and reproductive health at Save the Children, told IPS about cultural barriers in Sub-Saharan Africa. “Very often, poor families find themselves obliged to marry their children. The tradition has been that as soon as the girl menstruates she needs to get married because you don’t want the shame of having a pregnancy in the house before she is married.”

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in the developing world 90 percent of adolescent pregnancies are those of married girls.

Early marriage is a problem in Sub-Saharan Africa because it’s rooted deeply in the traditional values of the community. “Over 30 percent of girls in developing countries marry before 18 years of age; around 14 percent do so before the age of 15,” said Laski. Then, community expectations that girls soon have children prevents them from going to school.

In Latin America, early marriage is not as big a problem as in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report “Jóvenes y derechos” by Family Care International shows that in Latin America, factors related to a higher rate of teenage births have more to do with poverty, sexual abuse, absence of parents, culture and education levels.

María Faget, regional consultant in Latin America and the Caribbean for Family Care International, told IPS that “sexual context is still something not in the open”. Talking about the topic with parents or friends is difficult, and there is a reigning culture mandating that “young people do not need or should not be looking for contraception”, Faget explained.

Efforts in this region focus on providing “friendly services” and a welcoming environment for young people because sometimes, confidentiality is a problem. “These services are open and many times they are opened within hospitals and so young people do not go because they are afraid they are going to meet people, people they know,” said Faget.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, “friendly services” are also trying to be implemented. They include the training of  health personnel to provide accurate information to young people without interfering with their own values.

Education as the foundation

In both Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, the solution is strongly linked to the improvement of girls’ education.

Mali is a clear example. The percentage of female attendance in primary school between 2005-2010 (latest data) was 55 percent. But this number falls to 24 percent in secondary school, according to UNICEF data.

The number of girls in school is very low and the teenage pregnancy rate is extremely high – 190 births per 1,000 women – as the “Countdown to 2015 report” shows. The number is even higher than  the Sub-Saharan Africa average of 120 births per 1,000 women.

Often, families won’t take their girls to school because they are so far away . But Save the Children is working to build community schools there, as well as to create a girls-friendly environment –  also important in a family’s decision to let girls go to schools. “We build community schools that are friendly to girls, that have separate latrines,” Mwebesa told IPS.

Family Care International was part of a plan called Plan Andino para la Prevención del Embarazo en Adolescents (Plan Andino to Prevent Pregnancies Among Adolescents) that worked in six countries: Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Perú, Venezuela and Colombia.

Of those countries, Colombia has seen major improvement. “Colombia has made enormous effort in  friendly health programs,” explained Faget. In 2010, it launched an important communication campaign, “Por el derecho a una sexualidad con sentido,” that had a strong rights component.

Organisations agree that in these reproductive health and sexual education programmes, including young people’s voices is critical. After all, youth are the bridge between health and education systems and what is really needed.

Save the Children relies on youth participation to help develop materials related to sexual education. “We may have an idea of the content that needs to be in, but the format has to be decided by young people,” said Mwebesa.

Family Care International also believes in the importance of youth involvement, because youth can shift attitudes and they can have a big impact in changing culture, explained Faget.

In addition to keeping girls in school, young people need to have access to family planning and receive age-appropriate sex education, which Laski descrbied as “comprehensive sexuality education (where) girls and boys are educated about not only about their sexuality but (also) about…relationships and how to protect and promote human rights”.

An investigation by the Conflict Awareness Project has exposed an active arms trading network of associates of former trafficker Viktor Bout that involves companies from the United States, South Africa and the United Kingdom, among other countries.

All are cross-linked in a complex system with its centre in the island of Mauritius.

The traffickers’ ultimate goal was to access countries such as Iran, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and possibly Syria, researchers say.

Kathi Lynn Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project, led the investigation and just returned from South Africa, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Mauritius. The former U.N. arms investigator was able to track down the illicit activities of this network led by two main actors who once were Bout’s top lieutenants: Sergey Denisenko and Andrei Kosolapov.

“Many actors involved in this network had a connection to Viktor Bout and are back in the game of shipping arms to war zones,” Austin said.

Bout, also known as the “merchant of death,” is a former Soviet Air Force officer who in April was sentenced to 25 years in prison for trying to sell weapons and aircraft missiles to what he thought were members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) but were in fact part of a sting operation set up by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

This time around, the illicit activities took place in Mauritius, an island situated on Africa’s southeast coast. It is a strategic spot due to its location as a gateway between Africa, Asia and the Middle East and thanks to tax incentives, drop-box addresses and offshore banking.

The Denisenko-Kosolapov network tried to obtain an Air Operation Certificate from the Mauritius government, which is required for planes to take off. For that purpose they sought a partnership with a local aviation company with a pre-existing certificate so they could quickly start working.

“What they were doing was very similar to patterns I have seen before,” Austin said during the press briefing. “They wanted a flag of convenience, they wanted something called an air operation certificate.”

With multiple relationships, proxies and agreements, the two arms brokers built a complex network that involved companies such as Avialinx TRD (United Arab Emirates), Gibson & Hills Investment LTD (Mauritius), Superfly Aviation (Mauritius) and Island Air Systems LTD (Mauritius.)

“They actually operated with multiple layers, shell companies and holding companies with offshore bank accounts in order to facilitate their network,” Austin explained.

After different negotiations and change of tactics, and following a meeting between representatives from the Conflict Awareness Project and the Department of Civil Aviation and the Foreign Ministry of Mauritius, earlier this month the Mauritian authorities denied the application of the company Island Air System for the air operation certificate.

“We’ve stopped a trafficking operation from taking root in Mauritius,” said Austin. “But multiple governments still need to take direct action to shut down this global network for good.”

Although Denisenko and Kosolapov are barred from entering the U.S., they tried to evade U.S. sanctions and regulations by acquiring U.S. pilots, pilot training, aircraft and aviation services.

Since Denisenko is currently listed in the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN), any U.S. person or entity is banned from doing business with him or his companies.

“He actually acquired a lease agreement through a Finnish company called Alandia Air and leased a plane out of the U.S. from Bangor, Main, from a company called C&L Aerospace,” she said.

It was the U.S. division of the C&L Aerospace company that got caught up in the illicit activities of Denisenko and Kosolapov.

In the report, the company expressed their concern with the Denisenko connections: “We did not even think to check the possibility that they were performing illegal activities.”

The executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project told IPS that she met with the U.S. embassy in Mauritius and gave them information from the investigation, but she did not have an opportunity to follow up with the U.S. government.

“We’ve demonstrated an illegal activity occurring in the U.S. so then it becomes a matter for investigation and judiciary,” she explained.

The full report will be published on Wednesday under the title: “Viktor Bout’s Gunrunning Successors: Catch Me if You Can.”

This investigation’s finding were presented at the United Nations as some 190 governments are in the midst of negotiations for a global Arms Trade Treaty. It reveals the importance of a strong and effective treaty to control the flow and supply of weapons, ammunition and armaments.

When the main issue of controversy seems to be the inclusion of small arms and ammunition, Conflict Awareness Project’s report evidences the need to agree on a robust definition of cover brokers.

It recommends that any definition should include “the entire cast of intermediaries facilitating an arms trade transaction, such as dealers, transporters, financial entities, insurance agents and holding company managers.”

“You can have solid laws, good track records, and well-meaning intentions,” said Austin, “but without a uniform international standard, arms traffickers can still take advantage of the best-governed nations of the world.”

The proportion of people using improved water sources rose from 76 per cent in 1990 to 89 per cent in 2010. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park

By Carlota Cortes
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2012 (IPS)

An annual report card on the ambitious U.N.-led initiative known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) says that in three areas – poverty, slums and water – the goals have been met ahead of the 2015 deadline, but persistent gaps remain, notably in the critical area of maternal health.

The report , released Monday, also says that the ongoing financial crisis has undermined progress on many of the goals.

“Some of the biggest challenges are the most difficult ones. It doesn’t mean we should give up,” Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former U.N. assistant secretary general for economic development, told IPS.

Based on data compiled by over 25 U.N. and international agencies, the report presents a complex and sometimes contradictory picture.

“I’m a little sceptical about how reliable our information is. For example, how do we understand a situation where poverty seems to be going down but hunger seems to be going up?” said Sundaram.

The official poverty line, as set by the World Bank, is one dollar a day. This decision was “arbitrary” and “convenient”, he said.

“A dollar a day might be enough for food in India but a dollar a day may not be good enough in Brazil,” he added.

Francesca Perucci, chief of the U.N.’s statistics planning and development section, told IPS, “Some developing countries, because of scarce resources, still face some challenges in ensuring that effective data collection programmes are conducted regularly and rely heavily on surveys sponsored and/or carried out by international organisations.”

According to the report, the proportion of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day fell from 47 percent in 1990 to 24 percent in 2008 (the most recent data available). If this pace continues, by 2015 the global extreme poverty rate would be below 16 percent – one billion people.

Water is another goal with positive results. In 1990, 76 percent of the world’s population had access to safe drinking water. This number grew to 89 percent in 2010. Estimates indicate that by 2015, 92 percent of the global population will be covered, which means that the goal would be fulfilled.

Finally, the target to achieve “a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers” had improvement but with mixed results. According to the report, the share of urban slum residents declined from 39 percent in 2000 to 33 percent in 2012, which means that more than 200 million people gained access to improved water sources, sanitation facilities and better housing.

Nevertheless, even if the percentage of population living in those conditions has decreased, the absolute number of slum dwellers continued to grow, due mainly to intense urbanisation. It is estimated that right now, 863 million people are living in slums, a considerable increase compared to the 760 million in 2000.

“Even where the targets will be met by 2015, the job will not be done,” said Perucci. “The MDGs have proven to be an important framework for development and will be the basis on which to build the agenda for the post-2015 era.”

Progress for some of the goals is slow, revealing a more profound challenge. Maternal health, for example, is the goal with the least improvement. Reducing maternal deaths and advancing reproductive health requires different interventions, including transportation to hospitals, access to skilled health professionals and a minimum of four visits for antenatal care (recommended by the World Health Organization.)

“There has been visible progress in the provision of some reproductive health services, although not as rapid as in other MDG areas,” said Perucci.

Next, sustainable development goals

Every goal has different targets, for a total of 21 targets measured by 60 indicators.

“Some of the targets were not very ambitious, but quite modest,” Sundaram told IPS.

A key issue is data availability and accurate methodology. “We need to understand what is being reported, what those numbers mean,” said Sundaram.

But progress does not come only with better data, it also requires international cooperation. “With a continued political commitment, renewed partnership and the necessary funds, progress will continue,” Perucci told IPS.

The next step comes with the MDGs deadline of 2015, and the advent of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as discussed at the Rio+20 summit in June.

“We must not overburden the SDGs,” Sundaram told IPS. “If you have too many targets and indicators, the focus would be gone.”

By Carlota Cortes
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 2012 (IPS)

Radhika Coomaraswamy has been the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict since April 2006.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, UNMISS, South Sudan Ministry of Defence and UNICEF sign action plan for the release of children from the SPLA and allied militias. Credit: Children and Armed Conflict

She has visited Uganda, Central African Republic, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Philippines and Iraq among other countries to see first-hand the situation of children there.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Last March, you visited South Sudan. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) signed a U.N. agreement to release the children in their ranks. This is one of the objectives of your office: to establish a dialogue with the different parties. How effective has this strategy been in the past and how effective is it expected to be in South Sudan?

A: We have been successful, we have had about 17 action plans signed and in 2011 several thousand children were released in the Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, South Sudan and Sudan, including through United Nations demobilisation efforts.

This is a Security Council-mandated process, so what happens basically is the council asks the secretary-general to list parties that recruit and use children as child soldiers as one of its categories. The SPLA was listed as such a party.

To get off the list you have to enter into an action plan… that verifies that you do not have children anymore, so basically that’s what we did. We signed the action plan with them to release the children.

The situation in South Sudan is different from that in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Many young people join (the SPLA) and get involved because of the lack of any other opportunity, and SPLA has a lax policy that allows them to come. Currently, many of the cases are not of abducting and recruiting as you had in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Q: In the latest U.N. report on children and armed conflict, the Syrian government forces are listed as a new party that kills and maims children and also attacks schools and hospitals. What would be the best way to approach the issue?

A: What’s very important in Syria now is to first stop the fighting, and to do that we have to try and quickly revive the political process and stop the confrontation between the two parties. After that one can think of peacekeeping or anything else that the international community decides.

Q: How much has been achieved so far?

A: Nothing in Syria. Absolutely nothing, and that’s the problem and it’s a real concern, a humanitarian concern. For the killing of children, for the maiming of children, the torture of children, the summary execution of children, nothing has been done and that’s why we are calling on the international community to speak with one voice.

The technical team (that was sent to Syria) could meet with the refugees, with people across the border, so they spoke to them and they met children who have been victims and take out their attestation from them without an adult’s presence. They assessed the credibility of those children and in some cases of torture, the physical marks were still on the children. They got a very good sense of what is taking place.

Q: In this same report, Nepal and Sri Lanka are no longer on the “list of shame”. What should be the next step in the process towards peace and reconciliation?

A: In Sri Lanka, for example, there were two parties listed, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP). With regard to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, they were all killed at the end of the war, there was no leadership so there was no question of listing them. The TMVP had entered into an action plan with the U.N. and finally this year a team went down and confirmed that all the children had been released and therefore these parties were delisted.

Now the humanitarian programmes, of course, will continue but the purpose of listing of course is no longer there.

Excerpt:

The increasingly precarious financial situation in Europe remains the biggest threat to the world economy, warns a U.N. report released here.

The “World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012” (WESP 2012) released Friday focuses on the need to avoid austerity measures and promote growth and job creation.

Rob Vos, director of Development Policy and Analysis Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told IPS, “The debt problems and financial sector fragility in Europe, but also in the United States, continue to be a source of ‘de-leveraging’ whereby businesses, households and banks are trying to restore their balance sheets, but this is holding back consumption and investment demand as well as normal credit flows.”

Vos told reporters last week that Europe is struggling with a “vicious circle” based on high unemployment, banks’ exposure to sovereign debts and fiscal austerity.

“The situation is very fragile and we could fairly easily fall into a trap,” he said.

On Jun. 9, Spain accepted a 125-billion-dollar bailout from the European Union to rescue the failed banking system.

It is the fourth country in Europe to accept emergency assistance, after Portugal, Greece and Ireland. In March, Spain’s unemployment rate was a whopping 24.1 percent.

However, Europe is not the only region facing these challenges.

Although there has been some economic improvement in the U.S., the world’s biggest economy, the unemployment rate remains over eight percent, according to the report.

“Developing countries are already being affected through slower trade and more volatile capital and commodity markets,” Vos told IPS.

The 48 least developed countries (LDCs) grew almost two percent less than originally projected in the WESP report of January 2012, making the growth rate 4.1 percent.

Emerging nations are affected by the weakening of the international trade not only from developed countries but also among developing countries.

“World trade growth already started slowing in 2011 and this slowdown has continued this year. Manufacturing production in China is already showing signs of stagnation over the past few months and this is also bringing trade among developing countries to a halt,” Vos said.

To all of this is added uncertainty in markets and political instability in areas such as the Middle East, which creates a risky world economic situation.

The report concludes that the current policies chosen by the developed countries, especially Europe, are heading in the “wrong direction”. The fiscal austerity programmes implemented in several European countries are ineffective to help the economy emerge from crisis, it said.

Jomo Kwama Sundaram, U.N. assistant secretary-general of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told reporters Thursday, “There is a strong recognition all over the world that fiscal austerity pursued by many governments has been the main cause for the protracted economic downturn.”

The updated report recommends avoiding fiscal austerity measures and encourages policies that help to create direct jobs and promote green growth.

The debate over green growth and sustainable development goals has gained new momentum with the major Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development later this month.

According to Vos, official development aid fell for the first time in many years, but it is unclear to what extent this will affect the funding of proposals in Rio, such as the Global Environmental Facility (GEF.)

However, is it clear that “the economic problems in developed countries may affect willingness to agree on costly adjustments for cleaner energy, sustainable agriculture and other costly adjustments to their economies,” he added.

This should not tarnish the event. On the contrary, Vos told IPS, green growth may be the solution to the crisis and “investing in sustainable development has a great potential for job creation and poverty reduction.”

“Rio+20 provides a great opportunity for the world to come together to find a solution for both crises,” Vos said.