Datong, in China’s Shanxi Province, was an old-fashioned coal mining city. It has been a key city for an environmental clean-up. China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2. Credit: Trevor Page

By Marwa Awad
OTTAWA, Canada, Nov 9 2021 (IPS)

Look up any map showing today’s global humanitarian crises and you’ll find it awash in red alerts more than ever before. Climate emergencies are fast emerging in new areas that have never previously witnessed them, and they are accelerating humanity’s march towards the precipice in regions long battered by conflict, hunger and displacement.

While developed countries are responsible for the lion’s share of CO2 emissions, developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are the ones suffering the most from the devastating effects of these climate-induced emergencies.

The adverse effects of climate change are already at an advanced stage, with many developing countries around the world living in climates 3 degrees higher than normal such as Mali and Burkina Faso. It is no longer enough to focus only on mitigating climate crises through reducing fossil fuels and transforming food systems.

Cracked earth due to drought in India’s north-eastern State of Bihar. Bihar was the epicenter of India’s last major famine in the mid 1960s. Credit: Trevor Page

With only a few days left of the UN COP26 climate talks, world leaders and experts negotiating mitigative measures to cap global warming at 1.5 C or face irreversible disaster would be remiss not to prioritize helping developing countries already devastated by the impact of global warming to quickly adapt to climate change.

“In parallel with mitigation, we need to help countries adapt to the new climactic stresses brought about by global warming,” says Amir Abdulla, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme. “Climate change adaptation is urgently needed in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America where people face climate extremes.”

Without the ability to adapt, people will have no other choice but to migrate to where they can survive. In 2020, 30 million people were internally displaced due to weather-related events, primarily storms and floods. That is three times as many as conflict, according to the Norwegian Refugee Committee.

“At WFP, we recognize that if we can keep people in their homes and on their land, we help reduce the number of people who become climate migrants and climate refugees. But to do so, we have to enable people not only survive but also thrive on their land,” said Abdulla.

Entire villages in the Fangak region of South Sudan have been submerged due to record floods that have swept across the country for the third consecutive year, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Credit: Marwa Awad

WFP has had a strong record of working with communities to recover from climactic shocks and stresses that jeopardize their food security. In some of the most arid regions, WFP helps smallholder farmers and communities establish free nurseries to hold back the desert and recover agricultural land.

In central America and the Dry Corridor of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, WFP helped more than 32,000 people adapt to their changing climate by creating livelihoods and income generating activities that are suitable for the drought condition, while also implementing community projects on land restoration the result of which has been the reforestation of more than 1,300 hectares of degraded and marginal land as well as the construction of nearly 3,000 water harvesting systems.

Another pathway towards climate change adaptation is providing climate risk insurance, whether for drought or floods, to smallholder farmers who cannot buy insurance to protect their crops. Since the past couple of years, WFP has protected 1.5 million people in Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe and the Gambia from catastrophic drought events with climate risk insurance, through its African Risk Capacity Replica Initiative. Smallholder farmers received payouts from climate risk insurance, without which they would have been forced to move. These insurance schemes have also benefited vulnerable people coping with the impact of COVID-19.

Conclusion

In a post-COVID-19 world compounded by an increase in climate emergencies, humanitarian needs will always outpace available resources and finances. Meanwhile achieving zero hunger by 2030 has already become a dream out of reach. But those with influence can carve out pathways to a safer, more stable future for all by working with humanitarian organisations and actors in a globally coordinated manner to establish early warning systems that can anticipate risk and map out preventative measures to mitigate climate hazards before they spiral into natural disasters. As for the sake of those living on the frontlines of the climate crisis who have not the luxury of time and cannot wait for developed countries to deliver on their promise of cutting down their CO2 emissions, these vulnerable communities need immediate help to adapt to their already changed and riskier world.

Marwa Awad, a resident of Ottawa, Canada, works for the World Food Programme. She is the co-host of “The WFP PEOPLE Show”.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Combines harvesting durum wheat in Enchant, Alberta, Canada. GPS-programmed, they are already driverless except for going around corners, August 2021. Credit: Trevor Page

By Marwa Awad
OTTAWA, Canada, Sep 23 2021 (IPS)

Current food systems are no longer fit for the 21st century. Inequitable distribution, poor nutritional habits, and climate change are three issues breaking down our global food systems today, forcing us to look for solutions to transform them. Food aid – very much part of our global food systems – needs to be responsive to the challenges that lie ahead.

The World Bank estimates that the global food system is worth roughly $8 trillion – about one tenth of the entire world economy, yet this expensive system fails to provide proper nutrition and enough food. According to the World Food Programme, the problem lies in poor distribution of nutritious food. Although there is enough food in the world to feed every single person, close to one billion go to bed hungry each night, while 2 billion people are overweight.

“What we have today is a food system that doesn’t provide everyone with the nutrition they need. Yet it wreaks havoc on the environment and consequently is a huge contributor to today’s climate crisis,” said WFP’s Deputy Executive Director, Amir Abdulla.

According to FAO, in 2017, farming alone accounted for 68 per cent of rural income in Africa, and about half of rural income in South Asia. With the climate crisis already on us and Covid-19 pandemic disrupting all human activity across all sectors, transforming global food systems is paramount to withstanding these shocks.

Mal/nutrition

The diet culture and weight-loss industry are booming in many parts of the world. As much as this reflects the concentration of the global food supply in the hands of rich economies, it also points to the lack of nutritional quality and diversity in what people choose to eat.

According to the 2020 Global Nutrition Report, one in every nine people globally is either hungry or undernourished while one in every three people globally are either overweight or obese. In fact, overweight and obesity are increasing rapidly in nearly every country in the world, with no signs of slowing, the report says.

Meanwhile, almost a quarter of all children under 5 years of age are stunted. The disparities between the haves and the have nots are striking. While wealthier countries suffer from obesity and overweight rates five times higher than in poorer countries, underweight can be ten times higher than in the poorest countries than richer ones.

Collecting her WFP ration from an NGO centre in Bangladesh. Vulnerable group feeding, with development aspects progressively added, has provided a safety net for millions of poor, malnourished Bangladeshis for decades. Credit: Trevor Page

Reforming food and health systems globally is urgently needed to address inequalities in distributions by making healthy, nutritious foods the most affordable option for all.

The economic argument for this reform is compelling. The 2020 Global Nutrition Report states: “Malnutrition costs the world billions of dollars a year in lost opportunities for economic growth.” Ensuring equitable access will allow more than 800 million people to enter the labour market and support the economic development of their countries and around the world.

“We have to be able to continue levels of production, probably change what we are producing, where we are producing it and how we are producing it, and then find a set of systems that allow equitable distribution so that people have access to the nutritious food that they need,” said Abdulla.

The World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian organization in the world, understands fragile, broken, or distorted food systems, because it’s the core of the organization’s work. With an unparalleled six decades of experience repairing, sustaining, and improving food systems for the world’s most vulnerable and isolated communities, WFP is the best positioned food assistance agency with the knowledge and expertise to work with stakeholders to turn things around.

For food systems to work and provide answers to the challenges of the 21st century, they must be designed at the core to allow for equitable food distribution, which is not an easy task, says Abdulla: “This has potential social undertones which would worry some people, but you need to have series of mechanisms that permit equitable distribution.”

Food Aid and nourishing our world

If we already produce more than we need but we are not necessarily producing the right food in the right place, then how can we obtain food security in the interim while working on the vital paradigm shift. Increasing income, so that everyone at the household level can buy enough food to keep themselves fit and healthy is the key to food security.

At the national level, countries must either be able to produce all the food that their citizens need or buy it from those countries that produce a surplus. Until that happens, food assistance programmes in food insecure areas will remain a necessity.

Meanwhile, our capacity to feed ourselves has made immense progress over the past 50 years, yet viewed globally our food systems are inequitable, undermine public health, and have an enormous impact on our natural environment.

WFP estimates that the number of acutely food insecure people has increased by 80% – from 149 million pre-COVID, to more than 270 million today. The pandemic is placing significant stress on food systems, especially in lower-and-middle income countries, and fragile states where food systems are already flawed or disrupted.

In 2020, WFP reached 115.5 million vulnerable and food insecure people in 84 countries, delivering food and other assistance through a fleet of 30 ships, 100 planes and more than 5,000 trucks. Besides providing immediate relief, WFP has been paving the way for more equitable food systems through protecting the livelihoods of smallholder farmers around the world by helping them increase their agricultural productivity and reduce post-harvest losses, increase their access to agricultural inputs, assets, services, and markets while simultaneously improving their resilience to climate and other shocks.

WFP emergency relief supplies for the survivors of the massive 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami arriving at small ports on Indonesia’s Aceh coast. Credit: Trevor Page

As for food supply chains and markets, WFP utilizes its supply chain and procurement expertise to support governments and private sector stakeholders to strengthen markets, facilitate the movement of food and its availability. In the second half of 2020, WFP purchased over 550,000 MT of food from local food systems, that is over USD 268 million injected into those food systems. The volume of food purchased represents an increase of 33% when compared with the same period of 2019.

The world will not attain the goal of Zero Hunger by 2030, as the leaders of nation states and multilateral organizations have reluctantly accepted. Zero Hunger, along with the other SDGs that will not be attained by 2030 are all interconnected. While the SDGs must remain our goals, we need to find better ways of attaining them. Food is the most basic of our needs. Hopefully, we are on the verge of changing the existing food systems, so that progressively, fewer of us around the world will go to bed hungry.

Marwa Awad, a resident of Ottawa, Canada, works for the World Food Programme. She is the co-host of The WFP PEOPLE Show.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Roda tries to salvage usable items from the debris of her teashop which was destroyed by fighting in Gumuruk last May. Credit: WFP/Marwa Awad

By Marwa Awad
GUMURUK, South Sudan, Jul 13 2021 (IPS)

With her bare hands, Roda clears debris and forages scraps from her wrecked teashop after attackers scorched Gumuruk, a town in the Greater Jonglei region where conflict frequently disrupts daily life and stifles progress.

The 36-year-old mother of six is just one of countless South Sudanese stuck in a tiring cycle of destruction and rebuilding.

Roda’s teashop is — or was — situated in the heart of a local market in Gumuruk. Made of a few simple metal sheets held together on the unpaved ground, before the attack it was a place where locals could enjoy each other’s company over the steady supply of sweet, warming tea.

But all of that was destroyed when violence broke out and the market was stripped down with Roda’s teashop in tow. In one day, she lost all the investment that she had worked so hard to build over a year.

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the world’s newest nation. Born of decades of struggle and a persistent desire for self-determination, South Sudan has had its share of ups and downs in the first decade of its existence. WFP and its UN partners have been on the ground in South Sudan since the beginning, helping its people achieve their dream of developing their nation.

More than 7 million people — 60 percent of the population — are uncertain of where their next meal will come from due to intensified conflict, the effects of climate change and, more recently, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Insecurity, ambushes and violent raids are also hindering the delivery of humanitarian assistance and endangering lives. In Gumuruk alone, some 550 metric tons of food, enough to feed 33,000 food-insecure people for one month, were looted or destroyed. The food included cereals, pulses, cooking oil and nutrition supplements for the treatment and prevention of malnutrition in children and women.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and other UN agencies have been on the ground in South Sudan since it first gained its independence on 9 July 2011, providing millions of people with a lifeline of food and nutritional assistance, and helping them achieve the dream of developing their nation.

In many parts of South Sudan, a country of 12.2 million people, women, men and children have benefited from food security projects as well as WFP’s long-term programmes such Food Assistance For Assets and an extensive school feeding initiative.

This year, WFP plans to reach 5.3 million people with food assistance and over 730,000 people with livelihoods projects which build resilience against shocks and promote self-reliance.

Despite the progress that has been made through these and other ongoing projects, fighting among communities in the country has eroded many of the benefits experienced by South Sudanese, resulting in a host of missed opportunities for the young country.

Roda’s teashop is one example. After working hard to make a living for herself and her children, she is heartbroken by the loss of all her efforts and income.

“There is nothing to be happy about,” she says, tearfully. “Violence destroyed my hometown, my shop. And now — there is no water.”

Before the attack in Gumuruk in May, WFP was making steady progress reaching the most food insecure families in the town with life-saving food and nutrition. Roda and her community relied on a local water source to cook food for themselves and their families.

“My children and I would not be able to survive without this [WFP] food,” she says.

Then raiders destroyed the water treatment tank in the area, leaving Roda, her family and hundreds of others without access to clean water for cooking or sanitation. The nearest water point is a half day’s journey on foot, and she can only carry so much. Her husband is elderly and unwell.

On some days Roda cannot carry enough water back home to cook for herself and her family. The day I met her, she had gone without eating for the entire day, choosing to ration the little water she had that day to cook for and feed her children.

This is an example of how conflict between communities has wasted resources and opportunities for the people of South Sudan. That’s 10 years of wasted opportunities to grow, develop and build happy and fulfilling lives. It leaves people like Roda, who are working hard to build their lives, stuck in a pattern of one step forward, two steps back.

Longevity is a luxury in places like Gumuruk. The ability to imagine and plan for one’s future is built on stable foundations not only of hard work but also hope and confidence that are nurtured by small, incremental successes.

The cycle of building and destruction makes life for Roda and many others in South Sudan a Sisyphean task that derails their dream for a brighter tomorrow. No matter how much hard work she puts in, instead of being able to gradually build on her achievements, she finds they are back to square one.

“If only the fighting would stop, then maybe a better future will come,” says Roda.

Little can be done to change the past but experience can be used to ensure that the future is brighter for people like Roda and for all South Sudanese people. But while we cannot go back and change the last decade, we can make sure the next one is better for Roda and her people.

As she continues to clear the debris from her store, every now and again, Roda’s dirt-stained hand finds a small pot or a spoon buried underneath heaps of ash.

“I can still use this,” Roda says to me while slipping the blackened scrap in a bag she carries at her side. Despite its paltry contents, her resolve grows stronger.

Lives can be saved and improved in South Sudan if sufficient funding is made available. For the next six months, WFP requires US$ 170 million to continue delivering food assistance to the most vulnerable and promoting livelihoods projects which encourage self-reliance.

Marwa Awad, head of communications in WFP South Sudan, worked previously in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Likuangole in Pibor County, one of the counties that have been hardest hit in the past years due to relentless conflict and organized violence as well as catastrophic floods. Crerdit: Marwa Awad

By Marwa Awad
Likuangole, South Sudan, Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

Located in Jonglei state, one of the most underdeveloped regions of South Sudan, Likuangole is a town badly hit by floods and often battered by conflict. Despite the lack of secondary schools and industry, its residents aspire to transform their lives. But real investment is needed to spur development.

The constant threat of insecurity hangs over the town of Likuangole in South Sudan, with persistent tit-for-tat attacks over land, livestock, water that make peace in the world’s youngest country a challenging prospect in 2021.

It is one of nine towns in greater Jonglei, one of the most under-developed regions of South Sudan. Its people have very few opportunities for economic growth besides cattle and sheep herding, and subsistence farming. Chronic bouts of organized and localized violence fuel divisions between communities.

But this year brought even more suffering as devastating floods swallowed up homes, farmlands and livestock, wiping out harvests and cutting off the region from land access. Farmers see little point in cultivating in the face of such constant setbacks. With their livelihoods destroyed and access to food disrupted, people are pushed ever closer to the brink.

Aerial shot of Jonglei State, one of the most inaccessible and isolated regions of South Sudan. Credit: Marwa Awad

Martha Thiro, 29, says that she never stops worrying. “The women in Likuangole live in continuous fear. The floods may have stopped, the water is subsiding, but I don’t know whether to be happy or afraid, because the end of the floodwaters means violence will return.”

Martha prepares herself and children ahead of these looming raids, which tend to occur at set times in the year. “The children know they must run to the bush and find shelter near trees where the Gul or Lalob fruit grows,” she says. Gul is a bitter-tasting red fruit found in the wild bush. It is used as a source of food for people hiding when the violent attacks occur.

With 26,000 residents, Likuangole is one of 55 hard-to-reach areas where WFP must airdrop food to support isolated populations. Floodwaters and the damage they cause have meant doubling food assistance and extending distributions for longer periods to make up for the scarcity of food grown because of violence and climactic shocks. In the past two months, WFP reached 80,000 people in the Pibor area.

But food aid alone is not the solution for bringing peace to South Sudan. Tackling the deeply rooted isolation and inequity that often breeds conflict, poverty and hunger must go beyond immediate food needs. WFP aims to create an enabling environment for South Sudanese communities through alternative livelihoods that allow people to make a living and live in peace.

Too much time on their hands

To reach the remote town, we took a motorboat across the Pibor river. The skipper checks the fuel and soon we are gliding across smooth waters at speed. Large trees and bushes line the muddy riverbanks. As rays of sunshine glisten on the water and birds soar in the sky, you could almost forget that beneath this beguiling landscape lies long-standing conflict, deep hunger and abject poverty.

Credit: WFP/Musa Mahadi

Likuangole’s shore is lined with sinking houses, surrounded by children swimming in murky floodwater to cool off, and women washing clothes. Without any infrastructure, the town is bare, with no clearly marked roads, making movement nearly impossible. Residents use muddy pathways and skirt around puddles.

Surrounded by swamps, pasturelands contaminated with standing water from this year’s floods, and no schools or skills training, young men loiter with very little to do. Bored and restless, they pace up and down the market dirt road. With no work or any social outlet, these young men see no opportunity besides joining gangs to capture cattle from other communities. In this scarce environment, cattle raiding becomes one of few ways to become socially mobile and acquire the social status needed to afford marriage.

Secondary schools or any educational institutions are non-existent, save for one primary school. Illiteracy and the lack of learning means that children are left idle, their potential wasted. “We need schools for the children to learn and have the knowledge to live in a peaceful way,” Martha says. More than 2.2 million South Sudanese children are out-of-school.

At the end of the meagre market is a young man in his 30s who told us that his hometown needs more than airdrops of food. “Can you teach us how to become carpenters?” he asks, adding that woodworking would be a popular source of livelihood for men in Likuangole.

Another man nearby chimes in: “Your food helps us survive, but a job would give us a future.” The residents who were scattered in the quiet marketplace now joined our group and offered more ideas. To avoid the flooded areas they live in, the nearby towns of Boma and Labarab – a two to four days walk – could house the training workshops needed for carpentry. Both towns remain drier than most of their surrounding all year round.

Credit: WFP/Musa Mahadi

It was heartening to listen to the residents’ aspirations for a better life. Generating more livelihood possibilities in and around remote hotspots such as Likuangole will set the groundwork for self-reliance and stability.

In other less troubled areas across South Sudan, WFP creates alternative livelihoods for young people by training young men and women to build much community assets such as roads to connect their villages to local markets or training in constructing dykes to control flooding. These access roads bring opportunities to isolated communities by linking them to economically vibrant areas.

Investing in such training programmes that teach people the skill of building critical assets such as wells and multi-purpose ponds has helped to reduce fighting amongst communities over precious water resources. These livelihoods opportunities offer dividends. For one, it lifts villages out of isolation and the subsequent poverty that comes when livelihoods are limited or nonexistent. Beyond that, it gives local communities an opportunity to put their heads and hands together and work on a unifying project that benefits the collective, harnessing a sense of connectedness that can be an antidote to violence.

In Likuangole, there is a market for carpentry, the two young men said to me. Basic furniture is needed by families while the forests offer plenty of trees which men and women forage for firewood. A carpentry project as such would engage the idle youth and jobless men, thereby tackling inequity and isolation and giving people the independence to generate their own income. Even in times of desperate humanitarian need and catastrophic food insecurity, these critical livelihoods activities must continue operating. They go hand-in-hand with emergency food assistance in preventing the rapid deterioration of humanitarian conditions.

Credit: WFP/Musa Mahadi

For 2021, humanitarian organisations must go beyond emergency aid and gear up their livelihoods programmes in the Pibor area because of the unparalleled levels of food insecurity there as well as the scarcity of livelihoods opportunities. For South Sudan to thrive, we cannot lose sight of our contribution to peacebuilding programmes which need to grow and remain permanent across the year if we are serious about helping South Sudanese build a prosperous future for themselves.

Bottom line: If donor governments are serious about helping South Sudan, they must invest in early development projects and support WFP’s livelihoods work. Food rations alone will only serve to create dependency, and this is not a sustainable approach to the nascent country.

The writer is an official of the World Food Programme, the 2020 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau