Representatives of 38 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean meeting this week in the Uruguayan capital urged governments in the region to consider modifying their laws on abortion, which are among the most restrictive in the world.

The Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development calls on “States to consider amending their laws, regulations, strategies and public policies relating to the voluntary termination of pregnancy in order to protect the lives and health of women and adolescent girls, to improve their quality of life and to reduce the number of abortions”.

The document was adopted at the end of the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which ran Monday through Thursday.

Daptnhe Cuevas, of the Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network, said their reaction to the outcome of the conference was “jubilation.”

Uruguay’s deputy minister of health, Leonel Briozzo, presided over the regional conference on population and development. Credit: Courtesy of the Public Health Ministry

We feminists came here with a series of clearly outlined proposals that were taken up integrally by the governments, which sent out a strong signal to the world that in Latin America, women’s rights are on the rise.”

Speaking with IPS just after the negotiations came to a close, the Mexican activist described the result as “a resounding success” and praised the governments for “rising to the demands.”

The Montevideo Consensus also urges the governments to “Ensure, in those cases where abortion is legal or decriminalised under the relevant national legislation, the availability of safe, good-quality abortion services for women with unwanted and unaccepted pregnancies”.

In Latin America, first-trimester abortion is only legal on demand in Cuba, Mexico City and, since 2012, Uruguay. In the rest of the countries, it is only allowed in exceptional cases – such as risk to the mother’s life or rape – or under no circumstances at all, such as in Chile, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

This week’s meeting, organised by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Uruguayan government with support from the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), also brought together 24 regional and international agencies and 260 non-governmental organisations.

The document contains over 120 measures concerning the eight priority areas to follow up the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994.

The recommendations will be the input of Latin America and the Caribbean to the meetings of the U.N. Commission on Population and Development and the General Assembly, to be held in New York in April and September 2014, respectively.

The participants in the meeting numbered over 800, which made it one of the largest intergovernmental conferences in recent years in the region, according to ECLAC.

Cuevas said central demands of the women’s movement were echoed. The final document reaffirmed, for example, the concept that “a secular state is an indispensable condition for the rights of women to be exercised.”

The Montevideo Consensus states that “a secular state is one of the elements fundamental to the full exercise of human rights, the deepening of democracy and the elimination of all forms of discrimination”.

At the close of the conference, Uruguay’s deputy minister of public health, Leonel Briozzo, said the agreement was a sign that “Cairo isn’t moving backwards, but forward.

“We significantly expanded on what Cairo set forth, and we did so from a diversity of viewpoints that were completely respected. As a region that carries the sobriquet of inequality, we are giving an example of democracy,” he said.

“We were able to reach an agreement where no one was trampled on and no one was ignored. This collectively-built construction reflecting agreement on more than 130 points was made by all of us together. It is ours, and it is for the world as a whole.”

The countries also agreed to apply a human rights approach with a gender and intercultural perspective when dealing with population and development matters.

They also committed to spend more on youth, especially in public education, and to implement comprehensive sexual and reproductive health programmes, with a priority on prevention of teen pregnancy.

In addition, they agreed to adopt measures to ensure better quality of life for the elderly.

Another stride forward underscored by Cuevas was the recognition of sexual rights and reproductive rights as separate concepts.

“We took another step forward by recognising them separately,” she said. “What was approved 20 years ago in Cairo referred to reproductive, but not sexual, rights.

“Information has advanced, we have clear concepts, and we know that sexual rights are not necessarily linked to reproduction,” she added. “They’re different issues dealing with different bearers of rights, and on this occasion we managed to get that reflected in the agreement.

“The discussions were very different from discussions at past conferences. I think the tone changed substantially, and it changed because women were seen as people of flesh and blood,” she said.

The declaration also clearly states, she said, “the right to sexual orientations and gender identities. Gender identity can be varied, and the effort had never been made to mention that in a regional accord. That was included for the first time; we had no precedent in any previous consensus, and it is very important.”

Teresa Lanza, head of Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir/Bolivia – the Catholics for Choice partner in Bolivia – told IPS that “the next step is for this to be translated into political will and big enough budgets to ensure that everything that was achieved here truly works and becomes a reality for all women in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The activists attributed a large part of the advances made to Uruguay’s leadership. Cuevas said that “In the United Nations system, we generally find that the base document doesn’t really tread too much on anyone’s toes, and if you start to compromise, you won’t necessarily win.

“Uruguay set a high starting point, and that made less strident, ideological positions possible in the negotiations and dialogue,” she said.

Point 88 of the declaration calls on countries to “Respect and guarantee the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, including those of peoples living in voluntary isolation and those in the initial phase of contact, with special attention to the challenges presented by extractive industries and other major global investments”.

Chile had initially voiced reservations regarding this point.

Quechua activist Tania Pariona of the Network of Organisations of Indigenous Youth of Peru told IPS that “the work here was collective.”

“The states were fairly open to civil society,” she said. “There has been a good reception, a good vision of what is wanted for the future of the region, and that’s a step forward.”

Mariela Castro speaking at the conference on population and development in Montevideo. Credit: David Puig/UNFPA

By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 15 2013 (IPS)

Latin America and the Caribbean cannot hope to have truly advanced, progressive policies in sexual and reproductive health as long as women do not have the right to decide to interrupt their pregnancy, says Mariela Castro.

“To me it is shameful that many women in the region are still forced to decide between prison or death,” said Castro, director of Cuba’s National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX) and a member of the high-level task force for the International Conference on Population and Development.

The sexologist, who is the daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, said there is a “witch hunt” against women in Latin America and the Caribbean by governments that describe themselves as democratic.

Castro sat down with IPS during lunch break at the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is being held Aug. 12-15 in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

As director of CENESEX, Castro has led campaigns in Cuba against the spread of HIV/AIDS and to advocate the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

Thanks to a draft law she sponsored, Cuba became the first country in the region to offer free sex reassignment surgery to transgender people.

Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: What do you think are the biggest advances in Cuba in recent years, in sexual and reproductive health and sex education?

A: Very important work has been done, starting with the efforts of the Federation of Cuban Women in the 1960s. In 1965, abortion began to be provided free of cost by the national public health system, carried out by experts in the health system’s institutions, with the woman’s consent.

Abortions were available in Cuba before the (1959) revolution, but the procedure was very expensive and was practiced in private clinics. Unsafe clandestine abortions were a major cause of maternal mortality.

So the Cuban state decided to make it a service provided by the public health system. There is no law on abortion. It was established by a Public Health Ministry resolution.

The National Family Planning Programme was created in 1964 and the National Sex Education Programme began to be designed in 1972.

When the Communist Party of Cuba held its first congress in 1975, sex education was established as a state policy, with the primary responsibility put on the family and schools.

In 1988 and 1989, the National Centre for Sex Education was created under the Public Health Ministry.

Q: What is the situation today in Cuba in terms of respect for sexual diversity?

A: Cuba, like the rest of the countries in the world, reproduced the homophobic system that cultures and the sciences also helped impose.

The medical sciences imposed the view that homosexuality was an illness and that these people should undergo therapy aimed at turning them into heterosexuals.

It wasn’t until May 17, 1990 that the World Health Organisation (WHO) ‘depathologised’ homosexuality. My country was homophobic like the rest, but what is said about Cuba in that sense is exaggerated.

The idea of a project based on the principles of social justice and equality and solidarity among human beings created the foundations for us to continue the struggle against discrimination, within the revolutionary process itself.

In January 2012, when the Communist Party conference was held, the objective of fighting all forms of discrimination, including on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, was included for the first time.

Q: What can Cuba contribute to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean?

A: Last year, Cenesex organised a meeting of experts on sex education from Latin America and the Caribbean with the aim of sharing experiences and forging alliances to help push these issues forward in the region, and we approved a declaration.

We also want to exchange materials and information. We keep a close eye on new legislation in the region, so that we can also incorporate elements that can be useful for us.

Q: Very important steps towards equal marriage have been taken in Latin America. What’s the situation in Cuba?

A: As a Latin American, I feel very proud that Argentina, Uruguay and the Federal District of Mexico City have legalised the right (to same-sex marriage). I think it’s fascinating. What I am constantly advocating is for this to also happen in other countries, including Cuba.

The thing is that in Cuba, marriage is not considered very important, since most couples just live together, and they enjoy the same rights as married couples.

So the LGBT movement doesn’t put an emphasis on this; they are more interested in defending their economic rights. But if we’re going to talk about rights, we have to talk about the same opportunities, including marriage.

Q: What role should the media play in sex education?

A: I advocate an ongoing strategy of education, accompanied by constant communication. We are training journalists, communicators and artists all the time.

One example that showed that the media are not prepared to deal with an issue was what happened in 1988, when the first free sex change surgery was performed in Cuba.

The doctors who did the operation presented their experience at a congress. A journalist who was there published it in his newspaper, which triggered a debate. Many people sent letters to the government saying it was appalling.

The Health Ministry, which didn’t have the tools to defend itself, decided to suspend the operations, and we had to wait 20 years.

Today we’re the only country that has a strategy for integral care for transsexuals, with free specialised sex services to carry out the transformations that they need in their bodies to bring them into line with their gender identity.

There is also an overall strategy to modify policies, awareness and laws, so that transsexuals are respected.

Q: What are the expectations for this conference in Montevideo?

A: It’s very important for our region to at least reach agreement on a declaration where (the countries) commit themselves to respect, protect, and comply with sexual and reproductive rights.

We want this conference to take a stance in favour of access to quality information, education and services, so that all young people have universal access to sex education provided within and outside of school.

We cannot accept crumbs when it comes to rights. We cannot expect advanced or progressive policies in health if we don’t mange to establish agreements on issues like these.

Q: And with regard to abortion?

A: My hair stands on end when I see that in our continent only Cuba, Guyana and now Uruguay have laws that respect women’s rights to decide about their bodies in situations involving reproductive health, such as the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.

To me it seems like a witch hunt. I think it is shameful that many women in the region are still forced to decide between prison or death, or that countries that define themselves as democratic talk about democracy without having advanced on issues like these.

Excerpt:

Ahmad Alhendawi, the U.N. secretary general's special envoy on youth, speaks with participants in the programme Jóvenes en Red (Youth Net) from Manga, a working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Montevideo. Credit: David Puig/UNFPA

By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 13 2013 (IPS)

Shortcomings in the educational system in Latin America and the Caribbean fuel inequalities that remain hurdles to access to the labour market and safe sex for a large part of the region’s youth.

Around half of the region’s sexually active youngsters have never used any form of birth control, and an estimated 20 percent of children in the region were born to mothers between the ages of 10 and 19.

The HIV/AIDS rate, meanwhile, has declined but remains high: some 250,000 Latin Americans aged 15 to 24 are living with HIV.

These statistics were reported at the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, running Aug. 12-15 in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

Marcela Suazo, regional director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said the problem is that “there is insufficient access to sex education in the region.

“Sex education is still missing from the basic national curriculum in many public schools, although some private schools are providing knowledge and information,” she told IPS.

Suazo said that as medical care continues to advance, education and information on sexual and reproductive rights remain limited, which makes it difficult for young people to receive adequate attention.

The UNFPA official took part in a forum Monday to mark World Youth Day – observed Aug. 12 – ahead of the regional gathering.

This week’s meeting, which is assessing the progress made in implementing the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994, is organised by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Uruguayan government, with support from UNFPA.

Suazo also said sex education continues to face prejudices.

“Adults behave differently with people who we consider young and less prepared, who are thus treated in a prejudiced manner,” she said.

But even when good sexual and reproductive services exist, many young women do not use them because they fear they will be judged because of their sexual behaviour, she said.

“We need to overcome this barrier because it’s directly related to teen pregnancy, to the reproduction of poverty and inequality, which is a pending challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean,” she stressed.

Limitations on the sexual and reproductive rights of young women in Latin America directly influence their chances of completing their studies and avoiding poverty.

In this region, between 15 and 40 percent of young women say their first sexual experience was forced, while nearly 30 percent of adolescent girls are married before the age of 18.

The U.N. secretary general’s special envoy on youth, Ahmad Alhendawi, also stressed the importance of sexual education.

“We believe it’s fundamental for young people to know more about their bodies,” he told IPS. “Every six minutes a young person is affected with HIV/AIDS and this is unacceptable. These are dangerous numbers. We believe by providing tools and information we’ll be able to tackle this issue.”

According to figures from the ICPD high-level task force, the region is experiencing the largest youth cohort in history: Of the 600 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 26 percent are aged 15 to 29 – a demographic boom that should be harnessed, experts say.

But youth unemployment is the expression of a gap between education and the labour market.

“The education system is not equipping young people with the skills and the knowledge that they need to enter the labour market. This mismatch is daunting and shrinking young people’s chances to get decent job opportunities,” Alhendawi said.

“Globally, 73.4 million young people are unemployed, and this is a number that requires all of us to respond quickly to this problem,” he added.

Alhendawi underlined the importance of increasing investment in this age group, and called on governments and private institutions to provide financial services to enable young people to set up their own businesses, so that they can stop being job-seekers and become innovators and job-creators instead.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, only 10 percent of young people work in the formal economy, Suazo noted.

Young people “are the first to lose their jobs when there are cutbacks,” she said. “And when they want to get a formal sector job, they face requisites, like five years of experience, when they are just coming out of the university.”

Besides, she added, “we are facing a new industrial-technological revolution. Education systems should be reviewed so that they allow the development of the necessary skills, capacities and knowledge for young people to take part in this innovation.”

The UNPFA official acknowledged that education has improved in certain respects in Latin America. For example, 95 percent primary school enrolment has been achieved.

“But when we look at the secondary and university levels, the numbers start to come down considerably,” she said.

“Primary education does not manage to develop the necessary competence and skills for people to take part in development processes in productive areas,” she said.

The secretary general of the Ibero-American Youth Organisation (OIJ), Alejo Ramírez, urged governments to put a priority on youth when it comes to spending.

“The economic growth seen in Latin America in recent years has helped develop many sectors. But the youth, who are hardest hit by unemployment and inequality, are the last to be reached by public spending,” he lamented.

Only an estimated 20 percent of social spending benefits people under the age of 30, he said.

The OIJ also presented the First Ibero-American Youth Survey. Ramírez told IPS that the study’s main finding was that two out of three young people believe that in five years they will be better off, “pointing to a strong degree of optimism.”

Still from TV spot in favour of equal marriage. Credit: Colectivo Ovejas Negras

By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 11 2013 (IPS)

Activists in Uruguay hope the passage of the “Equal Marriage Law” Wednesday will help bring about recognition that society is heterogeneous.

The law approved by the Uruguayan Congress modifies the civil code and recognises the marriage of two people of any gender identity or sexual orientation.

This small country wedged between South America’s two giants, Argentina and Brazil, has thus become the second nation in Latin America, after Argentina, to adopt same-sex marriage.

The law, approved by 71 of the 92 lower house lawmakers present for the vote – out of a total of 99 – represents “the cornerstone of a change in our society’s perspective,” said Michelle Suárez, a lawyer for Ovejas Negras (Black Sheep), an organisation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

“In Uruguay we have a very fundamentalist, homogenising view. We believe there is a kind of hegemonic moral, which we use to categorise practices and conducts,” she told IPS.

But “Uruguayan society is totally heterogeneous and should be recognised as such,” she added. “So no one-size-fits-all utopias should be imposed; instead there should be an archipelago of utopias, all of which merit a space for development and should be connected under the principle of freedom,” said the lawyer, who drafted the original bill.

The law, which was introduced by the governing leftwing Broad Front coalition, also allows gay couples to adopt children or conceive them by means of in vitro fertilisation. The partners only have to sign a legal parenthood contract in which they assume rights and obligations as parents.

The order of the child’s last names – in Spanish, both surnames form part of the full official name, with the father’s surname coming first – will be decided by the partners, or by drawing lots if they fail to reach a decision.

The age requirement for marriage was also raised, from 12 for females and 14 for males, to 16 for both. But parental consent is necessary until the age of 18.

Uruguay had already taken significant steps towards becoming the 12th country in the world and the second in Latin America to approve same-sex marriage.

The Civil Unions Law was passed in 2007, providing legal recognition of stable unmarried couples, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

But registering under the civil union law is a complicated and costly process that requires couples to demonstrate that they have lived together without interruption for at least five years, in an exclusive relationship.

In 2009, a law was approved authorising partners in civil unions to adopt children. And that year, a law was passed allowing transsexuals to change their names on official documents.

But representatives of the LGBT community stressed that there was still much to be done. “One of the goals we have to focus on is an overhaul of the laws and regulations that have to do with discrimination,” Suárez said.

The lawyer insisted on the need to improve regulations for providing assistance to victims who are discriminated against on the grounds of gender or sexual orientation.

Last week, the Senate approved the bill (with slight modifications) in a vote of 23 to 8. Opposition mainly came from lawmakers of the conservative National Party.

The Catholic Church was one of the voices that most vehemently criticised the bill.

As for public opinion with respect to the question of gay marriage, poll results vary, but generally reflect an evenly divided society.

Senator Carlos Baráibar, the only member of the Broad Front who opposed the bill, left his seat to his alternate at the time of the vote in order to avoid going against the party line.

“I don’t agree with calling it ‘equal marriage’, and the bill itself doesn’t even explain why it’s called that,” he told IPS while the vote was taking place.

Baráibar said he was in favour of recognising the legal rights of same-sex couples. But he said they were not in a situation of “igualdad” or equality with respect to heterosexuals. (In Spanish, “igual” means both “equal” and “the same”.)

“Equality means giving equal/same treatment to things that are equal/the same,” the senator said. “For me, marriage still has an essential reproductive purpose, which comes from history, biology, culture and society.”

Baráibar also said adoption by same-sex couples merited a broader, more thorough debate, and cited studies arguing that children who are raised by their biological parents have better prospects for psychosocial development than children raised by homosexual couples.

“In adoption, it is not the welfare of the adults – who can think for themselves – that must be protected; it is the welfare of the children, who sometimes are babies only a few months old without the power of judgment and who, when they grow up, discover that they are surrounded by a world that is made up of mainly heterosexual couples, while they come from a homosexual family,” he told IPS.

Gay marriage is now legal in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Uruguay.

It is also legal in some states in the U.S., the Mexican capital, the southeastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, and some states in Brazil.

In addition, a gay marriage law was approved Wednesday by the French Senate, and similar bills are in debate in Colombia and New Zealand.

By Raúl Pierri
PUNTA DEL ESTE, Uruguay , Nov 1 2012 (IPS)

The countries of the developing South should remove the barriers still faced by small-scale farmers, because smallholders play a key role in economic growth, says Carlos Seré, the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) chief development strategist.

“National and regional policies need to eliminate cross-border delays and regulatory stonewalls faced by small farmers,” said the Uruguayan expert, who stressed that “Investment in smallholder agriculture and rural development is the foundation for economic growth.”

In this interview with IPS on the occasion of the Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2), Seré also discussed the importance of helping women gain access to land and of taking into account the environmental challenges faced by smallholders, in support programmes.

Carlos Seré: “Investment along the entire value chain is key.” Credit: Courtesy of IFAD.

The Oct. 29-Nov. 1 conference held in the Uruguayan resort city of Punta del Este was organised by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, in collaboration with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) consortium.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: The GCARD2 Road Map emphasises agricultural research and innovation for development. Is input from the ancestral knowledge of local communities – which has proved effective, for example, in the search for localised adaptations to climate change – being sidelined?

A: GCARD2 is a multi-stakeholder platform which is promoting partnerships in research for development. These are meant to forge alliances between advanced research institutions in the developed world, international agricultural research centres such as those of the CGIAR, and national agricultural research systems in the developing world.

The latter include national and local entities such as agricultural universities, civil society organisations, NGOs and farmer organisations, including indigenous peoples’ organisations, as full partners in the research process.

GCARD2 places an emphasis on the role of participatory technology development which builds on local knowledge and involves better understanding of people, their beliefs, their culture and other local socio-economic variables together with the bio-physical conditions.

Q: How can poor farmers adapt to new technologies and what criteria should guide investment in the sector?

A: For research to move from the lab to the field, it needs to be supported by a strong extension system and enabling policies that link research to products and markets so that the applications benefit both the public and private sectors.

The decision or choice to adopt new technologies is often quite complex for farmers, especially because they engage in agriculture for a variety of reasons such as generating income, providing for their own food consumption, buffering the impact of possible insecurity or shocks affecting other sources of income (for instance informal employment), and so forth.

Investment in the development of new technologies for adoption by small farmers should be guided by an understanding of the incentives and risks confronted by different types of farmer groups.

Therefore the need to focus more on research and innovation efforts to developing technologies that help farmers increase their productivity in ways that enable them to adapt better to harsher environments, water scarcity, and climate change.

Q: There are projects like the “Millennium Villages” which support small farmers in an interdisciplinary manner and have managed to increase yields. However, they still face logistical difficulties in accessing markets and ensuring that this increase will translate into higher revenues. How can this be fixed?

A: When small farmers in developing countries increase productivity, for a start, it can make a significant contribution to local and national food security and economic development – if they can, then, ensure that surplus food gets efficiently, safely from the farmer’s field to the market.

With extra money in the farmers’ pockets, we can then start to see true transformation for the developing world. Investment in smallholder agriculture and rural development is the foundation for economic growth.

If we want to make regional markets work, if we want to ensure developing countries’ food and economic security, then we must transform our infrastructure and the way we do business.

Roads, access to stable electricity, energy and running water, and good governance are also key to making the business environment attractive in developing countries Smallholder agriculture needs to be seen as a business.

National and regional policies need to eliminate cross-border delays and regulatory stonewalls faced by small farmers, to make it easy for them to get their produce from one country to the next.

Q: How successful can initiatives to provide inputs and training to small farmers in the South be, while subsidies in the North and barriers in international trade remain in place?

A: Proposals or schemes to provide inputs and training to farmers must be part of a broader package of initiatives to support agriculture-led development in developing countries – with maximising opportunities for access to markets.

However, while we recognise market distortions do exist and there are barriers to free trade, the low world food prices of the past that adversely affected agricultural incentives and performance have now changed dramatically.

Higher prices must come with opportunities for a supply response. We need comprehensive approaches to stimulating growth in the agriculture sector and in other rural sectors that can offer new entrepreneurial and employment opportunities.

Q: Women are the foundation of family farming in the developing world, but often the laws and customs of the countries limit their access to land. What is being done in this regard?

A: Gender equality is both a matter of fundamental human values and rights, but is now increasingly also clearly becoming more understood as a driver of economic efficiency in agriculture.

Women have major roles in all aspects of agricultural and food systems across the developing world.

Women are often the farmers of the developing world. Simply giving women the same access as men to agricultural resources and inputs could increase production on their farms by as much as 30 per cent and could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 100 to 150 million people.

We know, from a number of studies, that when women earn money, they are more likely than men to spend it on food for the family.

When rural women are economically and socially empowered, they become a potent force for change. When it comes to access and control over land, in particular, this may translate into gender sensitive approaches in community-level institutions.

Thus, activities that have an impact on land access, building women’s capacity to be aware of their rights and able to claim them, supporting rural women to have access to identity cards so they can claim their entitlements over land are important enabling institutional responses, while technology systems must be responsive to time and labour saving for women.

Excerpt:

“The law has many gaps, and satisfies no one,” says activist Martha Aguñín. Credit: Hacelosvaler.org

By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 18 2012 (IPS)

The Uruguayan Congress passed a law Wednesday decriminalising abortion, making it one of the few countries in the region where abortion is allowed in cases other than rape, incest, malformation of the fetus or danger to the mother’s life. But activists who backed the bill are not pleased with modifications introduced in the final version.

“We see this law as minimal; it is not what we were hoping for,” Martha Aguñín, spokeswoman for Mujer y Salud en Uruguay (MYSU – Women and Health in Uruguay), told IPS.

“It has many gaps, and satisfies no one,” added Aguñín, whose non-governmental organisation is leading the campaign “Legal Abortion – Uruguay; They are your rights, demand that they be respected!”

The law decriminalises abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. But it will only be permitted in cases in which the pregnant woman complies with certain requisites.

Under the bill approved by the Senate Wednesday, which is set to be signed into law by President José Mujica, the woman seeking an abortion must first explain to a doctor the “economic, social, family or age difficulties that in her view stand in the way of continuing the pregnancy.”

The doctor will immediately refer her to an interdisciplinary panel made up of at least three professionals: a gynaecologist, psychologist and social worker.

The panel will advise her on the content of the law, the risks posed by the procedure, and the alternatives to abortion, and she will be given five days to mull it over.

If she doesn’t change her mind after the five-day waiting period, she will be allowed to have an abortion, without any further necessary steps, in one of the country’s health clinics or hospitals.

But Aguñín criticised this system, saying the panels would act in practice as a sort of “tribunal” or court.

“When women make a decision of this kind, we don’t need to be instructed to reflect on it, because we already do that in a conscious, adult, responsible manner,” she said.

“We have the right to decide when and how we will have children, and how many, without having to go in front of a tribunal that orders us to think about it for five days,” she said.

The activist explained that the new abortion law was not the one civil society groups wanted, but was the only one possible, as it was the result of negotiations and concessions made by the lawmakers of the left-wing Broad Front coalition, which has governed Uruguay since 2005, who have a majority in Congress.

A similar attempt failed in 2008, when the legislature approved a law on “the defence of sexual and reproductive health” but President Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010), the leader of the Broad Front at the time, vetoed the articles that legalised abortion.

Vázquez, a prominent oncologist, argued at the time that abortion was “a social ill that must be avoided,” and said the bill could not deny “the reality of the existence of human life in the gestational state.”

But this time around, President Mujica has said he will not interfere and will sign the bill.

After a debate that dragged on for over 10 hours, the law was approved with the votes of 16 Broad Front senators and one senator of the centre-right National Party, in the 31-member Senate. The Chamber of Deputies had already passed the bill.

The new law, in practice

MYSU also expressed doubts about the implementation of the new law, given the shortcomings of the Uruguayan health system.

“We have found that women who live in some places in the interior, like Río Branco (a small town in the northeast of the country), do not have access to the services or the referral teams on sexual and reproductive health. They have to travel 80 km to receive attention and advice” in a larger city, said Aguñín.

“The system does not offer the conditions, under these urgent timeframes, for women to have an abortion in safe conditions,” she contended.

But Ana Labandera, president of the organisation Iniciativas Sanitarias (Health Initiatives), made up of health professionals who support the new law, was more upbeat.

“It is a law that can be perfected,” she told IPS. “It has a few problems, but it is a big stride anyway towards guaranteeing the rights of women, and allowing them to complete their decision process about having an abortion within the integrated national health system.”

With regard to the implementation of the law, Labandera said there are now trained professionals in different parts of the country, thanks to articles of the 2008 law on sexual and reproductive health that were not vetoed by Vázquez.

“These services are starting to function, or are already functioning, and this will clearly make it possible for the professionals to become qualified to deal with the entire process involved in abortion cases,” she said.

“The platform, the infrastructure, has already been put in place so that this law can be a complementary part of the services that are already provided,” she added.

The international human rights group Médicos del Mundo (Doctors of the World) celebrated the new law, describing it as a “positive precedent” for all of Latin America.

In a statement, the organisation said the law was a step forward for women’s health, from a regional perspective, and added that it would closely follow its implementation.

Abortion had been legalised in Uruguay in 1934, during a time of new liberal ideas. But that change provoked controversy, and in 1938, abortion was made a crime under the penal code. Since then there have been eight unsuccessful attempts at reforming the law, the last of them in 2008.

It is estimated that more than 30,000 abortions a year are practiced in this South American country of 3.3 million people. Of every 10 pregnancies, three or four are interrupted, Labandera said.

According to figures provided by MYSU, the highest rates of abortion are in Latin America and Africa, where the practice is highly restricted in nearly every country, and where many women have unplanned pregnancies.

In this hemisphere, abortion on request is currently only legal in Cuba, Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, three countries of the French Antilles, French Guiana, Guyana and Barbados. And in 2007, the Mexico City government made abortion legal in the capital.

In the rest of heavily Catholic Latin America, it is only allowed under narrow circumstances, such as cases of rape, incest, a malformed fetus or danger to the mother’s life. And in Nicaragua it is illegal under any conditions.

In a survey carried out in June by Radar, a Uruguayan polling firm, 51 percent of respondents said they were in favour of decriminalising abortion, 42 percent said they were opposed, and the rest did not express an opinion.

The Public Health Ministry reported that between 2007 and 2011, there were no deaths resulting from illegal abortions, although civil society organisations express doubts over that claim.

So far this year, two women, ages 28 and 32, died in public hospitals as a result of complications caused by medical abortion brought on by misoprostol, a drug used to treat ulcers that also causes early abortion.

Speakers at the plenary session of IDB Governors Meeting. Credit: Raúl Pierri/IPS

By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, Mar 20 2012 (IPS)

The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean were able to cushion the jolt of the global economic and financial crisis by means of anti-cyclical policies, but they need to remain vigilant and pay attention to social inequality, their most vulnerable flank.

This was the prevailing conclusion on Monday at the end of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), held in Montevideo Mar. 16-19.

“The worst thing we can do is think that recent events and the way we have coped with them within each of our countries will keep us safe from any storm,” said Uruguayan Economy Minister Fernando Lorenzo, who was elected the new chairman of the Board of Governors.

Lorenzo warned against “self-complacency” and said social inequality was Latin America’s main weakness. “Inequality is a weakness in terms of prospects for development, but even more importantly, for the consolidation and advancement of democracy,” he said.

This view dominated the plenary session of the Governors’ Assembly on Monday.

“Prosperity is only one side of the coin; the other is redistributive policies that promote greater equality. Latin America is one of the continents with the highest degree of inequality. Therefore, narrowing that gap is the major challenge facing economic and social policy-making,” Paraguayan Finance Minister Dionisio Borda told IPS.

“Fiscal policy must compel the highest-income sectors to make greater tax contributions, in order to pay for health, education, transport and technological innovation,” he added.

On the weekend, the IDB presented its 2012 Macroeconomic Report, indicating that the region might suffer a “relatively mild” recession if the debt crisis in Europe worsens and if the Chinese economy slows down.

But even if both of these events were to occur, the region would feel only a moderate impact. “We are cautiously optimistic,” IDB’s vice president for Sectors and Knowledge, Santiago Levy, said Sunday. “The region has grown strongly in the last couple of years and it has shown it is resilient to shocks.”

“Most importantly, the region has developed a set of policy tools that have proven to be effective during economic downturns,” he said.

The IDB forecasts regional GDP growth of 3.6 percent this year, compared to over four percent in 2011.

The Latin America and Caribbean region, which has a population of nearly 600 million, will enjoy a certain amount of protection because several countries, especially those that export commodities, have built up significant foreign reserves which will help them weather international financial turmoil.

“Unlike the past, most countries could implement effective fiscal stimulus packages to moderate the downturn and have accumulated valuable experience in managing anti-cyclical policies,” the IDB report says.

However, IDB president Luis Alberto Moreno reiterated at the plenary session on Monday that the region must remain vigilant.

“While it is true that the worst fears about a generalised recession seem to have passed, the crisis has not yet been overcome,” he said.

The United States has surprised analysts by performing better than expected; however, its unemployment rate is still very high and so are its financial obligations. China’s economy, on the other hand, is behaving more sluggishly than was customary, he said.

Moreno highlighted the important achievements of Latin American and Caribbean countries, such as lowering the unemployment rate to an average of below seven percent, and lifting over 50 million people out of poverty since 2002.

Increasing demand for commodities also augurs well for the nations of Latin America, he said.

On Monday Moreno confirmed that a contingency fund, designed to shield small countries in the event of crises or natural disasters, will be operational by the end of this year. The funds will be provided from the IDB’s own reserves.

The IDB and the Chinese government will also jointly create a one-billion dollar fund for investments in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ending social inequality was the keynote of speeches by several speakers in Monday’s session.

“Democracy in our countries should be based not only on political rights but also on the challenge of providing a more just life, with greater opportunities for all citizens of the Americas,” said Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza.

Alicia Bárcena, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), said “the time for equality” has arrived.

“Today those responsible for the region’s macroeconomy are concerned about inequality. That is a big change,” she said.

Another issue of concern to those present was the lack of public safety for ordinary citizens. Every day, on average, 350 murders are committed in the region, more than in any other part of the world. Latin American and Caribbean countries are home to eight percent of the world’s population, but one-third of all homicides are committed in this region.

“It is paradoxical that, just when we have made major advances, crime has reached levels far worse than during the so-called ‘lost decade'” of the 1980s, said Moreno, who announced a fund to facilitate regional cooperation on crime prevention.

Insecurity was also seen as part of the problem of social inequality, Latin America’s top challenge.

“The first weapon in the fight for security is education and the multiplying of a collective conscience,” said Uruguayan President José Mujica at the plenary session Monday.

“The second is intelligence, to build equity, not only for humanitarian reasons but for strategic self-interest. We cannot have a two-speed humanity,” he said.

Excerpt:

The leaders of South America’s Mercosur trade bloc decided to set up a committee to facilitate the incorporation of new members, adopt a mechanism to defend democracy in case of a coup, and ban vessels from the Malvinas/Falkland Islands from docking in member countries’ ports.

Mercosur leaders express solidarity with Argentina's historic claim to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. Credit: Office of the Uruguayan president

At Tuesday’s summit, the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay also signed a free trade agreement with Palestine, seen as mainly symbolic, and expanded the list of products from outside the bloc that will pay import tariffs.

In their speeches, the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) leaders acknowledged the contradictions and hurdles faced by the region’s largest trade bloc, while stressing the need to continue to forge ahead with the process of integration.

At the bloc’s headquarters in Montevideo, host President José Mujica met Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, as well as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, whose countries are in the process of joining as full members.

“Our path is full of contradictions and difficulties,” Mujica said. “Woe to us if the contradictions disillusion us and we abandon this project. We would soon become a leaf in the wind, in this world of colossal forces.”

The Uruguayan president emphasised that the bloc represents not only economic, but political, integration. “Without politics, there will be no Mercosur in the long run, and there will be no convergence, because this is not only an economic equation.

“Alas for us if we fail to understand that the underlying issue is a question of power, and that this question makes it necessary to move towards convergence,” he said.

Mujica also confirmed the creation of a high-level committee to analyse the admission of Venezuela and Ecuador as full members.

Venezuela, whose admission process began in 2006, is only awaiting approval by the Paraguayan Congress, where legislators opposed to the left-leaning Lugo hold a majority. For its part, Ecuador formally requested full membership on Tuesday.

Chávez said the incorporation of his country as a fifth full member has been blocked “by just five lawmakers” in Paraguay.

“These people who have been opposing (Venezuela’s admission) for five years, I don’t know if they are aware of the harm they are causing, not to Venezuela, but to everyone, to the Paraguayan people themselves,” he said. “There are only five people who don’t want it. I think that behind them there must be a very powerful hand, moving who knows what mechanisms of pressure,” he maintained.

Chávez underlined that Venezuela’s incorporation would mean “opening Mercosur to the Pacific.

“We are members of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Companies), we have gas and energy reserves, we have things to contribute,” he added. “We have to expedite this, spurred on by the global crisis that is threatening us.”

Lugo also referred to the case of Venezuela and the resistance put up by a handful of legislators in his country.

“This government of Paraguay is respectful of its institutions, but it is making an effort to strengthen integration. The incorporation of Ecuador and Venezuela would work in favour of our bloc,” he said.

Rousseff, meanwhile, highlighted the agreement reached at the summit “to expand the list of products included in the common foreign tariff” applied to imports from outside Mercosur, and to adopt various mechanisms to foment intra-bloc trade.

Correa, for his part, stressed the signing of the “Montevideo Protocol”, a mechanism providing for a mutual response in defence of democratic institutions in case of a coup d’etat in any of the member countries.

The summit agenda, which was to include public ceremonies, such as the signing of the agreement with Palestine – signed in private in the end – was interrupted by the tragic news of the death of Argentina’s deputy trade secretary, 33-year-old Iván Heyn. The newly appointed official was found hanged in his room in the Montevideo hotel where most of the Argentine delegation was staying. The police said his death appeared to be a suicide, but that the investigation continued.

When Fernández was notified, she was so upset that her private doctor was called to attend to her.

Malvinas/Falklands

The summit also approved a resolution to close the bloc’s ports to vessels flying the Falkland Islands flag. The islands, known as the Malvinas in Argentina, have been held by Britain since the 1830s, and were the subject of a brief war between the two countries in 1982, when Argentina sought to assert its sovereignty over them.

In a column posted on the Uruguayan president’s web site Tuesday, Mujica explained his decision to ban the boats from docking in Uruguay, arguing that his country’s foreign policy has always been based on national interests, but also on the principle of solidarity with the region.

Mujica said solidarity with Buenos Aires also benefited Montevideo. “Uruguay’s political history shows that every time relations with Argentina have soured, the economy and labour have been enormously impaired,” he wrote.

Fernández expressed her appreciation for the member countries’ decision to block boats from the Malvinas.

The Malvinas “are not just an Argentine cause, but a global cause, because (the British) are taking oil and fishing resources, and when they need more resources, whoever is the strongest will go to find them whenever and however,” she said, as Rousseff nodded.

“When they sign something involving the Malvinas, they are doing so as if the Malvinas belonged to them. There are many countries here with great natural wealth, and this wealth must be defended. Let’s be smart enough to understand that, by taking care of each other, we are taking care of ourselves,” she added.

At the end of the summit, Mujica handed over the rotating six-month presidency of the bloc to Fernández.

By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 8 2011 (IPS)

Reinventing the United Nations is crucial to protect the poorest inhabitants of the planet, at a time when the global economic crisis, the effects of climate change, and food insecurity are undermining development efforts.

That was the conclusion of U.N. and government officials from more than 30 nations who began to meet Tuesday Nov. 8 in the Uruguayan capital for the fourth high-level inter-governmental conference on Delivering as One: making the U.N. system more coherent, effective and efficient, a programme that was launched in 2007.

“There are major challenges out there, and we have seen not only poor developing countries that are increasingly being challenged because of so many developments, including the effects of climate change, but that we also have partners that say that the landscape has changed, from the point of view of the donors themselves,” U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said at a news briefing Tuesday.

“We cannot continue doing business as usual, as if nothing is happening,” she added.

For her part, Helen Clark, the administrator of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), said “It’s true that official development assistance globally has pretty much flattened out with the economic crisis.”

Many donor countries have cut their development aid, and only a few have managed to increase it, like Australia, Denmark and Britain, she added.

Clark said the troubles in the industrialised North, such as the crisis in Greece and the U.S. and Japanese deficit problems, have had an impact on programmes in the developing South.

“Many developing countries follow an export-led approach to economic growth, which depends a great deal on the markets of the developed world,” she said.

Added to the reductions in aid caused by the crisis are other, politically motivated, cutbacks, such as the late October decision by the U.S. government to cut funding for the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, just hours after UNESCO’s governing board voted overwhelmingly to grant Palestine full membership.

The U.S. funds 22 percent of UNESCO’s budget – about 80 million dollars per year.

“It is something that we will follow closely,” Migiro said. “We are aware that it will affect our work, but it is our expectation that we will all do our best to ensure that good work that we are doing and good work that member states would like to see us continue is not affected.”

Uruguay, whose government is organising the Nov. 8-10 inter-governmental conference in Montevideo, is one of the eight countries involved in the Delivering as One pilot initiative. The others are Albania, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Vietnam.

In recent years, more than 20 other countries have gotten involved in similar work, based on this model, which is aimed at responding to the challenges of a changing world and testing how the U.N. and governments can provide development assistance in a more coordinated manner.

Migiro acknowledged that the world financial crisis has affected the programme, but stressed that this effort has become more and more necessary, and that the results have been encouraging. She also said there was no turning back from U.N. reform.

“We know that countries are going through a difficult period in terms of the economic crisis, oil prices and food insecurity, and this to a certain extent does affect the work that we do….That is why we are focusing on how we can build a meaningful and effective organisation, how we can make good use of the resources and how we can deliver results, because at the end of the day that is what matters,” she said.

“Delivering as One has shown that there are tremendous gains in that regard, that we can have the countries coming together, internally, really acting as one,” she added.

“We cannot let the world’s poor, who have suffered so much from the economic and financial crisis, be left even further behind,” Migiro said. “By Delivering as One, we can optimise our resources and maximise our impact. The results are clear: lives saved thanks to better nutrition and health care, more children in school, fewer families stuck in poverty, and greater gender equality.”

The U.N. deputy secretary-general also underscored the significance of the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012.

“Twenty years ago, the Earth Summit in Brazil set the world on a greener path. Next year, again in Rio, we will have a chance to set the world on a greener, more prosperous, more equitable and more sustainable course. Rio+20 is crucially important. We need the conference to succeed. We need input from the U.N. development system in the months ahead,” she said.

At the opening of this week’s conference in Montevideo, Uruguayan President José Mujica stressed the importance of a strengthened United Nations, in order to combat inequalities.

“Globalisation is imposing the construction of broad unities. That is the direction the world is stumbling towards, and we need to give institutions like the U.N., which can protect the weak, more and more strength – strength based on rights, and real strength in practice,” the president said.

“Globalisation is not the same thing as equality, it is not the same thing as justice, it does not mean equal rights. Much of humanity has been postponed, and is longing to board the train of civilisation that we have invented,” Mujica said.

“The poor don’t need pity, they need intellectual tools in their hands and brains to be able to fend for themselves,” he added.

In the opening session, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro cited a famous quote of this South American country’s national hero, José Artigas: “May the most wretched be the most privileged.

“I urge you in your discussions to keep this principle in mind, so that our most wretched sisters and brothers, wherever they may be, are favoured the most by the policies of international cooperation that we all design together,” the minister said.

Excerpt:

The governments and big private media groups in Latin America are waging a war to win over public opinion, the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy, and the only solution would appear to be to strike up an alliance.

Uruguayan President José Mujica addressing the seminar organised by IPS and the World Bank. Credit: Ignacio Castañares/IPS

“Battle” was the most oft-repeated term in the seminar on “Communication, pluralism and the role of new technologies; the Latin American scenario: looking towards the future”, organised Friday Jun 24 by the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency with the support of the World Bank and the Uruguayan government.

Journalists and editors of public and private media outlets, representatives of civil society and governments, and experts on communication from the region took part in the seminar.

The battle between the State and private media for control of news management has come to the forefront in recent years in Latin America, as left-of-centre governments have been elected in most countries in the region and have found themselves embroiled in confrontations with powerful media interests.

Left-wing governments have had to negotiate peaceful coexistence with the economic elites, but at the same time they have sought to transform communications, attempting to democratise the media, by passing news laws for example, said Fábio Zanini, international editor at the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo.

Zanini cited the example of former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), who in order to be elected “had to build a strategic media-savvy political movement to show the banks, ‘big capital’ and the large landowners that he was trustworthy and reliable, and to draw right-wing parties into his coalition.”

Basically, leftist governments, and right-wing administrations like the government of Sebastián Piñera in Chile as well, have recognised the vital importance of the media, with which “they have a conflict-ridden relationship,” Zanini said.

Uruguayan presidential secretary Alberto Breccia preferred to describe the relationship between the left and the press as “schizophrenic,” and urged the participants to help make it healthier.

Zanini underscored the efforts of governments to expand their means of communication, by establishing or overhauling public TV and radio stations, but he expressed doubts as to whether they were truly impartial, and warned that they could end up serving merely as government propaganda tools.

Alberto Medina, co-director of news at the private Caracol TV station of Colombia, said there was “a war over information between the public and private sectors.

“I’m not convinced that governments open up their channels to all of the different sectors” and points of view, he said.

“I am a bit sceptical of these public media stations that are supposedly so democratic. I don’t see spaces made available to the opposition on the public stations. They are channels that defend the positions of the government of the day,” he said.

In the midst of this confrontation, the mission of community stations “is to make the fight for freedom of expression a general demand,” María Pía Matta, president of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), told IPS.

“We do not want to be turned into agents of the government de jure either,” she said. “I think the debate has to focus more on freedoms in general, and freedom of speech in particular, and on why the State has distanced itself so much from these freedoms.”

In this region, “the State has always been considered a natural predator of freedom of speech, an idea that has taken root,” she added.

The director of the left-leaning private Uruguayan newspaper La República, Federico Fasano, said there were not only two parties to the battle, but three: the state, the media, and society as a whole.

“Information is a public good, a public asset. And although it is subject to private appropriation, because of the way the system is set up, it is important to discourage monopolies and foment pluralism,” he said.

Fasano, who is also director of the AM Libre radio station and the TV Libre television station, said the mere existence of various media outlets with different owners does not necessarily mean there is media pluralism in a country. “If there is only one hegemonic way of thinking, even if they are different media outlets, it is a quasi-monopoly,” he maintained.

The seminar was followed in real time over the Internet, and dozens of people chatted about the content and sent the panellists questions.

Among the issues discussed by the on-line participants was the role played by social networking sites like Twitter in the Arab uprisings and the 15M social protest movement in Spain.

In the seminar, the Salvadoran government’s director of communications, David Rivas, defended measures his country has taken to control information and eliminate programming that, he said, was “psychologically harmful.”

“We removed programmes that previous governments had left in the public media which had a heavy ideological bent, portraying society as a world divided between the wealthy and the ‘bad guys’, denigrating women, and showing things that bordered on criminal behaviour,” he said.

Rivas also insisted that “we have to lose our fear of regulation” of content and of laws “that ensure greater public access to the media.

“There is no absolute right, not even the right to freedom of expression. Those who told us that ‘the best law is no law’ have been deceiving us all along,” he said.

That phrase was cited months ago by the seminar’s keynote speaker, Uruguayan President José Mujica, who spoke out at the time against a proposal to legislate the media in this country, set forth, ironically, by members of his own party.

Mujica did not repeat the phrase in the seminar, but urged the participants to wage a “permanent struggle” for freedom.

“Although the modern, contemporary media are capable of offering us unimaginable resources for communicating, they can also be the most formidable instruments of oppression, of denial of freedom, that mankind has known,” he said.

“This means that the question of how and for what purposes technological progress is used is a central, almost desperate battle,” he added.

Miguel Wiñazki, chief editor of the Clarín newspaper in Argentina, said that because public opinion is “a collective that grants power,” political forces and the media struggle to seduce it.

“Understanding the predominant beliefs, prejudices and ideologies of public opinion, governments as well as political forces and the private media tend to ignore the value of information in and of itself, in order to give public opinion the plot lines it believes,” said Wiñazki.

“The real journalistic work is the day-to-day battle of press workers to make information win out over the news people want,” and over propaganda, he said.

Fighting the front line battle against global warming, with the participation of all sectors of society, is the cornerstone of a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) pilot project in Uruguay that is drawing attention from the rest of the world.

The idea is to identify the most vulnerable areas and design mitigation and adaptation strategies, based not only on expert opinions, but particularly on the input of all the people involved, project coordinator Federico Ferla told IPS.

“Strategies will be developed through participatory working methods, unlike the few projects that have been carried out so far, mostly in industrialised countries, where in general teams of experts just hand over a report to be considered by the authorities,” he said.

“The process will be participative, with the involvement of relevant actors at the local level. Naturally experts and authorities will play a leading role, but so will representatives of the private sector, non-governmental organisations, universities, local representatives of international bodies, public enterprises and local communities,” he said.

The UNDP project is supported by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and implemented through the Support to Territorial Networks (ART) programme, an aid plan that links UNDP with local and national authorities.

Officially launched in September 2009, the present stage of the initiative involves the drawing up of adaptation and mitigation strategies by multi-sector working groups established in the southern provinces of Canelones, Montevideo and San José.

These three provinces, which include the metropolitan region of the capital city, “have great socioeconomic weight, with about two million people (in a country with a population of 3.3 million) producing around two-thirds of GDP,” Ferla said.

This region is also responsible for most of the country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, he said, although the main greenhouse gas emitted by Uruguay is not CO2 but methane, from its large cattle herds. Local development which is low in carbon emissions is also a goal of the project.

The pilot project was presented at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit 2009, held in Los Angeles, California from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, and at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15) that met in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18.

The head of the provincial government of Canelones, Yamandú Orsi, said the project is taking concrete action against global warming while inter-government negotiators are still bickering.

“At a time when high-level agreements are very difficult to reach, as we have seen at Copenhagen, ground level alliances and exchanges can be made to work,” he told IPS.

“We have seen that, depending on the country, between 40 and 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are generated as a result of decisions taken at a sub-national level, involving investment, transport, travel and consumption habits.

“That means decisions about mitigation that can be taken (at this level) are highly effective,” said Pablo Mandeville, the UNDP permanent representative in Uruguay.

The three provinces selected represent a fairly broad spectrum of Uruguay’s main vulnerabilities to climate change.

They face risks from rising sea levels, for instance, which pose an important threat in coastal areas and wetlands.

“Social vulnerability is also a problem. The area includes most of the country’s informal urban settlements (shanty towns) which are home to over 150,000 people,” says Ferla.

“In addition, there is a concentration of fairly vulnerable small farmers, which means food insecurity. The range of risks is quite wide, so the project can work on several fronts,” he said.

Mandeville told IPS that the first step is to map the region’s vulnerabilities, and then to undertake prospective studies on the probable risks under extreme climate conditions, in order to decide on adaptation measures.

For example, one of the places identified as high risk with respect to the effects of global warming in the metropolitan region is the Santa Lucía river basin.

“There is a danger that this river might flood, overflow its banks and trigger natural disasters, and that multiple flooding could have a catastrophic effect, since the only pumping station for drinking water for the whole metropolitan region is in the Santa Lucía basin,” Mandeville said.

“A possible adaptation measure would be to build a second pumping station, in light of this risk. It might be redundant now, but it could ward off catastrophe in the future,” he said.

“What happened with Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 showed that sometimes a combination of factors can be totally devastating in a populated area. And the most vulnerable zones, worldwide, are urban areas,” he added.

The project awakened considerable interest in Copenhagen, and several African countries, particularly Algeria, Senegal and Uganda, as well as others in Europe and Latin America, said they planned to replicate it.

With only one day to go to the end of the climate change talks and no agreement in sight, it looks like it will ultimately be up to national legislators to effectively implement whatever agreement is forged here in the Danish capital.

Nancy Pelosi with colleagues Ed Markey (left) and Steny Hoyer. Credit: Raúl Pierri/IPS

That is the view taken at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP-15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by representatives of GLOBE (Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment) International.

“It is clear that a successful agreement at COP15 is just the first step. The second, and more important, step is delivery. A post 2012 climate agreement will only be effective if it is ratified, underpinned by domestic legislation and if leaders are held to account for the commitments made,” said British lawmaker Stephen Byers, president of GLOBE.

“Legislators and parliaments are responsible for all three,” he added.

For her part, South African legislator Makhots “Maggie” Sotyu said: “Legislators all over the world must scrutinize their governments to ensure they deliver on the promises they make in Copenhagen, especially those relating to financial and technical assistance for developing countries to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change which are affecting us now.”

Legislators with GLOBE International came to Copenhagen to present a report prepared by their International Commission on Climate and Energy Security. They also took the opportunity to award the organisation’s annual prize for international environmental leadership to Mexican President Felipe Calderón for his contributions to protecting the environment and fighting climate change.

The award was delivered by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, at a ceremony on Thursday, also attended by Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

In his acceptance speech, Calderón called for efforts to reconcile the parties that are in conflict at COP15, which is drawing to a close with still no prospects of an agreement.

“The fight against climate change is a struggle that must involve all nations, whether developed or developing. A key factor is understanding that this is not an issue between developed and developing countries, but rather a problem that human beings must resolve with nature,” he said.

Calderón also highlighted the need to establish a world fund against climate change, like the Green Fund proposed by his government to help poor countries address the impacts of climate change.

In its report, the GLOBE committee backed the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendation that calls for industrial countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95 percent by 2050 with respect to 1990 levels.

“Developed countries should ensure they are on a credible path to the 2050 target by setting ambitious medium-term targets for 2020, 2030 and 2040 that are as aggressive as possible,” the report indicates.

For GLOBE, the world’s temperature cannot rise above 2degrees C on average, and that must be the limit set “if we are to avoid the worst risks from climate change.”

“The current commitments and actions pledged by the international community will put us on a path to a rise of 3.8 degrees C by the end of this century; the gap between where we are and where we need to be is a chasm.”

Mexican Senator Yeidckol Polevnsky said it is important that parliaments closely monitor the actions taken by their governments to address climate change.

“Any agreement requires legislation, so legislators must work together with the government to solve that. We won’t achieve anything if the executive branch acts but parliament fails to legislate. And if parliament legislates and there’s no political will on the part of the executive branch, we won’t achieve anything either. They must act together,” she said to TerraViva.

An example of this is the United States, where the bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions presented by the Barack Obama administration has still not received full sanction in Congress, and that has also complicated negotiations at Copenhagen.

As a sign of support to the efforts towards reaching an agreement in the climate talks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Copenhagen on Thursday heading a delegation of 21 U.S. legislators.

At a press conference, the U.S. lawmakers expressed their will to work with the world, but also demanded the same commitment from the other large economies.

Polevnsky, meanwhile, stressed the need for COP15 to set as its leading goal the signing of an agreement.

“I think it’s not an easy negotiation, that there are very conflicting positions, and in order to reach an agreement, both sides must make concessions. Developed countries must make concessions, but developing nations also have to yield some ground in order to achieve a fair and equitable agreement, where everybody contributes according to their size,” she said.

GLOBE legislators condemned negotiators for failing to find common ground, and appealed to politicians to “take control of the process and show leadership to close the gap” that separates them. (*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.)

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela had harsh words for rich countries Wednesday, accusing them of driving the COP 15 talks to the brink of failure out of “selfishness” and supporting a “culture of death.”

Evo Morales and French farmer activist Jose Bove. Credit: Raul Pierri/IPS

“The scientifically sustainable goal of reducing polluting gas emissions and achieving a long-term cooperation agreement clearly seems, here and now, to have failed,” the Venezuelan leader told the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15).

“And for what reason? We have no doubt that it is due to the irresponsible attitude and lack of political will of the most powerful nations. Let no one be offended; I quote the great José Gervasio Artigas (the Uruguayan liberation hero): ‘con libertad no ofendo ni temo’ (with freedom, I neither offend nor fear anyone),” he added.

Tension continued to rise in Copenhagen Wednesday as the standoff over a new regime of emissions reductions remained in place and security around the Bella Center, the conference venue, was tightened ahead of the arrival of heads of state and government.

NGOs loudly protested Wednesday over the expulsion of several of their representatives from the conference for “security reasons,” and activists clashed with police.

Meanwhile, the resignation of the conference chairwoman, Connie Hedegaard, only exacerbated the climate of uncertainty.

Against this backdrop, Chávez accused the richest nations of “selfishness” and “political conservatism,” as well as of “a high degree of insensitivity and a lack of solidarity with the poorest, the hungry and the most vulnerable.”

“I would like to remind you that the 500 million richest people in the world, that is, seven percent of the world’s population, are responsible for 50 percent of polluting emissions, while the poorest 50 percent are only responsible for seven percent of emissions,” he said.

The Venezuelan president also summed up the global environmental situation.

“Sixty percent of the planet’s ecosystems are damaged. Twenty percent of the Earth’s soil is degraded. We have been impassive witnesses of deforestation, land use conversion, desertification, alteration of freshwater systems, over-exploitation of ocean resources, pollution and the loss of biodiversity,” he said.

“Over-intensive land use is 30 percent above our capacity to recover that land. The planet is losing its ability to regulate itself,” he added.

Chávez stressed that the Venezuelan government would reject any draft text to come “out of nowhere,” alluding to the controversial Danish advance document leaked last week, and that it would only approve an agreement arising from the negotiating tracks of the Kyoto Protocol and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Minutes earlier, at a press conference, the Bolivian president had also expressed tough criticism of the richest countries for what he called the lack of transparency at COP 15.

“There is permanent manipulation going on here: documents appear, and decisions are made selectively without including governments who have brought proposals from their people. It cannot be countenanced that this manipulation should be used to impose a model that represents a culture of death,” Morales said.

Flanked by members of the Bolivian delegation and representatives of indigenous peoples, Morales condemned the “Western model and capitalist way of life” that promote consumerism and the destruction of nature.

“We come from a culture of life, and the Western model represents the culture of death. At this summit we must decide whether we are on the side of life or on the side of death,” he said.

“This is not simply an environmental or financial problem; it is a question of different models of life. This is a profound difference we have with the Western model. (Climate change) is not a cause but an effect: the effect of the capitalist way of life,” he said.

Morales urged rich countries to pay their “climate debt,” and proposed a series of measures to be considered by COP 15.

The first is to approve a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, a proposal he had already presented to the United Nations.

“In the past century our black and indigenous ancestors were treated as slaves, and their rights were not recognised. In a similar way, now our Mother Earth is being treated as a lifeless object, as if she had no rights,” Morales told the press. “We have to abolish the slavery of Mother Earth. It is unacceptable for her to be the slave of capitalist countries. If we don’t end this, we can forget about life,” he stated categorically.

Morales also demanded that the countries of the North pay reparations for the “present and future harm” arising from climate change, and “return atmospheric space” to developing countries.

“It is unacceptable that the atmosphere should belong to only a few countries for their development, and that these countries with their irrational industrialisation should have filled it up with their greenhouse gas emissions. To pay back this debt, they must reduce and absorb those gases so that the atmosphere is distributed equitably,” he said.

Finally, he called on industrialised nations to take in all those persons who are forced to emigrate because of global warming.

“I think that on this issue, our African brothers, our indigenous brothers, have more than enough moral and ethical authority to demand it. Formerly, we have been invaded and plundered.” he said.

(*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.)

Climate change is becoming an increasingly colossal problem, and civil society, fed up with fruitless negotiations, seems to have found its David: Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed.

Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, climate hero. Credit: Raúl Pierri/IPS

Because the crusade against big interests, corporations, indifferent governments and bureaucracy demands great determination, but more importantly in this age dominated by images, it also needs a symbol.

And that symbol is not media sweetheart Barack Obama, whose popularity is rapidly waning. “Earn it” is the phrase that can be read in stickers handed out in Copenhagen, asking the U.S. president whose speeches have raised so much hope to back his words with concrete actions, to earn the Nobel Peace Prize he came to accept days ago in Oslo, just a few kilometres from the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

When months ago activists appealed to the leader of the Maldives – an Indian Ocean archipelago of 1,196 islands that are home to 350,000 people – to give his support to a global mobilization against climate change, Nasheed did not hesitate.

Without waiting to hear what they had in mind, Nasheed announced that his cabinet members were learning to scuba dive with the aim of holding a meeting underwater to highlight the threat of global warming. In the meeting they planned to sign a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions, to be submitted at the climate change summit in Copenhagen.

And true to his word, on Oct. 17 Nasheed held an underwater cabinet meeting, the images of which were seen around the world. They painted a clear and powerful picture of the urgency of the problem: if global warming is not stopped, water levels will continue rising and small island states will soon be submerged like the mythical city of Atlantis.

As the scientific reasons for global warming are complicated, it’s sometimes difficult to explain the extent of the problem to the general public, and the issue has its sceptics.

The controversy over the leaking of a series of private emails between climate specialists from the British University of East Anglia, who are accused of manipulating data to fit their projections, has called into question the credibility of the entire scientific community, starting with the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change.

Most of the residents of the Danish capital would probably be hard pressed to pinpoint the Maldives on a map. Few will know that it’s a predominantly Muslim nation, that it obtained its independence from the UK in 1965, and that the name of its capital is Male. Not many will be able to make out its red and green flag among the many flags in Copenhagen.

But this Monday, its president was received like a true international hero, amidst great expectation and excitement at Klimaforum09 – the civil society meeting held parallel to COP15.

A crowd had been waiting for an hour when the lights went on in the main hall of Klimaforum, and reporters from numerous media focused their cameras on the 42-year-old president and former political prisoner popularly known as “Anni.”

As they listened intently to his moving speech, the crowd wasn’t disappointed by their hero. “We are here to save our planet from the silent, patient and invisible enemy that is climate change,” he began.

“There are those who tell us that fighting climate change is impossible. There are those who tell us that taking a radical attitude is too difficult. There are those who tell us to give up hope. But I am here to tell you that we refuse to give up hope.”

But a number can also be a symbol – and that number is 350, the name of an international campaign led by activist Bill McKibben, among others, and which Nasheed has joined. The aim of the campaign is to make 350 the limit of CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere, as that’s the level that scientists have identified as the safe upper limit.

After a display of dozens of pictures showing a global demonstration organised in October, where people of all ages gathered to form the number 350 in different places around the world, Nasheed led the crowd once again in loudly chanting “three-five-oh,” as McKibben had done minutes earlier.

“Three-five-oh saves the coral reefs. Three-five-oh keeps the Arctic frozen. Three-five-oh ensures my country survives. Three-five-oh makes a better world possible,” the president said

“I am here to tell you that down the road in the Bella Center (the venue of the COP15) the Maldives team is fighting to keep three-five-oh in the negotiating text,” he added.

But his address was not just passionate slogans meant to stir up the crowd. He also presented what his government plans to do about global warming.

“In March, the Maldives announced plans to become the first carbon neutral country in the world. We intend to become carbon neutral in ten years. We will switch from oil to 100% renewable energy,” Nasheed said.

“For us, going carbon neutral is not just the right thing to do. We believe it is also in our economic self-interest. Countries that have the foresight to green their economies today, will be the winners of tomorrow.”

He finished his speech urging his audience to chant “three-five-oh” over and over again, and when he stepped down from the podium security guards formed a circle around him as people swarmed him.

*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.

The sun came out in Copenhagen Saturday for the first time this week. But even though its rays were too weak to temper the bone-chilling cold, it shone brightly over the 5,000 people who braved the weather to participate in a demonstration organised by Friends of the Earth International (FOEI).

March in Copenhagen urging world political leaders to stop talking and act now. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

“Flood for Climate Justice” was the slogan that gathered activists from more than 20 countries around the world, and from a wide range of social, women’s, peasant and environmental organisations, along with dozens of young local people, who came out to voice their opposition to the carbon offsetting “solution.”

Demonstrators brandished signs calling for “Climate Justice Now!” and warning that “There’s No Planet B” and “This Is a Matter of Life or Death”. Other signs praised Tuvalu, the tiny South Pacific island state that presented a proposal Thursday demanding that the climate change conference adopt an agreement with firmer commitments to reduce the CO2 emissions that are responsible for global warming.

The march took off from the venue of the Klimaforum09, the civil society conference held parallel to the 15th Conference of Parties (COP-15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as activists were rallied by words from FOEI chair Nnimmo Bassey, Henry Saragih, general coordinator of the global network of rural workers’ movements Vía Campesina, and Amparo Miciano, Philippines national coordinator for the World March of Women.

“Carbon offsetting has no benefits for the climate or for developing countries – it only benefits developed countries, carbon speculators and major polluters who want to continue business as usual,” Bassey said.

“Friends of the Earth International denounces carbon offsetting as a false solution to the climate crisis, and urges governments to search for fair and sustainable solutions,” he added.

Carbon offsetting allows companies and countries to write their greenhouse gas emissions off as reductions by financing clean projects in other countries. The argument is that such projects will offset CO2 emissions that the financing countries continue to spew into the atmosphere.

The scheme is complemented by the sale of rights or certificates of emission in the carbon market.

Thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Copenhagen, many of them dressed in blue, plastic ponchos, led by a string of drums beating out Candombe, an Afro-Uruguayan rhythm, played by members of the Latin American community from neighbouring Sweden.

Spearheading the march was a large sign displaying the face of U.S. President Barack Obama, with the phrase “Hope hagen” underneath – a play on words that alluded to Obama’s appeal to hope during his presidential campaign, and the name of the climate summit host city.

Speaking to TerraViva, several activists, including the French agricultural unionist Jose Bove, expressed their satisfaction with some of Obama’s positions, but called on Washington to take more concrete action to combat climate change.

Obama is to attend the COP15 closing summit on Dec. 18.

Heavily guarded by security forces, including a helicopter that followed the mobilisation from above, the demonstrators marched up to the seat of the Danish Parliament, where they made a giant human sign forming the words “Offsetting Is a False Solution.”

* This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the COP 15 at Copenhagen.

Poor countries will suffer horrendous impacts if an agreement isn’t reached by the end of the climate change summit in Copenhagen. That was the warning launched by the developing South Friday during the talks that remained as bogged down at the end of the first week as at the start.

Delegates of the chief negotiating groups in tense press conference. Credit: Raúl Pierri/IPS

A draft agreement circulated Friday at the COP15 graphically illustrates the numerous points of disagreement, especially in terms of target numbers and timeframes, because they are set off by square brackets.

For example, there are two different figures on the limit for the rise in average global temperature from the preindustrial level: 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius.

And for overall reduction of global carbon emissions by 2020, from 1990 levels, the draft mentions three possible targets: 50, 80 or 95 percent.

The text, drawn up by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA), reflects the differences between the negotiating blocs of the industrialised North and the developing South.

Still pending are details on adaptation actions, which are essential for poor countries to confront the effects of global warming, as well as different aspects of financing. And the draft does not specify the year that emissions should peak.

Developed countries, as a group, should reduce emissions by “75-85 percent,” “at least 80-95 percent,” and “more than 95 percent” by 2050 from 1990 levels, says the text.

And by 2020, carbon emissions should be cut by 25 to 45 percent, it says.

The draft also says developing nations should cut their emissions by between 15 and 30 percent by 2020.

In a news briefing Friday, U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern found fault with the draft, saying it did not put enough pressure on major developing countries, and that “we don’t think that particular section of the text is an acceptable starting point” for negotiations.

Also presented was a draft produced by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). The text proposes that Annex I (industrialised) countries reduce carbon emissions by 30 to 40 percent between either 2013-2018 or 2013-2020.

As shown by the brackets and diversity of numbers, it is discrepancies that prevail at the climate change summit.

Delegates of the chief negotiating groups agreed to sit down at the same table for a press conference Friday. (U.S. chief negotiator Jonathan Pershing was invited but did not take part.)

However, not only did they confirm the gaps between their positions, but they even got involved in arguments with each other during the conversation with reporters.

There was clear agreement on the urgent need for an accord, but not on how to reach one. India insisted that boosting the level of development in the South is the best plan for adaptation to global warming.

“The impact of climate change will be most evident in the poorest countries…(which) have insufficient capacity to adapt to climate change because of financial and technological concerns,” said India’s chief negotiator Chandrashekhar Dasgupta.

“The only answer is to achieve a certain social and economic development and eradicate poverty as quickly as possible.

“If we fail to achieve and maintain the highest possible level of development, we will be condemning future generations in our countries to the horrendous impact of climate change,” said Dasgupta.

But EU negotiator Karl Falkenberg stressed the importance of the South also contributing to mitigation efforts, and said developing countries have the advantage of being able to develop by means of clean energy.

“We need to make sure that cleaner energy sources are used in developing countries. That technology is known today, not 20, 25 or 30 years ago. It would be an enormous waste if we were to leave Copenhagen not understanding that economic growth in developing countries – that is crucial, a fundamental right, recognized by everyone -needs to be achieved in different forms in which economic growth has been achieved in the past and that this is possible.

“We need to collectively reduce by 40 percent our emissions globally by 2020. We are very clear that we need contributions from everyone, and we need these contributions in a reliable binding manner from everyone,” said Falkenberg.

Alluding to developing countries’ insistence that the industrialised world is historically responsible for the pollution, he said “whatever is the origin of the problem,” we need “an international agreement, binding, verifiable for everyone.”

In the meeting with the press, organised by Climate Change Media, China’s chief negotiator Yu Qingtai joined his voice to that of Dasgupta.

“We as developing countries will not accept anything that would sacrifice our right to develop and put on hold our condition of poverty and lack of development,” he said.

For his part, the Indian negotiator said “The question is not whether it is desirable to reduce the rate of growth of emissions in developing countries. Of course it is. The question is, who pays for it?”

Things got tense when Falkenberg accused his fellow negotiators of claiming a “right to pollute.”

“There is no such thing as the right to pollute,” either for industrialised or developing countries, said Falkenberg, while Dasgupta responded to him off-mic.

Yu said the demand by the developing countries represented by the G77 plus China was based on everyone’s right to “emission space.”

“For the developed countries, when it comes to emission space, their fundamental attitude is that what is mine is mine. What I’ve taken away from you, I’ve got to keep. For us, the developing countries, our position is, our emission space is under occupation, and we want it back,” said the Chinese delegate.

Speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the ambassador of Dominica, Crispin Gregoire said “We are on the front lines of the climate change crisis. Some of our islands will disappear. We accept that. But we want an agreement that will address our survival. That is why we’re here.

“The Marshall Islands have started relations with the U.S., there might be some agreement of migration. The U.S. might be open to allowing a bigger quota of inmigrants,” he said

The United Nations predicts that 150 million people could be displaced by global warming and become climate refugees by 2050. The Bahamas, Maldives and Tonga are among the most threatened by the rising seas.

And in the Caribbean, said Gregoire, “We have the additional problem…that our fish are moving to cooler waters, and with a 2 degree warming our corals will disappear.”

* This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the COP 15 at Copenhagen.

“If there’s ever been a time in which the G77 has been more united than ever, that time is right now,” was the categorical statement made by Venezuelan negotiator Claudia Salerno to TerraViva, after a tiny island nation in the south Pacific stirred things up at the COP15 climate meetings.

Tuvalu wins Ray of the Day prize. Credit: Ana Libisch/IPS

The voice of the small island states of the Pacific was heard loudly in the Danish capital when the delegation of Tuvalu, a nation of 11,810 people and just 26 sq. km., firmly demanded the approval of a treaty setting a ceiling of a one to 1.5 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures, rather than the two degree limit being discussed in the negotiations.

Tuvalu’s outspoken stance won it the first-ever “Ray of the Day” prize, awarded to a country making an outstanding contribution to advancing negotiations towards an internationally legally binding agreement.

“Developed country Parties which have not taken commitments prescribed in Article 3 of the Kyoto Protocol, and other Parties who voluntarily elect to do so, shall individually or jointly undertake verifiable, nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions in the form of quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments,” says paragraph 1, article 3 of Tuvalu’s proposal.

The United States is the main industrial country that is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol.

Furthermore, “Parties undertaking (such) commitments or actions”…”shall not use these commitments to fulfill obligations established under the Kyoto Protocol,” opening up the possibility for a two-pronged scheme.

Article 3 of the proposal includes a detailed three-tier initiative for developing countries to also adopt emissions cuts, although it does not say they should be legally binding.

“Developing country Parties, notwithstanding paragraph 1 above, shall undertake nationally appropriate mitigation actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” it adds.

The Kyoto Protocol does not include binding targets for nations of the South, and the so-called emerging economies are resisting a new agreement that will commit them to reduce their emissions, arguing that the climate debt must be paid by the nations that have achieved growth through centuries of industrialisation at the expense of polluting the environment, and that emerging nations are entitled to their own development now that they can finally grow.

The problem is that today these emerging nations account for more than half of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

Nobody expected the discordant note in the G77 (the Group of 77, which represents 130 developing countries) to come from the small island nations, although there were reasons to believe it would, since they are without a doubt the most affected by climate change.

The United Nations has said that global warming has already caused several islands to disappear, and warned that in the next 40 years it will displace one billion people. Tuvalu could be wiped right off the map.

Salerno, head of international cooperation and management in Venezuela’s Environment Ministry, said that the responsibility lies with the industrialised North, and not with emerging nations.

“The problem we’re facing today is not the result of recent industrialisation processes. The right to development is not at issue here. What are at issue are the countries that for 200 years have been destroying our planet,” she said to TerraViva.

“They are the ones that have to stop. Scientifically the issue is critical, because no amount of effort from developing countries is going to be enough to repair the damage. There are 20 countries with the power to make a difference for the whole world,” she added.

Salerno, who participated in a joint conference of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, bloc in Copenhagen, contended that despite appearances, the G77 is firmly united, especially in its common rejection of certain moves by some countries of the North at the COP15.

“I think that, contrary to what certain media have said, all the actions by developed countries that have been aimed at undermining the process have only served to bring us closer together,” she said, in reference to a leaked draft agreement prepared by Denmark.

“We think it’s best that this document came out now and not on the 18th, because we would’ve been working without a clue of what was going on in back-room negotiations. The countries that are committed to the process are paying no attention to that paper. It means absolutely nothing to us, not to the G77 countries and not to the ALBA countries,” she said.

ALBA is made up of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.

For his part, Cuban delegate Pedro Luis Pedroso told TerraViva that, pursuant to the Convention, Tuvalu has the right to present its own proposals in line with its national concerns.

The assistant director of Multilateral Matters of Cuba’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said that the G77 had not yet examined the island nation’s initiative as a group.

The ALBA members have so far shown a demanding and ambitious front at Copenhagen. This Thursday, in addition to requesting the approval of a legally binding treaty that will put all the responsibility on the industrialised North, ALBA countries called on the international community to “change consumption patterns” in order to “address the causes of climate change, and not just the consequences.”

However, its positions have not been fully backed by the rest of the Latin American community. Several other countries in the region, including Brazil, have announced their willingness to make voluntary cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.

“Each country has its own national perspective, but I think that in essence we all basically share the same concerns and positions. How these concerns and positions are incorporated varies depending on the approach, but I think in essence we have a common stance,” Pedroso told TerraViva.

The heads of state of the ALBA members that will attend the COP15 summit are Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

* This story corrects several paragraphs in earlier article.

** This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the COP 15 at Copenhagen.

The World Bank proudly defended the global carbon market in the Danish capital Tuesday for its “contribution” to efforts to mitigate climate change, in spite of criticism from civil society.

The multilateral lender presented its publication titled “10 Years of Experience in Carbon Finance: Insights from working with carbon markets for development and global greenhouse gas mitigation”, at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15), running Dec. 7-18 in Copenhagen.

The study assesses the World Bank’s experience of working with the Kyoto Protocol’s flexibility mechanisms, like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI).

JI is a system that allows industrialised countries to fulfil part of their obligatory greenhouse gas emissions reductions by paying for projects that reduce pollution in other nations of the North.

In practice, this means building installations in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, financed by Western European and North American countries.

Meanwhile, the CDM allows rich nations to compensate part of their greenhouse gas emissions by financing projects that reduce emissions in the developing South.

The rich country that finances the project can acquire carbon credits, equivalent to the emissions savings made in the developing country, and these count towards its own binding emissions reductions. These carbon credits are, additionally, tradeable: they can be bought and sold on the carbon market.

The World Bank sees the carbon market as a positive development, as it estimates the countries of the South will need between 75 billion and 100 billion dollars a year, from now to 2050, to cope with the effects of global warming.

World Bank carbon finance specialist Martina Bosi reminded a press conference in Copenhagen Tuesday that the Bank created the 160 million dollar Prototype Carbon Fund in 2000, five years before the Kyoto Protocol went into effect.

Today, the World Bank manages several funds worth 2.5 billion dollars, the main beneficiaries of which are China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

Among the most important funds are the BioCarbon Fund, which focuses on forestry and land-use projects, and the Community Development Carbon Fund, which focuses on projects in least developed countries, “that have received strong social co-benefits in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

According to the report presented Tuesday, 26 percent of the projects financed by these World Bank funds were based in Latin America and the Caribbean, 21 percent in Asia, a further 21 percent in East Africa, 18 percent in Europe and 13 percent in Southeast Asia.

Bosi stressed that a large proportion of the funds for World Bank projects under the CDM are from the private sector, and that market mechanisms are an important tool for including private capital in climate mitigation efforts.

Private capital has provided 49 percent of the resources for the projects so far. The carbon markets have contributed 21 percent, public foreign investment 17 percent and local public funding 13 percent.

Non-governmental organisations are critical of the CDM because they regard it as a “corrupt” system that is “cheap” for the countries of the North, as it allows industrialised countries to avoid real measures to reduce their domestic greenhouse gas emissions, while favouring transnational corporations.

Friends of the Earth said that the CDM should be abolished because it does not promote the structural changes needed to bring about a sustainable economy, and complained that “many projects in the CDM pipeline have severe negative social and environmental impacts.”

In a communiqué released at the Copenhagen conference, Friends of the Earth demanded rich countries “pledge to cut domestic emissions by at least 40 per cent (compared to 1990 levels) by 2020, without offsetting (using the CDM) or carbon trading.”

According to the organisation, “most of these projects do not actually reduce emissions,” and have catastrophic consequences for the environment and society in the developing South.

It also demands that the countries of the North “meet their obligations for financial transfers to developing countries for mitigation and adaptation,” without cutting development aid. These financial transfers should be administered by the United Nations, it said.

Other external financing, like the funds managed by the World Bank, should also not count towards the fulfilment of these obligations, it said.

* This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the CoP 15 at Copenhagen.

Representatives of Latin America's governments are arriving in Copenhagen calling for an aggressive pact with teeth to fight climate change, though there are still minor differences among them when it comes to priorities.

Wheat is among Latin America's crops that could suffer as a result of climate change. - Mauricio Ramos/IPS

The ideal outcome for the region is that a legally binding agreement will be adopted in the Danish capital. But delegates are not ruling out the idea of signing on to a pact that establishes voluntary reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global climate change.

It will all be determined at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP-15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, under way here Dec. 7-18.

At the “climate summit,” the world's governments are expected to adopt a new plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, when the current period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end. The Protocol is the only international pact aimed at fighting this environmental problem.

In force since 2005, the Kyoto Protocol does not establish obligatory emissions cuts for the developing world, only for industrialized countries.

The Latin American countries combined are responsible for just five percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the principal gases that cause climate change. But the region is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of the phenomenon.

Droughts, floods, glacier melt, rising temperatures, new agricultural pests and diseases are already hitting the region, as detailed in the First Regional Report on Climate Change, published in November by Tierramérica, based on information from 23 Latin American experts.

“All of the Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Chile, are looking for a legally binding agreement,” Álvaro Sapag, a Chilean delegate to Copenhagen, told Tierramérica.

“In the current state of the debate, thinking that these agreements should be built through consensus, we probably won't come out of Copenhagen with a legally binding text that the heads of state can sign,” Sapag said.

Mexico's Environment Secretary Juan Elvira shares that opinion. “We are going for a legal accord, with well-defined goals, but we aren't ruling out a political compromise as a last option in the negotiations,” he told Tierramérica.

“I haven't lost hope, but it is not an easy issue,” said Sapag, who would accept as a minimum “a robust political accord, one that allows a short period to hone the details in order to then create a legally binding agreement,” possibly at the COP-16 slated for 2010 in Mexico.

Optimism that the Copenhagen meet would produce a solid and ambitious agreement was revived when the United States and China, the world's leading greenhouse gas emitters, announced voluntary emission reductions by 2020, taking 2005 levels as their starting point.

According to the reading of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his country's decision to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions 36.1 to 38.9 percent by 2020 (in large part by halting deforestation of the Amazon), mobilized the nations “that had been resistant to presenting numbers.”

Several Latin American countries have indicated that at COP-15 they will follow the lines of the Group of 77 and China (G-77), which currently includes 130 developing countries.

The G-77 insists on keeping the priority on “shared but differentiated responsibilities,” as established in the Convention and in the Protocol, and which implies leaving the brunt of emissions reduction efforts to the wealthy North, the main source of emissions in the industrial era.

Furthermore, this negotiating group is demanding that the North contribute financing and technology so that poor countries can take steps to confront the harmful effects of climate change and seek “cleaner” forms of development.

But regardless of the G-77, Latin America's stance is not 100-percent united.

“I would say there is a single opinion on certain issues, such as 'shared but differentiated responsibilities' and the need for mitigation and adaptation resources in developing countries and the historic responsibility” of industrial nations, summarized Sapag.

The region's governments are sharply aware of the risk that climate change could ultimately lead to trade barriers for their products.

“There are countries in Latin America that don't accept market mechanisms as a tool to reduce greenhouse gases, while others do. Some want all actions to be reportable, measureable and verifiable, and others that only want them to be voluntary for developing countries,” he explained.

Mexico, which emits 715 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, is voluntarily working to reduce the total 50 million tons by 2012, although the government has stated that it would accept an obligatory reduction over the longer term only if Mexico receives funds and technology.

At the Ibero-American Summit, which ended Dec. 1 in Estoril, Portugal, Mexico's President Felipe Calderón stated that the wealthy countries have the main responsibility to reduce emissions, but that the task cannot fall only to them, because sooner or later, “we will all pay the price of inaction.”

Calderón reiterated his proposal to create a new Global Fund Against Climate Change, with a starting budget of 140 billion dollars, to which each country would contribute according to the size of their economy and their environmental responsibility.

Although the Kyoto Protocol has an Adaptation Fund, Calderón believes Mexico's proposal would ensure a broader variety of actions in the climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts.

Argentina, meanwhile, proposes two executive councils with public funds from industrialized countries under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – not the Protocol – coming from each as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), which could range between 0.5 and 1.0 percent.

Buenos Aires also has insisted on the need for “a fair transition” in sustainable development so that emissions reductions efforts don't hurt employment.

Venezuela, for its part, seems to have a firm position: the industrialized North holds responsibility historically, so must be the first to act.

“We are operating on the basis of shared but differentiated responsibilities. If I am a big emitter of greenhouse gases, my responsibility is different from someone who doesn't emit or is just beginning to,” said Venezuela's deputy minister for environmental regulation and administration, Sergio Rodríguez.

“The United States is the country that has historically emitted the greatest quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere. It isn't possible that it has bailed out its banks and car companies but now doesn't have the resources to deal with climate change,” he said in a meeting with several officials.

According to Rodríguez, the Hugo Chávez government will heed the position of the G-77 in Copenhagen, the same as Argentina.

“We don't have weight as an emitter country, nor do we have weight in this negotiation,” Nazareno Castillo, Argentina's director for climate change at the Environment ministry, told Tierramérica.

Other countries, like Uruguay and Chile, have not announced concrete greenhouse gas emissions goals, but they have upheld the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), including energy efficiency programs and the introduction of non-conventional renewable energy sources.

Carlos Colacce, Uruguay's minister of housing and environment, says his tiny country of 3.3 million people has adopted a “novel position” for the Copenhagen summit, because although it supports the G-77 stance, it is taking its own steps to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, “even without receiving funds from the developed countries to carry out the task.”

Uruguay must start focusing on efforts against global warming, and work in a coordinated manner with its South American neighbours, said one of the scientists consulted for the First Regional Report on Climate Change produced by Tierramérica, which was released Thursday.

Cattle and birds on Uruguayan prairie. Credit: GEO report

The rise in sea level and the possible salinisation of drinking water sources are the biggest challenges facing this small South American country, which must design adaptation policies for agriculture and the livestock industry, Professor Mario Bidegain with the atmospheric sciences unit at the Faculty Sciences of Uruguay’s public University of the Republic, told a news briefing.

Bidegain said that while landlocked countries in this region like Bolivia and Paraguay would especially suffer the rise in temperatures, coastal countries like Argentina and Uruguay would be hit harder by the effects of the rising sea level.

In the meantime, Brazil is investing millions of dollars in efforts to study and adapt to impacts like the gradual transformation of the Amazon jungle into savannah, and has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 36.1 or 38.9 percent – depending on GDP growth levels – by 2020.

The expert said Uruguay – which is sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil – will not escape the impacts. The last five-yearly report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007, said that in the best-case scenario, the average global temperature would rise between two and 2.5 degrees by 2050.

The report by Tierramérica, a specialised news service on the environment and development produced by the IPS (Inter Press Service) news agency with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that is published by 20 newspapers in the region, is based on the responses of 23 climate change experts who were sent an extensive questionnaire by email, which was then supplemented by telephone contacts.

Several of the experts are members of the IPCC, like Bidegain, who was a reviewer of the Climate Change 2007 – The Physical Science Basis Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC and of the IPCC Technical Paper on Climate Change and Water (2008).

The aim of the special 40-page Tierramérica report, “Latin America and the Irreversible Effects of a Warmer Planet”, which is available on-line in Spanish, is to analyse the state of global warming in the region, by consulting with experts, scientists and authorities, and representatives of civil society and international bodies. Updated reports will be produced periodically.

The report was presented Thursday in Montevideo by its author, Cristina Canoura, and IPS regional editor for Latin America, Diana Cariboni, ahead of the Dec. 7-18 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

In the Danish capital, delegates from around the world will try to reach agreement on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

“A worrisome aspect for Uruguay is the rise in the average sea level. There is even greater uncertainty in that respect from a scientific point of view, because there is enormous debate, and even today the models used to project this kind of variable are not entirely reliable at a global level,” said Bidegain.

The IPCC projected a 60 cm rise in sea level by the end of the century, although other researchers believe that is an overly conservative estimate and warn that it could rise by over a metre.

This is especially alarming for Uruguay, said the scientist, given that this country has only seen a 10-cm rise in sea level in the past 60 years. “This would be at least six times that, which is overwhelming,” he remarked.

“This, naturally, has all kinds of effects on daily life that you can’t even imagine. The rise in sea level won’t only cause coastal flooding, but a process of salinisation of lakes, like at the mouth of the Santa Lucía river, where Montevideo gets its water,” he said.

The scientist said adaptation efforts should be prioritised over mitigation initiatives. “The change is going to happen. The greenhouse gases that we have already emitted will remain in the atmosphere. What we are seeing now is not because of what we’re emitting today, but what we have released into the atmosphere in past decades,” he explained.

“Global warming is inevitable in the next 50 years. That must be understood. It’s inevitable, no matter what we do. What will be negotiated in Copenhagen is an agreement to achieve an at-least voluntary reduction in greenhouse gases to try to curb the warming, but unfortunately it is going to continue for several decades.”

Bidegain explained the concept of irreversibility discussed in the Tierramérica report.

“There are scientists in the world pointing out that with a more than two degree rise in the average global temperature, the climate system could stabilise at a certain level, which no one knows what that would be, but at which we would all suffer. But later, even with voluntary or coordinated greenhouse gas cuts, there would be no return, even to current levels,” he said.

“Our society is based on the consumption of fossil fuels which, whether coal or oil, emit greenhouse gases when we burn them. We have to think of a new kind of society, a new way of life,” said Bidegain.

The researcher underlined that Uruguay has made progress, especially with the creation this year of the National System of Response to Climate Change, although he also stressed the need to design concrete long-term plans for agriculture and livestock, chief economic sectors in this country that will be affected.

Winter crops like wheat and barley will be hit hardest, according to experts. “It’s necessary to think about that with respect to the future, how Uruguay is going to cover that shortage. We will have practically no flour to make bread. Are we going to replace it with another crop? Climate change presents us with opportunities as well as challenges,” he said.

One of the experts surveyed for the Tierramérica report, Agustín Giménez, said “the most evident and negative effects of climate change in Uruguay and in the region (southern Brazil and the pampas in Argentina) are the increase in climate variability and more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events.”

Giménez is national coordinator of the National Institute of Agricultural Research unit on research and development on agro-climate and information systems.

The Tierramérica report says that Latin America and the Caribbean could suffer a loss of agricultural revenue of up to 12 percent, in a scenario of mild climate change, and of up to 50 percent in a more severe scenario.

Bidegain also underscored the need for these problems to be given priority in the plans of the future government of Uruguay, which will be elected in the Nov. 29 presidential runoff election.

Tierramérica is a multimedia platform that offers news reports, interviews and columns on the environment and development in Spanish, English and Portuguese in print, audio and images. It is sponsored by UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank.

Making the contributions by black people to the cultural heritage of Latin America visible is one big step towards pulling people of African descent out of the poverty and marginalisation in which so many still live, said participants at a regional seminar in the Uruguayan capital.

Black local residents of village on Atrato River in northwest Colombia. Credit: Jesús Abad Colorado/IPS

Experts taking part in the seminar on “Afro-descendant Women and Latin American Culture: Identity and Development”, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), stressed the need to raise awareness about the region’s black population and heritage.

“When you try to find data on the Afro-descendant population, it’s very hard to do. There are no statistics to help us find out what is going on, no specific indicators on infant or maternal mortality rates, or nutrition, among blacks,” UNDP regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean Rebeca Grynspan told IPS, describing the “invisibility” of this segment of the population in the region.

“The only approach available to us is to look at specific regions, because many people of African descent live in fairly identifiable areas. But that means we can only gauge the situation indirectly,” she said on the sidelines of the Sept. 27-29 seminar.

But the absence of broken down statistics is just one aspect, she stressed. “Blacks also suffer from invisibility with regard to their contribution to Latin American history and culture, and with respect to their movements, and their influence on what we do or what we sing.”

The seminar drew representatives from Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The UNDP is carrying out a series of projects to boost the visibility of the black population in the region, especially by highlighting their influence on Latin American culture and working to obtain more information on the situation of the rights of blacks.

“This is the first step, because if you don’t see something, you’re not worried about it, you don’t think about improving the situation, and you don’t believe there is any problem,” said Grynspan.

Despite the “statistical invisibility,” there is enough information to allow the UNDP to determine that there is a large gap between people of African descent in the region and other population groups in terms of living conditions and access to health care and education.

In Colombia, for example, the overall illiteracy rate stands at six percent, compared to 31 percent among blacks. And in Peru, the average number of school years among blacks is 6.3, while the national average is 7.3.

The extreme poverty rate is twice as high among blacks and indigenous people in the region as among the rest of the population, according to the U.N. agency.

In Uruguay, the average wage earned by black men is 70 percent of the average for the rest of the population.

In Brazil, blacks are hit harder by unemployment than other segments of the population, while joblessness among black women is more than twice as high as among black men.

Sixty percent of the black population in Colombia has no access to basic health care, and 51 percent has no health insurance, the UNDP reports.

The infant mortality rate in Latin America is between 40 and 50 percent higher among people of African descent than among the rest of the population.

Although she said the current global economic crisis has also hit that sector of the population especially hard, Grynspan stressed that “discrimination is not only a problem in material terms, but runs deeper than that…It is a problem of cultural discrimination, discrimination in terms of rights, and the institutions reproduce that discrimination, which undermines our ethical values of equity,” she said.

The participants agreed that culture should be used as an integrating mechanism.

In Uruguay, for instance, “the broad popularity of candombe (a drum-based musical genre with African roots), which is part of the identity of the entire population, is a model of a bridge between races, a symbol of unity and social integration, and thus a route for the black population to get ahead,” Uruguayan lawmaker Edgardo Ortuño, of the governing left-wing Broad Front coalition, told IPS.

“Culture is the big bridge that can bring about unity among human beings above and beyond ethnic and racial differences, and it has the potential to sensitise people and promote important values of integration,” added Ortuño, the first – and only – black legislator in this South American country.

For her part, Silvia García Savino, director of the UNDP’s project on people of African descent in Latin America, also stressed the importance of “cultural visibility.”

“We agree on the need to highlight the culture and folk wisdom of the Afro-descendant population…which are generally known through music and dance,” she said at the end of the seminar.

“We want citizens who fully enjoy their rights, and we believe that the recognition of cultural rights will have a positive impact on other rights. That is the route we should follow,” she added.

Barack Obama, as first black president of the United States, was also mentioned as an important symbol.

Obama’s election “is one of the most powerful symbolic events in recent times, as it sends the message that the entire black community can improve their conditions by making an effort,” said Ortuño. “At the same time, it is an important sign of the progress made by (U.S.) society as a whole, which has put human values above racial differences.

“Coming from a country with such a strong history of racism like the United States, a sign of hope and social integration has been spread throughout the world – one that we should pick up on and replicate throughout Latin America,” he said.

Putting people, not the economy, at the centre of development by coordinating and designing initiatives based on the interests of the target populations themselves is the goal of the Support to Territorial Networks (ART) programme, which is growing year after year in Uruguay.

UNDP resident coordinator in Uruguay, Pablo Mandeville, reviews projects with heads of provincial governments. Credit: Esteban Zunín

The programme now encompasses a vast array of activities: urban clean-up projects, the promotion of community gardens, support for carnival performers and other fields of art, support for cultural and tourism centres, training in apicultural production and marketing, the creation of schools for brick-making, support for milk production and artisanal fishing, and sewing workshops, to name just a few.

All of these initiatives, formerly undertaken as part of isolated and fragmented efforts, are now coordinated throughout Uruguay through the ART programme network, which involves the national government, provincial and local government authorities, civil society and the private sector and is supported with funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other international development cooperation agencies.

Washington Núñez, the local ART network representative in the northern province of Rivera, told IPS that this new approach is a response to “the failure of the neoliberal policies” imposed in the 1990s and the corresponding approach to development aid, which was not people-centred. Another key element of this new concept is that it considers development “from an integrated point of view,” he added.

Projects underway:> Support for sugar cane producers in the northern city of Bella Unión > Support for carnival in the northern province of Artigas > Promotion of nature tourism in Artigas > Support for horticulture in the eastern province of Cerro Largo > Sewing workshop in Rivera > Training for small and medium-sized enterprises in Salto > Sustainable management of artisanal fishing in the western province of Paysandú > Community facility for honey harvesting in Rivera > Creation of a development agency in the southern province of Florida > Creation of a regional cultural centre in Cerro Largo > Enhancement of apicultural sector competitiveness in Salto > Promotion of community participation in urban clean-up initiatives in Montevideo > Support for rustic wool producers in Salto.

As a result, it places emphasis not only on financing but on efforts to integrate all sectors in defining areas of cooperation, and to build local capacities, so that the local networks in each province can carry out the projects involved, he explained. The ART Local Development Programme emerged from a series of agreements in 2005 and was put into motion in 2007 with the mobilisation of resources.

Since then, working groups have been created in the respective provinces (known as departments) and the network has grown exponentially, Pablo Mandeville, the resident coordinator of the UN system and UNDP country representative in Uruguay, told IPS.

Mandeville presented a report on the ART programme to the Congress of Intendentes (the heads of provincial governments in Uruguay) held in August.

The funds mobilised as part of the ART programme have grown steadily, from 144,000 dollars in 2006 to 462,450 in 2007 and 1.1 million in 2008. The figure is expected to rise to 2.5 million dollars this year.

The programme operates in agreement with the administration of President Tabaré Vázquez, provincial authorities and international agencies including the UNDP, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation, among others.

Aimed at fostering a “new multilateralism” by facilitating cooperation among numerous actors in the same territory, the programme encompasses local development projects financed by different sources, including UNDP grants, government resources, contributions from bilateral donors, and decentralised development aid.

The ART network is now operating in all 19 provinces of this small South American country wedged between Argentina and Brazil, with 49 projects currently underway.

In each province a working group is formed, made up of representatives of all sectors. These groups function as a non-governmental public space for defining the main development needs of each particular region.

In Rivera, for example, four points were defined as targets for action: large industry; the logging sector; tourism and trade; and efforts to combat poverty and promote equality, Núñez told IPS.

The local ART representative in each province acts as a liaison “who brings together local actors and creates spaces for coordination and discussion, assists and accompanies them in the identification of strategic areas of development, training needs and group strengthening, and in the formulation of projects, among other activities, and fundamentally in building spaces that generate trust among the actors,” Vicenta Camusso, the representative for the eastern portion of Montevideo – the capital – told IPS.

Initiatives supported by the ART programme are generally aimed at achieving the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed upon by the world’s governments in 2000. The main targets include guaranteeing universal primary education by 2015 and halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, suffering hunger, and living without access to clean drinking water between 1990 and 2015.

Other goals are promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and ensuring environmental sustainability.

The fact that the ART programme allows the stakeholders themselves to make decisions about the focus and execution of the initiatives inspires considerable enthusiasm. People from the communities are able to express their concerns through the working groups, which means that the development plans that are formulated clearly reflect their needs.

“There are significant levels of acceptance and commitment, both from the institutions that are active members in the projects as well as the local communities, which identify with and support the activities. The projects have clearly been generating the desired impact,” Diego García da Rosa, the local ART representative from the northern province of Salto, told IPS.

Climate change: a cross-cutting theme

In his presentation to the Congress of Intendentes, Mandeville also offered an overview of a project aimed at promoting “resilient local development” in the face of climate change in the metropolitan area of Montevideo.

This is a pilot project involving activities to mitigate the effects of global warming, organised within the framework of the ART network. It will be presented internationally at the next climate change summit this December in Copenhagen.

As the UNDP experts explained to the heads of local governments, climate change is responsible for 300,000 deaths worldwide every year, in addition to an upsurge in pollution-related diseases and the collapse of global and local fisheries, which have suffered a 90 percent reduction in stocks of large fish.

A number of ART programme initiatives focus on the problem of climate change. In Salto, for example, “the local working group has decided that the environment and especially concerns about climate change and its impact on water resources should be a major cross-cutting theme in all of its activities,” said García da Rosa.

“That is why we have submitted a project proposal for the strengthening of local organisations in five rural towns, through a series of distance training sessions on the use of new technologies for environmental management and biodiversity conservation,” he explained.

“It also includes an awareness-raising campaign around the same issue, as well as two pilot projects for collectively managed animal feed banks to mitigate the effects of climate change,” he added.

García da Rosa stressed that “these activities have high priority, given that we are dealing with one of the regions of the country that is most vulnerable to these processes, with a significant loss in biodiversity and a serious water shortage.”

Taking in a classical music concert, learning to make films or attending a literary workshop are no longer activities reserved for the elite in the Uruguayan capital. In addition to the existing initiatives offered by the city government, a new project is under way to promote cultural production and recreation among the poor.

Credit: Comisión de Cultura Zonal 7

“Our motto is to improve cultural quality alongside the local residents. We don’t regard ourselves as ‘cultural experts’ coming to teach people culture; what we want is for all of us to become cultured together,” Sebastián Domínguez, a city councillor and a member of the Cultural Commission at Zonal Community Centre 7 (CCZ-7) in Montevideo, told IPS.

The CCZs are local branches of the Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo (IMM), the city government, which provide decentralised services and foment direct participation by local residents in neighbourhood affairs.

“We call what we do ‘education through action,’ because although we have taken some specific training courses, we acquire our experience essentially through the work we do,” Domínguez said.

The Cultural Commission, which covers the middle-class seafront neighbourhoods of Buceo, Malvín and Punta Gorda, has two main cornerstones: decentralising the city’s cultural activities in order to bring them closer to local residents, and promoting artists from within the local community.

“The idea is to form and train groups of people who will then carry out cultural activities in their respective neighbourhoods,” Domínguez said.

As well as bringing cultural events closer to where people live, the goal is to foster home-grown popular artistic and cultural expressions, often performed on the streets, according to the principle that culture is a very broad, inclusive concept.

The Commission, which is financially supported by an agreement with the IMM, recently organised an exhibition of antique toys with the help of collectors. Schools were invited to the exhibit, which included “puppets up to 300 years old,” Domínguez said.

Film series are also screened in small movie houses, and critics are invited to comment, together with the audience, on the works shown. Courses on film directing are offered too, “but our biggest strengths are choirs and rock bands,” he said.

There are many amateur choirs in the neighbourhood, and stimulating them is a good way of “supporting collective activity, group work and participation by people who aren’t professional artistes,” he said.

Tango, “murga” (a genre of popular musical theatre associated with Carnival in Uruguay), and “candombe” (a drum-based musical genre with African roots), play an important role in the Commission’s work, but so does classical music.

Solo instrumentalists give recitals, and the Montevideo Philharmonic Orchestra has performed several concerts.

Local residents also have the opportunity to hear foreign musical groups or bands that rarely perform in the neighbourhoods, such as Mexican mariachi bands or jazz orchestras, and to attend art exhibitions or lectures on the environment and sexual health.

A human right

Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, states that “everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”

Article 22 further stipulates that everyone “is entitled to realisation, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organisation and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.”

In another step forward, the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESC) established that everyone in the states party has a right to participate in the cultural life of his or her country.

“Each state party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realisation of the rights recognised in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures,” the ICESC says.

However, “cultural rights have often been treated as if they were ‘second-class rights’,” the National Director of Culture, Hugo Achugar, told IPS.

As a result, the Ministry of Education and Culture announced in May the creation of its department of Cultural Citizenship, intended “to ensure democratic access by the entire population to cultural goods and services.”

The new project incorporates existing programmes in other state departments which had similar purposes, promoting participation and cultural production in specific sectors, such as teenagers and young people, slum dwellers, the prison population and psychiatric patients confined to hospitals.

Literary and visual arts workshops are being organised in prisons, museum visits are arranged for schoolchildren, and cultural cottage industries are being set up. These are small businesses where unemployed people learn crafts like making dolls or theatre costumes, “not only for art’s sake, but also as income-earning activities,” Achugar said.

The aim of these projects, according to Cultural Citizenship authorities, is to include especially the most vulnerable groups in society, while fomenting and respecting cultural diversity as “a factor of social inclusion, national identity and the construction of sovereignty.”

In fact, the socioeconomic characteristics of certain population groups in Uruguay may influence their participation in cultural expressions.

Achugar told IPS that although one cannot rightly speak of a “culture of poverty,” there are however “certain patterns of consumption and behaviour typical of a subculture” in some poor neighbourhoods in Montevideo. From highbrow to lowbrow

Achugar is one of the authors of a study on “Culture and Poverty: Imaginaries and Cultural Consumption in Slums in Montevideo”, published in late 2007 by the state University of the Republic, which documented the consumption patterns characteristic of poor neighbourhoods.

The report concluded, for instance, that most people living in slums recognise Uruguayan cultural personalities who have a high media profile, but are less familiar with some illustrious figures of cultural tradition who are nationally revered.

Among the cultural icons selected for the survey were poet Juana de Ibarbourou, writer Horacio Quiroga, writer and politician José Enrique Rodó, and artists Pedro Figari, Joaquín Torres García and Juan Manuel Blanes.

Asked whether they recognised and could identify these people, 53 percent of interviewees recognised Ibarbourou, but the rest were recognised by less than 50 percent of respondents.

At the same time, figures within the contemporary “high literary culture” were presented for recognition: writers Juan Carlos Onetti (1909-1984), Mario Benedetti and Idea Vilariño who both died this year, as well as people with a strong current media presence, such as musicians Rubén Rada and Jorge Drexler, and actresses China Zorrilla and Natalia Oreiro.

Benedetti was recognised by 43 percent of respondents, Onetti by 41 percent, Quiroga by 39 percent, Blanes by 36 percent and Torres García and Figari by 28 percent. Only 20 percent of interviewees recognised Rodó, and three percent recognised Vilariño.

Rada was correctly identified by nearly 70 percent, and Fata Delgado, a cumbia singer, by over 65 percent. Carnival dancer Marta Gularte (1919-2002) was recogised by 70 percent, Drexler by 60 percent, Oreiro by 90 percent and Zorrilla by 80 percent of interviewees.

Questions referring to “cultural capital” and “cultural infrastructure” or equipment found that 37.8 percent of interviewees said they owned more than 10 books, while 26 percent did not own a single book; and 52 percent said they had more than 11 compact discs or audio cassettes at home, while 19.4 percent said they did not possess a single CD or tape. Over 21 percent said they owned a musical instrument.

In contrast, 90 percent of respondents had a radio or tape recorder, nearly 91 percent had a colour TV, and nearly 28 percent had cable TV.

Those with CD-playing audio equipment were 54.4 percent of the sample, nearly 42 percent owned a camera, 36.3 percent had a video or DVD player, 27.4 percent had personal stereos and 11 percent had a computer. Seventy-three percent said they had landline telephones. They were not asked about cellular phones.

This “partly explains the high percentages recognising personalities with a media presence,” the study concluded. “On the other hand, it confirms what was already known – and is valid for the whole of the country’s population – that is, the overwhelming predominance of the audiovisual media.”

Beat the odds: that was what the residents of El Monarca decided to do, in order to turn their informal settlement on the outskirts of the Uruguayan capital into a real neighbourhood, with all the necessary infrastructure and services.

As governments race the clock to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), ordinary citizens are organising as best they can to fulfill their own pressing need for decent housing.

“A lot of people said this was going to be just another slum, full of ‘pichis’ (a derogatory term for slum dwellers),” Washington “El Bocha” Suárez told IPS.

The 52-year-old Suárez, who has a high-pitched but forceful voice, is the one everyone turns to with their problems in El Monarca, the visible face of the neighbourhood committee.

“I’m involved in everything around here. I always have to be available, but things are working out pretty well this way,” he says optimistically. Suaréz, a father of four, is a carpenter and builder who sells crafts with his wife and dreams of a new sports field for the neighbourhood which he watched emerge from nothing, and which is now prospering on the outer edges of Montevideo.

“There were other informal settlements in the area, but none of them grew like El Monarca,” he says with obvious pride, although he clarifies that the progress was made with considerable effort.

Improving housing is one of the commitments included in the eight MDGs adopted at the United Nations General Assembly in 2000. One of the specific targets set by the international community is “to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers” by 2020.

Although this small country located between Brazil and Argentina, once known as the “Switzerland of South America,” has some of the best social indicators in Latin America, it is not exempt from the problem of slums.

Of the 566 informal settlements in the country, 37 percent were established between 1991 and 2000, the decade of the greatest expansion of slums in Uruguay, according to an October 2008 report by the Latin American non-governmental organisation Un Techo para mi País (A Roof for My Country).

Of that total, 61 percent are in Montevideo and 13.6 percent are in neighbouring Canelones, two of Uruguay’s 19 departments (provinces) which are home to over half of the country’s 3.3 million people.

An estimated 251,000 Uruguayans live in slums today. The largest shantytowns are on the outskirts of the capital, and are 22 years old on average. More than half of the informal settlements have cropped up on publicly owned land.

Unlike the situation in other countries of Latin America, homes made of durable materials like cement blocks and bricks – albeit usually poorly constructed – are predominant in the slums of Uruguay. But there are also plenty of ramshackle sheds made of corrugated tin, scrap wood and cardboard.

In more than 80 percent of the shantytowns, all of the households have some kind of access to clean water, in many cases from public spigots that have been installed in the slums. In addition, nearly all of the homes have electricity, although more than 50 percent receive it from illegal hookups. For sanitation, nearly 80 percent of the homes have cesspits.

The location of the slums on the outer edges of the cities means they are far removed from essential services. Farthest away from most of the shantytowns are police stations and hospitals, followed by daycare centres and high schools, the study found.

Informal settlements began to emerge mainly around Montevideo as a result of the rural exodus caused by the economic crisis of the second half of the 1950s. But they expanded greatly during the 1973-1985 military dictatorship, as economic problems and a shortage of affordable housing grew.

Between the national censuses of 1985 and 1996, 62 of Montevideo’s most central neighbourhoods lost over 10 percent of their inhabitants, while the population on the city’s periphery grew 13 percent, and areas farther out, including parts of the neighbouring departments of Canelones and San José, grew 35 percent.

After neoliberal economic policies took even deeper root in Uruguay in the 1990s, the country fell into a recession between 1999 and 2002, when the financial system collapsed, foreign reserves virtually dried up, and unemployment soared to a record high of over 20 percent. In 2002 alone, wages lost 20 percent of their value and evictions of non-paying tenants rose 20 percent.

Meanwhile, poverty skyrocketed – from 15 percent in 1995 to nearly 34 percent in 2003.

From renting to squatting

The move to a shantytown is not an easy one. Forging ties with people in a similar situation is the first step towards rebuilding one’s life, Cynthia Pérez, social director in the Uruguayan office of A Roof for My Country, told IPS.

“Perhaps the biggest impact on families is on the psychological and social levels, because of the irregularity that characterises life in the slums, not only due to the lack of a title deed for the property that they are occupying, which affects people’s sense of security and their ability to plan for a better future, but also with respect to the lack of basic services,” she said.

“When you live in a regular neighbourhood, you have access to quality services, which means that a significant amount of community organising is not necessary. But that is not the case in informal settlements, where a degree of community cohesion is indispensable,” said Pérez.

The work of organised civil society groups was reinforced in recent years by specific public policies. In 1999, Uruguay reached an agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to create the Irregular Settlements Integration Programme (PIAI), which responds to the Ministry of Housing, Land Management and the Environment.

Since March 2005, when the leftwing Broad Front government of socialist President Tabaré Vázquez took office, 45 slum upgrade projects in 64 neighbourhoods have been carried out or are in the planning stages under the PIAI, for a total cost of 70 million dollars. Twenty-four of the projects have been completed so far, benefiting 30,000 people, Susana Pereyra, the coordinator of the programme, told IPS.

Last year, the IDB approved another credit line of 300 million dollars to finance new PIAI projects.

Social policies have been the main focus of the Vázquez administration. Since 2005 the economy has steadily recovered, poverty has dropped from 34 to 21 percent, and unemployment has plunged to a record low of seven percent. Nevertheless, 21 new informal settlements have emerged in the last three years, indicating that the problem persists despite the efforts made.

El Monarca

Community cohesion and a sense of neighbourhood identity tend to be weak in the informal settlements. But there are exceptions, like El Monarca, where the residents themselves pressured the authorities and contacted civil society organisations to obtain essential services.

The neighbourhood basically emerged out of nowhere. In 1995, a small group of homeless families decided to occupy a large plot of land on the outskirts of Montevideo, which was the property of a landowner who had died and was abandoned by his heirs when they moved overseas to Spain.

The families cut down the fence around the property and divided up the land into 12 by 30 metre plots with stakes and string. They organised themselves, and little by little more evicted, unemployed people began to arrive from Montevideo, as well as people from the countryside joining the decades-old rural exodus to the capital.

The neighbourhood gradually began to take shape. The families set up a local committee, drew up a list of residents, began to charge a regular “social” fee per household, and put red flags on unoccupied lots, to keep each family from owning more than one.

An estimated 350 families live there today. The property was auctioned by the court, and the residents were able to pull together 35,000 dollars, but the Ministry of Housing made a better offer. The process of transferring the property to the families is now underway.

“We decided not to let our arms be twisted, to beat the odds, when the going got rough,” says Suárez.

The families have built up their neighbourhood with their own labour, building materials and skills. The corrugated iron sheeting, wood and cardboard gradually disappeared, and solid homes emerged, as well as the first streets and a community centre.

Through heavy pressure and unflagging efforts, and by drawing the attention of the press, they obtained piped water, electricity, and telephone lines, and the municipal garbage services began to collect their trash. They also organised to build a local health clinic.

The main challenges facing El Monarca now are the installation of a drainage system as well as sewer pipes to replace the cesspools, improvements to the public lighting, and the construction of a sports field and installations in the main square.

“Our energy, love and sacrifice helped built El Monarca, but above all, it was a question of perseverance,” says Suárez.

Fabrizio tells a young woman, Eriko, that it is very cold outside, while logs crackle in the fireplace and the sun sets behind the mountains, adorned with last night’s snowfall. It is all true, but they are acting, rehearsing a famous scene from the opera La Bohème, by Giacomo Puccini.

Terranova with students after the concert. Credit: Yukari Susaki

This is not Paris, where the opera is set, nor is it the stage of any well-known opera house in Europe. There are no expert critics or a panel of judges watching. The youngsters are relaxed, enjoying the delights of their art in Ameglio, a village in southern Italy about 50 kilometres from Naples, surrounded by hills producing tomatoes, courgette or zucchini, honey, molasses and wine.

Fabrizio Bossio, tenor, and Eriko Sumiyoshi, soprano, are two singers training with Italian maestro Vittorio Terranova along with a score of young people at the international opera singing course held each February.

The venue is the Catholic community of Oasi Regina degli Angeli (Queen of Angels Oasis), a self-sustaining not-for-profit foundation created in 2005.

After a long day of vocalising and practising arias and duets, there are no exams or tests of any kind. The students go in to supper, and members of the community cordially serve up what they have grown in their fields with their own hands.

There is always pasta, and wine. Sweet peppers, aubergine or eggplant, squash, olives and a variety of cheeses, sausages and cold meats are set on the table. The celebrated southern Italian camaraderie imbues the students with the original spirit of Italian opera.

Almost every night one of the students, after dessert, will sit at the piano, and everyone ends up drinking toasts and singing Neapolitan songs.

“For the past three years, the course at the Foundation has been organised in collaboration with (renowned tenor Francesco) Zingariello. Apart from this one here in Ameglio, I usually teach several other courses, some of them on a regular basis,” Terranova told IPS.

In his younger days Terranova had a distinguished international career as a tenor, and was sometimes referred to as “the Italian Alfredo Kraus,” for his artistic similarities with the Spanish bel canto tenor who died in 1999.

Now he is famed in the opera world as a teacher. He gives frequent master classes in Austria, Bulgaria, Japan, Venezuela and different parts of Italy.

Terranova, a permanent professor at the state “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory of Music in Milan, taught Argentine tenors José Cura and Darío Volonté, Juan Diego Flórez of Peru, Carlos Ventre of Uruguay and Francesco Meli of Italy, who sing leading roles at the world’s foremost opera houses.

In Ameglio, most of his students are Italians, taking the course for recreation while “resting” from the strenuous activity at their own conservatories. There is also a strong contingent from Japan, and sometimes a couple of students from other European countries.

But Latin Americans also occasionally show up in Terranova’s classrooms. Interestingly, many Latin Americans have attained distinguished positions on the international opera scene.

Among currently distinguished Latin American opera singers who were not Terranova’s students are Chilean sopranos Verónica Villaroel and Cristina Gallardo-Domas, Uruguayan bass-baritone Erwin Schrott, Argentine tenors Marcelo Álvarez and Raúl Giménez, Mexican tenors Ramón Vargas and Rolando Villazón, and Venezuelan tenor Aquiles Machado.

“Why are there so many Latin American singers nowadays, especially tenors, including my former students Ventre, Cura and Flórez? I would say it is because they have followed their vocation. They have concentrated on their goals, studying tirelessly and pursuing perfection until they have become ‘virtuosi’,” Terranova said.

In Ameglio, students spend a week at the Oasis in the company of the 40 people who live and work there: three married couples with eight children between them, five members of a religious order, 10 long-term guests and 10 orphans, all of them in the charge of Father Carmine Zaccariello.

People here “share the common purpose of living according to the example of the earliest Christian communities,” the priest told IPS.

“My ministry here began just over a year ago. I am happy and at peace, also because Ameglio is such a beautiful place, made up of courageous people with great humanity,” said Zaccariello.

The Oasis offers hospitality to young people adrift or in trouble, especially those physically, psychologically or socially disadvantaged, and seeks “to be a place of culture, recreation and prayer,” as well as “a social refuge,” he said.

Meanwhile, the strains of the major composers of Italian opera, like Puccini (1858-1924), Verdi (1813-1901), Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) and Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), float out of the classrooms. Outdoors, the members of the community tend to the gardens, livestock and honey bees.

“All our produce is for our own consumption in the community. We sell mainly honey, propoleum (an anti-bacterial substance produced by bees) and jam at markets outside,” said Zaccariello, who opened the Foundation’s premises to Terranova and Zingariello’s students with the aim of promoting culture.

During the course, students give a concert at the church in nearby Ameglio, offering local people an opportunity to listen to live performances of opera arias which are an essential part of the Italian cultural heritage, by singers who dream of joining choruses at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan or the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

But the path to the glamorous footlights is not at all easy, and one of the first difficulties encountered by qualified aspirants is to find a good teacher.

The lack of competent teachers “is typical,” said Terranova. “Even in Verdi’s time there was a shortage of good teachers, and very few enjoyed recognition.” In fact, Verdi himself wrote a letter saying that only seven of his contemporaries could be considered adequate instructors in the vocal arts, he said.

“Today the situation is practically identical. Few singing teachers are worthy of the name, but they do exist,” he said.

Subsequent difficulties include acquiring the right technique, developing artistic maturity, and making a place for oneself on the opera circuit. Out of the thousands of people worldwide who study singing in conservatories, academies, institutes and with private teachers, only a handful ever sing professionally.

“Students who want to study singing seriously have to map out a careful and precise strategy, which if they are lucky will reward them by helping them find their way. They must invest a great deal of time and effort, and possess confidence, dedication and an iron will,” said Terranova.

“Only those who are completely and unreservedly dedicated to their vocation will succeed; those who follow it gladly, vigorously, joyfully, without ever giving up,” he said.

Pastures with plants that produce less methane and substances that inhibit the nitrogen-fixing of soils are among the solutions the livestock industry is testing in an effort to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change.

In search of ways to reduce livestock greenhouse gas emissions. - Photo Stock

There are already studies to measure the climate costs of that glass of milk, or of a country’s entire milk production, from raising the cow to the final product on the table.

The farming sector’s emissions of climate changing gases grew nearly 17 percent between 1990 and 2005 worldwide, and the biggest increase took place in the developing South (32 percent).

The intestinal fermentation in ruminant livestock, like cattle, releases into the atmosphere methane and nitrous oxide, two potent greenhouse gases. Further emissions come from animal manure and urine, the burning of plant biomass to clear pastures, rice production and biological and chemical processes taking place in soils.

The two contribute 70 percent of the emissions coming from the agricultural sector. Methane and nitrous oxide, respectively, have 21 and 300 times more “greenhouse effect” than carbon dioxide, the principal gas associated with climate change, released primarily by vehicles, industry and electricity production.

While countries are looking for ways to produce more food and overcome the current food price crisis, experts from LEARN (Livestock Emission Abatement Research Network) are studying ways to reduce emissions without undercutting productivity.

That was the focus of discussion amongst officials and researchers gathered in Uruguay Jul. 21-24 for the international workshop on agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases, organized by LEARN. Tierramérica was the only member of the media present for the technical segment of the meeting.

In Uruguay, the agricultural sector generates 91 percent of the country’s methane emissions. In Argentina, farming and ranching are responsible for 44 percent of national greenhouse emissions.

Because it involves a sector that is very important to countries like Uruguay, the reduction of emissions must ensure that pasture-raised livestock has a “natural carácter”, Luis Santos, coordinator of Uruguay’s Climate Change Unit, told Tierramérica. One option is to modify the diet of the animals, using varieties of forage that are less rich in methane, he said.

Pasture systems occupy 26 to 40 percent of the world’s productive lands. And cattle emit 37 percent of the methane and 65 percent of the nitrous oxide generated by human-led activities. The vast majority of those gases come from pasture systems in Latin America and Asia.

Tim Clough, a scientist from New Zealand, noted that the atmospheric concentration of nitrous oxide continues to rise 0.26 percent anually. Globally, the nitrous oxide output is dominated by agricultural sources, he said, underscoring that it is urgent to reduce these emissions.

The main sources of nitrous oxide in pastures are manure and nitrogen-based fertilizers. Nitrous oxide is produced in the soil through microbe processes like nitrification or the conversion of ammonium nitrate, according to Clough, an expert in soil sciences from Lincoln University in New Zealand.

Clough suggested, as is being done in his country, using nitrification inhibitors, chemical substances added to nitrogen fertilizers (mineral or organic) or applied directly to the soil, which inhibit the activity of bacteria.

LEARN was founded last year in New Zealand, and includes representatives from politics, science and industry from some 40 countries, including agricultural giants like the United States, Brazil, Australia, India, China and Argentina.

Its aim is to define methods for measuring, verifying, communicating and mitigating the production of greenhouse gases from the livestock sector.

“The first objective is, in the context of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, to determine the factors of emissions in order to carry out an inventory of greenhouse gases released by the sector,” explained Santos.

“The countries of the developing South, according to the Convention, must take measures but are not obligated, like the industrialized countries, to reduce their emissions. That is why we want to know, for the countries like New Zealand that are obligated (to reduce emissions), how much they emit and how they are going to mitigate emissions,” he said.

To that end, a New Zealand Project presented in the meeting demonstrated the procedures for tracking greenhouse gases in the farming sector. In milk production, for example, this starts with emissions from the cow itself, to industrialization and transport.

Latin American personalities like Oscar Arias, Ricky Martin and Franklin Chang are meeting Aug 12-14 with other prominent scientists, artists and activists from around the world to condemn the militarism that continues in times of relative peace, and its effects on the environment.

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The participants in “Peace in Peacetime: International Conference on Peace and Development” will draft a declaration in which they will exhort the approximately 100 heads of state who will gather for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Aug 26-Sep 4) to halt military operations that harm people and the environment, such as those the United States carries out on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

“The aim is to motivate global reflection on peace in order to confront problems like terrorism, environmental destruction and social inequalities,” Antonio Fas Alzamora, president of the Puerto Rican Senate and organizer of the conference alongside the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, told Tierramérica.

The declaration will urge the inclusion in the Johannesburg Summit agenda of the negative impact of armamentism and military operations on the environment and on human development, an area the 1992 Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, failed to address, he said.

The document serving as the basis for the Puerto Rico meeting states that the world's combined weapons budgets in 2000 were the equivalent of 130 dollars per person on the planet, or 35 percent of what a quarter of the world population earns in a year.

The initiative is also being led by former Costa Rican president, Oscar Arias (1986-1990), winner of the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize. The event under way in San Juan includes the presence of Maneka Gandhi, lawmaker and social justice activists from India, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, Costa Rican astronaut and scientist Franklin Change, and U.S. Democratic Party activist Jesse Jackson.

Other notables at the Peace in Peacetime conference are Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin, Ireland's Betty Williams, 1976 Nobel Peace laureate, Deepak Chopra, a “poet-prophet” of alternative medicine, and Ernesto Sábato, renowned Argentine author, among others.