Flooding is a complex, sequential plant stressor, and its negative impacts on crops persist even after floodwaters recede. Credit: Shutterstock

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, US, Oct 28 2026 (IPS)

Recently, countries around the world, including the United States of America, celebrated the United Nations 2026 World Food Day. This year’s theme, “Innovate Today. Nourish Tomorrow,” highlighted how efforts to foster innovation and forward-thinking solutions can help to ensure that everyone in our world has access to sufficient, diverse, safe, and nutritious foods while safeguarding the planet for future generations.

But realizing this vision and developing forward-thinking solutions to help nourish 9 billion people including the 645 million people who still face hunger, requires recognizing and investing in research on emerging agricultural challenges, specifically those that remain overlooked and underestimated.

Many of the currently grown agricultural crop varieties cannot withstand flooding and crop and yield losses of up to 100 percent have been reported both nationally and globally. Crops and yield losses arising because of flooding translate into economic losses and ultimately food insecurity

Arguably, flooding is one of the emerging yet underestimated and underappreciated threats to important agricultural crops, including rice and corn, and to food security, which has increased in frequency and intensity in recent years because of climate change.

Globally, between 2008 and 2018, according to a Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations report, flooding was ranked as the second driving factor resulting on crop production losses.

Flooding deprives soil and plant roots of oxygen, a necessary ingredient for all plant-sustaining life processes, including water uptake, respiration, and photosynthesis. Consequently, plants’ cellular, physiological, metabolic, and biochemical processes are disrupted, impacted, and impaired. Without oxygen, plants’ growth and development is impacted, and if flooding persists for days, they suffocate and die.

Sadly, many of the currently grown agricultural crop varieties cannot withstand flooding and crop and yield losses of up to 100 percent have been reported both nationally and globally. Crops and yield losses arising because of flooding translate into economic losses and ultimately food insecurity.

Alarmingly, flooding also negatively impacts soil biology, chemistry, functioning, quality, and microbial communities while disrupting the many beneficial relationships plants form with microbes, relationships that help plants deal with other stressors and promote growth and resilience.

Concerningly, flooding is a complex, sequential plant stressor, and its negative impacts on crops persist even after floodwaters recede. After floodwater subsides, agricultural crops enter the second phase of flooding stress, referred to as the post-flooding stress phase.

During the post-flooding stress phase, plants face additional stresses, including reoxygenation and dehydration, impaired root function, and nutritional deficiencies due to altered nutrient uptake. At the same time, plants are vulnerable to pathogens, diseases, and pests, threats that can collectively lead to agricultural crop losses.

The good news, however, is that science, research, and scientific discoveries can provide the forward-thinking solutions needed to safeguard our food systems against emerging threats.

But for research to provide these solutions, researchers working to address these questions must be funded.

Take the case of flooding. With funding and investments, researchers can pursue multiple research pathways to understand flooding while also pursuing bold and innovative ideas with the goal of developing and advancing science-based solutions to mitigate the negative and detrimental impacts flooding has on agricultural crops and soils that underpin plant and ecosystem health.

First, scientists can build a comprehensive understanding of flooding, including discovering the many strategies plants use to resist and recover from flooding and post-flooding stress.

Second, researchers can pursue both short- and long-term field-based experiments that incorporate thousands of crop varieties, including wild varieties, across different soil types to establish a more comprehensive understanding of flooding and post-flooding impacts on plant and soil health, biology, chemistry, and microbes, as well as the legacy and cascading effects of flooding.

Concurrently, this research can identify microbial taxa, communities, functions, and traits that improve flooding tolerance. Additionally, researchers can work to determine whether the current management practices that have been put in place to protect soil health and help plants resist biotic and abiotic threats, including regenerative practices, are keeping pace with intensifying flooding events.

Third and most importantly, with funding, scientists from multiple disciplines, including plant biology, entomology, engineering, agronomy, microbial ecology, predictive modelling, breeding, and soil health biology, can collaborate to design innovative solutions and accelerate the discovery of new solutions to flooding.

Ultimately, mitigating threats like flooding that could derail and undermine progress toward building climate-resilient crops and improving soil health and biology requires a comprehensive understanding of flooding and its impact on soil health, biology, and plants.

With sufficient funding and investment, scientists, in collaboration with stakeholders, can develop transformative solutions to address flooding and fulfill 2026 World Food Day theme “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” Time is of the essence.

Esther Ngumbi, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

Governments today face an extraordinarily difficult set of tasks: cutting emissions, protecting nature, reducing pollution, creating jobs, strengthening economies, and improving people’s health, all while public finances remain under pressure.

Sheila Aggarwal-Khan

For much of my career, I have worked at the intersection of industry, the economy, and the environment. One lesson has become increasingly clear to me over the decades: the greatest gains come when chemical safety is built into economic and industrial decisions from the outset, rather than addressed only after harm has occurred. The global construction sector makes this particularly clear; chemicals and materials selected today can remain in buildings for decades. Safer choices at the design stage can prevent risks that otherwise become costly and difficult to manage decades later.

At the first International Conference of the Global Framework on Chemicals, taking place in Geneva this November, this lesson will come to the fore as governments, industry, workers, scientists, and civil society, including NGOs, consider how to accelerate implementation across the full life cycle of chemicals and products through sectors where change can happen at scale.

This matters because managing chemicals one substance at a time – while essential in some cases – cannot be the full strategy.

Agriculture offers a clear example. Under the Framework, stakeholders have committed to take effective measures by 2035 to phase out highly hazardous pesticides where risks remain unmanaged, and where safer and affordable alternatives are available. A new Global Alliance on Highly Hazardous Pesticides aims to turn that commitment into coordinated action, while projects supported by the Global Framework on Chemicals Fund are already helping farmers in East and West Africa move towards safer approaches.

Textiles offer another example. Argentina is testing a digital product information system that allows chemical information to move with products through the value chain. That kind of transparency can help businesses identify hazardous inputs, exposure risks, the liability that can come with that, and then choose safer alternatives and determine whether fabrics can be safely used, reused or recycled.

Exposure risks cannot be separated from the economic systems in which chemicals are used. This is also why chemicals policy cannot be driven by single ministries. Agriculture, environment, industry, health, labour, trade, and fiscal policies all influence which chemicals are used, how products are made, traded, and whether safer alternatives can compete.

The objective is not more bureaucracy. It is greater coherence in which multiple, often competing objectives across sectors, can be discussed together to find solutions that work.

Governments have a particularly important role to play in creating the conditions in which better solutions can compete and scale. Clear regulation can give businesses confidence to invest in safer alternatives. Better information can move through supply chains. Industrial and fiscal policies can support cleaner production, while chemical safety and the safety of the sectors in which chemicals are used—from agriculture, to construction, to electronics, and textiles-can be considered alongside circularity, competitiveness, jobs, and health from the outset.

The economic case for doing so is strong. The global chemicals market was valued at roughly US$5 trillion in 2017 and projected to double by 2030. A 2023 study estimated that lead exposure alone was associated with trillions of dollars in global economic losses in 2019.

Countries building industries today also have an opportunity to avoid the costly legacies inherited by economies that industrialized first as they can leapfrog to clean, prosperous economies without having to go through an era comprising pollution, health and environment impacts, and clean up. Strong institutions, modern chemicals legislation, safer technologies, and green and sustainable chemistry can help countries build competitive industries without locking in the same liabilities.

Finance, of course, is the engine of implementation. Incentivizing industries towards safer chemicals, safer products and production practices, strengthening national chemicals management systems, and scaling safer alternatives all require investment. The way in which public finances can leverage private investment, the type of fiscal policy that incentivizes these investments, and the right enabling regulatory environment, can make this journey viable. Unlocking domestic resources in this way, coupled with funding from financing mechanisms such as the Global Environment Facility and the Global Framework on Chemicals Fund and private investment all have a role.

The challenge is therefore bigger than only managing a longer and longer list of harmful chemicals. It is to make chemical and product safety part of how whole sectors grow, innovate, and compete.

If we can get that right, safer chemistry can become part of how stronger economies are built, with safety built in from the start for people and planet.

Sheila Aggarwal-Khan is Director of the UNEP Industry & Economy Division

IPS UN Bureau

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Bangladesh has earned global recognition for reducing deaths from cyclones and floods. Early warning systems, cyclone shelters, embankments and community preparedness have transformed the country’s disaster response. Yet another climate crisis is receiving far less attention: the economic damage climate change is quietly inflicting on households, farmers, workers, businesses and public finances.

Shahiduzzaman

The uncomfortable reality is that Bangladesh still lacks a comprehensive annual system for calculating climate induced microeconomic damage. Losses are recorded separately through agricultural damage, disaster assessments, health costs, infrastructure destruction, lost working days, business interruption, declining household income and climate induced migration. As a result, much of the country’s real climate bill remains invisible.

Available evidence shows that the cost is already enormous. The World Bank estimates that tropical cyclones cost Bangladesh around US$1 billion annually. It has also warned that a severe flood could reduce national GDP by as much as 9 percent, while climate change could cause around one third of agricultural GDP to be lost by 2050. As many as 13.3 million people could become internal climate migrants by 2050 because of climate related pressures on agriculture, water and land. The economic burden is no longer limited to cyclones and floods. Extreme heat is emerging as a major source of economic loss. A 2025 World Bank assessment found that heat related physical and mental health conditions resulted in an estimated 250 million lost workdays in Bangladesh in 2024. The resulting economic loss was estimated at between US$1.33 billion and US$1.78 billion, equivalent to around 0.3 to 0.4 percent of GDP.

This should fundamentally change how Bangladesh understands climate damage. A disaster does not have to destroy a house, factory or bridge to cause economic loss. When extreme heat reduces the productivity of a construction worker, garment worker, farmer, transport worker or street vendor, the economy loses output.

The hidden climate bill therefore extends far beyond physical destruction.

Consider a farmer in coastal Bangladesh. Rising salinity may gradually reduce agricultural production. The immediate result is lower household income. But the consequences do not end there. A family may sell livestock, borrow money, reduce food consumption or withdraw children from school. Eventually, one or more family members may migrate to Dhaka or another city.

A climate shock that begins in a field can therefore become a problem for the labour market, housing, education, health services and urban infrastructure.

The same chain of losses occurs during floods. A small shopkeeper can lose inventory. A transport worker can lose several days of income. A factory may remain physically undamaged but stop production because roads are submerged or workers cannot reach their workplace. Households may spend their savings on repairs instead of education, healthcare or investment.

At the same time, the government must spend more on emergency relief, damaged roads, embankment repair, reconstruction and public health.

Climate change therefore creates a double burden: private income and productive assets are lost while public expenditure increases.

This is why Bangladesh urgently needs a national climate loss accounting system. It should systematically measure household and productive asset losses, agricultural and fisheries damage, lost income and working days, health and productivity costs, business interruption, supply chain disruption, displacement and loss of human capital.

Such a system would tell policymakers not simply how much a cyclone or flood costs in physical damage, but how much income ordinary citizens lose and how much economic activity Bangladesh sacrifices.

This is particularly important because a large share of Bangladesh’s workers remain in informal employment. Agricultural labourers, construction workers, transport workers, street vendors and small entrepreneurs often have limited access to paid leave, insurance or social protection. When a flood, cyclone or heatwave prevents them from working, their income can disappear immediately.

Climate change is therefore also an inequality crisis.

A wealthier household may be able to repair its home, relocate temporarily or pay medical expenses. A poor household may have to sell productive assets or take on debt. For families living close to the poverty line, one climate shock can erase years of economic progress.

Bangladesh has taken important steps toward adaptation. Its National Adaptation Plan for 2023 to 2050 identifies major adaptation priorities and recognises the enormous investment required to protect people, livelihoods and development. (UNDP) But the gap between ambition and implementation remains a serious concern.

The first major gap is data. Bangladesh cannot effectively manage climate related economic damage without knowing its full scale. The government should publish an annual National Climate Economic Loss Report covering households, agriculture, businesses, labour productivity, health and public infrastructure.

The second gap is institutional coordination. Climate adaptation cannot remain primarily the responsibility of environmental or disaster management agencies. Climate risks must be integrated into agriculture, finance, labour, health, housing, transport, industry, education and urban planning.

The third gap is prevention. Bangladesh has become relatively successful at responding after disasters, but prevention deserves much greater economic priority. A resilient drainage system that prevents repeated business disruption may be more valuable than repeatedly repairing flood damage. A climate resilient crop can protect rural income for years. A heat resilient workplace can preserve thousands of working days.

The fourth challenge is finance. Bangladesh cannot meet its enormous adaptation needs through public budgets alone. International climate finance, concessional financing, private investment, insurance and innovative financial mechanisms will all be necessary.

International experience offers useful lessons. The Netherlands demonstrates how flood protection can be integrated into long term spatial planning, infrastructure and water management. Its experience shows that flood resilience can be treated as an economic strategy rather than simply an emergency response.

Singapore offers another important lesson, particularly for Bangladesh’s cities. Its approach to rising temperatures combines urban greenery, heat modelling, climate sensitive planning and protection of vulnerable populations. Dhaka could similarly treat trees, shaded public spaces, cool buildings, drainage and water management as economic infrastructure rather than merely environmental amenities.

Bangladesh can also build on its own success. Its cyclone warning system and community preparedness programmes demonstrate that locally rooted approaches can deliver remarkable results. The same principle should now be applied to protecting livelihoods, small businesses, agriculture and workers.

Most importantly, adaptation should be judged by economic outcomes. Instead of simply reporting how much money is spent on a climate project, the government should measure how many jobs are protected, how much income is safeguarded, how many working days are preserved and how much future economic loss is avoided.

The real climate bill is not simply the cost of rebuilding a bridge after a flood. It is the farmer who produces less for years because of salinity. It is the worker who loses productive days because of extreme heat. It is the small entrepreneur whose capital disappears in a flood. It is the child whose education is interrupted because household income collapses. It is the family forced to migrate after losing its land.

When millions of such individual losses accumulate, they become a national economic crisis.

Bangladesh has demonstrated that it can protect its people from the deadliest consequences of climate disasters. The next challenge is to protect their livelihoods and economic future.

The country cannot manage what it does not measure. It is time to move from simply counting disasters to counting lost income, lost jobs, lost working days, damaged productive assets and the GDP that climate change prevents Bangladesh from generating.

The objective should not simply be to calculate how much climate change costs Bangladesh. It should be to determine how much Bangladesh can save by investing in resilience today.

Climate adaptation is no longer merely an environmental responsibility. For Bangladesh, it is an investment in GDP, employment, poverty reduction, human development and long term economic security. The climate bill is already being paid. The failure is that we still do not know its full size.

The author is the Editor and CSO of News Network.

IPS UN Bureau

Communities face multi-layered crises in Afghanistan, including underlying poverty, climate-related shocks and the aftermath of four decades of conflict. Credit: UNAMA/Ahmad Khalid Khaliqi

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 21 2026 (IPS)

In recent months, Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis has severely deteriorated, with the UN reporting record-high levels of acute malnutrition and hunger. Compounded by rampant human rights violations, limited access to basic services, and persistent barriers to humanitarian aid, the UN warns that conditions could considerably worsen in the coming months.

The latest figures from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) show that approximately 15.9 million people—32 percent of the analyzed population—are currently facing Crisis-levels of hunger (IPC Phase 3) or worse. Of those, roughly 3.4 million face Emergency-levels of hunger (IPC Phase 4), just one step away from the highest level, which could entail the onset of famine.

IPC projects that food insecurity could surge from November to April during the winter lean season. As agricultural activity slows down, unemployment remains widespread, and harsh weather hinders aid delivery and basic services, IPC estimates that nearly 19.2 million people—including 10 million children—could face Crisis-levels of hunger or worse, with 5 million at risk of Emergency-levels of hunger.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warn that food assistance, agricultural support, and healthcare operations must be scaled up ahead of the winter season. WFP Country Director John Aylieff stressed that the “window to act” is rapidly closing if families are to survive the winter “with dignity.” Meanwhile, FAO Representative Richard Trenchard underscored that creating dependable income is essential in preparing communities to withstand future shocks.

Ashish Damle, Save the Children’s Country Director in Afghanistan, warned that the country is trapped in a “deadly” hunger crisis with “no end in sight,” as humanitarian needs rise while critical aid funding dries up. Young people are projected to bear the heaviest burdens, as roughly 4.04 million children under five will require treatment for acute malnutrition in 2027—a 9 percent increase from 2026. Severe acute malnutrition is forecast to surge by 16 percent in the coming year, rising from 942,000 in 2026 to 1.1 million in 2027.

With winter approaching, Damle stressed that harsh weather conditions will make survival even harder for children already facing acute malnutrition.“Our doctors and nurses witness the devastating consequences of the hunger crisis every day: malnourished children arriving at our clinics, mothers going hungry so their families have something to eat, and parents desperately seeking help as their children’s health deteriorates,” said Damle.

Despite recent rainfall improvements and promising harvests, widespread unemployment and weak purchasing power still keep adequate nutrition out of reach for most families, even when it is available. Conditions are compounded by the return of over 1.2 million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan in 2026, further stretching already limited resources.

“I saw firsthand that this crisis is not simply about whether food exists, but whether people can afford it, whether they can earn an income, access basic services, or whether they have anything left to fall back on when the next shock comes,” said Olga Cherevko, Spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). She added that years of conflict, economic instability, and climate shocks have severely eroded community resilience, leaving families with little capacity to adapt to new shocks.

Cherevko highlighted the Taliban’s systematic exclusion of women and girls from education and public life as a primary driver of the crisis. Figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) show that Afghanistan stands to lose up to 20,000 women teachers and 5,400 female health workers by the end of the decade. She emphasized that barring women and girls from society has alarming implications for access to healthcare, dietary diversity, education, and the ability to sustain livelihoods.

On October 15, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) issued a report detailing the persistence of human rights abuses between July and September. During this period, UNAMA documented over 50 cases of women arrested or detained relating to the hijab. Women continue to be barred from accessing health clinics and markets without a male guardian (mahram).

The mission also recorded around 443 cases of arbitrary detention and 97 instances of ill-treatment over minor infractions such as hijab violations, trimmed beards, skipped prayers, and listening to music. It further documented public corporal punishments of 28 individuals, including six women, and the detention of 14 former security force members, with at least four others killed.

Beyond individual rights, Afghanistan has also experienced a severe breakdown of civic space conditions over the past year, marked by the arbitrary suspension of multiple media outlets without clear reasons or opportunities for appeal. New legislation enacted in August bans all demonstrations and protests, effectively silencing civilian dissent across the country.

Cherevko emphasized the need for sustained, expanded humanitarian aid while calling for strategic investments in long-term resilience. She highlighted agriculture, rural livelihoods, local markets, employment, water systems, and health services as key areas for investment, stressing that expanding opportunities for women in the workforce is essential in building communities that are less dependent on emergency assistance.

“We cannot keep asking humanitarian aid to compensate indefinitely for the absence of economic opportunity and essential public services. We must act before winter, not after families have exhausted their options,” said Cherevko.

Ground operations remain significantly constrained due to persistent funding shortfalls. According to OCHA, as of mid-September, the agency had received just 31 percent of the funding needed to support Afghanistan’s 21.9 million vulnerable people. Earlier in August, WFP warned that these shortfalls had forced nutrition programs to scale back when they are needed the most, leaving more children at risk of being malnourished.

Despite these shortfalls, the UN and its partners continue to work on the ground to deliver emergency and essential services, reaching roughly 8.3 million people with at least one form of assistance between January and July.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Credit: UN Photo/Luke Powell

By FAO and WFP
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct 20 2026 (IPS)

Nearly 40 percent of the population of Afghanistan is projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity this winter, and cases of acute malnutrition are expected to soar during 2027, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned.

This is according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, which projects that approximately 19.2 million people (38% of the population) will face high levels of acute food insecurity during the November-April lean season, which lasts through the winter. This is an increase from 17.4 million projected for the same period a year earlier.

An estimated five million of those who are acutely food insecure will be facing emergency levels of hunger (IPC Phase 4) – double the number projected for April-September 2026 – meaning immediate food assistance and urgent emergency agriculture support are needed to prevent deaths and total livelihood collapse. The most severe classifications are projected in Badakhshan, Badghis, Daykundi, Ghor, Samangan, Sar-e-Pul and rural Ghazni.

Acute malnutrition is beginning to define the crisis in Afghanistan with mothers and children at the forefront. Malnutrition cases are expected to increase by nearly 10 percent compared to 2026 to four million. One-quarter of these are expected to be severe and life-threatening. Prevention and treatment services are lagging well behind despite cases increasing, leaving women and particularly children more exposed.

The crisis in Afghanistan is being driven by several shocks that are affecting Afghan families and the humanitarian response. More than 1.2 million Afghans have been forced to return home from Iran and Pakistan this year, adding pressure to already overstretched communities. Border closures and disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and other critical trade routes are also driving up prices for basic goods. At the same time, dramatic funding shortfalls are limiting humanitarian assistance just as needs are growing. All these issues are converging to drive hunger and malnutrition higher, particularly as winter approaches.

Improved harvests have not restored families’ access to nutritious food

Favorable rainfall supported crop production and pasture recovery in 2026, benefiting many farming households. The anticipated El Niño season could also bring above-average rainfall, helping replenish water sources, restore pasture and support winter and spring crops. Timely agricultural support could help farmers turn favorable conditions into food and income, but rainfall alone will not secure the next harvest. High fertilizer and agricultural input costs and low crop prices may force poorer farmers to plant less or use fewer inputs. Wetter conditions also increase the risk of localized flooding, erosion, crop damage and plant and animal disease.

However, improved harvests and greater food availability are not necessarily translating into improved food security. Persistent unemployment means many families who do not grow their own food cannot afford a nutritious diet, even when food is available. Winter will bring fewer opportunities for agricultural work, further reducing incomes and increasing the need for humanitarian assistance.

Scale up support before needs deepen further

FAO and WFP are calling for urgent funding to scale up food assistance, emergency agricultural support, and malnutrition prevention and treatment. Support must reach families before winter restricts access to vulnerable communities and farmers miss critical planting windows. Afghanistan cannot afford another year of worsening hunger and malnutrition.

Richard Trenchard, FAO Representative in Afghanistan:

“This year’s strong harvest shows what Afghan farmers can achieve. But for a parent with no steady income, nutritious food in the market can still be out of reach for their family. The drumbeat of shock and crisis is relentless, but we know progress is possible. Past experience shows that timely, targeted food and emergency agricultural assistance can bring acute food insecurity down. Helping families grow or afford nutritious food for their children can also help prevent malnutrition long before children need treatment. We need to scale up these practical solutions now, act ahead of foreseeable shocks and invest in processing and local agribusinesses that connect farmers to markets and create jobs. Families need support to get through this winter and opportunities to earn a dependable living that helps them withstand the next shock.”

John Aylieff, WFP Country Director in Afghanistan

“Hunger and malnutrition are tightening their grip on Afghanistan’s families, pushing more people towards the brink just as resources to respond are running short. This crisis is increasingly being defined by the gap between growing needs and shrinking funding. We still have a window to act, but it is closing fast. With urgent support, families can get through the winter with dignity. Without it, many will face impossible choices no parent should have to make.”

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

Woodlands in nearly every forested country face threats from climate-change-driven fires and deforestation pressures fueled by economic interests exploiting natural resources. Credit: Imran Schah/IPS

By Stephanie Dowlen
MALMO, Sweden, Oct 16 2026 (IPS)

On Monday, governments from across the world will gather in Armenia for COP17, the UN biodiversity summit, to assess progress on the global agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. For anyone who cares about the livability of our planet for future generations, and the richness of life on earth, the stakes could hardly be higher. Policy makers will debate targets, implementation, and the lack of money to protect nature, in particular the failure of developed countries to fulfil their obligations. But there is a more basic question that should put at the center of those discussions: what happens when the financial system governments are counting on to fund nature protection is also financing its destruction?

A new analysis by the Forests & Finance coalition provides an alarming answer. Since 2020, banks have provided $595 billion to companies operating in high-risk agribusiness and metal and mineral mining sectors across tropical forest regions. Of that, $351 billion went to agro-commodities and $244 billion to mining. These are among the primary industries driving deforestation, land degradation, pollution and conflicts with communities across the tropical forest regions of South America, Southeast Asia and Central and West Africa.

The significance of that figure goes beyond the amount of money involved. It exposes a fundamental weakness in the way the biodiversity crisis is being addressed. Governments have committed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to aligning financial flows with biodiversity goals, yet financial institutions remain largely free to finance nature destruction as a risk to themselves rather than as harm they may in fact be helping to cause.

Nature-related risks are not like ordinary financial risks. A bank might assess how drought could affect a company’s revenues without adequately considering whether the company itself helped create that vulnerability by clearing forests, draining wetlands or degrading watersheds. By the time those consequences appear on a balance sheet, an ecosystem may already have crossed a threshold from which recovery is extremely difficult. The report finds that current financial risk frameworks and sustainability policies remain woefully ill-equipped to assess these real-world impacts.

The consequences are already visible in some of the world’s most important forest landscapes. In Brazil, banks have provided $83 billion to the soy sector since 2020, including $6.8 billion this year alone, despite the collapse in January of the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which had been credited with reducing soy-driven deforestation by 69 percent in monitored areas. The withdrawal of major exporters from the agreement removed a critical safeguard and traceability system keeping forests standing, yet banks have not publicly taken a position on its collapse.

Indonesia presents a similarly disturbing pattern. Banks have provided $67.1 billion to the country’s notoriously destructive pulp and palm oil sectors since 2020, including financing for companies associated with repeated breaches of their own commitments to avoid deforestation, peatland development and exploitation. Peat drainage and deforestation leave landscapes less able to retain water and resist fire, increasing the vulnerability of communities to climate extremes.

At the same time, the financial flows behind mining are growing rapidly. Governments and companies are scrambling to secure copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and other minerals needed for energy technologies, while demand is also being driven by geopolitical competition and the expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Financing for mining in tropical forest-rich countries increased 55 percent between 2016 and 2025, with lithium financing increasing more than elevenfold and nickel financing by 183 percent.

There is a danger in treating every new mine as part of a clean transition simply because its minerals may eventually be used in low-carbon technologies. Mining in tropical forest regions is associated with ecosystem destruction, pollution, land conflicts, violence and violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. A transition that sacrifices some of the world’s most biodiverse landscapes and the people who depend on them is not sustainable, whatever the end product.

What makes this particularly troubling is how little protection many banks actually require before providing this financing. The average score in the report’s assessment of bank policies covering forest-risk agro-commodities is only 25 percent, while 39 percent of banks assessed scored below 20 percent. JPMorgan Chase, one of the world’s largest and most influential banks, scored just 18 percent.

Voluntary commitments have done little to close this gap. Governments now need to establish binding rules requiring financial institutions to conduct meaningful environmental and human rights due diligence across corporate groups and supply chains, disclose where their money is going and what impacts that financing is associated with, and face consequences when they finance severe and unresolved harms.

Financial regulators also need to recognize biodiversity loss as more than a distant environmental concern. Tropical forests underpin food systems, water supplies and economic activity, while their degradation can create cascading risks across economies. Yet there is still no equivalent to the regulatory framework used for financial institutions considered systemically important, even as the degradation of these natural systems threatens consequences that extend far beyond individual companies or projects.

But banks should not wait for governments to act. They can establish clear red lines against deforestation, ecosystem conversion and serious human rights abuses, make those requirements enforceable in financing agreements, independently verify compliance and suspend or terminate financing when clients fail to address serious violations. Those safeguards must respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent, and provide affected communities with meaningful access to remedy.

The choice facing governments at COP17 is therefore not simply how much money to mobilize for biodiversity. It is whether they are prepared to stop the financial system from undermining those investments in the first place.

The evidence is increasingly difficult to dismiss. Hundreds of billions of dollars are flowing into industries that are rapidly degrading the natural systems on which economies, and the web of life, depend. Governments have already promised to align financial flows with biodiversity goals. Now they need to make that commitment real.

At COP17, following the money would be a good place to start.

IPS UN Bureau

Satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz. Credit WikiMedia

By UN Women
GENEVA, Oct 13 2026 (IPS)

An additional 11.7 million women and girls could face food insecurity by the end of 2026, as the escalation in the Middle East and disruption to the Strait of Hormuz drive up food prices and strain livelihoods and household resources, according to a new UN Women analysis published today.

“Food security risks of the Middle East escalation for women and girls” finds that women and girls account for 53 per cent of the projected 22 million additional people who could face food insecurity by the end of the year across 28 countries analyzed. This is in addition to an estimated 208 million women and girls who were already food insecure or undernourished in these countries. These are scenario-based estimates, not forecasts.

“We know, as a matter of fact, that when food becomes scarce, women eat less and last. They often shift to less nutritious diets or skip meals altogether to prioritize the needs of others. Gender inequalities dictate who has access to food and the resources to obtain it. Therefore, investing in women and girls is a sure way of ensuring the well-being of families and communities,” said UN Women Deputy Executive Director Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda.

Disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz are driving up energy, fertilizer and transport costs, pushing up food prices. Combined with potential income and livelihood losses, these rising costs could make food harder to afford. For many women, existing inequalities in employment and access to financial services leave them with fewer resources to absorb these shocks.

More populous countries were found to have the largest numbers of women and girls who could face food insecurity. However, countries such as South Sudan, Sudan, Haiti, Yemen and Palestine face more concentrated risks, as multiple sources of vulnerability overlap.

In South Sudan, the additional number of women and girls who could face food insecurity represents around 14 per cent – or one in seven – of the South Sudanese female population – the highest proportion across the countries analyzed. In Lebanon, the additional number of women and girls who could face food insecurity represents nearly 4 per cent of the Lebanese female population, the second-highest proportion.

In many countries, women and girls make up a higher proportion of people who could face food insecurity. For example, in Afghanistan, women and girls are estimated to make up 60 per cent of people who could face food insecurity; in Yemen, more than 57 per cent; and in Sudan, nearly 56 per cent.

Employment also affects food security. In Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Sudan and Syria, around 80 per cent of women are outside the labour force. In Afghanistan and Yemen, this rises to around 95 per cent, the report notes. Among employed women, more than 80 per cent are in vulnerable employment in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Haiti, Mali and South Sudan.

According to the analysis, access to financial services could provide a buffer, but many women lack access to these services. In Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen, fewer than one in five women owns a bank or mobile money account. This can limit women’s ability to save, receive remittances or cash assistance, or borrow safely when prices rise or incomes fall, increasing reliance on informal lenders, relatives or other household members and potentially putting their safety and protection at risk.

UN Women calls for an integrated response that combines food and cash assistance with nutrition, protection, livelihoods and agricultural support, while ensuring women can access land, credit, services and other productive assets. It also urges resources to be targeted to places where women and girls face multiple, overlapping risks, and delivered at the right time – including ahead of agricultural seasons. Better data are needed to identify where food insecurity is worsening and who is eating less, losing livelihoods, taking on more unpaid care work, or facing heightened nutrition and protection risks within households.

UN Women joins the calls for de-escalation and respect for international law and echoes the Secretary-General’s call to all concerned parties to work towards diplomatic solutions that advance regional and international peace and security.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

A mother and her child stand in the wreckage of their destroyed home in Toamasina, Madagascar, following a devastating cyclone. Credit: UNICEF/Tsiory Ny Aina Andriantsoarana

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2026 (IPS)

New figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) project that the impending 2026-2027 El Niño cycle could be one of the strongest on record. Marked by unusually wet and dry conditions, this cycle is forecast to trigger a host of extreme weather events, threatening the health, security, education, and development of over 347 million children worldwide.

“For children, El Niño is far more than a weather pattern. It can mean increased displacement, malnutrition, water shortages, and disease outbreaks. Children are also at risk of schools closing, while families could experience added financial hardship,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, emphasizing that anticipatory action is critical in protecting communities from climate shocks in the coming months.

Nearly half of the world’s children—roughly 1.1 billion—are already exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards, including droughts, extreme heat, and floods. The impending El Niño cycle could affect children and communities across nearly 100 countries and territories between October and December 2026.

Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan, UNICEF Statistics and Monitoring Manager, tells IPS that children are uniquely vulnerable because of their early developmental stage and dependence on essential services and caregivers. This significantly limits their ability to withstand climate shocks, especially as basic services begin to disappear when extreme weather hits.

“Communities may not have fully recovered from one shock before another one strikes, causing the impacts to compound over time,” she said.

The Asia-Pacific region is projected to face the heaviest toll, with roughly 190 million children estimated to be at risk. Substantial populations are also critically vulnerable across East and Southern Africa, with 41 million children vulnerable to climate shocks, alongside another 41 million in Latin America and the Caribbean. Approximately 22 million children are similarly vulnerable in Europe and Central Asia, followed by 20 million in the Middle East and North Africa, and 20 million in West and Central Africa.

El Niño’s regional impacts are expected to vary significantly and could compound pre-existing humanitarian crises. Swaminathan underscored that climate shocks that are manageable in some areas can become pronounced humanitarian crises in others.

Tropical nations—such as Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and the Philippines—are forecast to face unusually dry conditions, driving weaker agricultural outputs and severe water scarcity. This, in turn, could elevate rates of acute malnutrition and adverse health outcomes among children.

Conversely, communities in the Greater Horn of Africa could face alarmingly high levels of rainfall, particularly in Somalia, where there is a greater risk of riverine and flash flooding. Children in this region are especially vulnerable to outbreaks of water-borne diseases.

Between 2016 and 2023, weather-related disasters displaced more than 20,000 children daily. Swaminathan stressed to IPS that regions facing wetter climates could experience exacerbated displacement as floods push more communities far from their homes and into crowded, temporary shelters, which amplifies protection risks.

In protracted conflict or crisis zones such as Chad and Afghanistan, El Niño poses a direct threat to survival for children. Already bearing the burdens of extreme hunger, displacement, and an overwhelming lack of access to essential services such as protection, these children have no safety net when climate shocks ravage their communities, as they are already on the brink of collapse.

Beyond physical hazards, UNICEF’s findings highlight that disruptions to schooling are among the most alarming consequences of the impending cycle. Severe droughts and floods threaten widespread school closures, declining attendance, and rising dropout rates. In 2025 alone, extreme weather patterns interrupted education for an estimated 171 million students globally.

Swaminathan warned that climate-induced disruptions to schooling carry profound risks for children’s safety, exposing them to heightened risks of violence, exploitation, and child marriage. Girls bear the brunt of these impacts, often taking on family caregiving roles that can lead to compromised health and nutrition, as well as limited access to essential services. “When girls leave school, they are often less likely than boys to return,” she noted.

UNICEF estimates show that every US $1 invested in disaster risk reduction and prevention efforts can yield up to $15 in saved recovery costs. Yet less than 1 percent of humanitarian funding is allocated for anticipatory action, even with months of warning and massive projected losses.

The agency continues to call on governments, donors, and partners to invest in lifesaving anticipatory intervention before peak impacts hit vulnerable communities. UNICEF highlights building climate resilience, securing essential services, and guaranteeing humanitarian access as key priorities in its response.

Swaminathan underscored that children with disabilities, who already face persistent barriers in education, healthcare, and nutrition, must be considered in disaster preparedness. She emphasized that inclusive planning is essential in addressing structural inequalities and ensuring every region is adequately prepared.

“Despite efforts to plan for disasters, most resources are mobilized only after the damage occurs, and the focus is often on the immediate response phase of a crisis,” said Swaminathan. “With forecasts providing months of warning, UNICEF is urging governments, donors, and partners to act before needs escalate by investing early and before impacts peak. Building resilience is not only about infrastructure and early warning systems, but also about strengthening the services and institutions children rely on and addressing the inequalities that make some communities far more vulnerable to climate shocks than others.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Children in Gaza wait in the hope of receiving food. Credit: UN News

By UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2026 (IPS)

Since October 2023, 50,000 women and girls in Gaza have been killed or seriously injured.

• UN Women estimates that nearly 50,000 women and girls in Gaza have been killed or severely injured since the onset of war in October 2023 [1], amounting to one in 21 Gazan women and girls losing their life or living with lifelong disabilities [2].


• More than 38,000 women and girls have been killed and 11,700 severely injured, the result of Israeli airstrikes and land military operations.

• While most of the casualties recorded took place during the first two years of the war, women and girls continue to be targeted despite a ceasefire agreement entering into effect in October 2025. Two hundred seventy-seven women and girls are among those who have been killed in Gaza over the past year.

Nearly every woman and girl in Gaza is displaced.

• More than 150 evacuation and movement orders have been issued across Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces since October 2023, forcing nearly one million women and girls from their homes – nearly every woman and girl in Gaza.

• The majority of women and girls in Gaza live in tents or in the ruins, with no privacy. In conditions that are incompatible with survival and dignity, women and girls are caring for children, the sick, the injured, and for the elderly, cooking and cleaning without the basic means to carry out these responsibilities.

• Women are being forced to deliver babies in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, putting their lives at risk. At the same time, the number of miscarriages reached almost 4,000 in the first six months of 2026, triple the number recorded during the last six months of 2025.

The number of widows and those assuming the role of head of household in Gaza has doubled since October 2023.

• Nearly one in four households in Gaza – an estimated 86,290 households – is now reportedly headed by a woman, compared to the pre-October 2023 rate of one in nine.

• For women-headed households, the impact extends beyond the grief of losing a husband, father or other loved one. Many are now carrying sole responsibility for providing for, protecting, and holding their families together in increasingly devastating conditions.

Despite the ceasefire, women and girls in Gaza continue to face severely limited access to food, shelter, safe water, and hygiene supplies, alongside ongoing hostilities and insecurity.

• Intense and widespread bombing has leveled homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, and shops, making it extremely hard for women and girls to access essential services and basic goods.

• Restrictions on humanitarian access and bombardment continue to cause immense suffering. Between July and December 2026, an estimated 702,000 women and girls are projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+, crisis or worse), with devastating effects on their health, including the risk of malnutrition [3].

The steepest recorded decline in aid is threatening a lifeline to women and girls in Gaza: women’s organizations.

• UN Women surveyed women’s organizations working on the frontlines of the response in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Thirteen of the 14 organizations surveyed reported that the level of need among women and girls has increased since 2025. All organizations surveyed had seen an increase in gender-based violence, poverty, and mental health distress since 2025. Thirteen of the 14 organizations had seen an increase in child marriage.

• At the same time, 13 of the 14 organizations surveyed by UN Women reported that they do not have the capacity to meet the growing needs of women and girls. To cope with the lack of funding, nearly two thirds of the organizations told UN Women they had been forced to put women and girls on waiting lists or turn them away.

UN Women is on the ground in Gaza. We work with women-led and women’s rights organizations to provide lifesaving and critical support to women and girls, including protection services and gender-based violence case management, legal aid, mental health and psychosocial support, and emergency cash and livelihoods assistance.

From fitting women and girls with prosthetics and offering counselling to survivors, to ensuring that the humanitarian response is shaped by the experiences and perspectives of women and girls, our support is helping them to stay afloat. But women and girls in Gaza need peace.

UN Women calls for the ceasefire in Gaza to be fully implemented. We call for international law to be upheld, accountability for violations, and the protection of women and girls and all civilians. Humanitarian assistance must reach those in need – at scale and without obstruction. Women and girls must be placed at the centre of response and recovery efforts.

[1] The proportion was calculated by combining women and girls killed or injured (38,000 and 11,700, respectively).

[3] UN Women estimate based on the IPC Gaza Strip Special Brief, published 13 August 2026. The estimated 702,000 women and girls facing acute food insecurity at crisis-level or worse (IPC Phase 3+) during July–December 2026 is calculated by applying PCBS’s 2025 female population share (49.7 per cent) to the IPC projected caseload of 1,412,421 people. The calculation assumes proportional representation of women and girls across IPC phases and is rounded to the nearest thousand.

IPS UN Bureau

By Madhu Rao and Tyson Miller
SINGAPORE, Oct 9 2026 (IPS)

When governments gather in Yerevan this month for the 17th UN Convention on Biological Diversity, they will weigh a promise nearly 200 countries adopted six years ago: to effectively conserve at least 30 percent of land, inland waters, and sea by 2030. Achieving the ambitious 30×30 target is essential to sustaining the systems humanity relies on for survival—including crop pollination, purification of water and air, and climate regulation—as well as the biodiversity that underpins food production, fisheries, and tourism.

Unfortunately, the world is not on track to achieve this target. Moreover, the emphasis on the quantitative dimension of the 30×30 target has often overshadowed its more critical objective: ensuring that areas of high biodiversity value are protected, conserved, and connected through effective and equitable management.

The struggle to deliver on international commitments reflects a fundamental challenge. The Global Biodiversity Framework requires countries to halt and reverse biodiversity loss while pursuing economic growth, and businesses are increasingly expected to mitigate nature-related impacts. The ongoing expansion in infrastructure, mining, and the energy transition places additional pressure on biodiversity-rich ecosystems, creating difficult trade-offs that must be carefully managed.

The fundamental question remains: how do we reconcile economic development with meeting biodiversity commitments?

A new analysis of tropical countries contains insights vital to answering that question. Most importantly, it found that oil and gas concessions overlap nearly 61 million hectares—roughly two and a half times the size of the United Kingdom—of protected and conserved areas. Mining concessions overlap another 43 million hectares. Such conditions can turn protected and conserved areas into ‘paper parks’: places protected in law but vulnerable to extractive industries in practice.

What the Maps Reveal

The analysis examined a wide range of some of the world’s most vital ecosystems and the industrial pressures closing in on them—oil and gas, mining, industrial logging, and large-scale agriculture—across the Amazon, Central America, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia, with further examples from the Global North. The report focused on the tropical forests and marine ecosystems that not only harbor irreplaceable biodiversity but also remain at the center of conflicts between extraction and conservation.

Senegal, for example, is close on paper to protecting 30 percent of its territory, yet oil and gas blocks cover 99 percent of both the country’s protected areas and identified Key Biodiversity Areas. The remaining undisturbed forest in Cambodia largely lies inside protected areas, yet a fifth of those areas face mining concessions and most contain land of interest to oil and gas companies. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, nearly three-quarters of the ambitious new Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor overlaps with oil and gas blocks included in a recent licensing round.

This contradiction between conservation in policy and extraction in practice can also be seen in high income countries. The United States has opened Bears Ears National Monument to mining and is threatening new oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the UK also allows fossil-fuel companies to drill in protected areas.

There is further tension. Some of the mining pushing into protected areas is for minerals fueling the energy transition. Securing a stable climate and securing nature are both essential, and one should not be pursued by quietly sacrificing the other.

We need to consider not only how much additional territory must be brought under protection by 2030, but whether areas already counted as protected and conserved are genuinely conserved, effectively managed, and delivering meaningful biodiversity outcomes.

The Path Forward

High-integrity implementation of 30×30 means prioritizing places that matter most for biodiversity and ensuring they remain ecologically intact, connected, effectively conserved, and equitably governed. It means upholding Indigenous Peoples’ and local community rights and protecting these places from incompatible extractive and large-scale industrial activities.

There are four critical components. The first is the mitigation hierarchy, which calls for avoiding harm whenever possible before considering other measures. Areas of highest biodiversity value, including strictly protected areas, should be no-go zones for extractive industry.

The second is policy coherence. A protected area sits with a ministry of environment while a mining concession sits with a ministry of mines or energy, and unless biodiversity is built into the decisions of every economic sector, the two will keep colliding.

The third is biodiversity-inclusive spatial planning, which enables governments to clearly recognize where nature is protected and where development can proceed. Protect here, develop there.

Finally, effective and equitable governance, including rights-based approaches, is essential. Indigenous peoples and local communities steward some of the world’s most intact and biodiverse lands, including many areas of global importance for biodiversity. Their rights, knowledge and leadership are central to effective conservation.

With only four years left, the commitment worth making in Yerevan is durable protection for the areas that matter most, so they remain intact, connected, and free of the industries that would undermine them. We must make sure that 30×30 is not a promise that only exists on a map, but is a pathway to true biodiversity protection for our collective survival.

Madhu Rao, Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and Tyson Miller, Executive Director of Earth Insight

IPS UN Bureau

An IPES-Food report warns that workers in the global food system face high exploitation in keeping the world fed. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Oct 6 2026 (IPS)

A new report reveals widespread labour exploitation among food system workers, warning that keeping the world fed comes at the cost of human dignity.

More than 1.4 billion people work in the food industry – the largest employer in the world – and are the most abused, according to a report, Food Work: The workers behind our food and the exploitation they face, published this week by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).

The global food system exploits more workers than any other economic sector, and the report notes that this exploitation is not accidental but rather ingrained in a business model that keeps labour cheap while maximising profits.

Abuse All Round

“Often hidden from view, food workers face low pay, wage theft, forced labour, human trafficking, discrimination, sexual violence, dangerous working conditions, and exclusion from social safety nets,” the report found.

“From farmworkers, fishers, and slaughterhouse staff to delivery drivers, restaurant and supermarket employees, and domestic workers, labour abuse is rife at every link in the food chain.”

The report highlighted that migrants, women, refugees, and racialised workers are funnelled into the worst conditions, where speaking up risks job loss, deportation and blacklisting.

IPES-Food co-chair Olivier De Schutter said what was most surprising about the findings of the report was the deep hypocrisy of governments concerning migrant farmworkers. With many countries relying heavily on migrant labour, especially for fruit and vegetable production, as witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments often grant migrant workers short-term, seasonal stays.

“These workers are routinely subject to forms of exploitation and abuse that would be unimaginable if they were natives – housed in poor conditions, paid poverty wages, and working in often dangerous conditions,” said Olivier De Schutter, a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

De Schutter argued that because migrant workers were considered unskilled, they were treated like second-class workers and that they had no or minimal connections to the communities in countries that host them; they barely complained in cases of abuse.

This practice is a form of trafficking in human beings, except that it’s legal and officially encouraged, De Schutter told IPS.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the gross value of global agricultural production is estimated at just over $5 trillion, while the World Bank estimates agricultural value-added at about $3.2 trillion.

The global food system is valued at more than $8 trillion, yet those who produce and market the food survive on poverty wages, which calls for a change.

De Schutter identified three mutually reinforcing challenges which include loopholes in the current legislation which does not apply minimum wage or on working hours, poor law enforcement and the difficulty of organising workers where unions are discouraged or even repressed.

“Governments routinely take the position that, where workers are informal, labour legislation does not apply, and labour inspectorates have no role to play,” he said, describing this situation as absurd.

‘It’s like saying that if you don’t have a driver’s licence, you can ignore the traffic rules. In fact, international human rights law requires that basic labour legislation be extended to informal workers and that incentives be given to employers to register their workers to ensure informality does not pay and that formalisation instead be rewarded.”

IPES-Food co-chair Olivier De Schutter. Credit: IPES-Food

Systemic Exploitation

“Unfair employment arrangements, off-the-books work, and lack of basic job security all combine to entrench worker vulnerability,” he said. “Governments directly enable this abuse through legal carve-outs that explicitly exempt food and farm workers from basic protections on wages, workplace safety, and union rights.”

The report highlighted that even where protective laws exist, weak public enforcement and pervasive informal employment leave millions of workers unprotected.

Migrant workers are essential to today’s food systems, yet they face some of the highest rates of workplace abuse, wage theft, forced labour, injury, and death, the report noted.

Worsening Conditions

Compounding these structural abuses, a dangerous convergence of emerging forces was making food work increasingly hazardous and exploitative.

“Climate change is becoming a workers’ rights crisis,” said Mamadou Goïta, IPES-Food panel expert. “Farmworkers already face poverty wages, toxic pesticides, and gruelling conditions. Now climate change is turning up the heat and making their work even more dangerous.”

Goïta said governments were still failing to guarantee workers even basic, lifesaving protections like shade, rest, and drinking water.

“The people producing our food should not have to risk their health or their lives to earn a living,” said Goïta.

The impacts of extreme heat and drought are usually measured in lost crops and harvests. But the human toll on the world’s 928 million agricultural workers was also mounting, with heat stress being the most common health threat facing farmworkers, the report noted.

The consequences of health threats include dizziness, vomiting, and exhaustion from heat stroke and kidney disease. In the US, farmworkers were 35 times more likely to die from heat stress than other workers.

Agricultural regions across Africa, the Americas, and southern Europe now experience up to 50 more days of dangerous heat each year than in the 1970s. In Africa, 93% of workers were exposed to dangerous heat, most of whom work in food systems, said the report.

The report warned that while climate change was exposing workers to extreme heat, severe weather and toxic wildfire smoke, corporate power was suppressing wages, undermining collective bargaining, and shifting risks onto workers, which meant prioritising shareholder returns over decent work.

“At the cutting edge, digital technologies are creating new frontiers of exploitation: gig-based platform work, automation, algorithmic management, and workplace surveillance are isolating workers, intensifying productivity pressures, increasing injury rates, and eroding worker bargaining power,” said the report.

Organise or Agonise

But workers are fighting back. They are forming unions and cooperatives, staging strikes, litigating for rights, and building alliances to demand comprehensive labour standards that recognise their worth and dignity.

The report shows that comprehensive labour standards, living wages, and the right to collective bargaining can shift the world’s largest workforce from the food system’s most invisible victims to resilience.

The report emphasised that in achieving lasting transformation in the food systems industry, there must be a strong policy and power shift across five key priorities. These include building the power of workers by strengthening trade unions and expanding collective bargaining. In addition, legal carve-outs for food and farm workers must be eliminated and equal rights for migrant workers guaranteed.

Policies that criminalise migrants must be scrapped, while employer-tied visa schemes must be dismantled to guarantee equal labour rights and social protections regardless of status, the report said, urging for a curtailment of corporate power so that companies are held accountable for labour abuses throughout their supply chains.

“The people who feed the world deserve safe, fairly paid, and dignified work,” said the report. “Food systems must never depend on low wages, hazardous conditions, or invisible labour. Achieving this requires changing who holds power, who profits, and who bears the costs.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, experts explored how renewable energy can ease the burden on farmers. Here Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She was named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year for the development of AI and solar-powered agricultural technologies. Credit: Solar Farm Uganda

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
KIGALI, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

Post-harvest losses, particularly in rural areas, threaten the gains Africa is making in agricultural production and export capacity.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, up to 40% of farm produce is lost because of a lack of cold storage, according to industry players.

Highly perishable farm produce, like fruits and vegetables, can go as high as 70%.

With agriculture accounting for one-third of the Gross Domestic Product and employing over 60%, such a loss threatens jobs and the livelihoods of millions of people.

Farmers in Africa grapple with a lack of reliable refrigeration, an underdeveloped cold chain and unreliable power storage, leaving harvests to heat and spoilage.

Poor road networks and limited refrigerated transport options also worsen the situation. Farmers transport fruits long distances to processing centres under non-ideal conditions, resulting in losses.

Renewable Energy Offers an Opportunity

At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, experts are exploring how renewable energy can ease the burden on farmers who often turn to diesel generators to cool their farms’ fresh produce.

Olamide Niyi-Afuye, Chief Executive Officer at Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA), an industry association working to improve the operating environment for mini-grids, said the biggest gap is not awareness but aggregation and intentional market design.

“We already see individual examples of mini-grids powering agro-processing, cold storage and other productive activities,” he said.

“The challenge is that these are still too often treated as individual projects rather than part of a scalable commercial model.”

Mugwe Manga, a Climate Finance Lead at Financial Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD Kenya), an independent trust supporting micro and small enterprises, said energy presents a tremendous opportunity for smallholder farmers to capture more value from what they produce.

“Solar, increasingly combined with battery energy storage, is particularly important because it is modular, increasingly affordable and can be deployed relatively quickly in rural areas,” he said.

“Solar-powered irrigation, cold storage, drying, milling, cooling and agro-processing can reduce post-harvest losses, increase productivity, improve product quality and allow farmers to sell into higher-value markets.”

Manga said energy can become an important enabler of both climate resilience and higher farmer incomes.

“The productive use of energy for cold storage, solar-pumped irrigation, and agro-processing is critical to value capture, climate resilience, and adaptation that will strengthen smallholder farmers,” he said.

Nigeria, one of Africa’s largest economies, lost between $2.3bn and $3.3bn to post-harvest inefficiencies in 2025, according to industry players.

The food wasted due to poor storage and transport networks amounted to up to 40 million metric tonnes.

South Africa loses an estimated 10.3 million tonnes of food annually, about 19% of its fresh produce, according to a 2021 report titled Waste Research Development and Innovation Roadmap Research.

Funding Cooperatives Is a Better Funding Model

Renewable energy offers reliable and accessible solutions to cold storage and processing problems in Africa, but funding remains a major challenge.

Though prices of solar panels and batteries shipped from China have been declining in recent years, current prices remain high for many farmers, particularly smallholders in rural areas.

With low capital amid limited access to grants and loans, many cannot afford solar-powered agro-processing and cold storage facilities.

Experts said that clean energy is the cheapest technology to deploy when farmers work together.

“Due to the capital expenditure of some of these, it is important for farmers to organise themselves and come together as a collective in order to take advantage of economies of scale and the power of aggregation that can use energy for all, as opposed to rolling out these solutions to individual smallholders that may not be cost-effective,” said Manga.

Niyi-Afuye said there is a need to bring energy developers and agribusinesses together much earlier, aggregate demand across agricultural value chains, and structure projects around credible productive loads from the outset.

“The opportunity is to stop treating energy and food systems as two separate investment cases and start building bankable opportunities at the intersection of both,” he said.

Manga said one of the key lessons from distributed energy is that the economics are often stronger when players move away from financing individual assets for individual farmers and instead aggregate demand.

“Farmers can organise through cooperatives, producer organisations, aggregators or rural enterprises and invest in shared infrastructure that serves many producers,” he said.

“This creates economies of scale, improves asset utilisation and creates a stronger and more predictable revenue base.”

Manga said aggregation also makes these projects more attractive to financiers by reducing transaction costs and perceived risk.

“Rather than lending against hundreds of individual smallholders, investors can finance a productive asset with an identifiable operator, clear cash flows and an aggregated customer base,” he said.

Niyi-Afuye said the better model is to aggregate projects into investable portfolios, combine commercial capital with appropriate credit enhancement and risk-sharing mechanisms, and increase access to patient, local-currency financing.

“Financing infrastructure in dollars while the underlying customers earn in Nigerian Naira or Kenyan shillings creates a structural mismatch,” he said.

Pratik Patel, Bureau Chief for East and Southern Africa at AfriCatalyist, a global development advisory firm headquartered in Senegal, said a public-private-producer partnership is the model that can make renewables affordable.

“Instead of a cold storage facility or cold chain operator trying to stand alone as a single commercial enterprise, it’s embedded in a collective plan that covers the full journey from farm to table, production, aggregation through farmer cooperatives, storage, processing, and market access, with clear roles and coordination at each stage,” he said.

He said the approach matters for financing because it gives investors what a standalone facility cannot, such as a defined use case, identified long-term clients, and a credible route to market.

“When responsibility for each link in the chain is assigned to the actor best suited to manage it, the plan becomes legible and de-risked, which is what ultimately builds investor confidence,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Members of Smallholder Farmer Alliance in Haiti with first harvest of regenerative cotton. Credit: Thomas Norielle/SFA

By Hugh Locke
NEW YORK, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

In November 1952, the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear device at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The test, code-named Ivy Mike, erased the island of Elugelab and scattered a signature of plutonium across the planet that remains in lake beds, ice sheets and ocean sediments today.

This month, scientists writing in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment proposed this moment as the start of the Anthropocene, a geological epoch shaped by human activity. Co-author Victor Galaz of the Stockholm Resilience Centre called the date “a tragic reminder of the highly unjust impacts of planetary change.”

I take that proposal seriously, because it carries hope as well as warning, and it connects to the argument of my new book, Whole Earth Farming.

Hugh Locke

The idea of the Anthropocene was popularized in 2000 by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen. In 2020, a paper in Nature found that human-made materials now outweigh all living things on Earth. Yet in 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences declined to formally recognize the Anthropocene. Officially, we are still in the Holocene.

The new paper, led by Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin Waters and Martin J. Head, draws on 12 stratigraphic records worldwide and identifies the 1952 rise in plutonium as the clearest marker of the new epoch. Whatever the geologists decide, the substance stands: human beings have become a force of planetary consequence.

Nobody set out to launch a new geological epoch. The Anthropocene is the unintended result of billions of decisions about energy, industry, consumption and land use. That is sobering. It is also, strangely, encouraging.

If humanity can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere without meaning to, then we are clearly capable of transformation at planetary scale. The only question is whether we can do it on purpose, in a direction that heals rather than harms.

Galaz’s point about injustice matters too. The Marshall Islanders had no say in what happened at Enewetak, yet bore its consequences. Those who contributed least to planetary change are often hit hardest, among them the world’s smallholder farmers. Any real transformation must put them at the center.

There are some 475 million smallholder farming families in the world, roughly one quarter of humanity, and yet they are largely absent from conversations about the future of food and climate.

Whole Earth Farming argues that these families could lead an agricultural revolution. It draws on 21 farmer stories from 18 countries and on decades of work, including in Haiti, where I co-founded the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. Its central argument is that if half the world’s smallholders adopted regenerative practices, they could produce all the additional food needed by 2050 while reducing agriculture’s net climate impact.

There is a fitting symmetry here. The Holocene began with a climate stable enough for humans to start farming. The Anthropocene could likewise coincide with a new global agricultural movement, one that restores the land rather than depleting it.

The changes of the 1950s spread without any global plan, as new tools and habits moved from place to place until they gathered their own momentum. A regenerative transformation can spread the same way: through practices that work, farmers who see them working on a neighbor’s land, and the support to adopt them.

The farmers in the book are already rebuilding soil, planting trees alongside crops and restoring water cycles. What they lack is not ingenuity but recognition, investment and connection to one another.

I once suggested that the historical epoch now taking shape will one day be named for the moment we began to reorganize ourselves around the principle of oneness. I still believe that.

The Anthropocene is, in one sense, the geological record of our failure to see ourselves as one people sharing one planet. A regenerative transformation led by smallholders would be the opposite: a practical expression of oneness, rooted in the recognition that the health of the land, the wellbeing of the farmer and the future of humanity are inseparable.

If a single morning in 1952 can mark a new chapter in the Earth’s geological history, then surely the choices of hundreds of millions of farming families can mark a new chapter in human history. We have already proven that we can change the planet. Now it is time to prove that we can do so with intention, with justice, and with the whole Earth in mind.

Hugh Locke is president and co-founder of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, president of the Impact Farming Foundation and author of Whole Earth Farming: Smallholders and the Great Regenerative Transformation (George Ronald Publisher, 2026).

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

As wells and other water sources dry up, women and girls in Kabul must travel increasingly long distances to secure enough water for their families. Credit: Learning Together.

By External Source
KABUL, Oct 1 2026 (IPS)

Drought has depleted wells, withered fruit trees, and reduced crop yields across Afghanistan. The heaviest burden of the water shortage falls on women in their daily lives, as they must fetch water from increasingly distant sources and use every single drop with extreme care.

More than half of Afghanistan is suffering from a prolonged drought and water shortage. The situation is critical in 19 provinces. Authorities predict the crisis will worsen. For instance, the capital, Kabul, is projected to lose the majority of its groundwater by 2030. In the northern province of Faryab, 90 percent of the area is already affected by drought.

Drought affects every aspect of her life. She struggles daily to secure enough water for her family’s needs. As an orchardist, she watches helplessly as the trees she has tended for years slowly wither and die while still standing

Water scarcity and poor harvests are further exacerbating Afghanistan’s food crisis. According to the UN World Food Programme, as many as 17.4 million people are in urgent need of food assistance.

Wells, springs, and groundwater sources are drying up. In some households, the water level in wells has dropped from 20 meters to 40 meters. On farmlands, water must now be drawn from depths of up to 120 meters, whereas previously it was accessible at 20 meters. Water is being rationed, and in some areas, farmers receive water for only 20 minutes a day.

When Afghanistan’s wells run dry, women’s workload increases

In Logar province, near Kabul, drought and water shortages have damaged crops and caused fruit trees to wither. Women must walk increasingly long distances to fetch water for their families.

“When our well ran dry, my immediate concern was whether there would be enough drinking water for our children. I only wash clothes if there is drinking water left over. Sometimes I go several days without doing laundry. I also gather the dishes from three meals and wash them all at once to save water,” says 35-year-old Simin Gul (name changed).

The well belonging to her family of nine ran dry four years ago. The nearest water source is less than a half an hour’s walk away.

At times, Simin Gul and her neighbors are forced to buy water. The local piped water network supplies water only two days a week, and even then, only for a few hours at a time.

Families help one another and take turns collecting water in large containers, but even that is not enough for large families.

The wells around Simin Gul’s home have dried up one by one. Women suffer from back pain and other ailments from carrying heavy water containers from distant sources.

Fetching water is particularly difficult during menstruation. Women must fetch water even when they need rest. At times, children have to miss school to help their mothers carry water.

Water scarcity and poor water quality also cause hygiene and health problems for families.

“The tanker trucks have plastic tanks, and the trucks travel from street to street under the scorching sun. Our children have fallen ill from this water several times,” says Simin Gul.

Drought-damaged crops in Logar province, near Kabul, where water shortages have reduced harvests and caused fruit trees to wither. Credit: Learning Together.

Drought deepens water inequality: “The wealthy can dig deeper wells”

Water scarcity has also changed the daily life of 50-year-old Zarmina (name changed). She has lived and worked on her orchard for about 20 years. Her husband is also a farmer.

“This year, about 50 of my apple and apricot trees dried up. I’ve managed to keep the remaining hundred trees barely alive thanks to a spring. But both the yields and the fruit are smaller and of poorer quality.”

“Some farmers pay for irrigation, but we can’t afford it. My husband lost his tomato crop this year because tomatoes need a lot of water,” Zarmina laments.

Zarmina’s husband farms an area of ​​about 60 acres. This year, he planted only half of it because of the water shortage.

“The wealthy can have deep wells dug. The fields of the poor remain dry,” Zarmina notes.

However, according to her, the problem is not just a lack of water but also inadequate infrastructure.

“Some areas have a piped water system. We should have one too, and the government ought to repair the irrigation canals as well. The problem is that Afghanistan has water, but it isn’t distributed efficiently,” she continues.

Zarmina is sometimes forced to buy drinking water, as her own well has very little water, and what remains is salty. Unless the authorities do something about the water shortage, the result will be a disaster, Zarmina believes.

Drought affects every aspect of her life. She struggles daily to secure enough water for her family’s needs. As an orchardist, she watches helplessly as the trees she has tended for years slowly wither and die while still standing. Together with her husband, she mourns the loss of productivity in their fields, where crop yields have dwindled because of the drought.

For Zarmina, water scarcity means more than just the drying up of springs; it means jeopardizing an entire livelihood and way of life, as well as constant worry about her children’s access to water.

As drought worsens, life in Kabul revolves around water

Water scarcity affects the capital, Kabul, too, even just a stone’s throw from the former presidential palace.

Sixty-year-old Shazia (name changed) lives in western Kabul. A large part of her week is spent securing water for her family of five.

To meet their daily needs, families either buy water or wait for the local communal tap to start running. Water used to flow every few days, but now the wait can be much longer.

When the water finally arrives, large containers and buckets are filled, and as much as possible is stored.

“Our lives revolve around water. We buy different types of water for different needs: bottled water for tea, filtered water for cooking, and tap water for washing and the toilet,” Shazia says.

Sheila lives on one of the hills in western Kabul. Together with her young daughter, she tries to find enough drinking water for her six children.

In Sheila’s neighborhood, some homes are connected to a private water supply system that delivers water every two days. Those who cannot afford it buy their water. Another option is to carry water uphill to their homes in heavy containers.

Before water flows properly from the taps of households connected to the private system, it must be allowed to run from the main street pipe for a few minutes. When nearby residents see the water flowing, they rush to the spot with their jerry cans.

“If we’re lucky, we manage to fill a few containers. Here, next to the presidential palace, we aren’t looking for a gushing water source anymore. A few drops for our children are enough for us,” Sheila laments.

“Aid organizations used to install water pipes, but no one comes to help anymore. We’ve been left here with empty jerry cans and thirsty children.”

Excerpt:

A stronger future for coffee starts by strengthening the places and communities where that journey begins. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Boubaker Ben Belhassen
ROME, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Imagine your morning coffee. You smell the aroma as steam rises from the cup. It wisps and swirls, thins, then disappears. You lift the cup to your mouth. The first pure joy of the day.

That coffee may have begun beneath shade trees in Ethiopia, on a Colombian hillside, in Viet Nam’s highlands or among the coffee farms of Brazil. Long before it reached your cup, someone planted and tended the trees from which it came. Then came the harvest. Ripe cherries were picked with care, and the coffee began a journey that would carry it far from the place where it was grown.

Building a stronger future for coffee therefore begins where coffee itself begins: with productive and resilient farms, open and transparent markets, and greater economic opportunity in producing countries

Few agricultural products connect people across such long distances. Coffee is among the world’s most widely traded commodities. Coffee supports the livelihoods of up to 25 million farmers worldwide, while millions more people participate in the economic activity created along the coffee value chain.

Coffee’s extraordinary global reach has created livelihoods and economic opportunities across continents. It has also connected millions of small producers to a market in which shocks can propagate quickly. Building a stronger future for coffee therefore begins where coffee itself begins: with productive and resilient farms, open and transparent markets, and greater economic opportunity in producing countries.

International Coffee Day is a moment to celebrate what coffee has made possible. It is also a moment to ask what its future will require.

Recent years have shown why. International coffee prices have experienced large fluctuations as weather has affected production in major producing countries and supplies have tightened. Droughts, frosts and excessive rainfall can disrupt harvests, while pests, diseases, rising costs, geopolitical tensions and shipping delays can add further pressure.

That exposure is amplified by the concentration of production in relatively few places. Brazil and Viet Nam together account for nearly half of global coffee production, while five countries supply around 70 percent of global coffee bean exports. With such concentration, a shock in one major producing region can quickly reverberate far beyond it.

Those shocks are transmitted unevenly through coffee value chains, with producers generally more directly exposed to fluctuations in international prices. The answer is not to prevent prices from moving. Markets respond to changes in supply and demand, and prices will inevitably rise and fall. Greater resilience therefore depends on strengthening the capacity of producers and producing countries to adapt and respond when conditions change.

The first priority is production itself. Coffee farming must remain productive and competitive while adapting to changing conditions. More resilient farming systems, innovation and technology, effective management of pests and diseases, and better tools for managing risk can help stabilize production and incomes and boost investment in the future of the crop.

Transparent markets and timely information are essential. Better and timely information on crop conditions, stocks, trade flows and prices reduce uncertainty and help producers, governments and businesses understand changing market conditions and adjust sooner. At a time when disruption in one major producing region can affect markets around the world, international cooperation and greater transparency become even more important.

Stronger production and better markets provide the foundation. But there is also an opportunity to create more economic value from the coffee that producing countries already grow.

The bean’s economic journey is far from finished when it is harvested. Coffee is processed and transported, then may be roasted, packaged, branded, distributed and eventually sold to consumers. Each stage requires investment, expertise and enterprise, while creating opportunities to generate additional economic value.

Much of the coffee produced in low- and middle-income countries is exported in raw form as green beans for processing and distribution elsewhere. Coffee therefore often enters international trade relatively early in its economic journey, leaving opportunities for producing countries to develop more economic activity around the later stages of the value chain.

Where commercially viable, improvements in quality can help producers reach different and potentially higher-value markets. Processing can create additional economic activity, while certification and branding can provide further scope for upgrading within coffee value chains. The opportunities will vary across countries, and investments should focus on areas in which producers and businesses can compete successfully.

Greater resilience in coffee production and greater economic opportunity around what happens after it is produced are complementary ambitions. Productivity, innovation and risk management can strengthen the productive foundation of the sector. Transparent markets can help participants respond to changing conditions. And commercially viable upgrading can broaden the economic opportunities created around the crop.

Realising these opportunities requires cooperation across the coffee value chain. Producers, traders, processors, roasters, retailers and governments perform different roles in moving coffee from the tree to the consumer. International cooperation, market transparency, innovation and investment can strengthen those connections and support a coffee sector that is more productive, competitive, resilient and sustainable.

Coffee already demonstrates what international trade can achieve. A crop grown by millions of farmers, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries, reaches consumers across the world and sustains economic activity throughout its journey. The next opportunity not to miss is to strengthen this connection while creating more economic possibilities in the places where coffee is grown.

Tomorrow morning, the journey begins again. Steam will rise from your cup. Somewhere far away, coffee trees will be tended and another harvest prepared.

The journey from crop to cup already connects millions of people around the globe. A stronger future for coffee starts by strengthening the places and communities where that journey begins.

Boubaker Ben-Belhassen is Director of the Markets and Trade Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Excerpt:

Member of Smallholder Farmer Alliance in Haiti with tree she is about to plant. Credit: A.F. Cortes/SFA

By Hugh Locke
NEW YORK, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Years ago, standing in a small farmer’s field in Haiti, I began to suspect that we had agriculture backward. The development world saw a man in need of rescue. I saw a farmer who might help rescue the rest of us.

That distinction matters. Over the next 25 years, humanity will need to grow much more food on a planet with degraded soils, shrinking biodiversity and a destabilizing climate. The usual instinct is to seek a technical fix. I want to suggest another source of help: a moral idea rooted in religion.

I am not a theologian. I am a development worker. In 2010, Haitian agronomist Timote Georges and I co-founded the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. We now work with about 10,000 farmers throughout Haiti who grow more food while rebuilding degraded land. Our “tree currency” rewards them for planting and caring for trees with credits they can exchange for seeds, tools and training.

Hugh Locke

Roughly 475 million smallholder farms, each under five acres, already produce about 30% of the world’s food despite limited access to finance, markets or technical support. In my new book, Whole Earth Farming, I argue that if even half of these families received support to adopt regenerative methods, they could produce the additional food humanity will need through 2050 on 12% of the world’s arable land, with a climate benefit comparable to offsetting the aviation industry’s annual emissions.

The Green Revolution averted famine, but its gains often came with degraded soils, diminished biodiversity and polluted water. Regenerative farming aims not merely to limit damage but to restore soil, rebuild biodiversity, improve farmers’ wellbeing and deliver a net climate benefit.

That is the language investors expect. Yet a case study more than a century old anticipated this approach, and its foundation was not market logic but morality.

From 1901 to 1921, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith, directed a farming settlement called ‘Adasiyyih in the Jordan Valley. Long before the term “regenerative agriculture” existed, the community used crop rotation, agroforestry, water conservation and integrated livestock management to make the land productive without exhausting it. Just as important was the framework behind those techniques: the belief that the earth is one country and humanity one interdependent family, expressed through consultation, equality and a rejection of extraction for its own sake. Farming at ‘Adasiyyih was not simply commodity production. It was a way to build community.

Regenerative agriculture does not require religious belief. Many successful regenerative farmers are secular, and the science stands on its own. But ‘Adasiyyih addressed, on a limited scale, a coordination problem that still hinders the movement: how can independent farmers, financiers, governments and companies be persuaded to treat soil health, water and biodiversity as a shared obligation?

‘Adasiyyih began with a moral premise rather than a technical formula. That premise is worth borrowing, whether one calls it stewardship or enlightened self-interest. Farmers, buyers and governments must act as though what happens to one plot of land is everyone’s concern, because increasingly it is. For generations we have asked how much the earth can give us. We should also ask what we owe in return.

Regenerative agriculture is at a fragile moment. By my estimate, some 15 million farms and ranches worldwide now use regenerative practices, and some 25 million acres, mostly in the United States, are certified under third-party standards, though almost none of that land is farmed by smallholders. The movement is growing faster than the systems meant to support it. Farmers can face lower yields and higher costs during the transition, there is no consensus on how to measure results, and financing, training and market rewards lag well behind farmers’ interest. A shared obligation is what can turn these isolated successes into lasting change.

This is not a case for religious agricultural policy, which would be unworkable in a pluralistic world. Smallholders are not waiting for a new theology. They need capital, training and markets. But the case for providing that support may rest more persuasively on the old idea of shared stewardship than on another spreadsheet of carbon calculations.

The next great agricultural transformation may begin not on the world’s largest farms but on hundreds of millions of its smallest. Given the means, smallholders may help determine whether the next 25 years of food production heal the planet or finish degrading it.

Hugh Locke is president of the Impact Farming Foundation and author of Whole Earth Farming: Smallholders and the Great Regenerative Transformation (George Ronald Publisher, 2026).

IPS UN Bureau

Dr. Agnes Kalibata, speaking at the opening ceremony of the Africa Food Systems Forum in 2019. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Agnes Kalibata
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 24 2026 (IPS)

I was born in Rwanda, but my family soon became refugees in Uganda during the conflict and unrest on the cusp of independence. My father was a teacher and went to great lengths to make sure I was well educated. My parents were also smallholder farmers, and I saw firsthand the challenges my parents and other refugee families faced.

After I received my doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, I returned to a new Rwanda in 2005, managing a World Bank agriculture project with the government. In 2008, I became Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources, and over the next six years, I oversaw the country’s transition from food deficit to food security, as Rwanda cut its global hunger index by more than 50 percent. We implemented what we understood to be true: effective deliberate agricultural investment drives poverty down.

Agricultural growth is up to four times more effective at reducing poverty than growth in other sectors, and it underpins food security besides. Yet despite that evidence, Africa’s agriculture sector faces an estimated $200 billion annual financing gap.

Less than a year ago, I joined the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) as Co-Chair of the Steering Committee because I have seen firsthand how GAFSP is a collaborative platform that connects governments, farmers, civil society and leverages the private sector and multiple partners to tackle food insecurity. Among its inaugural investments was a 60 million dollar investment in Rwanda’s Land Husbandry and terracing program which allowed farmers to reclaim degraded land by mobilizing more than 10 times this initial capital, reached hundreds of farmers and contributed to land restoration, food security and poverty reduction all at the same time.

GAFSP’s Business Investment Financing Track (BIFT) has made its second allocation (its first allocation was to the African Development Bank). Announced at the Africa Food Systems Forum “Investing in Africa’s Agri-Food Systems: Nourishing Nations, Growing Jobs, Building Resilience,” Rwanda’s BIFT allocation is a concrete step toward the GAFSP vision that sharing risk deliberately, and cooperatively, rather than leaving it with farmers alone, moves capital that reduces food insecurity. This $6 million allocation has already unlocked $15 million more from IFAD, the Bank of Kigali and Aceli Africa – 2.5 times GAFSP’s own contribution – reaching an expected 215 farmers’ organizations and 35,000 smallholders.

What is most encouraging about this funding is the paradigm shift it represents against the challenging context of reduced Overseas Development Assistance. Capital structured to absorb risk can shift lender considerations to bring private finance into a domain the private sector has avoided, catalyzing transformational change for smallholder borrowers.

The central obstacle isn’t capital or conviction – it’s risk. Agricultural lending is constrained by the risk of accelerating climate shocks and by the practical cost of financing smaller loans. Roughly 90 percent of staple food production in Sub-Saharan Africa depends on rain-fed agriculture, leaving households with no buffer when a season fails. Farmers in low-income countries bear the highest burden of worsening weather conditions, while African countries lose the most GDP to escalating natural disasters, from drought to surging storms. Finally, the loans these farmers need are relatively small, and small loans cost lenders more to appraise and administer.

As Rwanda’s Agriculture Minister, coordinating across ministries to run programs like the Land husbandry program mentioned above alongside the One Cow per Poor Family – a critical source of nutrition for poor families taught me that risk-sharing across government agencies, communities and financiers is what makes ambitious programs work.

It is now a question of scale. What worked for smallholders in Rwanda can work for millions more, if development finance institutions and private lenders treat risk-sharing as standard practice. I have spent my career watching farmers do more with less. Give them the finance they’ve earned, and there is no question they will transform the food system to be more efficient, resilient and a stronger driver of prosperity at scale.

IPS UN Bureau

Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples protest exclusion and lack of recognition at the UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Credit: Lucas Wasson for Rights and Resources Initiative

By Bayarsaikhan Namsrai, Gregoria Jimenez Amaya, Isabel Davila Pereira and Stephen Basele
ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia, Sep 23 2026 (IPS)

Rightsholders came to Ulaanbaatar from across the world, carrying declarations, demands and years of experience defending the lands on which their communities depend. Indigenous Peoples, local communities, Afro-descendant Peoples, women and youth were equally clear about what they needed from COP17. But being in the room is not the same as having power in the room.

In a year when the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists and the three Rio Conventions were supposed to create momentum for rights, recognition and implementation, the negotiations showed how quickly those gains can be diluted when the people concerned are not able to shape the language that governs their lands.

What happened in Ulaanbaatar should concern anyone advancing land restoration, climate resilience and biodiversity conservation. These cannot succeed while the rights of the people who govern these landscapes remain negotiable.

Ahead of COP17, the demands were clear: 2026 could not be a symbolic year. It had to be a year when secure and customary tenure for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, pastoralists, Afro-descendant Peoples, women and youth was translated into real protections and implementation across the Rio Conventions.

Pastoralists, Mobile Peoples, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities are proven leaders in land stewardship, biodiversity conservation and climate resilience. Achieving global restoration goals requires recognizing their rights, knowledge and leadership.

Secure and flexible tenure and mobility rights were an urgent ask in the context of the IYRP. RRI’s legal analysis of seven countries found that only Nepal and Niger recognize pastoralists as distinct rightsholders and only Niger considers mobility as a fundamental right. Even where rights exist on paper, they routinely fail against agricultural encroachment, mining, conservation expansion and green energy projects. Tenure should not be secondary to these initiatives, but a pre-condition before any projects are attempted in community lands.

Communities requested land and customary governance rights as a formal and permanent agenda item following past land tenure decisions, with customary institutions recognized as implementing bodies rather than consulted stakeholders and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) as a precondition for any Land Degradation Neutrality action.

Finance is not a technical question. It is a question of power. At a COP supposedly focused on implementation, it should have been a central matter that communities cannot implement priorities they did not define, using resources they do not control. Yet too much climate, biodiversity and land finance still travels through institutions far removed from the communities whose territories generate environmental benefits.

For communities, direct and flexible finance is about more than getting money to the last mile. It is about trusting organizations and customary institutions to decide what resilience, restoration and development mean in their own territories.

Rightsholders were ready to advance their distinct rights during COP17. The presence of pastoralists at COP17 was significant, but presence alone does not translate into influence. Pastoralists arrived organized, with a global declaration and clear demands, yet the experience of the negotiations showed that meaningful participation requires more than being present in the conference halls. It requires the knowledge, resources, relationships and sustained capacity to follow negotiating texts, understand procedures, build alliances and influence language as decisions are being shaped.

On Land and People Day, the Indigenous Peoples Caucus delivered the Sacred Lands Declaration directly to the UNCCD Executive Secretary, demanding recognition grounded in self-determination, a permanent seat on the Committee on Science and Technology, and a dedicated fund for Indigenous-led restoration.

The local communities caucus asked for institutional status equal to the Indigenous Peoples’, Gender and Youth Caucuses rather than as a facilitative mechanism sidelined when convenient, plus a self-determined representation model and sustained funding for its operation.

Afro-descendant Peoples asked for what the other two Rio Conventions have already conceded: to be named. Afro-descendant Peoples across Latin America and the Caribbean steward territories degraded or acutely at risk — drylands, deforested frontiers, dry forests, riverine and coastal lands. They asked the UNCCD to open an Afro-descendant desertification agenda for the first time.

Women’s demands cut across all of this. Parties have built agreed gender language across three COPs. The ask was that it hold and be implemented.

For youth, being called “the future” has become another way of postponing their participation in the present. Young rightsholders are already living the consequences of drought, shrinking mobility, changing economies and pressures on their territories. They are not waiting to inherit these challenges. What they need is more than a voice now, it is representation, resources and authority in the institutions making decisions about their future. Their minimum requests included recognition as drivers of present-day adaptation, a permanent space within UNCCD processes, culturally appropriate education, and direct financing for youth-led organizations.

How the Negotiations Went

Based on prior COP decisions, COP17 should have been the continuation of a road towards implementation. Instead, the days in Ulaanbaatar became much more focused on protecting past progress rather than operationalizing it.

The institutional failures began on day one. At the opening plenary on 17 August, only two State Parties objected to agenda items, yet no vote was held and instead the presidency provisionally adopted the agenda. Future Strategic Framework, synergies with other conventions, gender, and participation of civil society were all deferred pending consultation. The COP closed with no decision at all on civil society participation, the Riyadh mandate to bring the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus and the Local Communities’ Caucus to full Terms of Reference under Decision 5/COP.16 was pushed to COP18, and Rio synergies were removed from all decisions. Gender never reached the negotiation floor; instead, a quiet Gender Caucus convened in Plenary as the agenda block was sustained.

Still, IYRP advocacy proved successful to some extent. Parties agreed to recognize the critical role of pastoralists as stewards of rangeland ecosystems, including the importance of transboundary mobility. However, compromise language was adopted, replacing “traditional knowledge” with “knowledge accumulated by pastoralists” in order to remove wording related to Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

This distinction matters. Pastoralist knowledge is not simply a body of information accumulated over time; it is embedded in living institutions, relationships, territories and systems of customary governance. When knowledge is separated from the peoples and institutions that hold and transmit it, it becomes a technical resource while the rights and authority of its holders remain unrecognized. Draft decisions on land tenure and sand and dust storms also advanced, but only by leaving the naming of rightsholders behind. The lack of language on Indigenous Peoples and local communities was one of the biggest gaps. Many negotiators backed Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights in plenary, but behind closed doors, agreed to language so general it protects no one in particular. Language proposed replacing references to Indigenous Peoples with “common places” or “common people.” In the land tenure text, “affected areas” was pushed toward “common areas,” a phrase with no grounding in any multilateral mechanism and no obligations attached.

This dilution of language is particularly consequential as pressure on rangelands grows from competing global agendas. Rangelands are increasingly being presented as spaces for carbon sequestration, renewable energy, conservation and large-scale restoration, often without adequately recognizing the pastoralists who already govern and steward these landscapes.

And this is where the politics of rangelands becomes unavoidable.

Rangelands are increasingly being seen as spaces for carbon, renewable energy, conservation and large-scale restoration. The danger is that landscapes already governed and stewarded by pastoralists begin to be treated as empty spaces available for solving someone else’s global environmental problem.

A green transition cannot become a new form of land dispossession.

If pastoralists are displaced in the name of renewable energy, excluded in the name of conservation, or turned into carbon credits in the name of climate action, then changing the colour of development does not change its underlying politics.

Climate, biodiversity and land restoration objectives must not be pursued by treating pastoralist territories as empty spaces or global environmental infrastructure while sidelining the people whose livelihoods, cultures and institutions are rooted in them.

The same principle applies to emerging carbon and other environmental markets. Pastoralist rangelands cannot be reduced to carbon sinks whose value is defined externally while the cumulative ecological, economic and cultural value of pastoralism remains invisible. Any financing or market mechanism operating in these territories must begin with secure tenure, meaningful participation, Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), and fair recognition of the rights and contributions of pastoralist communities.

Right through the final day, negotiators discussed whether to reference synergies among the Rio Conventions, and whether to include gender at all. These questions were either resolved by adopting ambiguous and broad language that betrays the protection from past COP decisions or by simply delaying any decisions to COP18.

Across every draft negotiating text currently available, rangelands, drought, sand and dust storms, land tenure, Afro-descendant Peoples do not appear at all. Not contested and diluted; simply absent. On the year of the three Rio Conventions, this demonstrates how UNCCD is lagging. CBD Decision 16/6 made the Convention on Biological Diversity the first Rio Convention to name them explicitly and at UNFCCC COP30 they appeared in core negotiating text. The bridge that could have carried that recognition into the UNCCD was the synergies item blocked on day one. These synergies are urgent to deal with the intersections across climate, land degradation and biodiversity conservation.

When it came to drought, the COP also fell short. Decision ICCD/COP(17)/L.15 runs to four operative paragraphs: continue discussions at COP18 with a view to adopting a decision on proactive drought management; make drought a stand-alone agenda item; ask the secretariat and Global Mechanism to keep supporting Parties; and report back. After deferring at COP16 and again here, the working group toward a binding instrument did not materialize; the next window is 2028. In the current text, Indigenous Peoples and local communities appear as people affected by drought and consulted, rather than as rightsholders.

COP17 presented an unprecedented situation in which a small number of Parties blocked key issues from meaningful consideration. There is no Land Degradation Neutrality without human rights, no resilience without gender equality, no sustainable land governance without Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities.

COP17 also taught us something uncomfortable about participation. It is possible to be visible everywhere at a COP and still have very little influence over what finally enters the negotiating text.

Influence requires preparation. It requires people who understand the Convention, know the procedures, follow the text, build relationships with negotiators, organize across constituencies and remain engaged long after the cameras leave. Pastoralist movements have strong knowledge of their lands and livelihoods. What they need now is equal investment in the political and technical capacity required to defend that knowledge and those rights in global decision-making spaces.

If pastoralists want to shape the next COP, they cannot only prepare declarations. They must prepare negotiators.

What Happens Next

The answer cannot be another declaration.

The remaining COPs of 2026 must turn recognition into implementation. That means three things: name the peoples whose rights are at stake; put resources directly into the hands of their organizations and institutions; and give them meaningful authority over the decisions affecting their territories.

At CBD COP17 and UNFCCC COP31, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities must be recognized as rights-holders and implementing partners, not folded into generic “vulnerable groups” language. At UNCCD COP18, the gains made on pastoralists, tenure and customary governance must not be allowed to disappear into vague language.

But the responsibility does not rest with the conventions alone. Pastoralist movements must also build the capacity to influence these processes. The period between COPs must be used to coordinate positions, prepare negotiators, track decisions and negotiating texts, build alliances across the Rio Conventions and engage governments between sessions. Pastoralist organizations need investment not only to attend COPs, but to understand and shape what happens inside them.

COP18 must deliver the adoption of Terms of Reference for the Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ Caucuses, restore gender and synergies to the agenda, open an Afro-descendant desertification agenda, advance a drought decision with the communities who live its consequences first, and restore the full recognition of traditional knowledge.

Vague language does not merely fail to establish obligations. It blurs the content of rights and leaves earned recognition in a regression limbo.

Naming peoples is the beginning of recognition, not the end of it. Recognition must lead to rights, rights must be backed by institutions and finance, and those institutions must have the authority to shape the decisions that affect their territories.

The peoples who shepherd the vast majority of the world’s lands do not need another symbolic year. They need their names written into the decisions, and their voices, institutions and authority protected long after the COP is over.

Bayarsaikhan Namsrai (Steps Without Borders), Gregoria Jimenez Amaya (CITAFRO/ODECO), Isabel Davila Pereira (Rights and Resources Initiative), Stephen Basele (Pastoralist Goals Foundation)

IPS UN Bureau

Solar energy panels installed in a dry rural landscape powering agricultural irrigation infrastructure alongside a traditional windmill. Credit: Katja Forster/iStock

By Debisi Araba
KIGALI, Rwanda, Sep 22 2026 (IPS)

Africa is emerging as the world’s fastest-growing technology market, with its innovation ecosystem attracting increasing global investment. The European Investment Bank’s recent €40 million commitment to the sector underscores this growing confidence.

However, this surge in technological innovation has yet to address some of the continent’s most persistent challenges – hunger, food insecurity, and poverty. Agricultural productivity still depends more on land expansion than on innovation and efficiency gains. The recently concluded Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali focused on investing in Africa’s agrifood systems, exploring policy interventions to attract investment, boost productivity, build resilience to multidimensional shocks, and improve livelihoods. Discussions at the 9th Africa Agriculture Science Week in Abuja reinforced a clear message: Africa must invest far more in agricultural innovation systems and capabilities.

The continent’s population is projected to reach nearly 2.5 billion by 2050, thereby accounting for a quarter of the world’s population. Rapid urbanization and changing diets are accelerating food demand, creating significant opportunities for market expansion. However, climate shocks and slow-growing productivity have stalled progress toward food security.

The productivity gap is not rooted in a lack of promising technologies. Rather, it reflects limited adoption, weak complementary investments, and high transaction costs that constrain farmers and markets alike. Accelerating progress toward ending hunger and eradicating poverty in Africa will therefore require a coordinated bundle of technical, institutional, and socio-political innovations, designed not only to raise yields but also to strengthen the systems that enable productivity gains to take hold and endure.

Shaping Africa’s Technological Transformation: The Policy Landscape

Africa already possesses sound policy frameworks designed to promote technology-driven transformation. Agenda 2063, the continent’s blueprint for sustainable and inclusive socio-economic development, places technology at the center of Africa’s long-term trajectory.

Similarly, the Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa sets out a continental framework to harness digital technologies for inclusive growth, job creation, poverty reduction, and the narrowing of digital divides, while safeguarding Africa’s ownership of its digital future.

Together with the recently adopted Kampala Declaration, these frameworks lay important foundations for technological acceleration.

How, then, can Africa make the technological leap? The answer lies not in a proliferation of new pilot projects, but in the systematic deployment and scaling of existing technologies, backed by coordinated action across institutions and sectors.

The “technology frontier” is therefore not a single breakthrough, but the integration of biological, digital, engineering, ecological, and institutional innovations within a supportive political economy that enables scale, equity, and resilience.

Scaling Technological Interventions for Africa’s Agrifood System Transformation

Across the continent, the building blocks of technological advancements are already visible. From climate-resilient seeds and precision irrigation to AI-enabled advisory platforms and digital marketplaces, many of the tools needed to raise productivity and strengthen food security are already being deployed.

For example, in Mali and Senegal, AI-enabled geospatial tools are improving yield forecasting, helping farmers plan further ahead. Meanwhile, digital advisory platforms in Kenya are improving decision-making and market access, helping farmers increase productivity and sell their produce. Advances in gene-edited crops, such as drought-tolerant and pest-resistant crops, are narrowing yield gaps and strengthening resilience in countries like Nigeria, where improved maize and cowpea varieties are already delivering measurable productivity gains.

The challenge is coordination and scale. The 17th edition of the Annual Trends and Outlook Report underscores this point, calling for deliberate, system-wide interventions to expand the application of existing and emerging technologies and ensure their widespread, efficient use.

Africa’s Path to Technology Leadership

Against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding portfolio of complementary tools, Africa is well-positioned to translate its technological potential into system-wide performance. Realizing that ambition, however, will require coordination across five key areas.

First, Africa must invest in its innovation ecosystems. Frontier technologies cannot scale without strong science institutions, stable R&D financing, and coherent regulatory systems. Scaling new technologies demands long-term public investment and regional collaboration, not episodic pilot projects.

Second, technological dissemination must become inclusive and structured. Technologies spread fastest when embedded within trusted networks. Digitally enabled producer organizations, strengthened extension systems, and service-market models for mechanization and irrigation can aggregate demand, lower transaction costs, and ensure that marginalized groups and small-scale farmers are not excluded from the benefits of innovation.

Third, digital and climate intelligence infrastructure must expand. Precision agriculture, digital twins, and AI forecasting depend on reliable geospatial data, weather networks, compatible data standards, and rural connectivity. In this data-powered era, digital public infrastructure will become as essential to agriculture as roads and irrigation canals.

Fourth, climate adaptation and resilience must be mainstreamed into technological agendas. Drought-tolerant crops, solar-powered irrigation, water-efficient production systems, low-emission livestock practices, and circular bio-based innovations are not optional enhancements but prerequisites for resilient growth across the continent as it battles the harshest impacts of climate change.

Finally, governance and accountability must keep pace with innovation. An estimated US$77 billion in annual financing will be needed for transforming Africa’s agrifood systems by 2030. Coordinated public–private partnerships, harmonized regulatory frameworks, and transparent monitoring systems will be key to mobilizing private capital, boosting productivity, scaling innovation, and sustaining reforms – while placing farmers at the center of Africa’s agrifood transformation.

With its vast arable land, youthful workforce, and expanding digital capacity, Africa is uniquely positioned to pioneer climate-smart, resource-efficient agricultural models. The continent does not need another wave of breakthrough inventions to transform its food systems; what it requires is a decisive shift from fragmented adoption to system-wide modernization. The challenge is no longer to experiment at the margins, but to redesign the system at scale.

Debisi Araba is Managing Director, AKADEMIYA2063

IPS UN Bureau

On 11 September 2001 I was in New York, on one of my frequent visits to the United Nations, to which I was tied by a consultancy contract. That morning I woke up late, around eleven, sleeping off the jet lag of the flight from Italy. I was staying at the Hyatt Park, today the Millennium. A hotel a few metres from the Glass Palace, built to serve the world of the United Nations.

Roberto Savio

When I came down to the lobby, I was taken aback by an extreme state of agitation, from the staff to the guests. I tried to speak to a bellboy I knew, but he ran off without answering. So I went to reception, where everyone was on the telephone and no one paid me any attention. Finally, someone I knew told me: “They’ve attacked the Twin Towers!” And then she too rushed away.

At that point, with the professional deformation of the journalist, I went out into the street to take a taxi and get to the scene. But the street was deserted. Not a car in sight, and the few passers-by were running as well, certainly to get home.

So I did the only intelligent thing left to me, which was to watch television. The images were clear and terrible. But the anchors were groping in total darkness, in a bewilderment I had never seen. It was clear that this was an attack and not an accident. But by whom? And why? The CBS presenter was asking: “But who could wish America harm, when we have always helped the whole world?” And the one on NBC: “The Evil Empire is over, it set with the fall of the Berlin Wall twelve years ago. Where does this hatred come from?”

New York comes to a halt

On the day of the attack, as on the day after, New York ceased to exist. The streets were deserted. Shops, restaurants, supermarkets, closed. There was no public transport. In my hotel, where the staff had not turned up, the managers improvised pathetic sandwiches, which was all that could be offered to the guests to keep them fed. Everyone was at home digesting the shock, avoiding unpredictable dangers, and watching television. Only on the second day, beyond the appalling images of people falling from the sky, of office workers and firemen covered in a mantle of ash, did figures and data begin to appear. And in those days, the American dream vanished.

The American myth and its crisis

The United States had been the clear winner of the Second World War. And from then on, the undisputed leader of the world, opposed only by the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union. But American citizens saw the socialist world as politically absurd and economically backward, a place people were constantly fleeing in order to take refuge in the world of freedom, democracy and prosperity, the United States. It was they who had set in motion the reconstruction of Europe, which, though historically the centre of the West, was by then an arm of American hegemony. And their aid to the development of the Third World had saved millions of people from hunger and famine. In the collective imagination, this took on enormous proportions, which had nothing to do with reality. Shortly before 11 September, the New York Times had published a survey according to which the American “in the street” believed that development aid amounted to anywhere from a minimum of 5 per cent of Gross Product up to 10 per cent. In fact it was 0.10.

The common feeling in those days was disbelief. In the history of the United States, Americans had first read about and then watched wars, massacres and every kind of violence as distant events, even when their own sons were involved, as in the Second World War. But they had never suffered an attack at home. And the fact that this had been possible was the first, subconscious feeling of distrust towards the institutions — which, with other events and with time, would become an important part of today’s political reality. Until then, polls had always recorded a serene confidence in a State that guaranteed security.

From the American dream to Trump and Musk

To make an effective analysis of how the American dream progressively faded would require far more space than we have. But let me try to summarise the threads of the carpet that slowly covered the United States we knew, replacing them with those of Trump and Musk.

First of all, it should be remembered that in the decade of the Eighties a number of things happened that carried great significance not only globally, but with great weight inside the United States.

The first was the Conference of Heads of State in Cancún, in 1981, convened by the United Nations to continue the dialogue for a New World Order based on cooperation and international solidarity, adopted by acclamation by the General Assembly in 1973. I was head of communications for the Summit, and I lived it from the inside. The 25 most representative heads of state of the moment were there, and from Indira Gandhi to Mitterrand, from Nyerere to Trudeau, all spoke of the need to strengthen international cooperation. When Reagan’s turn came, elected shortly before, his speech was categorical, and was later taken up by Thatcher: “American citizens elected me to serve their interests and not those of others. And therefore I do not accept the straitjacket of United Nations resolutions. From now on, America will choose its own road.”

In those same years, at American urging, the international community adopted the Washington Consensus, drawn up by the American Treasury, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank. The consensus broke with the economic doctrines that had prevailed since the end of the war. It eliminated every social component, making the market and its laws of absolute competition the centre of society. The State was to withdraw from its central role and let the market take its place. Expenditure that was not immediately productive, such as health and education, was to be taken over by the private sector. And competition, at every level, from the individual to the global, was to be the yardstick by which success is judged.

The result was that many factories and companies moved to countries with lower labour costs and fewer controls. America lost millions of jobs, of people who until then had been a middle class — white, rural, with a social conscience. But the same happened in the rural world, of white, conservative Americans with little education and an unconscious racism towards workers of colour.

The wars and the financial collapse

Nor should it be forgotten that after the attack on the Twin Towers, the United States began the war in Afghanistan, from which it would withdraw ignominiously twenty years later. And shortly afterwards, in 2003, it began the invasion of Iraq, from which it withdrew in 2011, giving life to the Islamic Caliphate (ISIS), which would become a great element of destabilisation throughout the Middle East. During these years, Americans discover that their country is not invincible. It was supposed to overcome the trauma of Vietnam. Instead, the failure of the most powerful military machine in the world continues. In the end, all that will remain is a tragic balance sheet of ruins and dead, and a total expenditure of around eight trillion dollars. To put it in perspective, the American budget today is thirty trillion dollars.

But in my view, the final blow to the American dream came a few years later, with the collapse of Wall Street, an event which once again found me present while it was happening. Finance without controls had gone so far as to turn the stock exchange into a genuine casino, a place of ever riskier bets. Under Clinton, in 1999, a law was repealed which since 1923 had established a clear separation between deposit banks (those serving citizens and businesses, loans and mortgages) and investment banks, that is, banks of speculation. The capital of the deposit banks, which were not very profitable, flowed into the investment banks. Americans do not say, as we Europeans do, that they “gamble” on the stock exchange, but that they “invest” in it. And a great many citizens do so, as do their pension funds.

In 2008 the speculative bubble bursts, sweeps away Lehman Brothers, an icon of Wall Street, and gives rise to a crisis which obviously affects the whole world. It is calculated that all the countries of the world together had to commit some 20,000 dollars in rescue money for every citizen of the planet in order to avoid a total collapse of finance. In the crisis, millions upon millions of Americans lose their savings. Their pensions too are in danger. Since the decade of the Eighties, the bargaining power of the unions has been in continuous decline. Wages in real, purchasing terms have been steadily falling. Many citizens are struggling with precarious and part-time jobs with which they can barely reach the end of the month. Many have to hold down two jobs in order to survive. The poverty rate rises to 15 per cent, and child poverty to African levels. UNICEF’s figures are dramatic. And so begins the conviction that the elites are the enemies of the people, that politics no longer has anything to do with citizens’ real concerns. Electoral abstention increases. And so the immigrant, the labour force on which America was built, becomes the enemy who takes my job, pollutes my child’s classroom, takes my place in the hospital, and commits crimes and outrages.

Religion, sovereignism and the new right

It is not only politics that digs out this feeling of frustration and anger, which explains Trump’s great success. It is also religion. Fundamentalist evangelicals now number 60 million in the United States, and their message takes up exactly the economic and social vision of the Washington Consensus. We must compete, because God judges us by our success; whoever is poor is poor because he has not fought. They support an Israel that recovers its ancient kingdom of Samaria and Judea (and therefore a vast ethnic cleansing), because they preach that Jesus will make a “second coming”, a return to earth, only when Israel has returned to the time of Jesus. And in this world flourishes the sovereignism of Bannon, who wants to turn the right into a great international (later overshadowed by Musk, who wants an anti-system sovereignism of the far right). Catholic integralism flourishes, embraced by J. Vance, the vice-president placed there by Silicon Valley and a possible next President. The integralism that leads the Secretary of Defense (or rather of War, as he prefers it) to bring religion into the armed forces, to present the war against Iran in terms of religion. And a population in which the level of economic and social distress reaches 20 per cent sees the flourishing of the first trillionaire in history (let us look at a trillion: 1,000,000,000,000), who boasts of paying no taxes, eliminates American development aid, and dismisses tens of thousands of public servants without criterion.

The internet and the end of shared truth

Shortly afterwards comes the development of communications technology. In 2004 Facebook is born, Reddit in 2005, Twitter in 2006. All at once, millions of Americans find themselves connected to one another, bypassing the enormous media system of the United States, which was in any case in few hands. I was one of the great champions of the internet, until (I believe it was Bill Gates) someone launched a slogan: “Now it is not important to know; it is important to know where to look” — which brought me to a state of great concern. If I find, but do not possess, what I have looked for, it will slide off me, like water off a goose’s back.

But the problem is that the internet was not born as a common good, as a service for humanity. It was born as a source of profit, and with the orgy of available information, being consulted became fundamental. Hence the abandonment of any meaningful mechanism of ethical or professional control over the information in circulation. So, in order to keep the connection and not lose the user, priority went to the most sensational, extraordinary, striking information. Before long this would be exploited by creators of false or tendentious news, with a great flowering of conspiracy theories which, for example, see in the President of the Republic and the Pope a network of paedophiles covered by the secret services. I read, again I think in the NYT, that the FBI estimated at 45 million the number of people adhering to these conspiracies, which stripped the institutions of all legitimacy. And so the internet gave them a megaphone, which carried the most incredible ideas from the bar to the whole of society. And above all to the extremists, infinitely more fanatical than ordinary citizens.

Numerous studies and statistics tell us of the impact of the isolation that leads young people, instead of socialising, to shut themselves up in the internet, in a virtual world in which AI becomes the real friend and adviser. This falls upon a society that has always idealised the individual against the social, and where a winning political line sees in the reduction of the State the freedom of citizens, in taxes an unjust expropriation of the fruit of their labour, and in social spending, such as medical care, a clear socialist imprint.

Obviously, a reaction of suffering is under way in the United States. The Mayor of New York, who declares himself a socialist, has been elected, and other openly progressive figures are entering the field. But this is happening with a strong polarisation, with an intolerant and profound confrontation, which offers no glimpse, in the immediate future, of a path towards national consensus, but quite the contrary. Trump calls the Democrats “communists”, and politics has by now become the great instrument of division. The future does not look at all like a return to the America of dreams.

Bin Laden’s legacy and Europe

Bin Laden could never have imagined, in destroying the Twin Towers, that he would set in motion such a mechanism of destruction.

But his legacy is not measured only in treaties. It is measured also in everyday gestures, which we have stopped recognising as such. Today no one is surprised at having to arrive at the airport two hours before departure: shoes and belts in the tray, liquids in hundred-millilitre bottles, queues, scanners, searches. The new generations experience it as a law of nature, because they never knew the before. It was enough to turn up half an hour ahead, check in, and go straight to the gate. No controls. That world disappeared on a September morning, and it has never come back. This is terrorism’s most silent victory: not to have changed our ideas, but our habits, to the point that we no longer remember having had different ones.

We should also analyse how this mechanism did not remain in the United States. With different characteristics, and in a different reality, it spread to Europe as well. One need only look at the Maastricht Treaty, on which our European Union is based. Concluded in the Dutch town in 1992, at the height of the intoxication with the extreme capitalism of the Washington Consensus, it provides for obligations and competences in the economic field alone. The social field is part of an added document, which has no binding value. And now, out of 27 member states of the Union, a majority are sovereignist, and therefore opposed to any real power for Brussels. Next year we will have elections in Spain, France, Italy and Poland. Countries of great weight. If sovereignism prevails in these too, Europeans — who look upon Trump as an aberration — will have fulfilled his dream: to destroy the European Union.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti-neoliberal global governance. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

IPS UN Bureau

A delegate walking past a billboard at the Africa Food Systems Forum at Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda's capital. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
KIGALI, Sep 14 2026 (IPS)

When the African continent experiences erratic rains, crops fail, leaving millions of people facing hunger.

Approximately 95% of Africa’s arable land depends heavily on rainfall, which is vulnerable to climate shocks such as drought.

El Niño-induced drought expected to hit some parts of Africa, particularly southern Africa, is going to worsen the situation.

At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, governments and development partners are calling for more investment in irrigation systems to reduce dependence on rain-fed agriculture by farmers, including small holders who make up 80% of all farmers in sub-saharan Africa.

Building More Irrigation Systems

Only 5% of Africa’s arable land is under irrigation. Asia irrigates about 7 times more than Africa, as it holds about three-quarters of the entire world’s irrigated land.

“Some irrigation systems have been developed. The task now is to take it to scale,” said Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Senator Abubakar Kyari, at a side event organised by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). “The technology is there and the workforce is there. What we need is collective action.”

IWMI is a global research organisation addressing water challenges in developing countries, working with governments, civil society, and businesses.

When El Niño hit the southern Africa region in the 2023/2024 agriculture season, it triggered one of the driest mid-seasons in over 40 years. It devastated rain-fed maize production, leaving over 26 million people facing hunger in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and Zambia.

These countries declared national drought disasters to mobilise resources from the public purse, private sector and humanitarian agencies.

In preparing for the next El Nino, Abubakar said agriculture cannot remain at the mercy of the seasons. He said Africa should sustainably manage and deploy its vast water schemes. “This is not a continent of scarcity but of strategic abundance,” he said. “Our task now is not to apportion blame but to break that cycle.”

Africa holds about 9% of the world’s renewable freshwater systems.

Abubakar proposed the adoption and operationalisation of the African Union Framework on Irrigation Development and Agricultural Water Management to enhance water control and increase farmer-led irrigation. This framework is a continental blueprint published in 2020 to boost food security, adapt to climate change, and modernise agriculture across member states.

Abubakar said there is a need to innovate financing to close the investment gap and to strengthen transboundary water appropriation. “We must move from sharing drops to sharing benefits. Establishment of enforceable cooperative frameworks. To scale up climate-smart irrigation and put farmers at the centre of irrigation development. Also to open opportunities for young people in irrigated value chains,” he said

“We must turn continental commitments into actionable delivery. We have articulated the future we want. We must translate that.”

Policy is key to enabling a working, favourable environment for increasing investment in the agriculture sector.

Speaking at the same event, Vincent Kabuti, Irrigation Secretary in the Ministry of Water, said governments should be able to put in place mechanisms for farmers to hold the government accountable.

He said large commercial irrigation systems are essential in complementing farmer-led irrigation systems.

“We have a lot of water, but it is the investment that we do not have,”

Preparing for the next El Niño

Southern Africa expects the next El Niño in the 2026/2027 agricultural season, according to scientists.

The weather phenomenon was officially declared on 11 June by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA confirmed that ocean temperatures in equatorial areas of the Pacific Ocean had remained more than 0.5 °C above average for several months.

El Niño occurs when trade winds in the Pacific reverse direction, causing warmer water to flow into central and eastern areas of the world’s largest ocean.

In Africa, it normally brings El contrasting weather extremes, causing severe droughts in southern Africa and heavy, flood-triggering rains across East Africa.

Drier conditions, which scientists are anticipating, are expected to threaten staple crop yields like maize in southern Africa. Reduced food security risks compounding pressure on food price inflation and acute malnutrition among children.

Abubakar said irrigation systems cushion farmers from droughts and boost food security, create jobs and boost the livelihoods of approximately 439 million Africans living in extreme poverty.

Tilahun Amede, a director of Climate Sustainable Productivity and Resilience at Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an institution focused on scaling agricultural innovations that help smallholder farmers towards increased incomes, better livelihoods, and improved food security, said countries must integrate water in every aspect of agriculture. “African governments must invest in water and irrigation systems,” he said.

“We also need to create a market for farmers to increase their incomes so that they can adopt irrigation systems.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Most free trade advocates falsely claim that comparative advantage ensures developmental gains from trade liberalisation. Mainstream trade theory does not promise that partial trade liberalisation guarantees optimal international specialisation.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Why should developing countries specialise in producing and exporting mineral or agricultural primary commodities? After all, most economists recognise the greater gains in growth, employment, and income from dynamic modern activities, especially manufacturing.

Comparative advantage supposedly gained by trade liberalisation supposedly ensures gains from international specialisation. However, tropical agriculture has instead experienced falling relative prices rather than higher-value-added secondary and tertiary activities in the North.

As Hans Singer and Raul Prebisch showed in 1950, export prices for primary commodities have fallen much more over the long term relative to the prices of manufactures. Bilge Erten has shown these trends continuing into the early 21st century.

Evidence since the late 20th century suggests that the prices of manufactured goods produced by developing countries have fallen relative to those of more sophisticated, high-tech goods from more developed economies.

Intellectual property rents
Due to intense competition among developing countries producing ‘generic’ manufactures, developed-country firms secure higher rents from intellectual property rights (IPRs) – namely, ‘surplus’ from monopoly power so conferred – on their manufactured exports.

The latter are priced higher due to the ‘exclusive’ monopoly power protected by IPRs and ‘branding’ strengthened by transnational law with the establishment of the multilateral World Trade Organization and related law on trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS).

In fact, the prices of generic primary commodities and ‘unbranded’ manufactures have fallen due to more intense competition. In contrast, the prices of ‘exclusive’ products, due to monopoly IPRs and transnational corporate branding, remain higher.

However, such rents do not accrue to mass-produced generic products, whether primary commodities or manufactures made with easily accessible materials and production techniques, subject to intense market competition.

The last decade-long commodity ‘super-cycle’ price boom, which ended around 2004, generated windfall earnings and investible capital. While it undoubtedly lifted many boats for growth, if not development, it did not contradict longer-term trends.

Biased theory
The economic literature on development, trade, and monopolistic competition recognises the possibility of increasing – not just diminishing – returns to scale in manufacturing, enabling average costs to fall.

Such gains from trade are not from one-time ‘static’ improvements in resource allocation. Instead, these benefits stem from dynamic changes driven by production expansion, specialisation, and differentiation for larger markets.

Potential gains from greater external market access can be significant, but only if building on an existing industrial base, capacity and capabilities. Proactive support through appropriate industrial, investment, and technology policies can be crucial.

This pragmatic developmental approach to trade policy contradicts the neoclassical Heckscher-Ohlin ‘pure’ trade theory, the received conventional wisdom invoked by contemporary advocates of trade liberalisation.

Some Keynesian economists promoted balance-of-payments-constrained growth. Cross-border flows of goods and services are determined by the level and growth rate of economic activity, with the exchange rate determining relative prices.

This approach, implying fewer gains from trade, is rejected by trade liberalisation advocates. Developing countries’ gains from specialisation are reduced by falling relative prices, with consumers benefiting from productivity gains at the expense of producers.

If developing-country firms do not manufacture products at productivity levels comparable to those in developed countries, claims of trade gains from consumers’ ‘love of variety’ become quite irrelevant.

Agricultural trade liberalisation
The Western push for agricultural trade liberalisation sought to eliminate tariffs to ensure food security while ignoring subsidies that developed countries could afford.

Although agricultural export subsidies have been largely eliminated, OECD food producers continue to benefit from production subsidies, thereby enabling productivity and trade gains.

As many developing countries became net importers of subsidised agribusiness exports from OECD exporters, price increases due to subsidy withdrawal hurt consumers, especially in developing countries.

Comparable gains in developing-country agriculture have often been modest due to the decline in infrastructure and support services, especially after the imposition of the ‘neoliberal’ Washington Consensus by the West in the 1980s.

The increasing private foreign corporate domination of agricultural research, development, and extension has also significantly reduced net gains to developing-country smallholder farmers.

Neoliberal reforms, including structural adjustment programmes, have reduced, contracted out or privatised government and public-sector alternatives. This raised the costs of credit, marketing, and inputs, including seeds, fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, machinery and fuel.

While trade liberalisation of manufactured imports eroded the policy space needed for investment and technology policies for development, agricultural trade liberalisation has undermined ‘food security’ in most developing countries.

Thus, many African net food-exporting nations became net food importers in the 1980s, following the neoliberal reforms imposed by structural adjustment programmes on indebted nations.

IPS UN Bureau

On 2 September 2026, UNICEF staff and partners are distributing recreation kits at Child-Friendly Spaces (CFS) at the holding center for children affected by the recent flash floods in Nuwakot District, Bagmati Province, Nepal. Credit: UNICEF/Laxmi Prasad Ngakhusi

By Shreya Komar
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 11 2026 (IPS)

Two weeks after devastating floods struck Nepal, communities across the country are still struggling to meet basic needs as humanitarian efforts continue. The disaster, triggered by a glacial collapse, has become one of Nepal’s deadliest in recent years, leaving widespread destruction in its wake.

As of Wednesday, 1,367 people had been confirmed dead, while 5,132 remained missing, including 587 foreign nationals. 13,646 people have been rescued, but many families are still waiting for news about their loved ones. Search operations remain ongoing, including efforts to reach people who may still be trapped in tunnels and other difficult-to-access areas.

The scale of the destruction has made delivering aid particularly challenging. Floodwaters have damaged homes, roads, bridges, and other essential infrastructure, leaving some communities isolated. The Nepalese government has been using military helicopters to drop aid into areas that remain difficult to reach, while temporary bridges are also being constructed to reconnect communities that have received insufficient assistance.

Families urgently need food, clean drinking water, shelter and access to healthcare. Health services are particularly important for vulnerable groups, including an estimated 1,600 pregnant women who are expected to give birth soon. Ensuring that these women can reach medical facilities and receive appropriate prenatal and emergency care is a major concern.

Mental health support is another pressing need that could become increasingly important as the immediate emergency begins to subside. Survivors have lost homes, livelihoods and, in many cases, family members.

On Wednesday September 9, UN Resident Coordinator for Nepal Lila Pieters Yahia, briefed reporters at UN Headquarters on the ongoing humanitarian efforts by the UN and the Nepalese government.

“People were just so depressed,” Yahia reflected after her visit to the affected communities.

Many people are also coping with the uncertainty of not knowing whether missing relatives are alive. Reuniting separated families and children has therefore become another important part of the humanitarian response.

The United Nations and its humanitarian partners launched a USD 49.6 million flash appeal last Friday to provide life-saving assistance to people affected by the disaster. The appeal is intended to support critical needs including food, clean water, logistics and other immediate relief. So far, approximately USD 22 million has been pledged, leaving a significant funding gap.

The Nepal Red Cross Society is leading much of the humanitarian response, with support from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations. Aid is being distributed through a combination of government agencies, community organizations and non-governmental organizations. However, humanitarian officials continue to warn that access remains one of the greatest obstacles to reaching people in need.

Yahia described the destruction as an example of the increasingly severe losses faced by countries vulnerable to climate change. “The devastation Nepal has experienced is an extraordinary, stark illustration of the losses and damages that climate-vulnerable countries are increasingly facing,” she said.

Nepal’s experience has also renewed calls for greater international action on climate change and climate justice. As a mountainous country particularly vulnerable to changing weather patterns and the effects of a warming climate, Nepal faces a disproportionate burden.

Despite the enormous challenges, Yahia says aid is reaching many affected communities, and survivors continue to demonstrate hope. “People are still searching for family members they know they may never find,” she said, highlighting the resilience keeping people strong. Yet thousands of people remain in need, and the destruction of transportation networks means that reaching the most isolated communities will take time.

“My plea tonight to the international community: we need to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Nepal,” Yahia emphasized.

For Nepal, the emergency is far from over. The immediate priority remains saving lives and providing food, water, shelter and access to healthcare. As communities begin the long process of rebuilding, the country will also need sustained international support to recover from one of its most destructive disasters.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Following the June earthquakes in Venezuela, UNICEF has provided on-the-ground support, scaling up supplies and services to reach vulnerable children and their families. Credit: UNICEF/Francisco Segovia

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 9 2026 (IPS)

Two months after devastating twin earthquakes struck northern and central Venezuela on June 24, the humanitarian community has been on the frontlines, delivering lifesaving aid and focusing efforts on sustainable paths for rehabilitation.

With health and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) systems pushed to the brink of collapse, the United Nations (UN) and its partners are currently working to restore critical services by distributing essential supplies while closely monitoring recovery conditions.

As of August 28, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that roughly 1.3 million people have been affected by the earthquakes and will require humanitarian support for the next six months. Approximately 6,509 deaths have been reported as a direct result of the earthquakes, and 60,785 homes were evacuated due to damage or destruction.

The damage to essential civilian infrastructure has been immense and widespread, with the UN reporting damage not only to residential buildings but also to schools, health facilities, and infrastructure related to food production, clean water, and safe spaces for children.

A preliminary assessment by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) places the total losses from direct damage to housing and infrastructure at around US$37 billion, while estimates from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) place the losses at US$6.7 billion— roughly 6 percent of the nation’s total gross domestic product.

Immediately following the earthquakes, UNDP activated RAPIDA—a rapid assessment system that combines satellite imagery, AI-facilitated damage monitoring, exposure databases, and seismic intensity and engineering models—to provide the national government with critical data on the scale of destruction to guide effective recovery efforts.

According to the assessment, the earthquakes generated approximately 2.1 million tonnes of rubble as of mid-July, which has since been integrated into national debris-management planning. By late August, national authorities estimated that roughly 21.61 percent of the total rubble had been cleared.

Despite this progress, living conditions remain highly precarious for millions of Venezuelans. Tens of thousands of people remain displaced across 80 temporary shelters. Rampant overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and lack of access to basic services have made these facilities breeding grounds for disease outbreaks.

“In the coming weeks, the greatest health risks may stem not only from injuries caused by the earthquakes, but also from disruptions to health services, overcrowded conditions, deficiencies in water and sanitation, and reduced access to vaccination and routine healthcare,” said Jarbas Barbosa, director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), adding that vaccine coverage was significantly sparse even before the earthquakes.

The UN and its partners have prioritized restoring WASH systems, underscoring the need for access to clean and safe water to prevent disease outbreaks. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) noted that despite substantial gains in access to safe water recorded over the past two months, heavy rains, limited availability of water trucking, and rising operational costs continue to jeopardize lifesaving operations.

“After the catastrophic damage the earthquakes created, the priority has been to ensure that children have access to safe and clean water. But recovery also means ensuring that families can rely on safe water both now and in the future,” said Manuel Rodríguez Pumarol, UNICEF Representative in Venezuela.

“Recovery requires sustaining what works and strengthening the services that families need over the long term. UNICEF will continue providing technical assistance, supplies and operational support so that every child can grow up in a healthy and protective environment,” Rodríguez Pumarol added.

Currently, UNICEF and Venezuela’s Ministry of People’s Power for Water Services are mobilizing efforts to rehabilitate critical water infrastructure in La Guaira—one of the hardest-hit regions. Aiming to reach up to 250,000 people, operations will commence in October and will include reinforcing the Mamo pumping station and the Naiguatá water treatment plant.

As of September 8, UNICEF’s operations have reached at least 16,661 people, including 5,079 children. Several communities so far have been provided with access to safe water, marking a critical turning point in stabilizing health, nutrition, and protection.

In recent weeks, PAHO’s response has transitioned toward immediate emergency interventions and early recovery. Key areas of focus include mental health, maternal and perinatal care, restoring interrupted services, and ongoing support for transitional shelters.

On September 4, PAHO released a situation report detailing its current operations in Venezuela, confirming that it had shipped 41.3 metric tons of medical supplies and medicines to Venezuela, reaching approximately 70,697 people. PAHO and its partners are working to support early detection and response measures while monitoring environmental risks in transitional shelters.

The organization has highlighted the Caracas, La Guaira, Miranda, and Aragua regions as the most vulnerable, noting that these regions require urgent support in prenatal care and family planning, gender-based violence prevention, and rehabilitation services. In response, PAHO has launched a US$23 million appeal to fund lifesaving health interventions for the next six months.

IPS UN Bureau

Female Students learning wildlife tracking at a conservation leadership camp. Credit: Moreangels Mbizah

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Sep 9 2026 (IPS)

A 12-year-old male lion slipped out of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park one winter morning and killed a 7-year-old boy in a village it wandered into.

The boy, Elton, should have been safe within his village outside Zimbabwe’s largest national park, but a winter morning ended that safety. The lion cut short his life, pushing a grieving community into the centre of a contested frontline: conflict for space between humans and wildlife. The lion was put down.

“That day forever remains etched in my mind, and it’s one of the reasons that led me to form the Wildlife Conservation Action,” says zoologist Moreangels Mbizah, recalling how the morning of April 2014 when she found the lion had killed Elton changed her perspective about wildlife coexisting with people.

“I realised that protecting lions inside the park meant very little if we were not also protecting people living alongside them,” Mbizah said.

Charity Patron, HRH Princess Anne, presented Dr Moreangels Mbizah with a 2026 Whitley Award in April 2026 to expand a coexistence model of conservation in northern Zimbabwe. Credit: Whitley Fund for Nature

Conservation From Tragedy

Wildlife and communities living near or within conservation areas across Zimbabwe fight over habitat and resources.

In 2024, 49 people were killed by wild animals across the country; this number increased to 53 in 2025, according to the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Climate. Zimbabwe is currently developing a National Human-Wildlife Coexistence Strategy aimed at curbing human-wildlife conflict.

The country’s parks authority, ZimParks, recently released figures indicating that over the last decade over 12,000 incidents of human-wildlife conflict have been recorded. At that time 486 people were killed with 554 others injured, while more than 4,000 livestock were lost to wildlife attacks.

Human wildlife conflict hotspots in the country include Binga, Hwange, Chiredzi, Hurungwe, Mbire, Muzarabani, Nyaminyami, Chipinge, Gokwe North, Gokwe South, Tsholotsho, Bulilima and Kusile districts. Habitat encroachment, climate change, population growth and inadequate barriers between communities and wildlife have been blamed for the increase in human-wildlife conflict.

Wildlife Conservation Action works in the Nyaminyami and Binga districts, which are part of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA). They also work in Mbire district along the border with Mozambique and Mana Pools National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site with the only floodplain ecosystem left in the Middle Zambezi. The area which also forms part of the Zimbabwe-Mozambique-Zambia (ZIMOZA) TFCA is a human-wildlife conflict hotspot, especially for elephants and lions.

Over the years, villagers in Mbire District who have lost livestock to lions have fought back. Lions have been killed as communities defended themselves and their livestock.

Securing livestock, saving lions

A lion and lioness in the wild. Credit: Moreangels Mbizah

Losing a single cow to a lion is a loss of family income of an average three months in Mbire District. In general people earn an average monthly wage of $108, and a cow sells for an average of $300, said Mbizah, who is among the few Black African women to have founded a conservation organisation.

Many families keep livestock for income and food. For a farmer with just five cows, protecting the animals is also protecting lions – a paradox that got Mbizah thinking.

Mbizah – who, as part of her PhD studies, famously tracked “Cecil the Lion” before it was killed in 2015, sparking global criticism – has used community leadership and low-tech innovation of solar-powered “lion lights” and mobile cattle kraals to protect $2.3 million worth of local livestock.

She said the interventions promoted in the community to reduce human-wildlife conflict are non-lethal and climate smart, such as holistic livestock management, use of mobile bomas, beekeeping and chilli farming, and sustainable agriculture.

“Our programme has been successful because of our relationship with the community and engaging them as guardians for the environment. We looked at the traditional way of kraaling that people have been using for generations and how they can strengthen that so the livestock is protected overnight from lion attacks,” Mbizah said.

Her organisation has helped farmers build lion-proof bomas for their cattle and raised kraals for their goats. These kraaling methods have reduced lion attacks on livestock.

In addition, Community Guardians, whom Mbizah calls the bedrock of her organisation, have been recruited and trained on detecting lions before they attack. Young women and men use specialised equipment which alerts them to lion movements near the community and are able to move the predators away safely.

Ruth Kamuchato, from Mapini Village in Mbire District, says growing up seeing lions attacking livestock motivated her to train as a community guardian. She wanted to understand how it was possible to protect lions and livestock at the same time.

“I feel good about working as a community guardian, but it was difficult in the beginning to appreciate people and wildlife thriving together because of the fear of lions, which are dangerous animals,” said Kamuchato. “When lions kill livestock or threaten people, the first feeling is that animals are our enemy, but after training and working in conservation, I started seeing the bigger picture that lions are not bad – they are just trying to survive too.”

A community guardian installing a lion light monitoring unit. Credit: Moreangels Mbizah

Another Community Guardian, Knowledge Chiriga (31) from Nebiri Village Ward 7, in Nyaminyami District, says protecting lions was a solution to the human-wildlife conflict experienced in his village.

“I grew up in the Nebiri village, which is about 7 km from Matusadonha National Park, and have experienced a lot of human-wildlife conflict since my early childhood, and then I had no hope of finding a programme that would relieve the community from the challenge we had with lions,” Chiriga said, admitting he jumped at the opportunity to train as a community guardian under the Wildlife Conservation Action.

“Lions are part of our ecosystem and our heritage, so protecting them doesn’t mean ignoring danger, but finding ways to keep both people and lions safe,” Chiriga said. “Now I feel proud because I am helping my community to stay safe. With better safety measures we can live alongside lions.”

Lweetelelo Mugande (29) from Chitongo village, Ward 17 in Binga District, said it was difficult in the beginning for the community to accept her role in conserving lions, as some people asked why protect animals that hurt them.

“But over time, as we showed up during conflicts, we helped set up mobile bomas and explained how conservation can bring jobs and support; attitudes started to change,” she said.

“Now many community members call us when there’s a problem. They see that we are from the same village and that we have livestock and families here and that we are trying to find solutions together. Trust is growing, but we still have a lot of awareness work to do.”

Cattle inside a predator-proof mobile boma in Zimbabwe. Credit: Moreangels mbizah

Mbizah received the 2026 Whitley Award for her work in saving lions through a community-led model. The award, recognising conservation leaders across the world, will enable Mbizah to expand the coexistence model of conservation to other districts in the country.

“Local communities have a cultural connection to and respect for the wildlife, but that comes with risks, and this is where the challenge is,” Mbizah tells IPS. “If we can reduce these risks, people can tolerate the presence of wildlife in their communal land. Where there is conflict, people do not want lions because they impact their lives, livelihood and livestock.”

Lion populations in Africa are under threat. Over 90% of their historic range has been lost in recent years. The African lion (Panthera leo) is classified as a threatened species and listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

There has been a significant lion population decline of approximately 43% over the past 21 years with an estimated 25,000 individuals remaining in the wild in Africa. The loss of habitat, the decline of prey and human-wildlife conflict, where the lions have been killed in retaliation for livestock losses, are key drivers to the reduction in lion population.

Mbizah highlights the misconception that conservation is separate from development. Her work is at the intersection of conservation and community development.

“We help communities to protect wildlife by improving their livelihoods,” she explained. “If communities are doing well, they are more likely to be involved in conservation and to protect the wildlife around them. We cannot just protect the species without protecting the people that are also protecting these species.”

At a time when Africa’s lion population is threatened, Zimbabwe has maintained healthy populations thanks to its strong conservation programmes. Mbizah’s conservation approach is a model for protecting predators without impoverishing the people who live in its environment.

“Protecting lives and livelihoods ultimately protects lions too,” Mbizah said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Countries of the Global South are not merely recipients of development support; they are contributors of knowledge, innovation and investment. Credi: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Hua Yang
ROME, Sep 8 2026 (IPS)

The world’s agrifood systems are under mounting pressure from economic uncertainty, climate change and persistent inequalities. Farmers, rural communities and the most vulnerable are bearing the heaviest burden. We must act faster and scale practical, proven solutions.

The United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation celebrates more than solidarity. It recognizes the ideas, innovation and shared commitment emerging from the Global South. It also reminds us that cooperation among developing countries and with their partners is essential to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Countries of the Global South are not merely recipients of development support; they are contributors of knowledge, innovation and investment.

Knowledge from the Global South is rooted in practical experience and tested under real-world conditions. Triangular cooperation can amplify its impact by bringing in financing or technical expertise from developed countries, multilateral organizations and other partners - while keeping cooperation led and owned by countries of the South

For more than 40 years, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has helped countries share expertise and technologies through South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC). This cooperation has strengthened food security and improved livelihoods across the Global South.

SSTC works because countries that have faced similar development challenges can share relevant and adaptable solutions.

Knowledge from the Global South is rooted in practical experience and tested under real-world conditions. Triangular cooperation can amplify its impact by bringing in financing or technical expertise from developed countries, multilateral organizations and other partners – while keeping cooperation led and owned by countries of the South.

Above all, SSTC is built on partnership, not dependency. Every country has knowledge to offer, and FAO has seen that knowledge translated into practical results.

The long-standing partnership between FAO and China is one example. Since the 1990s, more than 1,200 Chinese experts have supported agricultural development in developing countries, sharing field-tested expertise in crop production, aquaculture, livestock and irrigation.

Through the FAO–China South-South Cooperation Programme and related initiatives, countries have strengthened technical capacity, increased agricultural productivity and improved livelihoods. The results show how targeted technical cooperation can deliver benefits far beyond national borders.

Other partnerships are producing results. For 18 years, the Brazil–FAO South-South Cooperation Programme has enabled countries across Latin America and the Caribbean to exchange knowledge. Since 2021, the FAO–Türkiye Partnership Programmes have supported countries in Central Asia.

In Central Asia’s Fergana Valley, FAO has also joined forces with the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, with support from the Russian Federation, to help Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan advance climate-smart agriculture. Farmer Field Schools, improved soil and water management, appropriate technologies and value-chain diversification show how SSTC can strengthen farmers’ livelihoods.

These examples reflect a wider transformation. Across the Global South, countries are not only receiving development support; they are contributing knowledge, innovation and investment.

FAO’s role as a trusted convener and technical facilitator is to connect these experiences with countries seeking solutions. That is why we upgraded the SSTC Gateway: to broaden dialogue, gather feedback and share Global South’s innovations, knowledge and experience.

This role has never been more important. FAO’s expanding SSTC portfolio reflects growing demand for this approach.

From rice value chains and digital agriculture to sustainable apiculture and support for Small Island Developing States, SSTC is mobilizing knowledge, resources and partnerships to deliver measurable impact.

Looking ahead, we must ensure that SSTC delivers stronger, measurable results for farmers, rural communities, women, youth and future generations. Women farmers, in particular, have a critical role in transforming agrifood systems.

FAO’s South-South and Triangular Cooperation Division will continue working with Members and partners to bring these solutions forward, adapt them to local contexts and help build agrifood systems that are more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable. As demand for SSTC grows, FAO will expand partnerships, mobilize investment and make proven solutions easier to adapt and scale.

When the Global South leads, the world benefits. When countries learn from one another, invest in one another and shape solutions together, we move closer to better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life for all, leaving no one behind.

Excerpt:

Farmer Field Day held at Mariira, to demonstrate the different Climate Smart Technologies used in farming. December 22nd, 2022. Murang'a county, Kenya. Credit: 2022 CIAT/Owen Kimani

By Ismahane Elouafi
KIGALI, Rwanda, Sep 3 2026 (IPS)

As leaders gather in Kigali for the Africa Food Systems Forum, they face an urgent question: why do so many proven agricultural innovations still fail to reach the farmers and communities that need them most?

For the first time, Africa is home to the largest number of people facing hunger. This is despite decades of agricultural innovation developed to address the continent’s food and agriculture challenges. Between 2022 and 2024, CGIAR – the world’s largest partnership dedicated to transforming food, land and water systems in a climate crisis – developed more than 470 innovations, reaching at least six million farmers across the continent.

Africa’s food systems challenges are not the result of a lack of innovation. Rather, a set of overlapping, complex and increasingly severe pressures is undermining progress at a critical point in the continent’s transformation.

Climate-driven weather impacts are becoming more frequent and severe. A predicted “super” El Niño in the coming months is forecast to create drier than usual conditions across parts of West and Central Africa. In East Africa, it is forecast to reduce normal rainfall in some regions and to lead to severe rainfall and flooding in others. According to the World Meteorological Organization, Africa is warming faster than the global average.

Escalating conflicts across several African countries are disrupting food supply chains and increasing the risk of severe food emergencies. At the same time, geopolitical instability has driven up the cost of agricultural inputs and transport, creating further barriers to sustainable farming. All this is taking place against a backdrop of reduced funding for agricultural development and an unprecedented decline in international aid to sub-Saharan Africa.

African countries are confronting this confluence of challenges as they begin implementing the new 10-year Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme Strategy and Action Plan (2026–2035), the African Union-led roadmap for transforming the continent’s agrifood systems into more resilient drivers of economic growth, food security and healthy diets.

The roadmap sets the ambition. What is missing is the architecture to make that happen: the “missing middle” between proven agricultural innovation and the large-scale public investment, partnerships and delivery capacity needed to take it to scale.

Bridging this missing middle requires development funders to rethink how they support agricultural innovation. Governments, international financial institutions, multilateral development banks and African development finance institutions must move beyond portfolios of disparate projects and invest instead in coherent innovation pathways. Science and evidence must be integrated from the outset, before investment decisions are made.

Innovation pathways provide a route for moving tried-and-tested solutions to scale. They allow governments, funders, scientific organizations and partners to work together to identify, validate, scale and measure the impact of the most promising innovations.

Bundling complementary innovations into investable packages can also help accelerate deployment and impact, opening opportunities for ambitious young Africans to build firms, provide services and create jobs within their own food systems.

African governments must remain in the driver’s seat throughout this process. That is essential to ensure investments respond to national priorities and align with country agrifood systems investment plans under CAADP.

CGIAR is working to build precisely these connections between country demand, science, finance and delivery. One example is the partnership between CGIAR Scaling for Impact with the African Development Bank to support the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) and its Clearinghouse. It demonstrates how large-scale development finance and scientific expertise can be brought together to meet national agricultural priorities and deliver proven, science-backed technologies at scale.

The TAAT Clearinghouse connects country demand and AfDB financing with proven innovations, CGIAR expertise and the technical support needed for effective delivery. It is currently linking approximately US$1.5 billion in AfDB-backed investments in Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with science-backed technologies and expertise.

In 2026 alone, CGIAR innovations funded and scaled through the TAAT Clearinghouse are expected to reach 3.4 million farmers across the continent.

The Africa Food Systems Forum must therefore be more than a place to showcase promising ideas. It should be a critical inflection point for moving from commitment to credible investment, action and delivery. African policymakers, investors, development finance institutions and researchers should use the Forum to build a more systematic science-to-finance compact—one that places proven innovation at the heart of national investment and delivery.

In an era of less aid and greater instability, Africa cannot afford for proven science to remain stranded in pilot projects—or for billions in development finance to be invested without the best available evidence. Connecting the two is one of the fastest ways to turn Africa’s food systems ambitions into results at scale.

Dr. Ismahane Elouafi is Executive Managing Director, CGIAR

IPS UN Bureau

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Homes and roads are covered in mud in Nuwakot District, Nepal, after devastating flash floods swept through central northern Nepal. Credit: UNICEF/Laxmi-Prasad-Ngakhusi

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 1 2026 (IPS)

On the morning of August 26, an unprecedented series of flash floods struck Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, causing immense destruction, killing hundreds of civilians and leaving thousands missing. Entire neighborhoods have been buried underwater and beneath mud as the Nepalese government and humanitarian organizations rush to provide emergency assistance.

“My family members were swept away by the flood in front of my eyes,” Kalpana Malla from Nepal’s Nuwakot district told reporters. “They could not escape the flood; there was no chance at all. This flood took everything, but my son and I climbed the rooftop of a house and survived, but couldn’t explain how.”

Although the direct cause of the floods is currently unknown, figures from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) indicate that the floods were caused by a significant glacial collapse, after previously reporting they were caused by a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. Marking a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, the subsequent debris flow and downstream collapse of seismic waves crashed over the Nepal-China border, destroying buildings and roads along the Trishuli River.

“Initial analysis of before-and-after satellite images now suggests that part of a glacier collapsed high in the mountains,” said Professor Liz Stephens, Professor in Climate Risks and Resilience at the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, noting that the stability of high-mountain environments is increasingly threatened by the global impacts of climate change. She adds that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has “high confidence” that similar “complex cascading events” could occur in the future if underlying climate factors are not addressed soon.

Entire regions in Nepal have been rendered inaccessible due to heavy flooding and mudslides, which destroyed at least 35 bridges, affected over 40 kilometers of roads, and disrupted telecommunications and electricity services in roughly 10 percent of the total affected areas. The hardest-hit regions are the Rasuwa district near Kathmandu in northern Nepal, the Nuwakot district in central-northern Nepal, and the towns of Timure, Rasuwagadhi, and Syabrubesi. According to figures from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), roughly 10,000 households are in dire need of emergency assistance, with many families stripped of basic services, such as shelter, food, water supply, and access to healthcare.

Last week on August 27, Lila Pieters Yahia, the United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator in Nepal, informed reporters during a press briefing at the UN Headquarters that at least 359 people had been killed, while 73 additional civilians had been hospitalized, though some have since been released. Yahia also stated that approximately 910 civilians remain missing, though various media outlets report the figure exceeds 1,300. Since then, Nepal officials have confirmed 900 deaths and over 4247 missing.

These numbers are projected to fluctuate in the coming days as aid personnel increasingly access isolated areas. Of those unaccounted for, Yahia noted that roughly 517 are foreign nationals spanning over 30 countries—including hundreds from China and India, alongside approximately 90 from the United States.

“Everyone in a mountain valley faces the same hazards, but tourists are more vulnerable because they may not recognize the danger or understand local warnings,” said Dr. Fatima M. Pillosu, hydrometeorologist and flash floods researcher from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. “Visitors from regions where such events are rare may not appreciate how fast a mountain river can rise, nor that these valleys also face avalanches, landslides and floods from melting glaciers, even in dry weather. Knowing in advance what can happen, and what to do if it does, is one of the most useful protections.”

Children in Nepal are among the hardest-hit populations, with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimating that at least 17,000 children have been impacted. UNICEF has recorded the destruction of at least 18 schools and damage to 20. Roughly 10,000 school-age children are projected to require urgent support to continue their education, including new learning materials, access to temporary learning centers, and psychosocial support services for both children and teachers.

“Children across Rasuwa and Dhading saw their lives being literally washed away in front of their eyes in a very short span of time, with homes, classrooms, and medical facilities damaged,” said Alice Akunga, the UNICEF representative to Nepal. “Children who have survived the floods now face heightened risks of disease, malnutrition, violence and exploitation,” she said.

Yahia informed reporters that the UN and its partners are currently on the ground, providing direct support to vulnerable communities while simultaneously conducting assessments to determine the exact scale of needs. Currently, the World Food Programme (WFP) is positioned to provide equipment and emergency rations to communities on the frontlines of the crisis. Additionally, two staff members from the World Health Organization (WHO) are distributing tents, logistics support, and medical kits for about 10,000 people for roughly three months.

Although the UN has identified potential risk for additional flooding in areas of Nepal on August 27, it is working closely with the Nepalese government to scale up its life-saving operations across health, nutrition, water, sanitation, protection, and education.

In the wake of the disaster, both countries and UN entities have begun sending emergency supplies and funding for the relief efforts in Nepal. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher announced that USD 2 million would be allocated from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

The U.S. State Department has pledged to send a disaster response advisor along with USD 500,000 in aid. Yahia also confirmed that Switzerland has sent more than USD 600,000 for aid, and other countries such as Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom have pledged to send aid funding and supplies in the days to come. Regional neighbors, such as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, have begun sending emergency supplies.

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Drylands landscape near Kitui, Kitui County - Kenya. Credit: Axel Fassio/CIFOR

By Éliane Ubalijoro and Salina Abraham
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 1 2026 (IPS)

Open a can of something fizzy and the reason the sugar doesn’t separate immediately is gum arabic, tapped by hand from acacia trees across the Sahel. Spray on perfume and the reason the scent is still there at dinner is frankincense, a resin cut from Boswellia trees on the dry escarpments of the Horn of Africa. The fat that gives a chocolate bar its snap may well be shea, gathered and pressed by women in the parkland belt of West Africa. The cashmere jumper came from goats that can only be raised on cold, dry rangelands.

These are drylands. They cover 44 per cent of the planet’s land, hold 44 per cent of the world’s cropland and half its livestock, and two billion people live in them. We have spent decades describing them as empty or unproductive. For a long list of things most of us use without thinking, they are the only places on earth that produce them at all.

It is no secret that our world is becoming hotter and drier. Three quarters of the planet’s land experienced drier conditions in the last 30 years than the previous 30. This year’s El Niño is intensifying fast, compelling the world to look back at what dryland systems already know. Nearly every model now points to a record-strength event: the US Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of a “very strong” El Niño at over 90 per cent for this fall and winter, and a 69 per cent chance it exceeds anything on record since 1950.

Drylands have been living through exactly this kind of shock-and-recovery cycle for generations, and their playbook offers real lessons. Farmers in places that have always been able to count on rain are beginning to face a question that dryland farmers answered generations ago: what do you grow, and how, when the water is not guaranteed?

Dryland systems are the longest-running operating record anywhere of producing value under conditions of scarcity, volatility and shock. These landscapes are home to generations of knowledge on how to thrive with limited water and high variability. This includes practices such as spreading risk across several crops and animals rather than betting the season on one, understanding land closely enough to move livestock before the pressure is too much, and building income that arrives at different times of the year so a bad month is not a ruined one. These are powerful lessons needed now.

Now is the time to listen and learn from dryland communities, practices, and regenerative production models. When this wisdom, data, and experience serve as our foundation, we can transition to sustainable business models and unlock investments to power our future world using knowledge that already exists in the places we have been calling marginal.

Mongolia, the host of the recently concluded UN’s COP17 talks under the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is a case in point. Three quarters of Mongolia’s land is already classified as degraded or at risk. However, Mongolian herders supply 40 per cent of the world’s raw cashmere, increasingly innovating to shift away from an extractive model to practices that generate diverse value, from wool to grass-fed meat, examples of what a healthy landscape can offer.

In northern Ghana, the Ojoba Women’s Shea Cooperative processes shea butter by hand in the arid Upper East Region, using a skill passed down through generations. They now supply international buyers including L’Occitane and Lush.

In both instances, the land already had value, and the skills already existed within the communities. What was missing was a route to the market willing to pay for them. These initiatives demonstrate what is possible when investment is designed around the realities and value in drylands.

Investment can take many forms: from financing cooperatives through the shift to new practices; insurance that pays out on rainfall; water and energy infrastructure that keeps a harvest sellable in extreme heat. There is growth potential beyond raw commodities too; processing into oils, powders, waxes compounds the returns. And payments for ecosystem services, from stored carbon, biodiversity and watershed protection, sit alongside that.

Donors like the European Union have already recognised the value of drylands with the €20 million Thrivelands initiative, led by Landscape Alliance, to build the coalitions and action this work needs; including innovations needed to protect and restore land. These innovations range from the tools to monitor and restore soil health accurately to the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework and the Regreening Africa app, which brings this data into the hands of farmers.

But public funding alone cannot unlock the drylands opportunities. Adapting to a drier world means restoring a broken nature finance system and closing the $700 billion finance gap to apply proven expertise across a growing area.

Many companies already depend on drylands through what they source, without having assessed how much of their supply comes from them. For those in the agrifood, textiles, and cosmetics sectors, investing in restoring and protecting these landscapes is a way to stabilise their supply chains, manage growing levels of risk and meet climate goals.

There is also the question of what inaction costs. Investing in drylands agriculture could avert a 12 per cent reduction in global food production over the next 25 years and prevent the release of about 60 per cent of stored carbon.

COP17 is a reminder of how little time is left. The UNCCD finance framework closes in 2030, with 82 per cent of the cumulative need for finance unmet. Time is running out to leverage the lessons from drylands to protect future food security. The gap between what is needed and what is being invested remains enormous.

The landscapes on which our future depends may be getting drier, but they are not devoid of opportunity. With science and innovation that enhances traditional knowledge, they are saturated with opportunities to bolster food security and climate resilience.

Dr Éliane Ubalijoro, chief executive officer of Landscape Alliance
Salina Abraham, Head of Thrivelands, Landscape Alliance

IPS UN Bureau

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Char residents crossing the Jamuna River by boat (Stock photo, 2016).

By Mohammad Zaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Aug 31 2026 (IPS)

Bangladesh’s riverine and coastal chars have always been landscapes of movement, but climate change is making that movement more violent, frequent, and unequal. The shifting islands of the Jamuna, Brahmaputra, Padma, and other rivers now reveal how climate stress multiplies deprivation, weakens citizenship, and forces char dwellers to absorb the costs of a crisis they did little to create.

After years of researching and writing about Bangladesh’s chars, I see them not as marginal landscapes, but as frontline climate geographies. They show how river erosion becomes repeated displacement, flooding brings livelihood collapse, and administrative neglect heightens vulnerability. Char people rebuild, migrate, and diversify under extreme uncertainty, but their resilience should not be romanticized. It is being stretched by intensifying hazards and institutions still designed for fixed land, fixed addresses, and orderly poverty. This is why the issue should be framed not simply as adaptation to hazards, but as a question of rights. The central problem is not that char dwellers fail to cope with a moving river; it is that institutions repeatedly ask them to cope without secure recognition, services, or protection.

Mohammad Zaman

Chars are marginal because state planning treats them as temporary spaces for poor and landless people. Some estimates suggest that chars cover roughly 8% of Bangladesh’s land area and are home to 15 to 20 million people. For char communities, migration is not a rupture in char life; it is a recurring way of organizing and rebuilding, often annually. But climate change is turning mobility from strategy into necessity. For many char dwellers, migration may begin as seasonal labour, become repeated relocation, and finally harden into permanent detachment from land, kinship, and legal security.

In 2024, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s Bangladesh country profile, monsoon floods triggered 1.3 million movements, while its disaster displacement risk reporting records more than 21 million disaster displacements in Bangladesh between 2008 and 2024. Among char people, climate change is felt through household decisions made under pressure: whether to rebuild on the same island, move to another char, keep children in school, or migrate to Dhaka for work. These choices are rational and strategic, but the field of options is narrowing under climate stress, vulnerability, and social exclusion.

Migration from char areas also reflects intelligence and aspiration: young people leave for wages, education, electricity, phones, clinics, and futures beyond subsistence and uncertainty. The tragedy is that climate-stressed households often move without skills, savings, documents, safe housing, or labour protection. The river follows them into the garment line, the rickshaw garage, the brick kiln, the domestic workplace, and the rented slum room.

How should these heightened risks from flooding and displacement be addressed? Adaptation is necessary, but it is not enough. Raised plinths, early warnings, flood-resistant crops and community preparedness may save lives, yet adaptation without land rights, education, healthcare, social protection and safe migration routes becomes a way of managing dispossession. Climate change deepens vulnerability because it strikes people who already lack secure tenure, dependable services and political recognition.

In Bangladesh, climate policy should stop treating char dwellers as humanitarian exceptions and start treating them as political subjects. Public services must be redesigned for moving landscapes through boat schools, mobile clinics, digital civil registration, portable social protection, and weather-responsive transport. Land administration must recognize erosion and accretion, while migration should be planned as adaptation through skills training, safe housing, labour rights, and social insurance. Gender must be central to this agenda. Women and girls often carry these risks most directly, through interrupted schooling, unsafe travel for work or services, increased care burdens during floods, and reduced voice in decisions about land, migration, and relief. Policies that imagine the household as a single male-headed unit misread both vulnerability and agency.

The politics of the char is the politics of who counts in a warming world. Fixed maps assume that citizenship has a stable address and that development follows roads. Char life challenges those assumptions. It shows that climate vulnerability is produced not only by hazards, but by institutions unable or unwilling to recognize lives shaped by unstable land.

Bangladesh can praise char people for endurance, or it can confront the uncomfortable truth: the river will keep moving; that is its nature. But if the rights of char people move more slowly than the river, the failure is political. Their future will not be secured by teaching them to adapt endlessly to disappearance, but by ensuring that no citizen has to prove belonging on land that may not be there tomorrow.

The experience of Bangladesh’s char dwellers shows that climate change is not only an environmental crisis, but also a crisis of rights, recognition, and governance. River erosion, floods, and displacement become devastating because they intersect with insecure land tenure, weak services, gendered risks, and limited political voice. A just response must therefore go beyond short-term adaptation and treat char communities as full citizens whose mobility, livelihoods, and claims to belonging deserve protection in a warming and increasingly unstable world.

Dr. Mohammad Zaman has lived and conducted extensive field research in the Kazipur-Sirajganj chars and has written widely on char land tenure, livelihoods, and social organization. He is the lead editor, with Mustafa Alam as co-editor, of Living on the Edge: Char Dwellers in Bangladesh (Springer, 2021). He can be reached at mqzaman.bc@gmail.com.

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Lake Chungará and Parinacota volcano in northern Chile
Credit: Gerd Breitenbach, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

By Céline Delacroix
OTTAWA, Canada, Aug 28 2026 (IPS)

This week is World Water Week, the annual conference of governments, business, and civil society on building a water-secure future as global population, climate disruptions, and water demand increase. In Washington, it’s also Water Resources Development Act season, when every two years the US Congress reauthorizes the legilslation that funds US drinking water, wastewater systems, and flood risk management projects.

Water security ought to be something everyone can agree on, and there are long traditions of bipartisanship in past WRDA reauthorizations, and of diversity and inclusiveness in World Water Week conferences. But these days, water is increasingly a trigger for division, from the public outcry over data center water usage to anti-abortion activists introducing legislation to designate the abortion medication mifepristone as a water pollutant and get the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate it, which is another way to restrict access to it.

For the record, mifepristone is no threat to waterways. Research overwhelmingly confirms its safety and efficacy, and a Food and Drug Administration assessment found its environmental accumulation in water was less than one part per billion. The lone study alleging mifepristone is a water pollutant is junk science. It used a debunked testing method and was published in a journal run by anti-abortion activists, and then cited by other anti-abortion activists.

While the mifepristone water scare is clearly disinformation, it’s so pointedly backwards that it points up an important truth: it isn’t abortion medication that threatens water security; on the contrary, it’s attacks on it and on family planning in general that pose a real threat.

There are several reasons for this. If family planning access is curtailed or cut off and birthrates rise, so will water demand and water stress. It will be worse in places with faster population growth, and worse globally for women and girls, who are the ones who have to collect the water in 80% of households experiencing shortages. Over 2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water. Women and girls suffer disproportionately from water shortages, yet they are generally excluded from decision making bodies or leadership positions that would give them a say in managing water.

In general, research shows that where gender disparities are high, women have more babies, population grows faster, and water scarcity gets worse. But the reverse is also true: where there is investment in and access to comprehensive family planning, and where women and girls are more empowered and included in decision making about managing water resources, over time birth rates decline, water stress eases, and water resiliency grows.

It ought to be obvious that population trends, changing demographics, and urbanization influence demand for water, food, energy, and land. Yet they are strangely absent from discourse on managing environment resources, including water governance. Ditto for gender inequality, which has a strong bearing on population growth.

The UN warns of “living beyond our hydrological means” amid water crisis and reaching “global water bankruptcy,” where water degradation has largely become irreversible. Population and gender issues are not controlling factors in this per se, as their impacts depend on patterns of production and consumption, technology, inequality and governanceThe same number of people can have radically different environmental footprints depending on where and how they live.

But population trends and gender equity are still important variables in how we use water and other resources that planners should not ignore. As human numbers and consumption levels rise, our ecological footprint, including water consumption, has become overwhelming and unsustainable.

This year, the Earth as a whole reached “overshoot day” – the day past which we’re consuming more in a given year than the Earth’s resources can regenerate — on July 30. The U.S. reached it March 14.

Climate change is intensifying drought, altering precipitation and snowpack, putting pressure on groundwater and surface water. For xample, fast regional population growth and development have stressed the Colorado River, which supplies roughly 40 million people and now faces severe and persistent shortages. In other water-stressed regions of the US, agriculture is the biggest consumer of shrinking water resources. The Ogallala Aquifer, for example, is getting depleted faster than it can naturally recharge.

Population dynamics are part of this complex picture. Water resources are embedded in an intricate web of human and ecological interaction. Water governance needs to take a broad, holistic view to understand the nexus of biodiversity, food production, and human needs and health as part of the same interconnected system of planetary health. Within that, managing water requires considering how population trends, human behavior, gender equity, technology, and human-caused climate change influence water systems.

The last thing policymakers should be doing is demonizing family planning as some kind of threat to the water supply. Reproductive health services are an intrinsic matter of human right, but they have critical environmental co-benefits, too, including easing population pressures on overtaxed water resources.

Managing water is not just about pipes and pumps; it’s about complex interactions between humans and ecosystems, managing them so they respect ecological limits as well as human rights and equity, which ultimately are all part of the same complex web. Water connects everything. Policymaking should too.

Céline Delacroix is adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Health Sciences, a Senior Fellow with the Population Institute, and Director of the FP/Earth Project.

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Lars Løkke Rasmussen (right), Minister for Foreign Affairs of Denmark and President of the Security Council for the month of August, addresses the Security Council meeting entitled ‘Food Under Fire: The Security Council's Role in Mitigating Global and Local Food Crises’, under the agenda item of maintenance of international peace and security. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 28 2026 (IPS)

Across the board, UN officials and humanitarian organizations urged the Security Council to act before the consequences of food insecurity and famines hit, during a high-level open debate on Tuesday, August 25. More than 80 representatives took part in Tuesday’s conversation on conflict-related food insecurity under the theme “Food under fire: the Security Council’s role in mitigating global and local food crises”.

In 2018, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2417, which strongly condemned the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, as well as the unlawful denial of humanitarian access. Resolution 2417 solidified the link between armed conflict and food insecurity. Most importantly, the resolution stated the Security Council’s willingness to consider adopting sanctions against individuals or entities deliberately obstructing the delivery and distribution of humanitarian assistance. The resolution was a landmark achievement that, for the first time, treated hunger not as a result of war but as a humanitarian security threat that the Security Council is obligated to protect.

Eight years after resolution 2417 was passed, 2025 marked the highest year on record of global acute hunger, with more than 266 million people facing acute food insecurity and, for the first time this century, two famines simultaneously confirmed in Sudan and Gaza. On Tuesday, August 25, representative after representative discussed how resolution 2417 has gone largely unused.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres opened Tuesday’s session reminding the members of the sanction provisions in the resolution, stating: “This council expressed its willingness to consider information on the unlawful denial of humanitarian access and take appropriate steps, including sanction measures.” Guterres explicitly called on the Security Council “to make every effort to ensure accountability”.

Denmark’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, presided over the session and candidly stated how “resolution 2417 [is] a powerful tool, but its potential remains untapped, particularly when it comes to early warning.” Testament to that fact is how the resolution’s original text cited 74 million people worldwide facing conflict-induced hunger, a figure that has now doubled to 147 million people.

During Tuesday’s session, the representatives present, notably the elected members of the Security Council, narrowed in on the same point, that being that the famines occurring worldwide are completely preventable.

While discussing the famines in Sudan and Gaza, Dace Melbārde, Latvia’s Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, called the dual crises proof that “these famines are not natural disasters. They are man-made, and they are entirely preventable”. Ms. Melbārde urged the Security Council to “consider targeted sanctions and other appropriate measures against those who deliberately weaponize food and obstruct humanitarian access,” warning that “impunity cannot become another driver of hunger.”

“This is not fate. It is a choice. And when there is a choice, there is culpability,” said Lewis Garsheedah Brown, II, Liberia’s Permanent Representative to the UN. Brown also focused on how the dual famines devastating Sudan and Gaza are not fate or acts of nature, but instead predictable results of the Security Council’s inaction.

Carl Skau, the Acting Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), admitted institutional failure when it came to acting on the warning signs of Sudan’s famine. Examining Sudan’s Darfur region, Mr. Skau said: “We all saw the atrocities in al-Fashir coming, but the international community, including this Council, failed to act on those warnings.” Mr. Skau went on to say that “waiting for famine to be declared is a total failure of duty”. The famine in Sudan was compared to the crisis in 2017 and 2022 in Somalia, where early implemented Security Council-backed action helped to avert catastrophic famine.

Perrine Benoist, Co-CEO, Action Against Hunger and Member of the Global Coalition Against Conflict and Hunger (Rule 39), addresses the Security Council meeting. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

Also during Tuesday’s session, Dr. Perrine Benoist, Co-CEO of Action Against Hunger, presented figures that highlighted the level of inaction the Security Council has taken despite the universal adoption of resolution 2417. Dr. Benoist detailed how there have been more than 9,300 incidents where conflict-related violence impacted food systems in over 45 countries. These incidents include more than 3,200 bombings of markets, agricultural land and water systems.

“Time and again, its provisions have been violated by parties to conflict, while implementation by the members of this Council has fallen far short of what the resolution demands,” Dr. Benoist said of resolution 2417.

However, despite the emphasis placed on strengthening and acting on resolution 2417, not every representative agreed to the scale of the action on Tuesday. Ambassador Vassily A. Nebenzia of the Russian Federation rejected the calls from other representatives to broaden the resolution’s application. Mr. Nebenzia argued that “resolution 2417 does not need an expanded interpretation or new mechanisms. It requires country-interest application where conflict does indeed create hunger.”

For the millions living through the famines in Sudan and Gaza and the tens of millions the WFP warned could be pushed into food insecurity, the consequences of the Security Council’s inaction are not abstract.

“We cannot wait for famine or catastrophic conditions to be formally confirmed,” said Guterres. “I call on this Council to act when the warning lights are flashing.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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