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

By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Oct 6 2026 (IPS)

One night, many years ago now, on a remote beach in the outer islands of Seychelles, I sat in the darkness and watched a green turtle come ashore. She had waited for the heat of the day to leave the sand. Under a sky crowded with stars, she hauled herself slowly above the tideline, dug with a patience no human hand could match, and laid her eggs. Then, in the small hours, she turned back toward the water. She did not hurry. She paused once, as though listening, and then made her slow, unhesitating way down the sand, back to a home older than any I could imagine.

James Alix Michel

We, the human beings watching from the shore, are the ones who wonder.

This, I have come to believe, is the deepest source of the trouble we now find ourselves in. Not our tools, not our economies, not even our numbers, though all of these press hard upon the living world. The deepest source is an older mistake: the unexamined assumption that we stand outside nature, deciding its fate. That the Earth is a stage and we are its principal players, and that everything else, the reef, the forest, the migrating whale, the green turtle, is scenery, resource, or backdrop.

The truth is far more humbling. We are not the authors of nature. We are its late arrivals.

Consider the arithmetic of belonging. The Earth is some four and a half billion years old. Life appeared here almost four billion years ago. Coral reefs were already ancient when the dinosaurs walked. Forests had been breathing for hundreds of millions of years before the first upright ape rose on the savannah. The calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon that composes almost everything we are, was forged in stars that lived and died long before this planet existed. To imagine ourselves separate from nature is not merely a philosophical mistake. It is a physical impossibility.

We Seychellois have a particular reason to understand this, for we are late arrivals twice over. Our granite islands are among the oldest islands on Earth, the only oceanic islands made of granite: fragments of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, left behind in the middle of the ocean when India drifted away some sixty-five million years ago. For almost all of that immense time, no human foot touched them. The turtles came, and the seabirds, and the giant tortoises. We came only in 1770, when a small party of Europeans, Africans and Indians stepped ashore on Sainte Anne. Others followed, from Africa, from India, from China, from Europe, some by choice and many, let us never forget, in chains. From that meeting of peoples, in scarcely two and a half centuries, a nation was born.

And something remarkable happened. A people with no ancestral memory of these islands learned, within a few generations, to belong to them. Our grandparents learned to read the sea as others read books. They gave thanks to the ocean before setting out and again on returning, and spoke of it as one speaks of a mother. Their kinship was not inherited; it was learned. That, to me, is among the most hopeful facts I know: belonging can be learned.

There is a school of thought, gathering strength in our time, that invites the whole of humanity to learn it too. Some call it biocentrism, the recognition that life in all its forms carries moral weight. Others call it deep ecology, the insistence that the human being is one strand in a vast web, not the loom on which the web is woven. The American conservationist Aldo Leopold put it most simply, many decades ago: we must learn to think “like a mountain.” The names matter less than the instinct behind them: that the living world is not a possession, and that our first duty to it is not extraction but attention.

This is why the environmental struggle feels to me, at its deepest level, like a spiritual struggle as much as an economic one. The numbers we use to measure our crisis are necessary and true, but they cannot on their own move the human heart. What moves the heart is the recognition that we are kin to what we are losing. That the coral bleaching in a lagoon is not a distant statistic but family. That the night sky above the nesting beach is not decoration but a memory of our own origin.

I do not offer this as sentiment. I offer it as strategy. For decades we have tried to persuade humanity to protect the Earth by appealing to self-interest. The argument is true, but it has not been sufficient. Self-interest is a thin thread from which to hang the future of a planet. What is needed now is the older and stronger thread of kinship. And kinship, once acted upon, is answered. On Aldabra, where green turtles were once taken in great numbers, decades of patient protection have allowed the nesting population to multiply several times over. The sea, it seems, is ready to forgive us, if we are ready to belong.

James Alix Michel, is Former President of the Republic of Seychelles

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

A community health worker examines a pregnant woman inside her home while family members look on, highlighting the growing challenges mothers face as extreme heat and climate-related pressures strain access to healthcare in vulnerable communities. Credit: Wellcome

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SUVA, Fiji & SRINAGAR, India, Oct 5 2026 (IPS)

Extreme heat is increasingly threatening pregnant women and newborn babies around the world, with almost all maternal health professionals surveyed across five continents saying they have cared for women or infants whose health was affected by high temperatures.

The findings, released as climate ministers gathered in the Pacific ahead of the COP31 climate summit, provide an extremely distressing picture of how global heating is affecting maternity wards, delivery rooms and newborn-care units.

A survey of 1,001 healthcare professionals in Australia, Brazil, India, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe found that 98 percent had personally cared for a pregnant woman whose health they believed was adversely affected by extreme heat.

Some 99 percent said they had cared for a foetus or newborn whose health, in their professional judgment, had been affected by extreme heat.

Almost three-quarters, 73%, said heat-related cases or complications affecting pregnant women had increased over the previous five years. The proportion rose to 76% when health workers were asked about complications involving foetal health, childbirth or newborn babies.

The survey was commissioned by the global health foundation Wellcome and conducted among obstetricians, gynaecologists, doctors, midwives, nurses and other maternal-health professionals between September 17 and October 1.

The findings were released in Fiji at the launch of Birthright, a global campaign seeking greater protection for pregnant women, babies and healthcare workers as temperatures rise.

Speaking at the event, United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said climate change was creating a new and potentially deadly risk around pregnancy and childbirth.

“The picture is clear and very disturbing: as extreme heat worsens, pregnancy and birth are now a new faultline in the global climate crisis, and one which is potentially fatal,” Stiell said.

“This faultline must not become another deep chasm of climate-driven suffering, inequality and injustice.”

The survey offers detailed evidence of what healthcare professionals say they are already witnessing.

Among pregnant women,

• 25% reported seeing muscle cramps or muscle aches that they believed extreme heat had contributed to or worsened
• 24% reported severe fatigue, sleep problems or a reduced ability among pregnant women to carry out daily activities
• 23% reported breathing difficulties or worsening respiratory symptoms
• 23 percent reported pregnancy complications requiring additional monitoring or treatment, while an equal proportion reported hypertensive disorders, including pre-eclampsia
• More than one in five reported mental distress, anxiety or stress linked to heat
• 21% said they had encountered severe maternal illness requiring medical attention or hospital care
• 20% reported dizziness, fainting or loss of consciousness, while 19 percent reported preterm contractions, labour or birth
• Nearly 18% said they had observed pregnancy loss or stillbirth in circumstances where, in their professional judgment, extreme heat had contributed to or worsened the problem.

The survey did not attempt to establish that heat alone caused individual complications. The responses provide information about the professional judgment and clinical experience of the healthcare workers questioned.

Protect Life at Its Most Fragile

The findings involving babies were similarly worrying.

• 36% of health professionals reported dehydration or heat-related illness among newborns during the pregnancy-related care they provided
• 34% reported low birth weight or restricted foetal growth
• 33% had observed breathing, feeding or temperature-regulation difficulties
• 28% said babies required additional monitoring, treatment or neonatal care, and a similar proportion reported preterm birth
• During the newborn period, 38% of respondents reported low birth weight or restricted growth
• 36% reported dehydration or heat-related illness, and another 36% reported breathing, feeding or problems regulating body temperature
• Almost 30% said heat-related conditions resulted in babies needing additional monitoring, treatment or neonatal care
• 9% percent reported stillbirth or neonatal death during the newborn period in cases where they believed extreme heat had contributed to or worsened the condition.

Stiell said the findings showed that rising temperatures could no longer be treated simply as an environmental issue.

“The climate policy process is measured in degrees, targets and finance,” he said. “But a deep test of climate action is far simpler: whether we protect life at its most fragile.”

He said the world was entering conditions for which many health systems had not been designed.

“We are in a new, hotter world, as the world continues to burn planet-heating fossil fuels, overwhelmingly in G20 economies,” Stiell said.

“The last eleven years smashed records.”

He said rising temperatures meant “rising danger in pregnancy”, citing evidence linking extreme heat to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight and maternal complications.

A healthcare worker cradles a newborn baby at a maternal health facility, illustrating frontline efforts to protect mothers and infants amid mounting concerns over the impact of extreme heat on pregnancy, childbirth and newborn health. Credit: Wellcome

No One Is Immune

The survey also revealed significant differences between countries.

Zimbabwean health workers were among those reporting the sharpest increases.

Eighty-five percent of respondents in Zimbabwe said heat-related cases or complications affecting pregnant women had increased during the previous five years. The figure was 79% in Australia, 74% in Brazil, 66% in the United Kingdom and 62% in India.

When respondents were asked about foetal or newborn health, 89% of Zimbabwean health professionals reported an increase in heat-related cases or complications. The corresponding figure was 79% in Brazil, 78% in Australia, 68% in the United Kingdom and 66% in India.

The results suggest that the effects are being felt across countries with very different climates, incomes and healthcare systems.

Concern was also widespread.

More than 92% of all respondents said they were concerned about the impact of extreme heat on the health and well-being of pregnant women in the areas where they worked and 90% expressed concern about foetal health during pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the health of babies during the newborn period.

Zimbabwe recorded some of the highest levels of concern, with 97% of respondents concerned about foetal and newborn health.

Stiell said no country or family could consider itself completely insulated from the risk.

“No one is immune,” he said. “But the risks and impacts are not shared equally.”

The survey showed that extreme heat was also disrupting the healthcare systems expected to protect women and infants.

• 29% of health workers said they had seen increased urgent or emergency presentations during extreme heat
• 28% reported difficulties safely storing or using medicines, supplies or medical equipment
• 27% said pregnant women and their families found it harder to travel to or access healthcare
• 25% reported increased demand for advice, monitoring or treatment, while another quarter reported staff illness, fatigue or a reduced ability to work safely
• 24% had experienced interruptions to electricity, water, cooling systems, medical equipment or other essential services
• A similar proportion reported healthcare services becoming overburdened or having insufficient capacity
• Nearly one-quarter said temperatures inside healthcare facilities had become unsafe or uncomfortable.

The findings highlight a basic problem in responding to extreme heat. Advising pregnant women to stay cool may be of little practical value when families lack air conditioning, cannot afford electricity, work outside, or live far from medical services.

“‘Staying cool’ is simply not an option when there is no cool place to go,” Stiell said.

“A safe birth is already too often shaped by geography, income and access to care. Without action, extreme heat will widen that injustice.”

The survey asked health professionals what most limited pregnant women’s ability to protect themselves and their babies.

• 26% cited limited awareness or understanding that extreme heat could affect health during pregnancy
• 24% cited the need to work outdoors or in hot conditions
• About 23% pointed to limited support from family or the wider community
• The same proportion cited limited access to cooling or air conditioning
• 23% identified the cost of electricity, water or other protective measures.

Other barriers included existing health conditions, inadequate access to safe drinking water, homes that were difficult to keep cool, lack of employer support and difficulties travelling to healthcare facilities.

Only 0.4 percent said no factors limited women’s ability to protect themselves from extreme heat.

Stiell said such conditions meant that climate change risk was increasingly intertwined with inequality.

“Someone working outdoors, living in unregulated housing, travelling far to a clinic, or relying on facilities without water, power or cooling, cannot be protected by advice alone,” he said.

Harm that is not counted is too easily ignored

For Pacific Island countries, the issue is particularly sensitive.

Many small island states have contributed only a tiny fraction of historic greenhouse gas emissions but face rising sea levels, intensifying storms, heat and pressure on food, water and health systems.

“Here in the Pacific, climate change is no abstraction,” Stiell said.

“It is felt in homes, villages, farms, fisheries and clinics, in journeys for care, and in the availability and cost of food, water, power and transport.”

The Fiji event was held as ministers and climate officials gathered for the pre-COP meeting hosted by Australia and Fiji from October 5 to 8.

The meeting is intended to advance negotiations ahead of COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, and give greater prominence to Pacific Island perspectives and climate solutions. Tuvalu was hosting a leaders’ event as part of the Pacific meetings.

Despite the growing risks, the survey suggests many healthcare workers believe they need more support to respond effectively.

• An overwhelming 92% said they wanted additional training and resources to help pregnant women during periods of extreme heat.
• 55% said clearer national or international guidance on protecting pregnant women from extreme heat would help them perform their jobs better
• When asked what would most improve their ability to protect women and babies, 33% selected practical information and materials for pregnant women and families
• 31% called for improvements to buildings, cooling, ventilation, water or electricity
• 29% wanted stronger referral pathways and better coordination between health services
• A similar proportion called for improved data and surveillance on heat, pregnancy and newborn health, as well as better local heat alerts and communication
• 28% said more staff, time or funding during periods of extreme heat would help
• 28% called for greater community outreach to people who may otherwise be difficult for health services to reach.

Stiell urged governments to make maternal and newborn health an explicit part of national climate adaptation and heat-response strategies.

“What is not named in a plan is too often not funded, not measured and not protected,” he said.

He outlined three priorities.

The first was to make pregnancy and newborn care part of national adaptation, health and extreme-heat planning.

That would require resilient clinics, dependable electricity and water supplies and properly trained health workers.

The second was to convert scientific evidence into direct protection, including improved guidance, professional training, heat alerts, safer medical facilities and health systems prepared before extreme weather strikes.

The third was better monitoring.

“Harm that is not counted is too easily ignored,” Stiell said.

“As temperatures rise, data must show where risks are growing, which interventions work, which communities are exposed, and where finance and technology support is needed.”

The survey found broad support among health workers for stronger policy action.

• 81% agreed that without further action, extreme heat would increasingly endanger maternal, foetal and newborn health during the next five years
• 82% said protecting pregnant women and babies from extreme heat should become a higher priority for health-system leaders and policymakers
• Another 82% agreed that better evidence on heat, pregnancy and newborn health would help drive effective action.

Stiell linked the issue to broader international climate finance negotiations.

He said commitments on adaptation finance agreed at COP30 in Brazil needed to be implemented and called for governments and the international financial system to help mobilise $1.3 trillion annually for developing nations.

“For small islands and other nations that did practically nothing to cause this climate crisis, it underscores the need for support at scale,” he said.

He also pointed to the Belém Gender Action Plan and Belém Adaptation Indicators as mechanisms that could help governments measure climate-related health risks and build more resilient health services.

Stiell praised Türkiye’s COP31 presidency and Australia, which is serving as President of Negotiations, for putting health on the agenda ahead of the Antalya summit.

For Stiell, the issue ultimately goes beyond climate-negotiating language.

“I am a parent, but I cannot pretend to know what it feels like to carry a pregnancy through those conditions,” he said.

“Mothers, midwives, doctors, nurses and families speak from lived experience. We should listen.”

The survey suggests those voices are already delivering a clear warning.

Pregnant women are struggling with heat exposure. Babies are requiring additional care. Health workers are seeing more complications. Facilities are facing pressure on electricity, water, medicines and staff. And many doctors, nurses and midwives say they lack the training and resources they need.

“Pregnancy should be a time of hope,” Stiell said. “But for millions, it is becoming a time of anxiety, as climate impacts fill everyday life with risk.”

He ended with an appeal for governments to treat protection of mothers and babies as a basic test of climate policy.

“A changing climate must never be accepted as a reason pregnancy and birth become less safe,” he said.

“A newborn’s healthy start must never depend on a family’s ability to escape the heat.”

“This work is urgent, deeply human, and we all share the responsibility to drive it forward together.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Nurunnahar, 45, is always afraid of the tide. Early warning of the tide helps her prepare. Photographed at Jhapali village in Shyamnagar upazila (sub-district) of Satkhira district, Bangladesh. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Montu/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam Montu
SHYAMNAGAR (Satkhira), Bangladesh, Oct 1 2026 (IPS)

Villagers rush to the vulnerable spot of the embankment—early warning of the rising tide has alerted them. Together, they save the village from tidal flooding by repairing the vulnerable embankment, which is at risk from the impact of low pressure in July this year. The message is clear: early warnings of the rising tide save lives and property.

This wasn’t always the case. Cyclone Amphan in 2020 and Cyclone Yaas in 2021 destroyed the embankment in question, which is located in Datinakhali village, Burigoalini Union, Shyamnagar sub-district, Satkhira district, southwestern Bangladesh. But there was no early warning of the rising tide at that time, and the cyclone caused extensive damage.

Every year during the monsoon, the pressure of tidal water in various parts of the Bangladeshi coast breaks or overflows the embankment. This causes extensive damage to homes, resources, and crops. Many displaced families have been forced to move elsewhere after facing severe losses.

“Real-time area-based tidal surge warnings are helping us in disaster preparedness, saving resources and lives. We can take necessary measures to protect ourselves before the tidal surge. But we have faced losses again and again because we did not have this opportunity before,” explained Meherun Nesa, 45, a resident of Kalbari village in the Shyamnagar sub-district of Satkhira district. Rokeya Begum, 40, Sakina Begum, 39, and many others shared the same opinion.

The United Nations has set the goal of Early Warning for All by 2027 to save people from disasters. On the other hand, a new UN report published on August 31, 2026, says that more than 14 million people in the South Asian delta region are at risk of losing their shelter due to rising sea levels.

Their homes will be permanently submerged. Bangladesh is one of the countries at risk. It is crucial that updated disaster warnings reach people like Meherun Nesha, who live in disaster-prone areas of the country.

This house in Anuliya village in Asashuni upazila (sub-district) of the Satkhira district, Bangladesh, was swept away by tidal water pressure in April 2025, before there was a cyclone warning system. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Montu/IPS

Early Warnings Protect Against Tides

Early warnings were given in 25 places during low sea levels in July, August, and September this year about the risk of breaking embankments or overflowing embankments. After receiving the warnings, villagers repaired the embankments in the two most vulnerable places.

In other places, villagers have also carried out additional preparatory work. Now, people living on the coast can know in advance whether the tide will rise or whether the embankments will collapse under the pressure of the tide. By getting warnings, they are able to prepare themselves and save resources.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based scientific early warnings are also protecting the coastal people of Bangladesh from major disasters like tidal waves and embankment collapses. This technology is capable of providing accurate forecasts three days in advance of the cyclone.

The technology provides advance information about the location of potential tidal waves, water height, flooded areas, and vulnerable embankments. Through these capabilities, meteorologists and disaster management professionals can make quick decisions. Disaster management professionals hope that the technology will further enhance Bangladesh’s capacity to deal with disasters and will play an effective role in reducing losses.

The country currently provides cyclone forecasts, but being port-based or large area-based, these forecasts do not cover specific areas. These forecasts can’t accurately identify the specific location of tidal waves, potential water height, or flooded areas. To overcome this limitation, a scientific model has been developed with international cooperation, which is known as ‘Surf IT.’

The international organization Action Against Hunger and North South University are working jointly under the leadership of Bangladeshi non-governmental organization Uttaran to combat the disaster. Technical assistance is provided by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), Flood Forecasting and Warning Center (FFWC), Water Development Board (BWDB), and Department of Disaster Management (DDM). The International Development Research Center (IDRC) provides financial support for the project.

How Does ‘Surf IT’ Work?

The model works by combining tides, temperature, and wind speed. It is combined with local knowledge. It involves marginalized communities in the project area. The model has been developed following the experience of weather forecasting systems in the European Union and the United States.

It not only measures the height of the tidal wave but also analyzes the condition of coastal embankments, their load-bearing capacity, and where the embankments are at risk of failure, and creates a map of flooded areas. Water sensors are constantly monitoring the river system and quickly detect any changes in water levels. Dams have been mapped to identify vulnerable areas and potential breach sites.

A digital dashboard has been created to convert complex data into simple and effective warnings. These help in providing forecasts. The information is sent to marginalized communities in local languages. It is sometimes sent via voice calls and sometimes via text messages. It is sent in such a simple language that anybody can access the message from any mobile phone.

According to the researchers, the latest test has shown that the model’s predictions are about 98 percent accurate. Work is underway to make it 100 percent accurate. Therefore, the model was tested at the field level in June, July, August, and September this year.

The project plans to transfer the technology to the government for use in the national disaster forecasting system. Currently, the project covers about 500,000 people in 20 unions across 3 sub-districts in 2 districts in southwest Bangladesh. The sub-districts are Shyamnagar, Asashuni in Satkhira district, and Koyra in Khulna district.

Will Reduce Loss and Damage

Md Jakariya, head of the ‘Surf IT’ technical team and professor in the Department of Environmental Science & Management at North South University, said, “One of the goals of the project is to reduce damage not only from major cyclones but also from regular very high tides and small tidal waves. Usually, even in the absence of major government assistance, people in coastal villages suffer a lot. The project has been initiated to reduce that damage.”

Discussions with the government are ongoing.

“This modern model is now final. Regular policy-making meetings are being held with high-level government officials to increase its effectiveness. The model is capable of predicting disasters three days in advance,” Zahid Amin Shaswat, Head of Program at the NGO Uttaran, which implements ‘Surf IT,’ said.

The advantage of this technology is that it goes beyond forecasting.

“Cyclone forecasting alone is not enough in coastal risk management; accurate information about the location, height, and potential flood areas is the most important thing in protecting human lives and property. Therefore, if such a technology based on scientific information can be effectively implemented, early evacuation of people to safe places, dam protection, and decision-making by local administration will be more realistic,” Environmentalist Sharif Jamil said.

Bangladesh in the Face of Disasters

Disasters like cyclones, floods, and heat waves are increasing in Bangladesh. Recently, coastal marginalized communities are facing loss and damage due to the impact of high tides.

In the latest long-term Global Climate Risk Index (CRI) published by Germanwatch, Bangladesh ranks 13th among the most vulnerable countries in the world. The World Bank has expressed concern that 216 million people will be internally displaced in six regions of the world by 2050 if necessary measures are not taken to prevent climate change. Of these, 40 million people will be displaced in South Asia. In South Asia alone, 19.9 million people are expected to be displaced in Bangladesh.

A recent joint study by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) says that more than 21 million people were displaced due to cyclones, floods, and tidal waves in Bangladesh between 2008 and 2025.

Meanwhile, in July this year, Disaster Management and Relief Minister Asadul Habib Dulu informed the National Parliament that floods and cyclones have caused Tk 41,200 crore (about US$ 3.3 million) in damage in the country over the five years from 2021 to 2025.

“In addition to major disasters, disasters like sudden high tides cause extensive damage to rural villages. Here, technology is being combined with the long-standing experience and folk knowledge of local people. Through this approach, it is possible to predict more accurately which dams are weak, where the risk of collapse is high, and where water can overflow,” added Md Jakariya.

Experts involved in the project hope that accurate early warning will ensure the safety of coastal people and reduce the risk of cyclones and tidal waves due to climate change. At the same time, the project will further strengthen Bangladesh’s capacity in disaster management.

On the ground people from marginalized communities, like Meherun Nesa, find hope in this message from experts.

IPS UN Bureau Report

From a distance, an island nation can appear to possess everything: pristine waters, a thriving tourism industry and a strong cultural identity. Its income figures may suggest prosperity.

James Alix Michel

This is the paradox confronting small island states. We are judged by what we earn on paper, while our future is shaped by what we must endure in reality. President Dr Patrick Herminie of Seychelles brought this question to the United Nations this month, urging international finance to “measure reality correctly”. He called for affordable, accessible, long-term finance, meaningful debt relief and effective implementation of the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI).

His appeal continues a case Seychelles has made for many years.

In 2009, Seychelles warned at the United Nations that small economies were especially exposed to global economic instability and the impacts of climate change. In 2013, it called for financing mechanisms and concessional conditions tailored to small island developing states. In 2015, it argued that attaining a higher-income classification should not automatically exclude an island nation from concessional support. The message has remained consistent: development gains do not erase structural vulnerability.

For too long, eligibility for grants and affordable loans has depended heavily on GDP or gross national income per capita. Income matters, but it cannot tell the whole story. It reveals little about a country’s exposure to shocks or its capacity to recover. A small state must maintain ports, airports, hospitals, schools, power systems, water supplies and coastal defences with a limited population and tax base. It may depend on one or two sectors, such as tourism or fisheries. When global prices rise or supply chains fail, the consequences can be felt across the entire nation at once.

This is not an argument against sound national management. It is an argument for recognising realities that good management alone cannot remove. Countries may graduate from an income category; they do not graduate from geography, climate exposure or limited economic scale.

Nor is this a Seychelles concern alone. From the Caribbean to the Pacific and across the Indian Ocean, island countries have long pressed for international finance to reflect vulnerability rather than income alone. Barbados has advocated measures that better capture vulnerability and resilience, while the Alliance of Small Island States has argued that the financial system must recognise the distinctive circumstances of its members. There is a shared understanding here: a prosperous-looking average can hide a profoundly fragile foundation.

The MVI offers a way to make that foundation visible. It is intended to complement, not replace, income measures by assessing structural vulnerability and resilience across economic, environmental and social dimensions. It asks decision-makers to look beyond a single number towards the pressures an island country faces: remoteness, economic concentration, disaster risk, climate exposure and the limited room to absorb shocks.

In August 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 78/322 on the MVI, an important recognition that national income alone is an inadequate guide. But adoption is only the beginning. An index will not protect a coastline, keep a hospital open or help a family recover after a storm unless it changes financing decisions. Will lenders and development partners use it to widen access to concessional finance? Will it help countries obtain adaptation funds before disaster strikes? Will it inform debt arrangements that leave governments room to protect essential services after a crisis?

That is the true test of the international community’s commitment. A fairer system would provide more grants and affordable long-term finance for resilience. It would include clauses that pause debt repayments after major disasters. It would treat coastal protection, water security, renewable energy and the restoration of reefs and mangroves as essential investments, not discretionary extras to be considered only when funds remain.
We know the price of waiting. When a storm destroys infrastructure, a country may have to borrow to rebuild what it could not afford to protect. Debt then limits future investment, leaving it more exposed to the next shock. Financing resilience in advance can break that cycle. It protects lives, public finances and development gains. This is not charity; it is sound economics.

The question also reaches beyond island states. Across the developing world, countries facing climate shocks, volatile markets and heavy debt are too often assessed through indicators that overlook their lived circumstances. When scarce public money goes towards expensive borrowing instead of health, education or adaptation, the poorest communities bear the greatest cost. A financial system that responds only after calamity is neither efficient nor just.

Seychelles has voiced this concern since 2009, and President Herminie’s appeal shows why it remains urgent. The MVI gives the world an opportunity to turn recognition into action. Those who govern international lending must now decide whether vulnerability will matter when resources are allocated, not merely when speeches are delivered.

An island is more than an income figure. It is a society, a culture, an ecosystem and a future, living close to risks often created far beyond its shores. To measure that reality correctly is the beginning of fairness. To finance it fairly must follow.

James Alix Michel, is Former President of the Republic of Seychelles

IPS UN Bureau

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:

Seaweed farmers tend their crop off Zanzibar, where rising sea temperatures are putting pressure on a vital coastal livelihood, according to the new Copernicus ocean report. Credit: Zuberi Mussa/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Fatuma Makame learned to farm seaweed in the shallow water where her parents worked. These days, she grows it farther from shore.

In the shallows, warmer water has left the crop more vulnerable to poor growth and disease. Conditions can be better farther out, but working there requires a boat, equipment, and the skills to handle deeper water. Makame joined Mwani Zanzibar Mamas—a cooperative union that obtained a boat and farming gear. She has since reported larger, more reliable harvests.

The decision she faced is becoming familiar to seaweed farmers along Zanzibar’s coast: move the crop, if they can afford to, or keep planting where it has become harder to grow.

A new assessment of the world’s oceans gives that local difficulty a wider context. The 10th Copernicus Ocean State Report, released today (September 30), describes an ocean absorbing more heat, rising along coastlines and becoming more acidic. It was produced by Mercator Ocean International through the European Union’s Copernicus Marine Service.

“The ocean is transforming before our eyes: warming, rising seas and ecosystem degradation are interconnected signs of significant and long-term change. It is our responsibility to build the permanent capacity to anticipate this transformation,” said Pierre Bahurel, director-general of Mercator Ocean International.

According to the report, the global ocean absorbed an additional 23 zettajoules of heat in 2025 — roughly 40 times the energy the world consumed that year. Global mean sea level rose by an average of 3.8 millimetres a year between 1999 and 2025; the rate was 4.2 millimetres a year from 2012 to 2025. The report also says the ocean became approximately 17 percent more acidic between 1985 and 2025.

Those are global measurements. They do not describe the water at Makame’s farm or explain the result of any one planting season. But Zanzibar’s seaweed farmers have had to contend with warmer water for years.

Across Unguja and Pemba, seaweed provides income for thousands of households, many of them headed or supported by women. Farmers tie seedlings to lines, tend them in the water, then harvest and dry the crop for sale. A poor harvest can leave less money for food, school fees and the next planting.

The Food and Agriculture Organization has documented how warmer water can inhibit seaweed growth and make it more susceptible to disease. Moving farms into deeper, cooler water presents other difficulties: stronger currents can damage the crop, and many farmers cannot swim or lack the equipment to work there safely. Low prices further limit what they can spend on changing their methods.

Tanzanian marine scientist Narriman Jiddawi has documented related problems farther south, on Songo Songo Island. In one study commissioned by the Institute of Marine Sciences, she recorded unusually warm water and signs of disease at shallow farming sites that had been abandoned.

“Farming is failing in many cultivation sites in shallow intertidal areas where it used to grow well,” she said. Their measurements were taken at Songo Songo, not at Makame’s farm in Zanzibar.

The Copernicus report also examines the ocean territories of small island developing states. It finds that all their exclusive economic zones have experienced ocean warming since 1960. About 65% of their combined ocean area has been exposed to accelerating sea-level rise since 1999. Among the Indian Ocean members of that group, the figure is 33%

Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, rather than a separate small island developing state, so those percentages are not figures for the archipelago. The findings nevertheless speak to risks faced by island communities whose incomes and homes depend on the sea.

“Small Island Developing States are experiencing multiple dimensions of ocean change at once. Nearly two-thirds of their ocean territories are exposed to accelerating sea-level rise, while warming seas are increasing pressure on coral reefs, fisheries and coastal communities,” said Karina von Schuckmann, director of the Copernicus Ocean State Report.

“For island states, ocean change is not a distant environmental issue; it is an immediate economic, development and security challenge – and a warning of what many other coastlines will face in the future.”

For fishing families, the condition of coral reefs is one concern. Reefs provide habitat for fish and help reduce the force of waves reaching shore. Severe heat can cause corals to bleach, and repeated episodes can hinder their recovery.

The report finds that about a quarter of threatened coral reefs within the ocean territories of small island developing states experienced accumulated, mortality-level heat stress for at least one month between 1982 and 2025. That is a finding for those states collectively, not an assessment of Zanzibar’s reefs.

There is local evidence of damage. Researchers from the State University of Zanzibar examined reef observations spanning 1992 to 2016. They found severe declines in hard coral cover following the El Niño events of 1998 and 2016, though the extent of change differed substantially between reefs.

Heat is only one of the pressures on them. Pollution and damaging fishing practices can make recovery harder. Reducing those local pressures will not cool the Indian Ocean, but it may improve the prospects for reefs that survive a period of extreme heat.

Rising seas pose a separate challenge to coastal settlements. A World Bank assessment identifies Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania’s coast as vulnerable to erosion, flooding and damage to infrastructure and marine habitats.

For authorities deciding where to protect homes or restrict construction, measurements of tides, storms, reefs and mangroves need to be considered alongside what residents know about places where water already reaches houses and roads.

Through the Agriculture and Fisheries Development Programme, seaweed farmers in Unguja and Pemba have received training in planting, handling and processing. Improved drying racks and solar dryers help keep harvested seaweed away from sand and rain, reducing losses after it comes ashore.

Other farmers are exploring additional sources of income. FAO has trained seaweed farmers on Zanzibar’s east coast in sea cucumber cultivation. That work requires suitable sites, equipment and buyers and will not suit every household.

Financial protection is being explored as well. The United Nations Development Programme, Zanzibar’s disaster management authorities and the Ministry of Blue Economy and Fisheries are developing a climate-risk insurance proposal for seaweed farmers in Unguja and Pemba. It remains a proposal. Its usefulness will depend on which losses it covers, what farmers must pay, and how quickly they can settle a claim.

For Makame, the cooperative’s boat and gear made it possible to try farming farther offshore. Other farmers still work the shallows. Whether they can follow her depends on access to equipment, training and a way to bear the risk if a new method fails.

The Copernicus report tracks changes across decades. On Zanzibar’s coast, a farmer must decide where to put her next lines of seaweed.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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

Rob Jetten, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, addresses the High-level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition on September 23. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 29 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations 2026 Climate Summit addressed critical strategies to mitigate the compounding impacts of the climate crisis and accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The summit brought together civil society actors, climate scientists, major energy producers and consumers, development experts, and world leaders on September 23 as part of the High-Level Week of the 81st session of the General Assembly (UNGA 81).

“The world is crying out for climate justice in mitigation, adaptation, and finance. We must answer that call with action, and we don’t have a moment to lose,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening remarks. “But emissions are still rising when they must plummet, and fossil fuel expansion continues, defying science, economics, and common sense.”

“We have seen our fossil fuel dependence wreak havoc, driving up costs, draining budgets, squeezing households, and leaving countries at the mercy of conflicts and decisions far beyond their borders. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies are banking windfall profits while everyday people foot the bill. Doubling down on oil and gas will only lock in vulnerability for decades,” Guterres added.

Nearly a decade after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the summit comes as climate experts warn of a dangerous new phase in the global climate crisis. New findings project it is virtually “inevitable” that global temperatures will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels within the next ten years.

This overshoot presents widespread, multifaceted risks—from extreme weather patterns to escalating public health emergencies. Intensifying heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods continue to cause millions of deaths annually, drive mass displacement, and destroy critical infrastructure, particularly in low-lying coastal regions.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman of Bangladesh—one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions—warned the General Assembly that up to 18 percent of the country’s coastal land could be entirely submerged by rising seas, endangering the security and livelihoods of tens of millions. President Naiqama Lalabalavu of Fiji also emphasized that over half of his country’s population lives within a kilometer of the shore, leaving communities at a significant risk of being exposed to natural disasters. He further noted that the stock of fish available to each Fijian is estimated to decline by nearly 25 percent by 2050, threatening widespread food insecurity across the region.

The compounding impact of these disasters is also linked to depressed crop yields—which significantly impact food insecurity, accelerate biodiversity loss, and cause widespread disease outbreaks. Higher temperatures directly drive the spread of vector-borne illnesses, while rising sea levels and flooding exacerbate waterborne diseases. As a result, countries worldwide continue to sustain massive economic and human costs while aid organizations and health sectors struggle to keep up with the influx of needs.

Tarique Rahman, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, addresses the High-level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

“We just lived through the hottest July and August on record. Global sea surface temperatures are at a record high, and the worst is yet to come,” said Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). “We enter a dangerous terrain where we’re likely to cross a number of tipping point systems that not only regulate the stability of the climate system, but also fundamentally determine life support for human development.”

Numerous speakers also underscored the severity of an immensely powerful “Super El Niño” rapidly forming in the Pacific Ocean, which WMO has described as potentially the strongest in at least a millennium. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center indicate a 90 percent chance that this El Niño will mark one of the most extreme weather events of the 2026-2027 winter.

Saulo warned that the global impacts of the impending El Niño will be massive and long-lasting and will cause 2026 to become the hottest year on record. Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, told the General Assembly that damages in Africa alone could exceed USD 20 billion, with comparable losses projected across other highly climate-vulnerable regions.

The summit sets new goals for the international community: to return global temperatures to below 1.5°C as quickly as possible, limit the severity and duration of ongoing impacts from the overshoot, and facilitate the global transition to renewable energy. Guterres warned that the current generation sits at a critical turning point—it is the first to possess the tools to end the climate crisis and the last with the opportunity to avert a “climate catastrophe.”

The main pathways for climate action highlighted during the summit included increased intergovernmental cooperation, sustained investment in climate adaptation and resilience monitoring systems, and wider-scale deployment of renewable energy. In recent years, renewables have become significantly cheaper than traditional fossil fuels—such as coal, oil, and natural gas—while generating far lower emissions, facilitating sustainable development, and potentially averting hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-related losses worldwide.

While countries representing roughly 90 percent of all global emissions have submitted updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—signaling widespread political commitment to the Paris Agreement in the midst of heightened geopolitical tensions—current NDCs are projected to continue to fall short of the emission reductions required to prevent an overshoot of the 1.5°C target.

Michael R. Bloomberg, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions and also founder of Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies, told the General Assembly that current financial contributions from the international community are insufficient, warning that these gaps in funding “can mean the difference between life and death.”

“More countries recognize that clean energy is essential to their security and economic stability. At the same time, while there’s still not enough climate funding going to developing countries, the amount has more than doubled since the Paris Agreement took effect,” said Bloomberg. “Now, we all know that’s not enough. Every day brings new evidence of the worsening harms of climate change.”

“No place on Earth is safe from climate change. Countries need more investment in resilient measures that protect people and in modern connected grids that will support the waves of clean energy installation. Both will require more of the kind of collaboration that has enabled progress over the past decade across government and business, philanthropy, nonprofits, and community leaders.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 
CIVICUS discusses the role of art in climate and rights struggles in the Brazilian Amazon with Tom Wheeler, executive director and co-founder of Treesistance. Treesistance is a platform operated by the Netherlands-based Sinchi Foundation that partners with Indigenous communities across four Brazilian states on cultural preservation and forest protection.

Tom Wheeler

How did art become the centre of a forest protection initiative?

Sinchi, the foundation behind Treesistance, was set up in 2016 as a cultural organisation. I believed we needed a societal or spiritual shift, so in our first years we ran festivals, film screenings, galleries, music events and debates, and built art and documentary projects with Indigenous communities across six continents.

At some point I went through a bit of a crisis, questioning what real impact this work was having. Then I met Vandria Borari, a brilliant Indigenous lawyer and celebrated ceramic artist from western Pará, a state in the Brazilian Amazon. She introduced me to the Tapajós and Arapiuns Indigenous Council, an association that represents 14 Indigenous groups in the Lower Tapajós region. In 2021, our focus shifted to the Amazon, and in 2023, together with our Indigenous partners, we co-created Treesistance as a platform built around four pillars: access to justice, communications, renewable energy and sustainable economic development.

The access to justice work is what we’re best known for. We support Forest Guardians, community-led groups that patrol and defend Indigenous territories against illegal logging and other threats, and we help build strong relationships between the territories and Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has a constitutional mandate to defend Indigenous rights.

That shift toward tangible, on-the-ground impact didn’t push art aside. If anything, it made clear how essential it was. Art isn’t a side product or a tool for us. It’s central to the community aspect of this work, to participation and authenticity, and to what the wider decolonial tradition is trying to achieve, of giving voice to communities and centring them in their own stories. Everything we do is co-created, but it’s led by our Indigenous partners. This carries multiple meanings for them, not least the pride of building something of their own from the ground up.

What’s the Tales of Resistance project?

Tales of Resistance is led on the ground by Vivi Borari, a talented young Indigenous woman. The idea was to build an archive, first and foremost for Indigenous communities’ use and records, telling the stories of the Majés and Pajés – plant healers, shamans and spiritual guides within these territories – from the inside out.

The project is about telling their origin stories, how they work within the community, what their roles and responsibilities are and the messages they carry from the spirits to the world. Once those stories exist on the communities’ terms, and with their consent, they can also travel further, which is why we’re now developing them into an exhibition. That kind of storytelling matters because one of the biggest challenges impact organisations face is talking only to people who already agree with them and failing to reach beyond that circle. Art and storytelling are how you break through.

We also took a deliberately different approach to how these stories are gathered. Turning up with a camera and asking people to explain their culture on the spot is a very western way of working. Just imagine how strange it would feel if someone did that to you. So we don’t do that. For us, everything starts as an audio recording while we are sitting together, having tea, walking in the forest, just talking about people’s experiences. Many of these stories would simply never be told in front of a camera. Only afterwards do we do a photo shoot, and that’s when we layer the audio and images together.

What films have you made, and what impact have they had?

Two years ago, we made a short film, Curupira, sharing the story of one of the forest’s spirits as told by one of the communities we work with. It was nominated for awards at film festivals around the world. It’s a tangible example of what storytelling can do for us. It brought in new interest, funders, partners and collaborators, people who wouldn’t otherwise have found their way to this work.

In 2026, we released another short film, Surara – Spirit of Resistance, directed by Lea Hejn, which won the Guardians in Action category at the Santiago Wild Film Festival in Chile. It includes footage from patrols led by Chief Dadá Borari, head of our Forest Guardian programme.

What changes when communities see themselves represented, and why do you call this resistance rather than activism?

The cultural scene, in the global south as much as the global north, is still working through questions of representation, making sure people see the diversity of their context reflected on screen. As Vivi has said, our biggest impact comes when Indigenous people see themselves and their reality reflected. This changes their self-perception. They no longer see themselves as victims but as people with agency, as fighters. That’s a qualitative impact that’s genuinely hard to put into a single sentence or measure in the way we measure hectares protected. But it’s real, and it’s the storytelling and narration that make it happen.

That’s also why we don’t use the word ‘activism’ much. It’s a strange word, a badge of honour to some people, something to avoid for others, and I think it’s fundamentally a western construct. There shouldn’t be anything activist about wanting to protect the health of the planet or stand up for human rights. That should be a key component of being a good person.

For our Indigenous partners, the stakes are different, though. For them, this work is intrinsic to survival, both literally, given the violence they face from illegal and aggressive forces, and culturally, in the sense of keeping traditions such as their graphic art and oral storytelling alive.

‘Resistência’ is the word I hear most often within Indigenous communities, whether people are talking about protecting their culture or land. It’s not a one-off response to a single government or form of exploitation, but something long-term and intergenerational, and like any form of resistance, the energy behind it runs low if it isn’t renewed. Art is one of the ways that energy gets renewed, generation after generation. That’s why we called the storytelling project Tales of Resistance and the wider platform Treesistance.

What other art initiatives do you run?

Storytelling extends into our product collaborations with local Indigenous artists, who create things such as clothing and notebooks. One example is Guardian of Nature, a T-shirt based on the Guardians’ uniform design. Buying one pays for a uniform for a Forest Guardian on the ground.

We’ve also launched a drink called Purpose, now going into restaurants in the Netherlands. A portion of the proceeds from every bottle sold supports our Forest Guardian projects. The brand itself is built around storytelling. It’s about people identifying their own sense of purpose in the world. So it’s art, but commercially driven, aimed at creating impact on the ground.

We held an open art and design competition for Indigenous artists from the 14 ethnic groups or nations of the Tapajós, focused on expressing their culture and relationship with nature. It brought the artists local and regional recognition through an event where the Indigenous Council, artists and other partners came together to celebrate the work.

How do you avoid the exploitative imagery typical of development fundraising?

Traditional development fundraising tends to rely on a particular kind of emotional imagery – a poor person, a hungry child, an old man in need – because that’s what drives donations from the kind of donor it targets. We deliberately avoid that.

There’s a well-known quote, often attributed to the Aboriginal Australian academic Lilla Watson, although she credits it to a collective of Aboriginal activists, that says, ‘If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together’.

None of the communities we work with are looking for charity. The role they play in protecting the Earth and their culture has real value in itself and, in my opinion, we need their wisdom more than they need us. We never describe ourselves as the communities’ funder. We’re a partner. When we help raise money, we’re clear that it was never ours to begin with. If it comes with requirements attached, the conversation is always about how we meet them together rather than about us imposing them. That’s the same principle whether we’re talking about a grant, a story or art. It has to build something the community owns, not something we extract.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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By Oritro Karim
KATHMANDU, Nepal / NEW YORK, United States , Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On August 26, 2026, deadly flash floods and landslides ripped through Himalayan towns and villages along Nepal and Tibet’s border, devastating communities. The United Nations estimates that in Nepal’s worst-affected districts of Rasuwa and Nuwakot, 157,050 women and girls are directly or indirectly impacted.

Ranjeeta Silwal

Climate change, melting glaciers and Nepal’s catastrophic floods

Shortly after 8:30 am, a catastrophic avalanche of glacial ice and bedrock roughly two square kilometres in size plunged thousands of metres into the river below, triggering a lethal flood of water, ice, rock and sediment. Travelling over 200 kilometres from Tibet into Nepal, the raging torrent swept away people, animals, homes, schools, roads, bridges and other key infrastructure.

World Weather Attribution explains that human-caused climate change is thawing permafrost in the Himalayan mountains and causing glaciers to melt, likely destabilising the slopes that triggered this humanitarian and environmental disaster.

At the time of writing, over 1,450 people are confirmed dead and more than 8,000 remain missing, with only a fraction of bodies identified and returned to their families. Nepal’s National Child Rights Council and Save the Children have reported that over 1,000 children are in temporary shelters without any parents, many of whom are dead or missing.

Ranjeeta Silwal explains how Nepal’s floods have put women and girls at greater risk

“While temporary shelters can be life-saving, if they aren’t designed with gender protection considerations from the outset, they can create new risks associated with overcrowding, lack of privacy, separation from family and community support networks, and limited access to confidential mechanisms for reporting violence. Without safe, accessible toilets, adequate lighting, privacy and safe pathways, women and girls may face risks simply when using the toilet or bathing, particularly at night.

“Systems that would normally prevent and respond to violations, like health and social services, police, courts and local communities, may be damaged or inaccessible. When authorities are focused elsewhere or are themselves absent because of disaster, the risk of violence, exploitation and other abuse increases exponentially.

“Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, women in poverty or from rural communities, those with disabilities, widowed and single women, and women-headed households may face additional barriers in accessing services, facilities and information following natural disasters. Adolescent girls can be especially affected because they have less mobility, less access to information and limited decision-making power.

“We need to ask: who can move safely, who has privacy, who can access food and water, who has information and safety networks? These are not additional considerations; these are basic requirements of a rights-based humanitarian response.

“The emergency doesn’t end when flood water recedes, as the secondary impacts can continue for months, even years. When families lose their house, their income and support networks, women and girls become more exposed and vulnerable to sexual violence, intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation, trafficking and child marriage. We need to understand that protection from gender-based violence must be part of the emergency response; it is not something that can wait until reconstruction begins.”

How does the climate crisis increase the risk of child marriage?

“Nepal has made important legal and policy commitments by raising the legal age of marriage to 20 for both women and men and pledging to end child marriage by 2030. Despite this, child marriage remains an ongoing problem. An Equality Now report on child marriage in South Asia explains how poverty, insecurity and lack of access to education are key factors, and the flood in Nepal has amplified all of these, especially for families who’ve lost their homes, agricultural land, livestock and incomes.

“Climate resilience and ending child marriage cannot be treated as separate agendas. As climate-driven disasters become more frequent and severe, the economic pressures on families can intensify, changing how they view a girl’s future.

“When a family is displaced, or a school is destroyed, returning to education can be extremely difficult. Families who’ve lost everything may be unable to afford transport, uniforms or supplies, and girls may be expected to take on additional domestic and care responsibilities. Parents can see marriage as a way to reduce household costs or provide daughters with perceived economic and physical security.

“Once a girl leaves school, the risk of child marriage, early pregnancy, exploitation, child labour and economic dependence increases. So schooling must be part of emergency responses, with displaced children given access to education as soon as possible. Families need social protection, livelihoods, education, food, housing and other essential support so they don’t turn to child marriage as a coping mechanism.”

What should recovery and reconstruction after the floods look like in Nepal?

“Across South Asia, many women depend on agriculture and natural resources while having less control over land, assets and finance. When natural disasters destroy agricultural land, inequalities deepen. A woman who has lost her livelihood and independent income may become more economically dependent on a partner or other household members, making it far harder to leave an abusive situation or challenge exploitation.

“Recovery should mean more than simply rebuilding what existed before. The first step should be a gender-responsive needs assessment, and plans to restore livelihoods must consider who controls assets and income, and how recovery can strengthen women’s economic security and autonomy. Crucially, recovery policies must be deliberately designed to reach women directly.

“Support can take many forms, including cash assistance, help to restore land and housing documentation, and direct access to compensation, recovery grants, credit and financial services. It should also include skills development, employment opportunities and investment in climate resilience. Unpaid care work is often overlooked, despite increasing significantly following disasters. Women looking after children, older people and injured family members have less time to rebuild their livelihoods, so recovery efforts must address this burden.

“Women and girls are not just victims of climate change. They are also agents of change, knowledge holders and decision-makers. We must ensure women’s meaningful participation in recovery decisions, and they shouldn’t only be consulted on plans that have already been developed. They need meaningful influence over what is rebuilt, where it is rebuilt, and how resources are allocated in the short and long term.”

About Ranjeeta Silwal, South Asia Regional Representative, Equality Now

Ranjeeta Silwal is a human rights lawyer, advocate and programme leader. She has recently joined international women’s rights organisation Equality Now as their South Asia Regional Representative. Licensed to practise law in Nepal, Ranjeeta has represented survivors before UN human rights mechanisms, contributed to strategic litigation, and led advocacy to reform discriminatory laws and advance accountability. Her work has focused particularly on gender-based violence, discrimination, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and strengthening legal protections and access to justice for all women and girls.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Excerpt:

Moderator Arif Ullah of Anthropocene Alliance joins LaTricea Adams of Young, Gifted, and Green; Dionne Delli-Gatti of Continuum Strategies; and Dr. Katlyn Turner of CU Boulder Information Science and KTLN Consulting to discuss AI’s environmental justice impacts and how frontline communities can maintain agency as data center development expands. Credit: Pillar Projects / Grayson Wise

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On September 21, Frontline Resource Institute (FRI) hosted its Climate Justice Hub at Fordham University at Lincoln Center in New York City under the theme “Building a Stronger Climate Coalition.”

As part of Climate Week, and coinciding with the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, the event united advocates, researchers, policymakers, and frontline leaders to address the intensifying threat of climate change to global public health, while highlighting the need for stricter guardrails on artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, particularly in their impacts on frontline communities.

Arif Ullah, Executive Director of Anthropocene Alliance (A2) and a moderator at the event, referenced Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by journalist Karen Hao, noting her warning that AI functions as a “new form of colonialism.” Ullah emphasized that AI’s impacts on frontline communities and their environments is multifaceted and far-reaching, requiring far more robust physical infrastructure to be sustainable.

“In July, nearly 1,400 tech company employees signed an open letter urging the [U.S.] government to regulate AI. Recently, an Anthropic researcher quit his job warning that the people building AI believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” said Ullah. “When you consider the many ways in which [resources are] extracted, it’s hard to disagree. Hyperscale data centers are among the ways it’s most extracted, not to mention destructive. We are seeing them proliferate, unchecked and unregulated across the country.”

Numerous speakers at the event underscored that natural resources are routinely extracted from frontline communities with little regard for public health or the stability of local ecosystems. To meet the rapidly growing demands for continuous power, data centers around the world have increasingly implemented methane gas turbines. These measures have led to a surge in toxic chemical emissions—such as formaldehyde and benzene—driving widespread air and water pollution while consuming vast amounts of water.

Sarah Vogel, Senior Vice President of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and another moderator of the event, warned that extreme weather patterns—including intense heatwaves, prolonged flooding, destructive wildfires, degraded air and water quality, and the spread of infectious diseases—are among the most alarming and common consequences of AI-exacerbated climate change.

She emphasized that these impacts present heightened risks of lung cancer, heart disease, and strokes, particularly for frontline communities. Young people are uniquely vulnerable, as their developing bodies face continuous strain from pollutants without the opportunity to grow up in healthy environments. Those with pre-existing conditions also face a heightened risk of exacerbated health outcomes.

“For communities in this country and around the world who have experienced the legacy and ongoing impacts of environmental injustices, climate change and the related pollution is a threat magnifier,” said Vogel. “We know that when our health is impaired, it’s like a domino effect. Everything is impacted. Our ability to work, our ability to take care of children, the costs associated with it. The ability to just enjoy our lives. That is what we mean when we say that the climate crisis is a health crisis”

It is these frontline communities, oftentimes primarily composed of people of color, that are entrenched in severe environmental degradation and pushed further into poverty while others reap the financial benefits. Bearing the brunt of extreme pollution, these communities often lack the healthcare infrastructure required to withstand such environmental shocks.

LaTricea Adams, Founder, CEO, and President of Young, Gifted, and Green, noted that frontline communities are often left ill-equipped to adapt to AI-driven climate shocks, describing it as a “point of reckoning.” She emphasized that many residents are often unaware that they are on the frontlines of environmental degradation, going a “significant amount of time” without understanding the full extent of how these developments directly impact their lives.

“We as a collective are still not taking public health seriously. That also has an economic implication,” said Adams. “While you may bring in millions of dollars, if people are consistently sick, does that not have an impact on healthcare, which we know is lacking in our country and in our society?”

“What you’re not gonna do is come into our community and give us nothing but pollution while we remain in poverty. But at the same time, we do have to make sure that we protect the people that have been neglected for centuries in disinvestment.”

Several panelists underscored the importance of centering frontline communities in AI reform, with cooperation between governments, community leaders, corporations, and the health sector imperative in preventing harm and establishing sustainable practices that can uplift these communities. Vogel noted that in order to build healthy and resilient communities, approaches in AI regulation must prioritize health and equity to effectively minimize risks.

Panelist Ali Abazeed, Chief Public Health Officer and Director for the city of Detroit warned that the international community must not become “sophisticated witnesses” to preventable harm, noting that progress hinges on empowering communities and providing them with the data that affects their lives.

“Public health doesn’t happen inside an office. Comfort is comfortable. The ivory tower—the research generated there is hugely important but it has to roll out to the communities,” said Abazeed, emphasizing that action is critically important amidst widespread cuts to funding for research and potential hostile takeovers of national institutes for health.

“Speaking as a government official, we need to recognize that the work that we do and the powers that we have can help uplift and elevate communities. The charge is to be outside, to be in the clinic lobby for public health, in the church basement, for us to be meeting the fence-line communities.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Credit: Amanda Cotton / Ocean Image Bank

By Gareth Johnstone and Jan Thomas Odegard
OSLO, Norway, Sep 24 2026 (IPS)

As Norway undertakes Vendepunkt, or “Turning Point,” its reflection on the future of Norwegian development policy, it is critical that oceans remain a priority. Donors around the world are running similar audits, deciding which long-term partnerships to keep, and why. Norway has decades of expertise to offer, but also something significant at stake: healthy and well-governed oceans underpin food, livelihoods and economic activity in partner countries while supporting global seafood supply chains in which Norway itself participates.

West Africa demonstrates what sustained investment in oceans can achieve. More than a decade of cooperation on illegal fishing has helped countries strengthen their own capacity to monitor and protect their waters. But the ocean cannot be managed country by country. Fish stocks are shared, vessels move across borders, and climate change is shifting marine resources into new waters. Strong national capacity must therefore be matched by the ability of countries to cooperate.

That cooperation depends on the relationships between countries that allow information to be shared, trust to develop and authorities to act together. These relationships are not simply a by-product of capacity building. They are essential development infrastructures particularly when the resources being protected cross borders.

Gareth Johnstone

The connection between West Africa and Norway makes this tangible. Fish caught off West Africa enters international supply chains as fishmeal and fish oil, including feed used in aquaculture thousands of kilometres away. A fish caught off Guinea-Bissau can ultimately help feed a salmon in a Norwegian fjord. In one investigation supported by TMT, authorities took action against the factory vessel TIAN YI HE 6 after it received fish from a Turkish-flagged vessel, with the resulting fishmeal transported onwards to international markets. The case resulted in fines for unauthorized fishing operations, illegal transshipment and obstruction of inspectors.

Jan Thomas Odegard

Technology has transformed what fisheries authorities can do. An inspector can now examine a vessel’s movements and history before deciding whether it should enter port. Recorded use of the Vessel Tracking Tool, developed by fisheries intelligence organisaiton, TMT, more than doubled between 2024 and 2025.

Despite this, turning information into action requires trained officials, functioning institutions and trust between agencies and countries. In the West African region where TMT, and its partners have focused support, the relationships resulted in the deterrence of illegal fishing took more than a decade to build. An independent assessment by Poseidon Aquatic Resource Management of this work, supported by Norway, found that some of the strongest results came when governments shared information regionally.

One case began with a concern raised by a fisheries inspector in Ghana about the vessel NOVA ZEELANDIA. Officials in Côte d’Ivoire, Angola and South Africa checked their records and shared information. Angola subsequently fined associated trawlers for unauthorized transshipment and barred NOVA ZEELANDIA from its waters, while Cameroon separately fined the vessel owners US$2.1 million for breaches of inspection rules.

The vessel later changed its name and flag and remains in operation. It is a reminder that effective ocean governance requires sustained cooperation across jurisdictions.

Relationships are development infrastructure

Development programmes routinely count the numbers of people trained, systems established and institutions strengthened. The value of the relationships built alongside them is harder to measure. Yet a fisheries officer knowing who to contact in a neighbouring country can be as important as the technology on their desk.

These relationships take years to build and can be fragile. One or two funding cycles may establish a system or deliver training, yet they are less likely to embed the institutional memory, expertise and relationships that allow it to survive and adapt.

Long-running development partnerships and support should therefore not automatically be viewed as evidence that localisation has failed to materialise. A better test is whether they are evolving toward stronger national institutions, greater regional leadership and with less dependence on external technical expertise, while preserving cooperation where challenges remain shared.

Oceans belong in Norway’s Turning Point

Norway brings decades of experience in fisheries management, marine research and ocean governance. Norway is itself a fishing and aquaculture nation, connected through the same ocean systems and global seafood supply chains.

Norway’s investment in oceans can therefore combine locally led capacity with international cooperation because illegal vessels do not respect borders.

The evidence from West Africa shows why sustained investment matters. National enforcement capability and regional networks have been built over more than a decade. Withdrawing support before those systems are sufficiently resilient risks losing hard-won gains, continuing to invest allows national leadership to deepen and relationships to mature.

Norway’s challenge is not unique. Development partners are increasingly being asked to make harder choices and reduce dependency without dismantling the relationships and cooperation needed to address problems that are inherently international. As Turning Point asks where Norway has particular strengths and where its development cooperation can have greatest impact, oceans deserve a prominent place in the answer.

The question should not simply be which partnerships Norway can eventually leave. It should also be which are worth sustaining and deepening because the same fish stocks, vessels and networks are what is at stake. Strong national capacity and international relationships are not competing goals. One makes the other possible. And in an ocean that connects Guinea-Bissau’s fishing communities with Norway’s fjords, Norway has both the expertise and the interest to keep investing in both.

Gareth Johnstone is the Executive Director of Norwegian based fisheries intelligence organization, Trygg Mat Tracking (TMT). He has over 30 years’ experience as an environmental scientist, researcher and policy expert. He is also the former Director General of WorldFish.

Jan Thomas Odegard is a Norwegian environmental and development expert with 30 years’ experience spanning the UN, NGOs, private sector and research. He is co-founder and Chair of the Trygg Mat Tracking Board and former Secretary General of Friends of the Earth Norway.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Sep 24 2026 (IPS)

After decades in which the high seas were too often treated as a distant frontier—vast, ownerless and beyond meaningful protection—the High Seas Treaty entered into force on 17 January 2026.

It was a landmark achievement for international cooperation and a reminder that, even in an increasingly divided world, nations can still come together in defence of the common good. But celebration must not be confused with protection. A treaty on paper will not restore depleted marine life. It will not prevent harmful activity and it will not ensure that the benefits of ocean science are shared fairly. Nor will it secure a healthy ocean for future generations unless the international community gives it the resources, institutions, scientific capacity and political courage necessary to succeed. That is the real test now before us.

The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, also known as the High Seas Treaty, creates a framework for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. It addresses four essential areas: the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from marine genetic resources; marine protected areas and other area-based management tools; environmental impact assessments; and the capacity-building and transfer of marine technology. These areas will secure the future of the global ocean—and, by extension, the future of every nation whose climate, food security, economy and heritage depend upon it.

For small island developing states, it is our climate regulator, our food source, our economic space, our history and our future. We do not look at the sea as a faraway expanse beyond our borders. We live with it every day. We prosper or suffer according to its health.

During my years as President of Seychelles, this understanding shaped my conviction that the ocean had to be placed at the centre of national development. Seychelles chose to pursue a blue-economy vision at a time when the phrase was less familiar than it is today. We worked to protect large areas of our maritime space, advanced marine spatial planning, and explored innovative approaches to ocean finance, including debt-for-nature arrangements and the blue bond.

Our actions were not driven by the illusion that a small island nation could fix a global crisis single-handedly. Instead, we acted out of a core conviction: true leadership belongs to more than just the largest landmasses, the richest economies, or the most dominant militaries. While we are a small island state in land, we are a vast ocean nation. We possess a wealth of experience, strategic maritime vision, and deep resolve. It is this exact spirit—proving that stewardship is measured by commitment rather than geographic size—that must anchor and define the High Seas Treaty.

The treaty rightly recognises the special circumstances of developing states, including small island developing states and coastal African states. It acknowledges that access to data, research, equipment, technical knowledge, monitoring systems and trained people is essential if all countries are to participate meaningfully in ocean governance. However, this principle must now be honored in practice. Too often, developing countries are invited to global negotiations only to discover that the real advantages remain concentrated elsewhere: locked away in distant laboratories, research vessels, satellites, and data systems. If the benefits arising from marine genetic resources are to be genuinely shared, then access to the knowledge and tools required to understand and use those resources must also be shared. The ocean cannot become another arena in which wealthier nations draw the greatest benefit while poorer and more vulnerable countries are asked merely to endorse the rules.

The first Conference of the Parties for the High Seas Treaty, scheduled to take place in early January 2027, will be a critical moment. It must not become a narrow exercise in procedure or a meeting dominated by those already best equipped to influence outcomes. It should establish an implementation culture based on ambition, inclusion and urgency. It must ensure that the financial mechanism is strong enough to support developing countries, that scientific cooperation is meaningful, and that capacity-building is not reduced to occasional workshops or vague promises. The treaty’s decision-making body is expected to convene within its first year in force, making the coming months decisive for how this new era of ocean governance is shaped.

There is another important lesson here. The world has too often separated environmental protection from development, as though nations must choose between conserving nature and improving the lives of their people. For island states, this is a false choice. A healthy ocean is development. It supports fisheries and livelihoods. It protects coastlines. It regulates climate. It sustains tourism, culture and community. It offers scientific discoveries that may help humanity confront disease, food insecurity and environmental change. To protect the ocean is not to turn away from progress. It is to redefine progress so that it can endure.

This is why the High Seas Treaty matters so deeply. It offers a chance to move beyond a culture of reaction—responding only after a fishery declines, a species disappears, a reef bleaches or an ecosystem is damaged beyond repair. It gives the international community an opportunity to act with greater foresight: to assess environmental risks before they are allowed to grow, to establish protected areas before the last refuge is lost, and to place stewardship alongside opportunity. But no agreement, however historic, can substitute for political will.

The treaty will need champions: governments willing to invest in its success; scientists willing to share knowledge; institutions prepared to support fair access; civil society determined to hold leaders accountable; and young people who refuse to accept that the ocean’s future should be decided without them. Seychelles has long believed that the world must see the ocean not as a boundary between nations, but as the great connector of humanity. That belief is even more urgent today.

The high seas belong to no single country and its condition affects us all. The High Seas Treaty is therefore more than a legal instrument. It is a test of whether multilateralism can still respond to the challenges that no nation can solve alone.

The ocean has a law and now the world must give it life.

James Alix Michel, is Former President of the Republic of Seychelles

IPS UN Bureau

Credit: Matt Palmer / Unsplash
 
This guest post is authored by V. Ram Ramanathan, Durwood Zaelke, and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and is informed by a presentation that Ramanathan is set to give at the Vatican on September 26.

By V. Ram Ramanathan, Durwood Zaelke and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco
NEW YORK, Sep 24 2026 (IPS)

Among the three of us, we have 15 decades of high-level experience in climate science, policies and actions, and we have never been more alarmed than we are at this moment. The United Nations has just officially declared that the world has failed in limiting global warming to a safe level. During the last decade, heat-trapping pollutants nearly doubled the rate that heat is being added to the planet—a rate that will push temperatures across the 1.5°Celsius threshold in five years or less and breach the first barrier of the Paris Agreement. This will further destabilize natural climate systems and amplify weather extremes, which are already costing the world economy more than $ 2 trillion annually. At the current rate of warming, the global temperature is likely to cross 2° Celsius in about 15 years, the outer limit of the Paris Agreement, taking us into a climate not witnessed by homo sapiens, ever.

High altitudes in the Tibetan-Himalayan region and the Alps are already warming at two to three times the global average (which may be implicated in the recent Nepal / Tibet floods that left 1400 confirmed dead and 5,000 missing). Other disastrous impacts of reaching 2°Celsius include the the transition of the Amazon from a forest into a savanna. The health impacts could be the worst of all. At 2°Celsius, heat deaths in 2050 could reach a staggering two billion in a worst-case analysis by actuarial experts at Exeter University.

If that weren’t bad enough, a new scientific study raises the possibility that the current rate of warming, if continued, could eventually shut down the ocean current called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation—AMOC. The Gulf Stream is a major part of this vital ocean current, which plays a dominant role in winter weather over north America and Europe. Worryingly, AMOC is already slowing down.

At today’s rate of warming AMOC could begin to collapse at warming as low as 2° Celsius, which could be crossed by the time today’s infants are in college. Impacts would be punishing, stranding heat in the already too hot tropics, while robbing northern countries of heat now transported north to keep temperatures temperate, leading to bitter winters. If AMOC collapses, currently a low-probability event, it could trigger massive forced internal and international displacements, ushering in the world’s largest crisis of forced migration ever.

Crossing 2°Celsius will trigger other irreversible impacts too, further amplifying warming through the loss of sea ice and glaciers. The depletion of ice and snow will make the planet darker, resulting in more absorption of incoming solar radiation, amplifying warming by 25% or more.

The good news is that we can avoid this fate if we cut the rate of warming quickly—by 50% within 15 years, which is feasible in two parts.

First, we need to cut the super-pollutants of climate. These include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), methane, lower-atmosphere ozone, and black carbon soot from diesel and cooking smoke. These short-lived climate pollutants are called super pollutants because they are tens to thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide in heating the planet and are currently contributing more than half of the warming the planet has witnessed. However, and this is crucial–they dissipate from the atmosphere within two decades, whereas carbon dioxide, the best-known climate pollutant, takes multiple decades to a century to significantly decline.

Technologies exist to quickly and affordably reduce the super pollutants. In many cases we have the policies and laws as well. HFCs are being cut through the 2016 Kigali amendment to the successful Montreal Protocol—the treaty that has slowed warming by several decades while restoring the protective stratospheric ozone layer.

Methane pollution is getting more attention recently, including from Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados, who is recommending a binding international agreement —inspired by the Montreal Protocol—to prevent the oil and gas industry from wasting natural gas, which is 90% methane. Other local solutions can reduce or even eliminate methane from landfills, starting by reducing food waste. There are many other such practical, off-the-shelf solutions.

The immediate task at hand is to thin the invisible heat trapping blanket. If we implement super pollutant solutions before 2030 and scale to full potential in less than10 years, the rate of warming can be reduced by 30% by 2040s. But we need to cut the rate of warming by half, i.e. 50%. The super pollutants should be our first target, because the technologies and policies are there and once we put them into action, the blanket-thinning will start immediately.

Second, as the recent IPCC report affirms, we need to focus on removing CO2. The human-made CO2 blanket up there weighs about 1,200 billion tons and we have to thin it by 5%, or 60 billion tons. Nature-based solutions are currently removing about 2 billion tons per year. Chemical/biological/technological solutions are actively pursued. Scaling to 4 billion tons per year would remove the needed tons in 15 years.

Together, these two measures would halve the rate of warming from today’s nearly 0.4° Celsius per decade to less than 0.2° Celsius per decade. We know of no other measures of thinning the heat-trapping blanket to provide the rapid cooling needed to allow us to survive and thrive. Even with rapid actions, climate disruption will continue for decades. We must make people and ecosystems resilient. Since we are all interconnected, we require global cooperation to make people and ecosystem climate resilient. Towards this global cooperation, we propose creating: One Million Climate Advocates to empower the public to support local and national actions; and One Million Climate Champions to connect civil society, governments, and industries to turn climate mitigation policies into actions at the local to the global level.

It’s time to move forward, always forward. Adelante, Siempre Adelante. Those were among the last words Pope Francis offered one of us (Suárez-Orozco). Not forward when the politics are perfect or opposition relents. Forward now, with the urgency of a species that has finally seen the iceberg but still has time to turn the tiller toward safety.

V. Ram Ramanathan is a distinguished research professor at the University of California at San Diego and the winner of the 2026 Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy.

Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston & the UCLA Wasserman Dean Emeritus.

This article was issued by the LegalPlanet and is being republished from the original with their permission.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

A street market in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city. Residents are anxious about high inflation and also fear recent floods will drive food prices higher. Credit: Ant/IPS

By Guy Dinmore, and a reporter in Yangon
YANGON, Myanmar, Sep 23 2026 (IPS)

Isolated and at constant war with itself, Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis is deepening as global challenges far exceed the capacity to respond of a military regime increasingly focused on its own survival.

The climate crisis, soaring commodity prices triggered by wars in Europe and the Middle East, plus worldwide cuts in donor aid are all hitting Myanmar hard. The regime’s inability to govern a fragmented and restive country with nearly four million internally displaced people has been exposed to the full since it seized power over five years ago.

Widespread floods caused by heavy monsoon rains since July have affected over 470,000 people, according to an assessment by the World Health Organization. Cases of malaria and dengue have been increasing, as well as outbreaks of cholera.

“Everyone is starving and cut off. Yes, everyone is facing food shortages,” said an activist calling himself Bruce, describing the situation in Shwebo township in the north-central Sagaing region, one of the main conflict zones and rice transshipment centres hit by floods.

Local and international aid organisations struggle to get help through conflict zones where the military is fighting a shifting array of ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and local resistance groups while syphoning off what it can.

“Armed hostilities, movement restrictions and administrative requirements continue to block access, underscoring the need for safe, sustained and unhindered humanitarian reach to vulnerable communities,” the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a July bulletin.

“Myanmar remains one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, with more than 16 million people in need as conflict, displacement, protection risks and access constraints intensify urgent needs nationwide,” OCHA said, noting that by end-March “humanitarian partners” had managed to reach 1.6 million people.

Floods have driven up food prices, already exacerbated by rising costs of fuel and fertilisers caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine and Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz following attacks by the US and Israel.

All sides exact a price in Myanmar, Bruce said, with cargo trucks moving north from the regime-controlled city of Mandalay to Shwebo having to pay fees at multiple military checkpoints and those run by other armed groups. Farmers in neighbouring Shan state growing rice and tomatoes are also facing “devastating losses” and being driven into deep poverty, he said.

Shwebo has experienced power blackouts of up to 20 consecutive days. As darkness falls, residents do not dare venture outside for fear of forced conscription by the regime, especially in rural areas. Households pay levies to avoid conscription, even those with only single women.

Some people are being forced into a second round of conscription as the military struggles to replenish its ranks, stretched across the country. Over 100,000 people have been conscripted, according to some estimates.

At night authorities inspect mobile phones. If they find online games, evidence of Starlink use or unauthorised communication devices then the individuals are immediately taken for military service.

Inflation and extortion reach deep into prisons too, said Bruce, a former political prisoner. Skin diseases like scabies are common, and the cost of a particular drug bought by relatives has soared more than eight times, while even traditional medicines like neem leaves have gone up fivefold.

Prison staff and those manning checkpoints even take their cuts of peanut snacks, driving up prices paid by prisoners.

The numbers displaced by conflict continue to rise. Fighting in the central Magway region in recent months has added over 200,000 more since May, according to some UN estimates. People fleeing conflict are moving to safer areas, but host communities have limited capacity to accommodate them.

U Than is a farmer in the Ayeyarwady delta and was struggling to make ends meet even before recent floods hit the major rice-growing region, destroying crops and jeopardising the next planting season. Fortunately his land has been spared destruction, but everyone is keeping a close eye on nearby levees.

“Farming has become a cycle of borrowing just to survive,” he said, complaining that the cost of fertiliser has risen five-fold and that fuel is increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain.

“We are working harder, borrowing more, and spending more, but the income from our harvest is no longer enough to cover the cost of farming or even our basic living expenses.” Families are forced to cut back their spending on health and education.

Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, feels somewhat insulated from the recent natural disasters and ongoing civil war. But inflation is hitting the pockets of its six million people, including city officials and their families, who squeeze more money from residents on trumped-up charges or bribes to avoid conscription.

“The junta stooges are resorting to all sorts of methods, legal or illegal, to recruit people while at the same time making money in the process,” one long-time resident told IPS.

“Life in Yangon is morphing into a new normal, with people feeling less safe about their lives as crimes are widespread. So many cases of theft and robberies go unreported or under-reported.”

A cholera outbreak in central Yangon in August, the second in two years, was blamed on poor hygiene among street vendors whose cheap food is even more attractive as inflation bites. The regime responded by shutting down their businesses in six city townships. Outbreaks have also been reported in Sittwe, one of the last regime strongholds in Rakhine State, as well as flood-affected areas.

Reports that CCTV artificial intelligence and facial scanning technology were deployed at a checkpoint in Mandalay city have raised fears that the regime is adopting widespread surveillance controls pioneered by China, its closest ally.

Min Aung Hlaing, leader of the 2021 coup, has proved resilient and uncompromising in directing a brutal retaliation against the popular resistance and was confident enough to swap his general’s uniform for a civilian suit as president after tightly orchestrated elections this year.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, set up by the UN Human Rights Council, stated in its annual report that its findings “show a pattern of deliberate aerial attacks on civilians, arbitrary detentions, torture and sexual violence committed by the Myanmar military.”

The military escalated its aerial attacks and other crimes against civilians in the lead-up to the elections, and these have continued unabated, the IIMM said, listing the targeting of homes, schools, medical facilities, religious buildings and camps for internally displaced persons.

“This underscores the urgent need to hold those responsible to account,” it said. The IIMM is also investigating alleged atrocities involving armed groups opposed to the military.

For the moment, accountability seems a distant prospect, at best.

Since Min Aung Hlaing’s assumption of the presidency in April, the former general has been accepted on official visits to Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, China, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. The Trump administration has not rolled out the red carpet but has eased sanctions against some of the regime elite and is engaging on matters of particular concern to the US, such as scam centres.

The regime’s growing de facto recognition abroad poses a further threat to the struggling efforts to exert its authority in liberated areas by the parallel National Unity Government (NUG). Established by lawmakers ousted in 2021 when Aung San Suu Kyi and other prominent leaders were jailed, the NUG managed to conclude agreements in March with several major ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) in an attempt to forge a unified political and military resistance.

Calling themselves the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF), the alliance has stated its commitment to a negotiated political solution that would end military rule and exclude the generals from politics.

“To get there we’re pursuing all available avenues, including military means,” a senior resistance official told IPS.

However, there is scepticism that Min Aung Hlaing will deal with the new collective entity and will continue to insist on bilateral ceasefire talks with individual EAOs while refusing to recognise the NUG as an interlocutor. Several major armed groups dependant to varying degrees on neighbouring China have also kept the SCEF at arm’s length.

“Substantive negotiations between the Tatmadaw [the Myanmar military] and SCEF members are likely to prove challenging,” Morgan Michaels, a southeast Asia defence expert, wrote in a recent analysis for the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“Meaningful progress in Myanmar – whether political, economic or humanitarian – would need to start with a broad conflict de-escalation, which at a minimum would require ceasefires between the Tatmadaw and the EAOs. Unfortunately, the path to de-escalation is likely to be long and fraught with dilemmas.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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

Helen Clarkson, CEO, Climate Group at Climate Week NYC. Credit: Climate Group

By Naureen Hossain
NEW YORK, Sep 22 2026 (IPS)

The Climate Group’s annual conference in New York City has attracted thousands of attendees this year, among them world leaders, corporate heads, philanthropists, and climate advocates. Those leaders present at the opening ceremony of Climate Week have made clear calls to collectively tackle climate issues.

Climate Week NYC’s opening ceremony and conference began on Monday in conjunction with the United Nations General Assembly Debate and High-Level Week (21-29 September). In addition to the main conference, held in the Glass House on 12th Avenue, there are multiple events hosted across New York City—more than 1,500. This is slated to be the biggest Climate Week yet, according to the Climate Group, the organizers of this week-long event.

Each year, Climate Week focuses on the most urgent issues when it comes to tackling climate change, from the transition to renewable energy, corporate and government responsibility, and scaling climate and economic progress.

The consequences of climate change, including extreme weather events, rising temperatures, and sea levels, are being felt worldwide. Global conflicts like the war between Russia and Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East have disrupted the world’s energy supply of oil and gas, which has put developed and developing countries alike in prolonged stress over energy needs.

Australian PM M Anthony Albanese. Credit: Climate Group

It is the latter point that the day’s first speakers urged on, as even in the face of mounting evidence that clean energy is more affordable, countries still rely on fossil fuels. But blaming the situation solely on fossil fuel companies would not be accurate. Helen Clarkson, the founder of Climate Group, pointed out in her opening remarks that incumbents still use and rely on fossil fuels for their energy needs. She also pointed her finger at right-wing pundits in traditional and social media that spread misinformation about renewable energy and politicians who “weaponize people’s fear.” Meanwhile, some leaders and even media outlets choose not to use the word ‘climate’ in relation to these issues in a form of erasure or denial. Silence is a form of inaction, Clarkson noted soberly, and that inaction leads to more climate change.

“It’s time to face the truth, and that’s hard in a world where truth has lost so much of its currency. But the truth is, we’ve been making ourselves smaller and quiet at the exact moment we should be bigger and louder,” said Clarkson.

Climate and nature loss should also be treated as a matter of national security, said Ed Miliband, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Minister. Miliband, who served as the energy secretary under Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer, remarked that climate destruction was once treated as a peripheral matter that was separate from economic growth or energy security. The job growth in the clean energy sector proves their potential for a sustainable transition. The latest conflicts in Ukraine and Iran underline the dependence of countries on fossil fuels while also highlighting the “energy independent imperative” of clean energy.

Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom at Climate Week. Credit: Climate Group

Countries struggle with the overlapping consequences driven by climate change, for they are no longer confined to borders. In 2026 alone, over 150 million hectares burned in the first four months. This year has also confirmed a “super” El Niño that will likely drive global recorded temperatures and extreme weather events to new levels.

“This is why these facts, what is happening in our world, and why climate breakdown, in my view, must be an issue for foreign ministers and prime ministers, as well as energy and climate ministers,” said Miliband.

Miliband recommended governments pool information on climate issues so that it can be used to inform forecasts and early warning systems to “[act] before the crisis hits, rather than picking up the pieces afterwards.”

This sense of collective responsibility between countries was the core of the keynote speech, delivered by Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“The global community cannot afford to be frozen in time while the world falls around us,” said Albanese. “Australia understands the dangers of global warming and the emergency of climate action as well as any nation. We’ve seen it up close from increasingly intense bushfires and floods.”

Albanese also spoke to the specific context of the Pacific region, where states are uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and have been among the most vocal advocates for climate action. He cited Australia’s efforts to fund and support Pacific Island states in their climate resilience plans. There is also the Pacific Resilience Facility, established last year, which he claimed was the first Pacific-led climate financing mechanism.

Adopting climate-friendly and sustainable initiatives is possible and better in the longterm to build necessary resilience. Iceland provides one such example, as a country that holds geothermal reserves but had been running on imported oil until the early 1970s during the oil crisis that disrupted their supplies. Through financing, political will, and cutting-edge technology, Iceland began developing large-scale geothermal heating districts across the country. Today, over 90 percent of households in Iceland are heated by geothermal energy. For Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir, the lesson that countries should take from their example is to invest in climate-friendly infrastructure and initiatives before the next shock.

“The transition each of you is managing—in energy, in supply chains, in infrastructure, in economic competitiveness—won’t be won by the country or the company that reacts fastest to the next disruption. It’ll be won by the one that has already built the capacity to absorb it, years before it arrives. Resilience, in other words, isn’t a response. It’s a foundation you pour long before anyone tells you the storm is coming,” Frostadóttir said.

As Frostadóttir and the other world leaders remarked in their addresses, the solutions to climate change already exist. But it will require an equal measure of financing and political will to push through with the necessary steps. It cannot be a matter of waiting for the next climate or geopolitical shock to adopt those changes.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Treating the polycrisis as one undifferentiated agenda has never worked; treating them as three coherent families might. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By External Source
APEX, North Carolina / SAN FRANCISCO, California / VIENNA, Austria / SHEFFIELD, United Kingdom / GENEVA, Switzerland, Sep 22 2026 (IPS)

In March 2025, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres launched “UN80”. Recognizing that the world is in a state of dramatic and rapid change at a time when funding for the UN is under threat from budget cuts, Guterres declared that, on the anniversary of the UN’s 80th birthday, a review of its work was long overdue. Now, UN80 is coming to a head with a set of recommendations that cover almost every aspect of the UN’s work.

Some of the recommendations are focused on reducing budgets. With some major governments cutting their funding and heavily in arrears, the UN needs to cut its spending.

The current target is a reduction of roughly 20%. This has already resulted in a decision to shift staff from high-cost duty stations like New York or Geneva, to lower-cost locations such as Bonn and Nairobi.

There has also been more “structural and programmatic alignment”—in other words, finding ways to make different parts of the UN work together more efficiently, or even merge different groups. So far, this has included the UN General Assembly agreeing to merge the UN System Staff College (UNSSC) and the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) into the UN Institute for Capability and Learning Innovation.

On the research side, the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) has been integrated into the UN University. Meanwhile, the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) has been absorbed into the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Finally, in the development agenda, there have been proposals to merge the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), and to join together the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women, while also integrating the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) into existing programs.

Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation: Improving Multilateral Environment Agreements

But what about all-important environmental issues? Does UN80 address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution?

The short answer is, yes. UN80 includes “Work Package 27” dealing with the environment. We are delighted to see the inclusion of several issues we believe would improve how multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) are organized, including the idea of “clustering.”

The UN80 process of the past 18 months has generated some excellent ideas. The window for acting on them is narrower than it looks: a new Secretary-General takes office in January 2027, and proposals that have not been anchored in a mandate by then will be inherited by someone who did not make them. Now is the time to bring them to fruition

Over the past year, we have advocated taking up an idea first mooted by UNEP’s Executive Director Klaus Töpfer back in the 2000s. He proposed grouping—or clustering—MEAs and making them work more closely and effectively together. These could be grouped along the lines of the triple planetary crisis (or “polycrisis”): (i) chemicals, waste and pollution; (ii) biodiversity loss and (iii) climate change.

The logic of the groupings matters. Chemicals and waste are fundamentally about pollution and health; biodiversity is about conservation and sustainable use, while climate change sits at the nexus of these challenges. This means effectively exploiting all synergies. Treating the polycrisis as one undifferentiated agenda has never worked; treating them as three coherent families might.

Achim Steiner, who took over from Töpfer as Executive Director of UNEP in 2006, made the first attempt at clustering. The chemicals and waste conventions—Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm—agreed a synergies process that produced joint decisions and, from 2010, back-to-back conferences of the parties, a shared secretariat structure and common administrative services.

It has been largely a success on the terms it set itself: it improved collaboration and cut costs, even if programmatic integration has gone less far than administrative integration.

Steiner also started efforts to cluster MEAs focused on biodiversity. However, this process was never completed. We believe UN80 provides an ideal opportunity for this to be revisited and moved forward.

We are pleased to see that UN80 recommends establishing “a time-limited, independent and regionally representative Consultative Group of Ministers or High-level representatives of UN Member States to evaluate benefits, feasibility and possible options for MEA consolidation.” (Action 5.1)

This group should focus on two areas: clustering the three biodiversity conventions administered by UNEP—the Convention on Biological Diversity, CITES and the Convention on Migratory Species—with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as a unifying umbrella; and bringing the Minamata Convention on Mercury closer to the other chemicals and waste MEAs (Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm).

If achieved, such clustering would strengthen both the treaties seeking to address biodiversity loss and those dealing with chemicals and waste.

Clustering the three UNEP-administered biodiversity conventions is only the start: working relationships will also be needed with the biodiversity-related conventions outside UNEP—Ramsar (wetlands), World Heritage, the Plant Treaty, and Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) —and with the other Rio conventions.

We already have more than a decade of experience of what the chemicals and waste cluster has achieved and believe there is much to learn from it, and to replicate.

Better Science

Another recommendation that should be implemented is the better coordination of environmental science, and closer links between science and policy.

This matters because so many environmental issues, such as biodiversity loss and climate change, are interlinked. Connecting the scientific work in these areas helps us “join the dots” and also develop and implement better policy.

The UN80’s recommendations include several very good ones on science coordination and science policy. For instance, it proposes that we:

• “Institutionalize a periodic science–policy dialogue anchored in UNEP’s science function that informs UNEA, as well as MEAs and other UN entities governing-bodies, as appropriate.” (Action 2.1)
• “Promote structured coordination and collaboration among chairs of MEA scientific and technical bodies and other science-policy interfaces, using existing mechanisms while respecting mandates.” (Action 3.1)
• “Build a user-driven, modern knowledge ecosystem and repository of environmental science and knowledge as a shared UN asset, linking country-to-global data and existing science platforms through shared standards and interoperable search.” (Action 3.2)

These are also the cheapest recommendations on the list, and the ones with the widest benefit. It is worth making this very clear at a moment when everything is being weighed against a 20% savings target: coordination costs very little and duplication costs a great deal.

With the global community appearing to be so divided and splintered across so many issues, we understand that not all ideas will command universal support.

This is why we applaud the idea of developing “coalitions of the willing” or communities of practice around various MEAs. We believe UNEP can and should play a convening role in this, as well as related discussions about how the Rio treaties dealing with climate change, desertification and biodiversity loss can work more closely and effectively together.

Environmental Interlinkages

When UNEP was set up in 1972, one of its key missions was to help coordinate environmental work by different UN bodies. Much of this has fractured over the years as new MEAs and organizations have emerged to address major environmental issues like climate change. However, we believe it is time to reinvigorate UNEP’s mission.

UN80 addresses this by proposing that the UN’s Environment Management Group (which is chaired by the head of UNEP) should:

• “Develop and roll-out a new EMG strategy and operating model. (Action 4.1)
• “Adopt a common UN system-wide results framework for environmental mainstreaming.” (Action 4.2)
• “Establish effective linkages with the UN Secretary-General and key governing bodies (e.g., UNEA, World Health Assembly, Human Rights Council, World Meteorological Congress, etc.).” (Action 4.3)

It is worth being clear about which of these the UN can simply decide to do, and which it cannot. The science function, the knowledge ecosystem and a reinvigorated Environment Management Group are Secretariat matters: they can be delivered by the UN system itself. Clustering conventions is not.

MEAs are autonomous treaties, and only their Parties can agree to consolidate them. That is precisely why Action 5.1 proposes a group of ministers rather than an administrative decision—and why governments, not officials, will determine whether this part of UN80 goes anywhere.

Strengthening Political Leadership

What else should be done? In 2025, we proposed reintroducing the Global Ministerial Environment Forum—a body that met annually through the 2000s in conjunction with UNEP’s Governing Council, until it was superseded by the creation of the UN Environment Assembly. The Forum’s goal was to elevate discussions on environmental issues to a high political level.

Work Package 27 suggests a slightly different approach, but with similar aims. It suggests a Global Environment Leaders’ Summit, to be held every four years and attended by heads of state and government. We support this (or similar) initiatives intended to bring presidents and prime ministers to the table. In short, we need decision makers at the highest level coming together to address global environmental matters.

But four years is almost too long given the speed and acceleration of global environmental change. A simpler answer is available: a ministerial segment attached to each session of the Environment Assembly, which already meets every two years and already has universal membership, with a leaders’ summit every four. That adds almost no additional costs, and it builds political attention into a cycle that already exists rather than competing with it.

A New Secretary-General — and the Question of Who Carries This Forward

There is one complication none of this can avoid. UN80 is António Guterres’ initiative, and his term ends in December 2026. The recommendations in Work Package 27 have been prepared for a Secretary-General who will not be in office to implement them.

Whoever succeeds him will inherit these proposals rather than own them—and on the evidence of the selection process so far, will arrive with no particular commitment to them. Eight candidates have published vision statements and taken part in interactive dialogues with the General Assembly since April.

So, what can we expect? Continuity on the efficiency agenda, almost certainly. Every candidate has endorsed UN80 in some form, and the Organization’s financial position leaves little choice.

Several have committed to sustained mandate discipline, which the General Assembly’s March 2026 resolution on the creation, implementation and review of mandates now underpins. That is genuinely useful, and over time it should reduce reporting burdens across the system.

But it carries a risk worth naming. Mandate discipline affects Secretariat mandates. It does not reach the treaty bodies, whose mandates are made by their own Parties.

If an incoming Secretary-General treats Work Package 27 primarily as a savings exercise, clustering becomes consolidation by austerity. This means the functions most likely to be cut are precisely those with no treaty constituency to defend them: science coordination, the knowledge ecosystem, the Environment Management Group.

Two practical conclusions follow. The first is that the Consultative Group proposed under Action 5.1 should be established now, with a mandate and a reporting line designed to survive the transition, rather than left to a successor to constitute. The second is that in whatever dialogue remains before the appointment, candidates should be asked a question none has yet been put to them: what do you intend to do with Work Package 27?

Optimism and Action

The suggestions in UN80 and Work Package 27 offer a new approach to environmental issues and show great potential. A more empowered UNEP could provide stronger systemwide coordination across the UN and significantly enhance the integration and coherence of science, policy, and environmental protection.

To succeed, decision makers will need to be bold and to move forward quickly and decisively. The UN80 process of the past 18 months has generated some excellent ideas. The window for acting on them is narrower than it looks: a new Secretary-General takes office in January 2027, and proposals that have not been anchored in a mandate by then will be inherited by someone who did not make them. Now is the time to bring them to fruition.

Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence have participated in United Nations talks on climate change and other environmental negotiations since the 1990s. They co-edited Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage (Routledge, 2022) and wrote Environmental Lobbying at the United Nations: A Guide to Protecting Our Planet (Routledge, 2025). Their next book, Political Heroes of the Environment: Profiles in Courage, is due for release in 2027.

Hugo-Maria Schally is former Head of the Multilateral Environmental Cooperation Unit at the Directorate-General for Environment, European Commission.

Peter Bridgewater is an Associate Researcher at the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.; Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia; a former Director of the Division of Ecological Sciences in UNESCO; and former Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

Craig Boljkovac is Executive Director of Green Cross International, a Geneva-based Senior Advisor with a Regional Centre for the Basel and Stockholm Conventions, and an independent international environmental consultant with over 35 years of experience in relevant fields. He has participated in several INCs and related meetings for the global plastics agreement.

The opinions expressed in this article are the personal views of the individuals listed and do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations with which they are affiliated.

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

Closing plenary of the recent Kunming Dialogue. Credit: ENB-IISD/Anastasia Rodopoulou

By Stella Paul
KUNMING, China, Sep 17 2026 (IPS)

The world may have enough money to protect nature. The bigger problem, according to the head of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), is that too much of it is still being spent on activities that destroy it.

With just four years left to meet the world’s 2030 biodiversity goals, Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the CBD, said governments must urgently change where money flows if they are to slow the loss of nature.

Her warning comes just weeks before governments meet in Yerevan, Armenia, for COP17, the UN biodiversity conference scheduled for October 19-30.

Speaking at a press conference organised by the CBD Secretariat on September 11 – after the three-day Kunming Dialogue, Schomaker said governments need to redirect financial flows and reform incentives that encourage activities harmful to nature. Without such changes, she warned, progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) will remain too slow.

What’s Slowing Biodiversity Action?

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in Montreal in 2022, sets 23 targets for protecting and restoring biodiversity by 2030. Since its adoption, governments have been carrying out the first-ever global stocktake of how the framework is being implemented, examining progress across countries and individual targets.

The stocktake began after COP16 and is looking at the full picture of implementation, from the targets countries have set for themselves to the policies, plans, finance and other measures they are putting in place to achieve them. Its findings are being compiled in the forthcoming State of Biodiversity Action report, which will present the final global assessment at COP17.

The three-day Kunming Dialogue, held from Sept. 7 to 9, offered governments, scientists, Indigenous Peoples, youth representatives and civil society organisations an early look at the trends emerging from this stocktake. While more than 70 percent of countries have submitted national reports and over 90 percent have established biodiversity targets aligned with the global framework, the emerging picture is far less encouraging. Progress remains uneven, with implementation lagging behind the scale and pace needed to achieve the 23 targets by 2030. The emerging findings suggest that global efforts are not yet moving fast enough or at the scale needed to achieve the 23 targets by 2030. In other words, while countries have made progress in setting commitments, implementation remains well behind what is required.

“Progress is being made clearly, but it is uneven, and it is clearly also not at the pace and scale required,” Schomaker told IPS.

Gap Between Global Goals and National Action

One of the biggest problems is that biodiversity commitments have not yet been fully carried into national policies, budgets and economic decisions.

According to Schomaker, some of the largest gaps are in finance, resource mobilisation and efforts to bring biodiversity into the work of government ministries and economic sectors beyond the environment.

Jillian Campbell, Head of Planning, Monitoring and Knowledge at the CBD Secretariat, said the problem is not that countries have failed to set targets. Rather, there is often a gap between what was agreed globally and what countries have committed to doing at home.

“Most parties have set national targets covering almost every global target. However, the national targets often don’t cover the full extent of the global targets,” she told IPS.

As countries turned the global framework into their own national plans, some of its ambition was lost along the way. This is particularly visible in areas where action depends on ministries beyond the environment, including finance, agriculture, infrastructure and development.

That raises a bigger question — and one that is likely to be central at COP17: is the problem really a lack of money for biodiversity, or is it where existing money is going?

For Schomaker, the answer is clear.

“The biggest elephant in the room of all of that is the misalignment of financial systems,” she told IPS. “There is enough money around in the world economy. The question is, where does that money go?”

Money Flowing in the Wrong Direction

Governments, businesses and financial institutions continue to channel large amounts of money into activities that damage ecosystems, even as they commit themselves to protecting nature.

Changing that pattern, Schomaker said, should be one of the central priorities for COP17.

The discussions in Kunming highlighted a growing understanding that biodiversity loss is not caused only by what happens in forests, rivers and oceans. It is also shaped by decisions made in boardrooms, government ministries and financial institutions.

Participants pointed to subsidies, investments and other financial incentives that continue to make activities harmful to nature more attractive or profitable.

Asad Naqvi, Secretary of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation, said the answer to the biodiversity funding problem may therefore lie partly in changing how existing money is used rather than simply searching for new sources of funding.

He noted that governments are still spending large sums on incentives that undermine biodiversity, particularly through harmful subsidies in agriculture and fossil fuels. Redirecting those resources, he suggested, could help close financing gaps while addressing some of the root causes of nature loss.

Biodiversity Beyond Environment Policy

Finance, however, is only part of the challenge.

The Kunming Dialogue also highlighted the need for governments to treat biodiversity as an issue that cuts across the entire economy, rather than something that belongs mainly to environment ministries.

Agriculture, finance, infrastructure and development ministries all make decisions that can either protect or damage ecosystems. Unless biodiversity is considered in those decisions, governments may find themselves trying to repair environmental damage with one hand while creating more of it with the other.

That broader approach is expected to be an important part of the discussions at COP17.

For many observers, the significance of COP17 will depend on how governments respond to the findings of the State of Biodiversity Action report — and whether they can turn commitments into action faster.

The conference is expected to focus on speeding up implementation, closing finance gaps and tackling the targets where progress remains furthest behind.

As delegates prepare to meet in Yerevan, the debate is moving beyond whether governments support the global biodiversity framework.

With only four years left before the 2030 deadline, bringing finance into line with the needs of nature may become one of the defining tests of the global biodiversity agenda.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Bangladesh is rightly praised for saving lives during cyclones and floods. Early warning systems, cyclone shelters and community mobilisation have turned once-catastrophic disasters into emergencies in which evacuation is often possible. But behind that success lies a quieter national failure: millions of people are being uprooted inside the country, often more than once, without a clear path back to secure homes, land or livelihoods.

Dr Mohammad Zaman

In Bangladesh, this distinction is not academic. A Rohingya family that fled Myanmar into Cox’s Bazar is rightly understood as part of a refugee crisis. A Bangladeshi family forced from a riverbank in Kazipur-Sirajganj, a cyclone-hit village in Barguna or Patuakhali, or a landslide-prone hillside in Chattogram is internally displaced. The first case draws international refugee law and a global humanitarian apparatus. The second is too often dismissed as local misfortune, seasonal migration or urban poverty—even when the displacement is forced, repeated and long-term.

The drivers are unmistakable. Monsoon floods, cyclones, storm surges and landslides trigger large annual movements. Slower disasters—riverbank erosion, salinity intrusion and coastal land loss—make return impossible for many families. Conflict and violence produce smaller annual movements, but protracted displacement in the Chittagong Hill Tracts remains unresolved. Development projects, urban evictions and infrastructure expansion can also uproot communities when resettlement and compensation fall short.

The numbers show why Bangladesh can no longer treat internal displacement as a temporary humanitarian footnote. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported about 2.4 million disaster-related displacements in Bangladesh in 2024, up from about 1.8 million in 2023. Monsoon floods alone triggered around 1.3 million movements, including an estimated 723,000 in Sylhet division in June. Cyclone Remal added roughly 1.1 million displacements, many of them pre-emptive evacuations that saved lives but still disrupted homes, schools, work and local economies. Conflict and violence accounted for about 2,800 displacements.

New national evidence makes the picture starker. The International Organization for Migration’s Displacement Tracking Matrix estimated 5 million disaster-induced IDPs in Bangladesh in its 2025 nationwide assessment. Nearly two-thirds had been displaced before April 2020, meaning many have lived with displacement for years, not weeks. One quarter were concentrated in just four districts—Chattogram, Sirajganj, Bhola and Noakhali—while Chattogram and Dhaka divisions together hosted about 40 per cent of the estimated displaced population.

These figures expose an unequal geography of risk. Coastal households face cyclones, storm surges, saline water and embankment failures. Riverine communities in the north and centre lose land to erosion. City slums absorb families who arrive after disasters, only to place them in flood-prone, insecure and poorly serviced neighbourhoods. Women, children, older people and persons with disabilities face particular barriers in evacuation, shelter access, documentation, employment and safe housing. Displacement is not simply movement from one place to another; it can strip people of assets, identity, social networks, education and political voice.

Bangladesh’s IDP crisis is best understood as a development crisis with humanitarian symptoms. The country is comparatively strong at emergency response: it can warn people, open shelters and move communities away from immediate danger. The harder work begins after the water recedes—restoring land, rebuilding homes, returning children to school, replacing fishing gear or livestock, securing tenure in safer locations, and preventing displaced families from being pushed into exploitative labour or unsafe housing. Without durable solutions—safe return, local integration or planned relocation—each disaster deepens the last.

Bangladesh has a policy foundation, including its National Strategy on Internal Displacement Management. What it lacks is implementation at the scale demanded by climate reality. Internal displacement must be built into land-use planning, social protection, climate adaptation, urban housing, education, health care and local government finance. Data systems should distinguish short-term evacuations from protracted displacement. Relief, relocation and resettlement must be transparent, participatory and centred on livelihoods—not merely a transfer from one unsafe place to another.

Ashrayan, Bangladesh’s flagship housing program for landless and homeless families, offers both a useful model and a warning. Since 1997, it has given many poor households a legal roof, a small plot and access to basic services. For families living for years on embankments, khas land, riverbanks or in insecure urban settlements, secure shelter can be life-changing. But Ashrayan also shows why housing cannot be mistaken for rehabilitation. A house in the wrong place—without work nearby, transport, drainage, schools, health care or local accountability—can become another form of confinement. The real test is not how many units are handed over, but whether families can rebuild livelihoods and belong to the communities that receive them.

The recurring failures are practical and political. Too many Ashrayan-style resettlement sites are chosen because public or khas land is available, not because the location offers a realistic route out of poverty. Weak construction, poor drainage, inadequate sanitation, limited maintenance and exposure to floods or erosion can undermine relocation itself. Governance failures—unclear beneficiary selection, local influence, informal payments, land disputes and weak grievance systems—can be just as damaging. When these problems occur, families may gain a roof while losing the social networks, markets and informal economies that kept them afloat. Some commute long distances; some rent out or abandon the unit; some move again. That is not a failure of the displaced. It is a warning about policy design.

The future will be harsher if policy remains reactive. Climate change will intensify the hazards that already uproot families—heavier rainfall, stronger storm surges, sea-level rise, salinity and river erosion—while urbanisation will keep pulling displaced people into already strained cities such as Dhaka, Chattogram and secondary urban centres. Bangladesh has proved through cyclone preparedness that public policy can save lives. Its next test is whether those who survive disaster can also recover dignity, income and security afterward.

That begins with treating IDPs as rights-holders, not as casualties of bad weather. Bangladesh must move beyond emergency shelter toward secure housing, restored livelihoods and accountable national systems backed by climate finance. Resettlement must be written into land policy, local budgets, urban planning, social protection and climate adaptation before the next flood or cyclone arrives. The choice is stark: displacement can remain a conveyor belt into poverty, or it can become a national commitment to safety, citizenship and a future people can rebuild.

Dr. Mohammad Zaman is an internationally recognized scholar and practitioner in resettlement and development projects across Asia and Africa. His work brings together academic scholarship, field-based practice, social safeguards, and policy engagement, with a particular focus on how affected communities experience, negotiate, and reshape development interventions. Dr. Zaman’s most recent book is Anatomy of Resettlement: Ethnographic Accounts and Stories in Retrospect (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025).

IPS UN Bureau

Indigenous Kakataibo patrol in the Yamino community forest. A new report titled Collective Power documents the deaths of people who stood against environmental destruction, land grabs, illegal logging, mining projects and other threats to their communities. Credit: Global Witness

By Umar Manzoor Shah
LONDON & SRINAGAR, India, Sep 16 2026 (IPS)

At least 124 land and environmental defenders were killed around the world in 2025 while protecting forests, rivers, farmland and Indigenous territories, according to a new report by Global Witness that warns violence against activists remains widespread even as recorded killings have declined from previous years.

The report, titled Collective Power, documents the deaths of people who stood against environmental destruction, land grabs, illegal logging, mining projects and other threats to their communities. It says the 124 killings recorded in 2025 bring the total number of land and environmental defenders killed or disappeared since Global Witness began tracking such cases in 2012 to 2,375.

While the number of killings fell from 142 deaths and four disappearances documented in 2024, Global Witness cautioned that the decline should not be viewed as evidence that defenders are becoming safer, and onimously, the killing and intimidation have serious consequences for the environment.

“Defenders are the world’s eyes and ears on the ground. It’s thanks to them that we know when ecosystems are being destroyed, where forests are being cleared or rivers polluted,” Toby Hill, land and environmental defenders investigator and lead author, said. “The violence that defenders face, including killings in the most extreme cases, reflects a much broader struggle over the world’s land and resources. But beyond these tragic stories, we can’t forget the thousands of defenders around the world who are working every day to protect their territories and cultures under increasing pressure.”

The report said, “Every one of these deaths represents an attempt, in the most brutal fashion, to impose a chilling effect on movements that resist environmental and human rights abuses. We remember the families, friends and communities who have been left devastated by each attack.”

Researchers argue that the real number of killings is likely much higher because many attacks occur in remote areas, conflict zones and countries where civil society groups face intimidation for reporting abuses. According to the report, difficulties in documenting cases are particularly severe in parts of Africa and Asia, as well as increasingly in Latin America.

The findings reveal a global struggle over land, natural resources and environmental protection, with Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers bearing the heaviest burden.

Indigenous women walk along a river in the Amazon rainforest. According to Global Witness, Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers accounted for nearly three-quarters of the land, and environmental defenders killed globally in 2025. The report highlights the growing risks faced by communities defending their lands, livelihoods and ecosystems from environmental destruction and resource exploitation. Credit: Global Witness

Nearly three-quarters of those killed in 2025 were Indigenous people or small-scale farmers defending their land rights and livelihoods. The report found that 47 victims were small-scale farmers and 44 were Indigenous people. Three victims were Afro-descendant defenders.

Among the dead were seven members of Indigenous guard systems, community-based groups that patrol and protect ancestral territories from illegal activities and outside encroachment. In five of those cases, researchers identified links to organised crime, highlighting what the report describes as a growing overlap between environmental conflicts and criminal networks.

Despite this, Indigenous people continue to defend their environments.

“Defending our territory is important to us as a community and as a people, and we’re proud to support the climate that we all depend on. In our culture, the work of defending our resources and territory is taught from an early age. But for this next generation coming up, the work is more dangerous than ever,” Segundo Ispón, commander of Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Guard, said.

Global Witness said the killings represent only the most visible form of repression. Beneath them lies what human rights groups call a “hidden iceberg” of threats that include criminal charges, surveillance, harassment, smear campaigns and online abuse.

“Increasingly, social media is weaponised to discredit and harass defenders, eroding public trust and isolating them from their communities,” the report noted.

The organisation suggested that some governments and powerful interests may be relying more on non-lethal forms of repression, which can silence opposition without attracting the international attention that often follows a murder.

The report also highlights a broader deterioration in civic freedoms. Of the 15 countries where killings were documented, 10 were categorised as “repressed” by the CIVICUS Monitor, a global tracker of civic freedoms. Nicaragua was listed in the most restrictive category, described as “closed”.

Asia emerged as one of the regions where environmental defenders face increasing pressure through legal and political means.

A major section of the report focuses on Indonesia, where Dayak Indigenous communities in West Kalimantan have resisted industrial expansion, land grabs and deforestation. According to Global Witness, community leaders and Indigenous defenders have faced criminalisation while attempting to protect forests and customary lands.

The report argues that such cases reflect a wider regional trend in which defenders are increasingly targeted through courts, police investigations and administrative actions rather than direct violence alone. It cites concerns raised by human rights organisations regarding the criminalisation of environmental activism across parts of Asia.

In the Philippines, environmental defenders Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro are highlighted as examples of activists who continued their advocacy despite legal and political pressure. Their experiences are presented as part of a larger pattern in which defenders face reputational attacks and criminal allegations linked to their activism.

The report also examines Peru, where members of the Kakataibo Indigenous people have developed Indigenous guard systems to protect their territory from growing threats associated with organised crime and environmental exploitation. The movement is presented as an example of collective protection developed by communities that feel abandoned by state institutions.

Across Latin America, which has historically recorded some of the highest numbers of killings of environmental defenders, the report documents continuing violence, disappearances and intimidation.

It revisits the disappearance of Mexican defenders Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz, whose case has become emblematic of the dangers faced by people challenging powerful economic interests. Three years after their disappearance, United Nations experts were still calling for truth and justice.

The report also highlights the unresolved disappearance of Chilean Indigenous defender Julia Chuñil. According to Global Witness, her family and legal representatives have faced mounting pressure while continuing to seek answers.

“Despite this pressure, Julia’s family continues to fight for truth and justice,” the report said. “They are still searching for their mother, organising protests, pursuing legal challenges and bringing international attention to the case.”

In Nigeria, defenders protecting the Ekuri Forest in Cross River State continued to face intimidation, arrest and detention after speaking out against illegal logging. The report said community leaders were targeted following complaints linked to logging interests but were later released after intervention from environmental organisations and lawyers.

“The arrests were widely viewed as an attempt to silence efforts to defend tropical forests and community forest rights,” the report stated.

The gender dimension of environmental activism also features prominently in the findings. Of the 124 defenders whose deaths were verified in 2025, 109 were men, 14 were women and one was identified as non-binary. However, researchers stressed that women defenders often experience different forms of violence that are less visible but equally damaging.

The report cites data from the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders showing more than 30,000 non-lethal attacks against women defenders in Mexico and Central America between 2012 and 2023. These included harassment, threats, surveillance, psychological abuse and smear campaigns.

The report also expresses concern about the unprecedented fall in foreign aid seen in 2025 – driven by budget cuts by the governments of the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and other traditional donors – impacting thousands of human rights organisations, drastically reducing the global pool of support to communities acting in the depths of rainforests and other secluded ecosystems.

“The effects of these budget cuts are not abstract. In Colombia, projects working to promote and protect human rights and support defenders have been hit by the sudden drop in foreign aid, particularly from the U.S. When foreign aid retreats, Indigenous Peoples and small-scale farmers can be left with fewer resources and less support as they defend the forests, rivers and other ecosystems that sustain their communities and help keep the global climate stable,” Juliana Vélez Echeverri, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said.

Global Witness says the solution requires more than investigations into individual killings. The organisation is calling for stronger legal protections for Indigenous peoples, recognition of land rights, accountability for corporations and criminal networks, and greater support for community-led protection systems.

The report argues that environmental defenders are not only protecting local communities but also safeguarding forests, biodiversity and ecosystems that are critical in the fight against climate change. Their work, researchers say, often benefits society far beyond the places where they live.

The publication opens with a dedication to those who continue that work despite the risks.

“This report is dedicated to all those individuals, communities and organisations bravely speaking out or taking action to defend their rights to land and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment,” it says. “Last year, 124 people were murdered for doing this work.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

A report Rebuild Trust: Rigged Economies, Fractured Societies and the Case for Change found that people everywhere believed the system was rigged. Credit: Earth4All

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Sep 14 2026 (IPS)

An international survey released by Earth4All has found a growing crisis of trust in governments, widespread anger over inequality, and strong public support for major economic reforms, suggesting that many people across the world believe current political and economic systems are failing to serve ordinary citizens.

The report, Rebuild Trust: Rigged Economies, Fractured Societies and the Case for Change, surveyed people in 17 countries representing 58 percent of global GDP, 38 percent of the world’s population, and 37 percent of global carbon emissions. Its findings paint a picture of societies that feel increasingly divided, economically insecure, and disconnected from political institutions.

As per the report, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe their country’s economic system is “rigged” to benefit the rich and powerful. Seven in ten said there is too much economic inequality in their country, while 69 percent called for major changes to economic systems to improve life for most people.

“The survey results show a mismatch between public support for economic change and what mainstream political parties are willing to offer,” the report’s authors, Owen Gaffney and Kate Pickett, write. They argue that the findings reveal an opportunity for governments to build new social contracts based on fairness, economic security, and long-term wellbeing.

The survey comes at a time when many countries are grappling with rising living costs, political polarisation, climate pressures, and growing public frustration with institutions.

One of the report’s most striking conclusions is that many people feel their societies are becoming more fractured.

Across the 17 countries surveyed, 67 percent said their country is more divided today than it was a decade ago. More than seven in ten respondents reported serious tensions between supporters of different political parties. Nearly two-thirds saw conflict between rich and poor, while similar numbers perceived tensions between immigrant and native-born populations.

The authors argue that these divisions are linked not only to economic conditions but also to a broader erosion of trust.

“Societies feel themselves coming apart. There is a trust deficit at the heart of societies,” reads the report.

Only 31 percent of respondents said they trust their governments to make decisions that will benefit the majority of people 20 or 30 years into the future. This was one of the lowest-rated measures in the survey.

The report also highlights a less visible issue. Many people feel they are not treated with respect and dignity.

Across all surveyed countries, only 41 percent agreed that people like them are treated with respect and dignity. The authors note that feelings of disrespect and humiliation can fuel political alienation and social resentment.

“A society in which one in four people feel they do not receive respect contains significant combustible material,” the report states. “Many people feel unseen, believe the system is rigged and do not experience their society as a collective enterprise.”

Asian countries included in the survey showed significant differences in public attitudes.

Indonesia emerged as one of the strongest supporters of economic reform. Nearly three-quarters of Indonesians said there is too much inequality in their country, while 74 percent believed the system benefits the wealthy. A remarkable 78 percent supported major economic changes, the highest level among all countries surveyed.

Indonesians also showed strong backing for climate action. Sixty-eight per cent said governments should take strong action against climate change even if it results in higher prices.

Yet Indonesia appeared less polarised than many Western countries. Only 53 percent believed the country is more divided than it was ten years ago, significantly below the global average.

Japan presented a different picture.

Trust in government was among the lowest recorded in the survey. Only 19 percent of Japanese respondents said they trusted their government to make long-term decisions benefiting the majority of citizens. Just one fifth felt they were treated with respect and dignity.

The findings also revealed unexpectedly strong support for authoritarian leadership in Japan. Nearly half of respondents agreed that the country would be better off with a strong leader unconstrained by parliament and elections. Meanwhile, only half said democracy was the best system of government.

India also featured prominently in the survey. According to comparative data in the report, 66 percent of Indian respondents agreed that there is too much economic inequality in the country, close to the international average. India ranked among countries where a majority still felt they were treated with respect and dignity, recording one of the highest scores in the survey on that measure.

Despite widespread frustration with governments and economic systems, the survey found continued support for democracy.

Overall, 68 percent of respondents said democracy remains the best way to govern their country. However, support was not universal. Forty percent also agreed that their country would be better off with a strong leader who does not have to worry about parliament or elections.

The authors describe this as a warning sign rather than a rejection of democracy itself.

In countries such as Brazil and Japan, support for strong leaders reached especially high levels. In Brazil, 51 percent backed the idea of a leader unconstrained by elections, while 63 percent still supported democracy. In Japan, support for strong leadership stood at 46 percent.

The United States presented a contrasting picture. Only 26 percent favoured a strong leader outside democratic constraints, while 68 percent supported democracy as the preferred form of government.

The report warns that declining trust in institutions can create openings for anti-democratic movements if governments fail to address public concerns about fairness and economic opportunity.

Climate Action Retains Public Backing

Despite growing economic anxieties, the survey found continued support for climate action.

More than half of respondents said governments should take strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even if it leads to higher prices. Support was strongest in middle-income countries and weaker among lower-income households and politically conservative respondents.

The authors argue that climate policies are more likely to succeed when paired with measures that address economic inequality and social insecurity.

Public resistance to climate action often grows when people believe they are being asked to bear unfair costs while wealthier groups benefit from the existing system, the report suggests.

Kate Pickett, one of the report’s authors and a well-known researcher on inequality and social wellbeing, has long argued that unequal societies tend to experience weaker social cohesion and lower levels of trust. The findings of the new survey appear to reinforce that argument.

Economic Anxiety Remains Widespread

Beyond questions of trust and politics, the survey highlights persistent worries about basic economic security.

Across the countries surveyed, 41 percent of respondents said they were concerned about having enough money to cover their basic needs during the coming year. Economic anxiety was particularly high in countries facing inflation and financial instability.

Argentina recorded the highest levels of economic insecurity. More than two-thirds of respondents worried about covering basic needs, and 78 percent supported major economic reforms.

Even in wealthier countries, concerns about inequality remained widespread.

In the United States, 62 percent said there was too much inequality. In Sweden, often regarded as one of the world’s more equal societies, 71 percent shared the same view. Australia recorded 64 percent.

The authors argue that economic growth alone is no longer enough to reassure citizens.

Instead, people increasingly judge systems based on fairness, opportunity, and whether prosperity is shared.

The Earth4All initiative was launched by organisations including the Club of Rome, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the Norwegian Business School. It seeks to identify pathways toward sustainable prosperity and social wellbeing.

The report’s authors say the findings should serve as a wake-up call for political leaders.

Rather than viewing public frustration as a temporary reaction to economic shocks, they argue that governments should recognize it as evidence of deeper structural problems.

The survey reveals what the authors call a “near-universal diagnosis”. Across different political systems, cultures, and income levels, large majorities share the belief that current economic arrangements favour elites while leaving ordinary citizens behind.

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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

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

Kamikawa Yoko, MP for Japan and Chair of AFPPD at the opening of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) annual conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Credit: APDA

By Cecilia Russell
KUALA LUMPUR & JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Sep 10 2026 (IPS)

“As parliamentarians, we should understand that behind every demographic indicator is a human story,” Kamikawa Yoko, MP Japan and Chair of AFPPD, reminded lawmakers in her opening address to the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) annual conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The conference, with the theme of ‘Parliamentary Leadership for the Future: An All-of-Society Approach to the Care Economy and Demographic Resilience,’ took place in the shadow of the devastating floods in Nepal, which Dr. Toshima Karki, MP Nepal, described as an “alarm from the roof of the world.” The impact of climate change on women, the elderly, and youth underpinned the concerns of many of the parliamentarians over the two-day conference.

Alexander Nanta Linggi, Minister of Works, Malaysia, opened with a strong statement about what parliamentary leadership means for the future.

“An all-of-society approach to the care economy and demographic resilience is ultimately about people,” he said.

“Parliamentarians have a unique role. We are not merely lawmakers. We are voices for our communities. We see the struggles of families caring for aging parents. We hear the concerns of young people uncertain about their future. We witness the inequalities that still affect women and vulnerable groups. This is why parliamentary leadership matters. We have the responsibility to translate lived realities into meaningful policy,” Linggi elaborated, adding that “a caring society is not a cost to be borne; it is an investment in social stability, economic resilience, and national well-being.”

Pio Smith, Deputy Executive Director of UNFPA and UN Assistant Secretary-General, noted the stark reality of fewer resources and the growing global polarization that parliamentarians were caught in.

“Doing more with less cannot mean doing less for those who need us most. It means making smarter choices, strengthening systems, improving efficiency, and ensuring that limited resources are directed toward investments that deliver lasting impact,” Smith said.

Dr. Toshima Karki, a member of Nepal’s House of Representatives, speaking at the AFPPD annual conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Credit: APDA

Officially opening the conference, the President of the Senate of Malaysia, Dato Awang Bemee Awang Ali Basah, argued that “Demographic resilience requires an all-of-society approach. No single ministry or government can solve these challenges—we need government, parliament, the private sector, civil society, academia, communities, families, and individuals working together.”

During the two-day conference, there were many powerful presentations, intertwining social challenges of youth, women, and the elderly and climate change.

Howard Lee Chuan How, MP Malaysia and Secretary-General of AFPPD Global, said the organization’s move to Kuala Lumpur should mark a new phase of globalization. AFPPD’s 30 national committees represent countries with a combined population of more than 4.3 billion people, over half of humanity.

“The stories of our people are therefore not peripheral to the global debate. They are a major part of the human story. The solutions we develop across our region, from aging and fertility to youth, gender, care, and climate resilience, have the potential to help shape solutions for the world,” Lee said.

For Syerleena Abdul Rashid, MP Malaysia, this is deeply personal. She started her speech by telling the conference that her mother, aged 81, grew up without air conditioners and weather apps.

“She now also lives with dementia, so when the temperature rises, I cannot simply just send her a text message saying, ‘Mom, please drink more water.’ She may not read it, she may not remember it, and she may not recognize that she’s becoming dehydrated or unwell.”

Syerleena listed the issues.

By 2030, 15% of Malaysians will be 60 or older.

In Malaysia, floods in November and December 2024 affected over 137,000 people, including 40,000 displaced families.

Older persons face specific risks such as loss of medication, mobility challenges during evacuation, and the inability to access digital warnings.

Then she reminded parliamentarians of the policy gaps, including age-unfriendly disaster relief centers, which lack ramps, quiet spaces for dementia, or proper medical storage, and lack of data around age groups and specialized welfare checks for the elderly during heatwaves, and challenged them to fix these.

But it is not only the elderly that are affected.

Dolores Devesi, Director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) Sub-Regional Office for the Pacific, reminded the audience that the impact of a loss of time in school could have lifelong impacts.

“Schools become more than a place of learning. They connect girls to peers, and they also become a center of information sharing amongst peers… When these connections are interrupted, risks rise, and we already know… that gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, unintended pregnancy, STIs, early marriage, and so forth, also come into play.”

Counting the cost of young girls and adolescents is crucial, she says.

“When a cyclone destroys a school, when flooding cuts off a community, when families are displaced, we naturally count the infrastructure and the economic cost, but the questions we need to be asking ourselves are how many young girls stop going to school, how many adolescent-age children have stopped going to school, why, how come they haven’t returned to school, and why are they still not in school? What happened to them and to their safety while they are away?”

Sahibzada Sibghatullah, MP Pakistan, said it was crucial to count the youth in the impacts of climate change; making up 64% of the country’s population, they bear the brunt of lost education and economic stability.

“A flood closes a school, and a child loses a year of learning that she or he may never recover back. A flood destroys a small shop, and a young man loses the only job he had. A flood cuts a road, and a young mother cannot reach a health center. And when a family loses everything, it is very often the daughter who is taken out of school first and married early. These are climate impacts. We must call them by that name.”

And he noted—it was the youth that rebuilt after the floods too.

“Let me end with this: In Pakistan, when a flood takes a village, it is the young who rebuilt it. They do not ask whose factory caused the warming. They do not ask who failed to cut emissions. They only ask to be counted. Let us count them. Let us fund them. Let us legislate with them, and not merely about them.”

A group photo of parliamentarians and delegates at the recent Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) annual conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Credit: APDA

It was during question time that Karki said she could barely conceal the anger she felt about the floods that left at least 1,300 people and more than 5,500 missing.

“Today I come with a warning from the Himalayas. I’m here to tell you the snow is disappearing. The snow is disappearing, and with it, the safety of my people.”

She listed the impact on roads, bridges, homes, schools, health posts, businesses, and hydropower projects that took decades to build and were destroyed in minutes.

“However, this is not simply a disaster. This is an alarm from the roof of the world.”

She continued, “Nepal contributes only around 0.03 percent of the global greenhouse emissions. Yet it is among one of the highly vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change.”

“We did not build the smokestacks. We did not burn the coal. Yet our children are compelled to bury their parents and parents to their children under the debris of a crisis authored elsewhere.”

“Climate crisis for Nepal for us is not only an environmental crisis; it’s a developmental crisis. It’s an economic crisis, a food crisis, a public health crisis, and ultimately, it’s a crisis of justice.”

The meeting was organized by the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) and the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA). It was supported by the Japan Trust Fund (JTF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), AFPPD Malaysia, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

IPS UN Bureau Report

UN staff members at the SDG Action Zone outside UN Headquarters in New York, 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

By Samuel King and Inés M. Pousadela
BRUSSELS, Belgium / MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 9 2026 (IPS)

When the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) ended in New York in July, it took two recorded votes for states to pass a ministerial declaration that, until recently, would have been adopted without controversy. Uruguay, speaking for the Group of 77 developing countries plus China, pushed through the deletion of a reference to the agreement reached at the COP28 climate summit. Israel forced a vote on a paragraph about self-determination for people under occupation. Russia dissociated itself from the passage on peace and security. The wrangling revealed the extent to which the consensus that in 2015 saw all 193 UN states agree the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a common blueprint to end poverty, tackle climate change and build accountable institutions by 2030 – has been eroded.

The problem goes beyond this latest session. Progress is tracked through Voluntary National Reviews, the self-assessments states present at the Forum. Thirty-six countries did so this year. But the process asks nothing of states beyond showing up. There’s no independent verification of data, and governments aren’t required to consult civil society. States that restrict civic space at home face no consequences. Seventeen of the 36 states that presented reviews this year are rated by the CIVICUS Monitor as having repressed or closed civic space.

A forum built to hold states accountable has become a stage on which the least accountable governments may perform compliance, while the civil society groups meant to keep them honest are locked out of the room.

In the room but not at the table

Where civil society can act, it supports delivery of the SDGs. Sustained advocacy delivered Colombia’s ban on child marriage in 2025 and continues to drive the campaign against female genital mutilation in The Gambia. In Nepal, local organisations have made monitoring the goals more inclusive by supplying data on excluded communities that official statistics miss.

Yet the HLPF gives civil society little formal standing. Civil society was in the building all week — CIVICUS co-organised sessions on civic space and the SDGs, supported a global forum on the future of multilateralism and ran a workshop on the post-2030 agenda — but it didn’t get a seat at the table where decisions are made.

Showing up can also be dangerous. In 2025, most civil society representatives from El Salvador withdrew over fears of reprisals. Activists elsewhere describe reprisals for exposing gaps between official reporting and reality on the ground, often with little practical support from the UN despite guidelines that are supposed to protect them.

SDG 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions is meant to be the foundation for the other 16 goals, and its Target 16.10 commits states to protecting fundamental freedoms. But it’s routinely ignored. The CIVICUS Monitor has tracked year-on-year regression in civic space conditions since the SDGs came into effect. Where civil society can’t operate freely, it’s no surprise if the goals it should help implement and monitor aren’t being met.

Falling short

The UN Secretary-General’s 2026 report on the SDGs made clear how delivery is falling short. It found that out of 139 targets with reliable trend data, only 15 per cent are on track, while a further 15 per cent have regressed below their 2015 baselines.

But rather than take responsibility for their failures, powerful states are using the lack of progress as a pretext to demand less ambition. The USA has dismissed the SDGs as an infringement on national sovereignty. Speaking at an event during the Forum, Russia’s representative said that the goals’ ambitions had proven ‘quite far away from reality’, blaming the design of the goals rather than states’ failure to deliver. For many states, an ambitious rights-based agenda is no longer a promise to keep, but a commitment to be backed away from.

Yet evidence suggests that when political will exists, change can come. The UN’s Asia-Pacific review presented at the HLPF showed that the number of children in child labour fell from 49 to 28 million between 2020 and 2025. What holds back achievement of the SDGs is not flawed design, but political choices.

As negotiations begin on what comes after the goals’ 2030 deadline, some states and UN officials favour extending the current goals, on the reasonable logic that reopening them in today’s political climate risks producing something weaker. But the framework agreed in 2015 wasn’t built for a world of growing authoritarianism, accelerating climate breakdown, coordinated backlash against gender equality, increasing militarisation, collapsing multilateral cooperation and rapid technological development. A post-2030 agenda will have to take account of all this, along with the financial strain on the multilateral system.

Forus, a network of national civil society platforms, has mapped three scenarios for the post-2030 process – continuity, reset or fragmentation – and insists that whichever prevails, accountability, civic space and financing reform must sit at the centre. Several upcoming moments will reveal the direction of travel. Next year’s Commission on the Status of Women and Economic and Social Council’s Youth Forum, along with the SDG Summit and the 2028 Pact for the Future review, all offer opportunities that must be seized to bring civil society into the process, identify where implementation is failing and match ambition with achievement.

Samuel King is a researcher with the Horizon Europe-funded research project ENSURED: Shaping Cooperation for a World in Transition at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Rodney Bay Marina, Saint Lucia. Rising seas are among the mounting risks for small island states as the world heads towards an expected overshoot of 1.5°C. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
CASTRIES, Saint Lucia, Sep 8 2026 (IPS)

The world is now expected to breach the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit that small island states have spent years defending as a threshold for survival.

For people in the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Ocean, the consequences will not begin only when islands disappear beneath the sea. They include saltwater intrusion into freshwater supplies and agricultural land, coral reef loss, more damaging coastal flooding and mounting pressure on already limited resources for recovery and adaptation.

That is the stark warning emerging from the United Nations Environment Programme’s Limiting Overshoot report, launched on September 2. The report examines a future in which average global temperatures rise beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels before, potentially, being brought back down.

The report concludes that the world is now expected to cross the 1.5°C threshold. What is still uncertain is how far above it temperatures will rise, how long they will remain there and how quickly they can eventually be brought back down.

Dr Shobha Maharaj, a Caribbean scientist and one of the lead authors of the report’s Chapter Four, says the expected breach raises a new set of questions for small island states.

“For years, the goal was to avoid crossing 1.5°C. But this report now says very clearly that we are going to cross it,” she said. “The question now is how deep is this overshoot going to go? How long is it going to last? And how do we live through it while we work to bring temperatures back down to 1.5°C?”

No buffer

The Paris Agreement committed countries to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C. Small island states were among the strongest advocates for the 1.5°C target, arguing that higher levels of warming would pose an existential threat.

“For small islands, it is because we live closest to the thresholds,” Maharaj said. “In a wealthy, temperate country, an additional half-degree of warming would still carry serious costs. But on a small island, it could determine whether a reef recovers or not, or whether an aquifer stays fresh or turns salty for good.”

“There is no higher ground to move to, no deep treasury to draw on and no second reef when one of them dies,” she added. There is no higher ground to move to, no deep treasury to draw on and no second reef when one of them dies.

The danger is not limited to dramatic disasters, she said. Habitability can erode quietly.

“Saltwater can contaminate groundwater and soil. A kitchen garden that has fed a family for generations may stop producing. High tides can reach roads, homes and public infrastructure even on clear days. When reefs die, communities lose not only fish and tourism income but also natural barriers that weaken waves before they reach the shore.”

“None of this requires an island to vanish,” Maharaj said. “Habitability begins to collapse first, quietly, through water, food and the loss of the everyday things that make a place home. By the time submergence becomes the headline, people have often already been forced to leave.”

The report warns that sea-level rise will continue for centuries and that falling global temperatures would not reverse all the damage accumulated during overshoot. Some ecosystem, biodiversity and glacier losses would persist, meaning a return to 1.5°C would not restore the world that existed before the threshold was crossed.

Small Islands, Different Realities

SIDS are often discussed as a single group, but Maharaj cautioned that their circumstances and options differ.

Pacific atoll states face acute threats because of their extremely low elevation and vulnerable freshwater lenses. Some Pacific islands are also experiencing land subsidence, compounding the effects of rising seas.

Several Caribbean states have higher terrain, but much of their population, infrastructure and economic activity is concentrated along narrow coastal areas. Indian Ocean states face their own combination of risks.

“What we share is a structural predicament, narrow room for retreat, limited finances and economies that are exposed to single shocks,” Maharaj said.

But she warned against transferring solutions indiscriminately between regions.

“The right response in Tuvalu, for example, is not automatically the right response in Barbados or the Maldives.”

Adaptation Buys Time, Not Immunity

For decades, adaptation has been presented as the principal defence for countries already living with climate impacts. But the UNEP report says many existing approaches were designed for gradual, one-directional warming, not temperatures that rise, plateau and may eventually decline.

Strategies fixed to one set of conditions could become ineffective or even increase vulnerability as conditions change. The report calls instead for adaptation that is flexible, forward-looking and capable of evolving throughout the different stages of overshoot.

“Adaptation buys time, not immunity,” Maharaj said.

She said the large gap between adaptation planning and implementation may provide a narrow opportunity to revise projects before they are built for conditions they can no longer withstand.

“We have a lot of plans, but many of them have not yet been implemented,” she said. “That gives us a window, although not a large one, to recalibrate those plans for a post-1.5°C world.”

That shift will require money before disasters strike.

Many developing countries are already trying to adapt, recover from extreme events, transform their economies and reduce emissions while servicing heavy debt. Climate finance, Maharaj said, arrives too slowly and is often supplied through loans that add to that burden.

“A disaster drains public funds into emergency response and reconstruction. That leaves less money to reduce the risks posed by the next event, which then hits a weakened country even harder. Each turn of that wheel reduces the very capacity we need to climb out of it.”

Breaking the cycle will require grants, upfront financing and investment in prevention, rather than repeatedly paying to rebuild after losses.

A Deeper Injustice

Overshoot also raises questions of climate justice, particularly for countries with little historical responsibility for the emissions driving warming.

“The harms concentrated during this period, especially those that turn out to be irreversible, fall hardest on the countries least responsible for the emissions that caused them,” Maharaj said.

Maharaj said contributing to the report carried a particular weight for her as a Caribbean scientist.

“For those of us from these islands, 1.5°C was never simply a number on a chart. It was the line we were told represented survival. It was the line at which we were told survival was still possible,” she said. “Now, helping to write the science of what lies beyond that line is a heavy thing, both personally and professionally.”

Crossing 1.5°C, she said, represents “a profound failure of collective will” but not permission to give up.

“How high the peak rises, how long we remain there and how quickly temperatures are brought back down are all still ours to decide,” Maharaj said. “Every one of those choices will be measured in lives and livelihoods here in our region and across small islands.”

For small islands, limiting the overshoot could mean the difference between mounting losses and holding on to the places people call home.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Excerpt:

Healthy rangelands are built through long-term commitment, local leadership and sustained investment. Credit: Shutterstock

By Samson Kuraru
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 4 2026 (IPS)

Across the Kenya-Tanzania rangelands, communities have long understood a reality that the global community is increasingly recognising: healthy rangelands support livelihoods, wildlife, water resources and local economies. They are among Africa’s most important natural assets and a foundation for resilience in a changing climate.

That lesson is especially relevant today. As East Africa prepares for the potential impacts of a strengthening El Niño, the focus should not be on rainfall totals alone. Forecasts point to an increased likelihood of wetter-than-normal conditions across much of the region, although the timing and distribution of rainfall may vary significantly.

Increased rainfall can improve pasture and water availability, but it can also increase flood risks and disrupt livelihoods, infrastructure and ecosystems. These conditions underscore the importance of healthy rangelands, reliable water sources and strong community-led approaches that help people prepare for and adapt to climate shocks.

One of the strongest messages to emerge from COP17 was the recognition of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and pastoralists as essential partners in restoring land and building resilience. Across Africa, communities are not simply beneficiaries of conservation and restoration efforts; they are often the people leading them

It was against this backdrop that governments, communities and development partners gathered in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, for UNCCD COP17.

The conference highlighted a growing global understanding that drought, land degradation, biodiversity loss, climate change, water security and livelihoods are closely linked challenges that must be addressed together. It also signalled a stronger focus on turning commitments into action through new partnerships, investments and initiatives aimed at strengthening resilience on the ground.

For Africa, this attention could not be more timely.

Rangelands cover nearly half of the continent’s land surface and support hundreds of millions of people. They underpin pastoral and livestock-based economies, sustain biodiversity and tourism, contribute to water security, and help communities adapt to a changing climate. Yet many of these landscapes face increasing pressure from recurring droughts, land degradation and growing climate risks.

The Kenya-Tanzania rangelands illustrate both the scale of the challenge and the opportunity. Stretching across some of East Africa’s most important wildlife and livestock landscapes, they support people, livestock and wildlife across interconnected ecosystems. Their future depends on how effectively land and water resources are managed today.

One of the strongest messages to emerge from COP17 was the recognition of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and pastoralists as essential partners in restoring land and building resilience. Across Africa, communities are not simply beneficiaries of conservation and restoration efforts; they are often the people leading them.

Across Kenya’s rangelands, community conservancies demonstrate what can be achieved when local knowledge is matched with investment and long-term partnerships.

A community conservancy is a locally governed institution through which landowners voluntarily work together to manage land, wildlife and other natural resources for shared social, economic and environmental benefits. These conservancies help protect wildlife while supporting livelihoods and improving the management of land and water resources.

A good example can be found in northern Kenya, where community conservancies operate across connected landscapes that support both pastoral livelihoods and wildlife. In these drylands, healthy grass is not simply an environmental asset; it underpins household income, livestock production and food security.

Community-led grazing systems help manage when and where livestock graze, protecting critical grazing areas during dry periods and allowing grasslands time to recover. Together with improved water management and restoration efforts, these approaches strengthen drought preparedness while supporting wildlife, livestock and local economies. They show that conservation and development do not have to compete. When communities are supported to lead, both people and nature can thrive.

These experiences point to an important lesson: while restoring degraded land remains essential, preventing degradation in the first place is often more effective and less costly. Healthy rangelands are built through long-term commitment, local leadership and sustained investment.

COP17 also elevated the importance of sustainable rangeland management through the Steppe Action Agenda and the Rangelands Flagship Initiative.

Together, these efforts seek to advance the conservation, sustainable management and restoration of rangelands while increasing investment and coordinated action to strengthen the resilience of pastoral and rangeland-dependent communities. They reflect growing recognition that healthy rangelands are essential for resilient communities, thriving biodiversity, water security and adaptation to climate risks.

Importantly, the conference also underscored that restoring land is not a financial burden. It is a strategic investment in resilience, livelihoods and prosperity.

This was reflected in the launch of the Drought Resilience Investment Facility (DRIF), which aims to help countries move from responding to drought crises to preparing for them. COP17 also announced approximately US$1.3 billion in new and pipeline financing for land restoration and drought resilience across 23 countries. Together, these commitments signal a growing shift towards proactive resilience-building rather than repeated emergency responses.

The challenge now is ensuring that investment reaches the communities doing the work on the ground. Success will depend not only on the amount of funding available, but also on strengthening the institutions, conservancies and partnerships that help manage land and water resources over the long term.

As governments, development partners, philanthropies and the private sector look to scale solutions across Africa, rangelands deserve far greater attention. They are among the continent’s most valuable assets for food security, biodiversity conservation, economic development and climate resilience.

COP17 highlighted what communities across Africa’s rangelands have known for generations: healthy land supports healthy communities. The task now is to turn that recognition into action through sustained investment, stronger partnerships and greater support for the people already managing these landscapes for the benefit of current and future generations.

Samson Kuraru is Northern Kenya Conservation Coordinator, The Nature Conservancy

By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Sep 4 2026 (IPS)

There is an older wisdom, quieter than the noise of our times, that whispers a simple truth: we are not the architects of nature, only its guests. Long before there were nations, economies, or even language, there was the pulse of the tide, the patience of coral, the breath of forests exchanging air with the sky. Into that ancient conversation we arrived — late, curious, and forgetful — mistaking our cleverness for sovereignty and our tools for wings.

Yet the sea remembers what we have forgotten. It remembers that every drop of rain has travelled through the roots of trees and the bodies of fish before returning to us as thirst quenched or harvest gathered. It remembers that the reef and the child, the mangrove and the fisherman, the albatross and the sailor, are all verses of the same unfinished poem. To live well is to learn that poem by heart — to know that when one line is silenced, the whole song grows thinner.

And still, something in us reaches further. The same species that learned to read the tides also learned to read the stars. From the first firelit night when a human being looked up and wondered, we have carried within us a quiet, luminous restlessness — a longing to know what lies beyond the horizon, beyond the atmosphere, beyond the reach of our brief lives. It is not vanity that drives this longing, but memory. Perhaps some ancient part of us recognises, in the distant glimmer of a star, a trace of our own origin — the stardust from which our bones were made, the cosmic seed from which life on this small blue world first stirred.

To be human, then, is to live in two directions at once. Downward, into the depths of the sea, where life first learned to breathe. Outward, into the vastness of space, where light itself becomes a form of scripture. Both journeys are acts of reverence. Both remind us that we are neither the centre nor the summit of creation, but its wondering witnesses — creatures endowed with the extraordinary gift of consciousness, and with it, the responsibility to use that gift with humility.

This is the paradox of our species: we are small enough to be humbled by a single wave, and large enough in imagination to send our thoughts across galaxies. We build submarines to touch the ocean floor and telescopes to touch the edge of time. Yet both instruments, in the end, do the same thing — they extend our capacity to wonder. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom, and wisdom is the beginning of care.

Perhaps this is the deepest task of our century: not to choose between protecting our planet and exploring the cosmos, but to understand that the two callings are one. We cannot honour the stars while poisoning the seas. We cannot dream of new worlds while abandoning the one that gave us breath. The reef and the galaxy are written in the same handwriting. To care for one is to prepare ourselves, morally and spiritually, for the other.

Small-island nations know this instinctively. We live at the meeting point of sea and sky, where the horizon is a daily teacher. We understand that fragility and vastness are not opposites but companions — that the smallest coral polyp and the most distant nebula belong to the same continuum of creation. When we speak of protecting the ocean, we are not defending a resource; we are defending a relationship. And when humanity looks upward, dreaming of Mars or of life on some far-off moon, we are not escaping the Earth; we are extending the same longing that first drew our ancestors to the sea.

For those of us shaped by the ocean, this is not philosophy — it is instinct. We have always known that the horizon is not a boundary but an invitation, that the sea is not a possession but a companion, and that the night sky is not empty but full of the same silent kinship that binds us to the coral and the whale.

If humanity can learn, once more, to walk softly among its fellow travellers — on this small blue planet and among the countless worlds beyond — then perhaps our story will not end in exhaustion, but in reverence: the quiet dignity of a species that finally remembered it was never alone, and never was meant to be still.

James Alix Michel, is Former President of the Republic of Seychelles

IPS UN Bureau

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