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

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IPS UN Bureau

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Ismahane Elouafi is Executive Managing Director, CGIAR

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Aug 26 2026 (IPS)

Across this vast ocean, the latest monitoring by Mercator Ocean International shows marine heatwave conditions ranging from moderate to severe. At the same time, the World Meteorological Organization expects a strong El Niño to intensify through August to October, with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole also likely to develop. These are not distant scientific signals. They are an urgent warning that the ocean system on which millions depend is under mounting stress.

The Indian Ocean in particular has sustained communities for generations. It provides food and livelihoods, carries trade and travel, shapes our cultures and moderates our climate. It is also one connected living system – its currents carry heat, nutrients, fish (as well as pollution, unfortunately) across borders drawn on maps. Its coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass meadows and open waters support people from the eastern coast of Africa to South Asia, and from the islands of the western Indian Ocean to the Maldives and beyond. When ocean temperatures rise abnormally, the consequences are not confined to a scientific bulletin. They are seen in the health of coral reefs, in the movement and abundance of fish, in the safety of coastal communities, and in the future of tourism and fisheries. They are felt in the weakening of the natural protection that reefs, mangroves and coastal habitats provide against erosion, flooding and storms.

Coral reefs are especially vulnerable. They can sometimes recover from an isolated bleaching event if temperatures fall quickly enough. But repeated bleaching and prolonged heat stress allow too little time for recovery. When reefs deteriorate, the consequences extend beyond biodiversity: fish habitats are lost, shorelines become more exposed, tourism suffers and communities lose part of their natural and cultural inheritance. This is why ocean warming is not simply an environmental issue. It is an issue of food security, jobs, development, economic stability and justice.

For decades, humanity has relied on the ocean’s exceptional capacity to cushion the climate crisis. The ocean absorbs more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions. By doing so, it has moderated atmospheric warming and spared humanity even more severe disruption. But there is a limit to what we can ask of the sea. Small island developing states have contributed little to the cumulative emissions destabilising the global climate. Yet we are among the first to face the consequences. We cannot move our reefs. We cannot relocate our coastlines without immense social and economic cost. We cannot separate the wellbeing of our people and economies from the health of the ocean. For island people, climate vulnerability is not an abstract concept. It is a daily reality.

Still, island states must not be viewed only as victims. We are custodians of extensive ocean spaces, centres of practical innovation and partners in the search for sustainable solutions. Seychelles has tried to demonstrate that economic development and marine conservation need not be enemies. Through marine spatial planning, Seychelles has committed 30 percent of its waters to protection, while advancing a blue economy vision based on stewardship rather than depletion. This is not charity towards nature. It is a recognition that there can be no enduring prosperity if fish stocks decline, reefs deteriorate and coastal ecosystems are damaged beyond recovery.

Across the Indian Ocean, other island and coastal states are also restoring habitats, improving fisheries management, investing in renewable energy, strengthening marine conservation and building more resilient communities. Their efforts deserve recognition and support. They show that those most exposed to climate risk are not waiting passively for rescue. They are protecting a shared ocean heritage, often with scarce resources. But local and regional action cannot substitute for the choices that must be made globally.

First, the world must reduce greenhouse gas emissions much more rapidly. Adaptation is indispensable, particularly for small island developing states. We need stronger early-warning systems, more ocean observation, investment in reef and coastal restoration, secure water supplies and infrastructure designed for a changing climate. But adaptation cannot indefinitely protect an ocean that continues to accumulate heat. No sea wall, restoration programme or emergency plan can replace decisive action to reduce emissions.

Second, climate finance must become fairer, faster and easier to access. Island states should not have to devote years of limited institutional capacity to complex procedures simply to secure support for renewable energy, water security, coastal protection, marine research and ecosystem restoration. Those facing the greatest climate risks require genuine partnership – not delayed promises, burdensome processes and inadequate resources.

Third, the countries of the Indian Ocean must deepen regional cooperation. Marine heatwaves, coral bleaching, illegal fishing, biodiversity loss and coastal erosion do not stop at national boundaries. We need better ocean observation, data-sharing and regional early-warning systems. We need stronger scientific cooperation, responsible fisheries management and coordinated protection of the ecosystems connecting our islands and coasts.

The Indian Ocean should not be seen merely as a corridor for trade or a theatre for geopolitical competition. It is a shared living system, whose health is fundamental to the security and prosperity of everyone who depends on it. The current warming should also remind us that the ocean is not an inexhaustible resource. It has regulated our climate, sustained our communities, supported our economies and linked our peoples for generations. Yet we still behave as though its capacity to absorb our impacts has no limits. It does.

The islands of the Indian Ocean are not asking for sympathy. We are calling for shared responsibility. We know that ocean health is inseparable from the security of our people. We know that protecting nature and pursuing development must go hand in hand. And we know that every year of delay makes adaptation more costly, the damage more severe and the choices before us more difficult. As a result, the Indian Ocean is sounding the alarm. Its islands are among the first to hear it. But the warning is not ours alone. It is for every country whose climate, food security, economy and future depend on a living ocean.

James Michel, is Former President of the Republic of Seychelles

IPS UN Bureau

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Photo highlighting the activities and successes of the 'Promoting Nature-based Solutions for Land Restoration while Strengthening National Monitoring Technical Working Group in Kenya: Phase 2' project funded by UK PACT. Credit: Anthony Ochieng/CIFOR-ICRAF

By Lulseged Tamene Desta and Cargele Masso
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 26 2026 (IPS)

Several coalitions exist today to defend the territories in which people live and work. Global leaders have long understood the importance of shared responsibility for collective security and have invested significant time in establishing networks, partnerships and alliances. In 2025, global spending on defense reached a record $2.9 trillion.

But the global community is increasingly recognizing that today’s gravest existential risks arise from a war being waged against nature itself – and our defenses are woefully fragmented and underfunded. The world is investing only about $220 billion a year for nature-based solutions, compared to $7.3 trillion for nature-negative activities.

This is not just a discrete, isolated environmental concern. The triple planetary crises of land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are worsening food insecurity, water scarcity and ecosystem collapse, threatening millions of lives.

Collectively, the impact of the ongoing assault on nature is amplifying conflict, worsening migration, driving inflation higher, and fomenting geopolitical instability. Unless restoration and sustainable management of resources is in place, the world is expected to lose more than US$23 trillion by 2050, while halting this trend would cost around $4.6 trillion.

Many solutions to these interconnected crises exist but have been ineffective to date. Limited coordination and collaboration between countries, sectors and disciplines, as well as insufficient resources and short-term approaches to long-term challenges, mean we are far behind the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Despite compelling evidence of the costs of degradation, investment remains far below what is needed because opportunities are rarely presented as credible, investable propositions.

To change this, two things must happen. First, governments, international agencies, academia and civil society must unite through a grand coalition to bring together those currently working in isolation to achieve greater impact than the sum of their parts – a kind of mutual pact to protect nature.

Photo highlighting the activities and successes of the ‘Promoting Nature-based Solutions for Land Restoration while Strengthening National Monitoring Technical Working Group in Kenya: Phase 2’ project funded by UK PACT. Credit: Anthony Ochieng/CIFOR-ICRAF

And second, this grand coalition must also engineer a funding paradigm shift from focusing on environmental challenges to investing in the many opportunities of conservation and restoration.

The ongoing UN COP17 desertification talks in Mongolia, where the theme is “Restoring Land, Restoring Hope”, is the perfect opportunity to progress this.

Evidence shows that integrated approaches to address landscape degradation solve multiple interconnected challenges.

For example, investment in soil and water conservation in the Adarsha watershed in southern India has been found to improve water availability, agricultural productivity, and rural livelihoods. Analysis showed that yields of maize intercropped with pigeonpea increased by 148% while households in the watershed were less affected by droughts compared to those in the non-watershed area.

In Kenya and Tanzania, the adoption of Participatory Rangeland Management improved rangeland condition and resilience to climate shocks for more than 90% of participating communities.

Despite evidence from these successes, these interventions are not being invested in and applied at the scale needed to transform the world’s food, land and water systems in ways that can build long-term, far-reaching resilience.

Countries, donors, financing institutions and civil society must come together in a grand coalition to direct the coordination, governance and investment necessary to tackle these crises where they all interconnect: at the landscape level.

A grand coalition would offer a dedicated focal point to integrate and advance the UN’s goals for climate, biodiversity and land degradation, allowing for stronger coordination and shaping the global agenda for informed decision-making. Critically, the coalition would lead the redirection away from ineffective, siloed solutions and the self-defeating environmental trade-offs they create.

A grand coalition would also create a platform for establishing the rigorous systems of governance essential to achieving global goals for nature, including fair and inclusive land tenure and governance over water systems. Understanding the true cost of landscape governance and inaction is instrumental for adequate investments.

Lastly, a grand coalition would gather the evidence to help shift the emphasis of finance for nature towards investments that benefit everyone. By identifying a menu of options for turning grand challenges into grand opportunities, the coalition would unlock the financing from banks, donors, philanthropies and other development funders needed to scale interventions globally.

The UNCCD COP17 talks in Mongolia is not just an opportunity to address the challenges facing land. It’s a moment to foster unity around a shared threat to all of our territories. CGIAR and its partners will play its part by developing an investment plan to anchor greater coordination in collaboration with the grand coalition of action for shared human and planetary outcomes.

Landscapes are where our greatest environmental and human challenges today are playing out, from declining biodiversity to the deforestation driving climate change, to increasing levels of food insecurity.

Investing in multifunctional landscapes through a unified global coalition, therefore, is not simply an environmental imperative for the world, but also a strategic one. Galvanizing support for landscape-centered solutions can simultaneously reduce future risks and strengthen economies and communities.

A global coalition for restoring and protecting landscapes would recognize a defining reality of the 21st century: protecting nature is fundamental for protecting us all.

Dr. Lulseged Tamene Desta, is Director of the CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program
Cargele Masso, is Director of the CGIAR’s Environmental Health and Biodiversity Impact Area Platform

IPS UN Bureau

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Zambia’s Green Revolution campaign generated stagnant productivity and rising hunger. Credit: Timothy A. Wise

By Timothy A. Wise and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
CAMBRIDGE, MA, USA / KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 17 2026 (IPS)

As AGRA turns 20, a new report exposes its worsening failure to double productivity and incomes and halve undernourishment in participating African nations as promised.

AGRA still failing Africa’s farmers
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, now known simply as AGRA, was established in 2006.

Timothy A. Wise

After considerable evidence of failure became apparent, it abandoned its original ambitious goals in 2022, adopting AGRA 3.0, focusing on food systems and policy reforms.

It also ‘rebranded’ by changing its name to AGRA, removing its explicit association with the much criticised Green Revolution. Wise’s 2020 assessment of AGRA up to 2018 found progress on its own declared goals quite modest and uneven.

Wise’s latest review finds even slower productivity growth and worsening hunger under AGRA compared to before 2006. Its improved seeds and fertilizer promotion did not even achieve sustainable intensification, i.e., growing much more food on the same land.

Dubious progress
Increased food production and sales were supposed to reduce rural poverty and food insecurity.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

High-yielding seeds and related agrochemicals were not widely adopted by most smallholders except when heavily subsidised.

But subsidies have encouraged planting favoured crops on new farmland. Modest yield growth often failed to cover the costs of more expensive inputs, leaving farmers in debt.

Meanwhile, cultivation and yields of millet, a nutritious climate-resilient staple, has declined over the last two decades.

Instead of halving the number of hungry, undernourishment has risen by 58% in participating countries since 2006. Tragically, the number of hungry in the 13 AGRA countries nearly doubled over the last six years!

AGRA unmonitored
The African Union was induced to support AGRA by encouraging more government investments in food agriculture. In 2006, it launched the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP).

Despite generous Green Revolution subsidies in Malawi, hunger continues to rise. Credit: Timothy A. Wise

CAADP called for dramatically raising government spending on agriculture to 10% of government budgets. However, most governments failed to provide the required funding.

But many governments, particularly in AGRA countries, have spent large shares of their scarce public resources on agriculture. Many have invested in Green Revolution programmes.

Despite setting similar productivity, income, and hunger objectives, by 2025, no country met CAADP’s targets according to its rigorous biennial progress reports using more benchmarks.

High-yielding seeds and related agrochemicals were not widely adopted by most smallholders except when heavily subsidised.

AGRA’s main initiatives, involving input markets and industrial farming, are too costly for most small-scale farmers, benefiting wealthier farmers more.

For Wise, the poor outcomes are not solely or even primarily due to AGRA. Instead, he blames the Green Revolution approach, previously strongly supported by private foundations and now by the World Bank Group.

In contrast, Senegal, not one of the AGRA 13, has succeeded in halving hunger, with more diversified policies supporting a wider range of crops and farming methods.

What failure?
AGRA has never reported actual progress against its original goals of doubling productivity and incomes while halving hunger for 30 million farming households.

With fewer measurable goals, progress reports now focus on the number of commercial seeds produced, private financing generated, and enterprises launched.

Instead, AGRA claimed, “we directly reached 11 million farmers and indirectly reached 26 million farmers. This achievement significantly outstripped our initial targets to reach 30 million smallholder households.”

‘Reaching’ 37 million farmers, mostly ‘indirectly’, says little about its actual impacts on farmers. Unsurprisingly, most donors have cut support for AGRA.

Now, AGRA is influencing national and continent-wide policymaking to accelerate agricultural commercialisation. Its new focus on food systems and policies shifts attention as its website now makes little mention of productivity or small-scale farmers.

Whither AGRA?
Yield growth has been slow and uneven, mainly for a few food crops prioritised by AGRA. Those modest yield gains often did not cover the costs of expensive inputs, leaving many farmers in debt.

Increased food production and sales were supposed to reduce rural poverty and hunger. Instead, malnutrition has risen in most AGRA countries, as dietary diversity has declined with crop diversity.

Asia’s Green Revolution offered far more support to farmers than Africa’s, although its achievements have been more mixed than typically claimed. Africa’s Green Revolution has offered much less, mainly improved commercial seeds.

AGRA still denies the failure of its earlier policies. Instead, it now pays lip service to low-input approaches including agroecology.

In 2025, AGRA president Agnes Kalibata acknowledged, as she stepped down from her post, “Part of why [AGRA] rebranded was that the Green Revolution ship has sailed. We can’t continue pursuing what’s not working for others.”

After twenty years, AGRA should take heed of that advice.

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa will release its report, drawing on Wise’s research, on August 24.

IPS UN Bureau

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Amir Saeid Iravani, Permanent Representative of Iran to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council high-level debate on the safety of global waterways, amid growing concerns over threats to shipping and freedom of navigation, held on April 27, 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 23 2026 (IPS)

Prior to the latest round of hostilities between the United States and Iran, freight traffic had been increasing in the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations were underway for a new agreement to fully restore trade through this channel.

According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), energy markets were likely to bounce back to normal pre-conflict levels faster than that of food, public finance, and transport, leaving many vulnerable economies worse off. UNCTAD research shows a change from about 125 daily ship transits through the Strait of Hormuz in 2026, January 1st through February 27th, to a drop of around 10 daily transits from February 28th through June 14th during the conflict, marking a 92 percent decrease in overall transit ability.

According to UNCTAD and the Strait of Hormuz monitor, levels on June 2nd recorded around 40 ship transits, with an average of 60 through the days after signing the MOU (The Memorandum of Understanding signed by both US and Iranian delegations). This represents roughly half of pre-conflict transit levels.

Source: Author’s visualizations using data from Strait of Hormuz Trade Tracker (WTO)
Note: Daily outbound shipments represent AIS-traceable crude oil tanker departures from the Strait of Hormuz to destinations outside the Persian Gulf. Additionally, this graph is roughly similar to overall shipments of LNG, fertilizer, and Agricultural products through the same period.

Following the closure of the Strait, the daily price of crude oil jumped to USD 120 per barrel, then averaged around USD 100 per barrel throughout the conflict. The daily price of crude oil fell to USD 70 per barrel upon the signing of the MOU, roughly returning to pre-conflict levels. However, following the latest escalations and the breaking of the MOU, crude prices have risen again to approximately USD 100, indicating that agreements to cease conflicts can quickly bring prices down significantly, if agreed to once more.

On the contrary, the IGC Grains and Oilseeds Freight index (GOFI), indicates a slow decrease of the heightened costs of transporting both grains and oilseeds by sea (e.g., Wheat, Corn, Barley, Sorghum, Soybeans, Rapeseed (canola), Sunflower seed), across 68 key exporting origins in the regions of the United States, The European Union, Canada, the Black Sea region, Brazil, Australia, and Argentina.

Source: Author’s visualizations using data from the International Grains Council (IGC).
Note: The index is normalized so that 100 represents the average grain and oilseed freight rate on January 1, 2013. During the conflict, the index rose to approximately 190, representing a 90 percent increase relative to the base value and a 30 percent increase from the beginning of the conflict on February 28, 2026.

As a result of the heightened price of grains and oilseeds, among other agriculture components, UNCTAD says, “Past input price shocks remain a risk to future food security,” laying out the cycle in which costs can amount:

1. Traffic through the strait was disrupted.
2. Limited freight traffic constricts the availability and raises the cost of oil, gas and nitrogenous fertilizer.
3. A decrease in energy exports creates higher energy prices, increasing transport and shipping costs.
4. Further fuel inflation slows down the global economy.
5. Agricultural production costs increase.
6. Food production may be affected by the increased cost of agricultural components such as fertilizer, pushing domestic food prices further up.
7. Vulnerable populations may face greater food insecurity and hunger, as a result of the heightened cost of importing food, and domestic agriculture production.

This process has exposed 61 vulnerable economies to dual impact of higher oil and cereal import prices. (e.g., wheat, rice, corn, barley, oats, sorghum, millet, rye) These countries consist of 35 least developed countries and 26 small island states, with seven of those countries being both least developed and small island developing states.

According to UNCTAD, the pressure is “sharpest for economies that rely heavily on imported fuel”, citing an example in Cabo Verde where net imports of oil and petroleum products averaged 24.6 percent of GDP within recent years. This dependence on fuel imports means that those extra costs can quickly make food prices, electricity, transport, and public finances more expensive.

Source: Author’s visualizations using data from UNCTADStat.
Notes: Orange countries are small island states, and blue countries are least developed countries (LDCs).

Yemen was also cited to be at high risk, with analysis showing that net imports of cereal and cereal products averaged 10.8 percent of GDP. For countries like Yemen dealing with conflict, hyperinflation, debt pressure, and limited public financing, a higher import bill for grain compounds an already declining situation.

Source: Author’s visualizations using data from UNCTADStat.
Notes: Orange countries are small island states, and blue countries are least developed countries (LDCs).

UNCTAD analysis indicates that a real increase of food cost by just 5 percent is associated with a higher risk of child wasting (a life-threatening form of acute malnutrition), especially among poor children and children living in rural landless households.

While restoring full trade through the strait is a necessary step to recovery, this will not undo the aftermath that higher import bills, delayed shipments, and higher priced food and energy have on the global economy, especially vulnerable economies.

“The policy task is therefore broader than reopening a route. Vulnerable economies need support to manage higher import bills, protect households from food and fuel shocks, and invest in systems that reduce exposure before the next disruption hits household budgets,” said UNCTAD, indicating the importance for vulnerable economies to develop supply chain resilience, sustainable systems, and have less reliance on concentrated international trade for vital goods such as food and energy, among financial support from the international system.

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In 2025, 13.5 million ‘zero-dose’ children did not receive vaccinations in their first year. More than half of these children live in fragile, conflict-affected or vulnerable countries, where immunization may be disrupted due to a number of factors. Credit: UNICEF

By Shuli Wong
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2026 (IPS)

Despite growing up and working in vastly different geographic regions and environments — one shaped by decades of armed conflict and political instability, and the other by remote, hard-to-reach areas — both Sagal and Johao encounter children daily who have never been vaccinated. Sagal and Johao are members of UNICEF’s Global Youth Health Advisory Group, where they advance children’s health by shaping UNICEF’s strategies, policies, and campaigns, while working directly in their own countries to connect community realities to global conversations about children’s health.

Sagal, 23, lives in the Darul-Salam district in Mogadishu, Somalia, where she works as a junior doctor in maternal and child health. Sagal’s passion lies in promoting vaccine confidence, addressing health misinformation, and empowering the youth to become advocates for healthier communities, she told Inter Press Service. While global vaccine coverage is improving, Sagal describes Somalia’s situation as “still very difficult.” Somalia has one of the lowest vaccination rates due to years of conflict, and while coverage is improving, “not all children are reached equally and a child’s chance to get vaccines depends on where they live, especially in unsafe or hard-to-reach places.”

Johao, 14, lives in Ecuador’s Amazon region, where he has seen firsthand the realities of why children in rural, remote, and isolated areas struggle to get vaccinated. Johao has hands-on volunteer experience in infectious disease research and community health projects and is also a part of U-Report, GeneraciónMÁS, and FixMyFood networks in Ecuador. The biggest challenges Johao encounters when it comes to childhood vaccination campaigns, he told Inter Press Service, are “reaching communities with limited infrastructure, overcoming transportation difficulties, and ensuring that accurate information reaches families before misinformation does.” Both conflict-affected and hard-to-reach areas face their own challenges, but what is particularly difficult in remote communities is “isolation and limited access to essential services.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines “zero-dose” children as those who lack access to or are never reached by routine immunization services, which is measured as children who have never received their first dose of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP). According to the annual WHO-UNICEF Estimates of National Immunization Coverage (WUENIC), 90 percent of infants globally received at least one dose of a DTP vaccine and 85 percent completed the three-dose series in 2025. However, in 2025, an estimated 13.5 million zero-dose children did not receive a single vaccine in their first year of life, and an estimated 7.3 million infants received their first DTP vaccine but dropped out before receiving their first measles dose. Globally, more than half of all zero-dose children live in fragile, conflict-affected or vulnerable countries (FCV) where immunization programs are affected by political instability, insecurity, and underfunding.

The Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) Mid-Term Review, identified FCVs as “one of the greatest challenges to achieving global immunization goals.” In Somalia, Sagal explained how “most zero dose and dropout children live in places that are unsafe, far away, or completely unreachable. These children face many problems at the same time, including, no vaccines, poor nutrition, very few health services, and almost no social support.”

Sagal, 23, a Somalian junior doctor and member of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group. Credit: UNICEF

The situation is similar in Ecuador, where Johao explained, “children who have never received vaccines often live in remote rural or Indigenous communities, where transportation is limited and access to health services can be difficult.”

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell emphasized that while vaccination rates have bounced back since dropping during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of children are still left vulnerable due to displacement, poverty and war.

“We must reach every child, and we must rebuild trust where it is fraying. No child should suffer from a disease that a simple vaccine can prevent,” said Russell.

WHO and UNICEF have identified the urgent need to counter the spread of misleading information and erosion of trust, which has led to a surge in vaccine hesitancy and anti-science sentiment. In particular, IA2030 called for tailored support in FCV settings to “promote nuanced and context-specific advocacy messaging and approaches, and foster trust through sustained community engagement.”

Aside from logistical access, there are other factors that determine people’s decisions to get vaccinations. Sagal shared that in Somalia people forgo vaccinations for a variety of reasons, including fear of vaccine side effects or rumors that vaccines cause infertility. In Ecuador, Johao detailed how some families lack clear information regarding vaccination schedules and have vaccine concerns influenced by misinformation, with these “barriers affecting their trust in and ability to access health services.”

As a member of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Johao, 14, speaks to the experiences of children in Amazon communities in Ecuador. Credit: UNICEF

In FCV and hard-to-reach settings, mistrust surrounding vaccines is driven by multiple complex and multifaceted aspects, including misinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, religious opposition, low health literacy, sociodemographic factors, and the politicization of vaccines that undermines science.

Both Sagal and Johao’s work sits at the intersection of access and trust. As members of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Sagal and Johao are not only bringing vaccines to children who would otherwise be missed, but doing so in contexts where the social and political conditions that make vaccination difficult are the same conditions their communities live with every day.

When it comes to rebuilding trust and reaching children in FCV settings, youth advocates’ “presence and credibility help [them] enter spaces where formal systems cannot,” Sagal said. “Youth advocates speak the same language and come from the same communities, [so] families trust us more than big institutions.” In Somalia, she explained, youth advocates help to rebuild trust in fragile areas by “reaching other young people quickly, communicating in a natural and friendly way, fighting misinformation fast, and mobilizing communities faster than traditional actors.”

Across settings, culture, language, and traditions strongly influence health decisions. Johao noted how “vaccination messages are more effective when they are communicated respectfully and acknowledge local knowledge and beliefs.”

In order to reach the IA2030 goal and ensure vaccines reach everyone, everywhere, at every age, WHO and UNICEF have put forth four concrete actions. These actions include strengthening immunization programs in FCV settings, countering false and misleading health information to support vaccine uptake, increasing and sustaining global funding for immunization programs, and investing in stronger data and disease surveillance systems.

Sagal and Johao’s lived experiences highlight the dire need for these actions. From Sagal’s experiences, zero-dose children “need health and nutrition support delivered in ways that work in fragile and dangerous environments.” As members of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Johao explained that to effectively help their communities, “we need access to reliable information, training, resources, and opportunities to work closely with health professionals and community leaders.”

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UNICEF unloads emergency humanitarian supplies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in response to the Ebola outbreak. The shipment includes protective equipment, hygiene kits, medicines, and medical supplies to support frontline health workers and nearly 100,000 people. Credit: UNICEF/Ndomba Mbikayi

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 6 2026 (IPS)

A new assessment from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) warns that the Ebola outbreak could cost Africa USD 3.6 billion, push 985,000 people into poverty, and put 300,000 jobs at risk.

The new analysis shows that the damage extends well beyond just those infected, disproportionately harming vulnerable populations and creating trade disruptions, transport delays, border restrictions, declining consumer confidence, along with interruptions to informal markets.

Currently, the Bundibuygo species of Ebola has no vaccine or treatment, and garners a fatality rate around 50 percent. The Democratic Republic of The Congo (DRC) records 1307 confirmed cases and 377 confirmed deaths as of June 30th, according to the DRC Ministry of Health. Separately the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recorded 20 confirmed cases and 2 confirmed deaths in Uganda, along with 1 confirmed case and no deaths in France.

According to Dr Abdirahman Mahamud, Director of Health Emergency Alert and Response Operations at the World Health Organization, the new virus only took 37 days to reach 250 deaths, while in 2014 and 2016, during the West Africa outbreak, it took 78 days, and in 2016-2019 it took 130 days to reach the same amount of deaths. “This is the largest number of confirmed cases in the first month of an Ebola disease outbreak in Africa,” said Dr. Mahamud.

Ahunna Eziakonwa, UN Assistant-Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Africa says “Ebola does not stop at the hospital gate. It affects livelihoods, education, food security, trade, public finances and trust. If we treat this Ebola outbreak solely as a health challenge, we risk missing the much larger development emergency unfolding around it.”

This indicates that this outbreak could affect much more than just health. Rather it can be a challenge for all forms of livelihood, among disrupting the movement of goods, food, and money: the backbone behind resilience.

“Ebola is more than a health crisis. It touches every aspect of daily life, bringing uncertainty and fear.” Says Ugochi Daniesl, Deputy Director General for Operations at the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

UNICEF notes that children make up 15 percent of confirmed cases, and over 25 percent of deaths, making children almost twice as likely to die compared to adults. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russel says that “Children are especially vulnerable because they depend on caregivers and cannot distance themselves from a sick parent or sibling in the same way that an adult can,” revealing a stark reality where more than 130 children have lost one or both parents in the Ituri region, the origin of the current outbreak.

While much of the outbreak looks dark, the WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus said on June 24th, “With support from the WHO and the Africa CDC, laboratory capacity has increased from 30 tests a day at the central laboratory in Kinshasa to over 2000 tests a day in nine labs across three provinces.”

The Director General also said that more than 100 people have recovered since, noting that early detection and supportive care can help patients survive the disease. He added “But we could save many more lives with therapeutics. And preparations are now complete for a trial of two therapeutics that is expected to start in DRC next week (The Week of June 28th). The trial will evaluate whether two antivirals, MBP134 and remdesivir, can help to reduce mortality in patients with Bundibugyo virus disease, alone or in combination. We thank the United States and Gilead Sciences for donating doses for the trial.”

The WHO Director General affirmed that “With early detection and supportive care, many can survive this disease.”

The clinical trial opened enrollment for Ebola patients in the DRC on July 2. The trial is coordinated by WHO, the Institut National pour la Recherche Biomédicale (INRB) in the DRC, the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium, and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, in coordination with international research, clinical and humanitarian partners. The trial will be integrated into clinical care, and will allow for additional treatments to be added as they become available.

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Exactly 15 years ago today rinderpest, or “cattle plague", was declared eradicated. Credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann/Unsplash

By Armin Wiesler
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jun 27 2026 (IPS)

Animal disease is no longer a distant concern for farmers and veterinarians alone. It is increasingly visible in household budgets: global egg prices surged more than 60% during recent bird flu outbreaks. In South Africa, foot-and-mouth disease pushed beef prices up by 34%. These are not isolated fluctuations in price. They are reminders that when prevention falls short, families, farmers and food systems all pay the price.

Exactly 15 years ago today, the world proved there is another way. On June 28, 2011, the United Nations (UN) declared rinderpest, or “cattle plague,” eradicated. It remains the only animal disease ever wiped from the planet. For centuries, the virus had killed millions of livestock animals, devastated herds and triggered famines across continents.

The eradication campaign succeeded because science, logistics and political commitment all came together. A global prevention effort was supported by surveillance, international coordination, and an effective, heat-stable vaccine that could reach remote, tropical areas without the need for refrigeration. This turned an ancient threat into a preventable one – and then into a disease of the past.

The lesson was not only scientific. It was economic. According to estimates by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, rinderpest control cost around $610 million while the annual benefits for Africa alone amounted to $1 billion. In other words, prevention did not just save animals. It protected livelihoods, strengthened food security and paid for itself many times over.

Yet, in the past 15 years, the world has not applied that lesson more broadly or consistently enough. When outbreaks occur, the response still too often defaults to emergency measures such as culling, movement restrictions and trade disruption. Rather than rapid deployment of preventive tools like surveillance, biosecurity measures, vaccination and close international cooperation.

Lumpy skin disease is a current case in point: diagnostics, biosecurity practices and effective vaccines exist, yet many countries struggle to use them quickly enough to stop spread and limit damage. The barriers are structural. International trade rules with potential economic risk impact decision-making, even when it is a necessity. Countries may face an impossible choice: protect their animals and farmers or protect access to export markets. The result is a system that remains perpetually reactive.

Meanwhile, these diseases continue to spread. Lumpy skin disease and peste des petits ruminants (PPR) reached new regions for the first time last year, disrupting trade, harming rural communities and undermining food security. For the more than one billion people who rely on livestock for food, income and livelihoods, these are not abstract events. They have a real economic and social impact.

That is why the rinderpest eradication anniversary should be more than a moment of reflection. It should be a reminder that prevention only works when it is planned before the next emergency, not improvised during it. National preparedness remains essential, but diseases respect no borders. No country can fully control animal health threats alone.

Global collaboration is needed to improve surveillance, align incentives for vaccination, and remove the trade and policy barriers that discourage prevention. This is the role initiatives such as the World Organisation for Animal Health’s PREVENT Forum can play: bringing governments, international organizations and the private sector together to help remove the barriers that individual countries cannot on their own.

But collaboration must move beyond discussion. It should lead to practical changes: stronger investment in surveillance and diagnostics, clearer pathways for the use and recognition of vaccination, and faster access to these tools during outbreaks. The goal should not be to respond better to every crisis. It should be to prevent more crises from happening.

The past three years alone have brought outbreaks of avian influenza, bluetongue virus, foot-and-mouth disease and Newcastle disease across continents. We do not yet know which animal disease will cause the next major shock, or where it will emerge.

But rinderpest proved that the world knows how to act when science, political will and global coordination are aligned. The question is not whether prevention is possible. The question is whether we will choose to make it a priority before the next crisis strikes.

Dr Armin Wiesler is President of HealthforAnimals

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Shifra Ainomugisha from Uganda receives the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year award from the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey. Credit: Commonwealth

By Kizito Makoye
LONDON & DAR ES SALAAM, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

Before anyone called her an innovator, before artificial intelligence entered the conversation, before solar-powered cold rooms, before the language of sustainable development, Shifra Ainomugisha knew food loss in its painful form.

At dawn, she would grab a bucket and walk into rows of tomato plants on her family’s farm in Western Uganda to collect what had already been lost.

The tomatoes looked healthy from a distance. But many had softened, burst, or spoilt before reaching the market – the true meaning of food loss.

“I used to wake up every morning to collect rotten tomatoes and throw them away while trying to save whatever remained,” she recalled.

Almost half the family’s harvest disappeared this way.

Yet the labour never stopped.

Her parents worked relentlessly. Seasons came and went. Fields produced food. But income remained painfully uncertain.

“Meanwhile, we struggled to pay school fees,” she said. “Some children dropped out of school even though we worked very hard during holidays on the farm. We were producing food but could not earn enough money to support our education.”

Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She was named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year. Her contribution includes combining renewable energy and AI-enabled agricultural support to help smallholder farmers increase productivity and reduce post-harvest losses. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Mission Accomplished

Those childhood memories – of abundance turning into loss and hard work failing to translate into opportunity – would eventually shape a mission that has now earned Ainomugisha recognition as the regional winner for Africa under SDG 2: Zero Hunger in the 2026 Commonwealth Youth Awards.

Selected from almost 1,000 applicants across the Commonwealth’s 56 member states after a two-stage adjudication process involving 57 judges, Ainomugisha joined 19 finalists recognised for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals through innovation and community impact.

But the award was not her only accolade.

Today, the Ugandan farmer and innovator earned the prestigious title of 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year at the 2026 Commonwealth Youth Awards ceremony in London.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey, presented the award to Ainomugisha.

In her remarks Botchwey congratulated all the finalists.

“You are already winners. To be selected from across 56 nations is a testament to your courage and your creativity. You embody the very best of our family. You have shown resilience in the face of challenge and innovation in the face of constraint.”

She continued, “Today is not about recognition alone – it is about momentum. It is not about isolated excellence — it is about collective advancement. Together, we will continue to strengthen the Commonwealth Youth Programme as a flagship vehicle for youth development in the Commonwealth.”

A Journey That Began With a Big Question

For the young Ugandan entrepreneur, however, the journey did not begin with awards.

It began with a question she carried since childhood:

How can people who grow food still remain hungry?

“Nobody should die of hunger,” she tells IPS.

“Because we are here to help. Farmers are doing agriculture, and we are solving food waste, which means we are fighting hunger. That is one of the SDGs we are working on.”

Today, Ainomugisha serves as co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of  Solafam, Uganda Ltd, a social enterprise using solar-powered technologies and artificial intelligence to help smallholder farmers reduce food losses, improve yields and increase incomes.

Her work combines three interconnected interventions: solar-powered cold storage, solar irrigation systems and an AI-enabled advisory platform known as Lean AI – a WhatsApp chatbot designed to guide farmers on planting decisions, irrigation timing, pest management, post-harvest handling and market access.

Together, the technologies aim to solve one of Africa’s challenging agricultural paradoxes: producing food but losing too much of it before it reaches consumers.

According to regional agricultural estimates, post-harvest losses continue to absorb a huge share of food production across sub-Saharan Africa, undermining incomes, nutrition and rural resilience. Smallholder farmers – who form the backbone of food systems – are particularly vulnerable because many lack access to storage, irrigation and agricultural extension services.

For Ainomugisha, those statistics have faces.

Her mother’s face.

Her father’s.

Her neighbours’.

And her own.

“I come from a tomato-growing family,” she said.

“Growing up, we experienced food wastage and low returns despite all the hard labour we invested in farming.”

Her father became one of her earliest inspirations.

Although he never had the opportunity to pursue formal education, he constantly experimented with solutions.

“He tried solving it by buying a diesel irrigation pump to increase yields because we only have one major farming season,” she explained.

“If you don’t make enough money during that season, the whole year becomes difficult.”

He attempted to preserve produce in improvised storage spaces.

But tomatoes continued spoiling.

Years later, after gaining access to education and exposure to technology, Ainomugisha began thinking differently.

“First of all, it wasn’t simply my decision alone,” she reflected.

“It began with my father. My father did not get the opportunity to go to school, but I did. I felt I had a better chance to solve the problem than he did.”

That conviction followed her into university.

Shifra Ainomugisha (centre, in reflective vest), co-founder and CEO of Solafam, Uganda Ltd, stands with farmers and community members beside a solar panel installation that supports climate-smart agriculture initiatives. Through renewable energy and farmer-centred innovation, the project seeks to reduce food loss and improve rural incomes. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Solar to AI to Filling Knowledge Gaps

Together with colleagues, she founded Solar Farm while still studying.

Initially, the concept was straightforward: cold-chain storage.

Support from entrepreneurship initiatives – including LEAP Africa – helped transform the idea into a functioning enterprise.

But customers quickly changed the direction.

People arriving at the cold rooms often revealed a deeper challenge.

Some had little produce to preserve.

Storage alone was not enough.

The team expanded.

Solar irrigation came next.

The goal was to help farmers reduce dependence on expensive diesel fuel and enable year-round production.

Farmers could access irrigation systems through a flexible financing model – paying 20 percent upfront and then making weekly payments of approximately USD 1.60 until ownership.

“We wanted to create a solution that farmers could actually afford,” she said.

Then came the next leap: artificial intelligence.

Ainomugisha says the AI component emerged from another observation.

Many farmers lacked access to agricultural training.

Knowledge gaps were driving losses.

“Many people are farming, but they are not always doing it the right way,” she explained.

“You might find a tomato farmer irrigating in the morning, yet tomatoes are better irrigated in the afternoon or evening.”

The team launched Lean AI – a chatbot accessible through WhatsApp that provides real-time agricultural guidance.

Farmers can ask questions and receive recommendations on farming practices, pest control, irrigation and post-harvest management.

The system is now being adapted to work via real-time messaging protocol known as USSD to reach users with basic mobile phones.

“We use AI to continue training farmers even when we are not physically present,” she said.

“We believe this will improve yields, increase incomes and eventually change the narrative that farming is only for the poor.”

Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She is combining renewable energy and AI-enabled agricultural support to help smallholder farmers increase productivity and reduce post-harvest losses. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Changing the Narrative

That narrative matters deeply to her.

“In Uganda, there is a narrative that agriculture is for poor people,” she said.

“That is sad.”

She pauses.

“People believe that because despite hard work, they cannot escape poverty.”

One of the defining moments came in 2023.

After struggling to convince local markets to host their first cold room, the team installed it at her family home.

Her mother became the first customer.

Then came neighbours.

Then more farmers.

Initially, usage was free.

People needed proof.

One woman – a friend of Ainomugisha’s mother who traded fruits and vegetables – became an unexpected validation.

She stored produce for a month.

Fresh vegetables that once spoilt within days remained viable for nearly two weeks.

That extra time allowed her to wait for better prices instead of selling under pressure.

“She later realised how much it was helping her,” Ainomugisha said.

“Now she earns more from farming than she did before.”

Solafam eventually introduced a pay-per-use model.

The impact, Ainomugisha says, became measurable.

“What makes us proud is that we have increased farmers’ incomes by 28 percent.”

“We have also reduced post-harvest losses by about 30 percent.”

Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General (Programmes), Tanmaya Lal, Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey, and Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General (Corporate), Tania Baumann, pose with the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year and Africa Regional Winner, Shifra Ainomugisha, at the Commonwealth Youth Awards ceremony in London. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

Winning Reaction

Those outcomes helped propel Solafam onto the Commonwealth stage. The Commonwealth Youth Awards are an initiative of the Commonwealth Youth Programme, which has supported youth development work in member countries for over 50 years.

“I am honoured to be named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year.  This recognition is not only personal but also represents the farmers and communities in Uganda whom we serve.  It also affirms that solutions built from lived experience can create real impact. I cannot wait to continue this journey with the support of the Commonwealth and its remarkable network of partners.”

The Awards recognise young leaders advancing development solutions across member states.

For more than a decade, the programme has provided visibility, networks and funding opportunities to support youth-led initiatives.

This year’s finalists span sectors ranging from climate action and health innovation to entrepreneurship and communications.

For Ainomugisha, being selected is an honour.

“I’m glad to be a finalist for the Commonwealth Youth Award and a regional winner for Africa,” she said.

She believes three things contributed most to the selection.

Sustainability.

Impact.

Accessibility.

“First of all, our project is sustainable. We have maintained it from 2022 until now.”

“Secondly, we are creating meaningful impact.”

“Also, our technology is affordable for smallholder farmers.”

But perhaps what distinguishes her work most is who it centres.

Women.

“Because this problem is personal to me,” she said.

“I did not hear someone else’s story and decide to solve it.”

“I am a woman, and I saw how my mother worked every day on the farm, yet our lives were not improving.”

Across much of Africa, women form a large share of the agricultural workforce while often facing unequal access to land, financing, technologies and extension services.

Ainomugisha says designing with women in mind is not a strategy.

It is lived experience.

“Of course, we also work with men, but the majority of our beneficiaries are women.”

As global conversations increasingly focus on artificial intelligence, her message is clear.

Technology alone is not enough.

It must be accessible.

Affordable.

And designed around people’s realities.

Her next ambition is expansion—making agricultural intelligence available even to farmers without smartphones.

The larger vision is not simply digitising agriculture.

It is restoring dignity to farming.

The memory of rotten tomatoes remains.

So does the memory of school fees that almost went unpaid.

But today, those memories no longer represent failure.

They represent the beginning of a different harvest.

One where innovation is measured not only in algorithms or solar panels but also in whether families who grow food can finally afford to eat, learn and dream.

And for Ainomugisha, that future has already started.

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« James Alix Michel warns that without real finance and precaution, ocean pledges risk remaining only on paper. »

Now that the lights have dimmed in Mombasa and the delegations have gone home, a simple but necessary question remains: did the first Our Ocean Conference on African soil truly move the world from promises to protection? The conference was indeed the first held in Africa, under the theme “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future,” with a stated focus on culture, communities, livelihoods, marine protection, climate resilience and sustainable blue economies.

James Alix Michel

For African coastal states and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) – or, as they are better understood, Large Ocean States – this is not an academic debate. It is about the future of economies, food security, cultures and dignity, because the ocean underpins trade, tourism, livelihoods and resilience across the continent and among island nations.

Seychelles has long argued that prosperity depends on a healthy ocean. That conviction helped shape the blue economy approach in Seychelles and the South-West Indian Ocean, and it has been expressed in practical policy through marine spatial planning and the legal protection of 30 percent of Seychelles’ Exclusive Economic Zone, roughly 410,000 square kilometres.

Mombasa offered a chance to bring that blue economy vision onto the African and global stage in a new way. The conference theme captured what is at stake: Africa’s seas and coasts are central to its history and hopes, and they stand on the frontline of climate change, overfishing and pollution.

During OOC11, leaders and ocean champions repeatedly called for the world to “make 30×30 real” – to ensure that the pledge to protect at least 30 percent of the ocean by 2030 translates into real outcomes for biodiversity and for coastal communities, not just new lines on a map. That shift from declarations to implementation is welcome, because paper protection alone will not restore fish stocks, strengthen reefs or secure coastal livelihoods.

But leadership is measured not only in the strength of statements. It is measured in the courage to say no when the risks are too great, and in the willingness to share fairly the costs of global stewardship.

On deep-sea mining, the precautionary voice is louder than ever. A growing number of governments support a moratorium, ban or precautionary pause, and one widely cited 2026 account linked to the earlier Seychelles-led call said more than 40 countries now support a pause. Other sources show the coalition has grown steadily over time, with additional countries publicly backing precautionary approaches as scientific concern has deepened.

That trend matters because the scientific and governance uncertainties remain profound. Advocates for caution argue that opening the deep ocean to industrial mining before its ecosystems are properly understood risks damage that could be widespread, long-lasting and irreversible, which is why calls for a pause remain central to responsible ocean policy.

Mombasa added to the political pressure for caution, but it did not resolve the issue. There is still no clear, binding global decision to pause exploitation in the deep ocean, and that leaves a shadow over the very blue economy future that African states and SIDS are being encouraged to build.

On 30×30, declarations and new marine protected areas continue to multiply. Yet too often, protection remains on paper: boundaries are drawn, but boats and budgets are not; management plans exist, but monitoring and enforcement are weak or absent. The gap between legal designation and effective protection remains one of the defining weaknesses of current ocean policy.

For SIDS that have already placed vast areas of their Exclusive Economic Zones under protection, the reality is stark. Seychelles has already legally protected 30 percent of its EEZ and exceeded earlier global marine protection benchmarks, but the long-term cost of managing such large areas is high and continuing. This is precisely where global ambition begins to collide with unequal capacity.

That is why the current architecture for financing ocean protection is not fit for purpose. SIDS are repeatedly asked to safeguard globally significant marine spaces, yet access to international funding often remains constrained by income classifications that do not reflect vulnerability, exposure, or the global value of these protected waters. Without predictable financing for science, surveillance, enforcement and community engagement, even the most celebrated MPA announcements risk remaining partial victories.

It is neither fair nor sustainable to expect a few small nations, with limited populations and fiscal space, to carry the long-term costs of managing huge marine areas largely for the world’s benefit. If the international community wants 30×30 to succeed, it must match moral expectation with material support.

So what should be the message after Mombasa? What would it mean, in practice, to make 30×30 real and to honour the theme “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future”?

First, every new square kilometre of protected ocean must be backed by the means to protect it. That means clear objectives, robust management plans, trained personnel, and the technologies and partnerships needed for effective monitoring and enforcement.

Second, a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining must be secured. This is not anti-development; it is responsible leadership in a time of profound uncertainty, and it reflects the growing international view that exploitation should not proceed before science and governance can guarantee protection from irreversible harm.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, a new compact of fairness in the ocean is needed. If SIDS and African coastal states are being asked to safeguard a disproportionate share of the world’s blue heritage, then the international community must share proportionately in the responsibility to finance and sustain that protection.

From Victoria to Mombasa, from Seychelles to the African mainland and beyond, the message remains unchanged: the ocean is not for sacrifice. It is for stewardship. It is for people. And it is for a common future.

OOC11 helped shift the conversation. It amplified Africa’s voice, elevated the concerns of SIDS, and underlined the need to move from promises to protection. But the journey is far from over. History will not judge the world by the elegance of its communiqués. It will judge by the state of the seas, the resilience of coastal communities, and the legacy left to those who will inherit this blue planet.

James Alix Michel is the former President of the Republic of Seychelles and founder of the James Michel Foundation.

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Tomorrow, Africa hosts the Our Ocean Conference on its own shores for the first time, in Mombasa.

This is more than a diplomatic milestone. It is a test of whether we, as Africans, are prepared to safeguard our ocean as a shared heritage and a pillar of our future prosperity.

James Alix Michel

As former President of Seychelles, I had the privilege to help pioneer the blue economy concept in Seychelles and the South West Indian Ocean. That vision, born from our own lived reality, was simple but profound: our economic future depends on a healthy ocean. We must build prosperity not by exhausting marine wealth, but by restoring and protecting it.

Today, as the world gathers in Kenya under the theme “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future”, that same blue economy vision must guide Africa’s choices. The theme is not a slogan to open a conference; it is a call to re imagine the relationship between our societies and the sea. It demands that we treat the ocean as a living heritage we hold in trust, not a frontier for short term extraction.

Earlier this year, together with Dona Bertarelli, we called for a moratorium on deep sea mining and for stronger protection of Africa’s ocean. We did so in anticipation of the Mombasa conference, knowing that the decisions taken there – or avoided there – will echo across our continent and far beyond. Africa’s voice on the ocean has to be heard clearly, and our commitments will be judged not by the elegance of our words, but by the protections that reach people and nature.

Deep sea mining crystallises what is at stake. The deep ocean is one of the last largely unknown frontiers on our planet. It supports ecosystems that have taken millennia to form and that play roles in global processes we are only beginning to understand. To open this fragile realm to industrial mining without robust, independent science and effective governance would be to gamble with consequences we cannot foresee and cannot reverse.

For Africa, the risks are even more acute. Many of our states are still building their scientific and regulatory capacities. Many of our coastal communities and small scale fishers already face pressure from climate change, pollution and overfishing. To layer the uncertain impacts of deep sea mining on top of these existing stresses would be reckless.

This is why I support a precautionary pause on deep sea mining. Precaution is not anti development. It is responsible leadership in a time of profound uncertainty. It says: we will not mortgage the ocean that sustains us for promises of quick gain, especially when those gains may flow elsewhere while the damage remains with us.

Africa’s seas underpin our food security, our climate resilience, our blue economies, our cultures and our identities as ocean peoples. They are the living foundation for millions of coastal and island communities across the continent, from the Western Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and Mediterranean shores. To treat them as mere repositories of minerals is to ignore their true value and the rights of those who depend on them.

As leaders, negotiators and experts gather in Mombasa, I believe Africa should speak with one clear, principled message.

First, our ocean is not a frontier for unchecked extraction, but a heritage we hold in trust. Decisions taken in Mombasa must respect the ocean’s ecological limits and recognise the special vulnerabilities and rights of small island developing states and coastal nations.

Second, any activity in the deep sea must proceed only when independent science shows it will not cause irreversible harm. That means investing in African and global scientific capacity and listening to evidence, not to pressure for rapid exploitation.

Third, ocean decisions must prioritise coastal communities, small scale fishers, women and youth, and the countries that depend on the sea every day. The benefits of a blue economy must be shared fairly, and its governance must be inclusive. Communities on the frontlines of change must be at the centre of decision making, not at the margins.

From Seychelles, we know that it is possible to chart a different course. Through marine spatial planning, marine protected areas, innovative financing and a strong commitment to conservation, we have shown that protecting the ocean can go hand in hand with creating opportunities for our people. The blue economy is not a theory for us. It is a lived pathway, built through hard choices and long term vision.

From Mombasa, Africa now has a chance to lead. True ocean leadership requires more than ambitious speeches. It requires restraint as well as innovation, protection as well as investment. It demands that we say “not yet” when the science is uncertain and the risks are too great. It asks us to measure success not only in money raised, but in coral reefs saved, fish stocks rebuilt and communities strengthened.

The Our Ocean Conference was created to move the world from promises to action. Let us ensure that the action that emerges from Mombasa honours its theme: “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future.” Let us ensure that the legacy of this conference is a safer ocean for Africa and for the world, not new risks passed on to our children.

From Victoria to Mombasa, from Seychelles to the African mainland, our message should be united and firm: Africa’s ocean is not for sacrifice. It is for stewardship. It is for our people. And it is for our future.

James Alix Michel is the former President of the Republic of Seychelles and founder of the James Michel Foundation.

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An aerial view of a beach with a ferris wheel, Ain Dubai, Bluewaters, Dubai, UAE. Credit: Unsplash/Nelemson Guevarra

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 2026 (IPS)

The global ocean economy continues its expansion, with ocean-related trade reaching USD 2.5 trillion as of 2025. Ocean services now make up the majority of the ocean trade, accounting for 58.9 percent of the composition, up from 47.8 percent in 2020.

Ocean services alone are now valued at USD 1.44 trillion dollars, an increase of USD 1.2 trillion since 2020; a rate greater than the entire global ocean trade in 2020. While 2020 was a year filled with disruptions, economies contracting, and consumer smoothing, this number is an increase of USD 476 billion dollars since 2015, a 49.5 percent growth from 2015, where the ocean services trade generated USD 961 billion.

“The ocean economy is expanding rapidly across sectors such as aquaculture, tourism, and shipping. While this growth is vital for food security, employment, and economic development, it’s increasingly constrained by the declining health of the ocean,” said Rafael González Quiroz, co-director of the United Nations ‘Third World Ocean Assessment’ and director of Spain’s Oceanographic center of Gijón (IEO-CSIC), during a press briefing held on World Ocean Day (June 8).

The UN World Ocean Assessment is a global integrated assessment of the world’s ocean following environmental, economic and social aspects, with interdisciplinary inputs from more than 650 experts to provide scientific basis for the consideration of ocean issues by governments and policy makers, among other stakeholders involved in the regulation and protection of the ocean.

Quiroz’s assessment reflect the broader expansion and changes within the ocean economy, where services have an increasingly dominant role in the global ocean economy. The strongest example of such is the recovery of marine and coastal tourism, which has turned sharply since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Credit: IPS/Maximilian Malawista

Today, marine and coastal tourism now accounts for 32 percent of global ocean trade, up from 16 percent in 2020. 32 percent representing USD 785 billion, over half of all ocean services trade. Maritime freight transport remains the second highest, at roughly USD 487 billion or 20 percent of total ocean trade. Quiroz emphasized that a “sustainable ocean economy can only exist if it’s built upon a healthy and resilient ocean”.

One of the key challenges highlighted during the briefing was marine pollution, especially plastics. Within global plastics trade, only 10 percent of all plastics are recycled. 52 million tonnes of such plastic waste every year enters the ocean, which the United Nations states is affecting at least 4,000 marine species.

In response, the international community has spent the past six years working on negotiating a “global plastics treaty”, an agreement which would put a ceiling on plastic production, and limit the USD 1.1 trillion dollar industry, ensuring waste management standards, recycling requirements, and creating market space for sustainable alternatives.

Achieving this may require changes to global trade incentives. UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) finds that “the key barrier is an uneven national and trade policy field.”

According to UNCTAD, tariffs on plastics have fallen from 34 percent to 7.2 percent over the past 3 decades, giving plastic producers a larger incentive to keep making more plastic. While plastic tariffs have decreased, alternatives to plastics like bamboo, natural fibers, paper, and seaweed have had tariffs double to the rate of 14.4 percent. As a result of such tariffs, conventional plastics remain the cheaper option for manufacturers.

However, recent volatility in the energy markets stemming from the current Strait of Hormuz crisis has increased the cost of plastic production. Reports from UNCTAD show that because plastics are approximately 98 percent derived from fossil fuels, the cost of plastic prices has risen 70-80 percent in the European markets. This market shock could open the door for sustainable alternatives, giving real reason for companies to develop products free of polyethylene resin and other plastics, further developing the sustainable alternatives industry.

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Recent geopolitical trends threaten more food crises, especially in developing countries. A new IPES-Food report urges a strategy of ‘resilient self-reliance’, proposing available opportunities to improve equity, sustainability and solidarity.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Geopolitics – referring to political sanctions, trade disputes, military conflicts, multilateral challenges, aid cuts, planetary heating, and corporate interests – is affecting food availability worldwide.

Corporate interests have increasingly reshaped food systems over the last half-century – promoting selective trade liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation, financialization and cost reductions, ostensibly to improve food security efficiently.

Prioritising cost and fiscal savings led to the neglect and closure of buffer stocks. Food systems became more vulnerable as price volatility worsened.

Just-in-time supply chains have also been more susceptible to geopolitical shocks, planetary heating, and market manipulation.

World Bank structural adjustment programmes made developing countries more reliant on food and input imports. Tariffs and sanctions have disrupted food supplies worldwide.

Felice Noelle Rodriguez

Wars in Ukraine, Iran and elsewhere have disrupted supplies, spiking prices, and have most hit poor food-importing countries. Powerful governments have also weaponised food supplies for political reasons, as against Cuba.

Major donor countries have cut aid, with lethal consequences for the most vulnerable, as in Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The legitimacy and capacity of multilateral institutions – such as the UN, World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Health Organization (WHO) – have been deliberately undermined by superpowers abusing international arrangements for their own advantage.

Food prices have been much higher since 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine and Iran wars, and other major disruptions. For instance, the Hormuz fertiliser disruptions will hurt food supply for some time to come.

Import bills have risen sharply, worsening debt burdens in poor food-importing countries. Food inflation has hurt low-income communities most, especially when governments juggle imports with debt servicing.

Corporate concentration has also worsened fertiliser and food supply and price volatility, especially hurting smaller producers. Powerful interests have also abused food crises for profit.

Geopolitics has also worsened environmental crises, as planetary heating intensifies extreme weather events, hurting crop yields and food availability.

Managing markets
To enhance food security, governments must effectively influence markets with appropriate policy instruments.

The report proposes adapting policy tools once widely used before corporate-inspired neoliberal reforms, to improve contemporary market management, supply resilience and price stability.

Public stockholdings (PSHs) involve government procurement, storage, and timely release of stocks to enhance food security, including by stabilising prices. PSHs can thus help smallholdings while improving emergency preparations.

Using minimum support prices with its Targeted Public Distribution System, India subsidises grain for two-thirds of its people, while insulating national food prices from international volatility.

Meanwhile, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has established a Regional Food Security Reserve to pool members’ stocks and collectively respond to crises.

Supply management
Other supply management mechanisms include production quotas, marketing boards, and import controls.

Market management has also supported other policy goals aimed at improving rural vitality, equity, food sovereignty, environmental sustainability, and democratic participation.

Thus, unlike in the US, Canada’s dairy, poultry, and egg production is subject to quotas and negotiated minimum prices to limit price volatility and stabilise farm incomes.

But policy implementation remains challenging. PSH programmes are often complex and costly, and risk leakage, corruption, and inefficiency.

Government commitments, such as trade agreements, limit policy options. Supply management measures may also raise consumer prices and favour wealthier farmers, as neoliberal critics have been quick to exaggerate.

But these policy tools can also support small-scale producers, reduce waste, strengthen national supply chains, and mitigate risks posed by highly centralised industrial agriculture.

Resilient Self-Reliance
The report promotes resilient self-reliance, requiring appropriate market management to stabilise food supplies and improve equity, sustainability, and food sovereignty.

Resilient self-reliance combines resilience (the ability to withstand and recover from shocks) with food self-reliance (the capacity to meet food needs with domestic production and cooperative trade).

The report recommends innovative trade partnerships, including international buffer stocks and cooperative regionalism, citing CARICOM’s regional food strategy.

Resilient self-reliance upholds food sovereignty norms, emphasising farmer rights, agroecology, territorial markets, and democratic governance, stressing equity, diversity, ecological balance, and flexibility.

Managing markets can also support agroecological transitions, culturally appropriate food diversity, territorial markets, and strategic reserves to cushion shocks.

Vulnerable countries, often due to earlier neoliberal reforms, typically try to reduce their susceptibility to international market volatility, but are usually less able to do so.

Market management mechanisms, agroecological practices, territorial markets, and cooperative trade arrangements can help ensure more stable and equitable food systems.

Stressing the urgent need for policy reform, the authors argue that recent geopolitics not only threatens crises but also offers new opportunities to reform food systems for greater equity, solidarity and sustainability.

For instance, the Hormuz crisis may spur developing economies to accelerate transitions to more renewable energy, thereby reducing their vulnerability to fossil fuel and other energy imports.

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Anup Jagwani, Global Director for Farming and Agribusiness at the World Bank Group, addresses the World Seed Congress. Credit: Supplied

By Friday Phiri
LISBON, May 26 2026 (IPS)

It is often said that the quality of seed determines the quality of the produce and, consequently, the sustainability of the entire agricultural value chain, influencing everything from crop yields to nutritional value.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) emphasises that “we cannot have good crops if we do not have quality seeds”, a principle that underpins global efforts to improve food and nutritional security. It may thus be safe to conclude that seed is the foundation of good health.

The week of 18 to 23 May 2026 witnessed two related but parallel global events: one on global health, the 79^th World Health Assembly in Geneva by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the other on the importance of seeds to global agriculture and food security, the World Seed Congress, organised by the International Seed Federation (ISF).

With a record attendance of more than 1,700 delegates and guests representing over 900 companies and organisations in Lisbon and held under the theme “Joint Actions, Resilient Futures”, the seed congress called for a collective commitment and action at a moment when the multilateral frameworks underpinning global food and nutritional security are under unprecedented strain.

The Congress took place amid mounting pressure on global agri-food systems, sparked by conflicts and worsened by climate change. In 2025, two famines were declared in a single year for the first time. This year, recent geopolitical tensions continue to threaten global trade and economic stability, while an estimated 700 million people worldwide, primarily in Africa and Western Asia, still face hunger each year.

And experts have warned that climate change, including a predicted El Niño event in mid-2026, could push an additional 132 million people in vulnerable contexts into food and nutrition insecurity within five years due to rising temperatures’ impacts on crop yields.

Michael Keller, Secretary General of the International Seed Federation. Credit: Supplied

“It would be easy to look at the state of the world and conclude that international cooperation is in retreat. But the seed industry tells a different story,” says Michael Keller, Secretary General of ISF. “We are here in Lisbon in record numbers in this critical year because we know that collaboration, innovation, and joint actions are practical and appropriate responses to the scale of the truly global challenges we face now and in the future. Unfortunately, in Africa, non-flexible legal and regulatory frameworks still hamper innovation by private seed companies.

And about 2,000 km away in Geneva, WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivered a similar message, focused on the theme “Reshaping global health: a shared responsibility”, strongly reinforcing the interconnected nature of global health and climate change resilience with several important social determinants of health, including food systems and nutrition.

Ghebreyesus highlighted the importance of not treating health as a standalone sector but rather ensuring that all social determinants of health are well-functioning in support of resilience, sovereignty, and protection of communities from crises.

The chain is simple: climate change threatens agricultural production, food systems, and access to nutritious food, leading to malnutrition, and malnutrition in turn increases vulnerability to infectious diseases and public health emergencies.

Role of Seed Breeding Innovations for Health

Seed innovations alone account for 74 percent of the yield gains observed in crops in the European Union, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. However, the global system of crop variety development depends heavily on cross-border trade, with the typical novel varieties bred, tested, produced, and distributed across multiple countries before they reach a farmer’s hands.

“Seed companies invest up to 30 percent of their turnover in research and development because we believe that innovation is key to solving problems at scale and for generations to come,” said Arthur Santosh Attavar, ISF President and Managing Chair of the international seed company Indo-American Hybrid Seeds. “ISF continues to work with national and regional seed associations, as well as governments, to create enabling policy environments that help ensure innovations reach farmers quickly and without unnecessary delays or restrictions.”

In the wake of increased climate-induced extreme weather events, one of the key innovations in seed breeding has been ‘climate-resilient seed’ to withstand not only intensified droughts but also the increased prevalence of pests and diseases related to drought conditions.

But the World Bank believes breeding seed that could go beyond being drought tolerant to high nutritional value could be a game changer.

“Until now, we have been dealing with climate resilience largely from the drought and sometimes excess rainfall perspective, but can we also start looking at developing seed varieties by building in additional nutritional aspects such as high protein content? At the World Bank, we are looking at different ways of how to build food systems resilience in a holistic way—covering the entire value chain from seed, infrastructure, markets and all the in-between, with a clear focus on sustainability,” said Anup Jangwani, Global Director of Farming and Agribusiness at the World Bank Group.

Sustained Awareness is Key for Sustainability  

Environmental sustainability has, in recent years, become a buzzword in the wake of increasing climate impacts. Unfortunately, there have been some cases of greenwashing linked to environmental sustainability – the promotion of false solutions to the climate crisis that distract from and delay concrete and credible action.

However, at Companhia das Lezírias the largest agricultural and forestry holding in Portugal, “environmental sustainability is a lived reality,” says Sandra Alcobia, who serves as a biologist and is responsible for tourism and visitation.

“Here we live and practice environmental sustainability in reality; our production is organic in every sense. In 2015, the drought conditions that we suffered provided us with an awakening to make a drastic change, and we have not looked back. We are proud to be a certified carbon-neutral establishment.”

Established in 1836, the farm boasts 20,000 hectares of land for crop farming, animal rearing and forestry – all premised on the principles of sustainability, emphasising organic practices.

But Antonio Farrim, Veterinarian and Director of Agriculture Production at Companhia das Lezírias, believes public awareness is key to the climate-resilient and sustainable agenda.

“Governments must take full responsibility for sensitising the public on the health benefits of sustainably grown food,” he says. “For example, in beef production, the colour of meat produced organically is not usually appealing to the eye; it is slightly dark with yellow fat. In terms of nutrition, however, this is the most healthy beef one can get, and yet most consumers don’t understand this fact. It is, therefore, incumbent upon governments to undertake sustained awareness for both environmental sustainability and good health. For us here at Companihia, we don’t only produce for sustainability but also for the good health of the consumers.”

Head of External Communication at Syngenta, one of the world’s biggest agricultural innovation companies, Dimitri Houtart agrees with the importance of the public awareness narrative.

Houtart says the growing global population poses a challenge as the global community races to produce enough for everyone, sustainably, with limited land. This, he states, can only be achieved through innovation and sustained public awareness for uptake of innovative technologies that support high productivity.

However, he notes, “misinformation on catalytic research and innovations to improve productivity while preserving environmental integrity is one of the drawbacks.”

“The need for a well-informed cadre of agricultural journalists cannot be over-emphasised. For me, Agricultural journalism is the most important branch of this profession because the agricultural information needs of the public, especially in this era of social media, are immense.”

Breeding Innovations for Africa’s Unique Challenges   

A quick search on post‑harvest losses in Africa reveals that it ranges between 20 and 40%, especially in crops such as maize, cassava, cowpea, and bananas, some of the continent’s staple crops

Losses are largely attributed to pests, diseases, poor storage and climate stress. While technological advancement is a critical means of enhancing agricultural productivity and improving food and nutrition security in many low- and middle-income countries, it has been slow to gain traction in Africa.

Thus, one of the innovations being tried is to breed crops that resist the noted stresses and reduce losses before they happen.

Professor Mohammed Ishiyaku of the Institute for Agricultural Research in Nigeria is one of the lead scientists behind Pod Borer Resistant cowpea – a variety developed by Nigerian scientists over three decades, now approved and growing commercially in Nigeria, with regulatory approvals advancing across the region.

“Legume Pod Borer (Maruca vitrata) is one of the most damaging insect pests limiting cowpea production,” says Prof. Ishiyaku. “The damage caused by the pod borer to cowpea plants reduces the size and quality of the cowpea harvest. It can reduce grain yield by up to 80%. Farmers typically spray pesticides up to 6 – 10 times within a planting season in an attempt to control this insect pest, but this is often not effective because the chemicals do not reach the pest larvae inside the plant tissues. The chemicals are also expensive, their availability to farmers is limited, and inadequate training in their use often leads to unintended dangerous human health and safety impacts. Therefore, a Cowpea product that can protect itself from Legume Pod borer damage makes it easier and cheaper for farmers to produce cowpeas in areas where this pest is a problem.”

An international public-private partnership, managed and coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), is developing Pod-Borer Resistant Cowpeas.

Sticking with innovation, Bruce Knight of Legume Technology, based in the United Kingdom, has been conducting trials on how to support smallholder farmers in Africa with affordable means of accessing inoculants for legume seeds.

With limited resources, most smallholder farmers on the continent still use untreated seeds, usually kept from the previous harvest. To help boost productivity, Dr Bruce Knight has, through support from the Gates Foundation, developed an affordable and tailor-made small-packaged inoculant solution that is able to treat at least a hectare of legume seeds.

“After 10 years of trials, we have finally got it right; we have developed an affordable inoculant solution for smallholder farmers in Africa,” says Knight. “So far, our product has outperformed other inoculant producers on the continent, and we are geared to roll out and support smallholder farmers with this tailor-made solution.”

A well-known health phrase, “You are what you eat”, implies that food is the foundation of good health. What you eat dictates your general well-being. Seed, from which most food is cultivated, is therefore the foundation of optimal health.

The author is the Climate Change and Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

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Transnational agribusinesses increasingly shape food policies worldwide. Claiming to best address recent food security concerns, they seek to profit more from innovations in food production, processing, and distribution.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The early post-WWII and post-colonial eras saw new emphases on food security, especially following severe food shortages before, during, and after the war.

Many starved as millions experienced acute malnutrition. The wartime Bengal famine in India claimed over three million lives as Churchill prioritised British imperial interests and military priorities.

After WWII, colonial powers weaponised food supplies for counterinsurgency and population control purposes, especially to overcome popular anti-imperialist resistance.

Many who died were not military casualties but victims of deliberate counter-insurgency food deprivation. Unsurprisingly, food security efforts became a popular policy priority after WWII.

Western-controlled research organisations, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), became highly influential, shaping and even developing post-colonial food security policies.

Felice Noelle Rodriguez

The Green Revolution initially focused on increasing yields of wheat, maize, and rice. These efforts increased cereal production unevenly during the 1960s and 1970s.

Malthusian logic held that rising life expectancies meant population growth outstripped the increase in food supply, constrained by limited agricultural land.

As government funding from wealthy nations declined, powerful corporate interests and philanthropies became even more influential. They often promoted their own interests at the expense of farmers, consumers, and the environment.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was established in the 1970s, channelling a small share of windfall petroleum incomes into food and agricultural development.

Soon after, the US transformed its Public Law (PL) 480 program into the World Food Programme (WFP). Thus, some FAO functions were ceded to donor-controlled UN funds and programmes also set up in Rome.

Embarrassingly, an FAO report found WFP food supplies were withheld from Somalia to avoid being taken by the ‘Islamist’ As-Shabaab militia. Chatham House also estimated two to three hundred thousand deaths as a consequence.

Neoliberalism
The counter-revolution against national development efforts in the 1980s undermined government fiscal capacities, import-substituting industrialisation, and food security efforts.

Neoliberal structural adjustment policies involving economic liberalisation were imposed on heavily indebted developing countries, mainly in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Global North promoted trade liberalisation, undermining earlier protection of and support for food and industrial production.

Powerful food conglomerates sponsored and promoted import-friendly food security indicators, undermining FAO and other civil society research and advocacy efforts.

Countries hardly producing any food were highly ranked, as civil society organisations tried to counter with their own indicators, mainly focused on food sovereignty.

Trump 2.0
A new phase has begun with Donald Trump’s re-election as US president.

Trump 2.0’s weaponisation of economic policies and agreements, including food supplies, has ominous implications for countries trying to assert some independence.

Economic and military threats have been used for diverse ends, including economic, political, and other ‘strategic’ goals. Tariffs and sanctions are now part of a diverse arsenal of such weapons deployed for various purposes.

Governments have even been threatened with tariffs and sanctions for personal reasons. Trump has demanded Brazilian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s freedom following his failed coup after losing the last presidential election.

Deploying such economic weapons has worsened the deepening worldwide economic stagflation, as various Trump economic and military policy threats exacerbate contractionary and inflationary pressures.

The US-controlled WFP was long used to provide food aid selectively. But there is little sympathy left in Washington for other nations’ food security concerns.

To cut federal government spending, Trump has ended official development and humanitarian assistance, including food aid, while the US remains the world’s leading food exporter.

Nevertheless, Trump may take unexpected new steps to boost farmers’ earnings to recover electoral support before the November mid-term election.

Weaponisation of food aid took an ominous turn during the Israeli siege of Gaza, by calibrating food access to enable selective ethnic cleansing.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation attracted hungry residents to its food centres, causing hungry families desperately seeking food to be shot while seeking food.

Poverty is primarily defined by inadequate access to food, while the FAO considers income the main determinant of food insecurity.

Although World Bank poverty measures have generally continued to decline, FAO indicators suggest a reversal of earlier progress in food security over the last decade.

These contradictory trends not only reflect problems in estimating and understanding poverty and food security but also suggest that resulting policies are poorly informed, if not worse.

Professor Felice Noelle Rodriguez is Director of the Centre for Local History and Culture, Universidad de Zamboanga, Philippines.

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Malawian Farmers harvest sweet potatoes in fields where no chemicals have been used. Credit: Albert Khumalo

By Benson Kunchezera and Tanka Dhakal
LILONGWE & VIENTIANE, May 7 2026 (IPS)

For decades, pesticides have been a quiet pillar of Malawi’s agriculture, guarding crops against pests, improving yields, and sustaining millions of livelihoods. But beneath this success story lay a troubling reality: weak regulation, unsafe handling practices, and growing threats to human health and the environment.

Between 2015 and 2023, USD 2.55 million by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) set out to confront these challenges head-on. Today, it is leaving behind a legacy that is transforming how Malawi manages pesticides from importation to disposal and reshaping the way farmers think about crop protection.

At the centre of this shift is a stronger institutional framework. The project supported a comprehensive review of national pesticide regulations, bringing them closer to international standards. It also invested in training regulatory staff in pesticide registration, monitoring, enforcement, and lifecycle management, areas that had long remained underdeveloped.

“We invested heavily in strengthening systems, not just solving immediate problems,” said Precious Chizonda, Registrar of the Pesticides Control Board of Malawi and former National Coordinator for the GEF project. “This has positioned Malawi to better manage pesticides across their entire lifecycle, from importation to disposal.”

A major milestone was the development of a strategic plan for the Pesticides Control Board (PCB), aimed at improving efficiency and aligning operations with global best practices. Collaboration played a crucial role. The Malawi Bureau of Standards provided laboratory services for pesticide quality testing, while the Ministry of Agriculture ensured policy coordination. Together, these institutions helped elevate the PCB’s effectiveness and national visibility.

Some examples of pesticide-free farming include bananas grown using manure and tomatoes grown using neem water to deter pests and a woman farmer is shown mixing ash with her pigeon peas for storage to protect them from weevils. Credit: Albert Khumalo

Obsolete Pesticides

The project also delivered concrete environmental results. Approximately 208 tonnes of obsolete pesticides — including highly hazardous persistent organic pollutants — were safely destroyed through high-temperature incineration. Another 40 tonnes of contaminated waste were secured in an engineered landfill. These efforts eliminated long-standing sources of soil and water pollution, protecting ecosystems and communities.

Equally significant was the introduction of a pilot system for managing empty pesticide containers. Initially constrained by regulatory challenges, the initiative has since gained traction and continues beyond the project’s lifespan. Supported by industry stakeholders such as CropLife, it now collects used containers from farms across the country, demonstrating a viable model for environmentally sound waste management.

A field of irish potatoes grown without using chemicals. Credit: Albert Khumalo

Farm Level Changes

But perhaps the most profound change is happening at the farm level.

In Lichenza, under Chiladzulu’s Thumbwe Extension Planning Area, 39-year-old farmer Emily Zuwedi recalls how deeply rooted pesticide use once was. “We used to believe in pesticides when growing our crops, but that is now a thing of the past,” she said.

Zuwedi joined a farmer training group in 2017, where she learned about integrated pest management (IPM) and alternative methods that reduce reliance on chemicals. Today, she grows onions and beans using these techniques, cutting costs while protecting her health and the environment.

“I am spending less money now, and my crops are still doing well,” she said.

Her experience reflects a broader shift among smallholder farmers. Albert Khumalo, an Extension Development Officer in Chiladzulu, said the transition was not immediate. “At first it was difficult for farmers to accept, but after the trials they get along,” he explained.

Since 2024, Khumalo and his team have trained at least 100 farmers in pesticide-free farming methods. The results are encouraging – farmers are reducing production costs, improving soil health, and becoming more environmentally conscious.

“This program is helping farmers conserve the environment while also saving money,” Khumalo said. “And those who learn are now able to share knowledge with others.”

The project has also strengthened Malawi’s compliance with international chemical conventions by building expertise in risk assessment and regulatory procedures, an area where the country previously faced challenges.

While gaps remain, particularly in scaling up initiatives to reach more smallholder farmers, the progress is undeniable. Malawi is demonstrating that agricultural productivity and environmental protection do not have to be at odds.

Across the country’s fields, a quiet transformation is underway – one in which safer practices, stronger systems, and informed farmers are cultivating not just crops but also a more sustainable future.

In Lao PDR, the UNDP and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry lead a $4.2 million GEF-funded FARM project. Credit: Lao farmer network

Laos Sustainable Farming

However, GEF funding is being used in several parts of the world, including Asia.

In Lao PDR, GEF funding is helping farmers adopt and apply practices that promote sustainable agriculture.

Laos farmers are being trained and given extension support to “reduce dependence on hazardous pesticides while integrating environmentally friendly pest management approaches”, Saithong Phengboupha, project manager at the Department of Agriculture under the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, said.

“This aligns their practices with good agricultural standards, translating upstream policy gains into tangible on-farm change.”

According to the Ministry, GEF funding has been helpful to create the foundation by strengthening the legislative and regulatory environment governing pesticide and agricultural input management.

“Key milestones include the promulgation of the Law on Crop Production and the development of decrees on fertiliser regulation and good agricultural practices (GAP), currently in the final stages. The instruments establish the legal basis for sustained enforcement and compliance beyond the project lifecycle,” Phengboupha said, explaining how FARM funding is being used to improve the agricultural future of the country.

The $4.2 million initiative through the FARM project is led by the UNDP and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

The FARM project is establishing a pilot on agrochemical container and plastic waste management in Viengphoukha District, Luang Namtha Province.

Smallholder farmers have responded to the pesticide management training and promotion of alternatives to chemical pesticides. Credit: Marco J Haenssgen/Unsplash

Integrated Pest Management

According to the ministry, the pilot is designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of a structured approach for the collection, interim storage, and environmentally sound management of empty pesticide containers.

“It also aims to strengthen institutional coordination among relevant government agencies, local authorities, and private sector stakeholders, while enhancing farmer awareness and compliance with recommended practices, including triple rinsing, segregation, and safe return mechanisms,” he said.

The project has supported awareness-raising and capacity building among local authorities, extension workers, and farmers on the risks associated with obsolete and banned pesticides, as well as on safe handling, repackaging, and temporary storage practices. In selected locations, pilot measures have been introduced to improve containment, labelling, and secure storage to minimise environmental and health risks.

Phengboupha says smallholder farmers in Lao PDR have generally responded positively to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) training and the promotion of alternatives to chemical pesticides supported by the FARM project. He added “training interventions have contributed to improved understanding of pest ecology, safer pesticide use practices, and the benefits of adopting non-chemical and low-toxicity control methods, including biological control, cultural practices, and mechanical measures.”

However, adoption rates vary depending on access to extension services, market pressures, availability of alternative inputs, and perceived short-term effectiveness of chemical pesticides.

“Constraints remain, including limited access to certified biopesticides, weak input supply chains for IPM alternatives, and continued reliance on agrochemical vendors for technical advice in some areas,” he added.

Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly will be held from May 30 to June 6, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

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Displaced mothers and children at a malnutrition treatment center in Chuil, Jonglei State, South Sudan. Credit: WFP/Gabriela Vivacqua

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

In 2026, the humanitarian situation in South Sudan has taken a considerable turn for the worse, with widespread food shortages, ongoing disruptions to food production systems, and rising rates of malnutrition affecting over half of the population. Compounded by the vast scale of needs and an overwhelming lack of access to basic services, humanitarian experts warn that nationwide levels of hunger are projected to worsen to catastrophic levels if urgent intervention is not secured.

On April 28, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Food Programme (WFP) published a joint statement underscoring the escalation of the hunger crisis in South Sudan, noting that approximately 56 percent of the population, or roughly 7.8 million people, are projected to face acute food insecurity by July. They stress that the main drivers of food insecurity are climate shocks, flooding, mass displacement, and protracted armed conflict, all of which hinder effective agricultural yields and reduce food availability for hundreds of thousands of families.

“Hunger in South Sudan is intensifying, not stabilizing,” said Ross Smith, WFP Director of Emergencies and Preparedness. “Between April and July of this year, more than half of the population is projected to face crisis levels of hunger or worse, including people already in catastrophic conditions, where starvation and a collapse of livelihoods are a daily reality. This is among the highest proportions of any country’s population facing crisis levels of hunger today.”

The latest figures from the Integrated Food Security Classification Phase (IPC) show that over 280,000 additional civilians have been pushed into acute food insecurity since late 2025, including 73,000 civilians who are facing catastrophic (IPC Phase 5) levels of hunger. This marks a 160 percent increase from last year’s figures. An additional 2.5 million people face emergency (IPC Phase 4) levels of hunger, and 5.3 million have been reported to rely on unsustainable coping mechanisms to survive.

Children have been hit particularly hard, with UNICEF reporting that approximately 2.2 million children between the ages of six months and five years suffer from acute malnutrition, marking an increase of over 100,000 cases compared to last year. Over 700,000 children are projected to face the highest levels of hunger by July. Roughly 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are acutely malnourished, which has significantly dangerous, long-term implications for both mothers and children.

“Every day of delayed humanitarian access and supply delivery is a day a child’s life and future hangs in the balance,” said Lucia Elmi, UNICEF Director of Emergencies. “We are calling on all parties to grant timely, safe access to conflict-affected, including areas of displacement, and scale up nutrition interventions. We must act now if we are to save children’s lives.”

Widespread displacement continues to hinder South Sudan’s road to recovery, with rampant insecurity, overcrowding, and a shortage of critical supplies in displacement shelters complicating humanitarian relief efforts. The UN agencies note that nearly 300,000 people have been displaced this year in the Jonglei state alone, with many communities entirely cut off from humanitarian assistance. Numerous families report being unable to access food services due to rising prices, disrupted markets, and economic decline, which has significantly reduced household purchasing power.

Additionally, displaced communities face elevated risks of contracting infectious diseases due to persistent overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. The agencies have recorded a sharp rise in cholera, malaria, and measles infections, particularly among “vulnerable and already acutely malnourished children”. Furthermore, treatment for malnutrition has been severely compromised over the past several months, with a substantial portion of the nation’s healthcare and nutritional support facilities having been damaged or closed entirely due to conflict. Life-saving medical interventions are largely unavailable due to continued shortages of medical supplies.

In April, IPC conducted a detailed Risk of Famine Analysis, assessing hunger conditions across seven counties to determine which regions were at a high risk of developing famine. The analysis identified four counties that are projected to contract famine in the coming months, a significant increase from just one county identified last year. The Upper Nile and Jonglei regions are particularly vulnerable, as the renewed escalation of armed hostilities has driven further displacement and reduced humanitarian reach to the most at-risk communities.

Risks are especially pronounced in Akobo, where IPC projects the return of over 100,000 South Sudanese civilians currently displaced in Gambela and Ethiopia. This large-scale return could further exacerbate hunger conditions, as humanitarian and healthcare personnel face severe shortages of supplies, funding, and staffing in assisting already strained communities.

IPC also warns that hunger conditions could escalate to catastrophic levels (IPC Phase 5) in the coming months across multiple areas, including Doma and Yomding in Ulang County; Pulturuk, Waat, and Thol Lankien in Nyirol County; and Kuerenge Ke and Mading in southern Nasir County. All of these regions remain largely inaccessible due to ongoing conflict, which has limited humanitarian reach.

In response, the UN has called for an end to the isolation of these communities in relief efforts, stressing the urgent need for closer monitoring and a strengthened humanitarian response.

“Now, more than ever, we cannot afford to lose the hard-won gains made in recent years, especially as South Sudan works to strengthen its agrifood systems and build on encouraging signs of local agricultural production,” said Rein Paulsen, FAO Director, Office of Emergencies and Resilience. “These gains remain highly vulnerable to conflict, insecurity, and climate shocks—the very forces driving today’s food crisis. We must act urgently and collectively to protect livelihoods, sustain food production, and prevent millions more people from falling deeper into hunger.”

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While media coverage of Iran’s restrictions on passage through the Hormuz Straits focuses on fuel prices, partial closure is also disrupting crucial fertiliser and other supplies, risking catastrophe for billions worldwide.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Hormuz is not just a chokepoint on a shipping lane for oil and gas; it has strategic implications for fertiliser, helium, and other energy-intensive exports as well as for food and other imports to the region.

Higher energy costs affect most transportation and farming requirements, such as tilling and harvesting, as well as fertiliser supplies.

Wars, especially protracted ones, have lasting effects, including for agrifood systems. Without earlier investments, output elsewhere cannot be easily increased.

Alternative fertiliser supply sources are not readily available, especially as agro-ecological options have rarely been seriously pursued despite their proven viability.

As with renewable energy generation to reduce the need for petroleum imports, it is unclear whether the looming food crisis will accelerate the needed and feasible agro-ecological transition for enhanced food security.

Disrupted food supplies
Shipping delays and port congestion disrupt food supplies, trade and availability.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

Many states have recently tried to improve their food security, expanding strategic reserves, investing in food agriculture and alternative supply routes.

Such measures have improved resilience but cannot address a prolonged blockade of the Persian Gulf. About 70% of the food for Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf emirates passes through Hormuz.

Replacing disrupted food imports for about 100 million people would require moving almost 100 million kilograms (kg) of food into the region daily by other means.

Supplying food to the Gulf region under blockade would require an unprecedented operation, possibly through contested airspace.

In 2024, the UN World Food Programme delivered about 7 million kg of food daily to 81 million people in 71 countries.

Weather-driven food shortages and price spikes triggered political instability in 2008 and 2010-11. With food systems worldwide increasingly vulnerable to climate shocks, food insecurity threatens regimes everywhere.

Fertilisers
Farmers worldwide need stable supplies of fertilisers and fuel.

The Iran war threatens to disrupt these supplies, so crucial to agricultural production. Staple crops like wheat, rice and maize rely heavily on fertilisers.

Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Bahrain all ship petroleum products through Hormuz, including a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG).

As LNG is key to producing many fertilisers, Gulf exports have become more significant, especially after the war cut Ukraine’s exports, and China and Russia reduced theirs as well.

In 2024, the Middle East accounted for almost 30% of major fertiliser exports, including nitrogen, phosphate and potash.

The Gulf alone exported 23% of the world’s ammonia and 34% of its urea, while 30-40% of the world’s nitrogen fertiliser exports pass through Hormuz!

In mid-2025, Kpler estimated that a Hormuz closure could reduce fertiliser supplies by 33%, with sulphur-based ones falling by 44% and urea by 30%.

Reduced nitrogen-based fertiliser exports would hurt major food exporters such as Brazil, the US, Thailand, and India, all heavily reliant on fertiliser imports. However, the impact of shortages may be delayed until imported stocks run out.

As the war drags on, farmers may cut fertiliser use by planting less or switching to crops requiring less. Poorer harvests would, in turn, adversely affect later investment, planting and fertiliser use.

Who suffers most?
The economic consequences of the unprovoked US-Israeli assault on Iran and Tehran’s responses are spreading fast and catastrophically, especially for the most vulnerable.

Iran’s new leadership mistrusts Washington and will keep Hormuz closed – choking fuel, food, and fertiliser flows through it – to secure the guarantees it needs to reduce its vulnerability.

As attacks on Iran continued, Tehran stepped up targeted attacks on infrastructure in the Gulf kingdoms hosting US military facilities. US-led efforts have provided little relief to its allies.

The worldwide impact is uneven, with the poorest taking the brunt. Asia and Africa have been hard hit by heavy reliance on oil, gas, and fertiliser imports.

Rich nations’ aid cuts to increase military spending have worsened poverty and hunger for millions, many of whom are also victims of war and aggression.

Unlike the rich, many migrant workers in the Gulf who cannot leave will struggle to make ends meet and send money home to their families.

And as the world’s attention has turned to the Gulf, Israel has worsened conditions in Gaza while taking over southern Lebanon and increasing Yemen’s pain.

Concerned about retribution in November’s mid-term elections, the White House is keen on a ceasefire.

But it has not offered terms acceptable to Iran, which remains suspicious of the US commitment to its own promises, let alone the rule of law.

Hence, the Iranian leadership is unlikely to agree to a ceasefire without credible guarantees for its future security from renewed Israeli and US aggression.

The Iran war has highlighted, yet again, the collateral damage of war and the food system’s vulnerability. Meanwhile, the suffering of the more vulnerable is ignored by the greater powers, who pay little heed to their plight.

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Fish Value Addition Workshop in Ivory Coast.

By Sidi Tiémoko Touré and Essam Yassin Mohammed
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Feb 19 2026 (IPS)

It is an indictment on the global food system that, despite having some of the richest and most endowed natural resources in the world and a burgeoning youth population, West Africa spends more than $2 billion a year importing aquatic foods to feed its people, almost half of which is spent by Côte d’Ivoire alone.

Fish has long been a cherished staple food in West African diets, providing around two-thirds of all animal protein and featuring in popular dishes such as the Ivorian classic, poisson braisé and Senegal’s thieboudienne.

Yet in recent years, the region’s fishing industry has struggled to meet demand with growing external pressures and threats. Some of the highest levels of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the world costs the region more than $9 billion annually, and increasing vulnerability to climate change is also impacting the sector.

These challenges to domestic production have coincided with a decline in fish consumption from more than 13kg per person a year in 2008 to just over 11.5kg in 2025, despite the ongoing popularity of fish and seafood.

From our perspective, Côte d’Ivoire, along with other West African countries, have enormous potential to embrace the investment rule to “fish where the fish are” and reclaim food sovereignty. Not only would a stronger domestic sector reduce the import bill, but it would also create much-needed jobs, especially for young people, as well as improving diets and food security by providing more highly nutritious fish and seafood.

In short, we believe that boosting homegrown aquaculture would allow West Africa to reap the full benefits of the blue economy.

To that end, Côte d’Ivoire is at the forefront of a transformative journey to get West Africa’s fishing industry back on course, setting an example for other countries.

To begin with, the country has launched an ambitious policy framework dedicated to growing the aquaculture sector, including inland fisheries, which extend the benefits beyond coastal communities.

The $25.6 million Project for the Development of Competitive Value Chains in Aquaculture and Sustainable Fisheries (ProDeCAP) focuses on improving marine, lagoon, and inland fisheries, increasing broodstock capacity, setting up commercial seed supply systems, and developing the fish feed industry. It aims to boost annual aquaculture production by 35,000 tons, adding to the country’s overall fish supply directly and indirectly benefiting around 700,000 people, around half of which are women.

Similarly, the Strategic Program for the Transformation of Aquaculture in Côte d’Ivoire (PSTACI) is focusing on four pillars to stimulate the domestic aquaculture sector. These include creating jobs, particularly for young people and in rural areas, as well as piloting innovations with demonstration projects to increase private investment, strengthening governance and boosting national capacities for supplying fishery products.

At the same time, Côte d’Ivoire will invest $3 million in a new Aquaculture Research Innovation Hub (ARIH), led by global research centre WorldFish. The hub, which will focus on improving feed, genetics and fish health, will help fill the gaps in research and innovation to modernise the sector.

The hub will bring WorldFish’s global expertise to West Africa, leveraging 50 years of innovation in small-scale fisheries and aquaculture. In 2023 alone, WorldFish developed 70 innovations, upskilled almost 120,000 small-scale fishers, farmers, extension officers, suppliers, students, and community workers, and facilitated the production of 436,600 tonnes of farmed fish using improved tools and technologies.

All of these efforts will help fast-track the growth of the sector and leapfrog the conventional trajectory of unsustainable practices by streamlining the adoption of best practices and proven technologies.

But beyond policy, research and innovation, the final piece of the puzzle is the development of the broader value chain to ensure every link that connects the sector is resilient and effective.

For this, Côte d’Ivoire and neighbouring countries need strong private sector partnerships to establish and grow reliable supplies of young fish as well as feed markets, processing infrastructure and sales platforms.

This element is crucial because in each of these stages lies untapped opportunities for new jobs and new sources of food and nutrition. The growth of the aquaculture sector is especially important for women, who can find diverse opportunities in processing and selling fish and other aquatic foods.

To extend the adage: teaching a man to fish might help feed him for a lifetime, but transforming an entire fishing and aquaculture sector will feed, nourish, employ and build resilience across a whole country.

West Africa has both the natural resources and demand for a thriving regional fishing industry. Strategic investments, policies and partnerships are now coming together to make this a reality, offering a swell of opportunities for others to come on board and ride the wave of Africa’s blue economy.

H.E. Sidi Tiémoko Touré, Minister of Animal Resources and Fisheries, Côte d’Ivoire
Dr. Essam Yassin Mohammed, Director General of WorldFish

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the 426th meeting of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2026 (IPS)

Since the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in October of last year, humanitarian conditions in Gaza have notably improved — but aid agencies warn that progress is extremely fragile. Acute shortages of lifesaving medical care and psychosocial support persist, hunger remains widespread, with conditional cash assistance as the primary barrier preventing full-scale food insecurity, while Israeli attacks continue to undermine stability and humanitarian efforts.

Addressing the 2026 Opening Session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of the urgency of the current situation in Gaza.

“We enter 2026 with the clock ticking louder than ever. Will the year ahead bend towards peace–or slip into the abyss of despair?” Guterres said.

Guterres urged all parties to fully implement the ceasefire agreement, exercise maximum restraint, and comply with international law and UN resolutions, while calling for the rapid and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid, particularly through the Rafah crossing, where aid personnel face the most severe restrictions. He also condemned the suspension of international NGOs, explaining that it “defies humanitarian principles, undermines fragile progress, and worsens the suffering of civilians,” adding that shelter, food, education materials, and other basic necessities must reach those in need.

In recent months, food security conditions in Gaza have shown notable, though uneven, improvement. Since the ceasefire went into effect, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have brought over 10,000 trucks of aid into Gaza, representing roughly 80 percent of all humanitarian cargo. With this, the enclave was able to narrowly avoid the onset of famine.

WFP’s deputy executive director Carl Skau noted that most families he met were “eating at least once a day”, with some even managing two meals. Commercial goods such as vegetables, fruit, chicken, and eggs have gradually returned to local markets, while the distribution of recreational kits has helped children cope with the psychological toll of over two years of conflict.

However, progress remains fragile. The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessment estimates that approximately 77 percent of Gaza’s population continues to face crisis-level food insecurity (IPC Phase 3), with around 100,000 people facing catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5). Moreover, most nutritious foods available in markets remain financially out of reach for civilians, leaving the vast majority of households heavily dependent on humanitarian food assistance.

For Gaza’s most vulnerable families, conditional cash assistance remains essential to accessing food. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), more than 3,200 agricultural households are currently supported through FAO cash programs, which also enable over 1,200 farmers to continue crop production and help more than 2,000 herders protect their livestock.

As markets gradually stabilize, humanitarian actors are seeking to shift their approach in favor of one that prioritizes building self-sufficiency. WFP has indicated its goal to transition to cash assistance as market conditions improve, shifting emergency relief efforts to restoring local food production and economic systems to allow for vulnerable families to be able to afford food. However, these efforts would require a significant upscale in funding, coordinated efforts between the international community, and the free flow of aid.

Meanwhile, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reports that Palestinians continue to face widespread insecurity, driven by routine attacks on civilians and critical infrastructures. On February 5, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a humanitarian situation report documenting a sharp increase in airstrikes, shelling, gunfire, and fatalities between January 30 and February 5 compared to previous weeks. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, at least 82 Palestinians were killed and 162 injured during that period, including children and a health worker, alongside extensive damage to civilian infrastructure.

Further underscoring the risks faced by aid workers, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reported on February 4 that a paramedic was killed while providing assistance in the Mawasi area. That same day, OCHA reiterated that civilians and humanitarian personnel “must never be targeted or used to shield military activities,” stressing that children and aid workers are afforded special protections under international humanitarian law.

The UN has also stressed that living conditions remain especially dire for displaced communities across Gaza. On February 3, heavy insecurity in the Al Mahatta and Sanafour areas of Gaza City forced approximately 40 families to flee their homes, with only 10 families able to return by the following morning. UN figures indicate that “capacity and funding constraints” have limited humanitarian support to only roughly 40 percent of the remaining functional 970 displacement sites across Gaza.

Healthcare needs are similarly overwhelming, as a steady influx of injuries and disease is compounded by the near-total collapse of Gaza’s health system. According to Jonathan Fowler, Senior Communications Manager of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the agency previously operated 22 clinics operating across the Gaza strip before the war, which has now fallen to just six.

“That makes it incredibly difficult to do our work and so many of our locations have been heavily damaged or indeed completely destroyed,” Fowler said. “On top of that, we remain banned by the Israeli authorities from bringing in any of our own supplies.” Despite numerous access and security constraints, UNRWA aims to assist approximately 15,000 patients each day, underscoring the scale of unmet medical needs across the most vulnerable areas.

Furthermore, OHCHR has documented a sharp rise in cases of mistreatment and abuse against displaced Palestinians by Israeli military forces, particularly along the newly reopened Rafah border crossing. As of February 5, Palestinians returning through the crossing for three consecutive days have reported consistent patterns of “ill-treatment, abuse, and humiliation”.

According to testimonies collected by the agency, returnees were escorted from the crossing to military checkpoints, where some were handcuffed, blindfolded, threatened, and intimidated. Others reported being subjected to invasive body searches, having personal belongings and money confiscated, and facing physical violence and degrading interrogations. Several individuals were also denied access to medical care and bathroom facilities, with some forced to urinate in public.

OHCHR also documented allegations that returnees were offered money to return to Egypt permanently or pressured to act as informants for the Israeli military.

“The international community has a responsibility to ensure that all measures affecting Gaza strictly comply with international law and fully respect Palestinians’ human rights,” said Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “After two years of utter devastation, being able to return to their families and what remains of their homes in safety and dignity is the bare minimum.”

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Close-up-of-a-yellowfin-tuna-swimming-in-the-sea. Credit: Freepik---EyeEm

By James Alix Michel and Dona Bertarelli
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Feb 3 2026 (IPS)

The world is entering a decisive period for the future of the ocean. With the High Seas Treaty coming into force and meaningful progress being made on the World Trade Organization Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, global momentum for stronger marine governance is building. Yet, new pressures linked to the push for deep-sea mining — the extraction of minerals from seabed thousands of meters below the ocean surface — threaten to undermine these gains. To safeguard progress, global decision-making will have to keep pace with such emerging risks. In this context, Africa will host several global discussions in 2026, including those that will shape the ocean’s future, with a series of opportunities for leadership starting with the African Union Summit in February to the Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya in June.

Dona-Bertarelli-and-James-Alix-Michel-meeting-at-Our-Ocean-Bali-in-2018. Credit: Dona-Bertarelli-Philanthropy

These concerns are particularly relevant to the Western Indian Ocean (WIO), one of the most biodiverse marine regions in the world, with endemism as high as 22 per cent yet at the convergence of multiple environmental stresses. Coral reefs and mangrove forests are deteriorating, while illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and sand mining put additional pressure on already fragile ecosystems. The lasting impacts of the 2020 Wakashio oil spill in Mauritius show how quickly harm to the ocean can ripple across communities. In such a fragile setting, the introduction of a new extractive industry demands the highest level of scrutiny.

In the face of these emerging challenges, Seychelles has an important role to play. For decades, it has demonstrated leadership in championing the blue economy and protecting marine ecosystems. Early ratification of the BBNJ Treaty, along with advocacy for High Seas marine protected areas such as the Saya de Malha Bank, has positioned the country as a respected voice for responsible ocean governance. If deep-sea mining begins in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean is likely to follow, including on the mid-Indian Ridge east of Seychelles’ EEZ and within the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries agreement region. Catalyzing a new wave of continental leadership on deep-sea protection would advance a vision of ocean stewardship grounded in equity and sustainability. A precautionary pause on deep-sea mining would give concrete expression to that vision.

Polymetallic nodules on the deep seabed. Credit: Deep-Rising

Scientific research continues to underline this need for caution. Deep-sea mining would have an irreversible impact on seabed ecosystems and species. And recent studies of the midwater zone, where waste plumes from deep-sea mining would spread, show that mining particles could reduce the nutritional quality of the natural food supply for zooplankton by up to ten times. This would decrease food quality and trigger effects that move through the food web, ultimately affecting larger species and the overall health of the ocean millions of people rely on. In an environment where more than 99.99 percent of the deep ocean floor has yet to be explored or directly observed, introducing large scale industrial activity could cause damage that cannot be undone.

The economic risks for the region are equally significant. The Western Indian Ocean’s natural assets have been conservatively valued at 333.8 billion dollars, making the ocean one of the region’s most important sources of long-term wealth. Within this, fisheries represent the single largest asset and a cornerstone of economic resilience. The region generates about 4.8 percent of the global fish catch, roughly 4.5 million tonnes each year, underscoring how many economies and communities depend on healthy stocks. In Seychelles and across the region, tuna fisheries in particular underpin national revenue, employment and food security. Undermining the sustainability of fisheries could therefore not only threaten livelihoods but also diminish long-term economic opportunity.

Deep-sea-creature. Credit: Schmidt-Ocean-Institute

The accelerating push for deep-sea mining activities also raises concerns about repeating historic patterns seen in other extractive sectors across Africa. The uneven distribution of benefits from land-based resource exploitation has shown how easily local communities can be left with environmental impacts while external actors capture most of the value. Without strong governance frameworks that ensure fair participation and transparent decision-making, current deep-sea mining models risk following a similar trajectory, privileging short-term economic gain for multinational corporations over regional priorities.

Finally, the argument that deep-sea mining is necessary for the renewable energy transition is also increasingly at odds with current evidence. Rapid advances in recycling technologies, circular economy approaches, and alternative materials are already reducing the projected demand for minerals from new extractions. These pathways can support the global transition without the need to industrialize one of the least understood parts of the planet. The United Nations Environment Programme has also made clear in their 2022 report that “there is currently no foreseeable way in which investment into deep-sea mining activities can be viewed as consistent with the Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Principles”.

White-sand-and-clear-turquoise-water-on-a-Seychelles-beach. Credit: Unsplash—Alin-Mecean

In parallel, African-led nature-positive initiatives are demonstrating how ocean resources can be managed in ways that support both people and the environment. Initiatives such as the Great Blue Wall aim to create connected networks of protected and restored marine areas that strengthen biodiversity, climate resilience and community wellbeing across the WIO region. These efforts demonstrate what a regenerative blue economy can look like in practice. Preserving these gains requires ensuring that new activities do not compromise the progress already made.

Across the continent, young leaders, civil society and scientific institutions are calling for greater accountability in decisions that shape our collective future. Their message is clear: long-term wellbeing for everyone must come before short-term gains for a select few. This call also echoes a growing movement worldwide, with more than 40 countries now supporting a pause on deep-sea mining, including France, Fiji, Chile and Mexico. A precautionary pause on deep-sea mining is not a rejection of economic progress, but a commitment to sound science, inclusive dialogue and responsible stewardship. We are hopeful that countries in Africa and elsewhere in the world will hear this call and secure the future of the ocean for generations to come.

James Alix Michel is the former President of Seychelles (2004–2016) and a global advocate for the blue economy, ocean conservation and climate resilience.

Dona Bertarelli is a Swiss philanthropist, IUCN Patron of Nature and biodiversity champion, deeply committed to a healthy balance between people and nature.

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In Gaza's Middle Area, State of Palestine, 4-year-old Abd Al Kareem eats from a sachet of Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplements (LNS) during a UNICEF malnutrition screening. Credit: UNICEF/Rawan Eleyan

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 23 2025 (IPS)

Despite notable improvements in the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip following the October 10 ceasefire, progress remains critically fragile. With the enclave having averted famine across multiple regions, the United Nations (UN) and its partners warn that sustained humanitarian access, a steady flow of resources, and the restoration of critical civilian infrastructure are essential in preventing further deterioration, which could have long-lasting consequences for an already deeply traumatized population.

According to the latest figures from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), food security in Gaza saw significant improvement during the October-November period, with famine eradicated across all areas. This marks a major shift from August, when famine was recorded and confirmed. This is largely attributed to the expansion of humanitarian access since then.

“Famine has been pushed back. Far more people are able to access the food they need to survive,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “Gains are fragile, perilously so. And in more than half of Gaza, where Israeli troops remain deployed, farmland and entire neighborhoods are out of reach. Strikes and hostilities continue, pushing the civilian toll of this war even higher and exposing our teams to grave danger. We need more crossings, the lifting of restrictions on critical items, the removal of red tape, safe routes inside Gaza, sustained funding, and unimpeded access, including for nonprofit organizations (NGOs).”

Figures from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) show that following the ceasefire, obstructions to aid deliveries have declined to roughly 20 percent—down from 30 to 35 percent prior to the ceasefire. Between October 10 and December 16, more than 119,000 metric tons of UN-coordinated aid were offloaded, with over 111,000 metric tons successfully collected.

Despite this, severe levels of hunger and malnutrition persist, particularly among displaced communities. The vast majority of the enclave’s population faces emergency levels (IPC Phase 4) of hunger, with hundreds of thousands facing acute malnutrition. Between October and November, approximately 1.6 million people, or over 75 percent of the population studied, were found to face crisis levels of hunger (Phase 3) or worse, including 500,000 people in emergency levels (Phase 4) and over 100,000 in catastrophic levels (Phase 5).

Women and children —especially those from displaced communities— are expected to bear the heaviest burdens. An estimated 101,000 children aged six to 59 months are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition through October of next year, with 31,000 of those cases expected to be life-threatening. In addition, roughly 37,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women are projected to require urgent treatment.

In a joint statement, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Food Programme (WFP), warn that without sustained humanitarian support, increased financial assistance, and a definitive end to the hostilities, hundreds of thousands of Gazans could quickly fall back into famine conditions.

OCHA noted that approximately 1.6 million Gazans are projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity through mid-April of 2026, with the agency recording aid deliveries being hampered as a result of continued airstrikes, procedural constraints, and the lingering effects of Storm Byron, which caused considerable levels of flooding. In December, the agency recorded reduced food rations from WFP in an attempt to maximize coverage. Other sectors of the humanitarian response have been deprioritized to address the most urgent food security needs.

IPC’s latest report identifies the collapse of agri-food systems as a major driver of food insecurity in Gaza, noting that over 96 percent of the enclave’s cropland has been decimated or rendered inaccessible. With livelihoods shattered and local production severely strained, families are increasingly unable to afford nutritious and diverse foods.

Approximately 70 percent of households cannot afford to buy food or secure clean water. Protein has become particularly scarce, and no children are meeting adequate dietary diversity standards, with two-thirds consuming only one to two food groups.

“Gaza’s farmers, herders and fishers are ready to restart food production, but they cannot do so without immediate access to basic supplies and funding,” said Rein Paulsen, Director of FAO’s Office of Emergencies and Resilience. “The ceasefire has opened a narrow window to allow life-sustaining agricultural supplies to reach the hands of vulnerable farmers. Only funding and expanded and sustained access will allow local food production to resume and reduce dependence on external aid.”

The latest figures from OCHA indicate that at least 2,407 children received treatment for acute malnutrition in the first two weeks of December. Additionally, as of December 16, more than 172,000 metric tons of aid positioned by 56 humanitarian partners are ready for transfer into Gaza, with food supplies accounting for 72 percent of the total.

Even in the face of these consistent needs, some humanitarian deliveries carried out by the UN and its partners continue to be routinely denied by Israeli authorities. Between December 10 and 16, humanitarian agencies coordinated 47 missions with Israeli authorities, 30 of which were conducted, 10 were impeded, four were denied, and three were cancelled.

According to Kate Newton, Deputy Country Director for WFP in Palestine, missions requiring prior coordination with Israeli authorities—including winterization efforts, assessment and clearance missions, and cargo uplifts—are particularly uncertain. “We still have all the issues that we’ve been talking about for months and months – the logistical challenges, the fact we’re very limited in terms of the number of roads we can use, that we still have a very high level of insecurity, that bureaucratic processes are still impeding humanitarian delivery,” said Newton.

On December 17, a coalition of UN agencies and more than 200 international and local NGOs called for urgent measures pressuring Israeli authorities to lift all impediments to humanitarian aid, warning that current restrictions severely undermine relief efforts and threaten the collapse of an effective humanitarian response. The joint statement underscores that humanitarian action is now more critical than ever and stresses that Gaza cannot afford to slip back into pre-ceasefire conditions.

“UN agencies and NGOs reiterate that humanitarian access is not optional, conditional or political. It is a legal obligation under international humanitarian law, particularly in Gaza where Israel has failed to ensure that the population is adequately supplied,” the statement reads. “Israeli authorities must allow and facilitate rapid, unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief. They must immediately reverse policies that obstruct humanitarian operations and ensure that humanitarian organizations are able to operate without compromising humanitarian principles. Lifesaving assistance must be allowed to reach Palestinians without further delay.”

IPS UN Bureau

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Children in the town of Didiévi, Ivory Coast, lining up to wash their hands before they receive food Credit: Scaling Up Nutrition Movement

By Afshan Khan
GENEVA, Dec 23 2025 (IPS)

In my more than 30 years with the United Nations, I’ve seen enormous change, collaboration and progress towards improving human development. But I’ve also seen how history has a way of repeating itself to entrench some of the most intractable global challenges.

In no area is this more evident than in the fight against malnutrition. Early in my career with Unicef, I learned to appreciate how crucial nutrition is to a child’s future, and the cascade of problems that follow when nutrition falters. The effects ripple through learning outcomes, health, economic opportunity, and long-term stability.

The 2008–09 food price crisis brought the issue of malnutrition sharply into focus. When nutritious diets suddenly became unaffordable for many millions, global leaders recognised the need for a different approach, inspiring the creation of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement.

Fifteen years on, we stand at a crossroads on nutrition. 2025 has seen a dramatic fall in overseas development assistance (ODA), especially for nutrition, which even in good years is below 1% of total ODA. And, there is no end in sight to humanitarian crises. The United Nations has appealed for US$23 billion to save the lives of 87 million people facing acute crisis, while more than 135 million people worldwide now require humanitarian assistance. In an increasingly constrained aid environment, the UN is forced into triage, deciding not where needs are greatest, but where limited resources can stretch the furthest. Beyond emergencies, a global cost-of-living crisis is pushing healthy diets further out of reach for millions more. Taken together, these pressures make one outcome tragically predictable: without urgent action, malnutrition will rise.

In Nigeria, hospital admissions of severely malnourished children have surged by 200 per cent in some states, and hundreds of children have already died from malnutrition, just in the first half of this year. In Sudan, the destruction of food factories and aid disruption amid a years-long civil war has left millions of people trapped in a never-ending, ever-worsening nutrition emergency.

Against a bleak backdrop of humanitarian crises at country levels, global trends project that more than half of the global population will be overweight by 2035 — the outcome of a food environment where convenient, low cost foods high in transfats, sodium and sugar are more affordable than nutritious foods.

And yet, now — just as renewed commitments to the principles that inspired SUN’s creation seem most crucial — high-income nations are reducing their spend on overseas development assistance (ODA) while SUN countries struggle with dwindling resources, regardless of their commitments to improving nutrition.

The world cannot afford to forget nutrition. To do so would invite a future marked by widespread chronic disease, overstretched health systems, lost educational and economic potential, and diminished quality of life for millions.

Meeting today’s reality demands a fundamental shift in how we plan and invest to solve the problem. We must move beyond short-term thinking, break down divides between humanitarian and development work, and coordinate efforts across food, health, education, climate, and social policy.

Only by building long-term resilience across governments, economies and communities can we hope to reverse current trends and safeguard the next generation against the nutritional challenges of the future.

This is the thinking behind the SUN Movement’s renewed approach — a joined-up, global effort built around three simple ideas: build resilience against shocks, work across sectors, and diversification of finance for sustainability. ODA alone cannot fuel progress against the World Health Assembly malnutrition targets.

First, resilience. The past few years showed that conflicts, climate disasters, and economic emergencies can quickly wipe out national nutrition gains. Resilience to such shocks is necessary to avoid human capital loss leading to longer term national decline. SUN will focus on helping countries build food and healthcare systems to withstand shocks and prevent emergencies turning into disasters.

Second, sustainable financing. Today, the world faces a $10.8 billion annual nutrition funding gap. Until we close it, countries will continue to face the same cycle of progress followed by setbacks. Countries need to be able to draw on more than one pot of money, and SUN will help them to diversify across national budgets, responsible business, philanthropies, development banks, and climate funds.

Third, addressing the changing face of malnutrition. Overweight and obesity now affect almost 400 million children, a tenfold increase since 1975. What is more, 70 per cent live in low- and middle-income countries, where populations are growing fastest. SUN’s renewed approach has put obesity prevention and healthy food environments alongside its long-standing focus on undernutrition.

Finally, integration. Malnutrition does not exist in isolation, so neither can our response. Policies across health, agriculture, education, social protection, climate adaptation, and humanitarian response matter. The Global Compact for Nutrition Integration — already supported by over 80 countries and organisations — is showing what true collaboration can look like. The Compact brings together governments, funds, development banks, UN agencies, civil society and business around a shared goal: aligning support with countries’ needs and providing a common framework to ensure nutrition objectives are embedded in policies, programmes and financing across all relevant sectors.

My career has taught me that global progress is never guaranteed. Moreover, I have learned that the gains we fight hardest for are often the most fragile and must be cultivated, invested in, and protected.

Two things are clear: no country is immune from the malnutrition crisis, and if we continue to rely on fragmented, short-term responses, this crisis will only deepen.

SUN is on a journey to help the world chart a different course. As I step back from this work, my hope is that global resolve only grows stronger, and in fifteen years time, we will have found new solutions for seemingly intractable problems.

Afshan Khan is UN Assistant Secretary-General and coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement

IPS UN Bureau

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Opinions have been divided over the annual UN climate conferences. While some see COP30 in Belém, Brazil, as confirming their irrelevance, others see it as a turning point in the struggle for climate justice.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

As the world accelerates toward catastrophic warming, ecological systems are collapsing, and millions across the Global South face increasingly life-threatening situations.

Rising sea levels, extreme heat, droughts and flooding are undermining food security, displacing communities, and exacerbating inequality and living conditions.

The economic costs of climate disasters are accelerating. Social and human costs continue to rise, with lives, livelihoods and ecosystems destroyed.

Fiscal austerity and indebtedness are making things worse. Instead, governments increase military spending and subsidise fossil fuels, accelerating planetary warming.

Business interest in ‘green transitions’ focuses on new profit-making opportunities. As renewable energy grows, energy supplies increase as fossil fuels are slowly replaced.

COP of Truth?
In his opening speech to the thirtieth Conference of Parties (COP30) in Belém, host President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised it would be the ‘COP of Truth’.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

Although not officially present, the US continued to frustrate the climate talks by urging petrostates to resist efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

The COP30 Climate Change Performance Index exposed governments’ weak commitments to combating planetary warming over the past 21 years.

Its report analysed the policies of 63 countries responsible for 90% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The top three spots were kept empty to emphasise that no country has shown sufficient ambition to do so.

For 2025, Saudi Arabia took last place, with the US, Russia and Iran not far behind. Trump’s latest policies have set the US further back.

Meanwhile, the White House threatened sanctions and tariffs against governments that support a global tax on GHG emissions by international shipping.

Just transition?
COP30 in Belém continued to fail to achieve what is urgently needed: binding GHG emission cuts, phasing out fossil fuels, meaningfully compensating for past losses and damages, or better financing for climate adaptation.

COP30 adopted the Belém Mechanism for Just Global Transition – a new UNFCCC arrangement to overcome the fragmentation and inadequacy of such efforts worldwide.

However, the mechanism lacks both finances and plans to protect those harmed by decarbonisation initiatives. Nor are there resources for ‘green industrialisation’.

Climate justice is still misrepresented as threatening livelihoods rather than as key to survival. The climate justice movement must convince the public that it is key to social progress.

Climate finance setback
Lula appealed again for increased climate financing for the Global South following the dismal record since the 2009 Copenhagen COP.

Brazil also launched the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF) to incentivise countries conserving their forests. Although it failed to raise its target of $25 billion, 53 countries endorsed the TFFF, with pledges in Belém totalling $6.6 billion.

Belém also offered new suggestions for climate finance, in its ‘Baku to Belém (B2B) Roadmap to 1.3T’ (USD1.3 trillion), and the report of the COP30 Circle of Finance Ministers (CoFM).

The CoFM involved 35 finance ministers representing three-fifths of the world’s population and its GHG emissions.

The COP30 promise to “at least triple” finance for developing countries’ climate adaptation by 2035 was again blocked by the Global North. LDC requests for grant financing were also ignored yet again.

Promoting voluntarism
Brazilian COP30 chair Corrêa do Lago proposed various compromises to encourage those disappointed by UN processes to take climate action.

His proposed ‘voluntary roadmap’ to transition from fossil fuels will be discussed at the Colombia/Netherlands-led ‘coalition of the willing’ conference in April 2026.

The chair’s other voluntary roadmap for forest conservation followed the COP30 agreement’s failure to condemn deforestation with stronger language.

The adoption of the 59 compromise indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation was delayed by poorer African countries’ inability to afford immediate implementation. The compromise was a two-year delay, referred to as the ‘Belém-Addis vision’.

Belém as turning point
For the first time, the US was officially absent from the Belém COP. With over 56,000 delegates registered, attendance was second only to Dubai, with more than 1,600 business lobbyists present.

COPs make slow progress by painstakingly extending the consensus for climate action. Belém may shift the COPs’ focus from negotiations to initiatives, a precedent which can be abused or advanced.

Belém’s Mutirão Decision (Action Agenda) focuses on delivery, drawing from the ‘whole of society’. Its 30 measurable Key Objectives were based on the 2023 Global Stocktake.

While Belém’s outcomes fell short of most expectations, many acknowledge Brazil did its best under trying circumstances. Nonetheless, climate justice is being denied by the continuing procrastination of powerful vested interests.

Although not quite the ‘COP of Truth’, inclusion and implementation that Lula promised, Belém reversed the backward slide of recent COPs, which the Global South must build upon before it is too late.

IPS UN Bureau

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A young girl looks at signage advertising specials at a food stall near her school in New Delhi, India. India faces high rates of hunger and malnutrition, while the growing availability of ultra-processed foods contributes to rising rates of childhood obesity. Credit: UNICEF/Amit Madheshiya

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 22 2025 (IPS)

2025 marked a notable year of progress in reducing global hunger; yet climate pressures, economic instability, and ongoing conflicts continue to push agri-food systems to their limits, undermining food availability. In a new report, UN agencies raise the alarm on how these factors are particularly pronounced in the Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for 40 percent of the world’s undernourished.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) warn that access to nutritious food is increasingly slipping out of reach for millions across the region, posing serious risks to economic development, public health, and social stability across the region. A new joint report released on December 17 breaks down the state of food security and nutrition in the Asia-Pacific region in 2025, highlighting global progress toward the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“In this day and age, no one should lack the food and optimal nutrition they need and deserve. Yet hunger, malnutrition and overweight impact the health and wellbeing of millions of our fellow human beings – including children,” said Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, the Regional Director of WHO Western Pacific. “We need multilateral solutions to rethink, reshape and reimagine food systems across Asia-Pacific – leaving no one behind.”

While the report notes a significant decline in undernourishment across the region from 2023 to 2024—with roughly 25 million people escaping hunger—it also finds that South Asia continues to lag far behind, experiencing the highest levels of food insecurity in the Asia-Pacific. Nearly 80 percent of South Asia faces moderate to severe levels of food insecurity, with the region also reporting the highest rates of stunted growth among children—at 31.4 percent— and wasting—at 13.6 percent, both exceeding global averages.

Additionally, the Asia–Pacific region faces roughly double the rates of malnutrition compared to the global average. Adult obesity is particularly widespread, adding another layer to the region’s complex nutrition challenges.

Furthermore women and girls are projected to bear the greatest burdens, experiencing the highest levels of food insecurity among all subregions of Asia. Women and girls aged 15 to 49 also face elevated rates of anemia, with an estimated 33.8 percent affected—posing serious risks for both maternal and child health. According to figures from WHO, without urgent intervention, approximately 18 million more women and girls in South Asia could become anemic by 2030, adding to the current figure of 259 million. Anemia is a leading cause of low birth weight and stunted growth, conditions that carry long-term consequences including disrupted education, reduced economic opportunities, deepened gender inequalities, and greater vulnerability to illness.

“In South Asia, our young people and mothers stand at the heart of our demographic and development goals. Ensuring that they are healthy, nourished and empowered is not just a moral imperative, it is a strategic investment in the future of our societies.” said Golam Sarwar, Secretary General of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

Although the number of people in the Asia-Pacific region who can afford healthy diets has increased in recent years, food affordability remains a persistent challenge. In 2024, the cost of a healthy diet in the region averaged roughly USD 4.77 per person per day on a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) basis—higher than the global average. The affordability gap is the widest in South Asia, where approximately 41.7 percent of the population cannot afford nutritious food.

These widening gaps in access to nutritious food not only threaten public health by leaving populations increasingly vulnerable to infections and chronic disease, but also carry far-reaching economic implications—shaping productivity and further straining already fragile economies in the region.

The report cites a study from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which found that numerous Asian countries have historically benefitted from a “young, growing workforce,” which accounted for up to 42 percent of economic growth in the region between 1960 and 2010. However, as urbanization and population growth accelerate, a workforce facing rising food insecurity could see substantial losses.

As food insecurity in the Asia-Pacific is increasingly driven by rapid urbanization, economic pressures, and climate issues, humanitarian experts stress that response measures must adapt accordingly. Addressing hunger requires protocols that account for shifting population dynamics and rising living costs, with governments and humanitarian groups collaborating to strengthen agri-food systems to ensure that they are accessible, affordable, and resilient.

The report highlights the importance of globalization in addressing hunger strategies, underscoring the vast gains that result from more countries being integrated into global economies generally seeing fewer rates of undernourishment. Additionally, trade policies must be considered, as they shape how agricultural products move across borders, affecting the variety and availability of diverse food options. Favorable trade agreements can expand access to nutritious foods and open larger markets for small farmers, while unfavorable ones can prioritize the import of unhealthy foods, weakening local agriculture and eroding overall nutrition.

The report concludes that, “Governments together with other stakeholders are increasingly including measures in their national pathways to ensure that food and agriculture investments and policies contribute to sustainable and diverse food production, healthy food environments, promotion of positive dietary behaviour and improving access to affordable healthy diets.”

“Accomplishing that goal involves reorienting public finance and encouraging private sector investments in infrastructure development programmes, research on innovations and technologies, food manufacturing and capacity development to enhance agricultural productivity and sustainability.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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CIVICUS discusses climate displacement and Tuvalu’s future with Kiali Molu, a former civil servant at Tuvalu’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and currently a PhD candidate at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji and the University of Bergen in Norway. His research focuses on state sovereignty and climate change in the Pacific.

Kiali Molu

Why have so many Tuvaluans applied for Australia’s climate mobility visa?

This visa is part of the Falepili Union Treaty agreed by Australia and Tuvalu. The treaty combines a special mobility pathway, guarantees around Tuvalu’s statehood and sovereignty and a broader security arrangement. Under the mobility component, Tuvaluans can apply for residency in Australia through a ballot system, without being forced to permanently relocate.

Many applications are driven by practical reasons, such as employment opportunities to be able to support families back home. Others value the ability to travel more freely, particularly given Australia’s historically long and uncertain visa processes. Access to education opportunities and social protections also matter. What’s important is that selection under this pathway does not require people to leave Tuvalu. It creates choice and security in a context where the future feels increasingly uncertain.

How is climate change reshaping daily life in Tuvalu?

Rising sea levels and frequent king tides regularly flood homes, public buildings and roads, interrupting community gatherings, education and work. Coastal erosion continues to reduce habitable land, while saltwater intrusion contaminates groundwater and destroys pulaka pits that are central to food security, as they’re used to grow staple root crops.

These impacts extend beyond infrastructure: higher reliance on imported food means families face rising costs, and stagnant water means a rise in waterborne diseases. Constant flooding is increasing anxiety about displacement and cultural continuity, and farming and fishing livelihoods are becoming harder to sustain. Climate change affects our food, health, housing and identity every single day.

What does potential resettlement mean for Tuvaluan culture and identity?

Our identity is inseparable from our community, our land and the ocean surrounding it. Tuvaluan culture is rooted in fenua – shared practices around agriculture and fishing, church life and the falekaupule, a community meeting house. Large-scale resettlement risks disrupting these foundations. The transmission of everyday cultural practices, language and oral history may weaken if younger Tuvaluans grow up away from the islands.

However, mobility doesn’t automatically mean cultural loss. Tuvaluan communities abroad are finding ways to preserve collective life, language and traditions through associations, churches and digital platforms. Initiatives such as the Tuvalu Digital Nation aim to safeguard cultural heritage virtually. Still, there is no substitute for ancestral land, and this raises profound questions about what it means to be Tuvaluan if our homeland becomes uninhabitable.

What climate adaptation measures does Tuvalu urgently need?

Adaptation for Tuvalu is not only about renewable energy and seawalls. While these remain essential, there’s also a critical legal and political dimension. The international system still defines statehood on the basis of physical territory, offering little protection to nations facing permanent land loss due to climate change.

We believe Tuvalu should push for a new global legal framework that rethinks sovereignty in the context of climate displacement. This would protect Tuvalu’s international legal personality, maritime boundaries and political rights even if parts of its territory become uninhabitable. This diplomatic strategy is needed as much as physical adaptation measures because it addresses national survival, not just infrastructure resilience.

What responsibilities do major polluters have towards climate-vulnerable states?

Major polluters have legal and moral obligations towards climate-vulnerable countries. International law increasingly recognises duties to reduce emissions, prevent environmental harm and cooperate in protecting those most at risk. Recent legal developments, including advisory opinions from international courts, reinforce that these responsibilities are enforceable, not optional.

These obligations go beyond emissions cuts. They include providing climate finance through mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund and the Loss and Damage Fund, supporting adaptation efforts and sharing technology. For countries like Tuvalu, this support is fundamental to preserving lives, culture and sovereignty. Continued inaction by major emitters should not be seen solely as political failure, but also as a breach of international law.

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A Yemeni mother and her child receiving nutritional assistance at a clinic in the Abyan governorate. Credit: UNICEF/Saleh Hayyan

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 2025 (IPS)

For the past decade, Yemen has been at the center of a severe and multifaceted humanitarian crisis, marked by widespread violence between various Middle Eastern actors, widespread civilian displacement, economic decline, and the collapse of essential services that serve as lifelines for displaced communities.

As the crisis has intensified in recent months, humanitarian agencies face increasing challenges in providing lifesaving care to civilians, who are experiencing record levels of hunger in a country that has become more reliant on remittances as self-sufficiency continues to slip further out of reach.

On November 25, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) released a joint report detailing the food security situations in areas of highest concern that require urgent humanitarian intervention. According to the report, Yemen’s food crisis is primarily driven by economic deterioration, escalating armed conflict, climate shocks, displacement, disrupted supply chains, limited humanitarian access, and the collapse of safety nets.

The report highlights that food production in Yemen was severely impacted by the main Kharif season in August 2025, which was marked by early-season dryness followed by extended rainfall. Between August and the end of September, widespread flooding damaged water infrastructure across the country, particularly in the Lahij, Ta’iz, and Ma’rib governorates, which not only reduced economic output but also increased the risk of waterborne illnesses, such as cholera. Together, these factors contributed to a below-average 2025 cereal harvest, which serves as a critical food source for millions of Yemeni civilians.

Ongoing conflict remains a key driver of widespread food insecurity in Yemen, with attacks in areas controlled by the Sana’a-based authorities and along the Red Sea contributing to continued economic decline and triggering new waves of displacement. These attacks have damaged critical infrastructure, resulting in a decrease in fuel imports and a rise in food prices. Humanitarian access constraints, funding cuts, and economic sanctions also hinder the effectiveness of responses.

The report notes that over half of Yemen’s population is projected to experience high levels of acute food insecurity between September 2025 and February 2026, with approximately 63 percent of surveyed households reporting a lack of adequate food and 35 percent reporting severe food deprivation. Food security conditions are especially severe in four districts across the Amran, Al Hodeidah, and Hajjah governorates, where populations are experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger—defined by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) as the highest possible level.

Approximately 18.1 million people are projected to face ‘Crisis’ or worse levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above), including 5.5 million in ‘Emergency’ (IPC Phase 4) across the country. In 2025, 24 districts are expected to experience very high levels of acute malnutrition, particularly in the Ta’iz and Al Jawf governorates. Of the districts classified in Emergency (IPC/CH Phase 4), 72 percent also have a Nutrition Severity Level of 4 or higher.

It is estimated that the average Yemeni household spends more than 70 percent of its income on food, leaving very little for other critical necessities. These households predominantly rely on unhealthy foods for survival, such as cereals, sugar, and fats, while essential items for a balanced diet like meat, fruit, and dairy, are almost entirely absent.

These challenges are even more pronounced among displaced communities, with approximately 24 percent of internally displaced civilians reporting that at least one family member goes an entire day and night without food—nearly double the rate seen in resident communities.

To effectively address the food security crisis in Yemen, it is crucial to confront the underlying economic challenges, which are threatening millions of livelihoods and restricting access to essential needs. According to the report, Yemen’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to contract by 0.5 percent in 2025, with inflation likely to remain elevated.

Public finances are under severe strain due to fuel shortages and the Houthi blockade on oil exports in areas controlled by the Internationally Recognized Government (IRG). Meanwhile, regions governed by the Sana’a-Based Authorities are grappling with severe liquidity shortages, and external shocks, such as ongoing conflict, reduced aid, and economic sanctions, are expected to exacerbate the already fragile economic situation.

“Economic stabilization in Yemen depends on strengthening the systems that keep services running and livelihoods protected,” said Dina Abu-Ghaida, World Bank Group Country Manager for Yemen.

“Restoring confidence requires effective institutions, predictable financing, and progress toward peace to allow economic activity to resume and recovery to take hold.”

Yemen’s economy is currently unable to adapt to external shocks due stringent economic sanctions, flailing external funding, and its historic over-reliance on remittances for survival. According to a joint analysis from Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED), the Cash Consortium of Yemen (CCY), the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), and more, remittances in 2024 made up over 38 percent of Yemen’s GDP, making it the third-most remittance-dependent nation in the world.

The report also highlights that a significant decline in remittances would lead to currency destabilization, a collapse in import financing, and the widespread use of negative coping strategies, such as asset liquidation and severe dietary restrictions.

According to WFP, funding for the 2025 Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan urgently requires USD $1.1 billion for investments in food security measures and livelihood interventions and roughly $237.9 million for nutritional assistance. However, lifesaving humanitarian programs have been forced to suspend or halt certain operations as funding is at its lowest level since the beginning of the crisis in 2015, with contributions at only 24 percent. Beginning in January 2026, WFP will reduce the number of people receiving food assistance in IRG areas from 3.4 million to 1.6 million due to funding shortfalls. In Sana’a Based Authorities, all WFP operations will remain paused.

The United Nations (UN) and its partners continue to call for increased donor contributions as the evolving economic situation reshapes the food security landscape, which remains subject to change.

Through its operations, WFP will provide targeted emergency and nutrition assistance, such as distributing agricultural inputs like seeds, tools, and fertilizers, as well as fishing and livestock production packages, such as fishing gear, small ruminants, and poultry.

Cash assistance will also be paired with these efforts to protect the livelihoods of households dependent on livestock. The organization will also strengthen its operational readiness for potential conflict escalation, ensuring rapid and second-line food security responses.

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Delegates met at the Global Climate-Smart Agriculture Conference in Brasília before the COP30 climate talks. Credit: 2025Clim-Eat/Flickr

By Ana Maria Loboguerrero and Dhanush Dinesh
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 20 2025 (IPS)

The language of agricultural sustainability changes like the seasons—from “climate-smart” to “regenerative,” “agroecological,” and “nature-positive.” Each term reflects good intentions, but the growing list risks duplication, confusion and delays.

The recent CSA Conference in Brasília gathered leaders from policy, science and finance ahead of COP30 to focus not on buzzwords but on the shared foundations of sustainable food systems, which is all the more important in the Grave New World. For all the various theories of change, many share the same principles of soil health, crop innovation, inclusive finance and resilient livestock production.

In the midst of the COP30 climate talks, consensus will depend on recognizing that climate action and protecting livelihoods must advance together. Leaders must challenge themselves to measure success not only in emissions reduced, but also in the quality of life sustained by a thriving and resilient rural economy. With Brazil’s COP presidency determined to accelerate agreements into action, the challenge now is to accept and advance context-specific approaches in pursuit of a shared goal.

At present, fragmentation continues to divide institutions, donors, NGOs and producers, with competing ideologies slowing progress toward sustainability at the speed and scale required. For example, while a vast number of organizations are currently backing the concept of regenerative agriculture, others tread the paths of sustainable intensification or climate-smart agriculture. But some of the practices, such as agroforestry, could fall under each of these concepts.

And the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA), established prior to COP26, has been succeeded by Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on the Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security and yet farmers are still waiting for clear national strategies to emerge from years of workshops and working papers. While the principles underpinning these joint work programs are sound, they have not generated action at the speed needed.

On the other hand, the six CSA Conference themes—from soil health and crop innovation to finance and policy—offer a fundamental framework around which there is already much agreement and can deliver results under whichever buzzword it is categorized. The themes also reflect the priorities of Brazil’s Action Agenda and ABC+ Plan, highlighting practical areas of consensus.

Brazil’s experience offers tangible examples of how shared priorities can move from discussion to delivery. The ABC+ Plan (2020–2030) forms the backbone of the country’s low-carbon agriculture strategy, integrating sustainable practices like no-till farming, pasture recovery and biological nitrogen fixation into a coherent national framework. It represents a direct contribution to the COP30’s Action Agenda’s agricultural pillar, transforming abstract goals on soil health and productivity into measurable outcomes.

Building on this, Brazil’s RENOVAGRO is the financing arm that enables the implementation of the ABC+ Plan, demonstrating how public policy can activate private investment to move all Action Agenda ambitions forward together. By tying credit eligibility to verified adoption of low-carbon practices, the program allows farmers to commit to transitions that would otherwise be out of reach. This realizes the ABC+ Plan’s policy objectives and shows that progress depends not necessarily on new ideas, but on acting decisively on the systems that already work.

At COP30, the challenge is not to settle on the right language but to sustain the right actions—whatever this might look like according to local circumstances and resources. Progress depends on scaling what we already agree on: sound policies, accessible finance that doesn’t exclude vulnerable populations and resilient food systems that keep production within environmental limits. The next phase must prioritize implementation over invention.

Leaders have an opportunity to move from promises to performance. The task ahead is to scale what already works—not to define new concepts, but to deliver proven solutions faster.

Brazil’s example shows that integration works better than focusing on the continued search for a universal solution. There is no single path forward, only a combination of context-specific approaches bound by diplomatic agreement and sustainable financing.

By focusing on fundamentals, we can avoid the paralysis of competing definitions and begin to act collectively by applying the policies and practices we know work in ways that fit local realities.

Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Director, Adaptive and Equitable Food Systems at Gates Foundation
Dhanush Dinesh, Chief Climate Catalyst at Clim-Eat

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Damaged greenhouse in Bent Jbeil, Nabatieh governorate. Credit: Action Against Hunger

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Nov 10 2025 (IPS)

Food security and livelihoods in southern Lebanon are under severe threat as the repercussions of Israeli bombing continue to be felt across the region, a report released today (NOV 10) has warned.

Almost a year since a ceasefire was agreed, many farmers in Southern Lebanon are still denied access to their land due to displacement, ongoing Israeli attacks, and soil contamination, a joint report from Action Against Hunger, Oxfam and Insecurity Insight has found.

The impacts of the war, coupled with regular Israeli attacks and occupation, have wiped out farmland and destroyed crops and essential food infrastructure, threatening food security and livelihoods in some of the country’s most fertile and productive areas, according to the report.

“Food insecurity is a huge concern in Lebanon, affecting around a fifth of its population, and this report shows how damage and displacement are devastating production in some of its most fertile lands. As winter approaches, more and more families face hunger and poverty,” Suzanne Takkenberg, Action Against Hunger Country Director, told IPS.

The report, “’We Lost Everything’: The Impact of Conflict on Farmers and Food Security in Lebanon,” lays bare the effects of repeated and ongoing attacks by Israeli forces on Lebanese agricultural land and food production.

It highlights the lasting disruption to the agricultural sector and damage to the rural economy as seeds, fuel and other items necessary to plant and harvest, such as fertilizer and fuel, fodder, workers, and equipment, have become harder to obtain, while damaged roads mean transporting goods can sometimes be impossible.

Displacement and continued lack of access to land are among the major problems farmers are facing.

Almost half of the farmers interviewed for the report had been internally displaced and nearly a year on since the ceasefire was agreed, approximately 82,000 people remain unable to go home due to ongoing Israeli occupation and armed violence.

The ongoing presence of Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, despite a February 2025 deadline for their withdrawal, is also preventing people from accessing land to farm.

“Agricultural losses are not only caused by shelling or burning. When farmers cannot reach their land because of displacement or military presence, the outcome is the same: fields go unplanted, and food disappears,” Christina Wille, Director of Insecurity Insight, told IPS.

The five areas in southern Lebanon remaining under Israeli occupation as of September 2025.
Credit: Map: Insecurity Insight. Base Map: UN OCHA

But farmers have also complained of another serious effect of the bombings – contamination with/from explosive remnants of war (ERW) and white phosphorus.

White phosphorus can have detrimental effects on soil fertility and plant growth, which affects farmers’ ability to grow and harvest crops – with a knock-on effect for food security.

“ERW also poses a serious risk, as not only can these weapons degrade over time and contaminate water and soil, but they can also lead to serious injury and even death if unexploded ordnance detonates unexpectedly,” explained Wille.

“Explosive contamination freezes life in place. It keeps people displaced, fields uncultivated, and entire communities in limbo. Farmers told us that the war didn’t just destroy their crops but also their confidence. Food security is not only about seeds and soil. It is also about whether people feel safe enough to work the land,” she added.

The scale of the losses farmers have endured since the start of the conflict is immense.

“Our findings show that around 90% of farmers we interviewed have seen their food production drop since October 2023. That is a systemic collapse, not a seasonal shock,” Drew East, Researcher at Insecurity Insight, told IPS.

The food production of several farmers in Khiam, Bodai, Saaideh, Baalbek and Aitaroun has completely stopped, depriving them of their main income sources.

Meanwhile, farmers in areas of southern Lebanon and Bekaa that have seen some of the worst conflict incidents have seen losses not just of land but of homes, livestock, and agricultural assets.

But it is not just the livelihoods of farmers that have been ruined.

“Some farmers have lost everything and this will have devastating repercussions not just for them and their families, but also for the communities they help to feed,” said Wille.

The ongoing threat of violence and the levels of destruction witnessed throughout the conflict have also had a profound impact on the physical and psychological well-being of affected communities, according to the report.

“Farmers across Lebanon are already in crisis as historically low rainfall has led to the worst drought on record. This climate stress is being exacerbated by the ongoing effects of the conflict, including contamination of the land, restricted access and disruption to supply chains. Urgent action is needed to restore hope for farmers and communities who rely on them,” said Takkenberg.

Farmers also warned of the need for urgent assistance to address worsening hunger and poverty among communities.

Experts believe that until the ceasefire agreed upon one year ago is fully adhered to, affected farmers will not be able to recover fully.

“The repeated attacks on farmland in South Lebanon and Bekaa are not only destroying livelihoods but undermining Lebanon’s food security. There must be an immediate end to these violations and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces so that farmers can safely return to their land and rebuild their lives,” Oxfam in Lebanon Country Director Bachir Ayoub said.

“Three key elements farmers identified that would enable them to end the negative cycle afflicting southern Lebanon and fully resume food production were financial assistance, a complete cessation of hostilities, and the clearance of ERW-contaminated land,” added Wille.

The report comes just months after the same groups warned at least 150,000 people had been left without running water across the south of Lebanon after Israeli attacks had damaged and destroyed swathes of water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities since the beginning of the conflict.

A report detailed how repeated attacks on Lebanese water infrastructure between October 2023 and April 2025 had led to long-term disruption to supplies of fresh water and caused losses estimated at USD171 million across the water, wastewater and irrigation sectors.

Meanwhile, a severe rainfall shortage had exacerbated the problem, increasing risks of outbreaks of waterborne diseases.

In the latest report, its authors point out that all parties to the conflict have clear obligations under International Humanitarian Law to protect objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, including foodstuffs, agricultural areas, crops and livestock.

And they have issued a call for urgent action to push for more humanitarian and development material support and funding to help with the situation and have stressed the need for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory as part of the ceasefire.

“The most urgent call could be to help people to safely return home and to work and address food insecurity as soon as possible,” said Wille.

“This is not last year’s conflict. The report tells the story of communities that are not just struggling to recover but under ongoing attack- as we’ve seen most intensely in the last few days,” said Takkenberg.

“Our teams are operating in this highly volatile environment to support those in need – rebuilding greenhouses, restoring roads, distributing cash and providing essential agricultural inputs. Working side by side with local authorities and communities, we are doing what we can to repair livelihoods and create space for renewal. But ultimately, this won’t be possible until we have lasting peace,” she added.

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Time2Graze will use Sentinel-2 satellite data to track pasture biomass and support farmers and land managers to make informed decisions about grazing management, resource allocation, and sustainable land use.

By Lindsey Sloat
LANCASTER, PA, Oct 24 2025 (IPS)

Thousands of years ago, we looked to the stars for guidance — constellations like Taurus and the Pleiades signalled the changing of the seasons and the best times to plant, harvest and move animals.

Today, we may soon turn skyward once again, but this time to satellites that reveal in near-real-time when and where grasses are most nutritious and digestible. Feeding livestock at these peak moments not only boosts growth but also cuts methane, since animals release the most methane during digestion, a process known as enteric fermentation.

Globally, enteric fermentation from livestock accounts for nearly one third of methane emissions generated from human activities. This matters because methane has 86 times the heat-trapping power of CO2 over a 20-year period; yet it breaks down much faster. This means that methane reduction is one of the fastest ways to slow down the rate of global temperature rise.

Smarter grazing is a major opportunity. Farmers already rotate herds so pastures can recover but often rely on guesswork. When cattle graze younger, more digestible grasses, they produce less methane per unit of milk or meat. Yet in many regions, farms capture only 40 to 60 percent of their pasture’s potential. Unlocking this potential would improve productivity and cut emissions.

Two thirds of all agricultural land worldwide is devoted to livestock grazing, so even small efficiency gains can have a big impact. A 10 percent improvement in feed digestibility, for example, can reduce methane emissions per unit of feed or product by 12 to 20 percent.

Closing this pasture productivity gap by optimizing grazing would not just significantly reduce methane emissions, but also improve livestock keepers’ livelihoods, because increases in livestock productivity translate into more milk and more meat per animal.

The newly launched Time2Graze project, funded by the Global Methane Hub and in partnership with Land & Carbon Lab’s Global Pasture Watch research consortium, will apply Sentinel-2 satellite data and modelling to track pasture biomass.

This near-real-time data, combined with rancher observations and digital decision support tools, will provide important information for farmers and land managers, helping them to make informed decisions about grazing management, resource allocation, and sustainable land use.

This new data will offer free, open, up-to-date information that will be available on Google Earth Engine and other platforms to guide when and where animals should graze to consume the most abundant and digestible forage. To ensure usefulness to livestock farming and pastoralism, Time2Graze partners will conduct on-farm trials at more than 100 sites across eight countries in Latin America and Africa.

Alongside other livestock sector advances — improved feed additives, manure management, and animal health and genetics included — digital and data-enabled livestock management is essential to delivering climate solutions at the necessary speed and scale. Within the food system, these advances sit alongside improvements to rice production, reducing food loss and waste, and shifting high-meat diets toward plants.

Livestock management data innovations arrive at a pivotal moment in the development of international policies around methane emissions. More than 150 countries have signed the Global Methane Pledge, committing to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Livestock enteric fermentation is the single largest source they must tackle. Likewise, the UN COP28 climate talks’ Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems and many countries’ climate strategies, or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), now emphasize methane mitigation and climate-smart agriculture as cornerstones of their strategies.

Yet, climate finance dedicated to global livestock systems languishes at just 0.01 percent of total spend, equivalent to a US$181 billion funding gap, lagging far behind the ambition demonstrated by these international initiatives.

Innovations in satellite-based grassland and forage monitoring are emerging as powerful tools to cut methane while improving productivity. Governments, climate finance institutions, and development banks should prioritize and expand support for these kinds of solutions to accelerate their impact across the livestock sector.

Redirecting a fraction of agricultural subsidies and climate finance toward such efficiency gains could not only unlock rapid, measurable methane reductions, but also additional co-benefits, such as reducing deforestation and ecosystem conversion, safeguarding future food security, and strengthening rural livelihoods. Realizing this potential will depend not only on data, but also on farmer adoption, political will, and the ability to scale solutions across diverse grazing systems.

For generations, the stars helped farmers decide when to move their animals. Today, satellites can do the same, but with far greater precision. With more investment and adoption, these new guides can help agriculture deliver on its climate promises.

Lindsey Sloat, Research Associate, Land & Carbon Lab and World Resources Institute

IPS UN Bureau

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