Joseph Loree, who lives in the oil-rich Lokichar area of Turkana in northern Kenya, keeps a few goats due to frequent droughts. Governments in the Global South are spending billions of dollars subsidising industries harming the climate, such as the one in Lokichar. Credit: Maina Waruru/IPS

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Sep 18 2024 (IPS)

A report examining corporate capture of public finance is accusing industries fueling the climate crisis, including fossil fuel ones, of draining public funds in the Global South, singling them out for squeezing out of governments USD 700 billion in public subsidies each year.

The report, How theFinance Flows: Corporate capture of public finance fuelling the climate crisis in the Global South, released on 17 September says that the climate-destructive sectors are benefiting from money that could go to paying for schooling for all Sub-Saharan African children 3.5 times over, even as Global South renewable energy projects remain starved of cash, receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossil fuels sector.

While urging governments in the developing world to allocate more of their limited resources in ways that “truly serve their people’s needs” through climate solutions for food and energy, the analysis of financial flows by ActionAid reveals that the fossil fuel sector in the region received a staggering annual average of USD 438.6 billion a year in subsidies, between 2016 (when the Paris Agreement was signed) and 2023.

The industrial agriculture sector alone benefited from the government subsidies equivalent to a whopping USD 238 billion a year on average between 2016 and 2021, even as it continued to contribute to the worsening of nature, it  reveals.

It further reveals that the industries causing the climate crisis are also draining the lion’s share of public funds, including in “climate-hit countries,” in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, even as initiatives providing climate solutions remain severely underfunded.

The report points to corporate capture of public finance, combined with a lack of international climate finance, as some of the factors holding back climate action in some of the “countries and communities that need it most”.

While also finding that climate finance grants from the Global North for climate-hit countries are still grossly insufficient to support climate action and the necessary transitions in the southern hemisphere, it gives examples of several countries in Africa where policies in place were in conflict with actual reality actions.

These include the fossil fuel-rich African countries of South Africa and Nigeria, which have been found to be heavily subsidizing the discredited sector.

The countries, including Bangladesh in South Asia, Action Aid says were providing fuel subsidies up to between 22 and 33 times the “per capita level of annual public investment in renewable energy” flow, for example.

As a result, in the hemisphere, renewable energy initiatives are receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossils sector, while climate finance grants amount to just a 20th of the Global South’s public finance going to fossils and industrial agriculture.

“While trillions of dollars in climate finance from the Global North to the Global South are necessary to adequately address the climate and development crises, Global South governments must allocate their limited resources in ways that truly serve their people’s needs through climate solutions for food and energy,” it says.

“Meanwhile, the failure of Global North countries to provide adequate climate finance for climate transitions means that Global South countries are locked into harmful development pathways that destroy ecosystems, grab lands and compound the injustice of climate change,” it adds.

Citing the example of Southern Africa’s Zambia, it says that the industrial agriculture sector in the country gobbled up 80 percent of the national agriculture budget in 2023, through subsidies for “climate-harming synthetic fertilizer’s and commercial seeds.”

“Meanwhile, only 6 percent of the Agriculture Ministry’s Agricultural Development and Productivity Programme was spent on supporting farmers to adopt agroecological, nature-friendly farming approaches, that naturally strengthen soil fertility and reduce dependency on agrochemical inputs,” it explains the contradiction.

Zambia’s neighbor Zimbabwe has made public policy statements in support of a shift towards agroecology, a shift evidenced by 34 percent of the country’s agriculture budget this year supporting farmers to adopt practices to move from climate-destructive agrochemicals.

Despite that, Zimbabwe is still using approximately 50 percent of its entire national agriculture budget towards subsidizing industrial agribusiness inputs such as fertilizers and hybrid seeds,” signaling the industry’s continued control over the sector and budget, as well as the potential to free up more public finances for public good’.

Two west African countries, the Gambia and Senegal, and South America’s Brazil were equally  found to be engaging in contradictory practices, making public investments in renewable energy, on a scale that is almost comparable to the per capita public subsidy provision for fossil fuels.

In the Gambia, the scale of public investment in renewable energy is more than four-fifths that of public finance provided to fossil fuels; while in Brazil and Senegal, the scale of renewables investment was found to be two-thirds that of fossil fuel subsidies.

“Kenya’s ambition to be a global leader in renewable energy is borne out by the finding that per capita investment in renewables in the country is outspending public subsidy provision to fossil fuels. However, recent protests in Kenya against the government’s reduction of fossil fuel subsidies underline the importance of feminist Just Transition principles,” the investigation found.

“Shifts in public financing must be carefully sequenced to protect the rights of people—especially women—living in poverty. Any reductions in fossil fuel subsidies should target the wealthy corporations first. Only once accessible and democratic alternatives and comprehensive social protections are available to people on low incomes, should progressive policies be shifted,” the analysis concluded.

The report further found that governments in the North continue to disproportionately fuel the climate crisis, and even though the developed world has just a quarter of the world’s population, their annual average fossil fuel subsidies amounted to USD 239.7 billion.

Action Aid laments that renewable energy public investment in the Global South comes to an annual average of USD 10.3 billion each year, noting that even worse, renewable energy investment in the South has been on a downward trend, more than halving from USD 15 billion in 2016 to USD 7 billion in 2021.

It calls on governments to speed up the transition to green, resilient, democratic and people-led climate solutions for food and energy, such as renewable energy and agroecology. “For Global South countries already experiencing the devastating consequences of climate change, the need for global transition is all the more urgent”.

According to Arthur Larok, Secretary General of ActionAid International, the report further helps expose wealthy corporations’ ‘parasitic’ behavior.

“They are draining the life out of the Global South by siphoning public funds and fueling the climate crisis. Sadly, the promises of climate finance by the Global North are as hollow as the empty rhetoric they have been uttering for decades. It is time for this circus to end; we need genuine commitments to ending the climate crisis,” he said.

The report also debunks the “false narrative” that fossil fuel and industrial agriculture expansion in the Global South is necessary to address food insecurity and energy poverty and to provide livelihoods and public revenue, said Teresa Anderson, Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid International and one of the report’s authors.

“It seems that money is the root of all climate upheaval. Climate-destructive industries are bleeding the Global South of the public funds they should be using to deal with the climate crisis. “The lack of public and climate finance for solutions means that in climate-vulnerable countries, renewable energy is receiving 40 times less public finance than the fossil fuel sector,” she added.

The time had come for the poor to stand up to industries that are draining their finances and wrecking the climate.

Public resources, the report recommends, should be directed toward supporting just transition away from climate-destructive fossil fuels and industrial agriculture and in favor of “people-led climate solutions that safeguard people’s rights to food, energy and livelihoods.”

It should also go to scaling up decentralized renewable energy systems to provide energy access, and gender-responsive agricultural extension services that offer training in agro-ecology and adaptation.

It appeals to wealthy countries to provide “trillions of dollars in grant-based climate finance each year to Global South countries on the front lines of the climate crisis,” including by agreeing to an ambitious new climate finance goal at COP29.

Further, it calls for regulation of the banking and finance sectors to end destructive financing, including setting minimum standards for human rights, social and environmental frameworks, and transformation of the international financial institutions that are pushing climate-vulnerable countries into “spiraling debt.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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"Women Leaders at COP 21 in Paris Raise the Banner for Gender Awareness in Any Climate Deal." Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
PARIS, France , Dec 8 2015 (IPS)

53-year old Aleta Baun of Indonesia’s West Timor province is a proud climate warrior. From 1995 to 2005 she successfully led a citizens’ movement to shut down 4 large marble mining companies that polluted and damaged the ecosystem of a mountain her community considered sacred. After their closure in 2006, she became a conservationist and restored 15 hectares of degraded mountain land, reviving dozens of dried springs and resettling 6,000 people who were displaced by the mining.

On Monday, on the eve of the Gender Day at the ongoing UN Climate Change Summit (COP21) in Paris, Baun who is better known as or ‘Mama Aleta’ in West Timor, had a strong message for the negotiators: for a climate deal to be effective on the ground, it also had to be gender equal and recognize women’s climate leadership.

Running a landscape restoration project is costly. Baun has so far spent about 50,000 dollars pooled by community members and local NGOs. The project needs much more for completion. But this is a challenge as official funding has not come forth. This dismays Baun who feels that although women were setting great examples of climate leadership, it is not officially recognized by governments and international policy makers.

For example, she said, there was no official communication between the Indonesian delegation of negotiators at the COP and grassroots women climate activists like her. “We don’t know who the negotiators are and we don’t know what they are negotiating. We feel that we, the indigenous women, are alone in this fight against climate change,” she said.

Baun’s dismay and disappointment was shared by several other women leaders who expressed their thoughts on the draft climate policy at the COP. The draft, tabled at the end of the first week for formal negotiations, was “far from ideal,” said a woman leader because it had “too many brackets that made the text too complicated.”

“The purpose of the many sections is not clear. Also, some crucial components are missing. For example, gender equality is there, but indigenous people are not. One very important thing is inter-generational equity. For us, this is a core issue and it’s really not clear,” said Sabina Bok of Women in Europe for a Common Future.

Farah Kabir, head of ActionAid in Bangladesh agreed as her country has been hit by extreme weather events like flooding and sea disasters that have affected millions of women from poor communities. “The draft policy has lack of clarity on several of these points,” she said.

Presently, the key demands of most women leaders at the COP21 included commitment by all governments to keep global warming under 1.5 Celsius to prevent catastrophic climate change, including in all climate actions the recognition of human rights, gender equality, rights of indigenous peoples and intergenerational equity and provide new, additional and predictable gender-responsive public financing.

But, the negotiators seemed divided on the global warming target, which dismayed Kabir. “It is not clear whether the deal will stop global warming at 1.5 degree or at 2 degrees, the later will be catastrophic for women as that will mean more disasters and more suffering for women who are already the most vulnerable people.”

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) estimated that women comprise one of the most climate vulnerable populations. As the impact of climate change on women grows bigger, the vulnerability of women across the world is also growing and there is a sheer need for allowing women greater access to renewable technologies, said many. However, these technologies also had to be safe and gender responsive, so that they responded to both the daily and different needs and priorities of women. Alongside, investment is the need to train women in how to use these technologies.

Investments are also needed to facilitate women’s leadership in both mitigation and adaptation measures, said Neema Namadamu, a women leader from northern DRC. “In Congo, women are busy planting trees to help re-grow our rain forests. First, we need assured investments into initiatives like this that is a direct flight against climate change. The hair-splitting negotiations can continue after that,” said Namadamu, founder of Mama Shuja, a civil society organization that trained grassroots Congolese women in climate action and fighting gender violence using digital media tools.

However, to ensure women’s greater access to climate finance, renewable technologies and adaptation capacity, the climate draft needed to have a sharper gender focus, felt Mary Robinson, former Prime Minister of Ireland and one of the greatest women climate leaders.

“There will be a climate deal in Paris. It will not be a ‘great’ deal, but a fairly ambitious one. But its extremely important to have a climate agreement that is ambitious, fair and also gender-fair. We definitely need an agreement that will exhilarate more women’s leadership. If we had more women’s leadership, we would have been where we are now,” Robinson said.

(End)

School children in a classroom in Gao, Mali. Advocates of a global tax body say revenues lost in tax havens could go to the building of much-needed schools, clinics, and roads and provide clean water and electricity to help combat poverty and boost development. Credit: UN Photo/Marco Dormino

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS/ADDIS ABABA, Jul 10 2015 (IPS)

When the four-day-long international conference on Financing for Development (FfD) concludes in the Ethiopian capital later this week, one of the lingering questions in the minds of departing delegates may well be: did we really achieve anything concrete after years of negotiations?

As Oxfam International rightly points out, 2015 is a big year for major global conferences – on combating poverty, inequality, environmental degradation and climate change.“Setting up a tax body is a crucial first step towards a better global financial system which works to uplift the majority and not further enrich the wealthy." -- Lidy Nacpil of APMDD

But in the first of these big conferences – in Addis Ababa, July 13-16 – decisions will be made about how money is delivered and spent by governments to tackle poverty and inequality.

One of the major sticking points during the negotiations in New York was the creation of a global tax body, including international tax reforms.

The final decision, however, will be made by ministers and high-level officials from 193 governments in Addis Ababa, the third in a series, the first FfD conference being held in Monterrey, Mexico in 2002 and the second in Doha, Qatar in 2008.

If you look at the big finance-related issues that are in the media these days, says Oxfam, “we read about economic crisis, government budget cuts, major tax dodging scandals, and countries in debt crisis. All of these are issues that fall under the financing for development agenda. “

Therefore, if the FfD conference is to be a success it could mean a rebalancing of power and a new cooperation with developing countries, which would get to have a voice in the international financial system.

The FfD conference could be a once in a decade opportunity to ensure that efforts to fight climate change, poverty and inequality are funded fairly.

“Unfortunately, current signs indicate that it will far from deliver on that promise. Negotiations (in New York) have seen more and more eroded from these ambitions,” said Oxfam in a statement released here.

McKinley Charles, media coordinator for ActionAid in Addis Ababa, told IPS its primary focus will be on tax reforms, more specifically the international tax body that is still currently being negotiated.

“We are working to improve and democratise the international tax body so that regulations can be put in place to stop tax dodging which robs developing countries of billions of dollars of revenue every year.”

These are revenues, she pointed out, that could have gone to the building of much-needed schools, clinics, and roads and provide clean water and electricity to help combat poverty and boost development.

“Addis is a big opportunity since it looks as if a decision on the international tax body will be made there,” she added.

Charles also said ActionAid, as part of its efforts, will be involved in a number of side events on tax justice, including panel debates.

ActionAid is also fielding some 12 tax policy analysts and campaigners from Europe, South Africa, Kenya, Zambia and Mozambique “to get our messages out to the policy makers and the public influencers.”

Asked whether the success or failure of the FfD will largely depend on tax reform, Alison Holder, Oxfam’s policy advisor on tax reform, told IPS the tax body issue will be a litmus test of whether this FfD conference is really about building a new common agenda and whether it is about real reform to address the international barriers that prevent developing countries from raising sufficient tax revenue.

The tax body raises the question of whether rich countries recognise that if the world is able to finance ambitious development goals, “then we need to see some shift in the balance of power”, she said.

“Without the commitment to create a truly global tax body, any outcome from these negotiations will continue to place all of the burden of financing for development on developing countries’ own doorsteps. They would be told to improve their own tax systems and live with current broken tax system.”

Holder also said rich countries are refusing to recommit to their decades-old promise to deliver 0.7 percent of their national income in aid – which would release an estimated 250 billion dollars a year.

Official development assistance (ODA) is declining and countries need taxes to fill the gap.

“There is still a real chance that all of the months of negotiations on this FfD conference will come to nothing, and that no agreement will be forged. But this doesn’t have to be the way it turns out,” she declared.

Some of the world’s major multinational corporations are accused of shifting their profits out of countries where they make their money and hide it in tax havens, increasing their profits and leaving the poorest countries with an estimated loss of 100 billion dollars a year.

But the rich countries want to retain their status quo, where global tax rules are set within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development or OECD, long described as a rich man’s club based in Paris.

The Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), one of more than a thousand organisations which are part of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ), said it is joining the call for the establishment of a global tax body.

“Civil society groups in Asia are criticising the United States and European Union for opposing a global tax body that would be more democratic than the OECD and G20, where rich countries dominate,” said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of APMDD.

“Setting up a tax body is a crucial first step towards a better global financial system which works to uplift the majority and not further enrich the wealthy. It can level the playing field against tax evaders and provide more funds for developing countries,” she added.

Meanwhile, the European Union, the United States, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Finland and Sweden are expected to announce a new tax initiative, which aims to strengthen the capacity of developing countries’ tax authorities.

The initiative aims to double the collective overseas development aid available to help developing countries build more progressive tax systems and improve the collection of national taxes; support them in their efforts to clamp down on tax dodging practices by multinational companies; and increase their capacity to engage in global fora which deal with international tax reform.

Called the Tax Inspectors without Borders (TIWB) initiative, it will be jointly launched by the OECD and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) at a side event during the FFD3.

The initiative aims to help build tax audit capacity in developing countries by providing tax audit experts to work alongside local officials of developing country tax administrations – this should help developing countries identify cases of tax evasion and avoidance and claim back the revenue they are owed.

The TIWB programme aims to support 200 expert tax deployments between 2016 and 2019.

Holder told IPS Oxfam welcomes both initiatives to help build the capacity of developing countries’ tax administrations.

Less than 1 per cent of total aid budget is dedicated to support domestic resource mobilisation yet fairer and progressive tax systems are vital to reduce poverty and inequality. However, developing countries need more from Addis, she noted.

“Developing countries are not claiming the tax revenues they are entitled to because of a broken international tax system. This system allows multinational companies to cheat poor nations out of billions of dollars in taxes. Despite this, rich countries, led by the OECD, have denied them an equal say at the international negotiation table on new global tax rules.

“The Addis tax initiative includes the objective to increase the capacity of developing countries to negotiate global rules and to facilitate their presence at e.g. OECD-lead international tax meetings. This cannot replace the need for a truly inclusive global tax body where all countries can participate on equal footing to negotiate global tax rules. The same countries that initiated the Addis tax initiative have spent months blocking the creation of such a new intergovernmental tax body in Addis.”

Oxfam called on all countries to walk the extra mile in Addis and ensure that developing countries will be able to increase their tax revenues and build fairer tax systems at the national and global levels.

They should agree on the establishment of a U.N. tax body that will enable developing countries to claim their fair share of global corporate tax revenues, Holder declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Washing clothes in a stream, Mchinji District, Malawi. Goal-setting can lift millions of people out of poverty, empower women and girls, improve health and well-being, and provide vast new opportunities for better lives. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 6 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations, which launched one of its most ambitious anti-poverty development programmes back in 2000, has hailed it as a riveting success story – despite shortcomings.

Launching the final report of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at a meeting in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Monday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said “following profound and consistent gains, we now know that extreme poverty can be eradicated within one more generation.”“If people go to bed hungry, don’t have access to water and sanitation, to education or health coverage, the income threshold is not the end of poverty." -- Ben Phillips of ActionAid

The MDGs, which are targeted to end this December, “have greatly contributed to this progress, and have taught us how governments, business, and civil society can work together to achieve transformational breakthroughs,” he said.

The United Nations claims it has cut poverty by half. “The world met that goal – and we should be very proud of that achievement,” he added.

But the target for the complete eradication of poverty from the developing world has been set for 2030 under a proposed post-2015 development agenda, including a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be launched at a summit meeting of world leaders in September.

Goal-setting can lift millions of people out of poverty, empower women and girls, improve health and well-being, and provide vast new opportunities for better lives, according to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2015 released Monday.

“Only two short decades ago, nearly half of the developing world lived in extreme poverty. The number of people now living in extreme poverty has declined by more than half, falling from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015,” the study said.

But civil society organisations (CSOs) were sceptical about the claims.

Jens Martens, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum (New York/Bonn), told IPS rather bluntly: ”The MDGs are not a success story.”

They reduced the development discourse to a small number of quantitative goals and targets and did not touch the structural framework conditions of development, he said.

Pointing out some of the shortcomings, he said the goal on income poverty has been weak and the threshold of 1.25 dollars per day completely inadequate. Someone with a per capita income of 1.26 dollars is still poor.

“And focusing only on income poverty is not at all sufficient. Governments have to deal with the problems of poverty and inequality in all their dimensions.”

Furthermore, said Martens, the MDGs did not take into account that the consumption and production patterns of the people in the global North, with their impact on climate change and biodiversity, have grave consequences for the survival and living conditions of the people in the global South.

Therefore, it is good news that the new SDGs reflect a much broader development approach, are universal and multidimensional, and contain not only goals for the poor but also goals for the rich, he noted.

Ben Phillips, International Campaigns and Policy Director at ActionAid, told IPS world leaders cannot fulfil their pledge to end poverty unless they tackle the crisis of the widening gap in wealth and power between the richest and the rest.

Ending poverty by 2030 cannot and should not be only an arithmetic exercise on the basis of very low dollar poverty lines which will not guarantee a life of dignity for all, he said.

“If people go to bed hungry, don’t have access to water and sanitation, to education or health coverage, the income threshold is not the end of poverty,” Phillips said.

Even to get beyond the very low poverty lines they have, however, growth will not be enough if it is not more evenly shared, he said.

“The world can overcome poverty and ensure dignity for all if political leaders find the courage to challenge inequality by boosting jobs, increasing minimum wages, providing universal public services, stopping tax dodging and tackling climate change.”

Governments need to stand up to corporate interests who are now so powerful that they are not only the sole beneficiaries of global rigged rules but the co-authors of them, he argued.

“It’s clear that governments will only take on the power of money if they are challenged by the power of the people.”

Still, the good news is that the movement to tackle inequality and confront plutocracy is growing, declared Phillips.

Martens told IPS lessons from the MDGs show that development goals are only useful if they are linked to clear commitments by governments to provide the necessary means of implementation.

That’s why the Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development (FfD), scheduled to take place in Ethiopia next week, is of utmost importance.

To avoid the complete failure of this conference, he said, all governments have to accept that they have common but differentiated responsibilities to provide the necessary means to implement the SDGs; and they have to strengthen the U.N. substantially in international tax cooperation by establishing an intergovernmental tax body within the U.N.

Meanwhile the Millennium Development Goals Report 2015 found that the 15-year effort to achieve the eight aspirational goals set out in the Millennium Declaration in 2000 was largely successful across the globe, while acknowledging shortfalls that remain.

The data and analysis presented in the report show that, with targeted interventions, sound strategies, adequate resources and political will, even the poorest can make progress.

Highlighting some of the shortcomings, the report said that although significant gains have been made for many of the MDG targets worldwide, progress has been uneven across regions and countries, leaving significant gaps.

Conflicts remain the biggest threat to human development, with fragile and conflict-affected countries typically experiencing the highest poverty rates.

Gender inequality persists in spite of more representation of women in parliament and more girls going to school.

Women continue to face discrimination in access to work, economic assets and participation in private and public decision-making, according to the report.

Despite enormous progress driven by the MDGs, about 800 million people still live in extreme poverty and suffer from hunger.

Children from the poorest 20 per cent of households are more than twice as likely to be stunted as those from the wealthiest 20 per cent and are also four times as likely to be out of school. In countries affected by conflict, the proportion of out-of-school children increased from 30 per cent in 1999 to 36 per cent in 2012, the report said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

G7-based companies and investors cheated Africa out of an estimated six billion dollars in a year through just one form of tax dodging, according to a new Oxfam report ‘Money talks: Africa at the G7’, released Jun. 2.

This is equivalent to three times the amount needed to plug the healthcare funding gap in the Ebola-affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and at-risk Guinea Bissau.

According to an Oxfam briefing paper release in April this year, an estimated 1.7 billion dollars is required to close the healthcare funding gap to improve dangerously inadequate health systems in these countries. This figure is based on raising spending to the recommendation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) that 86 dollars per capita is required to achieve the minimum package of essential services.“Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the United Kingdom and other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare and send their children to school” – Nick Brye, Oxfam’s Head of U.K. Campaigns

The new Oxfam report comes as G7 leaders prepare to meet their African counterparts at the annual summit in Bavaria, Germany from Jun. 8 to 9. African leaders from Ethiopia (Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn), Liberia (President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf), Nigeria (President Muhammadu Buhari) and Senegal (President Macky Sall) are scheduled to join an outreach session on Jun. 8.

Oxfam is calling for the leaders of the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States – to include action for ambitious tax reform in discussions about how the group can support economic growth and sustainable development on the continent.

In the United Kingdom, Oxfam is part of a coalition that has been calling on the recently elected new British government to show leadership by introducing a Tax Dodging Bill, which would make it harder for U.K. companies to avoid paying tax in the countries in which they operate – practices which currently cost some of the world’s poorest countries billions each year.

The coalition, which includes ActionAid and Christian Aid in addition to Oxfam, is currently running a Tax Dodging Bill campaign.

According to Oxfam, a well-crafted Tax Dodging Bill would also make it harder for big companies to avoid paying tax in the United Kingdom, and could bring in at least 3.6 billion pounds (5.4 billion dollars) a year to the U.K. Treasury, the equivalent of 600 pounds (910 dollars) for every household living below the poverty line.

“Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the United Kingdom and other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare and send their children to school,” said Nick Brye, Oxfam’s Head of U.K. Campaigns.

“To fund the fight against poverty and to tackle worsening extreme inequality, we need action to ensure big companies pay their fair share, here and in the world’s poorest nations.”

Oxfam also notes that existing international efforts to tackle corporate tax dodging, such as the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) process, led by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD) for the G20 group of the world’s major economies, will leave gaping tax loopholes.

It warns that these loopholes can continue to be exploited by multinational companies across the developing world and that many African nations have been shut out of discussions on BEPS reform and will not benefit from them as a result.

Oxfam is also calling for British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne to attend July’s Financing for Development Conference in Ethiopia which will play host to heads of states and finance ministers from around the world.

The talks, which will focus on how the international community will fund development over the next two decades, are an opportunity for governments to work together to start shaping a more democratic and fairer global tax system.

In 2010, the last year for which data are available, Oxfam says that companies and investors based in G7 countries avoided paying tax on 20 billion dollars of income through a practice called trade mispricing – where a company artificially sets the prices for goods or services sold among its subsidiaries to avoid taxation.

With corporate tax rates in Africa averaging 28 percent, this equates to nearly six billion dollars in lost revenues. In addition, developing countries as a whole lose around 100 billion dollars a year through tax avoidance schemes involving tax havens, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“Reforming global corporate tax rules so that African governments can claim the money owed to them is vital to tackle extreme poverty and inequality and boost economic growth, said Brye. “That’s why Oxfam has been calling for a U.K. Tax Dodging Bill that would ensure U.K. companies do their bit to help poor families at home and in developing countries.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

The land by Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County, Liberia, has been leased by the government to Equatorial Palm Oil for 50 years. Credit: Wade C.L. Williams/IPS

By Soren Ambrose
NAIROBI, Apr 23 2015 (IPS)

Parents in despair because they can’t pay the fees at the privatised neighbourhood school…

Families left without healthcare because the mining company that pollutes their river also dodges the taxes that could pay for their treatment…

Women getting four hours of sleep a night as they try to balance caring for their families and homes with earning income…

Soren Ambrose

Whole communities thrown off their land to make way for a foreign company…

Workers paid so little by employers that they’re suffering malnutrition.

These are just a few of the reports I’ve heard from my colleagues in recent months.

We see people frustrated by the surge in the power of the plutocrats.

Plutocracy is a society or a system ruled and dominated by a small minority of the wealthiest. The rich have always been powerful; some element of plutocracy has been present in all societies.

But the degree of control being exercised now; the number of the ultra-rich essentially buying political power; the nearly impossible persistence required to overcome the legal, public relations, and technical resources controlled by corporations and the richest individuals; the much denser concentration of wealth in even the largest countries; and the global nature of the resources, power, and connections being accumulated have combined to foreclose meaningful democratic options and space for a life independent of the materialistic values of the plutocracy.The economy no longer facilitates human society; humans live to serve the economy.

The logic that undergirds all of this – the greed for money, power, and control – is antithetical to preserving an environment in which living things can thrive. Through most of human history we have endured various unbalanced political and social systems.

Today’s market economy has roots going back centuries, but only in this one has it become so monolithic, with virtually the entire world under its spell.

We are living in an age of hyper-capitalism: we have gone beyond industrialisation and value-addition to a point where the rules are written by the financiers, and the finance industry, rather than a sector that actually makes something, has become arguably the most politically powerful industry in history.

A brief period of relative equality in the richer countries after World War II gave way from the late 1970s to a powerful ideology of competition, unending growth, and unhindered profit. This ideology was charted deliberately by institutes lavishly funded by aspiring plutocrats.

The denial of limits, the privileging of competition and profit over cooperation and public goods, and the capitulation of governments to the power of money has made the modern plutocracy a dominant reality, and one that must be reversed.

Commentators now routinely speak of how people can “contribute to the economy.” The economy no longer facilitates human society; humans live to serve the economy. “Freedom” has been reconfigured to refer to consumer choice rather than the ability to determine how to order one’s life.

A few years ago there was considerable debate about the concept of “peak oil” – the possibility we were reaching the beginning of the end of usable petroleum supplies. We may be reaching a more dangerous point: peak plutocracy, where society and the environment can sustain no more concentration of power and resources.

So it is worrying to hear so consistently from colleagues around the world the extent to which the power of people is being curtailed by the people with power.

We see the evidence of peak plutocracy in:

• the so far largely successful efforts of business interests to prevent meaningful action on climate change;

• the push for high-input, high-tech, restricted-ownership agriculture that excludes smallholder farmers – a great portion of them women — who feed most of the world’s people;

• the collusion of governments and companies in taking control of land and natural resources from communities in order to generate profits for privileged outsiders;

• the “race to the bottom” among governments to sacrifice revenues through blanket “tax holidays” in order to lure foreign investment, even when the benefits are unclear or negligible;

• the failure of governments to establish laws that protect workers from abuses ranging from trafficking to unlivable wages to unacceptably risky working conditions, with women workers in the most precarious, low-paid and inhumane jobs;

• the failure to recognise the systematic abuse of women’s rights in many areas – but in particular the deep uncompensated subsidies women provide to all economies with their unpaid and low-paid care work that keep families and societies functioning;

• the pressure put on countries – and more recently the collusion between governments and companies – to change commercial and consumer-protection laws so that foreign companies can dominate markets;

• the use of coercion, including violence, by powerful elites in private enterprises, fundamentalist movements, and repressive regimes to control women’s bodies and sexual and reproductive choices, their labour, mobility and political voice;

• the pressure to privatize schools at the expense of decent public education, despite the complete absence of evidence that the results will be beneficial to anyone beside the owners;

• the unwarranted scorn directed at the public sector, and the pervasive recourse to the notion of “private sector led development” by most donor countries and inter-governmental institutions, even in the absence of positive models

• the fetishization of foreign direct investment in low-income countries despite compelling evidence that no country has achieved sustainable development with foreign capital;

• the increasing congruence of interests among governments, corporations, and elites in limiting the freedom of action of social movements and public interest groups, constricting political space in all parts of the world;

• the increasing domination of wealthy corporations and individuals in United Nations debates and processes.

• the brazen ideological defense of inequality and massive concentration of power and resources by wealthy individuals and the institutes they fund;

• the increasing number of disasters and emergencies are turned into profit opportunities, as affected areas are remade according to the plutocrats’ rules.

• the refusal of governments to combat the global youth unemployment crisis with public jobs programs to address the widely-acknowledged looming crisis of deteriorating infrastructure;

• the fallacy of scarcity revealed by the capacity of governments to find massive public financial resources for war and bank bailouts, but seldom for programs that would employ people, combat hunger and disease, and foster renewable energy.

The hyper-concentration of wealth in the hands of the few has corrupted democratic systems, in rich countries as well as in poor ones.

We need to democratise power. But that doesn’t mean just better monitoring of elections. It means making power more horizontal, more accessible to more people, the people who are affected by the decisions made.

There is no one-off recipe for making this happen. It has to happen over and over again, every day, everywhere, with increasing connections so that we won’t be crowded out by those with money and influence. We have to occupy space and not leave it, and then occupy some more.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By Lydia Alpízar Durán
SAO PAULO, Apr 2 2015 (IPS)

When you are faced with the task of moving an object but find it is too heavy to lift, what is your immediate and most natural response? You ask someone to help you lift it. And it makes all the difference.

And so in the face of unprecedented economic, ecological and human rights crises, we should not hunker down in our silos, but rather join together and use our collective power to overcome the challenges.

The recent World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunis, showed that ‘Another World Is Possible’ if we work collectively to address the structural causes of inequality.

It is for this reason that the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) has pledged to work together with ActionAid, Civicus, Greenpeace and Oxfam.

The gathering of approximately 70,000 activists in Tunis, the various workshops held on alternate economic models – including an AWID-led session on ‘Feminist Imaginations for a Just Economy’ – the protests against shrinking spaces for dissent and the calls for social justice are critical in a world where the economic, ecological and human rights crises are interconnected and getting worse.

This is the power of the World Social Forum (WSF). This 13^th edition, held for the second time in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, is a reminder, and a call to action that it is people power that will change the world.

Changing the world, especially where women’s rights and gender justice is concerned, means recognising and bringing visibility to the interrelatedness of issues.

While in the past 20 years there have been notable achievements for women’s rights and gender justice, there is still so much more to be done.

At the centre of the current global crisis is massive economic inequality that has become the global status quo. Some 1.2 billion impoverished people account for only one percent of world consumption while the million richest consume 72 percent.

The levels of consumption in the global North cannot be sustained on this planet by its peoples or the Earth itself. They are disappearing whole ecosystems and displacing people and communities.

The challenges are not only increasing, but also deepening. Many women and girls, trans and intersex people continue to experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and vulnerability throughout their lives.

These include the disproportionate impact of poverty, religious fundamentalisms and violence on women, growing criminal networks and the increasing power of transnational corporations over lands and territories, deepening conflicts and militarisation, widespread gender-based violence, and environmental destruction.

Women have been caretakers of the environment and food producers for centuries, and are now at the forefront of its defense against habitat destruction and resource extraction by corporations.

Violence against women who defend the earth occurs with impunity, at precisely the moment when ‘women and girls’ are also receiving the attention of various corporate philanthropic actors as drivers for development.

Government and institutional commitments to address inequalities for the most part have been weak. And while people’s mobilisation and active citizenship are crucial, in all regions of the world the more people mobilise to defend their rights, the more the civic and political space is being closed off by decision-making elites.

This year’s Political Declaration from the United Nations’ 59^th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW59) is just the latest example.

Twenty years after the Beijing Declaration – the most progressive ‘blueprint’ for women’s rights of its time and the result of 30,000 activists from around the globe putting pressure on 189 participating government representatives – women’s rights and feminist groups were shut out of the CSW ‘negotiations’ with the result that the Declaration is weak and does not go far enough towards the kind of transformative change necessary to truly achieve the promises made in Beijing.

The forces of justice, freedom and equity are being relentlessly pushed back. There is an urgent need to strengthen our collective voices and power, to further expand our shared analyses and build interconnected agendas for action.

The WSF contributes to doing just that. At this year’s WSF, there was a diversity of feminist activists in attendance and the systemic causes of global inequalities were addressed in intersectional ways linking new relationships to land, and land use to patriarchy, food sovereignty, decolonisation and corporate power.

These connections make the struggle seem huge but also make possible solidarity between movements.

As a global network of feminist and women’s rights activists, organisations and movements, AWID has been working for over 30 years to transform dominant structures of power and decision-making and advance human rights, gender justice and environmental sustainability. In all that we do, collaboration is at the core.

I strongly believe that we cannot achieve meaningful transformation unless we join together in all of our diversity. So for AWID, joining with the struggles for environmental sustainability, just economies and human rights, is another step in a long trajectory of working with and for other movements.

Together we can take bolder steps, push each other further, and draw upon our combined knowledge and collective power to amplify our voices. Working together is the only way to reverse inequality, and to achieve a just and sustainable world.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Excerpt:

Farmers with the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) protest the concentration of land ownership in Brazil, during a Feb. 21 demonstration in support of the occupation of part of the Agropecuaria Santa Mônica estate, 150 km from Brasilia. Credit: Courtesy of the MST

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

The growing economic inequalities between rich and poor – and the lopsided concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the world’s one percent – are undermining international efforts to fight global poverty, environmental degradation and social injustice, according to a civil society alliance.

Comprising ActionAid, Greenpeace, Oxfam and Civicus, the group of widely-known non-governmental organisations (NGO) and global charities warn about the widening gap and imbalance of power between the world’s richest and the rest of the population, which they say, is “warping the rules and policies that affect society, creating a vicious circle of ever growing and harmful undue influence.”"Inequality is about more than economics and growth – it is now at such high levels that we risk a return to the oligarchy of the gilded age. " -- Ben Phillips of ActionAid

The group identifies a list of key concerns – including tax avoidance, wealth inequality and lack of access to healthcare – as being unduly influenced by the world’s wealthiest one percent.

In a statement released Thursday, on the eve of the World Social Forum (WSF) scheduled to take place in Tunis Mar. 24-28, the group argues the concentration of wealth and power is now a critical and binding factor that must be challenged “if we are to create lasting solutions to poverty and climate change.”

The statement – signed by the chief executives of the four organisations – says: “We cannot rely on technological fixes. We cannot rely on the market. And we cannot rely on the global elites. We need to help strengthen the power of the people to challenge the people with power.”

“Securing a just and sustainable world means challenging the power of the one percent,” the group says.

The signatories include Adriano Campolina of ActionAid, Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah of Civicus, Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace and Winnie Byanyima of Oxfam.

Asked about the impact of economic inequalities on the implementation of the U.N.’s highly touted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Ben Phillips, campaigns and policy director at ActionAid International, told IPS economic inequalities have meant that in many countries progress on poverty reduction has been much slower than it would have been if growth had been more equal.

For example, he said, Zambia has moved from being a poor country (officially) to being (officially) middle income. Yet during that time the absolute number of poor people has increased.

India’s persistently high child malnutrition rate and South Africa’s persistently high mortality rate are functions of an insufficient focus on inequality, he added.

Papua New Guinea has the highest growth in the world this year and won’t meet any MDG, because the proceeds of growth are so unequally shared, he pointed out.

Speaking on behalf of the civil society alliance, Phillips said inequality has also been the great blind spot of the MDGs – even when countries have met the MDGs they have often done so in a way that has left behind the poorest people – so goals like reducing maternal and infant mortality have been met in several countries in ways that have left those at the bottom of the pile with little or no improvement.

The four signatories say: “We will work together with others to tackle the root causes of inequality. We will press governments to tackle tax dodging, ensure progressive taxes, provide universal free public health and education services, support workers’ bargaining power, and narrow the gap between rich and poor. We will together champion international cooperation to avoid a race to the bottom.”

The statement also says that global efforts to end poverty and marginalisation, advance women’s rights, defend the environment, protect human rights, and promote fair and dignified employment are all being undermined as a consequence of the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.

“Decisions are being shaped in the narrow interests of the richest, at the expense of the people as a whole,” it says.

“The economic, ecological and human rights crises we face are intertwined and reinforcing. The influence of the one percent has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished,” the group warns.

“Faced with this challenge, we need to go beyond tinkering, and address the structural causes of inequality: we cannot rely on technological fixes – there is no app for this; we cannot rely on the market – unchecked it will worsen inequality and climate change; and we cannot rely on the global elites – left alone they will continue to reinforce the structures and approaches that have led to where we are”.

People’s mobilisation and active citizenship are crucial to change the power inequalities that are leading to worsening rights violations and inequality, the group says.

However, in all regions of the world, the more people mobilise to defend their rights, the more the civic and political space is being curtailed by repressive action defending the privileged.

“We therefore pledge to work together locally, nationally and internationally, alongside others, to uphold and defend universal human rights and protect civil society space. A more equal society that values everyone depends on citizens holding the powerful to account.”

Phillips told IPS even the U.N.’s proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be approved at a summit meeting of world leaders in September, will not be achievable if economic inequalities continue.

As leading economist Andy Sumner of King’s College, London has demonstrated, “we find in our number-crunching that poverty can only be ended if inequality falls.” Additionally, healthy, liveable societies depend on government action to limit inequality.

It is also a question of voice, and power. In the words of Harry Belafonte, a Hollywood celebrity and political activist: “The concentration of money in the hands of a small group is the most dangerous thing that happened to civilization.”

Or as Jeff Sachs, a widely respected development expert and professor at Columbia University, has noted: “Corporations write the rules, pay the politicians, sometimes illegally and sometimes, via what is called legal, which is financing their campaigns or massive lobbying. This has got completely out of control and is leading to the breakdown of modern democracy.”

Phillips said tackling inequality is core to progress on tackling poverty – both because extreme and growing economic inequality will undermine poverty reduction and because the warping of power towards the one percent is shifting the focus of governments away from their citizens and towards corporations.

“Inequality is about more than economics and growth – it is now at such high levels that we risk a return to the oligarchy of the gilded age. We need to shift power away from the one percent and towards the rest of society, to prevent all decisions being made in the narrow interests of a privileged few,” he declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The UN climate talks open in Geneva, Switzerland on Feb. 8. Credit: Jenny Lopez-Zapata

By Denise M. Fontanilla and Chris Wright
GENEVA, Feb 13 2015 (IPS)

Food security has become a key issue of the U.N. climate negotiations this week in Geneva as a number of countries and observers raised concerns that recent advances in Lima are in jeopardy.

While food security is a core objective of the U.N. climate convention, it has traditionally been discussed in relation to adaptation.“If we succeed in having food security within mitigation, we can say that one of the biggest concerns of Southern countries will have been taken into account." -- Ali Abdou Bonguéré, a negotiator for Niger

“Ask any African country what’s adaptation about – they’re going to say agriculture,” said Teresa Anderson of the international charity ActionAid. She added that 90 percent of countries who developed national adaptation plans identified agriculture as the key element.

Food security is referenced throughout the latest draft of the new climate agreement, which was released Feb. 12. One proposal for adaptation recognises the need “to build resilience of the most vulnerable linked to pockets of poverty, livelihoods and food security in developing countries.”

This language has recently been strengthened during negotiations in Lima. These discussions were seen as a minor victory for many developing nations seeking to include specific provisions for food security.

“Since Lima we have worked hard for food security to be taken into account. Food security was finally included into the adaptation section and we are currently working hard to have it also included in the mitigation negotiations as well,” said Ali Abdou Bonguéré, a negotiator for Niger.

However, this week a number of non-governmental organisations and negotiators alike have raised concerns that food security may be coming under threat.

As Teresa Anderson of ActionAid explained, there have been recent changes to the language being used within mitigation discussions that may have a long term impact on food security, especially in developing and marginalised nations.

Augustine Njamnshi, executive member of Cameroon’s Bioresources Development and Conservation Programme and part of the Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance. Credit: RTCC

These concerns began when “a few countries proposed submissions on a long term mitigation goal of ‘net zero’ emissions”. This was seen as a largely positive move, as negotiations developed a broader perspective and a number of countries proposed possible long-term pledges to reduce fossil fuel emissions by 2050 to ‘net’ or ‘near’ zero.

However, while the terms “near zero emissions” and “net zero emissions” may sound similar, some NGOs here believe they can have the exact opposite meaning. According to Anderson, while a goal of near zero emissions would be essential to addressing climate change, a long term “net zero” goal would mean that developed countries in particular could continue their emissions business as usual , while using alternative approaches to suck carbon out of the air instead of implementing real change.

Of the “net-zero” emissions approaches currently on the table, most are land-based, and would involve the scaling up of biofuels, biochar or BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage). “All of these approaches would use massive amounts of land, and this could create significant competition for food production,” she adds.

“In Africa we need land to grow our crops. You cannot be solving another problem by creating another problem,” said Augustine Njamnshi, executive member of Cameroon’s Bioresources Development and Conservation Programme and part of the Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance.

“We call for zero emissions, actually reducing emissions. Net zero means continuing pollution in some countries while stocking carbon dioxide in other countries, which will not be helpful to the communities in Africa,” he added.

This then could have a multiplying effect on food security, as “land use” was this week also introduced into the negotiations on mitigation.

“As land use is now being proposed in mitigation text, there are fears from many NGOs and countries I have talked to that an overemphasis on mitigation relating to agriculture and land will become the priority over adaptation…countries will have to sequester carbon to meet their mitigation goals,” Teresa said.

Dr. Alicia Ilaga, climate director of the Philippine agricultural ministry. Credit: Lou Del Bello via SciDev.net

This, she fears, means that developed countries could supplement their mitigation goals with plans on purchasing land used for agriculture and turning it into biofuels or biochar. As Teresa added, if this was in fact to occur, it could affect poor and subsistence farmers, especially in developing countries.

“What we have learned from the biofuel land grab, it is always the hungriest, the poorest, the most marginalised who suffer the most. In the end, they get pushed off their land and thrown into poverty as they can’t afford the price of food.”

However, a number of negotiators, including some from developing countries, have argued that these concerns are exaggerated, and assumes these negotiations are occurring in bad faith.

“I don’t think that’s the way [the European Union] would see it like that because there’s actually a lot of measures you can take within the agriculture sector that have benefits for food security, adaptation and mitigation,” according to Irish delegate Gemma O’Reilly.

This is in the context of a week of negotiations that many feel was among the most successful and collegial in the recent history of the U.N. climate negotiations. As such, O’Reilly still believes we can achieve a win-win situation in the long term.

“There are measures you want to take that’s win-win-win and that’s what you can encourage. And land-grabbing – I don’t think so,” she added.

While Geneva may have closed (the talks ran Feb. 8-13), negotiations on mitigation remain open as we move closer to a Paris deal at the end of the year. It is therefore the hope among many developing nations that the inclusion of specific safeguards within mitigation could help protect against a future climate-fuelled land grab.

“If we succeed in having food security within mitigation, we can say that one of the biggest concerns of Southern countries will have been taken into account,” Bonguéré said.

This was reiterated by Dr. Alicia Ilaga, climate director of the Philippine agriculture ministry.

“Adaptation is our priority. If there are mitigation co-benefits, okay, even better, why not? And there are co-benefits for food security. Food security is adaptation, but there are adaptation strategies with mitigation potential,“ she said.

Saying that, climate justice groups this week reminded negotiators that the greatest threat to food security remains the lack of efforts to dramatically reduce carbon emissions before 2020.

Instead of delaying what may become an inevitable climate crisis for farmers and fisherfolk in the future, they call on countries to “take up the call of local communities to transform our energy systems today”.

This approach, partnered with a rapid phase-in of renewable energies and agro-ecological farming practices, could possibly achieve the co-benefits Dr. Ilaga hopes will support food security and prevent further climate change.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

A woman from Pune, Timor-Leste, collects water for her home. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret

By Tim Brewer
LONDON, Nov 24 2014 (IPS)

The Ebola crisis has thrown into sharp relief the issue of water, sanitation and hygiene in treating and caring for the sick. Dying patients are being taken to hospitals which never had enough water to maintain hygiene, and the epidemic has pushed the system to the breaking point.

Last week’s World Health Organisation report produced by UN Water, the Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS), has provided a sobering picture of water and sanitation services so necessary to healthcare systems around the world.Half of the lucky minority of rural poor who have gained access to improved water and sanitation are still using unregulated services which have no way to guarantee safety.

The annual analysis is a gold mine of data, covering 94 countries and using information from 23 aid agencies. The story it tells this year is of modest progress alongside inadequate funding, poor monitoring and a desperate need for skilled regulators, administrators and engineers to keep services running effectively.

Among GLAAS’s most important findings are how poorly finances intended to address the water and sanitation crisis are targeted.

Urban areas are prioritised over rural regardless of the level of need – nearly three-quarters of aid spending goes to urban areas and more than 60 percent of aid is in the form of loans, which are rarely targeted to the poor. This suggests rural people and the urban poor are being further marginalised.

Nearly three-quarters of the aid targeted at water, sanitation and hygiene programmes is spend on drinking water supplies. Despite these investments in improved supplies, 1.8 billion people drink water contaminated with fecal matter.

It’s fair to assume that this is linked to the 2.5 billion people still without a basic toilet. Too much money is being invested in finding or making clean water, and not enough in containing the waste that contaminates it.

Addressing these issues effectively requires money, training and monitoring, but these, too, are falling short.

The GLAAS report has found that financing for water and sanitation in 70 percent of responding countries covers less than 80 percent of the costs of operation and maintenance for existing services.

Regulators, administrators and engineers are all in short supply in developing countries. All are of critical importance in the safe, sustainable delivery of water and basic sanitation services, fundamental to good public health and economic growth. Yet it’s rare to see plans or investment to address this. Only one third of countries even have a human resources strategy in place.

Monitoring is also seriously lacking. WaterAid is examining the sanitation transformations that took place in East Asia, and has found that responsive monitoring which actually leads to changes in policy and investment is a crucial driver of sanitation improvements. But very few countries have enough personnel to collect or review data, or enough senior political interest to demand it.

Less than half of countries have a formal rural service provider that reports to a regulatory authority, and effectively monitors its services.

What does this mean? It means that half of the lucky minority of rural poor who have gained access to improved water and sanitation are still using unregulated services which have no way to guarantee safety.

But there is progress. Proposals for the U.N.’s new Sustainable Development Goals, now under negotiation, include goals for water and sanitation services that include schools and healthcare facilities along with households.

This is of huge importance, particularly when we look at the Ebola crisis in West Africa – where healthcare systems in Liberia and Sierra Leone in particular were broken in years of conflict and never properly rebuilt – or this year’s cholera outbreak in Ghana, where 20,900 people were infected and 166 died of preventable infection transmitted by water contaminated with human waste.

The GLAAS reports that less than one-third of countries have a plan for drinking water or sanitation in health care facilities and schools that is implemented, funded and reviewed regularly. These targets are long overdue.

The state of water and sanitation is a global health crisis. Some 10 million children have died since 2000 of diarrhoeal illnesses, directly linked to growing up without clean water, basic toilets and hygiene. It is possible to reach everyone, everywhere with water, sanitation and hygiene education, but it will require strong political will, a comprehensive and accelerated approach, and financing.

As the U.N. negotiates the new Sustainable Development Goals, including a strong, dedicated goal on water and sanitation that incorporates water and sanitation targets into goals on healthcare will address many of these shortfalls.

What the present shortlist does not include, but which the GLAAS report has clearly shown, is the need to find and train people to drive this transformation, and keep services running sustainably.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Chandrasekhar Chalapurath, an economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, talks about development banks in India, at the International Seminar on the BRICS Bank. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
FORTALEZA, Brazil, Jul 17 2014 (IPS)

The creation of BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) own financial institutions was “a disappointment” for activists from the five countries, meeting in this northeastern Brazilian city after the group’s leaders concluded their sixth annual summit here.

The New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), launched Tuesday Jul. 15 at the summit in the northeastern Brazilian city of Fortaleza, represent progress “from United States unilateralism to multilateralism,” said Graciela Rodriguez, of the Brazilian Network for the Integration of Peoples (REBRIP).

But “the opportunity for real reform was lost,” she complained to IPS at the International Seminar on the BRICS Bank, held in this city Wednesday and Thursday Jul. 16-17 as a forum for civil society organisations in parallel to the sixth summit.

The format announced for the NDB “does not meet our needs,” she said.

The NDB will promote “a new kind of development" only if its loans are made conditional on the adoption of low-polluting technologies and are guided by the Millennium Development Goals and their successors, the Sustainable Development Goals. -- Carlos Cosendey, international relations secretary at the Brazilian foreign ministry
The bank’s goal is to finance infrastructure and sustainable development in the BRICS and other countries of the developing South, with an initial capital investment of 50 billion dollars, to be expanded through the acquisition of additional resources.

“We want an international system that serves the majority, not just the seven most powerful countries (the Group of Seven),” that does not depend on the dollar and that has an international arbitration tribunal for financial controversies, said Oscar Ugarteche, an economics researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“It is unacceptable that a district court judge in New York should put a country at risk,” he told IPS, referring to the June ruling of the U.S. justice system in favour of holdouts (“vulture funds”) in their dispute with Argentina, which could force another suspension of payments.

“We need international financial law,” similar to existing trade law, and an end to the dominance of the dollar in exchange transactions, which enables serious injustice against nations and persons, like embargoes on payments and income in the United States, he said.

“Existing international institutions do not work,” and the proof of this is that they have still not overcome the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, said the Mexican researcher.

Major powers like the United States and Japan have unsustainable debt and fiscal deficits, yet are not harassed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in contrast to the treatment meted out to less powerful nations, particularly in the developing South.

During the seminar, organised by REBRIP and Germany’s Heinrich Böll Foundation, oft-repeated demands were for civil society participation, transparency, environmental standards and consultation with the populations affected by projects financed by the NDB.

These demands have not yet been included in the NDB but may be discussed during its operational design over the next few years, while the group’s parliaments ratify its approval, said Carlos Cosendey, international relations secretary at the Brazilian foreign ministry, in a dialogue with activists.

Participants at one of several panels at the International Seminar on the BRICS Bank, held Jul. 16-17 in Fortaleza, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Cosendey said that a disadvantage of the multilateral bank was the need for its regulations not to be confused with infringement of national sovereignty of member states. The political, cultural, legal and ethnic differences between the five countries could pose a major obstacle to the adoption of common criteria, he said.

The NDB can be constructive “if it integrates human rights” into its principles and presents solutions for the social impacts of the projects it finances, said Nondumiso Nsibande, of ActionAid South Africa, an NGO.

“We need roads, other infrastructure and jobs, as well as education, health and housing,” but big projects tend to harm poor communities in the places where they are carried out, she told IPS. It is still not known what levels of transparency and social concern the bank will have, she said.

In the view of Chankrasekhar Chalapurath, an economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, the NDB will alleviate India’s great needs for infrastructure, energy, long distance transport and ports. However, he does not expect it to make large investments in one key service for Indians: sanitation.

Having an Indian as the bank’s first president, as the five leaders have decided, will help attract more investments, but he said people’s access to water must remain a priority.

Cosenday said the NDB will promote “a new kind of development.”

But Chalapurath told IPS that this will only happen if its loans are made conditional on the adoption of low-polluting technologies and are guided by the Millennium Development Goals and their successors, the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as human rights and other best practices.

Adopting democratic processes within the bank will facilitate dialogue with social movements, parliaments and society in general, he said.

Incorporating environmental issues and gender parity is also essential, said Ugarteche and Rodriguez, who regards this as necessary in order to make progress towards “environmental justice.”

Not only roads and ports need to be built; even more important is the “social infrastructure” that includes sanitation, water, health and education, said Rodriguez, the coordinator of the REBRIP working group on International Economic Architecture.

Mobilising resistance to large projects that affect local populations in the places they are constructed will be part of the response to the probable priority placed by the NDB on financing physical infrastructure projects, she announced.

The social organisations gathered in Fortaleza, with representatives from Brazil, India, China, South Africa and other countries that are not members of the group, are preparing to coordinate actions to influence the way the bank and its policies are designed, and to monitor its operations and the actions of the BRICS group itself.

Brazilian economist Ademar Mineiro, also of REBRIP, said there was potential for national societies to influence the format and policies of the NDB, and time for them to organise and mobilise. “It is an unprecedented opportunity,” he told IPS.

Russia did not originally support the BRICS bank, preferring private funding. But Mineiro said its position changed after the United States and the European Union involved multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank in sanctions against Moscow for its annexation of Crimea, a part of Ukraine.

BRICS evolved “from the economic to the political,” with its members demanding more power in the international system. The alliance is one of the pillars of the Chinese strategy to conquer greater influence, including in the West, said Cui Shoujun, a professor at the School of International Studies of Renmin University in China.

“The BRICS need China more than the other way round,” he told IPS, adding that the Chinese economy is 20 times larger than South Africa’s and four times larger than those of India and Russia.

As well as seeking natural resources from other countries, among the reasons why China has joined and supports BRICS is strengthening the legitimacy in power of the Communist Party through internal stability and prosperity, the academic said.

(END)

Residents of Bangalore, India, who live in extreme poverty. Credit: bandarji/ CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 26 2013 (IPS)

Key multilateral institutions charged with improving regulation of the international financial system are failing to democratise their governance and adequately consider the impact of their actions on the world’s poor, says a new report by anti-poverty groups.

The 68-page study, entitled “Global Financial Governance & Impact Report”, gave higher marks on both counts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank than to other institutions, notably various rule-making bodies on international taxation, the Group of 20 (G20), and the Basel-based Financial Stability Board (FSB).

Overall, however, the study, which was released by the ten-year-old Washington-based New Rules for Global Finance Coalition, found all agencies’ governance and impact on poor countries “very disappointing”.

“Too much of the governance of global finance remains ad hoc, with non-transparent, non-inclusive, largely unaccountable and un-responsible institutions wielding great power,” according to the coalition, which includes ActionAid, the South African Institute of International Affairs, and the Jubilee USA Network."Those who are often most affected by the rules aren't there when these rules are being made."
-- Jo Marie Griesgraber

Despite increased integration of poverty reduction into the work of the IMF and the Bank, in particular, “there are huge gaps between declarations and actions,” according to New Rules, which also includes the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Tax Justice Network, the South African Institute of International Affairs, Germany-based World Economy, Ecology & Development (WEED), and the Heinrich Boell Foundation of North America.

“All have a very long way to go before they can confidently declare that they are having a strong positive impact on equitable and sustainable development,” the report said.

“The problem is that all of the wealthy countries have a seat at the table in these institutions, while those who are often most affected by the rules aren’t there when these rules are being made,” New Rules executive director Jo Marie Griesgraber told IPS.

“What we’re trying to do is make room at the decision-making table for excluded peoples and thereby ensure that their decisions and processes benefit everyone,” she added. “This is an initial attempt to assess how these institutions are performing in that regard.”

Most experts believe that the 2008 financial meltdown was caused primarily by key national and international institutions’ failure to adequately regulate increasingly sophisticated transactions in an ever-more globalised financial marketplace – a product of the neo-liberal orthodoxy that guided many of the world’s economic policy-makers, including in the IMF and the World Bank, in the 1980s.

In the wake of the crisis, however, world leaders decided that greater regulation was required to keep the global economy from falling into a 1930s-like depression and to impose greater discipline on financial markets.

So they replaced the G8 with the G20 as the key forum for global financial policy-making; boosted lending resources and modified strategies of the IMF and the Bank; and created the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to develop and coordinate global financial regulatory policies to promote stability.

The new report marks the first effort to assess how well these rule-making agencies have performed with respect to their own internal governance, including their “transparency” in internal processes; accountability to all governments and to civil society; involvement of the poor in decision-making; and responsibility to promote “more just and economically sustainable global development, especially for people in low income countries.”

The institutions were given scores ranging from 1 (poor) to 4 (excellent) on each of the four criteria, as well as an overall score.

For the aggregate scores, the IMF, the World Bank, and the FSB all rated a 2 (moderate), while the G20 and the new tax authorities were given 1.5. On transparency, the IMF and the World Bank scored highest at close to 3 (good), while the G20 was the lowest at 1.5.

The IMF also scored highest (2.5) on inclusiveness, higher than the World Bank (2), despite the latter’s long-standing commitments to consult closely with civil society. But with respect to responsibility, the IMF and tax-related agencies received the lowest possible score.

Regarding the impact of these institutions on the world’s poorest, New Rules said it was not possible to use a common framework such as the one it applied in assessing governance. Instead, it used independent specialists and experts from within the coalition’s member organisations to evaluate each institution.

The IMF gained the highest score on impact at 2.6, followed closely by the World Bank (2.4) and the G20 (2.1), which was praised for its coordinated stimulus package devised at its 2009 London Summit, its establishment of the FSB, and its efforts at reducing transfer costs of remittances by migrants from poor countries.

The FSB received a 1.4 score, while the tax authorities received the lowest possible score in large part because none addressed the problem of “offshore” tax havens, or secrecy jurisdictions that are estimated to hold 21 to 32 trillion dollars of the world’s private wealth.

That failure, according to the report, is due primarily to the fact that the status quo powers continue to control the OECD and that the IMF and have deliberately weakened the U.N. Tax Committee.

The World Bank strongly criticised the study. “This report is deeply flawed, and it misses the mark on the World Bank’s increased push for results, our huge strides in openness, and our strong focus on accountability,” David Theis, a Bank spokesman, told IPS by email.

He noted that the “2012 Aid Transparency Index: Publish What You Fund” rated the Bank, along with the British aid agency DFID, first among all donors at the country level on transparency.

Requests to the IMF for reaction to the report went unanswered.

Griesgraber said the new report was “an initial attempt, and we know there’s a lot of room for improvement.…Our report is a challenge to the institutions. If you don’t like our data and conclusions, show us where we’re wrong.”

But, she suggested, the report’s focus on the inclusion of the poor in the governance of institutions that oversee the global financial system and the poverty-reduction impact of these same institutions offered important insights that call for greater study.

“The fact that the voices of low-income countries and the world’s poor citizens are rarely heard in the forums governing global finance almost certainly explains why they have disappointingly low impact on improving their lives,” said the report.

Women ragpickers in Delhi scavenging through a pile of refuse for recyclable material. Credit: Dharmendra Yadav/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2013 (IPS)

As world leaders from 193 countries evaluate the successes and failures of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) during high-level meetings and special events here, the United Nations claims that extreme poverty worldwide has been cut in half.

The number of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day fell from 47 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2010, five years ahead of the targeted 2015 deadline, according to the latest figures released Wednesday by the world body."The roots of global crisis are the incredible concentrations of wealth and the failure of that money to trickle down." -- Sameer Dossani of ActionAid

But much of the reduction in poverty – amounting to about 700 million people leaving the ranks of the indigent – has taken place in countries such as India, China and Brazil, which have huge populations. There are still 1.2 billion people still living in extreme poverty in most of the world’s poorer nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean.

But poverty alleviation has also resulted in the rise of a new middle class.

On the negative side, this has triggered mass social protests in Brazil, China, India, Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia. And this may be an unintended consequence of poverty eradication.

Perhaps more importantly, poverty alleviation even in these countries may hit a dead end soon because of the widespread financial crisis worldwide – as currencies collapse and exports shrink.

Martin Khor, executive director of the Geneva-based South Centre, told IPS the analysis on poverty eradication is valid and makes good points.

“The reduction of poverty coincided with exceptional global factors in the first decade of this century that is coming to an end,” he noted.

The credit boom in developed countries fuelled trade and economic growth – a rise in Gross National Product (GNP) – in developing countries, including commodity exports, he said. These countries also recovered from the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009 because of the reflationary policies of rich countries.

“But the Northern economies are in trouble, as they have changed to austerity policies and the U.S. easy money policy will have to taper down sooner or later,” said Khor, a former director of the Penang-based Third World Network.

Developing countries are now vulnerable to lower exports, reduced commodity prices and revenues and capital outflows, he warned.

In the next few years, Khor said, the slowdown of growth and possible recession in some countries and lower commodity prices are likely to impact on jobs and income, while poverty could rise again.

“It’s happening in Greece already and could happen in some developing countries,” he said.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, told IPS the MDGs have been an important force for development progress over the last 13 years.

“So many people lifted out of extreme poverty in such a short time is an achievement to celebrate,” she said.

Yet globally, more than a billion people still live on less than 1.25 dollar a day.

She said progress has been slow or non-existent where there has been protracted conflict, or where growth has been highly inequitable. “Global poverty is declining but in country after country, inequality is on the increase,” Byanyima said.

Billions of people are being left behind by economic growth, she noted.

There is an emerging consensus that high levels of inequality are not just morally objectionable, but they are damaging for social stability and to growth itself.

“These challenges must be met head-on,” she added.

Without targeted efforts to reduce gaps between rich and poor, the next set of global development goals will likely be unachievable.

“A focus on reducing inequality was a major omission in the original MDGs. Without it, the next set of global development goals is almost certain to fail,” she warned.

A stand-alone goal to tackle inequality must be included in a future framework for global development, she said.

Sameer Dossani, advocacy coordinator, Reshaping Global Power at ActionAid, told IPS the United Nations, first and foremost, needs to move beyond the 1.25 dollars-a-day definition of poverty.

“The roots of global crisis are the incredible concentrations of wealth and the failure of that money to trickle down,” he said.

One way to address the issue of global inequalities, he pointed out, is through reform of the international tax system. “At the moment we estimate that as much as 300 billion dollars in tax revenue is lost to development through a combination of corporate tax incentives and corporate tax dodging.”

At the country level, he said, countries can move away from the liberalisation policies that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions promoted in order to seek some protection.

At the global level, leaders should reform the international monetary system to reduce dependency on the U.S. dollar and ensure stability in the international financial system, said Dossani.

The debate so far has skirted these fundamental issues. A genuine development framework would have tax and international monetary system reform at the top of the agenda, he said, adding that “these issues can’t be brushed under the carpet.”

Ambassador and Permanent Representative of France to FAO H.E. Bérengére Quincy. Credit: ©FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

By Claudia Ciobanu
ROME, Jun 17 2013 (IPS)

Closing the gender gap between women and men on agriculture and food security could free over one hundred million people from hunger. 

Women represent 43 percent of the global agricultural workforce yet they have access to disproportionately less land and productive resources, according to FAO’s report The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011.

Not only are they discriminated against in terms of access to credit and land, but they also are burdened with more house and family care chores and are more likely to be in precarious and low-paid employment.

During this week’s biannual conference in Rome, FAO announced the mainstreaming of gender across all its policies and put its gender policy for discussion in front of the national delegations.“In order to close the gender gap, it is not enough to adopt the gender lens." - ActionAid International’s Alberta Guerra

Observers of FAO’s work on gender argue that the organisation has made very good progress over the past years, and that the basic necessary documents and normative frameworks needed for closing the gender gap are now in place.

But care must now be paid to implementation.

“Gender mainstreaming is necessary but not a guarantee,” Berengere Quincy, France’s representative to FAO, tells TerraViva. “The mainstreaming needs to be backed up by better knowledge and expertise and followed up with clear objectives and indicators of progress.”

In many places around the world, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen pointed out in his speech given in Rome at the kickoff of the FAO biannual conference, women are also discriminated against when it comes to nutrition, with men systematically getting the best food. In turn, this weakens women’s chances of meeting their full potential.

FAO’s report quoted above further points out that granting women equal access to land and resources as men would increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 percent, which in turn would lead to raising agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to four percent and saving 100 to 150 million people from malnourishment.

In response to these realities – and to pressures from civil society – FAO has over the past two years made significant progress on turning itself into an organisation focused on closing the gender gap when it comes to food security.

The 2010-2011 State of Food and Agriculture report was for the first time focused on women’s role in the global food system. Importantly, it brought quantitative data to support the idea that empowering women contributes significantly to FAO’s mission of defeating hunger, which in turn contributed to gender issues being embraced across FAO departments.

In 2012, the organisation published a Gender Policy which aims to both prioritise gender issues in the FAO’s own structure and programmes and to increase capacities for promoting gender equality in the countries where FAO operates.

Several countries (Switzerland, Norway and the United States) as well as the European Union warned that clear targets and implementation mechanisms, alongside a sufficient budget, are crucial to add to the current plans if FAO is serious about gender equality.

This year’s conference is expected to endorse a budget for 2014/2015 that would leave the amounts for gender issues unchanged from the previous budget period 2013/2014, that is, 21.8 million dollars.

This amount represented a doubling of the 9.8 million dollars corresponding to the 2010/2011 following pressures of gender rights supporters within and outside FAO, and represents a 2.1 percent of the overall net appropriation. Over the next years, FAO is expected to set a target for gender spending which could even exceed the 2.1 percent.

ActionAid International’s Alberta Guerra, whose group has been advocating for a gender policy and gender mainstreaming at FAO for years, says that it is important that the organisation keeps up the momentum of promoting gender equality.

That would mean paying attention to implementation of the current commitments and making sure that a solid budget comes together with the objectives stated out in the policy documents.

“In order to close the gender gap, it is not enough to adopt the gender lens. It is essential that, in addition to that, interventions that target, specifically, women’s needs are put into place,” Guerra says.

“The policy is very forward looking. It’s not just a policy for FAO, but a policy for its members, a policy which tries to set objectives and goals that everyone concerned about food and agriculture is trying to achieve,” says Eve Crowley, FAO deputy director for gender, equity and rural development.

“It’s important to build a momentum around these objectives and goals among all stakeholders.”