The Mbeubeus dumpsite in Dakar, Senegal, where Practical Action, an international organisation is helping the communities phase out open burning of waste. Credit: Practical Action.

By Robert Kibet
NAIROBI, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

With the African continent recycling less than 11 percent of its waste, COP28 provided leaders on the African continent to consider integrated waste systems that include informal waste workers.

Akinyi Walender, Africa Director at Practical Action, an innovative international development group, says the informal waste workers are rarely involved. She was speaking recently at the inaugural Africa Climate Summit.

“For us to tackle the issue of waste, we really have to look at how we can have a more integrated system in place, which means we need to bring everybody along,” she told a session on open burning of waste on the sideline of the summit.

Coming ahead of the upcoming Cop28 summit, Wandeler says it provided an opportunity for the African continent to think concretely about what it wants to achieve on climate issues.

“The situation on climate is so dire that we do need to really act. We should already begin to look at opportunities within the continent and make those good while we wait for the funding that is supposed to come on adaptation,” Walender told IPS in an interview.

Over 90 percent of waste generated in Africa is disposed of at uncontrolled dumpsites and landfills, often with associated open burning. Nineteen of the world’s 50 biggest dumpsites are located in Africa, all in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The African Union set an ambitious target for African cities to recycle at least half of their waste by 2023, but many are still far from achieving this.

According to the UN Environment Programme, the goal can be met and even surpassed with a shift of organic waste to composting and bioenergy recovery, along with the refurbishment, repair, reuse, and recycling of the waste.

In 2016, Sub-Saharan Africa alone generated around nine percent of global waste or 180 million tonnes, of which about two-thirds is dropped in landfills and open dump sites, left to pollute the nearby environment and global climate. This is projected to quadruple by 2050.

Last year, environment ministers from 54 African countries met in Dakar, Senegal, at the 18th session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), committing to achieve a 60 percent reduction of open waste burning by 2030 and fully phase out open burning of waste by 2040.

It is an ambitious target, which Walender says, “With the much wider UN 2030 Agenda on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in place, many countries have so much that they need to grapple with”.

Akinyi Walender, the Director of Practical Action Africa, speaking during a session on open burning of waste at the sideline of the recent Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

“We have many policies in place, but most are hardly implemented. The whole topic on open burning of waste and its 2040 timeline is very short. Many have yet to even put in place those policies that govern the open burning of waste. I feel that this timeline is actually very short,” Walender told IPS in an interview.

Sam Dindi, director for training and community mobilization at Mazingira Yetu, a Kenyan-based environment organization, says if countries embrace a green and circular economy in which waste is reused, it has the potential to create job opportunities for the youth.

“Open burning of waste is a quick way of addressing a problem, but again, it brings an even bigger problem that we may not be able to solve both as a country and as a continent,” he told IPS in an interview.

Last year, Kenya passed the Solid Waste Management Act 2022, dubbed Sustainable Solid Waste Management Act 2022, which requires the closure of all open dumpsites and transit to landfills, a controlled form of dumpsite.

“Kenya is making progress. Last year, Kenya passed the Solid Waste Management Act 2022, which transforms how we manage waste from the previous linear economy and promotes a circular economy in which waste is given a new lease of life. It is either upcycled or recycled,” says Dindi.

According to Dindi, the implementation of the policies in place remains a barrier to the efforts of various stakeholders.

“Implementation of the policies is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we lack the political goodwill because perhaps implementing these policies is perceived to affect some businesses, policymakers, or other interested parties,” Dindi told IPS.

Dumping of waste, according to stakeholders who spoke at the session, agreed that the open burning of waste heavily impacts the impoverished and marginalized communities.

A 2021 report by Practical Action dubbed Managing Our Waste indicates that nearly two billion people on the planet live without any form of waste collection, with Sub-Saharan Africa experiencing some of the lowest waste collection coverage.

The report recommends monitoring waste management as a people-centred service, integrating the voice of those most affected and improving informal waste workers’ lives and working conditions.

“At all levels, waste policies need to focus not only on environmental benefits but also on improving the lives of the poorest communities and workers. Their voices need to be heard in all key decision-making processes,” reads the report.

In Senegal, Practical Action is working with local communities and government agencies to reduce the open burning of waste at two major dumping sites, namely, the infamous Mbeubeus site in Dakar and a second one in Thiès.

“While it is generally seen as a responsibility of the local government, the community and the private sector need to be involved. If you look at the whole circular economy, there is the ability to reuse, recycle the waste, and reorient it in terms of packaging,” Walender told IPS.

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Local stakeholders engaged in participatory livelihoods planning in Champasack, Laos. Credit: A Barlis

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 14 2021 (IPS)

As incidents of drought and extreme rainfall increase, farmers in Southeast Asia are partnering with experts to develop targeted weather forecasts to work around the threats and, when adaptation becomes too costly, buy specially designed insurance to protect their livelihoods.

Climate impacts are increasing. In 2016, for example, the impact of what is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) resulted in severe drought and saline intrusion in 11 out of 13 provinces in the Mekong River Delta. This affected 400,000 hectares of cropland, resulting in 200 million dollars in economic losses and food insecurity among farmers. Household incomes dropped 75 percent, pushing vulnerable farmers who had little savings and no insurance deeper into poverty.

Integrated risk management and risk transfer approaches (e.g. innovative insurance solutions) will be critically required for smallholder growers to manage the physical and financial impacts of climate.

A key component of the project, DeRisk Southeast Asia, is to develop a number of adaptation strategies, says Professor Shahbaz Mushtaq, the project’s insurance segment lead at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) one of three project partners. The others are the World Meteorological Organisation and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, part of the CGIAR.

“So the project is working on improved climate forecasts, new irrigation systems and practices, and improving production systems,” says Mushtaq in an online interview. “The underlying premise is that the smallholder growers need to mitigate their risk as much as they can while developing and adopting suitable adaptation practices.”

“Then, the project also acknowledges that there’s a limit to adaptation,” he adds. “Not all risk is manageable. [It is] when it is no longer economically viable then you need to transfer the risk elsewhere, this is where insurance will play a major role”.

ECOM facilitator leads the insurance literacy workshop with coffee farmers in Dak Lak. Credit: A Barlis

DeRisk, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, operates in Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. For example, in a pilot led by the Alliance in one of the provinces in the Mekong River delta, the department of crop production (across levels), extension officers and farmers now sit down with weather forecasters (or meet virtually because of COVID-19 restrictions) to mould a general weather forecast into seasonal and 10-day advisories that target rice producers.

“We really emphasize co-development by multiple stakeholders, integrating information from the hydro-meteorological (‘hydro-met’) experts and the crop experts with the local knowledge of farmers,” says Nguyen Duy Nhiem, DeRISK Country Coordinator in Vietnam.

For example, the representatives will take a seasonal forecast, broken down by month, and generate guidance for specific crops such as: “the best planting date, the best variety to plant and if drought happens, what drought-resistant variety to use,” Nguyen tells IPS in an online interview.

That advice is packaged as a bulletin and delivered using a variety of media, including stationary loudspeakers in villages, paper bulletins or posters and on a smartphone app called Zalo.

The 10-day advisories zero in on daily conditions. “For example, if it’s going to rain on a certain day, farmers are told not to apply fertilizers or pesticides because they would leach into the soil,” explains Nguyen.

He’s happy with the project’s progress. The stakeholders from the hydro-met sector and agriculture sector “understand better each other’s languages,” says Nguyen. “For example, prior to project’s engagement when talking about ‘rainy days’, the agriculture stakeholders and farmers think that rain should be an amount that can be measured in a gauge while for the hydro-met sector that can be any amount above 0.0 mm. The definition of rainy days has been explained during discussions and clearly noted in bulletins.”

In addition, Nguyen says the 20,000-plus farmers who have received the advisories in the past two cropping seasons have been very pleased because the information helped them avoid the impact of damaging weather and make more informed decisions better. If plans hold, other districts and provinces in the region will start developing the tailored forecasts in 2022.

Challenges, according to Nguyen, include the lack of capacity of staff in provincial weather offices to develop the tailored forecasts. Another is reaching more farmers. Although many farmers have access to smartphones, not all of them know how to use them to access the advisories in the Zalo group. Possible solutions, he says, include developing an app or partnering with a telecom company to send messages to all customers in project areas.

In neighbouring Laos, agro-climactic advisories are available for the whole country, in monthly and weekly forecasts, says DeRisk Country Coordinator Leo Kris Palao. The implementation of DeRISK in Laos was linked with existing efforts by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to further improve this system with national partners.

Seasonal agroclimatic bullet poster installed at District Agriculture Service Center in Mekong Delta. Credit: Dang Thanh Tai

The system is automated, he explains in an email interview. Called the Laos Climate Services for Agriculture (LaCSA), the system analyses meteorological and agricultural data from national databases and field-level data collection by local partners. Offices of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry review advisories before being disseminated.

LaCSA can be accessed online through an app (Android/iOS), but for those who don’t use IT tools, the information, as in Vietnam, is also shared via loudspeakers, radio and TV, and community and school posters.

More than 21 000 farmers in Laos have adapted their activities after receiving an advisory. “We are happy with the progress made by the De-RISK project in Laos,” says Palao. “Based on our baseline assessment, most of the responses from farmers receiving the agro-climatic advisories indicated that change in planting dates, use of suitable varieties tailored to the climate condition of the season, and water and fertilizer management were among their adaptation practices.”

Mushtaq says that to further mitigate the ‘residual risk’, which can’t be managed economically through adaptation strategies, his team developed various indexed-based insurance products that are now being tested through a pilot insurance scheme – Coffee Climate Protection Insurance.

“We went to the field and interviewed several hundreds of smallholder coffee growers and industry.” The assessment for the insurance scheme included asking about the biggest risks faced by farmers, whether it be drought, disease, or extreme rainfall, among other hazards. “We wanted to develop products for those risks that are most impactful,” Mushtaq says.

The researcher of USQ adds that if an extreme weather event occurs and a farmer can’t immediately recover from losses, “his production would suffer, it would impact the supply chain, it would impact the roaster, and it would impact coffee production regions. But if farmers could get back on their feet very quickly, it would help the industry, it would the whole supply chain. That’s the underpinning driver for the supply chain industry to co-contribute insurance premiums.”

Mushtaq says he was impressed when coffee growers told him that drought and extreme rainfall are major risks but didn’t want drought insurance because they are able to cope through access to irrigation. “But if there’s extreme rainfall, we don’t have an option to manage that risk, so we want products to cater to it,” the farmers said.

The initial assessment found that farmers have a range of attitudes about insurance — some were willing to pay more than the suggested premium, others would not even consider purchasing, and the majority were in the middle, unsure.

Finally, most agreed on the product. What swayed the doubters was the credibility that USQ and its partners had developed over the years working with the coffee industry represented by the private sector and associations, says Mushtaq. “To me, the most important success factor was the presence of the industry itself. You need to have really solid leadership to drive this agenda. And we were very lucky that we got some really good partners in the coffee industry.”

In stages 1 and 2 of the pilot, farmers and coffee traders will split the costs of the premiums, but in later years, other actors in the supply chain, such as roasters, will have to contribute a portion; the exact division of costs still needs to be negotiated.

Currently, the ‘extreme rainfall’ insurance product is in operation, explains Mushtaq, meaning that if total rainfall exceeds the threshold for the two-month season, payments would be triggered. As the insurance is indexed, the payouts would reflect the amount of protection that farmers chose to purchase.

To get to this point, “we had to run several workshops, and gather a lot of information on how index-based insurance products works,” he says, adding that more needs to be done to increase awareness. Moving forward, the team considers running a campaign to address this, “Awareness is still a problem, and we do need to run a massive campaign.”

DeRISK aims to develop its climate services and insurance products further and work with national partners on policies and strategies supporting smallholder farmers in the region in response to climate risks.

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Mitali Padhi (19) cradles her 3-month-old son in front of her parents’ new brick-asbestos one-room home. With her is her mother, Parvati Padhi. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Aug 25 2021 (IPS)

When 11-year-old Mitali Padhi hugged her childhood friends to say goodbye, she felt a deep-seated foreboding.

Around her, the mud walls of their home had collapsed, wrecking their meagre belongings. All were mired in mud. The straw roof lay splayed 100 metres away from the house – blown away by tropical storm Phailin.

The tropical storm made landfall at 136 mph wind speeds near Mitali’s village in India’s eastern coastal Odisha State. The storm left 3.7 million houses damaged in its wake.

However pitiable this mud hut, it was the only secure place the girl had ever known, and it was a place where, since birth, a larger community supported her.

Rice paddies had turned into sea-water pools. Mitali’s father, a farm labourer, would have no work for a year until monsoons washed away the salt from farmlands.

Her family of five, her parents and two elder brothers, took a high-interest local loan and migrated to the nearest urban centre Bhubaneswar. This was 2013.

When IPS met Mitali Padhi, she had a 3-month-old baby boy in her arms. The frail 19-year-old says she is breastfeeding but feels extremely weak.

“We got a protein drink for her (Mitali), but she dislikes it,” her Mitali’s mother, Pravati Padhi, 50, interjects.

We stand between two parallel rows of one-room brick and asbestos hutments that the Padhi family built and moved into after super cyclone Fani in 2019. This cyclone, described as the worst since 1999, decimated their tiny mud-walled, plastic-sheet covered hut that squatted illegally against a university’s compound wall – displacing the family for a second time.

Mitali’s father runs a 3-wheeler tuk-tuk but is “lazy, moody, and his earnings are erratic,” according to his wife, Pravati. After leaving their village in 2013, the burden of providing for her three children was on her, she tells IPS. Since then, she sells spicy snacks on roadsides earning $10 a day.

After migrating to the city, the 11-year Mitali looked after the cooking for the family. After lunch, she helped her mother roll out tiny puffed poori (bread) and fry them crisp while her mother prepared the boiled potato filling and spicy, tangy water for the popular snacks.

In a dire financial state once again after the 2019 cyclone, Pravati decided to marry off Mitali. It would mean one less mouth to feed, “and the young man was earning well.”

“We were eating out our savings after the storm. My daughter was already ‘mature,’ (reached puberty), she was not in school, and when I was away from home vending, and she was alone, young boys from our slum tried to chat her up, come into the house,” Mitali’s mother told IPS, justifying the marriage of her teenage daughter.

Soon Mitali was pregnant – at barely 18.

“I would have liked to learn sewing, earn and get married only when I was 22,” she tells IPS.

2. A pre-teen girl migrating with her family to a brick kiln in India’s Telangana State after drought hit her native province of Bolangir in Odisha State. Here she looks after her sibling while her parents work.
Credit: Umi Daniel/IPS

The family are an example of increasingly vulnerable people affected by climate change disasters.

“As (the number of) climate disasters rise in Odisha, drought (is experienced) in its western part, cyclones in the coastal region, floods in over half of its 30 provinces,” Ghasiram Panda, Programme Manager for ActionAid, told IPS. “Because of poverty, because of their vulnerability, there are concerns for the safety (of vulnerable communities). We are seeing an increasing trend of girls being married off before the age of 18.”

This is not only in the rural areas.

“In Bhubaneswar city slums, populated by rural migrants in search of livelihoods, child marriages are (also) on the rise,” Ghasiram Panda says. “While rural families migrate to cities to better their income, girl children more particularly are unable to access education, they do poorly in school or drop out, and parents think marriage is the best way out.”

Umi Daniel, Director, Migration & Education, Aide et Action, South Asia, says children are adversely affected because “a quarter of all migrating population (from Odisha to brick kilns) are children.”

According to the UN, in India, internal migrants accounted for around 20 percent of the country’s workforce in 2017, which currently equals 100 million people.

Around the world, approximately 1 in 45 children are on the move. Nearly 50 million boys and girls have migrated across borders or forcibly displaced within their own countries, UNICEF estimated in 2017.

Climate-related events and their impacts are already contributing significantly to these staggering numbers, with 14.7 million people facing internal displacement due to weather-related disasters in 2015 alone.

The annual average since 2008 is increasing and now at 21.5 million is equivalent to almost 2 500 people being displaced every day.

Owing to climate change, 27 of the 37 Indian states are now disaster-prone. Some 68 percent of the cultivated land is vulnerable to drought, 58.6 percent landmass is prone to earthquakes, 12 percent to floods, 5,700 km of the coastline is prone to cyclones, and 15 percent of the area is susceptible to landslides, according to India’s National Disaster Management Authority.

“Mitali still is fortunate,” Gitanjali Panda, community mobiliser of local non-profit Centre for Child and Women Development, tells IPS.

Another internal migrant girl, ‘fell in love’ and eloped with a boy when she was 15, Gitanjali Panda says. The infatuation wore off within a year, and the family got her back but hastily married her off to another man.

Gitanjali Panda frequently visits the slum and says the young woman, a mother of a 5-year child at 21, had complained of excruciating stomach pain. She miscarried her second child. The doctor then diagnosed a ‘cracked uterus’ – the result of a fall during her first pregnancy at aged 16.

An adolescent boy takes a break from extracting burnt bricks from the kiln with his father and stacks them for transportation in Tamil Nadu State.
Credit: Umi Daniel/IPS

In Daniel’s experience, children are “invisible entities” – they don’t even count. Always migration in India is seen as male-dominated. The government doesn’t even (acknowledge) families are migrating, let alone formulating pro-child migration policies.”

Daniel has worked on migration and child rights for three decades, heading the Aide et Action’s Migration Information and Resource Centre (MIRC) in Bhubaneswar.

Internally displaced families live in rows of temporary tin huts next to brick kilns in the suburban areas where they congregate. In these tin boxes, without doors and with just a torn sari hanging at the door for privacy, boys may get beaten and made to work inhumanly as bonded labour, but girls are “several times more vulnerable,” Daniel says.

Girls and women face “disproportionate threats to their safety and most basic human rights,” Action Aid’s Ghasiram Panda agrees. They are, too often, “the silent victims of climate disasters.”

Governments rarely consider their specific needs and vulnerabilities, he says.

“Rape is frequent,” Daniel told IPS. MIRC took up a case where three minor girls were raped in front of their parents in a brick kiln by the drunk kiln owner and his friends. They were from Karimnagar in Telangana State, which is a climate migrants’ destination. It took MIRC five to six years in a fast-tracked court to bring the wealthier culprits to justice.

As climate displacement and internal migration increases with more intense natural disasters impacting the poorest, Umi says solutions are being implemented by the non-profit organisations but “urgently need scaling-up by governments.”

Inside a learning centre at a brick kiln site in Odisha where adolescents to infants are creatively engaged while their parents make bricks.
Credit: Umi Daniel/IPS

Among the hopelessness, there are stories of success. A decade ago, Aide et Action’s Migration Information and Resource Centre started sourcing youth volunteers from India’s migrants’ origin provinces to go to destination locations and teach migrant children in their local dialect at the kiln sites.

Initially, the kiln owners refused to allow these informal learning centres.

“Now owners are putting in money themselves because they see women’s outputs increase when their children, adolescents to infants, are taken care of,” Umi says.

Government schools often agree to allow two rooms for these informal teaching classes. When migrants’ children return home for the four paddy-sowing months of August to November, they can seamlessly continue their schooling.

“In these ten years, we were able to reach out to 30 000 children with this facility. We started with just 250 children,” Umi says.

Ghasiram Panda says, however, there is a lot more that needs doing.

“Strengthening the government system to be more sensitive towards children’s issues, linking (migrant) youth to re-integrate and fully utilise schemes meant for their benefit, is Action Aid’s main focus now.”

• This feature was produced on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, Aug 24 2021 (IPS)

In 2020, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia faced their worst drought in half a century. The Atlantic Basin saw 30 named storms – the most recorded in a single year. Two category 4 hurricanes achieved an unprecedented feat by making landfall in Nicaragua.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says events like floods, droughts, and heatwaves account for over 90 percent of all disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last 20 years.

It adds that warns that climate change impacts are likely to become more intense for the Region.

The Organization, in collaboration with the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), launched the ‘State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2020’ on August 17 at a high-level conference ‘Working Together for Weather, Climate and Water Resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean.’

According to the Report, increasing temperatures, glaciers retreat, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, coral reefs bleaching, land and marine heatwaves, intense tropical cyclones, floods, droughts, and wildfires have impacted the most vulnerable communities, among them many Small Island Developing States.

“Accurate and accessible information is crucial for risk-informed decision-making, and the ‘State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean’ is a vital tool in our battle for a safer, more resilient world,” said Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of UNDRR.

While the report lays bare the devastating impact of a changing climate on the Region, it is also heavy on solutions and urgently needed mitigation and adaptation initiatives.

Leaning on Sustainable Development Goal 13, which calls for ‘urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts,’ the WMO wants nations to strengthen their national multi-hazard Early Warning Systems.

While agencies like the WMO and ECLAC say those systems are underutilized in the Region, Coordinating Director of the Caribbean Meteorological Organization Dr Arlene Laing told the virtual event that recent disasters in the Caribbean, including the eruption of the La Soufriere Volcano in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, have underscored the importance of early warning systems to reduce disaster risk and impacts on lives and livelihoods.
“The meteorological service in St. Vincent, for example, supplied weather forecasts to the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre for planning their onsite activities. There were red alerts given to fisherfolk, who were advised of poor visibility due to volcanic ash. There was constant communication with the National Emergency Management Organization and the local water authority on heavy rainfall which would lead to rain-soaked ash,’ she said.

Haiti, beleaguered by poverty and political turmoil, has also faced numerous disasters in the past decade. In 2020, Tropical Storm Laura claimed 31 lives in the country, while its citizens and farmers bore the burdens of severe drought. According to the WMO report, Haiti is among the top 10 countries experiencing a food crisis.

“Haiti presents a much more extreme need for this kind of early warning system and cooperation, as they have been experiencing in succession Tropical Storm Fred, an earthquake then Tropical Storm Grace,” said Dr. Laing.

Many Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Caribbean know the importance of adaptation and mitigation measures. The problem lies in financing for those initiatives.

Chairperson of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) Dr Walton Webson told IPS that in the absence of climate finance reform, these nations which contribute so little to global greenhouse gas emissions but bear the highest burden of climate change impacts, will be unable to undertake the projects they need for survival.

“Only 2 percent of total climate finance provided and mobilized by developing countries was targeted towards SIDS from 2016 to 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated our financial challenges and placed us in a fiscally precarious situation. Our needs have multiplied, and we continue to take on debt as our economies are hit and the avenues for concessional finance close for many of us,” he said.

The AOSIS Chair says the Alliance is leading reforms to ensure targeted financial flows to the most vulnerable. This includes developing a ‘multidimensional vulnerability index to address eligibility.’

He added that the Caribbean small island states of Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago no longer have development assistance.

“Imagine that these climate-vulnerable islands, hit by hurricanes, flooding, and drought, must now find loans at commercial interest rates to invest in early warning systems, water resources, and other climate resilience! We need strong political support at the Highest Level to adopt a multidimensional vulnerability index,” he said.

The release of the ‘State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2020’ closely follows the publication of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned that ‘human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land,’ leading to extreme heatwaves, droughts, and flooding.

Latin America and the Caribbean are already reeling from the impacts of a changing climate.
With 2020 among the three hottest years in Central America and the Caribbean and 6-8 percent of people living in areas classified as high or very high risk of coastal hazards, the WMO says the way forward must include collaboration among governments and the scientific community, bolstered by strong financial support.

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NDC Partnership launched its Youth Engagement Plan to build young people’s capacity on climate change matters and engage the youth in global NDC partnership activities. Credit: Natalia Gómez Solano

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 19 2021 (IPS)

Just over six months after launching its Youth Engagement Plan, the NDC Partnership, the coalition assisting governments with their climate action plans, has brought together youth climate advocates for its inaugural NDC Global Youth Engagement Forum.

NDCs, or Nationally Determined Contributions, refer to governments’ commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an integral part of the Paris Climate Agreement. NDCs are scheduled for revision every five years and are expected to be increasingly ambitious to tackle the climate crisis effectively.

Countries and the NDC Partnership want to ensure that, as agents of implementation, young people have platforms for engagement and a say in national climate action.

The Partnership recently brought youth together in 3 regional groupings: Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The young people engaged with representatives of partners such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) through sessions like ‘agriculture and climate change,’ and ‘equipping young people to engage in the NDC process.’

The NDC Partnership, the coalition assisting governments with their climate action plans, has brought together youth climate advocates for its inaugural NDC Global Youth Engagement Forum. Credit: NDC Partnership

The participants say the teaching element was bolstered by the opportunity to be heard, as the organizers asked for their input in areas that include NDC enhancement, structures needed to strengthen youth involvement, and ways young people are already impacting climate action.

For youth like Natalia Gómez Solano of Costa Rica, the forum provided a space to share experiences and ideas.

“Working for a more resilient and a more just, low-emissions world moves us, and that is why we are here today,” she told the virtual event.

“We are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, and they are worsening. We need increased adaptation and mitigation action, and the NDCs are the key instruments to achieve that. The NDCs are the roadmaps for climate ambition in which young people are key in bringing new climate solutions to the conversations and to raise action.”

Jamaica’s Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Housing, Urban Renewal, Environment, and Climate Change, Dr Alwin Hales, told the Latin America and Caribbean forum that the virtual event and Youth Engagement Plan hope to leverage the ‘leadership and power’ of youth into NDC implementation and enhancement.

“Today’s children and young people are caught in the center of climate change, for it is they who have to live with and manage its consequences,” he said.

“The NDC Partnership launched the Youth Engagement Plan (YEP). It aims is to build young people’s capacity on climate change matters and engage the youth in global NDC partnership activities. This is in direct support of our mission to increase alignment, coordination, and access to resources to link needs with solutions.”

The forum was proposed by the NDC Partnership’s Youth Task Force but is a priority of the NDC Partnership’s Steering Committee and Co-Chairs, Jamaican Minister of Housing, Urban Renewal, Environment, and Climate Change Pearnel Charles Jr. and U.K. Minister Alok Sharma, who also serves as President of COP 26.

Noting that young people are vital to effective action on climate change, NDC Partnership Global Director Pablo Vieira Samper reminded them that their input also ensures that action is inclusive.

“We want to hear about what capacity or technical support is still needed and what learning you are eager to share with your peers,” he said.

“The Youth Engagement Plan was the starting point for greater action for youth engagement in NDCs. Today the NDC Partnership is thrilled to be turning this plan into concrete steps for more meaningful engagement and bringing new ideas to this framework to inspire action. We look forward to your insights as we collaborate across the Partnership to build a low carbon, climate-resilient future by supporting sustainable development.”

The youth attending the forum have described it as an important platform for highlighting the challenges faced by young climate activists.

“It is important to increase climate finance to support projects that are led by children and youth and integrate a rights-focused education curriculum in schools and universities,” said Xiomara Acevedo, the Founder and Chief Executive of Barranquilla+20, an NGO run by young people who empower their peers to tackle issues of biodiversity, sustainability, policy inclusion, and climate change.

Acevedo’s NGO has reached over 2,000 young people. She says it is clear that youth have a unique role to play in climate activism.

“We have seen that involving young people at the local and subnational level has also helped to ensure that a lot of citizens are seeing that climate action is not something beyond their territories, or is not only a topic that is managed at the national level. They can relate our message to their narrative, to their realities. We engage climate action as an important topic in the local agendas,” she said.

According to UNICEF, including youth in climate change action is important to achieving Sustainable Development Goals 13,2 which urges urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts; 16,3 which calls for the promotion of peaceful, inclusive societies for sustainable development and 17,4 with its target of assistance to developing countries in attaining debt sustainability.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) released its NDCs scorecard in February. It applauded countries for strengthening their commitments to the Paris Agreement but encouraged them to further step up their mitigation pledges, adding that greenhouse gas emissions targets were falling ‘far short’ of what is required to achieve the Agreement’s goals.

Young people like Natalia Gómez Solano say as custodians of the planet, youth must be mobilized, and their voices amplified to arrive at the deep emissions reductions needed in the NDCs.

“We need to integrate more voices and reach more places. As the Latin America and Caribbean Region, we need to keep working, keep asking, keep demanding, and doing more. Not all youth know how to be involved in climate action, and we need to work with more young people, for example, in the rural areas,” she said.

The delegates at the NDC Partnership’s inaugural Youth Engagement Forum say they are hoping for more opportunities at the table.

They say it takes persistence, organization, time, and passion to achieve climate goals. It also takes an empowered, well-connected, and financed global network of youth.

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Ngadirejo residents have been converting their organic waste into compost and are selling this to inorganic waste to private companies. They are also planting vegetables in their backyards and on unused land as part of the community’s urban farming activity and climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. Courtesy: Serono Arief Wijaya, ProKlim Ngadirejo

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Apr 7 2021 (IPS)

Residents of Ngadirejo village in Sukaharjo regency, Central Java province, had often found themselves helpless when their wells dried up or water flooded through their homes. But thanks to a national campaign called Program Kampung Iklim, known by its acronym ProKlim, they now have solutions to this flooding that generally occurs because of a lack of adequate water catchments.

“We started planting biopore holes and erecting infiltration wells in early 2016 to harvest rainwater and wastewater. The results have been almost instantaneous – our wells have never run out of water and floods never visited us again since 2017,” Serono Arief Wijaya told IPS from Ngadirejo, which lies around one-hour flight east of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.

As climate change hits home, Indonesia has frequently experienced drought and heavy rainfall, with reports of water scarcity, floods, landslides, and crop failures becoming common. In 2012, the government introduced Program Kampung Iklim, which literally means Climate Village Programme, to raise public awareness towards global warming and to assist people at grassroots level to draw up adaptation and mitigation plans.

While attending a seminar organised by the local office of Environment and Forestry Department in December 2015, leaders of Ngadirejo, according to Wijaya, heard the word global warming and ProKlim for the first time. The following year community leaders decided to plant biopore holes along Ngadirejo’s drainage network and build infiltration wells throughout the neighbourhood in adaptation and mitigation efforts.

“We now have around 600 biopore holes, each measuring one meter deep and eight centimetres wide, and 50 infiltration wells measuring one meter deep and three meters wide each,” said Wijaya, who heads Ngadirejo’s ProKlim campaign.

“Many residents who had access to piped water previously now harvest groundwater instead for their daily needs,” he added.

Up until 2016, only between 10 to 15 percent of Ngadirejo residents had access to piped water, with the remainder reliant on artesian wells only. According to 2020 figures, the village has some 3,000 families – slightly over 10,000 people.

Aside from harvesting rainwater, Ngadirejo residents have also been converting their organic waste into compost and are selling this to private companies. They are also planting vegetables in their backyards and on unused land as part of the community’s urban farming activity.

They also use LED light bulbs and automatic sensors to switch lights on or off when needed and have planted trees with the slogan “one-house-one-big-tree”.

“We have also designated a section of our village as a tourist destination and training centre where we explain our ProKlim actions to visitors or conduct training on how to make biopore holes, infiltration wells, fertiliser, or anything related to adaptation and mitigation actions,” Wijaya said.

Residents sell their organic and inorganic waste at a waste bank in Ngadirejo village, Sukoharjo regency, Central Java province. Courtesy Serono Arief Wijaya, ProKlim Ngadirejo

Hardi Buhairat, a 50-year-old resident of Poleonro in Bone regency, South Sulawesi province — a three hour flight east of Jakarta — expressed a similar sentiment when talking about the ProKlim programme being implemented in his village.

“ProKlim has brought the Lita River back to life and we are very happy about that. The river is our only source of water for household consumption and farming but there were times it could no longer irrigate our field. Its water debit has returned and is stable throughout the year,” Buhairat, who is head of Poleonro’s ProKlim programme, told IPS.

The village started implementing ProKlim solutions in 2015, kicking it off with series of meetings with residents where they discussed climate change and the actions community members could take to avert its adverse impacts.

“The first things we did was issuing a village ordinance banning the residents from cutting trees and harvesting woods in and around Lita River’s spring. Soon after that, we planted thousands of trees in deforested areas around the spring,” said Buhairat, who is also Poleonro’s chief.

Poleonro’s village leaders also issued two other ordinances; one banning residents from burning rice straw and farms after harvest.

The 2019 Pollution and Health Metrics: Global, Regional and Country Analysis report from the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) ranks Indonesia as 4th in the world in terms of annual premature pollution-related deaths, after the populous nations of India, China and Nigeria.

The second ordinance requires residents to replace any tree they cut down in customary forests.

“The latter ordinance allows them to harvest trees in their customary forests but also orders them to plant new trees to replace the ones they cut. To ensure that they comply the rule, we inspect their forests regularly,” Buhairat said.

The residents also planted biopore holes to store rainwater underground, built wells to filter household wastewater before it goes into the river, and treated waste, converting organic waste into compost.

“Since 2015, we encouraged the residents to have indoor toilets. We are glad all households now have their own toilets indoors,” Buhairat said.

Buhairat said Poleonro villagers have also begun to diversify their food crops as part of their food security action.

“Our farmers planted organic red rice for the first time in 2018. We are now looking for buyers before going on a large-scale production. We want organic red rice to be our specialty commodity,” he said.

Since ProKlim’s launch in 2012, over 2,700 villages in 33 provinces have been registered as climate villages, according to Sri Tantri Arundhati, Director of Climate Change Adaptation of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. In 2020, six of those villages, including Ngadirejo and Poleonro, received the ProKlim Lestari Trophy, the highest accolade for a climate village programme, from the ministry.

Arundhati said the government now aims to establish 20,000 climate villages, which constitute roughly 25 percent of the country’s 83,000 villages, by 2024.

“We will cooperate with other stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and the private sector, and improve coordination with local governments and related departments. We will also work to improve the capacity of local governments and people at the grassroots level,” she told IPS.

Arundhati said her ministry has also asked registered climate villages to promote ProKlim and help other communities design their adaptation and mitigation actions.

Wijaya confirmed Ngadirejo village has been encouraged to help other communities implement ProKlim.

“We are now helping 44 villages in Central Java where we explain about global warming and help residents there identify adaptation and mitigation actions they could take to deal with  climate change-related problems in their community,” Wijaya said.

Buhairat said Poleonro is now guiding 15 villages in South Sulawesi to become climate villages.

Rizaldi Boer of the state-owned Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) said ProKlim could help the government achieve the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDCs) agreed according to the Paris Agreement.

“The programme can help a lot in dealing with climate change as it encourages active participation of people at grassroots level,” said Boer, who is also director of the Centre for Climate Risk and Opportunity Management in Southeast Asia and Pacific.

“However, the government should establish a standardised report mechanism on ProKlim actions, particularly how to calculate its contribution to greenhouse gas emission reduction,” Boer told IPS.

Under the country’s NDCs, Indonesia has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent with its own initiatives and 41 percent with external financial and technical assistance by 2030.

Boer also praised the government’s ambitious target of establishing 20,000 climate villages by 2024.

“It’s a tall order but it is not impossible. However, it requires participation of governments at all levels and all stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations and the private sector,” he said.

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Experts say artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are critical to combat climate change. One project uses AI to visualise the consequences of a changing climate by ‘bringing the future closer.’ It visually projects how houses and streets will look following the impact of climate related events. A file photo of Haiti shows impact on the country after Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 17 2021 (IPS)

International organisations, researchers and data scientists say artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are critical to combat years of promises but inadequate action on the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the UN Environment Programme, Microsoft and StartUp inside, a corporation which works with Fortune 500 companies in digital transformation held the virtual ‘AI for the Planet’ conference this week.

As vaccines bring hope of an end to a brutal pandemic, the partners warn that digital technologies and machine learning can no longer be left out of the conversation on building a more sustainable and equitable planet. They say the technology can be used to assist the public in embracing more sustainable practices and making better consumption choices.

Postdoctoral Researcher in AI for humanity at the Mila Institute Sasha Luccioni is working on a project that uses AI to visualise the consequences of a changing climate by ‘bringing the future closer.’ It visually projects how houses and streets will look following the impact of climate related events, hoping that the images will move people into action to protect the planet.

“We are creating a website where someone can enter an address, find their house, school or workplace and we provide them with AI generated images of what it would look like if climate change had an impact on this location, whether it be through flooding, smog or wildfires,” said Luccioni.

The images are accompanied by information on climate change, extreme weather events, local and global changes, as well as personal and collective action to save the planet and prevent the virtual images from becoming reality.

While Luccioni’s project uses AI to impact behaviour change, Weathernews Incorporated of Japan is using the technology in a UNESCO-supported disaster prevention programme. The chatbot system will be rolled out in East Africa this year. Used by local governments in Japan, it uses AI technology over a messaging app to send information such river swells to citizens before a disaster and communicate with them during and post-disaster. The project underscores the need for technology to save lives in an area beset with flooding, landslides, droughts and earthquakes.

“We would like to contribute to the creation of a society and a planet where many lives can be saved through information, by consolidating our knowledge of disaster prevention, together with AI technology for the planet,” said Shoichi Tateno, Private Public Partnership Section Leader at Weathernews.

UNEP officials say the world has 10 years to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals but cannot adequately measure its progress against 68 percent of their environmental indicators. Executive Director Inger Anderson says AI, big data and technology can help to fill that gap.

“How do we use digital solutions to drive sustainability and to create a world that is circulator, regenerative and inclusive and where we know how we are tracking and measuring where we are falling behind?” asked Anderson, adding that, “UNEP is just beginning to support and scale environmental change through the digital architecture.”

The summit partners say that applying big data, AI and digital technology in areas like mobility, manufacturing, agriculture, energy and buildings can result in a 10 to 20 percent reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

Watt Time, an environmental non-profit founded by UC Berkley researchers and Silicon Valley software engineers, has been developing technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Executive Director Gavin McCormick says the process starts by using AI to produce high quality data on greenhouse gas emissions.

“We teamed up with other tech savvy non-profits including Carbon Tracker and the World Resources Institute to AI to begin continuously monitoring the emissions from every power plant in the world and to make those data available to the general public the way the United States government makes its own data available to the public,” he said.

The virtual summit explored the role of AI in helping nations achieve the goal of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2°C pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. From providing real-time, reliable data on emissions to focusing on disaster prevention, the partners say AI is a critical yet underused tool in protecting the planet and securing a more sustainable future.

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Excerpt:

Forest on the island of Dominica. With 54% support, the conservation of forests was the most popular climate action policy selected by participants in the Peoples’ Climate Vote. It was the world's largest climate change public poll. Credit: IPS/Alison Kentish

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 27 2021 (IPS)

Between October and December 2020, something was different for people playing popular video games like Words with Friends, Angry Birds and Subway Surfers. Instead of a traditional 30-second ad, gamers across the world were invited to participate in a climate change survey. It was an unconventional way of polling that gave University of Oxford researchers an opportunity to tap into the 2.7 billion user-strong gaming market and produce the world’s largest climate change public opinion poll.

The results of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-commissioned Peoples’ Climate Vote were released on January 27. They show that 64 percent of people view climate change as a global emergency, even in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results included over 1.2 million people in 50 countries, which cover more than half of the world’s population.

“Mobile gaming networks can not only reach a lot of people, they can engage different kinds of people in a diverse group of countries,” said Professor Stephan Fisher of the University of Oxford Department of Sociology. “The Peoples’ Climate Vote has delivered a treasure trove of data on public opinion that we’ve never seen before. Recognition of the climate emergency is much more widespread than previously thought.”

The survey is unprecedented in both scale and diversity. It includes respondents from wealthy nations and Least Developed Countries, land locked nations and small island developing states. It also spans gender, education levels and age groups – including youth under the age of 18, a key demographic typically unable to vote in regular elections.

According to the results, 69 percent of these young people classify climate change as an emergency. There was not much difference between age groups however, with 65 percent of respondents aged 18-35 holding that view, while 66 percent of people aged 36-59 and 58 percent of people over 60 stating that they too, believe that climate change is a global emergency.

“People are very nervous, very scared. They are seeing wildfires in Australia and California. They are seeing category five storms in the Caribbean. They are seeing flooding in southeast Asia and they are looking around and saying ‘this is a real problem, we have to do something about this,’ UNDP’s Strategic Advisor on Climate Change and Head of Climate Promise, Cassie Flynn told a virtual press briefing.

The UNDP official pointed to a ‘groundswell of support for ambitious climate action’ by survey respondents, who were asked to select what policies they would like to see their governments prioritise. Conservation of forest and land led the climate solutions at 54 percent, followed by investment in renewable energy (53 percent), the implementation of climate friendly farming techniques (52 percent) and rolling out of green businesses and jobs (50 percent). As countries around the world develop their pledges as part of the Paris Climate Agreement, Flynn says the UNDP will work with them to ensure the voice of the people is articulated in those plans. 

“The idea was that the decisions that governments are making now, whether on COVID-19 or climate, that people would be able to have a voice at the table, because these decisions will influence so many generations to come, that this is a way of bringing those voices forward,” she said.

The results showed that the leading driver of a respondent’s view of climate change is education. In every country, those with post-secondary education demanded action; with Least Developed Countries like Bhutan tying with Japan at 82 percent of respondents saying governments must act now to tackle the crisis.

Along gender lines, at 4 percent, the divide was small overall, but wide on a national level in countries like Australia, Canada and the United States, where more women and girls believe the world is in a climate emergency than their male counterparts. The opposite is true for Nigeria.

The researchers say for several governments, this is the first time they will have access to extensive, analysed data on public views on climate change and policy prescriptions.

In terms of limitations, the survey organisers say for the next phase of the survey, there must be efforts to bridge the digital divide. While this survey bucked tradition and embraced technology in polling, it left out a few key constituencies, including smaller countries and rural communities without the bandwidth and tools to participate in the survey.

2021 is seen as a crucial year for action on climate and biodiversity. One of the highlights is expected to be the UN Climate Conference scheduled for Glasgow, UK. UNDP officials say world leaders have to make unprecedented decisions that will affect ‘every person on this planet and every generation to come.’

With the results of the world’s largest climate change public opinion poll now available, they say not only has more than half the world stated its belief that climate change is a global emergency, citizens from over 50 countries have made it clear to their leaders just how they want them to solve tackle the issue.”

Excerpt:

Respondents being questioned for the United Nations global conversation on the world they want. Many called for universal healthcare in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Courtesy: United Nations

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Jan 11 2021 (IPS)

The peoples of the world are unanimous – access to basic services such as universal healthcare must become a priority going forward. So too should global solidarity, helping those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and addressing the climate change emergency.

The collective thoughts of the world’s future by some 1.5 million people, including those from various organisations and networks, from all countries across the globe has been highlighted in a global initiative by the United Nations, which it called the world’s largest conversation on the future people want.

Last year, to mark the 75th anniversary of the UN, it conducted various townhall discussions, dialogues and an online survey from January until November.

The resultant report, Shaping Our Future Together, showed that people across the world were unified in their concerns, with the current coronavirus pandemic being the foremost in their minds.

“When you ask people about their fears and hopes for the future, when you ask people about their expectations of international cooperation about their priorities in the immediate, post-COVID, there is remarkable unity across generations, regions, income groups, education groups, and from people from different political direction,” Fabrizio Hochschild, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the commemoration of UN’s 75th anniversary, said during a virtual press conference on the findings on Friday, Jan. 8.

Indeed respondents of the UN conversation from all but two regions – sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern and South-eastern Asia – had listed access to universal healthcare as an immediate short-term priority, according to the report.

In the regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern and South-eastern Asia the call for increased support to places hardest hit by the pandemic and greater global solidarity ranked top. Next was the need for universal healthcare.

“This reflects the grim reality reported by UNDP – that daily COVID-19 related deaths have exceeded other common causes of death throughout much of 2020. Emergency services, health systems and health workers are under enormous strain around the world, with indirect health impacts also expected to rise,” the report noted.

Yesterday, Jan. 10, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres marked the 75th anniversary of the first UN General Assembly held in London by giving a keynote address. He noted that the COVID-19 pandemic “has had a disproportionate and terrible impact on the poor and dispossessed, older people and children, those with disabilities and minorities of all kinds”.

“It has pushed an estimated 88 million people into poverty and put more than 270 million at risk at acute food insecurity,” Guterres said.

The second short-term priority was a call for greater global solidarity and increased support to places hardest hit by the pandemic. 

Indeed, Guterres said in his speech that the COVID-19 pandemic had highlighted serious gaps in global cooperation and solidarity.

“We have seen this most recently in vaccine nationalism, some rich countries compete to buy vaccines for their own people, with no consideration for the world’s poor,” he said.

But he went on to thank the government and people of the UK for supporting the COVAX facility, established by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

COVAX is the global initiative to ensure rapid and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries, regardless of income level. In December, COVAX announced that it had arrangements in place to access two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine candidates on behalf of 190 participating nations. At the time, WHO said in a statement that this would ensure deliveries of the vaccine in the first quarter of 2021 to participating countries.  

Guterres said the pandemic has highlighted the “deep fragilities in our world” and in order to tackle them we need to reduce inequality and injustice and to strengthen the bonds of mutual support and trust.

He also said that the world needed “a networked multilateralism, so that global and regional organisations communicate and work together towards common goals”.

“And we need an inclusive multilateralism, based on the equal representation of women, and taking in young people, civil society, business and technology, cities and regions, science and academia,” he said.

People around the world also called for safe water and sanitation, and education.

Rethinking the global economy and making it more inclusive to tackle inequalities was another concern.

Meanwhile addressing climate change and destruction to the environment also remained top long-concerns for respondents.

“Respondents in all regions identified climate change and environmental issues as the number one long-term global challenge,” the report noted.

Guterres was pragmatic, admitting that while the UN was proud of its achievements over the last 75 years, including helping to boost global health, literacy, living standards and promoting human rights and gender equality, it was also aware of its failures. The biggest one being the inability to adequately address climate change.

“The climate emergency is already upon us and the global response has been utterly inadequate,” he stated.

“The past decade was the hottest in human history, carbon dioxide levels are at record highs, apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are becoming the new normal,” he stated.

“If we don’t change course,” Guterres warned, “we might be headed for a catastrophic temperature rise or more than 3 degrees this century.”

“Biodiversity is collapsing, one million species are at risk of extinction, and whole ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes.

“This is a war on nature and a war with no winners,” Guterres said.

He said that while the pandemic was a human tragedy – it can also be an opportunity.

“The past months have shown the huge transformations that are possible, when there is political will and consensus on the way forward,” Guterres said.

He said the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development already provide the blueprint for this.

“We now need increased ambition and action to deliver – beginning with the climate emergency. The central objective of the UN this year is to build a global coalition for carbon neutrality by the middle of the century,” he said, adding that meaningful cuts — reduction in global emissions by 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels – were needed.

“Every country, city, organisation, financial institution and company needs to adopt plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050 — and start executing them now, with clear short-term targets.”

Akosua Agyepong, a youth activist from Ghana, asked Guterres after his speech how the lessons learned from the current pandemic could be used in addressing climate change “so that we can achieve the [goals of the] Paris Agreement and the SDGs”.

Guterres replied saying that currently trillions of dollars were spent on supporting economics facing the impacts of COVID-19. “When spending those trillions, we are borrowing in relation to the future. We need to make sure those trillions are spent to address the recovery from COVID but also the challenge of climate change.”

“We can use the same money to build coal power plants or build renewable energy. We can use the same money to support industries that pollute or use the same money to create new jobs in the green economy. We can tax people and income or we can tax carbon and pollution.

“There are many ways in which we can organise our recovery to make it sustainable and inclusive, reducing at the same time inequalities and making peace with nature and our planet in order to make sure we are able to tame climate change, and in order to make sure we do not allow temperatures to rise by more than 1.5 degrees C at the end of the century and that we can get a net zero coalition in the middle of the century to make sure that we rescue our planet,” he said.

In his speech Guterres also highlighted the role of gender equality in development, saying that justice and equality, including gender equality, were prerequisites to transforming the challenges ahead.

“Women’s leadership and equal participation are key ways to address the global challenges we face.

“The past year has highlighted the effectiveness of women’s leadership, adding to evidence that gender-balanced decision-making leads to stronger climate agreements, greater investment in social protection, longer-lasting peace, and more innovation,” Guterres said, adding that achieving women’s equal representation required bold action.

Despite the challenges in the years ahead, the world’s people were optimistic about the future with many believing they will be better off in 2045, with respondents in sub-Saharan Africa — where the median age is just 18 — being the most optimistic about the future. 

Guterres was also optimistic, in turn praising the youth of the world.

“Today, it is often young people who are showing courage, and demanding courage from the rest of us. Let me be clear: I stand with you. You give me hope. Young people can and do change the world,” he said.

He said he was confident that working together the world can emerge from the pandemic “and lay the foundations for a cleaner, safer, fairer world for all, and for generations to come”.

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Jessore district in Bangladesh was one of the coastal districts evacuated of nearly 2.4 million people and over half a million livestock ahead of Cyclone Amphan making landfall. Credit: Stella Paul

By Stella Paul
HYDERBAD, India, May 21 2020 (IPS)

Amid the social distancing measures posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, coastal communities in Bangladesh and India face a double threat as the record-breaking Cyclone Amphan made landfall yesterday (May 20).

With sustained wind speeds of 270km/h, intensified by record water temperatures in May, the storm is now stronger than the 1999 super cyclone Fani and the joint-strongest on record in the North Indian Ocean.  

At least 12 people have died in West Bengal, India and 10 deaths have been reported in Bangladesh so far.

• With over 2 million people in shelters and relief camps, Bangladesh waited with baited breath for Cyclone Amphan.
• Large scale damage of properties have been reported all over West Bengal, including Kolkata (Calcutta) city. 
• In an online press briefing, Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, said it would take 10-12 days to assess the real loss and damage. 
• On Thursday afternoon, Cyclone Amphan weakened significantly.  

Disastrous effect at a very large scale

Cyclone Amphan made its landfall on Wednesday afternoon at Digha – a coastal town 187 km south of Kolkata city. During the four-hour long landfall, it created a long trail of devastation, including uprooting trees, destroying mud houses and electricity wires. 

Damages have also occurred in Odisha – another Indian coastal state where hundreds of mud houses have caved in due to the wind and heavy rainfall. Cities like the Odisha capital, Bhubaneshwar, are waterlogged with power outages all over Odisha and West Bengal, including Kolkata.  

 The devastation comes as India is still struggling to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

• The state of West Bengal, which has been in the direct pathway of the cyclone labelled by the meteorological department as “extremely severe”, has had 2,961 positive cases and 250 deaths.
• In addition, the state is also grappling with hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who have been returning home to escape the difficulties of a 55-day lockdown.    

“We are fighting 3 challenges: 1) coronavirus , 2) arrival of lakhs (hundred thousands) of migrants and the cyclone Amphan,” Banerjee said at a May 20 press briefing.  

According to Banerjee, the overall impact on the state has been disastrous. “It might take us 10-12 days to assess it all, but there are damages worth millions. Houses, roads, river embankment – everything has been hit,” she said, before adding her own office building – “Nabanna” has been partially damaged by the wind. 

 “We are shocked. We didn’t expect devastation of such a scale,” she said.     

 According to the meteorological office in Kolkata, the highest speed of Amphan in Kolkata has been 133 km/ph and though the wind speed has declined below 100 by Wednesday night, it subsided on Thursday afternoon after moving to Bangladesh.  

Bangladesh launched massive evacuation

In the middle of its intense fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Bangladesh launched a massive evacuation operation to safeguard its citizens and livestock in coastal districts.   

By Wednesday evening, the country evacuated nearly 2.4 million people and over half a million livestock in the coastal districts of Khulna, Satkheera, Jessore, Rajbadi and Sirajganj – the districts that will be on the crossway of Amphan.

Local schools have been set up as temporary shelters/relief camps for the evacuees, local media quoted Bangladesh’s Disaster Management and Relief Minister Enamur Rahman as saying.

 But with the number of COVID-19 cases on the rise with 27,000 already confirmed cases and over 350 dead, the cyclone has only increased the country’s uphill battle for safety.  

“Cyclone Amphan, which is about to hit Bangladesh, will worsen the situation of our population, which is struggling to control the COVID-19 pandemic and is already trapped due to measures of isolation and social distancing. While Bangladesh has an efficient system of cyclone shelters, most of the coastal communities that will be impacted are scared to move to those shelters, as it will be almost impossible to practice social distancing norms there,” Sohanur Rahman from YouthNet for Climate Justice in Bangladesh, told IPS before Cyclone Amphan made landfall. 

Climate change is increasing the damage that cyclones like Amphan cause in several ways, including increasing sea surface temperatures and rising sea levels, increasing rainfalls during the storm, and causing storms to gain strength more quickly.   

Stronger cyclones have become more common across the world due to climate change, and the strength of cyclones affecting countries bordering the North Indian Ocean has been increasing as the planet has warmed.     

Also, sea levels in the North Indian Ocean have risen more quickly than other places in recent years. According to a study, India and Bangladesh could experience dramatic annual coastal flooding by 2050, affecting 36 million people in India and 42 million in Bangladesh.  

Women from the Andes highlands, queuing up in a village in Peru's Puno region. At a Covering Climate Now panel in New York on Friday, indigenous leaders reiterated the need for the world to listen to them in addressing climate concerns. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2020 (IPS)

Mina Setra remembers the story clearly. As a Dayak Pompakng indigenous person from Indonesia, when  visitors from the city who came into her community; brought bottled water with them because they were worried about the water not being suitable for drinking. 

Setra, who is the deputy secretary-general of the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), recalls one of the elders telling the visitors, “This is the problem of you city people: You eat and drink all the dead things. Like the water that is already in a bottle? It is dead water. The vegetables that you buy from the freezer in the supermarket, they’re all dead plants.”

The anecdote sums up a much bigger conversation that is relevant today: how climate change is linked to coronavirus, and why it’s important to listen to indigenous leaders on the matter.

Setra shared the story with IPS when asked about links between climate change and coronavirus, during a panel talk by Covering Climate Now in New York on Friday, where indigenous leaders reiterated the need for the world to listen to them in addressing climate concerns — and reminding them how climate change can lead to or exacerbate a global health crisis as grave as the current virus. 

The talk took place as global communities scrambled to take effective measures against the deadly virus, and just as the U.S. announced a global emergency while struggling to contain its coronavirus cases. More than two months since the world became aware of coronavirus — and increasingly learned of its alarming implicants — the pandemic has globally claimed 8,810 lives, with more than 218,800, cases. 

While global conversations have mainly focused on the issue of death rate, or the racism attached to the virus, or different countries’ isolation methods (or lack thereof), little has been said about the link to climate change.

This remains a much bigger conversation that indigenous leaders want people to be aware of: how climate change can exacerbate the dangers of something like the coronavirus, and why the world should’ve been listening to indigenous leaders to avoid such a catastrophic spread.  While many believe that coronavirus started with a bat, experts argue it’s not so black and white. A February report established what the leaders discussed at the talk: how deforestation can lead to a loss of habitat for many wild animals and species. As a result, they move to habitat that brings them to closer proximity to humans which can lead to repeated contact between them.  

“The inequilibrium of our planet is not just about climate change, but it’s also about the global economy,” Levi Sucre Romero, a member of the BriBri indigenous community from Costa Rica, told IPS at the panel talk. “So coronavirus is now telling the world what we have been saying for thousands of years: that if we do not help protect biodiversity and nature, that we will face this and worse future threats.”

Romero, a coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, further highlighted a United Nations’ statement for why it’s important for global communities to work with indigenous leaders and learn from their knowledge. United Nations for Indigenous Peoples did not respond to the IPS’ request for comments. 

While wild animals and species are forced to find a home in close proximity to humans as a result of deforestation, another crucial concern is the treatment of animals by people from commercial hubs and cities that can act as a catalyst for such a global crisis.

“Our animals are not contaminated by themselves. They get contaminated by people,” Tuxá said in response to IPS’ question about the link between coronavirus and climate change. “And the proof is that these viruses start in the commercial centres of the world. There is a direct correlation between this and coronavirus and other pandemics that are to come.”

Tuxá added the next pandemic’s cure can be found in the diversity of indigenous peoples’ lands. 

“That’s why it’s really important to demarcate and recognise our lands, to protect our lands and our biodiversity because future life depends on it,” he said.

Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley warned of a backlash of mass migration to the world’s richest and biggest polluters, saying an influx of climate refugees can be expected in coming years as a consequence of failing to take action to stop climate change. Courtesy: Desmond Brown

By Desmond Brown
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 1 2019 (IPS)

The Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley tells IPS her patience is running thin, as she challenges the world to tackle the climate crisis.

She warned of a backlash of mass migration to the world’s richest and biggest polluters, saying an influx of climate refugees can be expected in coming years as a consequence of failing to take action to stop climate change.

“The bottom line is that we are not here by accident. There is no traditional norm on the part of the world where I come from,” Mottley tells IPS.

In September 2014, Small Island Developing States met in Apia, Samoa for the Third International Conference on SIDS and adopted the Small Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of Action, also known as the SAMOA Pathway. It is a 10-year plan to address challenges faced by small islands.

During last week’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the world body convened a one-day, high-level review of progress made in addressing SIDS’ priorities in the first five years since implementation.

According to the world leaders, progress toward sustainable development in SIDS will require a major increase in investment.

Foreign Affairs Minister of Belize Wilfred Elrington says the mid-term review represents more than a simple reflection.

“It is a critical political moment, given the overwhelming challenges that threaten our sustainable development,” Elrington tells IPS.

“Our people receive daily reminders of the ticking clock for our survival. Last year we had a special report from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] that predicted utter devastation for our countries if we missed the 1.5° C target.”

Elrington says the latest special report on the ocean and cryosphere from the IPCC projecting that 65 million people who inhabit islands and low-lying states are at risk of total inundation, only reinforced what is already happening.

“Our beaches are disappearing, our drinking water is being salinated, our oceans and seas are warming, acidifying and deoxygenating threatening our reefs and our fisheries. And if we are not experiencing more frequent flooding events, we are experiencing extreme drought events,” Elrington adds.

“Anyone of us could be the next to face a Category 5 hurricane or cyclone. We are the ground zero of a global climate and biodiversity crisis.”

Some of the specific development issues SIDS are faced with include their remoteness, transport connectivity, the small scale of their economies, the high cost of importing, the high cost of infrastructural development, vulnerability and climate vulnerability.

Already on the frontlines of climate change, sustainable development in many SIDS is threatened by difficulties in achieving sustained high levels of economic growth, owing in part to their vulnerabilities to the ongoing negative impacts of environmental challenges and external economic and financial shocks.

“It is diabolical and it is unbelievable. I refer to the plight of Barbuda whose cost of recovery was 10 times that which was pledged, and who still have not collected even that which was pledged,” Mottley says.

“I refer to Dominica, whose public service is minuscule to most countries but who are required to jump through the same hoops to unlock 300 million dollars in public funds while the people of Dominica, who were affected like the people of Abaco and Grand Bahama [in the Bahamas], don’t know where they’re going to earn money this week,” Mottley adds.

The prime minister says: “Twenty five years ago we met in Barbados and settle the Barbados Programme of Action, and on that occasion, we recognised that the wellbeing and welfare of Small Islands Developing States required special recognition and was a special case for our environment and our development.”

Meanwhile, Guyana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Karen Cummings says even with their limited resources, SIDS have been doing their part, adding that her country has taken an “aggressive” approach towards climate change and has been “ambitious” in its nationally determined contribution commitments.

Leaders called on the international community to mobilise additional development finance from all sources and at all levels to support SIDS and welcomed the ownership, leadership and efforts demonstrated by these states in advancing the Implementation of the SAMOA Pathway.

They expressed their concern about the devastating impacts of climate change, the increasing frequency, scale and intensity of disasters and called for urgent and ambitious global action in line with the Paris Agreement to address these threats and their impacts.

The High-level Review of the SAMOA Pathway comes one month after Hurricane Dorian devastated parts of the Bahamas, causing significant loss of life and property damage.  Countries noted that the increasing frequency, scale and intensity of natural disasters will continue to claim lives, decimate infrastructure and remain a threat to food security.

While some progress has been made in addressing social inclusion, poverty, and unemployment, inequality continues to disproportionately affect vulnerable groups, including women and girls, persons with disabilities, children and youth. More support is needed to strengthen public health systems in SIDS and especially reduce the risk factors for non-communicable diseases, and healthcare after disasters.

Other areas identified as needing more effort include demographic data collection, trade opportunities, and economic growth and diversification.

Michael Tierney, Deputy Permanent Representative of Ireland to the United Nations and co-facilitator for the Political Declaration of the SAMOA Pathway midterm review, says SIDS have done excellent work in setting up a partnership framework at the United Nations, whereby the partnerships they are working on are monitored and registered and there is an analysis done of their effectiveness.

“It’s actually a model of other parts of the world to look at. It can be improved and it can be strengthened but there is a very detailed process here at the U.N. whereby we try to encourage new development partnerships for the islands, but also, we try to monitor and analyse what we’re doing and if we’re doing it well,” Tierney tells IPS.

“One of the things, quite frankly, that we need to do better is get more private sector interest in projects. That’s a problem across the board in the developing world but it’s something that is specifically a difficulty in the Small Island Developing States.”

Forest fires, droughts and other forms of land degradation cost the global economy as much as 15 trillion dollars every year and are deepening the climate change crisis. Pictured is a drone visual of an area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration taken in 2015. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 7 2019 (IPS)

Forest fires, droughts and other forms of land degradation cost the global economy as much as 15 trillion dollars every year and are deepening the climate change crisis, a top United Nations environment official said Friday.

Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), said the degradation of land was shaving 10-17 percent off the world economy, which the World Bank calculates at 85.8 trillion dollars.

“In very simple terms, the message is to say: invest in land restoration as a way of improving livelihoods, in reducing vulnerabilities contributing to climate change, and reducing risks for the economy,” Thiaw said in response to a question from IPS.

Thiaw spoke to reporters in New York through a video-link from New Delhi, India, where delegates from UNCCD signatories are gathering for talks on tackling the desertification threat, which runs until Sept. 13.

Droughts and desertification currently hit 70 countries each year, while sand and dust storms are becoming a growing menace around the world, leading to asthma, bronchitis and other health problems, Thiaw warned.

“The good news is that the technology, the science and the knowledge is there to actually reduce land degradation and fix this phenomenon once and for all,” said Thiaw, formerly a Mauritanian official and deputy chief of the U.N. Environment Programme.

“Land restoration is being done in many parts of the world and by restoring land we are able to mitigate climate change.”

Some 100 government ministers and 8,000 delegates from 196 countries are at the UNCCD talks, which will cover drought, land tenure, restoring ecosystems, climate change, health, sand and dust storms and funding to revamp cities.

Thiaw praised a record-breaking turnout of decision-makers in the Indian capital that “could mark a major turning point for how we manage the scarce land and water resources we have left.”

Attendees include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his counterpart from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves, and the world body’s deputy secretary-general Amina Mohammed.

An outcome document, known as the “Delhi Declaration”, will inform this month’s climate summit in New York and spur a “coalition of like-minded countries” to make firmer pledges on tackling droughts, said Thiaw.

“We are fast running out of time to build our resilience to climate change, avoid the loss of biological diversity and valuable ecosystems and achieve all other Sustainable Development Goals,” said Thiaw, referencing the U.N.’s SDG agenda. 

“But we can turn around the lives of the over 3.2 billion people all over the world that are negatively impacted by desertification and drought, if there is political will. And we can revitalise ecosystems that are collapsing from a long history of land transformation and, in too many cases, unsustainable land management.”

Droughts are getting worse, says the UNCCD. By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in “water-stressed” conditions.

Though droughts are complex and develop slowly, they cause more deaths than other types of disasters, the UNCCD warns. By 2045, droughts will have forced as many as 135 million people from their homes.

Last month, a report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed that better management of land can help limit the release of greenhouse gases and thus combat global warming.

Tackling desertification and other forms of land degradation could help keep the global rise in temperatures below the benchmark figure of 2 degrees Celsius, IPCC scientists said in the 43-page study. 

With approximately 90 percent of Guyana’s population living below sea level, the country says it needs to adapt and build resilience. But Janelle Christian, head of the Office of Climate Change in Guyana says unlocking needed financial support is a major challenge. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Mar 26 2019 (IPS)

In 2008, the then president of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, established within the Ministry of the Presidency the Office of Climate Change. Guyana became the first country in the region to do so. A year later, Jagdeo set out a vision to forge a new low carbon economy in the Caribbean nation.

Jagdeo’s vision was translated into a national strategy as outlined in Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) after more than a year of review and consultation within Guyana, coupled with input from climate change negotiations at the United Nations.

The aim of the LCDS was the achievement of two goals: transforming Guyana’s economy to deliver greater economic and social development for the population by following a low carbon development path; and providing a model for the world of how climate change can be addressed through low carbon development in developing countries, if the international community takes the necessary collective actions, especially relating to REDD+.

Head of the Office of Climate Change Janelle Christian told IPS that the office continues to fulfil its mandate even though there has been a change of administration.

“We have started the process for preparation of our national climate change policy,” Christian said.

“We have concluded work on the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action for Greening of Towns.”

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Janelle Christian, head of the Office of Climate Change in Guyana. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Inter Press Service (IPS): What is the government doing to develop national climate change strategies?

Janelle Christian (JC): When the government changed, back in 2015, the new government advocated the vision for Guyana to become a green state and so the Department of Environment has been working over the last two years to elaborate the Green State Development Strategy. That strategy is looking at low carbon development across all sectors. When compared to the LCDS, which is looking at our mitigation contribution through sound management of our forest resources, the Green State Development Strategy is looking at advancing what we have started under the LCDS but also looking to maximise our renewable energy potential through the full mix of the opportunities available in that field, and also to ensure that our future development as we proceed as a country would ensure that we pursue that development on a low carbon path.

IPS: How different are the strategies and plans being developed on the President David Granger administration compared with those under the Jagdeo administration?

JC: We have been, and continue to work in crafting and in some instances revising some of our existing strategies so that they’re aligned with the new vision. So, what we have been working on, specifically with support from many of our multilateral partners – we have started the process for preparation of our national climate change policy. We are in the process of revising our climate resilience strategy and action plan and the output will be our National Adaptation Plan (NAP) aligned with the Green State Development Strategy main pillars. We have concluded work on the Nationally Appropriately Mitigation Action for Greening of Towns. We’ve also completed our Technology Needs Assessment.

IPS: Who are some of the development partners you’ve been working with to get projects off the ground?

JC: We have largely been working with existing global facilities for the mobilisation of climate finance to not only address some of the gaps and strengthen some of our existing programmes, but mobilise resources for sector-specific initiatives. We have been engaging very closely with the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and have successfully been able to mobilise what is called readiness support. The first one that we would have implemented was what is called the NDA [National Designated Authorities] strengthening through the GCF and that was with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre and that work has concluded. That really set the tone for further engagement and how we engage with the GCF.

Since then we would have successfully worked with the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations] and we would have been able to mobilise some resources specifically through the GCF, again focusing on getting the agriculture sector ready and also working with the sector to develop a concept proposal for submission to the GCF for investment-type support to the sector given its priority. We received notice of approval from the GCF for readiness support for our energy sector – largely renewable energy and also some private sector support. Because, we know, for climate solution it requires both public and private sector investment.

IPS: What else do you have going on in terms of climate change adaptation and mitigation?

JC: We have advanced work for support of the president’s vision for Bartica, which was identified as a model green town. We have just concluded all of the baseline data-type studies that were required for Bartica as we get ready to plan and identify specific type investments for that community.

IPS: Going forward, what would you say are the main challenges facing Guyana and other developing countries in fighting climate change?

JC: Support…They talk about the developed providing support to developing. And when we talk about that support, we’re talking about financing, which is the top challenge because these interventions for adaptation to increase our resilience require lots of investments. So, financing. While they will tell you that there are lots of established climate financing mechanism, to unlock those resources is really a challenge in itself. So, then the capacity of the country to be able to understand the systems, the modalities; to be able to elaborate the proposals that would then be successful and allow for their approval – those allow you to implement.

So, the financing and then the capacity in-country to unlock the financing, or the capacity in-country to have the right skill set in specialised areas, and of course we need technology also. Of course, technology requires money again. But even when you have technical support for the deployment of technology, again you have to be able to use the technology correctly. Then as a country you have to ensure that you have the sustainability component incorporated into your national systems so that those can be successfully infused as part of your operation over the long term. Those are the main things I would say for countries such as ours. How do you make a decision when you have limited finance to address the realities of what is before you?

Macharia Kamau is Kenya's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. UN Photo/Mark Garten.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 12 2017 (IPS)

The Super El Nino of 2015 to 2016 wrought droughts and floods around the world, yet it is its sister La Nina that is now fuelling drought and hunger in East Africa.

IPS spoke with Macharia Kamau, Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and an expert on climate change and El Nino and La Nina.

“Climatic events have taken on a rather different pattern now because of climate change,” said Kamau.

These events, such as the current drought in East Africa, are becoming “more severe,” “less predictable” and are happening “more often,” he said. “Those three things put everyone who is on the path of these climatic events at higher risk.”

Kenya’s current severe drought, exacerbated by the recent La Nina, has left over two million people in Kenya without enough to eat.

“We estimate about two million people have been affected,” said Kamau. Those most at risk of malnutrition include the elderly, young children and mothers who are breastfeeding, he said.

With two-thirds of its landmass already desert or semi-desert, Kamau says that Kenya is already vulnerable to low rain-fall.

However less reliable weather patterns associated with climate change, as well as increasingly frequent La Ninas and El Ninos, mean that farmers now have less time to recover in between extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods.

“If you’re relying on rain-fed agriculture, then having the right weather, predictable weather, is crucially important,” said Kamau, who is also the Special Envoy of the President of the UN General Assembly on Climate Change and was formerly the Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General on El Niño, alongside former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson.

Yet it is not just people who cannot find enough water. During droughts Kenya’s pastoralists struggle to find enough water for their cows. While the government is helping relocate some livestock, the lack of rain places incredible strain on farmers.

Wild animals also struggle to find enough food during droughts.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare estimates that some 40 percent of the animals in the Tsavo West National Park during Kenya’s last severe drought.

Droughts has a “direct impact” on Kenya’s tourism industry which relies on visitors to its wildlife reserves, says Kamau.

Climate change is also affecting the East African coral reef, another important part of Kenya’s tourism industry.

“Acidification of the seas is beginning to effect the coral reefs, and you know the East African reef is one of the great reefs of the world. That, in and of itself, presents yet another challenge for fisheries, for biodiversity of the seas, for oxygenation of the ocean, (and) for tourism.”

“That’s another worrying situation,” said Kamau.

The recent La Nina which subsided in February follows the super El Nino of 2015 to 2016, one of the most severe El Ninos on record. Climate change is making El Ninos and La Ninas more frequent and more intense.

Although La Nina has subsided, Kamau doesn’t think that there will be much relief until at least April.

“If you are already without food or water for a couple of months and living off of disaster assistance, a week is a lifetime,” he said.

A young boy stands near mangroves planted near his home in the village of Entale in Sri Lanka’s northwest Puttalam District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2017 (IPS)

Children growing up in the Seychelles think of the ocean as their backyard, says Ronald Jean Jumeau, Seychelles’ ambassador for climate change.

“Our ocean is the first and eternal playground of our children, they don’t go to parks they go to the ocean, they go to the beach, they go to the coral reefs, and all that is just collapsing around them,” Jumeau told IPS.

The tiny country off the East Coast of Africa is one of 39 UN member states known as small island states, or as Jumeau likes to call them: “large ocean states.”

Ambassadors and delegations from these 39 countries often speak at UN headquarters in New York steadfastly sounding the alarm about the changes to the world’s environment they are witnessing first hand. Jumeau sees these island states as sentinels or guardians of the oceans. He prefers these names to being called the canary in the gold mine because, he says: “the canaries usually end up dead.”

Yet while much is known about the threats rising oceans pose to the world’s small island states, much less is known about how these large ocean states help defend everyone against the worst impacts of climate change by storing “blue carbon.”

“We are not emitting that much carbon dioxide but we are taking everyone else’s carbon dioxide into our oceans,” says Jumeau.

Despite decades of research, the blue carbon value of oceans and coastal regions is only beginning to be fully appreciated for its importance in the fight against climate change.

“There’s proof that mangroves, seas salt marshes and sea grasses absorb more carbon (per acre) than forests, so if you’re saying then to people ‘don’t cut trees’ than we should also be saying ‘don’t cut the underwater forests’,” says Jumeau.

This is just one of the reasons why the Seychelles has banned the clearing of mangroves. The temptation to fill in mangrove forests is high, especially for a nation with so little land, but Jumeau says there are many benefits to sustaining them.

As well as absorbing carbon, mangroves guard against erosion and protect coral reefs. They also provide nurseries for fish.

Its not just coastal forests that take carbon out of the atmosphere. Oceans themselves also absorb carbon, although according to NASA their role is more like inhaling and exhaling.

The Seychelles, whose total ocean territory is 3000 times larger than its islands, is also thinking about how it can protect the ocean so it can continue to perform this vital function.

The nation plans to designate specific navigation zones within its territories to allow other parts of the ocean a chance to recover from the strains associated with shipping.

The navigation zones will “relieve the pressure on the ocean by strengthening the resilience of the oceans to absorb more carbon dioxide and ocean acidification,” says Jumeau. He acknowledges the plan will only work if all countries do the same but says you have to start somewhere.

Fortunately other countries are also, finally, beginning to recognise the importance of protecting the world’s oceans.

Isabella Lövin, Sweden’s deputy prime minister and climate minister told IPS that the world is going “in the totally wrong direction,” when it comes to achieving the goal of sustainable oceans and life below water.

“If you look at the trends right now, you see more and more overfishing, we are seeing more and more pollution, plastic litter coming into our oceans, and we’re also seeing all the stress that the ocean is under due to climate change, acidification of the water, but also the warming and sea level rises.

“All of this is putting a tremendous, tremendous pressure on our oceans,” said Lövin.

Together with Fiji, Sweden is convening a major UN Ocean Conference in June this year.

The conference aims to bring together not only governments but also the private sector and non-governmental organisations to create a more coordinated approach to sustaining oceans. It will look at the key role that oceans play in climate change but also other issues such as the alarming prospect that there will be more plastic in our seas than fish by the year 2050.

“There’s 3 billion people around the world that are primarily dependent on marine resources for their survival and so they depend on what the ocean can produce, so it’s about food security, it’s also about livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people that depend on small scale fisheries mostly in developing countries,” said Lövin.

Lövin also noted that rich countries need to work together with developing countries to address these issues, because the demand for fish in rich countries has put a strain on the global fish stocks that developing countries rely on.

“Rich countries … have been over-fishing with industrial methods for decades and now when they European oceans are being emptied more or less we have depleted our resources and then we import and we fish (over long distances in) developing countries’ waters.”

“We need to make sure that fish as a resource is conserved and protected for future generations.”

Excerpt:

When Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood tweets, the world listens.

And when the 76-year-old writer chanced upon a short video of a 6-year-old girl in Australia named “Ruby, the Climate Kid,” talking about how she admires environmental activists like David Suzuki, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Sir David Attenborough in a YouTube video she made with her mum Natalie, Atwood turned to one of her popular social media platforms – Twitter – and tweeted the link to her 1.3 million Twitter followers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has also seen the video now and social media is spreading the word tweet by tweet and update by update.

Meet ”Ruby, the Climate Kid,” as she calls herself in the video. With several videos already uploaded to YouTube about protecting the planet and other ecological issues, Ruby plans to continue making short videos in the future and slowly build a fan base, her mum told IPS. These things take time, but with a Tweet from Margaret Atwood making waves across the seas – Atwood also ”Facebooked” theRuby video link– there’s a big future for this young girl with a mind for science.

Ruby is a six-year-old Gamilaraay girl, fiercely passionate about saving the planet and alerting everyone to how dire the situation is, even if they have grown complacent, Independent Australia reported last week, in an article Rubypenned — with a little help from her mother, Natalie Cromb, who serves as the Indigenous Affairs editor for the news publication. According to David Donovan, IA’s editor, the online journal bills itself as “the journal of democracy and independent thought.”

Ruby‘s mum says that, from a very young age, her daughter has been influenced by people like Attenborough, Tyson and Suzuki. And now she has a new friend in Dr Atwood.

Natalie told a reporter:

“She is an avid reader of environmental newsletters and non-fiction books about wildlife. She was appalled to find out that five animals have been declared extinct since she was born and has been determined to make a difference ever since.”

In between school – Ruby is currently in Grade One – saving the planet with YouTube videos and making her parents laugh, she enjoys spending time with her dad and mum, family and friends at their home on Tharawal country.

When Natalie told Ruby the news that a famous Canadian novelist named Margaret Atwood, who was once 6-year-old herself and did science projects with her brother and sister in those long ago days before YouTube existed, Ruby told her mum:

“But she’s so smart, how does she know about me?”

Explaining that Atwood had seen the video online and enjoyed watching it and listening to Ruby‘s words and Tweeted it to her one million followers, Ruby told her mum:

“I hope she likes it and thinks that I have good ideas to save our planet.”

Natalie explained why Ruby makes videos as ”the Climate Kid” and writes about the planet, noting:

”From a very young age, Ruby has shown a demonstrable interest in the world around her and she has observed and learnt a great deal.

”She watches Sir David Attenborough, David Suzuki and Neil deGrasse Tyson documentaries which inspire her and educate her greatly. She has a great affinity for planet life which I think is because of her culture and she genuinely believes she can help save this planet.”

Ruby is now planning to make a short video to speak directly to Margaret Atwood in Canada.

An early peak at the transcript looks something like this, according to sources:

”Dear Margaret Atwood,

I am so happy you saw my video about saving our sick planet. And you Tweeted the link to your one million followers and facebooked the link, too. 

You are so kind. I guess you were six years old once, so you understand me, just a little six year old girl in Australia. I can’t believe you watched my video on Youtube!

I know you care about the oceans, too. You are concerned about our warming oceans and ocean acidification.

I support you, Margaret Atwood. You are my new hero. Thank you. You are 76 and I am six. There is no difference! We are kindred spirits. 

I love you, Margaret Atwood.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon applauds during a High-level Event on the Entry into Force of the Paris Agreement. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 2016 (IPS)

The Paris Climate Agreement is on the verge of coming into force after 31 nations officially deposited their instruments of ratification here Wednesday, more than doubling the number of countries which have joined so far to reach 60.

However the treaty will not yet enter into force, since these 60 countries represent only 48 percent of global carbon emissions. The Paris Agreement requires at least 55 countries representing 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in order for the deal to take effect.

Convened by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the High Level Event on Entry into Force of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change brought world leaders together to act upon commitments made to reduce global greenhouse emissions last year.

“What once seemed impossible now seems inevitable. When this year ends, I hope we can all look back with pride knowing that we seized the opportunity to protect our common home,” said Ban to delegates.

Director of Strategy and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) Alden Meyer pointed out the significance of the event to IPS, stating: “Political leaders see this as an important issue for their public.”

Similarly, Greenpeace International’s Climate and Energy Policy Advisor Kaisa Kosonen said how “inspiring” it was to see so many countries ratifying the agreement so soon.

“It truly tells you that times have changed. If one compares the process we had at Copenhagen and you think about where we are today when the agreement is looking likely to enter into force…it is giving the agreement a very good start,” she told IPS.

During the UN Climate Change Conference in 2009 (COP15) in Denmark, global leaders failed to commit to concrete actions to reduce emissions. The Paris Agreement now obligates governments to keep temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Many believe that the treaty will be ratified by the end of the year, less than a year since the agreement was signed, which would make it the speediest agreement to enter into force.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Spokesperson for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Nick Nuttall to IPS after noting the breakneck speed in which the treaty would come into force.

“Getting an agreement on climate change was one of the most difficult tasks the world has ever faced…that’s a strong political signal that all governments are on board to actually make good on their pledges in Paris.”

Of the countries that have joined are some of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions including China and the United States, which together account for over one third of global emissions.

However many of the countries which joined the agreement early, were small island states many of which see climate change as an existential threat. Although these states face increased natural disasters and rising sea levels, their own carbon emissions barely make a dent on a global scale.

China, which represents just over 20 percent of global emissions, has ambitiously committed to reduce carbon dioxide levels by 60 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The East Asian nation also aims to expand energy consumption coming from non-fossil energy to 20 percent by then. The U.S. meanwhile plans to cut up to 28 percent of the country’s emissions below 2005 levels by 2025.

Meyer commented on the importance of the move by the U.S., stating: “The United States is very wealthy but is obviously not immune as we’ve seen from Superstorm Sandy, the recent flooding in Louisiana, the droughts and heat waves in the West…no country, no community is immune.”

More countries are expected to ratify the agreement by the end of this year including Australia, Canada and the 28 members of the European Union (EU).

If these promises are fulfilled, the agreement will pass the second threshold and go into effect within 30 days.

But this is just the beginning, Nuttall stated. “The Paris Agreement is a framework agreement to combat climate change but it needs some nuts and bolts put in.”

Meyer echoed similar sentiments, telling IPS: “Having the agreement in place is only meaningful if countries implement [the agreement]. It is really actions on the ground that make a difference and the jury is still out on that.”

Nuttall highlighted the need for a “rule book” for member states to put the climate treaty into action, which many hope will be achieved during the upcoming Climate Conference (COP22) in Morocco.

Meyer particularly pointed to the challenge of achieving the two degree Celsius goal, telling IPS that the pledges by themselves do not add up to meet the temperature target. But even if the international community achieves this goal, the impacts of climate change will drastically increase which will require further action.

“The other side of this discussion has to be how we increase resilience to climate impacts and how we help countries and communities that are facing impacts cope with those impacts,” Meyer told IPS.

“This is a moment which we should celebrate, hoist a glass of champagne but get back to work in the morning because there’s still a lot of work to do,” he continued.

Already obstacles are arising as trade policies continue to clash with climate action.

“It’s clear that all policies that still favor fossil fuels or prevent countries from prioritizing renewable clean energy are harmful and should not be supported,” Kosonen said, referring to a new controversial global trade deal Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa).

According to leaked documents, the trade deal under negotiation between the EU and 22 countries may threaten the expansion of clean, renewable energy which could undermine the achievement of the Paris Agreement.

Meyer told IPS it was important for heads of State to engage and ensure that trade deals are “climate compatible.”

However, the world is waiting for the final ratification of the Paris Agreement as it is still uncertain where, how far and how fast it will go.

“The direction is clear, the commitment is clear but…can a family of nations working with the private sector and being supported by cities and regions rev up the action sufficiently quickly that we have a good chance of peaking these emissions very soon? That we will have to wait and see,” Nuttall stated.

Kosonen noted there is no room for complacency.

“Time is not on our side on this. This is the moment when we come together and decide this is what we want to do,” she concluded.

In December 2015, the international community descended on the French Capital of Paris to sign an agreement to reduce global warming. Over 180 countries have signed the agreement.

The beauty of the Paris agreement is that it’s a universal agreement, unlike the Kyoto protocol, said Ambassador Djoghlaf. Credit: Ahmed Djoghlaf.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 26 2016 (IPS)

The 134 members of the Group of 77 and China (G-77) made their mark on the Paris Climate Change Agreement and should now adopt a program of action to implement it, Ambassador Ahmed Djoghlaf told IPS in a recent interview.

Djoghlaf, of Algeria, was co-chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), together with Daniel Reifsnyder, of the United States, a position which allowed him to “witness very closely” the negotiation of the Paris Agreement.

“As the co-chair of the preparatory committee I can tell you that the G-77 has been a major actor during the  negotiation and a major player for the success of the Paris conference,” said Djoghlaf.

Djoghlaf said that the Group of 77 and China made its mark on the Paris agreement by mobilising a diverse range of countries and sub-groups, to “defend the collective interests of the developing countries.”

The group helped to find balance in the agreement “between mitigation issues that are important for developed countries and adaptation issues that are very close to the heart of the developing countries,” said Djoghlaf.

He also said that the group fought for equity, response measures, loss and damage as well as means of implementation, including financing, capacity building and transfer of technology.

“Those that are suffering the most nowadays are those that have less contributed to climate change crisis and they are using their own limited financial resources to address them, to adapt, to adjust to the consequences created by others,” he said.

Program of Action in Marrakech

“I hope that the G-77 through the leadership of Thailand will be able to take the lead and submit to its partners at the next conference of the parties in Marrakech a draft work program on capacity building for the implementation of the Paris agreement,” said Djoghlaf.

The 22nd meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP22) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held in Marrakech, Morocco, from 7 to 18 Nov. 2016.

Djoghlaf said the program should address North-South as well as South-South capacity building, which is needed to ensure that developing countries can implement their commitments including on issues related to the finalisation of their nationally determined contributions and preparation of their future contributions.

“It would be important for the developing countries to be able to identify their own capacity building needs and let others do it for them. It will be also important to have a framework to coordinate the South-South cooperation on climate change similar to the Caracas Plan of Action on South-South Cooperation or the Buenos Aires Plan of Action on economic and technical cooperation among developing countries,” he said.

Quoting Victor Hugo Djoghlaf said that “not a single army in the world can stop an idea whose time has come, I do believe when it comes to South-South cooperation on climate change it’s an idea whose time has come also.”

“Within the G-77, the diverse group, you have emerging countries that are now leaders in renewable energy and the energy of tomorrow and the they have I think a responsibility to share their experience and to allow other countries from the same region and the same group to benefit from their experience,” he said.

“I also believe that time has come for the G-77 to initiate it’s own program of action on climate change,” he said.

Djoghlaf said that developing countries need capacity building to ensure that they can continue to participate fully in the implementation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

Unlike developed countries, which “have fully-fledged ministries dealing with climate change,” he said, “In the South there is not a single country that has a Minister of Climate Change.”

He spoke about how during the negotiations of the Paris agreement many countries of the South had only one focal point and yet sometimes there were 15 meetings taking place at the same time and the meetings also often continued into the night.

It can be difficult for this focal point “to be able to understand and to participate, let alone be heard” when there is a “proliferation of simultaneous meetings,” he said.

Djoghlaf said that countries of the South could help address this disparity by establishing national committees, which include representatives from a number of different ministries.

“There’s not a single sector of activities which is not nowadays affected by the negative impact of climate change,” said Djoghlaf.

“All the sectors need to be engaged and we will succeed to win the battle of climate change when all these ministers, economic ministers and social ministers, will be fully integrating climate change in their planning and in their decision making processes,” he said.

Djoghlaf acknowledged it’s not easy for ministers in developing countries to engage because they have other urgent priorities. “They tend not to see the importance of the impact of climate change because they believe that this is not a priority for them,” he said. Yet there is often evidence that supports a more cross-cutting approach. For example, said Djoghlaf, World Health Organization research, which shows that 7 million people die from air pollution every year, demonstrates that climate change should also be a priority for health ministries.

The beauty of the Paris agreement

Djoghlaf said that the beauty of the Paris agreement is that it’s a universal agreement, unlike the Kyoto protocol. The Paris agreement is “very balanced” and should last for years to come because it takes into in to consideration the evolving capacities and the evolving responsibilities of countries, he said.

“We need a North-South and a South-South global climate solidarity,” said Djoghlaf.

“Without judging the past, who is responsible now, and who is responsible tomorrow, and who is responsible yesterday, I think we are all in the same boat, we are all in the same planet and we have to contribute based on our capacity,” he said.

He described the success of the signing ceremony held here Friday, where in total 175 countries signed and 15 countries deposited their instruments of ratification as “unprecedented”. “This has never happened before,” he said, referring to the developing countries, which also ratified the agreement. “It is a resounding political message and a demonstration of leadership,” he said. “It is crystal clear that the Paris agreement will enter into force well before the original expected date of 2020. The clock is ticking and we cannot afford any delay.”

Djoghlaf also said that he was not concerned about upcoming changes to the United States domestic political situation.

“When you are a party to the Paris agreement you can’t withdraw before three years after its entry into force. In addition I do believe that this historical agreement is in the long term interest of all Parties including the United States of America” he said.

“I believe that this Paris agreement is in the long term strategic interests of every country,” in part because eventually fossil fuel energy is going to disappear.

Investment in renewable energy was six times higher in 2015 than in 2014, he added.

“We tend to ignore the tremendous impact and signal the Paris agreement has already been providing to the business community,” he said.

Another part of the Paris agreement which Djoghlaf is happy about is what he describes as a “fully-fledged article on public awareness and education.”

“It’s to ensure that each and every citizen of the world, in particular the developing countries, are fully aware about the consequences of the climate change and the need for each of us as an individual to make our contribution to address the climate change,” he said.

“There is a need also to educate the people of the world of the need to have a sustainable lifestyle this throw away society can not continue to exist forever and we need to establish a sustainable pattern of production and consumption,” said Djoghlaf.

However Djoghlaf, who was the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said that he was concerned that the negotiations in 2015 didn’t adequately reflect the importance of ecosystems and biodiversity.

“Healthy biodiversity and healthy ecosystems have a major role to play to combat climate change,” said Djoghlaf, adding that 30 percent of carbon dioxide is absorbed by forests and 30 percent by oceans.

“For each breath that we have we owe it to the forests, but also to the ocean, also wetlands have a major contribution to make, the peat lands have a major contribution to make, the land itself, the fertile soil of course has a major contribution to play, so biodiversity is part and parcel of the climate global response,” he said.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jan 27 2016 (IPS)

The rich and the powerful, who meet every year at the World Economic Forum (WEF), were in a gloomy mood this time. Not only because the day they met close to eight trillion dollars has been wiped off global equity markets by a “correction”. But because no leader could be in a buoyant mood.

Roberto Savio

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is losing ground because of the way she handled the refugee crisis. French President Francois Hollande is facing decline in the polls that are favoring Marine Le Pen. Spanish president Mariano Rajoy practically lost the elections. Italian President Matteo Renzi is facing a very serious crisis in the Italian banking system, which could shatter the third economy of Europe. And the leaders from China, Brazil, India, Nigeria and other economies from the emerging countries (as they are called in economic jargon), are all going through a serious economic slowdown, which is affecting also the economies of the North. The absence of the presidents of Brazil and China was a telling sign.

However the last Davos (20-23 January) will remain in the history of the WEF, as the best example of the growing disconnection between the elites and the citizens. The theme of the Forum was “how to master the fourth revolution,” a thesis that Klaus Schwab the founder and CEO of Davos exposed in a book published few weeks before. The theory is that we are now facing a fusion of all technologies, that will completely change the system of production and work.

The First Industrial Revolution was to replace, at beginning of the 19th century, human power with machines. Then at the end of that century came the Second Industrial Revolution, which was to combine science with industry, with a total change of the system of production. Then came the era of computers, at the middle of last century, making the Third Industrial Revolution, the digital one. And now, according Schwab, we are entering the fourth revolution, where workers will be substituted by robots and mechanization.

The Swiss Bank UBS released in the conference a study in which it reports that the Fourth Revolution will “benefit those holding more.” In other words, the rich will become richer…it is important for the uninitiated to know that the money that goes to the superrich, is not printed for them. In other words, it is money that is sucked from the pockets of people.

Davos created two notable reactions: the first came with the creation of the World Social Forum (WSF), in 1991, where 40,000 social activists convened to denounce as illegitimate the gathering of the rich and powerful in Davos. They said it gave the elite a platform for decision making, without anything being mandated by citizens, and directed mainly to interests of the rich.

The WSF declared that “another world is possible,” in opposition to the Washington Consensus, formulated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Treasury of the United States. The consensus declared that since capitalism triumphed over Communism, the path to follow was to dismantle the state as much as possible, privatize, slash social costs which are by definition unproductive, and eliminate any barrier to the free markets. The problem was that, to avoid political contagion, the WSF established rules which reduced the Forums to internal debating and sharing among the participants, without the ability to act on the political institutions. In 2001, Davos did consider Porto Alegre a dangerous alternative; soon it went out of its radar.

At the last Davos, the WSF was not any point of reference. But it was the other actor, the international aid organization Oxfam, which has been presenting at every WEF a report on Global Wealth.

Those reports have been documenting how fast the concentration of wealth at an obscene level is creating a world of inequality not known since the First Industrial Revolution. In 2010, 388 individuals owned the same wealth as 3.6 billion people, half of humankind. In 2014, just 80 people owned as much as 3.8 billion people. And in 2015, the number came down to 62 individuals. And the concentration of wealth is accelerating. In its report of 2015, Oxfam predicted that the wealth of the top 1 per cent would overtake the rest of the population by 2016: in fact, that was reached within ten months. Twenty years ago, the superrich 1 per cent had the equivalent of 62 per cent of the world population.

It would have been logical to expect that those who run the world, looking at the unprecedented phenomena of a fast growing inequality, would have connected Oxfam report with that of UBS, and consider the new and immense challenge that the present economic and political system is facing. Also because the Fourth Revolution foresees the phasing out of workers from whatever function can be taken by machines. According to Schwab, the use of robots in production will go from the present 12 per cent to 55 per cent in 2050. This will cause obviously a dramatic unemployment, in a society where the social safety net is already in a steep decline.

Instead, the WEF largely ignored the issue of inequality, echoing the present level of lack of interest in the political institutions. We are well ahead in the American presidential campaign, and if it were not for one candidate, Bernie Sanders, the issue would have been ignored or sidestepped by the other 14 candidates. There is no reference to inequality in the European political debate either, apart from ritual declarations: refugees are now a much more pressing issue. It is a sign of the times that the financial institutions, like IMF and the World Bank, are way ahead of political institutions, releasing a number of studies on how inequality is a drag on economic development, and how its social impact has a very negative impact on the central issue of democracy and participation. The United Nations has done of inequality a central issue. Alicia Barcena, the Executive secretary of CEPAL, the Regional Center for Latin America, has also published in time for Davos a very worrying report on the stagnation in which the region is entering, and indicating the issue of inequality as an urgent problem.

But beside inequality, also the very central issue of climate change was largely ignored. All this despite the participants in the Paris Conference on Climate, recognized that the engagements taken by all countries will bring down the temperature of no more than 3.7 degrees, when a safe target would be 1.5 degrees. In spite of this very dangerous failure, the leaders in Paris gave lot of hopeful declarations, stating that the solution will come from the technological development, driven by the markets. It would have been logical to think, that in a large gathering of technological titans, with political leaders, the issue of climate change would have been a clear priority.

So, let us agree on the lesson from Davos. The rich and powerful had all the necessary data for focusing on existential issues for the planet and its inhabitants. Yet they failed to do so. This is a powerful example of the disconnection between the concern of citizens and their elite. The political and financial system is more and more self reverent: but is also fast losing legitimacy in the eyes of many people. Alternative candidates like Donald Trump or Matteo Salvini in Italy, or governments like those of Hungary and Poland, would have never been possible without a massive discontent. What is increasingly at stage is democracy itself? Are we entering in a Weimar stage of the world?

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