By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sep 5 2022 – Most of the 2.1 billion strong workforce in Asia and the Pacific are denied access to decent jobs, health care and social protection but there is an array polices and tools that governments can use to remedy these deficiencies and ensure that the rights and aspirations of these workers and their families are upheld and that they remain the engine of economic growth for the region.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

A new report released today, the Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific: The Workforce We Need, offers tangible solutions to immediately address alarming trends that both preceded the new coronavirus and were exacerbated by the pandemic.

While 243 million new people were pushed into poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic, half of all people in our region already had been surviving without cash, a third without necessary medicine or treatment and a quarter had gone without enough food to eat. This can lower productivity, which has fallen below the global average, but also tax revenues and future economic output.

With two-thirds of all workers in the region being employed informally, often with low wages, in hazardous working conditions and without a contract, half of our workforce are at the brink of poverty. People in our region are also at a higher risk of being pushed into poverty by health spending than anywhere else in the world, causing inequalities to further widen. With more than half of all people being excluded from social protection, pandemics, disasters economic downturns, or normal life events, such as falling ill, becoming pregnant or getting old often have detrimental impacts on households’ wellbeing and life prospects.

The reality is harsh: our workers are generally ill-equipped to unlock new opportunities, fulfill life aspirations for themselves and their families but also to face ongoing challenges emanating from megatrends of climate change, ageing societies and digitalization.

Climate-induced natural disasters cause businesses to relocate and jobs to disappear, disproportionately affecting rural communities. Digital technologies are bringing disruptive change to the world of work and the digital gap is intensifying inequalities in opportunities, income and wealth. Population ageing means that the number of older people will double by 2050, making policies to support active and healthy ageing ever more urgent.

None of these vulnerabilities are inevitable. With the right policies, our region’s workforce can become more productive, healthier and protected.

First, active labour market policies, through life-long learning and skill development, can support a green and just transition into decent employment and improve access to basic opportunities and adequate standards of living. Harnessing synergies between active labor market policies and social protection can help workers upgrade their skills and transition into decent employment while smoothing consumption and avoiding negative coping strategies during spells of unemployment or other shocks.

Second, extending social health protection to all can significantly improve workers’ health, income security and productivity. COVID-19 demonstrated the weakness of a status quo in which 60 per cent of our workers finance their own health care and receive no sickness benefits. A focus on primary health care as well as curative health protection is needed, also to support healthy and active ageing. People who are chronically ill or live with a disability must be included in health care strategies. Given the large informal economy across the region, extending social health protection is the key policy instrument for achieving universal health coverage in our region.

Third, building on the ESCAP Social Protection Simulator, a basic package of universal child, old age and disability social protection schemes, set at global average benefit levels, would slash poverty in our region by half. Our analysis also shows that social protection helps increase access to opportunities particularly for furthest behind groups. This income security would improve the workforce’s resilience. Extending social protection to all means increasing public spending by between 2 and 6 per cent of GDP, an investment well-worth its cost. The Action Plan to Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Social Protection in Asia and the Pacific can guide action towards broadening social protection coverage.

With this information at hand, there is a long overdue need for action. The policy recommendations set out in the Social Outlook are a priority for most countries in the region. These require bold but necessary reforms. For most countries these reforms are affordable but may require a reprioritization of existing expenditures and tax, supported by tax reform. Decent employment for all and an expansion of social protection and health care should form the foundations of a strong social contract between the State and its citizens. One where mutual roles and responsibilities are clear and where our workforce is given the security to fulfil their potential and be the force for achieving the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

IPS UN Bureau

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By Mario Osava
FORTALEZA, Brazil , Sep 5 2022 – The increasing productivity with which humankind generates waste has gained at least one sustainable counterpart: the extraction of biogas from landfills, a growing activity in Brazil.

“There was a great deal of prejudice even among engineers, skepticism in the gas companies. We had to present analyses and quality tests that were more rigorous than the ones required for fossil fuel gas. But we broke down the barrier of discredit and opened a new market, proving that it is a safe, stable gas with predictable prices.” — Thales Motta
Two small plateaus stand out in the landscape on the outskirts of Caucaia, one of the 19 municipalities that make up the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, capital of the state of Ceará in the Northeast of the country.

Although they look similar, one of the hills receives about 5,000 tons per day of solid waste collected in the metropolitan region of 4.2 million inhabitants. The other, the old sanitary landfill which began to operate in 1991, is already closed, but it is the one that generates more gas.

“We are pioneers in the production of biomethane from garbage,” said Thales Motta, director of Fortaleza Renewable Natural Gas (GNR), a partnership between the private companies Ecometano, of the MDC renewable energy and natural gas group, and Marquise Ambiental, of Fortaleza, which manages the Caucaia landfills.

Biomethane is the by-product of biogas refining that removes other gases, such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.

GNR Fortaleza produces about 100,000 cubic meters per day of this gas, which is sold to the state-owned Ceará Gas Company (Cegás), which mixes it with natural gas in its pipelines.

“We supply 15 percent of the gas distributed by Cegás, which trusted the quality of our biomethane,” Motta said during IPS’s visit to the GNR plant, inaugurated in December 2017.

This labyrinth of pipes collect biogas from the landfill and refine it to produce biomethane with 95 percent purity. The renewable gas is mixed with natural gas for industrial use, in vehicles and thermoelectric plants, as well as in homes and businesses in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, in northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Initial difficulties

Ecometano’s pioneering activity is due to another plant, Dos Arcos, established in 2014 in São Pedro da Aldeia, a coastal city of 108,000 inhabitants, 140 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro. Its capacity is limited to 14,000 cubic meters per day.

“There was no regulation for biomethane then and the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels denied us authorization to sell it,” said Motta, an electrical engineer. There were losses; the sales were made directly to a limited number of customers, such as supermarkets.

But the company persevered and the regulation came out in 2017, shortly before the start of GNR Fortaleza’s operations.

“There was a great deal of prejudice even among engineers, skepticism in the gas companies. We had to present analyses and quality tests that were more rigorous than the ones required for fossil fuel gas,” said the plant manager.

“But we broke down the barrier of discredit and opened a new market, proving that it is a safe, stable gas with predictable prices,” he added.

A view of the new Caucaia landfill, near Fortaleza, capital of the state of Ceará in northeastern Brazil, which receives about 5,000 tons of garbage a day. It already produces biogas, but will do so on a larger scale in a few years. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Advantageous costs

At the beginning, biomethane cost 30 percent more, but today it is 30 percent cheaper than natural gas, in view of the rise in fossil fuels, he pointed out. Its price depends on internal factors, such as inflation, and is not subject to unpredictable oil prices on the international market or exchange rate fluctuations, he stressed.

“Biomethane competes with fossil gas on an advantageous footing today. But even if oil becomes cheaper, the market is predisposed to betting on biomethane” because of environmental issues, he said.

“Cegás decided to distribute biomethane because it considers it strategic to diversify its mix with a cleaner, renewable and sustainable gas, thus contributing to reducing pollution and improving the environment,” the company’s president, Hugo de Figueiredo Junior, told IPS.

“It is also an opportunity to expand suppliers, competition and conditions to offer better prices to the end consumer,” he added.

Cegás, in which the state of Ceará is a majority shareholder, was a pioneer within Brazil in the injection of biomethane into its network, starting in May 2018.

The nearly 15 percent proportion of biomethane in the total volume constitutes “one of the highest percentages of renewable gas injected into the grid by a distributor in the world,” Figueiredo said.

That proportion may expand in the future, but biomethane faces several challenges, he added.

There is a need to disseminate existing technological solutions and facilitate access to them, expand knowledge about potential uses of green gases, and improve regulation and processes for the collection and disposal of solid waste and wastewater, he said.

The old landfill, now covered, still generates biogas that is converted to biomethane by refining, in Caucaia in northeastern Brazil. The dark lake is leachate, a highly polluting waste liquid that is treated before being discarded by sprinkling it on the soil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Expansion

In terms of production, GNR Fortaleza is now the second largest biomethane plant in Brazil. It is surpassed by Gas Verde, from Seropédica, a town near Rio de Janeiro, which has been producing 120,000 cubic meters per day since 2019.

Many interested parties visit GNR, which has become a reference point for gas generated from waste because it has developed process technologies that make it possible to integrate equipment from different national and international suppliers, “with its own codes that are open” to anyone, said Motta.

Currently, many companies that extract biogas from landfills for electricity generation are preparing to convert their plants to biomethane production, he said.

“We receive visits here from universities and groups of interested parties. We have to build an auditorium for lectures. There was no laboratory for biomethane analysis in the Northeast. Now we have one and research on this gas is mushrooming,” Motta said.

But it is necessary to take a broader view, he acknowledged. Landfills are limited. A minimum of 2,000 tons of waste per day is needed to make a biomethane plant viable, he estimated. Only large cities with at least one million inhabitants generate that much solid waste.

“We have to look for other kinds of biomass,” he said.

Hundreds of trucks travel the roads transporting garbage to the Caucaia landfill, some 20 kilometers from Fortaleza, the capital of the state of Ceará in Brazil’s Northeast region. About 5,000 tons of garbage are produced daily from the metropolitan region, which has 4.2 million inhabitants. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

This process is already underway, especially in the South and Southeast regions of Brazil, where largescale agricultural production offers a large volume of waste. Sugarcane is the main source of biomass, as it is also planted to produce ethanol, whose consumption in vehicles is on par with that of gasoline.

Livestock manure, especially from pigs, drives the production of biogas for electricity generation, and a growing proportion goes towards conversion into biomethane, especially for use in vehicles.

“Biomethane is a suitable fuel for the energy transition, has more predictable prices (than fossil fuels) and can be produced in regions far from the existing natural gas network,” which in Brazil is concentrated along the eastern coast, Figueiredo, the president of Cegás, said from the company’s headquarters in Fortaleza.

But not having a pipeline nearby can frustrate large projects, Motta said. He gave the example of a sugar agribusiness company that could produce 30,000 cubic meters of methane a day. As this is double its own consumption and the nearest big city is 90 kilometers away, the project was unfeasible.

Harnessing gas from garbage, and from biomass in general, has become an urgent necessity in the face of the climate emergency. Methane contributes more intensely to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, which is used to gauge threats to the climate.

Brazil and other countries pledged to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, as a crucial step towards keeping global warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius by 2050.

GNR Fortaleza, located in Caucaia, a city of some 370,000 inhabitants 15 kilometers from Fortaleza, plays an environmental role. But in terms of employment, it generates only 32 direct jobs and an uncertain number of indirect jobs, including outsourced services, temporary consultants and suppliers of certain equipment.

Cegás serves only 24,000 gas consumers in Greater Fortaleza. According to its data, industry accounts for 46.26 percent of consumption, thermoelectric plants for 30 percent and motor vehicles for 22.71 percent. There is little left – just 0.73 percent for households and 1.22 percent for commerce.

Having harvested and graded their sunflower crop instead of taking it to market, every member of Zikometso Productive and Innovation Centre (IPC) brings their produce to the factory for cooking oil production. The IPC falls under the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (Nasfarm). The rising cost of cooking oil in the country and the […]

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Sep 5 2022 – The chances of a child dying before reaching age five years have dropped substantially worldwide during the recent past. However, a significant divide remains among countries as well as within regions in the chances of children dying.

Over the past fifty years, the death rates of infants and children under age five have declined markedly. Since 1971 the world’s infant mortality rate declined from nearly 100 deaths per 1,000 live births to 28. Similarly, the world’s under-five mortality rate declined from nearly 150 deaths per 1,000 live births to 37 (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

Despite those impressive declines, sizable differences in the levels of children dying persist especially between more developed and less developed regions. In 2021, for example, the infant mortality rate and under-five mortality rate of the less developed regions were about eight times the levels of the more developed regions.

High rates of children dying are even more striking for many developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. While sub-Saharan Africa represented 14 percent of the world’s population in 2021, it accounted for more than 56 percent of the deaths of children under age five. In contrast, more developed regions represented 16 percent of the world’s population but accounted for 1 percent of deaths of children under age five.

In addition, the infant mortality rates of the fifteen highest countries are all located in sub-Saharan Africa. Their rates are no less than thirteen times higher than those of the more developed regions. Moreover, four of those countries, i.e., Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, and Somalia, have rates that are eighteen times higher than those of the more developed regions (Figure 2).

Source: United Nations.

A similar pattern is clear for death rates of children under-five. The fifteen highest countries are again all in sub-Saharan Africa. They have under-five mortality rates that are at least fifteen times higher than those of the more developed regions. In addition, the rates of Somalia, Nigeria, Chad, and the Central African Republic are about twenty times higher than the levels of the more developed regions.

Important factors contributing to high levels of children dying include neonatal causes, including preterm and low birth weight, asphyxia, infection, pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, measles, and tuberculosis.

The death of mothers is also a major factor associated with high levels of children dying. High rates of maternal mortality are often the result of excessive blood loss, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, obstructed labor, anemia, malaria, and heart disease. In addition to high rates of maternal mortality, countries with high death rates of children also have high rates of women dying during their childbearing years.

For the fifteen countries with the highest rates of child mortality, for example, female mortality between age 15 and 50 is at least four times higher than the level of the more developed regions. Moreover, in the Central African Republic, Chad, Lesotho, and Nigeria, female mortality between age 15 and 50 is more than seven times the level of more developed regions (Figure 3).

Source: United Nations.

One of key targets of the Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) is by 2030 to end preventable deaths of newborns and children under five. More specifically, the goals are to reduce neonatal mortality to at least 12 deaths per 1,000 live births and under-five mortality to at least 25 deaths per 1,000 live births.

While sub-Saharan Africa represented 14 percent of the world’s population in 2021, it accounted for more than 56 percent of the deaths of children under age five. In contrast, more developed regions represented 16 percent of the world’s population but accounted for 1 percent of deaths of children under age five

For most of the sub-Saharan countries achieving those desired goals by 2030 appears unlikely. For example, the under-five mortality rate of sub-Saharan Africa in 2021 is 72 deaths per 1,000 live births, or nearly triple the desired goal by 2030. Also, the projected 2030 under-five mortality rate for sub-Saharan Africa is 62, again more than double the desired goal of 25 deaths per 1,000 births.

The situation for the fifteen countries with the highest levels of children dying are even more striking. The under-five mortality rates of those countries are expected to remain far greater than the desired goal by 2030. For example, the 2021 under-five mortality rates for Nigeria and Somalia of about 111 deaths per 1,000 births are projected to decline to approximately 100 by 2030, or four times the goal of SDG 3.

On a variety of developmental dimensions, the countries with high rates of children dying are doing comparatively poorly. Those countries have high levels of poverty, illiteracy, and malnourishment.

Furthermore, on various global indexes, such as the Fragile State Index, the Human Development Index, the Economic Freedom Index, and the Human Freedom Index, those sub-Saharan African countries are doing comparatively poorly, typically falling in the bottom tier. For example, on the Fragile State Index, the rankings of the fifteen high child mortality countries reflect low levels of economic and social development with high levels of political instability.

Moreover, high child mortality countries are facing increasing risks of climate change. Those countries are among the least able to adapt to its consequences, such as high temperatures, droughts, flooding, and extreme weather events. Also, the same countries generally lack the financial and institutional capacities to carry out adaptation programs.

It is certainly the case that child mortality levels worldwide have declined substantially over the past half century. However, despite those impressive declines, a significant divide in the level of children dying remains between the more developed regions and most sub-Saharan African countries and other countries with high child mortality rates.

The major measures needed to address the high levels of children dying are widely recognized, with most of those deaths being due to preventable or treatable causes. According to the World Health Organization, six solutions to the most preventable causes of under-five deaths are: skilled attendants for antenatal, birth, and postnatal care; immediate and exclusive breastfeeding; access to nutrition and micronutrients; improved access to water, sanitation, and hygiene; family knowledge of danger signs in a child’s health; and immunizations.

It is also widely recognized that the financial resources, political will, social stability, and health programs that are necessary to reduce the numbers of children dying are typically lacking or seriously inadequate.

Addressing the significant divide in the rates of children dying represents a major challenge for many developing countries as well as the international community of nations that can offer aid and assistance to those countries. While the challenge is formidable, it is essential to reduce the unacceptably high levels of children dying.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations, and his latest book is: “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 5 2022 – There are many ways the UN can have a sizeable role in promoting the engagement and participation of youth and helping them becoming a central pillar of a new way of doing policy-making.

After all, if we want to rethink the relationships between the state and citizens, the foundation of a new Social Contract as envisioned by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, youths must be enabled to have a voice and an agency powerful enough to directly influence decision making, locally and globally.

At the former level, the UN can set up UN Youth National Forums or Assemblies wherever it operates. Such entities would be more then tokenistic forums where meetings happen on “off basis” but instead would be structured as permanent mechanisms with a power of not only advising but also monitoring the work being carried out by the UN Country Teams.

Having in place such forums locally would pave the way for bolder action at the higher levels, on the international arena.

It is here where there is a great deal of scope for the UN to model a truly radical change in terms of youths’ participation globally, raising the bar in terms of what youths’ involvement means and what it can imply.

If we truly create pathways for youths to play a more central role and we generate a structure or mechanism for them to fulfill such responsibilities, international politics, while would not drastically change overnight, surely would be impacted.

This is the reason why Guterres should strive for something that, though discussed in the past, was never close enough to be fully considered nor implemented.

I am referring to the idea of creating a permanent UN Youth Assembly that would autonomously act alongside of the established General Assembly and would become a forum where youths from around the world can discuss and set the policy course.

This permanent mechanism could either be linked up with the assemblies or forums that the UN could establish at national level or could simply have a completely different, standing alone nature with its members being selected at national levels through transparent and competitive process.

While we cannot imagine at the moment that such body would yield any veto power, it could, for example, have a symbolic, though powerful role especially in making its voice heard by the major global powers.

For example, it would have access, on consistent basis, to the UN Security Council, the most consequential institution within the international community.

While the official positions of its members, results of government-to-government negotiations behind the curtain, won’t be altered, at least they could be openly challenged.

Imagine some representatives of the UN Youth Assembly addressing, after their own deliberations, the sessions of the Security Council: this would be a powerful reminder to the world leaders that youths can dare to think differently.

The working modality of this envisioned UN Youth Assembly could become a template for participation and transparency where inputs and feedbacks from youths around the world could make such assembly truly owned by all the youths from across the world.

Thanks to the progress of digital work, a permanent online platform could offer themes of discussions for the UN Youth Assemblies in a way that everyone, even those not formally part of the UN Youth Assembly, could participate.

Ensuring a strong connection between this assembly and the youths around the world is as vital as daunting.

The risk is that any bold attempt of creating a new world body for youths to be involved in the decision making could become an elitist platform where only the most connected youths would participate.

Instead of bringing in youths from disadvantaged groups, the “usual suspects”, youths from well off families with access to opportunities, would “capture” their new “toy”.

That’s why it is vital that UN agencies and programs around the world do a better job at promoting civic engagement and participation, enabling innovative pathways for also the less advantaged youths to participate and deliberate.

Setting up national mechanisms for the UN to engage youths at national level could offer a pipeline for a more diverse crop of youths to have a chance to be involved and participate.

Investing in capacity building of youths is more and more critical.

Thanks to innovative partnerships with civil society, trainings, courses, institutes or academies could offer a way for the UN to create a sort of “upward mobility” in terms of opportunities to participate for many youths now excluded.

In addition, the members UN Youth Assembly should be chosen on rotation basis and exercise their duties for short periods like six months or at the longest, one year as such short mandates would give chances to more youths to be in the Assembly.

Moreover, a way to ensure a deep link between this new body and the ground reality, each of its representatives would be supported by a deliberative group at national level, a further connection between local youths and the international arena.

Imagining such body comes with risks.

In relation to its duties and responsibilities, the UN Youth Assembly could be easily become object of derision.

It would be seen as another tokenistic tool that governments could use to promote some forms of reforms that in reality, instead, would continue to legitimize the current status quo in terms of decision making and power relations.

That’s why it is important that UN Youth Assembly is provided with the analytical and research tools that would make it an authoritative source of insights and proposals from a youths’ perspective.

Youths led deliberations should be based on a proper process of accessing to the best available information and through a very structured exercise of deliberative process that would, ultimately, end up with recommendations or proposals, also in forms of policy briefs.

Setting up a UN Youth Assembly won’t preclude other forms of youth’s activism and participation.

For example, we have seen with climate activism, how forceful youths’ actions have to be in order to become visible and noticed.

The Assembly would be just another way, now completely missing, for youths to properly channel their opinions and voices, overcoming the multitude of improvised consultation mechanisms that are often created for major global leaders ‘gatherings whose impacts are close to nil.

Moreover, like the UN Youth National Forums or Assemblies locally, the UN Youth Assembly could be given some limited binding powers in steering the course of the UN agencies and programs, having a clear voice and power in deciding their global strategies and priorities.

The future of youths’ participation aimed at setting the global agenda will be a mix of different and yet complementary actions from the ground and from the top alike.

Peaceful manifestations, including those of civil disobedience, have a place together with other forms of youths’ involvement.

Having a new global platform to express their voices should not be seen as a way to stifle bottom-up initiatives but, rather, as another way to help transform the way political power is exercised.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

IPS UN Bureau

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