By Paul Virgo
ROME, Sep 8 2022 – In 1972 the Club of Rome alerted the world to the harm human economic systems were doing to the health of our planet in its seminal, best-selling report, The Limits to Growth. With the devastating impacts of the climate crisis hitting home harder than ever, especially in the Global South, that warning about the dangers of exponential economic growth has been fully vindicated.

The club, an international network of scientists, economic experts and former heads of State and government, is marking the 50th anniversary of that landmark work with a new contribution that builds on ‘Limits’ and the dozens of other reports that it has released over the last half century to consolidate the case for an overhaul of the prevailing economic paradigm.

If humanity snaps out of its collective denial, it can move to a ‘Great Leap’ scenario in which global temperatures are stabilized at below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. To bring this about it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis

‘Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity’, which is coming out late in September, warns that if the world continues with the economic policies of the last 40 years, the rich will get richer while the poor fall farther behind, creating extreme inequalities and growing social tensions within and between countries.

In this ‘Too Little, Too Late Scenario’, political division and lack of trust will make it increasingly difficult to address climate and ecological risks, with regional societal collapse, driven by rising social tensions, food insecurity and environmental degradation, increasingly likely.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be like this.

If humanity snaps out of its collective denial, it can move to a ‘Great Leap’ scenario in which global temperatures are stabilized at below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

To bring this about it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis by: ending poverty through reform of the international financial system; addressing gross inequality by ensuring that the wealthiest 10% take less than 40% of national incomes; empowering women to achieve full gender equity by 2050; transforming the food system to provide healthy diets for people and planet; and transitioning to clean energy to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

“With bold action now a large population can thrive on a livable planet,” Owen Gaffney, one of the six authors of the new report, told IPS.

“We argue that we need five transformations in parallel at speed with the biggest effort this decade on poverty, inequality, food, energy and gender equity”.

“This is the minimum. This does not lead to some utopia, but this leads to societies that are functional enough to deal with the scale of the crises we know are coming.”

Gaffney, a sustainability analyst at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said that it is necessary to break away from “a system that will create the first trillionaire this decade” and distribute wealth more fairly to create a system that benefits the majority in the long run.

“High wealth inequality has a destabilizing influence in societies,” he said.

“It erodes social cohesion. Compare Sweden to the United States. In the US there has emerged an ‘elite versus the rest’ worldview. This, compounded by race and religious divisions, has contributed to an increasingly dysfunctional society.

“In more economically equal societies there is more trust in governments. We need trust in governments to allow societies to take large, long-term decisions”.

Earth for All, which is the result of a two-year research project, goes on to give 15 policy recommendations with the greatest potential to accelerate these turnarounds.

It also calls for the creation of a novel financial innovation, the Citizen’s Fund, which would distribute the wealth of the global commons to all people as a Universal Basic Dividend, in order to tackle inequality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and provide a safety net for the most vulnerable through economic shocks.

Furthermore, the book tackles the fierce debate between supporters of ‘degrowth’ and advocates of ‘green growth’.

It sides with the latter, saying the ‘Giant Leap’ would not spell the end of economic growth, but the end of the directionless economic growth that is destroying societies and the planet.

“Exponential economic growth comes hand in hand with exponential growth in material consumption, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the current economic system,” said Gaffney.

“This does not necessarily need to be the case. An energy transformation to clean energy will cause economic growth in the clean energy sector and a contraction of the fossil fuel sector.”

“So, it depends what is growing. If we have growth in circular economies and regenerative economies, this is good.”

“If we continue growing the linear ‘take, make, break, waste’ model then we don’t have a long future on Earth”.

Although the solutions proposed in the book are largely macro-economic ones that can only be implemented by governments, the book is also a statement against climate doomism and a call to action for everyone.

Gaffney points to the impact social movements like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion are having and to a survey done for Earth4All with Ipsos MORI of G20 countries which suggests that 74% of people in G20 countries want economic systems to change.

He hopes that we are reaching a positive “social tipping point” in which these new ideas take hold and embed in the political sphere rapidly.

Remarkably, one of the authors of the report is Norwegian climate expert Jorgen Randers, who was also among the co-authors of The Limits to Growth.

“We are standing on a cliff edge,” Randers said. “In the next 50 years, the current economic system will drive up social tensions and drive down wellbeing.”

“We can already see how inequality is destabilising people and the planet.”

“Unless there is truly extraordinary action to redistribute wealth, things will get significantly worse. We are already sowing the seeds for regional collapse.”

“Societies are creating vicious cycles where rising social tensions, which are exacerbated by climate breakdown, will continue to lead to a decline in trust.”

“This risks an explosive combination of extreme political destabilisation and economic stagnation at a time when we must do everything we can to avoid climate catastrophes.”

By Juliet Morrison
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 2022 – With the outbreak of Monkeypox in non-endemic countries leading to a scramble for vaccines, global health advocates are again calling for equity to be prioritized in the international response.

Equity was a top concern during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic emergency health response. The World Health Organization (WHO) helped spearhead several initiatives in an attempt to reduce disparities between nations, notably COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.

Yet, despite these efforts, figures from Our World in Data show that only one in seven people are fully vaccinated in low-income countries. In contrast, almost three in four people have been fully vaccinated for a year in high-income countries.

Fatima Hassan, human rights lawyer and founder of South African-based civil society group Health Justice Initiative, sees the current disparity in Monkeypox vaccine access as the latest example of the Global South, and Africa especially, being disadvantaged in the global health space.

“We still as Africa don’t have any supplies of monkeypox vaccines, even though as a continent, we’ve been dealing with this disease for a number of years. So on one level, now that it’s become a Global North problem, the vaccines have been found for them, but not for us.”

Monkeypox can be combated with smallpox vaccines, which are 85 percent effective against the virus. Since the disease was eradicated in 1980, the WHO has had 31 million doses set aside for a rapid response in case smallpox should re-emerge. The organization is currently assessing the potency of this stockpile and whether it can be deployed against Monkeypox.

However, these doses have never been distributed in Africa, where Monkeypox has circulated since the 1970s. The continent is also facing a much higher death rate. When the WHO declared a global health emergency, the only deaths recorded were from West and Central Africa, where 4.7 percent of people who contracted the disease had died.

In the case of COVID-19, many saw the international rules that allow pharmaceutical companies to protect their intellectual property (IP) as simply reinforcing existing disparities between countries.

Several wealthy countries signed contracts with pharmaceutical companies, helping finance private sector research and development, in exchange for prioritized access to vaccine supply. When companies eventually developed successful vaccines, the technology they used was restricted from being shared with the global community. Nations that lacked both the technology and the resources to purchase on the open market resources had to rely on vaccine donations from rich countries that came several months later.

Over 100 organizations and networks joined a coalition called The People’s Vaccine to call for the suspension of intellectual property rules and mandatory pooling of COVID-19-related data and technologies. Those supporting the alliance’s call include the current leaders of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and former Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

For Hassan, intellectual property regulations were especially problematic given the participation of Africans in trial phases for Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines.

“We did all those trials; we’ve contributed to the knowledge generation and to the scientific knowledge that allowed [pharmaceutical companies] to get emergency use authorization. But we were not guaranteed supplies or access or preferential access. So the deeper inequity in this entire setup was also that the Global South was asked to participate in the research and the trials, but there was no regulated way of ensuring […] genuine benefit sharing agreements.”

For countries worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of increased self-sufficiency in coping with global health emergencies.

“I think that was the lesson of COVID. For the global South, it was like, oh, okay, we need to actually figure this out by ourselves,” Hassan said.

Several initiatives have been created to fulfill this goal, including a new mRNA vaccine technology hub in South Africa.

The hub was launched by the WHO and COVAX in Afrigen, Cape Town, on June 21, 2022. It aims to bolster low and middle-income countries’ capacity to produce COVID mRNA vaccines by training scientists in developing mRNA vaccines and pooling all knowledge acquired by partners. The site in Afrigen will be run by a consortium that includes Biovac, Afrigen Biologics, and Vaccines, a network of universities, and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

When the hub launched, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa commended the initiative and its implications for Africa’s role globally.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the full extent of the vaccine gap between developed and developing economies and how that gap can severely undermine global health security. This landmark initiative is a major advance in the international effort to build vaccine development and manufacturing capacity that will put Africa on a path to self-determination.”

African scientists are heading the technology transfer hub. It has already produced the first batches of an mRNA vaccine with technology that will be transferred to 15 countries.

Reflecting on Africa’s response to COVID-19, Public Health Professor Flavia Senkubuge told IPS that she’s proud of how well the continent dealt with the caseload, especially as many predicted COVID-19 would “literally obliterate” the region.

The WHO has cited Africa as “one of the least affected regions of the world” throughout the pandemic. The number of total deaths from the continent, 256 555, makes up 3 percent of the world’s total, 6.49 million. In contrast, deaths from the Americas and Europe accounted for 46 and 29 percent, respectively.

Senkubuge told IPS that predictions that Africa would be completely overwhelmed overlooked the expertise Africa has garnered in combating public health crises, notably HIV and AIDS.

“If you look at South Africa, for people like me who trained and practiced as physicians during the HIV and AIDS period, we are used to those large numbers of very sick patients. Additionally, in South Africa, you must remember that we are a country that has a quadruple burden of disease, therefore which means we have a high volume of patients coming into our health establishments. We are therefore used to working differently, having an optimum triage system, and working in under-resourced and high-pressure environments.”

Being underestimated also extends to the work of African scientists. Both Hassan and Senkubuge told IPS that the work of Africans is often neglected and overlooked in global settings.

Yet, the pandemic has also highlighted their contributions to global health, Senkubuge said. She pointed to South Africa’s discovery and swift response to the emergence of the Omicron variant. She believes this has led to a shift in how African scientists are considering their work on the global stage.

“As African [scientists], […] I think we have kind of shifted the paradigm to say we are here, we are not going anywhere. We’re not going to try and convince anyone regarding the excellence of our work, we’ll just do our work, continue to share it with our communities, publish in the top journals and be part of the global discourse on our own terms. You’re welcome to retake, amend, recheck, but actually, we stand resolute in our unapologetic knowledge that the work we do here in Africa is excellent and contributes significantly to global health.”

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By Trevor Page
LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 8 2022 – As our planet continues to heat up, extreme weather has affected many of us. From the west coast of North America across Europe, the Middle East and Asia to Pakistan and New Zealand, wildfires and flash floods have destroyed homes and property and disrupted the daily lives of millions.

Supply chains, already badly affected by COVID, have been further complicated by drying rivers and waterways. In the more developed countries, insurance covers much of the short-term losses.

But it’s in the developing world where the effects of climate change cause the most acute form of human suffering: starvation. Somalia, in the Horn of Africa is once again in the grip of a devastating drought. Livestock have perished and children are beginning to die.

Parts South Sudan’s farmland have now been under water for the 4th consecutive year because of abnormal floods. Hapless farmers, marooned on islands of higher ground, are living off handouts from the international donor community. No insurance to cover their losses; they’re lucky just to hang on to their lives.

And if we needed a shriller wake-up call about the unfolding global food crisis, Russia’s war on Ukraine has certainly provided that: Much of grain and fertilizer that the world relies on was held hostage by the combatant’s mines and warships in the Black Sea.

Paralyzed by the outdated make-up and role of the Security Council, the political side of the UN System was once again unable to prevent war from breaking out.

Wars and armed conflict rage on in Syria, Libya, Myanmar, Afghanistan, South Sudan, the DRC and, of course, in Ukraine itself. But thanks to UN and Turkish mediation, grain and fertilizer shipments from Ukrainian and Russian ports have resumed under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The Joint Coordination Centre (JCC), set up in Istanbul at the end of July, is ensuring that trade and aid in these most basic of commodities can flow out of Black Sea ports again. Amir Abdulla, the World Food Programme’s former Deputy Executive Director is the UN’s coordinator for the Black Sea Grain Initiative and heads up the UN Delegation to the JCC.

Abdulla told me earlier this week that operations are scaling up and grain exports from Ukraine went over 1 million tons in less than a month and to 2 million tons in just the last week. An average of 9 ships a day heading to or from Ukraine are being inspected jointly by UN, Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian inspectors. “While the conflict in Ukraine continues, it has been possible with the help of Turkey and the agreement of Russia and Ukraine, for the UN to get this initiative underway so that the much-needed flow of food and fertilizer moves out of Black Sea ports to the rest of the world”, he said.

“More grain needs to move through to make space in silos for the new harvest. This is critical for the world’s grain supply for next year. Equally important is the urgent export of fertilizer, including ammonia, so that farmers across the world can continue food production at an affordable cost”, he added.

But what about the wider food crisis that is developing and will be with us in the years to come?

The World Food Programme (WFP) warns that 345 million people are already affected by acute food insecurity in 82 countries. And with the global population set to hit at least 10 billion by 2050, the effect of climate change on agriculture will compound the growing problem. There is a desperate need for the developing world to grow more food.

Up to now, WFP has helped ward off mass starvation among the world’s most vulnerable. But to prevent this happening in the years ahead, there’s never been a greater need for it to address the “development” part of its dual mandate by getting back in the business of helping governments and communities grow more food.

In the early-60s when WFP started out, and for it’s first 20 years of operation, around 70% of its budget was spent on development projects, many of them designed to grow more food.

Work on India’s Indira Gandhi Canal, which takes water from the Himalaya mountains to irrigate 2 million hectares of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, started in 1964 with WFP assistance. Workers building the canal were able to buy WFP food at specially set up shops on the banks of the canal network at low, fixed rates.

After WFP assistance ended the World Bank and the EU helped complete the irrigation network. For the last 50 years, millions of tons of additional food grain has been produced every year as a result of this project. Wheat is now reaped annually in the far-flung desert district of Jaisalmer.

As WFP’s Representative in India, Bishow Parajuli says with pride, “This project has changed the lives of millions of ordinary people”, giving real meaning to WFP’s development slogan: changing lives.

In China’s far-western province of Qinghai, it’s much the same story. Here, back in the 80s, WFP helped the local government’s Water Conversancy Bureau construct an irrigation network that today irrigates what was 8,000 hectares of low-yielding land in Haidong Prefecture.

CHINA – Completed irrigation canal in Qinghai Province, a WFP- assisted project. Credit: WFP/Trevor Page

As with India’s Indira Gandhi Canal, the network was built manually, by hand. WFP food was supplied to pay part of the worker’s wages. With assured irrigation, wheat yields doubled within 5 years. Today, this same area of Qinghai is the province’s main wheat producing area with mechanical combines harvesting the crop instead of reaping it by hand.

CHINA – With irrigation, wheat yields doubled in 5 years at this WFP-assisted project in Qinghai Province. Credit: WFP/Paul Mitchell

Why is WFP no longer helping developing countries build major irrigation networks designed to grow more food? Because its focus changed in the early 90s to emergencies or saving lives as WFP calls it today.

That was when WFP took over the responsibility from the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR to feed the world’s 25 million refugees on its books as well as the 50-odd million who sort refuge elsewhere in their own country as internally displaced people, or IDPs.

But the pressure of climate change and population growth is causing the pendulum to swing again. At WFP’s last Executive Board (EB) meeting in June, WFP’s Changing Lives Transformation Fund (CLTF) was introduced.

While there was general agreement that WFP’s dual mandate – emergencies and development – must be respected and that humanitarian aid alone is not enough, cash-strapped main donor EB members insisted that saving lives must always take priority over changing lives.

Not surprisingly, most EB members from the developing world wanted WFP to help more with changing lives through stepped-up development assistance. After much debate, which went to closed night sessions, the compromise was a $55 million fund over 5 years, or upto $1.2 million for around 10-15 countries as seed money for projects aimed at supporting national food security.

While this is a start, the amounts earmarked seem like half-hearted steps for the organization that the world set up to help governments prevent mass hunger and starvation. Volli Carucci, Director of WFP’s Resilience and Food Systems Service disagrees, pointing to the many reliance measure that WFP is supporting in the drought-stricken Sahel. “ But more long-term support from donors is needed”, he said. Many countries in Africa need to be growing drought-resistant sorghum and millet rather than maize he told me. Maize is the staple for much of the continent.

Acknowledging “the present and future danger” of the global food crisis, Carucci emphasised that greater awareness of WFP’s current resilience initiatives and its development successes of the past is needed.

BANGLADESH – Unskilled labour re-excavating a silted-up irrigation canal. WFP food was used as part-payment of wages to workers rehabilitating irrigation and drainage canals and embankments in this flood-prone country. Credit: WFP/Trevor Page

Bangladesh, China, Egypt and India have all benefited from WFP assistance in building major irrigation networks. Every year since, millions of tons of food grain has been produced that helps feed their people.

EGYPT – Irrigation canal under construction. Credit: WFP

Ethiopia reversed some of its major soil erosion problems by planting millions of trees to protect agricultural land. Always short of cash to pay labour costs, these governments used WFP assistance to help pay the workers on these projects with food.

ETHIOPIA – Watering seedlings for a WFP-assisted forestry project. Credit: WFP/Franco Mattioli

South/South Cooperation provides a channel to transfer the organizational management and technical expertise of these countries to less developed countries with agricultural potential. Projects like these would also provide employment for the growing hordes of unskilled labour looking for work.

As WFP nears its 60th anniversary it has a full agenda of programming and internal management issues to address. Hopefully, helping the governments and community organizations in developing countries grow more food will figure more prominently than in past decades.

Irrigating and developing more farmland could also help with the integration IDPs into new communities to make them productive citizens instead of living off handouts year after year. It could also help stem the flow of migration to the more-developed countries.

Involving cooperating partners such as UNDP, FAO, World Bank, NGOs and other multilaterals like the EU will be crucial right from the planning stage.

Of course, saving lives will always be the priority of the day. But unless governments act now to ensure that future generations have enough food to eat, parts of the planet run the risk of becoming overwhelmed by the hungry poor.

WFP can and must do more to help countries along the path towards food security, as its mandate dictates. Only then will the world move significantly towards achieving its Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger.

Trevor Page is a former Country and HQ Director of the World Food Programme. He has also served with FAO, UNHCR and what is now the United Nations Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs.

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By Cecilia Russell
Johannesburg, Sep 8 2022 – Parliamentarians play a decisive role in addressing population issues, as was demonstrated when the majority voted against a private member motion to end the teaching of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in Zambia in 2020.

However, a Zambia All Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development (ZAPPD) workshop held in Lusaka also heard that many challenges need addressing. The Zambia All Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development (ZAPPD) was founded in 1997 to provide capacity on population and development and to strengthen parliamentarians’ commitments. It is one of the first National Committees on population and development, established in the East and Southern African region.

The seminar, supported by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), was attended by several expert researchers who unpacked the outlook for the developing nation.

Lester Phiri from the Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia (PPAZ) noted that much work was needed for the country to achieve its Vision 2030 goal of becoming a prosperous middle-income country.

Delegates at a ZAPPD workshop heard that significantly high poverty levels, particularly in Zambian rural areas where 76.6 percent of people are considered poor, should be addressed. The workshop delegates contributed to a strategic plan to address population issues. Credit: APDA

Phiri noted that while the economy had grown, with more mothers surviving childbirth and children being healthier and more educated – this did not “automatically lead to overall national development and improved quality of life.”

To achieve Vision 2030, the significantly high poverty levels, particularly in the rural areas where 76.6 percent of people are considered poor, should be addressed.

Unemployment was high, Phiri said, and there was limited access to empowerment programs.

Another issue was the high fertility rates and maternal mortality rate of 252 for every 100 000 births.

Research indicated that at least one-fifth of married women had an unmet need for family planning.

Zambia’s development would benefit from an explained the benefit of a healthy and educated population by addressing family planning.

“Couples with smaller families are better able to provide for their children, save money, and escape poverty,” Phiri said. “In fact, studies show that shifting the age structure of the population can lead to a 47 percent increase in per capita income.”

Of concern was that gender-based violence was high, with nearly half (47 percent) of ever-married women reporting having experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence.

Answering why, if the economy was growing, there was still widespread poverty, Phiri noted that Zamia had one of the fastest-growing populations in the world. By 2030 the population, estimated at 19 million, will have swelled to 24 million and 41 million by 2050.

This meant that at a “community and household level, there are a large number of dependents, which impacts the working population’s ability to save money and escape poverty”.

Phiri advised parliamentarians to work toward improved child survival and reducing fertility by promoting voluntary family planning.

Another issue needing fixing was the high school dropout rate. The benefits to society would be significant if the country increased secondary school completion rates among youth, especially girls. Other programmes should include investment in comprehensive sexuality education and create an enabling policy environment for pre- and post-secondary, and tertiary education economic activity to counter unemployment and promote entrepreneurship.

“If we invest in the health and education of the population, especially women and girls, we may see a different Zambia in the years to come,” Phiri told the workshop.

Ifoma Mulewa, a sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) researcher at the National Assembly of Zambia, said these objectives could be achieved through energetic and committed parliamentarians.

She said MPs should take the initiative to bring motions on population matters; they should participate in population debates in the House and parliamentary committees and through oversight visits.

They could also undertake public hearings to get wider community and stakeholders’ views on population matters.

She called on them to keep the pressure on the Executive to adhere to international protocols on population and growth.

Phiri agreed and said there was inadequate commitment towards population and development in the allocation, disbursement, and utilization of national budgets. It was also crucial to balance legislation – for example, on child marriage, where the statutory versus customary laws were not harmonized.

He said Zambia had a legislative framework to ensure Zambia remains on the path to achieving its Vision 2030 goal, including the Population Policy Implementation Plan (2019-2030), the 8th National Development Plan (2022-2026), the Family Planning Costed Implementation Plan (2021-2026) and a National Strategy on Ending Child Marriage.

It also had polity for youth, including Education Act 2011, the Comprehensive Sexuality Education Framework, and National Youth Policy (2015).

The Gender Equity and Equality Act (2015) ends discrimination against women.

However, MPs should engage more with the community on population and development issues.

The workshop, attended by about 35 participants and 22 parliamentarians, made crucial inputs to a strategic plan on population by ZAPPD. The new members of ZAPPD, under the leadership of Hon Princess Kasune, MP, are aiming to address the Committee’s contribution to implementing ICPD25 commitments.

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