By Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue
YAOUNDE, Feb 20 2024 – Climate change made 2023 the warmest year on record. As urgency mounts to address this worldwide crisis, phasing out the use of fossil fuels is a necessary step that all nations must take. This is because fossil fuels—coal, oil and gas — are the primary drivers of the climate crisis accounting for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

Fossil fuels can be linked to severe human rights harm. According to the International Energy Agency, there cannot be any new fossil fuel projects if countries are to meet existing climate targets and avoid the worst consequences for frontline communities. Not addressing these issues can create a human rights crisis of unprecedented scale.

Another ethical imperative for phasing out from fossil fuels is our responsibility to communities facing loss and damage. Fossil fuel projects and infrastructure often expose fence line and frontline communities to toxic substances, environmental degradation, and increased vulnerability to climate disasters.

Africa has contributed the least to climate change but still suffers the most from its consequences. Since rich countries have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases, the goal of transitioning to renewable energy sources is an act of responsibility and justice, providing support to those most in need

Fossil fuel extraction and production often violate the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, and environmental defenders, who face land grabbing, displacement, violence, intimidation, and criminalization. This must change.

When we look at the African continent, the current increase in investment in fossil fuels will increase Africa’s carbon emissions and raise Africa’s share of global climate change.

In 2021, Africa contributed 3.9% (1.45 billion tonnes of CO2 eq.) of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry. Continuing with this energy policy would be very suicidal for their future in the face of the consequences of climate change.

There is also an economic impact of fossil fuel production too, especially in Africa. Fossil fuel subsidies and investments divert resources from addressing the needs and rights of people living in poverty.

It is well known that Africa has contributed the least to climate change but still suffers the most from its consequences. Since rich countries have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases, the goal of transitioning to renewable energy sources is an act of responsibility and justice, providing support to those most in need.

Fossil fuel extraction leads to deforestation, habitat destruction, and water pollution, which have contributed to 1.2 million deaths in 2020, leading to biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation.

In the DRC for instance, if the peatland is destroyed by the construction of roads, pipelines and other infrastructure needed to extract the oil, up to 6 billion tonnes of CO₂ could be released, which is the equivalent of 14 years’ worth of current UK greenhouse gas emissions.

Through a transition to renewable energies such as wind power and solar energy, we can take control of the effects of climate change and support future generation’s sustainability moving forward.

Africa has huge renewable energy potential – it has 60% of the world’s best solar resources, but the continent receives less than 3% of global energy investment.

As a region that has had the smallest impact on the climate crisis but suffers significant impacts now and in the future, the international community must work with Africa to invest in its clean energy future.

For instance, Kenya is home to the Lake Turkana Wind Project, currently the largest wind farm in Africa. Output exceeds 310 MW—enough to power 1 million homes.

The project also attracted the largest private investment in Kenya’s history, amounting to US$650 million. For Africa to achieve its energy and climate goals, Africa needs $190 billion of investment a year between 2026 to 2030, with two-thirds of this going to clean energy.

Fortunately, some progress has been made toward ending use of fossil fuels on a global scale. During the recent COP28 in Dubai, nearly 130 nations approved a roadmap for “transitioning away from fossil fuels“—a first for a UN climate conference—but the deal still stopped short of a long-demanded call for a “phaseout” of oil, coal, and gas.

This is what is needed to transition away and help keep us from reaching the 1.5°C degree limit. Another shortcoming of COP28 is that there was neither a clear commitment nor a well-funded phaseout of all fossil fuels, nor was there clear funding for countries to transition to renewables and cope with escalating climate impacts.

We have a responsibility to protect future generations and support vulnerable communities. The countries, businesses, civil society, and leaders who came together during COP28 and made this first step deal should now walk the talk.

I can’t agree more with UN Secretary-General António Guterres who said during COP28: ‘’that a fossil fuel phaseout is inevitable, whether they like it or not. Let’s hope it doesn’t come too late.”

Being the custodians of the planet, it is our moral duty to leave a world that is habitable for our children and our grandchildren.

Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue is a Senior Aspen New Voices Fellow, a Policy Advocate & campaigns Builder.

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Feb 20 2024 – Abdul Gani Malik, a 75-year-old goldsmith living in Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, has witnessed eras of tranquility and turbulence in the Himalayan region. What he has not seen, however, is a snowless Kashmir during the winter.

Malik still works at his shop, located in one of the jam-packed markets of the old city area of Kashmir’s capital, intricately lacing colorful emeralds on dazzling gold necklaces. While conversing with IPS, he mentions that the winter in Kashmir has never been so terrible and terrifying as it has been this year.

He recalls how, during the 40-day harshest winter period from December 21 to January 30, snow would accumulate to about six or seven feet, freezing and making pathways treacherous even for city dwellers. In the mountainous region, according to Malik, the snow would last for several months, regulating temperatures during the summer and providing water and food.

“Now is a different tale. The mountains appear dry and dead. The rivers are carrying no water, and our woods are bereft of life. This is an absolute apocalypse,” Malik said.

The region of Kashmir is located in the north-western complex of the Himalayan ranges, with marked relief variation, snow-capped summits, antecedent drainage, complex geological structure, and rich temperate vegetation and fauna.

Kashmir’s winter is traditionally divided into three parts: Chilay Kalan (old man winter), Chilay Khuarud (young winter), and Chilay Bacha (kiddy winter). The coldest part, called Chilay Kalan, starts on December 21 and ends at the end of January. It is during this period that snowfall is expected.

“The temperatures during this period plummet to even minus 8 to 10 degrees Celsius, and when it snows, it accumulates in glaciers. The snowfall in the later period is of no use,” says Abdul Ghani Malik.

He was part of the congregational prayers held across Kashmir for snowfall. Local Muslims, who constitute more than 90 percent of the local population, decided in January to hold special prayers for snowfall in all major mosques. “We prayed, and we hope God listens to our plight.”

According to Abid Ali, a student of environmental sciences from Kashmir, Kashmir’s livelihood depends on snowfall, and if it doesn’t snow, things are going to take a terrible shape.

“The region’s electricity system, agriculture, and tourism are all dependent on snowfall. The dry winter will prove catastrophic for the local populace,” Abid said.

Kashmir, as per estimates, reported a 79 percent precipitation deficit through December of last year. Indian meteorologists claim that unusual weather is linked to global warming and El Niño, the sporadic climate phenomenon that can create warm, dry conditions in the Indian subcontinent and other parts of Asia.

A man walks through an area in Kashmir where low snowfall is causing concern as the region’s economy is highly dependent on it. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Threat to Agriculture

In Kashmir, 60 percent of the state’s revenue comes from agriculture and horticulture, and about 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas.

However, over the years, the valley has experienced irregular patterns of precipitation. In the first five months of 2022, Kashmir saw a 38 percent rain shortage, according to data provided by the Meteorological Department (MeT) in Srinagar.

The data reveals that the Kashmir Valley has experienced a significant lack of pre-monsoon precipitation over the years. From March 1 to May 31, 2022, the region got 99.5 mm of rain, 70 percent lower than average.

Comparatively, between March and May of each of the following years—2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021—there was a deficit of 16, 28, 35, and 26 percent, respectively. The dry winter this year is already throwing life out of gear for the farmers.

Abdul Karim Ganaie, a farmer hailing from south Kashmir’s Pulwama, says the threats are menacingly looming large, and people cannot do anything other than watch helplessly as the crisis unfolds.

When IPS contacted Choudhary Mohammad Iqbal, the director of agriculture in Kashmir, he stated that the department was closely monitoring the situation and would be issuing a warning to the farmers in the coming months.

“We accept that the situation is going to prove worrisome for Kashmir’s farming community, but we have to adopt a strategy to ensure minimal losses. We are working on that front,” Choudhary said.

Tourism under Cloud

The famous tourist destinations in Kashmir are also witnessing a dip in tourist arrivals, putting the people associated with this business in dire straits. In January, the famous tourist resorts recorded the lowest arrival of foreign and domestic tourists, with only 30 percent occupancy in hotels.

It snows at last but too little, too late!

Finally, in the first week of February, when the harshest 40-day-long spell was already over, it snowed in most of the areas of Kashmir. However, according to experts, the snow would yield the fewest results as it is not possible to accumulate for an extended period.

What is important, says Mehraj Ahmad, a research scholar working on climate change in Kashmir, is that the snow must accumulate in the higher reaches for as long as possible until the arrival of summers.

“The snowfall of February or March carries the least significance when compared with the snowfall of January. Therefore, we really are keeping our fingers crossed and praying for the safeguard of our lives against the dark, dreadful effects of climate change,” Ahmad said.

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By UN News
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2024 – Artificial intelligence (AI) is ripe to help resolve certain major problems in Africa, from farming to the health sector, but Senegalese expert Seydina Moussa Ndiaye is warning of a new “colonization” of the continent by this new technology if foreign companies continue to feed on African data without involving local actors.

One of 38 members of the new UN advisory body on machine learning, Mr. Ndiaye spoke with UN News about the landscape ahead, building on his experience in helping to drive Senegal’s digital transformation in higher education, serving as an expert to the African Union in drafting the Pan-African Strategy on AI and in contributing to the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI).

AI expert Seydina NDiaye is one of the 38 experts of the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence. Credit: Courtesy Seydina Ndiaye

How could AI help Africa?

There are several African countries that are beginning to have a dedicated strategy for artificial intelligence. However, there is a pan-African strategy that will soon be published, with a continental vision of AI development.

More and more, young people launching startups are interested in this, and they have a real thirst for knowledge in the field of AI. This growing interest can be accelerated with international help.

However, there is a wall in some areas, and AI can in fact be used to solve certain problems, including in agriculture. In the health sector, AI could solve a lot of problems, especially the problem of a lack of personnel.

The other element that is also very important is the development of cultural identity. Africa has been seen as a continent with a cultural identity that has not been able to impose itself across the world. With the development of AI, we could use this channel so that African cultural identities are better known and better valued.

Are there bad sides of AI threatening Africa?

The biggest threat is colonization. We may end up with large multinationals in AI that will impose their solutions throughout the continent, leaving no room for creating local solutions.

Most of the data currently generated in Africa is owned by multinationals whose infrastructure is developed outside the continent, where most African AI experts also operate. It’s a loss of African talent.

The other important element to consider is in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. The power of AI combined with advances in biotechnology or technology could be used, and Africa could be the place where all these new solutions are actually being tested.

If it’s not supervised, we could end up with tests that would take place on humans with chips or even integrated biotechnology elements that we improve. These are technologies that we don’t really master well.

In regulatory terms, there are certain aspects that have not been considered. The very framework for the application of ideas and existing regulations is not effective.

In concrete terms, and when you don’t control these things, it could happen without anyone knowing. We could have Africa being used as a guinea pig to test new solutions, and this could be a great, great threat for the continent.

Do you think that the UN’s new AI advisory group is going to be a platform that will allow you to put these problems on the table?

Yes, absolutely. We’ve started our work, and it’s really very open. These are high-level people who understand international issues well, and there are no taboo subjects.

It’s important that the voice of Africa is represented in the group. International scientific cooperation will be strengthened and not limited to the major powers. At the international level, it includes everyone and also helps the least developed countries.

Currently, there is a real gap, and if this is not resolved, we risk increasing inequalities.

Source: Africa Renewal published by the UN Department of Global Communications.

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By Philippe Benoit
PARIS, Feb 19 2024 – The International Energy Agency (IEA) held its annual ministers meeting last week in Paris, marking the 50^th anniversary of the world’s leading energy organization. Critical topics on the agenda included energy security issues linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, as well as advancing a clean energy transition to meet global climate change goals.

Far from Paris lives Aïcha Bonou N’Donkie, an 18-year-old from a village in Burkina Faso whose shoulder shimmy dance move has caught the attention of millions, including media outlets around the world. A YouTube video featuring her “Aïcha tremblé” has had over 14 million views.  But Ms. N’Donkie wasn’t a professional dancer.  Rather, the day she first gained attention with her dance move began with the much more mundane chore of gathering firewood used for cooking.

And in this, Ms. N’Donkie is, according to a recent report I co-authored (with Siyuan Ding) for Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, one of almost 400 million women household biomass producers.  They constitute the largest, and largely invisible, workforce in our global energy system.

While much of the attention regarding the energy sector is paid to the workers (predominantly male) who labor in the oil and gas, coal and electricity businesses, these women biomass producers are the providers of the primary source of energy for millions of families: household biomass, which is used for the most essential of human needs, eating.

While there has been progress in expanding the use of clean cooking technologies, universal access remains far off … and analysts point to the ongoing use of household biomass for years to come, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa where poverty remains a key barrier

There are an estimated 2 billion people who rely on traditional cooking methods fueled by biomass such as firewood and animal waste. They live in the poorer regions of the world, mostly in the rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. In notably much of Sub-Saharan Africa, women are the primary providers of this energy.

Our preliminary analysis indicates that there are 190 million women (and girls) household biomass producers in Sub-Saharan Africa and a nearly equivalent amount in developing Asia, with 7 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.

By comparison, the IEA estimates that there are about 40 million people working in the formal energy production and distribution subsectors. We often see their pictures: workers in hardhats at oil drilling wells, emerging from coal mines, in cranes fixing transmission lines, or walking on roofs installing solar panels.  They are an important part of our economic landscape, who have received increasing attention amid the discussions about the clean energy transition.

There is much less discussion and are far fewer pictures of women household biomass producers, like Ms. N’Donkie, whose labor can involve collecting and carrying loads of wood that weigh 50 pounds or more, and who spend up to 10 hours or even in some regions, 20 or more hours per week in this work.  While women carrying bundles of firewood on their backs may not conjure the usual images of energy’s labor force, they are a very important part of the global energy landscape, providing a principal source of energy for an estimated 200 million families.

To date, much of the discussion of this labor has occurred in the context of the effort to provide universal access to clean cooking technologies (under United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #7).

This involves notably replacing firewood, etc. with cleaner and more modern cooking technologies, which in turn would go far to obviate the need for the time-consuming labor of collecting and preparing fuelwood and animal waste for burning in traditional stoves. The clean cooking discussion is, however, also inherently tilted to women as consumers rather than producers.

While there has been progress in expanding the use of clean cooking technologies, universal access remains far off … and analysts point to the ongoing use of household biomass for years to come, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa where poverty remains a key barrier.  Accordingly, we estimate in our report that there are likely to still be 200 million or more women biomass producers in 2030.

And so, the question – and challenge – remains as to what can be done to improve the conditions for these women energy producers.

Part of the response is more research to better ascertain their circumstances and, importantly, their wants. Understanding the varied preferences of these millions of women will require time and resources, not only because of their numbers, but also because of the diversity of the situations they labor in and the overlapping challenges that many face of poverty, gender discrimination and, for some, marginalization (including, as refugees). This granular information is needed to develop effective and context-adapted solutions, an important lesson from the clean cooking effort.

As the international community — including through COPs, the IEA and the World Bank — looks to advance a low-carbon future, it is important, in parallel, for the specialized energy and development communities to explore what can be done now to improve the lives of these women given their central role in the global energy landscape.

While, for arguably serendipitous reasons, we can today better see the talented Aïcha Bonou N’Donkie, there are hundreds of millions of women energy producers who remain largely invisible to too many. Seeing these women and understanding them better is a critical step to developing programs to help them to improve the quality of their lives in the face of the poverty and other challenges they face.

Philippe Benoit is managing director at Global Infrastructure Advisory Services 2050. He previously held management positions at the World Bank and the International Energy Agency.

By Guy Dinmore
BANGKOK , Feb 19 2024 – Dr Ismahane Elouafi has her work cut out. As the new executive managing director of CGIAR, a global network of agricultural research centers, her mandate, simply put, is to tackle the world’s most severe hunger crisis in modern history.

And it is in Africa that the former Chief Scientist of FAO with a PhD in durum wheat genetics faces her greatest challenges, both in terms of developing science-based innovations and technologies and lobbying governments to adopt responsible policies.

Ten years ago, an African Union summit of heads of state and government signed the Malabo Declaration, committing to end hunger in Africa by 2025, to allocate at least 10 percent of national budgets to agriculture and to double productivity levels. Those goals are far from being reached. 

The FAO’s 2023 report on state of global food security estimates that between 691 and 783 million people in the world faced hunger in 2022, as measured by the prevalence of undernourishment, with numbers rising in Western Asia, the Caribbean, and all sub-regions of Africa.

“Most countries in Africa are much below that (budget) target of 10 percent,” Elouafi told IPS in an interview from Nigeria after visiting the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), part of the CGIAR network. Only Ethiopia and Morocco were close to that spending target, she noted, while African countries were also failing to meet goals of allocating three percent of spending on science and innovation.

CGIAR’s executive managing director Ismahane Elouafi.

The severely worsening climate crisis, the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and soaring costs of grain and fertilizer following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago have all contributed to derailing grand pledges made in Malabo. But as a recent report by Oxfam noted, nearly three-quarters of African governments have cut instead of increased their agricultural budgets since 2019 while spending almost twice as much on arms.

“CGIAR is a science-based organisation, and our bread and butter is science, mostly applied science,” Elouafi replies when asked if much of her time will be spent knocking on the doors of heads of governments over their policy choices. But, she adds, many solutions are not “technical” as such and involve policies in investment, education, women’s rights, and capacity building.

“We need African countries to invest in solutions that are better fit for Africa,” she says. She highlights how the lack of food processing industries means that crops are exported and then re-imported, crossing multiple borders and contributing to the continent’s trade deficit in food of over $40 billion a year.

Durum wheat—the subject of her doctorate—may fetch some USD 300 a tonne on the international market, but processed as pasta, it is valued 10 times as much. The added value of processed quinoa is even more.

Much of the work on developing wheat—a significant component of Africa’s annual food import bill of over USD 80 billion—has been achieved under TAAT (Transformation of African Agricultural Technologies), a multi-CGIAR center initiative funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and led by IITA.

Delivering that knowledge to farmers and making an impact through innovative platforms is a vital element of CGIAR’s work, with TAAT a good example of a model that Elouafi is considering for adoption by CGIAR.

Dr Ismahane Elouafi looks at disease-free cassava and banana plants at the Virology Lab in IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria. Credit: IITA

In Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria and IITA’s International Goodwill Ambassador, welcomed  Elouafi on her visit, during which they discussed IITA’s strategic initiatives for stakeholder engagement aimed at combating food insecurity at both national and African levels.

Recognizing IITA’s extensive contributions to improving Nigeria’s food systems, including its network of stations across Africa, Obasanjo noted gaps in research dissemination and agricultural extension services, suggesting an approach akin to the Zero Hunger Program with IITA in which he was involved.

Elouafi proposed a continental summit on food security to synergize efforts between researchers and scientists, and also discussed the possibility of working with development banks to establish an endowment fund for agriculture.

Thanking Nigeria for hosting and supporting IITA, Elouafi said she was deeply impressed by the quality and strategic significance of IITA’s role in Africa and the commitment of its team under Director General Dr Simeon Ehui, who is also CGIAR’s Africa regional director.

“Leadership at a country level is very important,” she says, singling out Ethiopia, which has made substantial progress in wheat production using the expertise of CIMMYT and ICARDA, two of CGIAR’s network of 15 global research centers.

Food has become a major part of the world’s climate agenda, with every degree in temperature rise significantly increasing the number of people going hungry, Elouafi says, noting that 500 million small-scale farmers, who provide a third of the world’s food, live in regions disproportionately affected by climate change.

Africa’s rapid population growth means the continent must produce more food in terms of quantity and quality of nutrition. “This is where CGIAR has a huge role to play, because to produce more food on the continent, we need to adopt new technologies and innovation,” she says. This is not just about improved crop genetics but also generating policies that, for example, provide more jobs and opportunities for African youth in agribusiness, she adds.

But Africa also needs to promote crop diversification, says Elouafi, who is a champion of neglected or “forgotten” crops like fonio, a climate-resilient grain and formerly a staple food across West Africa, as well as cassava and a wider range of vegetables.

Asked about the long-running debate that amounts to a battle for attention between large-scale industrialised agriculture and the needs of smallholders, Elouafi first points out that more than 80 percent of food in sub-Saharan Africa is produced by smallholder farmers.

“CGIAR is working tremendously with smallholder farmers. We know that there will always be many farmers in Africa who are smallholders and that is where we need to adopt our technologies and innovation.”

But while the debate often focuses on the extremes of small and large industrialized farms, she says “the reality is in between,” as demonstrated by successful examples of models like cooperatives and aggregations of smallholder farmers. She points again to Ethiopia, where the irrigated wheat initiative brought together smallholders with areas ranging from 10 hectares to 5,000.

“We need to move away from both extremes and look for solutions,” she said, citing Asia’s success in developing small-scale mechanisation for fishing communities, herders, and smallholders.

“But I want to stress that in CGIAR and across our centers in Africa, we are doing a lot of work on the technical side and on the social and policy side to help smallholder farmers,” she says.

Elouafi also thinks of a future where “ideally” policies are adopted so that these smallholders will be paid not just for their farm products but also for the “ecosystems services” that they are performing in terms of carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and conservation.

For the moment, the methodologies to monitor and monetise these processes are lacking, she says.

“But in the ideal world going forward, we could eventually both monitor the carbon sequestration, the ecosystem services, and the food production and get the farmers, particularly the small-scale farmers, to be paid for both of them.”

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By Luiza Antoun de Almeida, Si Guo and Andrea Schaechter
WASHINGTON DC, Feb 19 2024 – Chile’s economy is at a crossroads. Strong policies have successfully brought down high inflation and reduced the large current account deficit that emerged during the pandemic. Increases in social benefits have provided some relief in response to discontent over inequality.

However, investment and growth are still tepid and social gaps remain high.

Going forward, Chile—the world’s largest copper producer, second largest lithium producer, and richly endowed with solar and wind—can both contribute to, and benefit from, the global green transition.

A more dynamic and greener economy could also create conditions for greater equity and inclusion.

Boosting economic activity

Chile has a comparative advantage in renewable energy production. Costs of electricity generation are lower for solar and wind than fossil fuels thanks to the high solar radiation in Chile’s north and strong winds in the south.

Already, electricity generated from solar and wind increased from 1 to 23 percent of total electricity supply during 2010–22.

Our estimates suggest that replacing coal with renewable energy, along the lines of the authorities’ plans to decommission coal-fired power plants by 2040, could boost economic activity by at least 1 percent over the long term.

Such a shift in the energy mix would imply a nearly 30 percent cost reduction in electricity generation, in addition to the benefits from lower carbon emissions and air pollution. A shift in Chile’s energy mix would also significantly strengthen the economy’s resilience against future coal and fuel price shocks.

Development of the green hydrogen industry could offer additional growth prospects, conditional on further reductions in the production and transportation costs. The geographic mismatch between power generation and consumption is the main bottleneck for greater use of renewable energy.

In particular, the areas rich in solar and wind in the northern and southern parts of Chile are more than 1,000 miles away from its economic hub in the central area. This could be resolved by upgrading the transmission network, including through the new Kimal-Lo Aguirre transmission line set to become operational in 2029.

New opportunities

Chile also has an opportunity to play a role in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. This involves the greater use of lithium for energy storage in batteries. The resulting higher global demand for lithium offers prospects to expand Chile’s lithium production and related industries along the value chain, while balancing social and environmental objectives.

For Chile, lithium has already become an important source of exports and fiscal revenue in recent years when the lithium price surged. The country is planning to expand its lithium production through public-private partnerships.

Providing a clear institutional framework for investors that can be swiftly implemented as global demand ramps up will be an important factor to further develop the industry.

More investment needed

While Chile’s economy is projected to resume growth in 2024, its average real economic growth rate has been declining for many years alongside negative productivity growth. Therefore, strengthening investment is critical to sustainably raise and diversify economic activity.

Investment approvals have become more complicated, uncertain, and lengthier over the years, largely reflecting more complex safeguards for the environment, health, safety, social concerns, and a larger number of stakeholders.

The government’s ongoing efforts to streamline and improve coordination of permitting processes, while maintaining high environmental standards, could contribute to lifting much-needed investment and bring meaningful growth dividends.

Source: International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington DC

Luiza Antoun de Almeida is an Economist, Si Guo is a Senior Economist, and Andrea Schaechter is an Assistant Director in the Western Hemisphere Department.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 19 2024 – Imperialism continues to dominate the world. Globalisation is losing to some of its anti-theses, but imperialism still rules, increasingly by law, albeit in changing even contradictory ways.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Hence, we live in challenging times. It is often difficult to see the main challenges we face as there seem to be so many. Also, the new or the unusual gains far more attention than what appears commonplace.

Power and empire
Our histories and cultures are often quite different despite our common, but varied experiences of foreign domination, even rule. Such power involves varied mixes of socioeconomic and political relations, involving governance and even the rule of law.

Our world has seen empires and imperialism for over two millennia, at least from before the time of Jesus Christ in Palestine, who had to deal with the satraps of the Roman empire then.

Half a millennium ago, when the Spanish conquistadors first reached the Philippines via the Pacific in 1521, the people of Mactan, led by Lapu-Lapu, resisted. Magellan had burnt down their villages after they ignored his demands for tribute as well as accepting his god and king.

Empires evolve
Imperialism has changed very significantly over time and will continue to change. It has combined in new ways with capital, capitalisms and existing socio-economic relations, especially after the mid-19th century.

A century and a half ago, at least two people from Asia began to criticise and oppose the emerging new imperialism. Sayyid Jamaluddin al-Afghani developed an Islamic critique of Western imperialism.

Dadabhai Naoroji, an Indian who became a Liberal Member of the English Parliament, was the other. Both analysed the impacts of imperialism in their own cultural idioms, condemning injustice and ‘drainage’ of the economic surplus.

They wrote decades before radical Western writers such as the English Liberal John Hobson and Social Democrats such as Rudolf Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg and VI Lenin. All linked the new imperialism to ongoing capitalist transformation.

Imperial contradictions
However, successful resistance to imperialism does not overcome all injustices and may even make some worse. The US War of Independence against British colonialism strengthened American slaveowners and their business interests.

From thirteen colonies, the US expanded south and west, typically at the expense of indigenous communities, delaying inevitable pressure to go beyond the continent. Anticipated by the Monroe Doctrine in the early 19th century, US expansion abroad led to the Spanish-American War at its end.

Imperialist expansion abroad helped resolve some, but not all problems of capital accumulation. In the early 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires – both invoking religion – ended with help from rising nationalism.

Meanwhile, the Berlin Congress had mitigated inter-European imperial rivalries in Africa. Three decades later, the Treaty of Versailles purported to end the so-called First World War, mainly among rival European imperialists.

But, as Lenin and Keynes both observed – albeit somewhat differently – its inter-imperialist roots and Versailles’ terms only ‘kicked the can down the road’, thus sowing the seeds for the Second World War.

China had contributed immensely to the First World War effort. But instead of returning the Shantung peninsula to China, Versailles gave it to Japan after Germany surrendered it! This triggered widespread Chinese resentment of the West, triggering the 1919 May Fourth movement.

Imperialism without colonies
Recognising how rival colonial interests threatened the future of capitalism and imperialist interests, visionary US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt envisaged a new post-war world order, saving imperialism through decolonization.

This led to the birth of the United Nations and related multilateral institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, somewhat anticipating the Marshall Plan.

Now, with capitalism divided and weaker in some ways, but stronger militarily, modes of domination are still changing with significant consequences. For instance, until the 21st century, there was no explicit US African Command (Africom) to protect all Western and not only European interests there.

Another of Barack Obama’s ‘achievements’ after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize was overthrowing the Libyan regime. Despite giving up his nuclear programme at the request of the West, its leader Muammar Gaddafi, generally acknowledged as key to establishing the African Union, was humiliatingly murdered.

The significance of Gaza
The world is constantly being reshaped by imperialism, and developing countries need to continually update their understanding of its features. Such power remains the main, but not the only common challenge we face today, especially in the Global South.

Today, the tragedy of Gaza is the most brutal face of Western imperialism, historical and contemporary. It is not disputed that European failure to resolve its ‘Jewish problem’ from the 19th century contributed directly to the Nazi Holocaust.

And as Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion noted, “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs.

“There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: We have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Ben-Gurion’s acknowledgement of the implications of creating Israel underscores the legitimacy of the ongoing Palestinian resistance to Israeli settler colonialism, fascism and apartheid, specifically its latest brutal massacre in Gaza.

Explicit Western support for Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing reminds the world that those who claim moral legitimacy from having been victims before are more than capable of perpetrating the same, if not worse, on others.

The Israeli occupation of Palestine is a cruel caricature and reminder of the threat to humanity, especially in the Global South, of one hard face of imperial power, loyally supported by the soft power of manufactured consent, digitised or otherwise.

* Revised from invited speech at the 2024 Kathmandu World Social Forum opening ceremony, 15 February 2024.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Emilio Godoy
LA PAZ, Mexico , Feb 19 2024 – The specter of blackouts hovers over the Mexican city of La Paz, the capital of the state of Baja California Sur in Mexico’s far northwestern corner, as summer approaches, due to increased electricity demand from air conditioning and insufficient capacity in the local grid.

Since 2019, the local population has suffered the effects of this situation when it starts to heat up in June in this city located 1680 kilometers from Mexico City, which has the additional difficulty of being located in the south of a peninsula that it shares with the state of Baja California.”The location of renewables rarely follows criteria where they are most needed, because the idea is to feed the centralized system. The more rural sectors or those far from cities are not connected to the grid; progress in those areas is slow.” — Gabriela Cabaña

Being separated from the national power grid, due to its distance, Baja California Sur is an energy island whose energy mix depends on thermoelectric plants that burn fuel oil, a very dirty fuel, diesel and gas, while renewable energy contributes about 10 percent. La Paz is where most of the energy is generated, although the highest level of consumption is in the neighboring municipality of Los Cabos, due to its urban growth and insufficient production.

Lucía Frausto, executive director of the non-governmental organization Cómo vamos La Paz, said the model reflects inequities in this city, which had a population of 292,241 according to the last census in 2020.

“The high costs leave no benefits to the community and that impacts everyone. There are sectors that use a lot of energy and others that barely have any. When there are blackouts the water can’t be pumped. It also affects the productivity and competitiveness of businesses,” she told IPS.

The evidence indicates that renewable energy, which is needed to reduce the polluting emissions that overheat the planet, does not address inequality and in some cases foments it.

For this reason, non-governmental organizations and academic groups in Latin America and around the world are pushing for a just transition, understood as an inclusive process, above and beyond mere technological substitution and in line with respect for human rights.

Energy inequality is not just seen in Mexico but extends throughout the Latin American region.

In Latin America and the Caribbean there has been progress in renewable energy, although its impact on inequality is still invisible in the least equitable region on the planet. In addition, almost the entire population has access to electricity, but challenges remain, such as clean energy for cooking and energy efficiency.

The report Fostering Effective Energy Transition 2023, released by the World Economic Forum (WEF), which brings together governments, companies and civil society organizations, warns that the energy transition in Mexico presents a tendency to strengthen inequality.

In this Latin American country, where the energy transition is not moving forward, 15 percent of the population of 129 million lacks access to clean fuel sources in the kitchen and energy efficiency stands at 3.2 percent, below the world average of 4.6 percent. This is part of the persistence of energy inequality, even though poverty fell between 2016 and 2022.

This is reported by the Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2023, drawn up by the International Energy Agency, the International Renewable Energy Agency, the United Nations Statistics Division, the World Bank and the World Health Organization.

Population growth in the city of La Paz, capital of the northwestern peninsular Mexican state of Baja California Sur, is also driving the increase in electricity demand in a territory whose supply network is isolated from the national grid and is falling increasingly short. The city is an example of the inequality in access to energy, and especially to alternative sources, in the Latin American region. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Poorly distributed?

Latin America and the Caribbean, a region with 662 million inhabitants, 29 percent of whom live in poverty, have the largest proportion of modern renewable energy use, thanks to hydropower, bioenergy and biofuels.

According to Gabriela Cabaña, a researcher at the non-governmental Center for Socio-environmental Analysis, in most Latin American countries renewable energy is not installed in areas with economic and energy needs, but rather they are in areas privileged by the power grid.

“The location of renewables rarely follows criteria where they are most needed, because the idea is to feed the centralized system. The more rural sectors or those far from cities are not connected to the grid; progress in those areas is slow,” she told IPS from the island of Chiloé, in southern Chile.

In her view, this is a generalized phenomenon in Latin America, where local communities receive the impacts but not necessarily the benefits.

In Chile, the transition shows progress, but there are risks in terms of equity, says the WEF. In that nation, energy efficiency stands at 3.6 percent.

The WEF report says the transition to less polluting forms of energy in Argentina is stable in terms of equity, but local environmental organizations have suffered a major setback under the government of far-right President Javier Milei, in office since Dec. 10.

Moreover, the South American nation reports ups and downs on its path to a low-carbon energy system, and energy efficiency of 3.5 percent.

On the other hand, the transition is inequitable in Brazil, the WEF concludes. In the largest economy and most populous country in the region, with 203 million inhabitants, three percent of the population uses dirty cookstoves, and energy efficiency stands at four percent.

Back in La Paz, Alfredo Bermudez, a researcher at the Department of Fisheries Engineering of the public Autonomous University of Baja California Sur, said the energy scheme in the city has inherited environmental, economic and social consequences.

“La Paz bears the costs and the benefits are not compensated, they are not proportional. There is differential treatment” that is unfair, he told IPS.

Due to local grid congestion, the state can only interconnect 28 megawatts (Mw) and there will be more space perhaps in 2026, which poses obstacles to decentralized solar deployment and illegal connections to the grid.

Official figures indicate that in Mexico there are 367,207 distributed generation permits for 2,954 Mw, figures that have been growing since 2007. In the first half of 2023, 32,223 permits were approved, half of the total for 2022. But Baja California Sur only has 1634 authorizations for 23 Mw, one of the lowest rates in the country.

A photo of solar panels in the parking lot of the airport in La Paz, capital of the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California Sur. The deployment of clean and renewable energies is not, at least for now, a factor in reducing inequality in Latin America; on the contrary, it sometimes fuels it. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

The electrified poor

While a minority can finance the installation of solar panels on their homes or drive an electric vehicle, the majority rely on dirty energy or polluting transport.

This gap poses a risk to the fulfillment of the seventh of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which promotes affordable, clean energy. One of its targets is to “ensure access to affordable, secure, sustainable and modern energy for all,” as part of the 2030 Agenda, adopted in 2015 by the United Nations member states.

In Mexico, the region’s second largest economy, the poorest areas lack renewable energy installations or do not benefit directly from such infrastructure. For example, the southern state of Chiapas, one of the most impoverished in the country, which relies on hydroelectric plants, has only one private wind farm, producing 49 Mw of power. Guerrero, a poor state in the southwest, has no wind farms.

And while Oaxaca, another poor southern state, has the largest installed wind capacity in the country, there are meager benefits for local communities. Oaxaca and Chiapas are among the territories with the fewest distributed generation connections.

In Brazil, Pernambuco in the northeast was the fourth poorest state in 2021 and is one of the largest generators of solar energy, but neither solar nor wind power benefit the population of this and other disadvantaged territories in the country, which in 2023 reached a new record for solar power generation.

In Argentina, population 46 million, the province of Buenos Aires, where the capital is located, has the second largest number of wind turbines, but at the same time has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. A similar phenomenon occurs in the case of solar energy.

In Chile, a country of 19.5 million people, the northern region of Atacama ranks third in solar generation and is a leading wind energy producer in the country, but it also has the second highest poverty rate. .

Improvements

By encouraging the use of computers and the Internet, promoting cleaner forms of cooking and heating or cooling, cleaner energy generates a host of benefits that can have an impact on reducing inequality.

Frausto the activist and Bermudez the academic proposed a greater deployment of renewables and decentralization of generation in Baja California Sur and other energy vulnerable states.

“We need to diversify production and distribution, to have generation throughout the country,” the activist said.

Meanwhile, Bermudez sees an opportunity in the high costs. “You can try things that are not possible in other places, because of the particularities of the state. Anything that reduces costs is advantageous” in electricity generation and efficiency, he said.

Cabaña from Chile recommended public investment to replace private fossil fuel infrastructure.

“We should consider that energy infrastructure should not be in pursuit of a centralized model, but should focus on something more community-based. A change is needed to help combat energy poverty,” she argued.