By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 26 2024 – On August 21st, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric spoke at a press briefing at the United Nations Headquarters about the ongoing Rohingya genocide taking place in Myanmar. Dujarric detailed high levels of hostility and displacement in the Shan, Mandalay, and Rakhine regions, which have significantly intensified since late June of this year.

“On 5 August, an estimated 20,000 people were reportedly displaced from three downtown Maungdaw wards. There are also reports of more people crossing into Bangladesh. In northern Shan, there has been a resurgence of fighting since late June, with an estimated 33,000 people displaced from four townships”, Dujarric stated.

Additionally, casualties continue to grow as armed conflict escalates in the Rakhine State. A joint statement delivered by United States Ambassador Robert Wood on behalf of the United Nations states that the Myanmar regime is currently using displaced Rohingya Muslims as human shields and have placed landmines around their camps. Furthermore, ethnic minorities are being drafted into the military by force, with many of them being young children.

Wood went on to say that the Myanmar Armed Forces have been employing “indiscriminate aerial bombardments of civilians and civilian objects, burning of civilian homes, attacks on humanitarian workers and facilities, and restrictions on humanitarian access”.

A joint statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union, as well as the Foreign Ministers of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, among other nations, states “violence against civilians has escalated, with thousands jailed, tortured and killed. Airstrikes, shelling and arson have been used to destroy civilian infrastructure, including homes, schools, healthcare facilities and places of worship”.

In addition, hostilities from the Myanmar military have forced millions of ethnic minorities to flee to neighboring territories such as Bangladesh, India, Thailand, and Malaysia. Bangladesh currently has the largest refugee camp in the world, with over one million Rohingya refugees flocking to Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Ukhia, Cox’s Bazar. However, attempts at relocation remain extremely dangerous as over 600 refugees have been reported dead or missing at sea.

Since the Myanmar regime’s military coup in 2021, the need for humanitarian aid has grown immensely as conditions grow more dire every day. The population in need of aid has swelled from 1 million to over 18 million. Furthermore, approximately 3 million people have been displaced from their homes, which have been bombarded or destroyed by the military.

Environmental factors also play a significant role in rates of displacement in Myanmar. Dujarric adds that “Torrential monsoon rains since the end of June are aggravating the already dire humanitarian situation. Some 393,000 men, women and children have been impacted by this flooding”.

Furthermore, women and LGBTQ residents have long been disproportionately and adversely affected by policies in Myanmar, which have been greatly exacerbated post-coup. There have been numerous reports of women, girls, and LGBTQ individuals being conscripted and subjected to sexual and gender-based violence.

According to a report published July 2nd by Tom Andrews, the UN Special Rapporteur on the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, “Junta forces have committed widespread rape and other forms of sexual violence, often characterized by the utmost cruelty and dehumanization. Members of resistance forces have also been responsible for abuses against women, girls, and LGBT people. Accountability for sexual and gender-based violence is extremely rare, and survivors struggle to access the support they need”.

Andrews goes on to say that widespread displacement during the Rohingya genocide has increased the risk of violence, human trafficking, forced child marriage, and sexual exploitation. This is highly counterproductive in easing tensions as there is a growing resistance in Myanmar, composed of Rohingya women, girls, and LGBTQ people, that are focused on providing humanitarian aid and easing conflict.

The United Nations intends to combat tensions in Myanmar and assist Rohingya people through the 2024 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan, with a focus on helping those who have been displaced or exposed to military conflict.

Although early funding has resulted in over 2 million Myanmar residents receiving humanitarian aid, there remains much work to be done. Approximately 993 million dollars are needed to fully fund this initiative, with only 23 percent of that goal being met as of now. Additional support from donors is necessary in order to respond to this growing humanitarian crisis.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Aug 26 2024 (IPS-Partners)

Seven years ago, a brutal campaign of violence, rape and terror against the Rohingya people ignited in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Villages were burned to the ground, families were murdered, massive human rights violations were reported, and around 700,000 people – half of them children – fled their homes to seek refuge in Bangladesh.

Today, Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar hosts the largest refugee camp in the world with close to a million children, women and men living in makeshift settlements. The crisis is an abomination for humanity. And while the Government of Bangladesh and other strategic partners are supporting the response, the resources are severely strained and access to essential services is scarce.

As the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the United Nations, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), along with its strategic donor partners, government, UN agencies and civil society, has supported holistic education opportunities for both Rohingya and host community children in Bangladesh since November 2017. The more than US$50 million in funding, delivered through a consortium of partners – including government counterparts, PLAN International, Save the Children, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNICEF and other local partners – has reached over 325,000 girls and boys with quality education. Over the years, the programmes have provided learning materials for close to 190,000 children, financial support to over 1,700 teachers, and rehabilitated over 1,400 classrooms and temporary learning spaces.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, fires in the refugee camp and other pressing emergencies, the programming in Bangladesh was quickly adapted, and over 100,000 girls and boys were able to take part in remote education programmes during the height of the pandemic.

For refugee girls like Jannat, these investments mean nutritious school meals, integrated learning opportunities, catch-up classes, and security and solace in a world gone mad.

We must not forget Jannat and the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya girls like her that only yearn to learn in safety and freedom. Our investment in their education is an investment in peace, enlightenment and security across the region. Above all, it is an investment in the Rohingya people’s rights and other persecuted groups that face human rights abuses and attacks the world over.

Despite strong support from donors – as shown in this powerful joint statement by Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States following their visit to the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in May of this year – the Rohingya crisis is fast-becoming a forgotten crisis.

The Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis Joint Response Plan 2024 calls for a total of US$852 million in funding, including US$68 million for education. To date, only US$287 million has been mobilized toward the plan. More concerning still, only 12.8% has been mobilized towards the education response, according to OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service. What we need to realize is that our investments in education are investments in health, food security and skills development. Taken together with other actions, it forms a cornerstone upon which all the other Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved.

As we commemorate seven years of persecution and attack, we must demand that perpetrators are held accountable for human rights violations, we must establish conditions conducive for a safe return of the Rohingya to their native lands, and we must enforce the rule of law and expect humanity for the people whose lives have been ripped apart by this brutal crisis.

Join ECW and our partners in urgently mobilizing additional resources to provide Rohingya girls and boys – and other children caught in emergencies and protracted crises worldwide – with the promise of a quality education. They deserve no less.

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Excerpt:

Education Cannot Wait Executive Director Yasmine Sherif Statement on the 7-Year Anniversary of the Rohingya Crisis

By Eoin Jackson and Nina Malekyazdi
NEW YORK, Aug 26 2024 – The world is facing a triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

Climate change continues to pose an existential threat to humanity, with recent science estimating that we have possibly less than six years left to change course and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to have a chance of avoiding the worst of the climate crisis.

Pollution is crippling air and water quality, exacerbating the inequality between wealthy and low-and middle-income countries. Biodiversity loss has the potential to collapse our food and water supply chains, putting further pressure on some of the most vulnerable countries in the world to manage the ever-growing risk of poverty, hunger, and harm to human health.

We also have scientific evidence that six of the nine core Planetary Boundaries have been crossed, posing a catastrophic danger to the Earth’s overarching ecosystem.

With this in mind, the Climate Governance Commission, supported by the Earth governance smart coalition Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance (MEGA), seeks to assist in catalyzing the implementation of critical reforms to global governance institutions for the effective management of the triple planetary crisis.

Probably the most significant and fundamental reform that could be established quickly and effectively would be a Declaration by the UN General Assembly of a Planetary Emergency and the convening of a Planetary Emergency Platform to facilitate global cooperation to address the emergency.

Adopting a Planetary Emergency Declaration would ensure that policy actions to protect the environment – especially the climate – would be elevated to top priority in global, national and local decision-making, requiring concerted action by all sectors of government, similar to the way that other critical emergencies are addressed.

Convening the Planetary Emergency Platform would help facilitate the development of cooperative plans for urgent action at all levels of governance on specific goals such as, for example, a global, fast-track de-carbonization package. The fact that we are indeed in a serious planetary emergency justifies and indeed requires an approach that can sufficiently address such an emergency.

Why declare a Planetary Emergency?

An emergency occurs when risks (impact X probability) are unacceptably high, and when time is a serious constraint. As identified by MEGA and the Climate Governance Commission based upon the best available science, we are at such a juncture. Consequently, with scientific evidence continuing to mount depicting the grave circumstances humanity finds itself in, the UN General Assembly, with the support of climate-vulnerable countries, should consider responding in kind, declaring a planetary emergency recognising this fundamental shift toward an emergency footing and moving quickly to convene an emergency platform to reflect these circumstances and facilitate urgent, coordinated action, with linked national emergency plans.

The growing urgency for declaring a planetary emergency stems from a history of a fragmented multilateral planetary policy system, that lacks a coordinated and ambitious response at the speed and scale required. Climate change to date has been treated as a peripheral issue dealt with primarily within a two-week framework every year at the climate COPs (Conference of the Parties), leading to a lack of effective cooperation between different aspects of the multilateral system and its domestic counterparts. Further, climate change solutions have not been adequately linked to mitigating pollution and biodiversity loss.

This siloed approach to handling the crisis as just another social and economic issue, rather than the interlinked and existential threat that it poses to society, illustrates how unequipped current governance structures are to handle this all-encompassing and systemic issue.

Consequently, global governance at present lacks the preparation and resilience necessary for current and future global shocks caused by the planetary emergency (e.g. extreme weather events, potential collapse of food supply chains, major economic crises, among other shock events).

However, this emergency also opens the door for the UN General Assembly and broader multilateral system to reconsider its framing of its approach and identify new governance mechanisms to address current gaps in the system. Governments and policymakers are now presented with an opportunity for transformation – to create a sustainable governance framework that facilitates the safe operation of humanity within its Planetary Boundaries.

Climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss and its related ecological, social, and economic problems are global issues, and thus require a whole-of-system approach to provide global solutions.

By recognizing that the world is in a state of acute distress through the Declaration of a Planetary Emergency at the UN General Assembly and thereby convening a Planetary Emergency Platform to coordinate a response to this emergency, policymakers would be provided with a framework needed to transcend current political divides to effectively address the challenges we face.

What would a Declaration of a Planetary Emergency at the UN General Assembly achieve?

We have already seen regional, national, and local climate emergency declarations issued across 2359 jurisdictions (as of August 2024). Such declarations by themselves have limited impact due to the global nature of this emergency. However, they demonstrate a keen interest in responding to the triple planetary crisis within an emergency framework, providing a core foundation for multilateral cooperation.

A Planetary Emergency Declaration would be science-led and action-focused, helping to elevate global planetary policy by connecting and elevating the existing declarations and filling the gaps in our current governance framework. Activating, focusing, and coordinating existing capacities at the UN through a Declaration of this kind could form a crucial aspect in ensuring that the Declaration is not merely a reflection of well-intended aspirations, but that it provides a solid basis for building effective, cooperative action.

A Planetary Emergency Declaration could build off and connect to its predecessors’ efforts and acknowledge all inter-connected risks associated with the triple planetary crisis in order to facilitate a global green transition. This would in turn allow for the Declaration to stimulate, support and facilitate cooperation and implementation of planetary policy at multilateral, national, and subnational levels.

The Declaration could seek primarily to achieve three things at the outset.

Firstly, as noted above, it could place the multilateral system on an acknowledged emergency footing, allowing for more ambitious action at all levels of governance, and reducing the current barriers to planetary progress.

Secondly, a Declaration could open the door for more effective emergency governance platforms including in particular the convening of a Planetary Emergency Platform, in line with the broader proposal of the UN Secretary General that emergency platforms be convened to strengthen the response to complex global shocks.

A Planetary Emergency Platform, using the Declaration as its basis, could be tasked with coordinating, defragmenting, and harmonizing the international community’s response to the triple planetary crisis. This would, in turn, speed up much needed solutions to the crisis, including, for example, the unlocking of greater climate finance and increased protection of crucial global commons under threat from human activity, from the Amazon to the High Seas.

A Platform of this kind would also be capable of developing a Planetary Emergency Plan, which could outline and bring into effect these desired outcomes, as well as assist with monitoring the implementation of the Declaration.

Finally, a Declaration of Planetary Emergency would allow for scientific concepts like Planetary Boundaries to become more familiar and integrated into our global policy responses, as well as creating vital opportunities to bridge the gap between planetary science and policy.

The Declaration could seek to ensure policymakers have greater impetus to take emergency action to protect these Planetary Boundaries, helping to generate political support and reduce geopolitical barriers to progress.

A Planetary Emergency Declaration at the UN General Assembly could serve as a crucial next step toward remedying the – to date – dysfunctional and inadequate nature of our response to the triple planetary crisis and convene a Planetary Emergency Platform as a key governance mechanism to facilitate the cooperation required between national and subnational entities to ensure effective and equitable planetary action.

Working with climate-vulnerable states, and global experts, the Climate Governance Commission and Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance will offer support to build a coalition to advance this Declaration at the UN General Assembly and accelerate our shared efforts to capably and effectively manage the global environment.

Eoin Jackson is Chief of Staff and Legal Fellow at the Climate Governance Commission and Co-Convenor of the Earth Governance ImPACT Coalition; Nina Malekyazdi is a Summer Intern at the Climate Governance Commission and a graduate in International Relations of the University of British Columbia

Source: Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance (MEGA)

MEGA is a coalition of civil society organizations working in cooperation with like-minded governments, legislators, experts, private sector actors and other stakeholders to strengthen existing environmental governance mechanisms and establish additional mechanisms. MEGA is led by the Climate Governance Commission and World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy (co-hosts) in cooperation with 28 co-sponsoring organizations.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Aug 26 2024 – Groundbreaking research indicates that the wild relatives of wheat could be turned into an all-time food security crop capable of cushioning vulnerable populations from starvation and hunger, thanks to its ability to withstand both climatic stress and diseases. Wheat is a staple for over 1.5 billion people in the Global South.

The review looked at two different studies and found that using the ancient genetic diversity of wild relatives of wheat, which provides 20 percent of the world’s calories and protein, could lead to weather- and disease-resistant varieties of the crop. This could ensure food security around the world.

The study led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre reveals that “long overlooked” wild wheat relatives have the potential to revolutionise wheat breeding, with new varieties capable of withstanding climate change and associated threats, including heat waves, droughts, flooding, and emerging and current pests and diseases.

Wild wheat relatives, which have endured environmental stresses for millions of years, possess genetic traits that modern varieties lack—traits that, when integrated into conventional varieties, could make wheat farming more possible in ever more hostile climates, the study published today (August 26, 2024) explains.

By farming the more resilient wheat, productivity could increase by an estimated USD 11 billion worth of extra grain every year, says the authors in the review paper titled ‘Wheat genetic resources have avoided disease pandemics, improved food security, and reduced environmental footprints: A review of historical impacts and future opportunities’ published by the journal Wiley Global Change Biology.

The review suggests that the use of plant genetic resources (PGR) helps against various diseases like wheat rust and defends against diseases that jump species barriers, like wheat blast. It gives nutrient-dense varieties and polygenic traits that create climate resilience.

The study points to a vast, largely untapped reservoir of nearly 800,000 wheat seed samples stored in 155 gene banks worldwide that include wild varieties and ancient farmer-developed ones that have withstood diverse environmental stresses over millennia. This is despite the fact that only a fraction of this genetic diversity has been utilised in modern crop breeding.

The findings, according to co-author Mathew Reynolds, will have major implications for food security, particularly in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, where the world’s most food-insecure populations live.

“The discoveries are very promising, as Africa has a lot of new environments in terms of potential wheat cultivation,” he told IPS.

Based on the research findings, significant environmental benefits have been realised thanks to various scientific efforts that have successfully integrated wild genes into modern species.

The study acknowledges that the use of PGR in wheat breeding has improved the nutrition and livelihoods of resource-constrained farmers and consumers in the Global South, where wheat is often the cereal of choice in parts of Asia and Africa

“We’re at a critical juncture,” says Reynolds. “Our current breeding strategies have served us well, but they must now address more complex challenges posed by climate change.”

He observes that breeding that helps in maintaining genetic resistance to a range of diseases improves “yield stability” and avoids epidemics of devastating crop diseases that ultimately threaten food security for millions.

“Furthermore, post-Green Revolution genetic yield gains are generally achieved with less (in the Global North) and often no fungicide in the Global South, and without necessarily increasing inputs of fertilizer or irrigation water, with the exception in some high-production environments,” the study contends.

As a result, there has been an increase in grain yield and millions of hectares of “natural ecosystems” have been saved from cultivation for grain production. These include millions of hectares of forests and other natural ecosystems, Reynolds and colleagues found.

Equally promising is the discovery in some experimental wheat lines incorporating wild traits that show up to 20 percent more growth under heat and drought conditions when compared to current varieties, and the development of the first crop ever bred to interact with soil microbes that has shown potential in reducing production of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. This enables the plants to use nitrogen more efficiently.

“The use of PGR wild relatives, landraces, and isolated breeding gene pools has had substantial impacts on wheat breeding for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses while increasing nutritional value, end-use quality, and grain yield,” the review further finds.

Without the use of PGR-derived disease resistance, fungicide use to fight fungal diseases, the main threat to the crop, would have easily doubled, massively increasing selection pressure that would come with the need to avoid fungicide resistance, the review finds.

Remarkably, it is estimated that in wheat, a billion litres of fungicide application have been avoided, saving farmers billions that would go into the purchase and application of the chemicals, it adds.

The authors note that as weather becomes more extreme, crop breeding gene pools will need to be further enriched with new adaptive traits coming from PGR to survive the vagaries of climate change.

These ‘definitely’ include stubborn diseases that have plagued wheat farming in the tropics, such as the Ug99, a devastating stem rust fungal disease that, at its worst, wipes out entire crops in Africa and parts of the Middle East, Reynolds said.

Modern crop breeding, it says, has largely focused on a relatively narrow pool of star athletes—elite crop varieties that are already high performers and that have known, predictable genetics.

The genetic diversity of wild wheat relatives, on the other hand, offers complex climate-resilient traits that have been harder to use because they take longer, cost more, and are riskier than the traditional breeding methods used for elite varieties.

“We have the tools to quickly explore genetic diversity that was previously inaccessible to breeders,” explains Benjamin Kilian, co-author of the review and coordinator of the Crop Trust’s Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods and Development (BOLD) project, that supports conservation and use of crop diversity globally.

Among the tools are next-generation gene sequencing, big-data analytics, and remote sensing technologies, including satellite imagery. The latter allows researchers to routinely monitor traits like plant growth rate or disease resistance at unlimited numbers of sites globally.

While the collection and storage of PGR since early in the 20th century have played a key role, especially in breeding of disease-resistant plant varieties, the study concludes that a massive potential remains unexploited.

With wild relative varieties having survived millions of years of climate variance compared with our relatively recent crop species, more systematic screening is recommended to identify new and better sources of needed traits not just for wheat but for other crops as well, the study advises.

It calls for more investments in studying resilient wild varieties of common crops, taking advantage of widely available, proven and non-controversial technologies that present multiple impacts and a substantial return on investment.

“With new technologies emerging all the time to facilitate their use in plant breeding, PGR should be considered the best bet for achieving climate resilience, including its biotic and abiotic components,” the authors said.

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By Mario Osava
ACREUNA / ORIZONA, Brazil , Aug 26 2024 – A community bakery, family production of fruit pulp, and the recovery of water springs are some of the initiatives of the Energy of Women of the Earth, organised since 2017 in the state of Goiás, in central-western Brazil.

A common resource is non-conventional renewable energy sources, such as solar and biomass, which are fundamental to the projects’ economic viability and environmental sustainability.

The network includes 42 women’s organisations in 27 municipalities in Goiás, a state that, like the entire central-western region, has an economy dominated by extensive monoculture agriculture, especially soybean, corn, sugar cane and cotton.

It is an adverse context for small-scale family farming, due to low population density and distant urban markets. A movement to strengthen the sector has intensified in this century, with the Agro Centro-West Family Farming Fairs promoted by local universities.

There are 95,000 family farms in Goiás, 63% of the state’s total number of farms.

“The network is the link between the valorisation of rural women, family farming and energy transition,” Gessyane Ribeiro, an agronomist who coordinates the project that uses alternative energy sources to empower women in agricultural production, told IPS.

The Energy of Women of the Earth project, which generated the network, is promoted by Gepaaf, a company known by the Portuguese acronym of its name, Management and Elaboration of Projects in Consultancy to Family Agriculture, and born from a study group at the Federal University of Goiás.

Non-repayable funding from the Caixa Economica Federal, a state bank focused on social and housing support, allowed the company, in partnership with two institutes and the university, to deploy actions involving 92 women farmers and to set up 60 family projects and another 16 collective projects until June 2023.

In Acreúna, a municipality of 21,500 inhabitants, 14 women farmers run a bakery that provides a variety of breads, pastries, cakes and biscuits to local public schools, which have around 3,000 students. They are women from the Genipapo Settlement, where 27 families received plots from the government’s land reform programme.

Solar energy made the settlement’s Residents’ Association’s enterprise viable, along with basic education schools in nearby towns. The National School Feeding Programme requires beneficiary schools to allocate at least 30% of their purchases to family farming.

In Orizona, a municipality of 16,000 people, Iná de Cubas received a biodigester and eight photovoltaic panels, which generate biogas and electricity for its production of fruit pulp, also for school meals.

Another technology distributed by the project, the solar pump, recovered and preserved one of the springs that form a stream in Orizona. The equipment, powered by solar energy, pumps water from the spring to a pond belonging to Nubia Lacerda Matias, where her cows quench their thirst.

Before, the animals went straight to the spring, fouling the water and damaging the surrounding forest. The area was fenced off, protecting both the water and the vegetation, which grew and became denser, to the benefit of the people who live downstream.