By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Aug 10 2022 – With climate change bringing about increasing numbers of human deaths and untold suffering, and rising economic, social, and environmental consequences worldwide, it’s time for governments to take bold action to address the climate change emergency.

Climate scientists have warned that there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5 Celsius. Beyond that level, even half a degree, will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat, and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

In November the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the UN Framework Convention to Climate Change is scheduled to take place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Government representatives from some 200 countries and other parties will focus on securing the 1.5°C goal and adapting to the negative impacts of climate change through the implementation of the Paris Agreement provisions.

At the time of COP27, world population is expected to reach 8,000,000,000. That figure is an increase of more than 2 billion humans on the planet since the first COP conference held in Berlin, Germany, in 1995.

The 8 billion milestone is double the size of world population in 1974 and quadruple its size in 1927. With the growth of the world’s population, annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry have grown enormously over the past century, increasing more than nine-fold since 1927 and doubling since 1974 (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations and Our World in Data. *Projected figures.

The growth of world population has slowed down from its peak levels in the second half of the 20th century. It continues to increase, currently at about 70 million annually and projected to reach 9 billion by 2037 and 10 billion by 2058.

If annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry continue to increase as they have during the past several decades, their annual level of emissions in 2058 when the world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion would be more than 50 percent higher than it is today, or approximately 60 billion tonnes.

Up until relatively recently, warnings of a climate change emergency by thousands of scientists have been downplayed by most governments. Frustrated by government responses, many scientists are increasingly feeling like climate change Cassandras.

Warnings that rising carbon emissions are dangerously heating the Earth have been clearly conveyed to governments. In particular, scientists have emphasized that the burning of fossil fuels is already heating up the planet faster than anything the world has seen in 2,000 years.

In 2020 five countries produced approximately 60 percent of the world’s annual CO2 emissions. In first place was China with nearly one-third of the annual CO2 emissions. China also has the greatest number of coal-fired power stations of any country in 2022, or approximately 1,110 operational stations (Figure 2).

Source: Our World in Data.

The United States is in second place accounting for 14 percent of the annual CO2 emissions in 2020. The percentages for the other three countries, India, Russia, and Japan, were 7, 5 and 3 percent, respectively

In addition to warnings of a climate change emergency, scientists have spelled out some of the likely consequences for life on the planet if the increase in global warming were to exceed 1.5 Celsius (Table 1).

Source: Job One for Humanity.

Those likely consequences include warmer temperatures with increased frequency, intensity, and duration, impacting oceans, seas levels, coral reefs, fish levels, glaciers and ice and snow cover. Also, changes in patterns and amount of rainfall are expected to result in increased droughts and desertification as well as flooding.

Climate change’s worsening of air and water quality is expected to contribute to the spread of certain diseases and human illnesses accompanied by increased malnourishment, hunger, and mortality, as well as the deteriorating ecosystems impacting numerous plant and animal species. Climate change will also likely contribute to the increased displacement of people as well as illegal migration as millions of men, women, and children seek to escape the consequences of global warming and environmental degradation.

Due to the increasingly visible consequences of climate change, governments are finding it difficult to downplay the warnings of scientists. Among the weather consequences of the climate change emergency are worldwide record-breaking high temperatures as well as droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, and hurricanes.

Global surveys also report that the majority of the world’s population is worried about climate change. In January 2021, for example, the global climate survey by the United Nations Development Programme across 50 countries found that nearly two-thirds of the respondents consider climate change as an emergency and represents a clear call for governments to take the needed action to address it.

Various measures have been recommended to address the climate change emergency. Among those measures are stabilizing or reducing the size of human populations, eliminating the use of fossil fuels, moving to renewable energies, reducing air pollutants, restoring ecosystems, shifting from meat to mainly plant based diets, and transitioning to sustainable GDP growth (Table 2).

Source: International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The upcoming November COP27 conference in Egypt is expected to follow the usual pattern of previous sessions with an adoption of a negotiated final report. However, that outcome is unlikely to be sufficient to achieve the internationally established goal of limiting the increase in global warming to a maximum of 1.5 Celsius.

Despite more than two dozen annual COP sessions, various international agreements, and enumerated goals, a binding international agreement to address the climate change emergency is lacking. In addition, an authority that would impose climate change policies is not likely to be established, particularly given the supremacy of national sovereignty.

Nevertheless, progress to address climate change has been achieved over the past several decades. The international community of nations adopted the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, and the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Also, governments have agreed on the science behind climate change, acknowledged the likely consequences of inaction, and have set emission reduction pledges to slow down CO2 emissions. Recently adopted policies have enhanced energy efficiency, slowed deforestation rates, and accelerated the use of renewable energy.

In addition, scores of governments are adopting additional commitments to address climate change. The United States, for example, recently passed historic legislation aimed at addressing climate change and clean energy that includes a budget of U.S. $369 billion.

As stated above, climate scientists have warned that there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5 Celsius. Given that 12-year window to address the global warming goal, there is little time to waste.

It is time for governments, especially the major contributors to global warming, to implement bold actions to address the climate change emergency.

* Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Aug 10 2022 – The upcoming summit on Education, part of the UN Secretary General’s ambitious agenda, can truly bring accountability and participation to the inevitably new ways education will be imparted in the future.

With scorching temperatures, uncontrolled flames and floods devastating our planet, millions of people are realizing that we are all going to pay a high price for climate inaction.

The current climate crisis is furthering compounding the other emergency that is still affecting all of us, a public health crisis fully exposed by the Covid pandemic.

Amid this gloomy scenario, the international community cannot forego its duties not only to strengthen the global education system but also its moral obligation to re-think it and re-imagine it.

While it is easy to criticize the UN as a system incapable of effectively tackling these multidimensional challenges, we cannot but praise Secretary General Antonio Guterres for his far sighted vision encapsulated in his global blue print, Our Common Agenda.

It’s a bold statement that contains multiple proposals including the ambitious goal of reinventing the global education.

In this context, and on September, the UN will host the most important forum to discuss how education can emerge as the thread that can equip the citizens of the world with the right tools to thrive in a truly sustainable and equitable planet.

The Transforming Education Summit, scheduled to take place at the UN September 19, should be seen as a stand-alone effort while it is intended to be the beginning of an ambitious global brainstorming. It is also the culmination of several other major events in the past few years.

In 2015 the Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action provided the vision for implementing the SDG 4, the global sustainable goal focused on inclusive and quality education.

We know how brutal the effects of the pandemic were on learners worldwide especially in developing and emerging nations.

In face of these challenges, with the global headlines focused on the public health emergency and the futile attempts at negotiating a breakthrough climate change agreement at the COP 26, few noticed that the international community tried to take action.

In November 2021, it gathered in Paris for a Global Education Meeting’s High Level Segment hosted by UNESCO and the Government of France. The outcome was the Paris Declaration that building on the work of a previous summit, the Extraordinary session of the Global Education Meeting (2020 GEM), held in October 2020, provided a clear call for more financing and a stronger global multilateral cooperation system.

The fact that our attention was totally focused to other existential crises should not deter us from reflecting on how such events were neglected by world media and, as a consequence, how little discussion about the future of education happened.

I am not just talking about discussions among professionals on the ground but also a debate that involves teachers and students alike. The upcoming Transforming the Education Summit will try to revert this lack of attention and overall weak engagement among the people.

The Secretariat of the event, hosted by UNESCO, one of the agencies within the UN system that lacks financial support but still proves to be real value for money, is trying its best to enable a global conversation on how the future of education should be.

It is in this precise context that UNESCO has set up an interactive knowledge and debate hub, the so-called Hub that, hopefully, will become a permanent global platform for discussing education globally.

Imagine a sort of civic agora where experts, students, parents, policy makers alike can share their best practices and bring forwards their opinions on how to follow up on the decisions that will be taken in September.

It is also extremely positive that a Pre-Summit event at the end of June in Paris, laid out some grounds for the September’s gathering especially because youths also had a chance to speak and share their views.

It is not the first-time youths are involved, but the full involvement of the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth in the preparation of the Transforming the Education Summit could be a turning point, shifting from mere and tokenistic engagements to real shared power with the youth.

That’s why the existence of a specific process within the preparation of the summit, focused on youth, is extremely important and welcome not just because it will generate a special declaration but because it could potentially become a space where youths can have their voices and opinions heard permanently.

Let’s not forget that the ongoing preparations were instrumental to revive the outcomes of the “Reimagining our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education” developed over two years by the International Commission on the Futures of Education, a body chaired by President Sahle-Work Zewde of Ethiopia, and published in 2021.

It is truly transformative because the title itself is aligned to the aspirational vision of Secretary General Guterres to establish a new social contract.

A new social contract in the field of education really needs to rethink the domains of learning and its established but now outdated goals. Learning should become, according to this report, a holistic tool to create personal agency and sustainable and just development.

For example, education for sustainable development and lifelong education together with global citizenships should stopped being considered as “nice” but burdensome adds on.

Today’s challenges, the report explains, must be focused on “reinventing education” and the knowledge it provides must be “anchored in social, economic, and environmental justice.”

Wisely, Guterres intends the summit in September to be the starting point for a much longer conversation that will build on the insights and knowledge emerged in these last few years.

Governance of the global education system will also be central and with this, we will have an opportunity to find creative ways, ways that just few years ago were imaginable, to include people, especially the youths.

No matter the efforts now put in place to create awareness and participation for the summit, no matter how inclusive the Youth Process will be, the fact that there is still a very long way before creating spaces where persons on the ground can truly participate.

Too few are aware of the existence of a Global Education Cooperation Mechanism led by the SDG4-Education 2030 High-Level Steering Committee that also includes representatives of youth and teachers and NGOs.

While there is no doubt that such inclusive format is itself innovative, the challenges ahead require a much more accessible and holistic set-up.

The existence of a global accountability mechanism was one of the key points discussed and emerged in the Youths Consultations during the Pre-Summit in Paris.

The High-Level Steering Committee needs not only more visibility because of its “political” aim of galvanizing global attention and energizing and influencing global leaders so that education can become a global priority at the same levels of climate action and public health.

It should also have a stronger representation of youths, teachers and NGOs and it can evolve into a real permanent forum for discussions and even decision making.

As difficult as it to imagine a new global governance for education, what we need is a space, virtual and as well formally established as an institution, where not only experts and governments’ representatives gather and decide.

A space for accountability but also for enhanced participation.

There is still a long way before reaching a consensus on how education will look like in the years to come but there is no doubt that bold decisions must be taken also to reimagine its governance.

The Transforming the Education Summit can herald the beginning of a new era.

Media will have a special role to play: not only on reporting on the summit and its following developments but also for giving voices to the youths and for bringing forward the most progressive ideas that should define how education will shape this new era.

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

IPS UN Bureau

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By Ignatius Banda
Bulawayo, Aug 10 2022 – Zimbabwe’s press freedom credentials suffered further criticism with the arrest of two journalists from a privately-owned newspaper charged with transmitting “false data messages.”

The pair were charged on August 3 under the contentious Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, as amended through the Cyber and Data Protection Act, which became law in December last year despite spirited opposition from press freedom lobbyists and civic society groups.

The act has been criticised for giving too many powers to law enforcement authorities and the information ministry, allowing the monitoring of private electronic communication in violation of the country’s constitution.

What is significant, however, about the latest arrests of journalists is that while the crackdown on press freedom has for years been driven by the ruling Zanu-PF party against its critics, the two journalists, together with the paper’s attorney, were held for reporting on a private business enterprise believed to be run by politically connected individuals.

Senior reporter Desmond Chingarande who wrote the story, and Wisdom Mdzungairi, the Newsday editor-in-chief, were charged under a Cyber and Data Protection Act section which critics say vaguely criminalises the communication or spread of “false data messages.”

The two now have the dubious distinction of being the first journalists to be charged under the cybersecurity law.

The arrests have been condemned by rights groups. The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) reiterated that journalists have a Constitutional right to right to seek, receive and impart information. Credit: Twitter

Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) quickly condemned the arrests.

“MISA Zimbabwe reiterates its long-standing position that when journalists are undertaking their professional duties, they will be exercising their constitutional rights as stipulated in Section 61 of the Constitution and that they have a right to seek, receive and impart information,” the press freedom watchdog said in a statement.

“Any limitation to this right should qualify under the three-pronged test, which requires legality, proportionality and necessity. It is also our position that criminal sanctions on false news are disproportionate and not necessary,” the statement added.

These concerns come as Zimbabwe’s record as one of the places where journalism is considered a dangerous profession worsens.

“On paper, the arrest of the journalists has been instigated by private businesspeople. But the truth is that charging the senior journalists is ominous,” said Tawanda Majoni, an investigative journalist and national coordinator of the Information for Development Trust, an NGO supporting local investigative journalism projects.

“It represents a serious threat to freedom of the media and expression as well as access to information of public interest as provided under respective sections of the Zimbabwean constitution,” Majoni told IPS.

What began with the promise of wide-ranging reforms after the rise of Emmerson Mnangagwa as president on the back of the ouster of Robert Mugabe morphed into an escalation of the crackdown on government critics, with media practitioners being especially targeted.

Opposition politicians and rights activists have found themselves in police detention, with press freedom advocates not being spared despite calls by countries that include the European Union and the US raising concerns about what are seen as arbitrary arrests.

In May, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders noted that Zimbabwe had declined further on the Press Freedom Index, from 130 in 2021 to 137 in 2022.

The country has witnessed a steady increase in journalist arrests, which have failed to result in custodial sentences despite the routine arrests and weeks behind bars awaiting trial.

“These arrests are a worrying trend as it is technically criminal law provisions that are being invoked to criminalise journalism,” said Otto Saki, a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer.

“These provisions are patently unconstitutional and are likely to be struck down by the constitutional court,” Saki told IPS.

Several journalists have been arrested in the past few months, and there are concerns that the crackdown on journalists is being escalated in the run-up to crucial elections next year with electioneering already in full swing.

“It’s always the case that during power contestations in the run-up to major political events, we see governments invoking such laws,” Saki said.

Despite numerous court challenges regarding the unconstitutionality of the arrests of journalists, government spokesperson Ndavaningi Mangwana is on record saying journalists are not above the law and “must have their day in court.”

Regarding the arrest of the two Newsday journalists, Majoni noted that “those that instigated the arrest of the three, clearly, had more decent options to use, that they tellingly ignored as a suggestion of the difficult times ahead for journalists.”

“They could have simply appealed to the Data Protection Authority to intervene and would have appealed to either the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe or the Zimbabwe Media Commission. So, this is like some people are being used to test the new law,” Majoni told IPS.

However, ahead of the 2023 polls, journalists are not the only sector being targeted by the government, as nongovernmental organisations are also being threatened with stringent monitoring under the proposed Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill.

If passed into law, it will see NGOs being required to furnish the government with itineraries and accounting that show the source of their funding as authorities claim external funds are being used to undermine the ruling party.

The bill has already been criticised for its ambitions to curtail freedom of association at a time NGOs are carrying out voter education programs ahead of the 2023 elections while millions in the country require food assistance.

For now, it is not clear what fate awaits the Newsday journalists as they are expected to appear in court by way of summons.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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