By Abigail Van Neely
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 30 2023 – The President of the UN General Assembly, Csaba Kőrösi, struggled to find a reason to celebrate the 13th International Day against Nuclear Tests. There have only been five nuclear tests, all conducted by North Korea since the day was declared in 2010. Still, Kőrösi said he sees a world plagued by more distrust, geopolitical competition, and conflict than before.

“We are closer than at any other time in this century to global catastrophe, and yet we fail to see the terrifying trap that we have set for humanity by betting on nuclear weapons,” Kőrösi told the General Assembly.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would ban all nuclear tests and explosions. However, while it was adopted by a large majority of the General Assembly in 1996, the treaty is not yet in force. It must first be ratified by nine remaining countries with significant nuclear capabilities, including China, India, and the United States.

Secretary-General António Guterres called for these countries to ratify the treaty immediately to end the “destructive legacy” of nuclear war.

Izumi Nakamitsu, Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs addresses the UNGA to commemorate and promote the International Day against Nuclear Tests. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

Meanwhile, nuclear stockpiles and capabilities are growing. Globally, a record 2.2 trillion dollars went to military spending last year. According to Izumi Nakamitsu, the high representative for disarmament affairs, there are 13,000 nuclear weapons stored around the world.

Kőrösi expressed concern that nuclear testing threatens the “newest human right” to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. He called for a “human-centered approach to disarmament” aimed at preventing both human suffering and environmental destruction. As Nakamitsu pointed out, nuclear tests often occur in the world’s most fragile ecosystems.

In the last decade, international monitoring systems have helped increase transparency and promote a “powerful global norm against testing,” Robert Floyd, the executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, said. Civil society has continued to play an important role in advocating for nuclear non-proliferation since the first nuclear test in 1945 and first test ban treaty in 1965.

Still, danger persists. The president reminded member states that a limited nuclear war cannot exist: “It is time to put an end to the threat of our collective suicide.”
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By Antonio Pedro
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Aug 30 2023 – September 2023 marks the halfway point to the deadline for achieving the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, globally we are still far off-track, and Africa is only halfway towards achieving the SDGs, with nearly 600 million Africans still lacking access to electricity and 431 million people living in extreme poverty.

While the challenges associated with achieving the 2030 Agenda remain complex, the slow progress in Africa is, fortunately, redeemable. Africa possesses abundant assets to achieve the SDGs. The challenge lies in effectively harnessing these resources to turn Africa’s comparative advantages into global competitive advantages.

As a first step, we need to develop new narratives that move away from portraying Africa as a “victim” and instead emphasise Africa’s position as a solutions powerhouse for rescuing the SDGs and climate mitigation.

Africa can play a crucial role in securing global food, water, and energy security and accelerate the decarbonisation of production systems. The continent has 60% of the world’s arable land, 40% of the world’s solar irradiation potential, 71% of global cobalt production, and 77% of the world’s platinum.

Cobalt and platinum, in particular, are critical minerals for the energy transition and electrification of transport systems. However, Africa’s extractive sector is an enclave with insignificant linkages to local economies.

Secondly, we must go beyond the logic of resource extractivism that locks the continent in perennial booms and busts that accentuate Africa’s vulnerabilities to global shocks. To address this, African governments must implement smart industrial policies, foster local value addition, develop regional value chains, and promote resource-driven industrialisation.

These should be supported by well-constructed and executed local content and national suppliers’ development programmes, which will ultimately lead to the emergence of well-performing local small- and medium-scale enterprises.

A notable disruptive example is the development of a battery, electric vehicle, and renewable energy value chain in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, valued at US$46 trillion by 2050. We need to replicate these examples across the continent.

The evidence is clear that climate action will generate dividends for the continent. To this effect, we need to go beyond GDP metrics. For instance, many African countries, including those in the Congo Basin, possess vast natural wealth, which often goes unaccounted for in official statistics.

Therefore, we need to strengthen the capacities of national statistical systems to incorporate natural capital accounting into national accounts. With this, countries can assess the monetary value of their natural wealth to design ecological compensation schemes, participate in carbon markets, reinforce the value proposition of nature conservation, and secure more fiscal space.

At the right price (e.g., US$120/ton of C02 sequestrated), carbon credit markets could generate US$82 billion of innovative financing per year, with the Congo Basin being a hotspot for this.

However, the fundamentals must be right to secure macroeconomic stability and sustainable financing. These include enhanced trade, sustainable industrialisation, and economic diversification to reduce the continent’s vulnerabilities, improve the share of tradeables in total exports, and generate the millions of jobs that Africa needs for its youthful population.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), ratified in 2019, offers great potential for trade and investment on the continent, helping to catalyse the development of regional value chains and enable the continent to climb the ladder in global value chains. African multilateral development banks also play an important role in de-risking investments on the continent on the road to making Africa a globally competitive investment destination.

Looking ahead, we should also build on the outcomes of the recently held UN Food Systems Summit and 2nd Stocktaking Moment and accelerate the implementation of the Common African Agro-industrial parks Programme (CAAPs) to promote continental agro-industrialisation and integration.

These agro-industrial parks have the potential to stimulate public and private investment in agro-industries, ensure greater food security across Africa, and increase the value of Africa’s food and agriculture product exports.

Additionally, access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy is crucial to achieving many of the SDGs, ranging from poverty reduction and advancements in health, education, water supply, and industrialisation to mitigating climate change, yet Africa faces a huge energy gap. Building the Inga III and IV dams must be prioritized to increase access to renewable electricity.

To finance these and other transformational projects, dormant funds in our pension funds should be mobilized as efforts to reform the global financial architecture and reduce the cost of borrowing for our countries continue.

Africa must keep its eye on the prize and chart its own path to rescuing the SDGs. Isolated solutions and “business as usual” projects will no longer suffice. We need to strengthen Africa’s institutions and agency by building ecosystems for transformational change and leadership.

Drawing inspiration from the ‘moonshot’ programmes that led to the historic moon landing in 1969, economist Mariana Mazzucato highlights the importance of creating structures that foster collaborative, mission-oriented thinking, and a shared sense of purpose.

To build such an environment on the continent, ultimately, we need leaders from all walks of life who are responsive and transparent, embrace multi-stakeholder consultations, and work inclusively towards strengthening social compacts and domestic accountability to fully harness Africa’s potential for achieving the SDGs.

Antonio Pedro is Acting Executive Secretary, UN Economic Commission for Africa and UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Leadership Council Member

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 30 2023 – The United Nations will host six “high-level” meetings, including two summits of world leaders– over a short span of five consecutive days, beginning September 18.

The back-to-back meetings, described as unprecedented, includes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit on September 18-19; a high-level dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) on September 20; and a ministerial meeting of the Summit of the Future on September 21 (with the summit itself scheduled to take place September 2024).

The agenda of the 78th sessions of the General Assembly also include high-level ministerial meetings on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (September 20); Universal Health Coverage (September 21), and the fight Against Tuberculosis (September 22).

The UN is also expected to announce a Climate Ambition Summit—scheduled to take place in September 2024.

But these summits and high-level ministerial meetings come at a time when UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says he needs action, not empty promises or political rhetoric.

At the BRICS summit on August 24, he complained about the unfulfilled promises by Western donors.

“We need action to save our planet. Developed countries have a particular responsibility and so they must lead and they must deliver. They must also keep their promises to developing countries.”

He singled out the annual $100 billion pledge to developing countries; the proposed loss and damage fund; the doubling of adaptation finance; and the replenishment of the Green Climate Fund—promises made mostly at high-level meetings.

And on unimplemented plans for early warning systems, which are aimed “to protect every person in the world – including the 6 in 10 Africans who still lack those systems”. As a matter of justice, Africa must be considered a priority in all these crucial commitments, he noted.

Still, the months ahead will be vital.

“From the Africa Climate Summit, where I will be in Nairobi in two weeks times, the G20 Summit, to the SDG and Climate Ambition Summits at the United Nations in September, to COP28 in December – we have important opportunities to set a path to a better, more peaceful and more just world,” he said.

According to an article in the European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD) website September 2022, developed countries agreed in 2009 to mobilise 100 billion dollars per year by 2020.

This deadline was then extended to 2025, with a view to setting a new global climate finance goal by 2025. At the time, developed countries hailed this as a seminal commitment that would ensure that developing countries in the global south were also able to tackle climate change.

Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS high-level summits that are usually preceded by intensive preparation play an important role by providing governments with a platform to express commitments and enabling the public to hold them accountable for their action or inaction.

The Sustainable Development Goals summit this year is crucial as it marks the half-way point in implementing Agenda 2030, he said.

“At the time, civil society will convene for its own meeting across the UN building, the Global People’s Assembly, to provide its perspective and remind world leaders of their promises,” he said.

Jens Martens, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum Europe, a think tank based in Bonn, told IPS the SDG Summit offers the Governments of the Global North the chance to demonstrate that they are serious about their much-vaunted global solidarity.

Because at the mid-term of the 2030 Agenda, the results are devastating: According to the United Nations, the countries are only on track with 15 percent of the targets. For the remaining 85 percent, progress is insufficient, or development is even heading in the wrong direction, he pointed out.

“A key reason for this is the failure of countries in the Global North to provide the necessary means to implement the SDGs. At the SDG Summit, they must declare their political willingness to change this”.

What is needed, he argued, is the mobilization of new and additional public resources to finance the SDGs. The UN Secretary-General has proposed an SDG Stimulus of $500 billion per year for this purpose.

“This would be extremely important. But what is also needed is effective debt cancellation, increased cooperation on tax matters at the UN level, and reforms in the international financial architecture”.

“If governments of the Global North do not make concessions on these issues, the SDG Summit will fail. And then the Summit of the Future planned for September 2024 is also doomed to fail. In view of the global crises, we cannot afford for that to happen”, he declared.

Purnima Mane, past President Pathfinder International and former Assistant Secretary General & Deputy Executive Director, UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS the large number of meetings this September could be interpreted as a genuine effort to make up for the difficulties experienced over the last three years in coming together to monitor progress and enhance commitment on varied, equally relevant themes to push forward a collectively designed, multilateral agenda.

But the results of these meetings are also expected by the Secretary-General (SG) to be different from those held earlier, in that instead of empty promises and political rhetoric, these meetings would lead to action, she added.

“While this is a welcome move from the SG, it is not clear what steps will be taken to ensure that this in fact happens and what it will take to motivate Member States towards the action they needed to have taken all along”.

And more meetings than usual on critical themes — all of which demand minimally, for action to occur, commitment of political leadership at all levels, adequate resources, and solid planning and accountability measures, will not necessarily ensure that such action will follow, especially during this period of our history when the world is divided by increasing tensions that occupy the attention of national leadership.

She said the appeal the SG makes to the Western donors, in particular, in his message to them, is to live up to their promises to fulfill, what he refers to as a Rescue Plan for People and Planet.

The Plan demands better support to developing countries, and considerable changes to the international financial architecture which will amount to sacrifices on the part of groups like the G20.

“Whether these changes will happen is to be seen. Demanding action is obviously fully justifiable and we can hope that the action will occur but the track record so far has not been promising”, said Mane, currently an independent consultant on gender and development and global health, focusing on sexual & reproductive health.

Speaking during the International Day against Nuclear Tests August 29, Csaba Kőrösi, President of the General Assembly was critical of public funds being diverted.

He noted that global military spending reached a record 2.2 trillion dollars in 2022.

When public funds are diverted in this way, the President said, “and when our own words are ignored, we have a duty to ask: “How serious are our pledges to focus on overcoming poverty and curbing pollution, climate change, or biodiversity loss?”

“Will we protect our newest human right: the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment? Or are our lofty pledges nothing but words?”, he asked.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 30 2023 – The United Nations Secretary-General’s Dialogue on Financing for Development on 20 September may well be the world’s last chance to save the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and curb global warming in time.

The UN and international finance
Many features of the international financial system – including multilateral arrangements developed over many decades – have been overtaken by new developments, sometimes resulting in multidimensional crises.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The month-long 1944 Bretton Woods gathering was convened as a UN conference to create conditions conducive to post-war recovery and post-colonial development. But the systemic concerns of John Maynard Keynes and others from developing countries were largely ignored.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was set up for post-war growth and stability following the pre-war ‘gold standard’ crisis. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development – later, World Bank – would help with financing.

The Bretton Woods agreement set the gold price in US dollars, effectively making the greenback the world’s reserve currency. Thus, the US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) has long financed Treasury bonds with newly minted dollars.

The French economy minister saw this giving the US an ‘exorbitant privilege’. As Europeans increasingly demanded gold for dollars abroad, President Richard Nixon unilaterally abandoned US Bretton Woods obligations in August 1971.

It thus repudiated its promise to deliver gold for the greenback upon demand by other central banks. Although the dollar has not been the world’s official reserve currency since, widespread acceptance has effectively extended the exorbitant privilege indefinitely.

UN potential?
The inadequate institutions and processes in place over the last half century have exacerbated risks. Meanwhile, financial crises inadvertently highlight previously obscure gaps, weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Proposals to reform economic governance should start with better efforts to address these problems. This should involve progressive reform of the UN system, including the IMF and World Bank.

The UN is well suited to lead because of its record with difficult reforms due to its more inclusive and responsive governance. Securing legitimacy requires all parties to feel they have stakes in the broader reform agenda.

Despite poor regulation, many believe new financial markets and instruments have ushered in a new golden era. Threats posed by international macro-financial imbalances are seen as far less dangerous than those due to budgetary deficits. Worse, false purported solutions to such dangers have exacerbated complacency.

Financing development
Major financing for development (FfD) innovations have long been initiated by the UN. Special drawing rights (SDRs), ‘0.7 per cent of national income’ for official development assistance (ODA) and debt relief were all conceived in the UN around half a century ago.

The financialization of recent decades has undermined the mobilization and deployment of adequate financial resources to accelerate sustainable development and address global warming.

During the 1990s, the UN warned against new threats to economic stability. Some were due to volatile private capital flows and speculation, encouraged by deregulated financial markets, enabled by the IMF despite its Articles of Agreement.

By contrast, the UN has insisted on ensuring policy space for more effective development strategies by Member States. It has also urged macroeconomic policies to support long-term growth, technological progress and economic diversification.

The UN Secretariat has also promoted orderly sovereign debt relief. But Member States have long complained IFIs were shirking their mandates to provide financial stability and adequate long-term development finance.

UN pro-active on finance again?
The first UN FfD conference was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1992. It sought to ensure adequate development finance on reasonable terms after the 1980s’ debt crises, exacerbated by conditionalities imposed with emergency IFI credit.

Structural adjustment programmes ensured ‘lost decades’ for Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The current situation may be even more dire. Government debt today is greater than ever, but also more diverse, and on much more commercial terms. This situation is even less conducive to debt restructuring, let alone relief.

For decades, the UN’s FfD Office has tried, largely in vain, to mobilize domestic and international resources for development and climate finance. But progress has been modest and grossly inadequate at best.

The SDGs were cursed at birth in September 2015 by rich nations blocking developing country efforts to improve international tax cooperation at the last FfD summit at Addis Ababa just months before.

The rich countries’ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has since imposed its will on international corporate taxation. The OECD process largely consigned developing countries to observer status, offering paltry shares to reward compliance.

The UN has also highlighted links between financialization and food as well as energy crises, stressing justice and sustainability concerns. It has urged greater sensitivity to avoid, or at least alleviate ‘downside risks’ for the vulnerable.

Get real to progress
International tax cooperation has been blocked for decades by the rich nations’ OECD. The UN system, including the IMF, urgently needs a strong mandate to seek common solutions to increase tax revenue for all.

While private finance is needed for the SDGs, it is also part of the problem when not well regulated. Meanwhile, most developing countries still lack access to liquidity during financial crises except on onerous IMF terms.

Also, with the reversals of trade liberalization in recent decades, especially with new Cold War sanctions, UN resolutions need to be realistic in order to be broadly accepted and feasible.

The last decade has seen huge setbacks to progress on the SDGs, climate action and needed financing. Developing countries have received only a third of the IMF’s 2021 $650 billion SDR allocation.

Over the decades, ODA flows have declined as a share of commitments, with the loan-grant ratio falling, favouring financial globalization, particularly since the first Cold War ended.

This has constrained developing countries’ ability to respond to crises and meet long-term development financing and fast-growing climate adaptation requirements. Curbing illicit financial flows can also improve financing for needed ‘public goods’.

As most rich nations show little sign of meeting their ODA and climate finance obligations, annual issue of SDRs, within limits set by the US Congress, can quickly boost international liquidity ‘painlessly’.

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