By External Source
May 29 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
In a world where headlines warn of rising seas, dying reefs, and vanishing species, it’s easy to think the story ends in loss.

But what if the frontlines of climate change were also frontiers of hope?

From the Galápagos to the Seychelles, from New Zealand to Palau, islands are writing a different story.

One of resilience.

Of revival.

Of resistance.

While global systems stall and fracture, island communities are forging ahead.

Spearheading ecological restoration with precision and urgency.

Not as victims. But as innovators.

By restoring native ecosystems from ridge to reef, these communities are showing the world what climate justice looks like in practice.

And the results speak for themselves:

On Palmyra Atoll, the removal of rats led to a 5,000% increase in native trees. That canopy now shelters a coral reef where manta rays thrive.

On Kamaka Island, a bird unseen for a century has returned home.

These aren’t isolated miracles. They are replicable models.

That’s why, this June, global leaders, scientists, and community voices will gather in Nice, France for the United Nations Ocean Conference.

It’s more than an event. It’s an opportunity.

An opportunity to scale island-led solutions. To fund restoration at the source. To center Indigenous knowledge in global policy.

To listen. To learn. To act.

The Island-Ocean Connection Challenge is just one initiative showing us the way.

Fifty partners. Twenty ecosystems. One vision. To holistically restore 40 island-ocean systems by 2030.

This is not just environmentalism. It is climate justice. It is biodiversity justice. It is food security. Cultural continuity. Economic innovation.

And it’s led by the very communities who have long known the rhythms of land and sea.

There is power in local action to shape global futures.

In amplifying the voices of those living the solutions.

And in supporting the work that safeguards rights, restores ecosystems, and renews hope.

The Sea of Islands Can Rise Again. Not with the tide, but with resolve.

Join us at UNOC3 in Nice, or follow the movement. Support the science. Back the communities. Amplify the solutions.

Because investing in islands today means securing the oceans of tomorrow.

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By CIVICUS
May 29 2025 – CIVICUS discusses the devastating impact of palm oil extraction in West Papua with Tigor Hutapea, legal representative of Pusaka Bentala Rakyat, an organisation campaigning for Indigenous Papuan people’s rights to manage their customary lands and forests.

Tigor Hutapea

In West Papua, Indigenous communities are boycotting palm oil products, accusing major corporations of profiting from environmental devastation and human rights abuses. Beyond environmental damage, Indigenous leaders are fighting what they describe as an existential threat to their cultural survival. Large-scale deforestation has destroyed ancestral lands and livelihoods, with Indonesian authorities enabling this destruction by issuing permits on contested Indigenous territories. Local activists characterise this situation as ecocide and are building international coalitions to hold companies and government officials accountable.

What are the problems with palm oil?

In West Papua, one of the world’s richest biodiversity centres, oil palm plantation expansion is causing what we call ecocide. By 2019, the government had issued permits for plantations covering 1.57 million hectares of Indigenous forest land to 58 major companies, all without the free, prior and informed consent of affected communities.

The environmental damage is already devastating, despite only 15 per cent of the permitted area having been developed so far. Palm oil plantations have fundamentally altered water systems in regions such as Merauke, causing the Bian, Kumbe and Maro rivers to overflow during rainy seasons because plantations cannot absorb heavy rainfall. Indigenous communities have lost access to forests that provided food and medicine and sustained cultural practices, while monoculture crops have replaced biodiverse ecosystems, leading to the disappearance of endemic animal species.

How are authorities circumventing legal protections?

There’s unmistakable collusion between government officials and palm oil companies. In 2023, we supported the Awyu Indigenous people in a landmark legal case against a Malaysian-owned company. The court found the government had issued permits without community consent, directly violating West Papua’s special autonomy laws that require Indigenous approval for land use changes.

These actions contravene national regulations and international law, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which guarantees the right to free, prior and informed consent. Yet despite clear legal violations, authorities continue defending these projects by citing tax revenue and economic growth. They are clearly prioritising corporate profits over Indigenous rights and environmental protection.

The government’s response to opposition is particularly troubling. There is a systematic pattern of human rights violations against people defending their lands. When communities protest against developments, they face arbitrary arrests, police intimidation and violence. Police frequently disperse demonstrations by force, and community leaders are threatened with imprisonment or falsely accused of disrupting development. In some cases, they are labelled as separatists or anti-government to delegitimise their activism and justify repression.

What tactics are proving effective for civil society?

Indigenous communities are employing both traditional and modern resistance approaches. Many communities have performed customary rituals to symbolically reject plantations, imposing cultural sanctions that carry significant spiritual weight in their societies. Simultaneously, they’re engaging with legal systems to challenge permit violations.

Civil society organisations like ours support these efforts through environmental impact assessments, legal advocacy and public awareness campaigns. This multi-pronged approach has gained significant traction: in 2023, our Change.org petition gathered 258,178 signatures, while the #AllEyesOnPapua social media campaign went viral, demonstrating growing international concern.

Despite these successes, we face an uphill battle. The government continues pushing ahead with new agribusiness plans, including sugarcane and rice plantations covering over two million additional hectares of forest. This threatens further environmental destruction and Indigenous rights violations. Supporters of our movement are increasingly highlighting the global climate implications of continued deforestation in this critical carbon sink region.

What specific international actions would help protect West Papua?

Consumer power represents one of our strongest allies. International consumers can pressure their governments to enforce laws that prevent the import of products linked to human rights abuses and deforestation. They should also demand companies divest from harmful plantation projects that violate Indigenous rights.

At the diplomatic level, we need consistent international pressure on Indonesia to halt large-scale agribusiness expansion in West Papua and uphold Indigenous rights as defined in national and international laws. Foreign governments with trade relationships must make human rights and environmental protection central to their engagement with Indonesia, not peripheral concerns.
Without concerted international action, West Papua’s irreplaceable forests and the Indigenous communities who have sustainably managed them for generations face an existential threat. This isn’t just a local issue: the destruction of one of the world’s most biodiverse regions affects us all.

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SEE ALSO
Indonesia: ‘The transmigration plan threatens Papua’s autonomy and indigenous ways of life’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Budi Hernawan 03.Feb.2025
Indonesia: ‘The international community should help amplify the voices of Indonesians standing up to corrupt elites’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Alvin Nicola 28.Sep.2024
Indonesia’s election spells trouble for civil society CIVICUS Lens 13.Mar.2024

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By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, May 29 2025 – The humanitarian situation in Haiti has deteriorated significantly in the recent weeks as rates of violence, hunger, and displacement soar amid a severe lack of funding. As armed gangs continue to seize more territory in the capital, Port-Au-Prince, as well as in areas in the Artibonite and Centre Department, humanitarian organizations have found themselves unable to keep up with the growing scale of needs.

Haiti is considered to be one of the poorest countries within the western hemisphere and relies heavily on foreign aid to fund the majority of basic services for its citizens. According to figures from ACAPS, a nonprofit organization that provides daily analysis on current humanitarian crises, the 2024 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) for Haiti had called for USD 673.8 million, 65 percent of which was contributed by the United States. Due to the Trump administration’s reduction in USAID for over 90 programs, the amount of funding Haiti receives this year could look very different.

Heightened insecurity and worsened living conditions in Haiti have resulted in a 34 percent increase in needs as this year’s HNRP calls for USD 908 million. In the first two months of 2025, the U.S. provided nearly half of all foreign aid that was committed to Haiti, totaling at nearly USD 23.1 million. ACAPS estimates project that the total HNRP will be severely underfunded this year, with the food, healthcare and protection sectors being among the most affected.

Additionally, the reduction in funding from the U.S. could have significant implications for the efficacy of the United Nations (UN) in crisis-affected nations like Haiti. Not only will the delivery of humanitarian aid be constricted, but a variety of programs that monitor impending disasters, such as climate shocks, economic downturns, disease outbreaks, and conflicts, could be terminated.

“The pullback of U.S. funding will limit the United States’ ability to shape the UN system, to maintain its leadership of UN agencies, and to put the UN tools, especially in peacemaking situations, to use. More broadly, these funding cuts will have negative repercussions for the perception of the United States around the globe,” said Allison Lombardo, a senior associate with Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Estimates from the UN indicate that armed groups in Haiti have taken control of over 90 percent of Port-Au-Prince, spurring concern from humanitarian groups that the gangs could completely override efforts from law enforcement and the state. “It’s an unsustainable catastrophe. We could lose Port-au-Prince at any time,” said Claude Joseph, the former prime minister of Haiti.

The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) states that over 1,600 civilians were killed as a direct result of gang violence in the first quarter of 2025 alone. Additionally, according to figures from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), over 60,000 people have been internally displaced since February.

William O’Neill, the UN’s independent expert on the human rights situation in Haiti, states that the rampant insecurity in the capital can be attributed to a consistent influx of firearms from the US to Haiti. According to Amnesty International, over 600,000 guns are currently in circulation, with more coming in every day.

“The gangs have access to an increasing number of high calibre weapons, and a seemingly endless supply of ammunition and some gangs have weapons that pierce armour. This is very dangerous because the Haitian National police and the multinational security support mission led by Kenya are really relying on their armoured vehicles to provide them protection,” said O’Neill.

According to figures from the World Food Programme (WFP), over 5.7 million people, or roughly half of Haiti’s population, faces acute food insecurity. 227,000 children from the ages of six months to five years, as well as numerous pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, are at risk of acute malnutrition, with over 125,000 severe cases having been recorded already.

Haiti has also experienced another surge in sexual violence in the past month. On May 3, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported the death of a six year-old girl after experiencing a rape in a displacement site in Port-Au-Prince. According to the UN, over 333 women and girls were subjected to gender-based and sexual violence in the first quarter of 2025, with 96 percent of these cases being rape. These victims have struggled to recover due to a lack of judicial and psychosocial support.

Additionally, the lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services has led to a rise in cholera cases. The UN Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric has said that as of May 28, there have been over 2,100 cases of cholera reported, with 28 associated deaths. Dujarric added that rates of infection are highest in densely populated areas and displacement sites.

“After the families informed us of these cases, the threat remains because no decontamination session has taken place in the camp. We lack the materials to carry out the cleaning. Where we live, we are exposed to all kinds of diseases,” said Jhonny Élysée, president of the Bois-Verna camp committee.

Due to aid deliveries being hampered by threats of gang violence, basic services have been stretched to their limits for the majority of civilians in Haiti. According to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), over 60 percent of healthcare facilities in Port-Au-Prince are nonfunctional or operate with significant shortages in personnel, funding, and medical supplies.

“The number of seriously injured patients has risen steadily over the past four weeks. Nearly 40 percent of them are women and children,” said Dr. Seybou Diarra, coordinator of MSF’s Tabarre Hospital.

“We are now creating hospital rooms in the meeting rooms. The medical teams are exhausted, and the intensification of violence around the structure complicates the conduct of our activities, as we are located next to areas that are regularly under attack, with a high risk of stray bullets…If the situation doesn’t calm down, I fear that many of the wounded will die for lack of available treatment.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Alfonso Fernández de Castro
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 29 2025 – While headlines often focus on crises, inequality, or instability, they rarely highlight one of the most powerful tools for transformation: development finance. Can money change the world? Yes—if mobilized with strategic vision, sustainability, and equity.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the investment gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 exceeds USD 4 trillion annually. Yet, global financial assets total USD 486 trillion, according to the Financial Stability Board.

What prevents even a small fraction of these funds from flowing toward sustainability? This gap represents not only a financial challenge but also an opportunity to rethink how the economic system works and reorient it towards more equitable and resilient growth.

Alfonso Fernández de Castro

While several barriers can limit capital flows—such as underdeveloped regulatory frameworks, lack of appropriate incentives, subsidies that fail to promote sustainable practices, unclear standards, and perceived risks—tackling them with an ecosystem perspective can unlock the full potential of finance for development.

Redirecting financial flows toward social and environmental priorities is more urgent than ever. Every dollar invested with an SDG focus can reduce poverty, boost innovation, and protect ecosystems.

The goal is clear: to build an effective, inclusive, and accountable financial system, capable of responding to major global challenges. To achieve this, many countries are implementing financing frameworks that align domestic and international resources with social and environmental goals.

These strategies mobilize investments that generate real impact in people’s lives and in planetary health: enabling energy transitions, reducing poverty, and fostering innovation in key sectors.

At the global level, maximizing the impact of Official Development Assistance (ODA) remains essential. In 2024, for every dollar spent on basic financing, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) helped mobilize over USD 500 in public and private investment for the SDGs. Since 2022, this has amounted to over USD 870 billion in climate-resilient financing.

The upcoming Financing for Development Conference (FfD4), in Seville, is a key opportunity to strengthen a global financial architecture that supports SDG-aligned investments, helps alleviate the debt burden on the most vulnerable countries, and promotes domestic resource mobilization through collaborative networks of governments, investors, and philanthropic organizations.

Efforts also focus on building sustainable investment ecosystems through SDG-aligned pipelines, de-risking mechanisms, financial innovation, and systems that steer investments toward sustainable activities with strong disclosure and impact-tracking frameworks.

Uruguay: Financial Innovation with Impact

In Uruguay, the push for a sustainable finance market aims to accelerate SDG progress and position the country as a regional hub. This agenda is coordinated through the Sustainable Finance Roundtable, an inter-institutional platform led by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and the Central Bank of Uruguay (BCU), with the strong commitment and support of UNDP, along with banking and financial sector partners, to tackle the challenges of development finance.

A major milestone was the issuance of the Sovereign Sustainability Linked-Bond (SSLB) in 2022. Its Reference Framework was developed by five ministries with technical support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and UNDP. The bond linked financing costs to environmental targets, with external verification by UNDP.

Its first issuance, which drew USD 1.5 billion in demand, set a regional precedent for sustainable finance and marked a significant contribution to global public goods.

In 2024, Uruguay also launched its first Social Impact Bond (SIB) focused on dual education—an instrument that links financial returns to measurable outcomes in inclusion and employability. Developed with the participation of civil society organizations, public institutions, and investors, it aims to finance educational projects that promote youth workforce integration.

The Risk of Greenwashing: More Transparency, Fewer Empty Promises

The growth of sustainable finance brings certain risks. One of the most prominent is greenwashing—that is, projecting a false environmental or social commitment without verifiable action or outcomes. To prevent it, it is essential to manage impact objectively, with clear transparency standards and independent verification mechanisms.

Uruguay, with its strong financial framework and performance-linked bonds, exemplifies how a transparent, results-based approach can effectively counter greenwashing and ensure every invested dollar yields real impact.

Financing the future means measuring the real impact of every decision. Only then can the 2030 Agenda become reality.

Money has no intrinsic purpose; its impact depends on our choices. We can use it to fuel inequality—or as a driver to build a more just, resilient, and sustainable world.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Alfonso Fernández de Castro is Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Uruguay