By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 5 2025 – El Granjero, the second-largest egg producer in El Salvador, invested US$2.5 million in 2017 to build a biogas plant, proving that there is a solution to the thorny issue of environmental pollution caused by most poultry companies in the country.

It also showed that the investment can yield financial benefits, as the biogas generates electricity that is fed into the national power grid.

The biogas plant, located in Jayaque, a district in southwestern El Salvador, is managed by Renig, the subsidiary created by El Granjero to handle its biological waste.

In 2018, Renig began processing the 200,000 tons of chicken manure and other organic waste produced annually from the eight farms that El Granjero operates in the southwestern part of the country, housing around one million birds.

The plant’s biodigester, with a capacity of 5,300 cubic meters, is 92 meters long, 17 meters wide, and five meters deep.

“I thought biodigesters were the most suitable because they solved the environmental problem immediately, but there was also at least a possibility of being profitable,” Bernhard Waase, director of Renig, told IPS during his visit to the plant.

The environmental pollution caused by the poultry sector has been a source of tension for rural communities living near the farms established in their territories.

According to data from the Salvadoran Poultry Association, the country’s poultry sector produces approximately 1.2 billion eggs and 155 million kilograms of chicken meat annually.

The production of biogas is complex. Bacteria are living organisms that, depending on the conditions inside the biodigester, can behave differently and affect gas production, Melissa Ruiz, in charge of the digester and secondary processes, explained to IPS.

“The digester works like our stomach, and the bacteria are very sensitive to the elements we provide them, just like us. If we suddenly eat a lot of meat or an unbalanced diet, our stomach reacts, and we feel sluggish or get sick. The same happens with the digester,” Ruiz elaborated.

The biodigester at the Renig plant began producing biogas in 2018 but only started generating electricity in 2021. That year, after winning a government tender for biogas production, it began generating and injecting 0.85 megawatts into the national grid through the power distributor Del Sur.

Waase said that, in environmental terms, the plant has achieved its primary goal—preventing pollution—which is already a reason for celebration and pride, as few large companies in the poultry sector have taken this step. Specifically, in the egg industry, El Granjero is the only one that decided to make this investment.

However, financially, expectations have not been fully met.

“From an environmental standpoint, it has been a total success, but financially speaking, it’s much more complicated. We haven’t lost money in any year, but we’re nowhere near the return we had envisioned,” he stated.

By Francine Pickup
NEW YORK, Aug 5 2025 – As the world’s youngest and fastest-growing nations, LLDCs are home to immense untapped potential, yet remain cut off from the currents of international commerce and opportunity. Imagine being surrounded by opportunity, yet separated from it by mountains, borders, and vast distances from the nearest port—this is the daily reality for the world’s landlocked developing countries (LLDCs).

These 32 nations, on average 1,370 kilometers from the closest seacoast, face daunting obstacles: high transport costs, tangled logistics, and economic vulnerabilities. LLDCs account for only 1.3% of global exports, 82% of which are unprocessed primary commodities, and face 1.4 times higher trade costs than coastal partners.

This high dependence on exports of unprocessed goods not only undermines their resilience to crises like demand shifts and trade disruptions but also limits their inclusion in higher-value global supply chains.

Today’s environment of increasing tariffs compounds these vulnerabilities and LLDCs risk becoming further marginalized from global value chains, which can slow economic growth and hinder efforts toward poverty reduction.

LLDCs often depend on a small number of trade partners, with China being the primary market for many. This economic concentration and dependency on a single partner increases vulnerability when there are unpredictable shifts in global trade policies.

LLDCs’ development landscape is shaped by intersecting crises: economic instability, debt distress, climate shocks, and technological disruption. Nearly half of LLDCs are classified as Least Developed Countries and almost 40 percent of their urban populations live in slums.

The LLDCs face compounded vulnerabilities that demand more agile, anticipatory, and systemic responses. With their populations poised to surpass one billion by 2050, the stakes have never been higher—or the moment for transformative action more urgent.

Four game changers for unlocking local action in LLDCs:

1. Harnessing Extractives for Sustainable Development – Harnessing extractive industries is vital for many mineral-rich LLDCs. Promoting sustainable practices, especially in artisanal and small-scale mining is critical along with maintaining strong regulatory frameworks, social environmental safeguards and technological innovation. In Uganda, in partnership with the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (OACPS) and the European Union (EU), UNDP is addressing these challenges by strengthening regulatory frameworks, so issues pertaining to Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Enterprises (ASMEs) are mainstreamed into mining and mineral laws and policies.

2. Trade Facilitation and Regional Cooperation – Regional integration is essential for LLDCs to overcome geographic constraints and boost economic resilience. Initiatives like Aid for Trade and African Continental Free Trade Area implementation have helped LLDCs align strategies, improve coordination, and strengthen infrastructure, resulting in greater regional trade and inclusive growth.

3. Strengthening National Institutions– Effective governance is central to drive structural transformation in the backdrop of democratic backsliding and shrinking civic space. A comprehensive approach that seeks to strengthen local and national institutions with quality analysis of evidence and improved monitoring and evaluation can boost inclusive and accountable governance. Efforts in Nepal, Moldova, Lao PDR, and Mali have helped reinforce institutions during times of crises.

4. Supporting Local Entrepreneurship and Innovation – At the local level, small businesses and community enterprises need new opportunities through inclusive development models. Support for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) means providing technical assistance and innovative tools to improve access to finance, digitalization, and investment. For example, in many countries women-led cooperatives in agriculture have gained skills to boost exports, resulting in significant economic gains.

Over the past decade, UNDP has partnered with all 32 Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) across diverse contexts. Through the framework of the Vienna Programme of Action (2014–2024), UNDP invested over USD 12.5 billion to support national efforts in governance, climate resilience, economic transformation, and financing for development, helping countries find solutions that fit their own needs.

This decade of impact is captured in the latest report Landlocked Developing Countries: Looking Back and Ahead | Accelerating Action in the next 10 Years.

The next decade must be about unlocking the untapped potential

Although the sea may be far away, the horizon offers broad possibilities when we consider perspectives beyond geographic boundaries. Many Landlocked Developing countries (LLDCs) have achieved meaningful developments over the past decade, but overall progress has been uneven and still limited to meet the goals set by the Vienna Programme of Action or the Sustainable Development Goals.

This week, global leaders and stakeholders will gather in Turkmenistan, for the Third United Nations Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries. The Awaza Programme of Action already provides a blueprint for governments to agree on reforms for better trade arrangements, address tariff sensitivities by fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, economic diversification and through regional and South-South cooperation, so LLDCs are fully integrated and empowered within the framework of global development.

https://www.un.org/en/landlocked/about-landlocked-developing-countries

Francine Pickup is Deputy Director, UNDP Bureau for Policy and Programme Support

IPS UN Bureau

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By Maximilian Malawista
NEW YORK, Aug 5 2025 – They are lightweight, cheap, and able to be used in every sector of every supply chain. Few materials have revolutionized manufacturing and the global economy as much as plastics have. They are essential in almost everything, however this comes at a cost. A cost of 1.5 trillion annually in environmental damage, and a 75 percent waste ratio of all plastic ever produced.

Even though there have been biodiversity protection agreements through the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), no comprehensive global agreement has responded to the challenges that plastic pollution presents. To bridge this gap, the focus of the International Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2), mandated by the United Nations Environment Assembly resolution 5/14 in 2022, was tasked with developing a legally binding instrument (ILBI) on plastic pollution. The latest rounds of these negotiations are scheduled to take place in Geneva this year from August 5-14.

During the previous year’s sessions, which were held in Busan, South Korea, INC-5.1 in Busan, Republic of Korea, INC Chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the United Kingdom remarked: “Our mandate has always been ambitious. But ambition takes time to land.” He added: “I call on all delegations to continue making paths, building bridges, and engaging in dialogue. Let us always remember that our purpose is noble and urgent: to reverse and remedy the severe effects of plastic pollution on ecosystems and human health.”

This kind of damage results in at least 1,400 wildlife species being negatively impacted annually. Plastic leaks into marine life, and disproportionate operational capacity to collect, reuse, and recycle plastics by developing countries, which are not the ones producing the waste in the first place. The reliance on fossil fuels for creating plastics which generate 1.96 gigaton (Gt) of C02 equivalent. These plastics create a triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change.

“We are choking on plastic,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “Plastic pollution is all around us and even inside us – from our seas to our blood, to our brains…Every year, people may ingest the equivalent of up to fifty plastic bags due to microplastics in food.”

The producer of plastic

The demand for plastic products is fulfilled through trade, making trade the propagator of most plastic pollution. Much of global plastic production is designed for single use, which has grown from two million metric tonnes (MMT) in 1950 to 436 MMT in 2022, a 217-fold increase. If trade practices resume as usual, this annual production of plastic is expected to increase to 884 MMt by 2050, meaning plastic production is growing at a rate 2.65 times faster than it did from 1950 to 2022, growing from 6.03 MMT per year to 16 MMT per year.

In 2022, over 78 percent — 323 MMT — of plastic produced was traded internationally in primary, intermediate, and embedded forms. The value of plastics trade grew more than double since 2005 to USD 1.13 trillion. Accounting for 5 percent of global merchandise trade that year, this was a display of its dominance across all sectors of trade.

A solution to the pollution

As trade dominates plastic production, integrated environmental trade policy becomes the number one priority in halting further environmental impacts and controlling plastic flows. This kind of policy can incentivize investment while also offering safer alternatives creating working environmental waste management.

A proven policy to reduce plastic use has been seen with tariff measures, which can reduce market competitiveness of plastic products. Establishing these measures would require a comprehensive value chain approach, analyzing how plastic is produced, moved, and disposed through its entire life span. The removal of tariff measures has been a main driver in increased plastic production. Over the past 30 years, tariffs on plastic and rubber have dropped from 34 percent to 7.2 percent, largely due to the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreements under the World Trade Organization (WTO), among numerous bilateral and regional free trade agreements leading to net zero tariffs on plastics and rubber products.

Plant-based plastic alternatives did not benefit from such free trade agreements, instead now averaging 14.4 percent, creating a lack of competitiveness for products with natural origins. Non-tariff measures (NTMs) have seen some levels of implementation across national levels. These are most commonly found as technical regulations on product specifications, and production methods and packaging requirements, of which 195 of the 299 notified measures by the WTO are.

Credit: Maximilian Malawista

To combat plastic pollution even further, UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has identified promising replacing measures which would implement sustainable non-plastic substitutes and alternatives focusing on packaging, agriculture, and fishery applications.

UNCTAD’s database identified 274 traded products of plant, mineral or animal origin that could replace plastics across various sectors. These value chain swaps could involve using glass, aluminum paper, bamboo, seaweed, and natural fibers instead of plastics, due to their biodegradable, erodible, compostable, and recyclable natures. These materials have already been tried and tested to work, it is only a matter of implementation and market growth.

Currently, plastic alternatives such as compostable and bio-based plastics are available in many developed and developing country markets, with massive potential to grow as they currently represent 1.5 percent of global plastic production. In 2023, global exports of non-plastic substitutes reached USD 485 billion, down from 561 billion in 2022: mirroring a small drop in plastic trade. Developed countries made up 58 percent of exports, while developing countries held 42 percent, but with an observed 5.6 percent growth rate.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Appolinaire Djikeng and Emmanuelle Soubeyran
NAIROBI, Kenya / PARIS, France, Aug 5 2025 – One would expect that this year’s wetter than average rainy season in parts of Africa would be viewed with relief, not fear. Yet many areas in the region sits at a knife’s edge—still recovering from years of drought and a historic famine, too much rain leads to flooding and water-borne diseases. Both varieties of extreme weather place enormous stress on livestock systems across the region, on which communities rely for both sustenance and livelihoods.

Despite this, current planning around climate change tend to focus narrowly on weather patterns, overlooking the impacts on animal agriculture. Even with strong evidence that healthy animals support livelihoods while helping to reduce climate impacts, just 20 out of 176 countries mentioned animal health and welfare in their latest climate commitments (NDCs). African nations cannot afford to make this omission.

Animal health isn’t just a veterinary concern – it’s a global public good.

Appolinaire Djikeng

The recent State of the World’s Animal Health report found that outbreaks of avian influenza in mammals more than doubled in 2023, raising alarms about its potential spread to humans. Nearly half of the diseases now spreading into new areas have this same potential. At the same time, antimicrobial resistance poses a growing threat to human, animal, plant and environmental health, also impacting livestock and fisheries.

Climate change accelerates these threats by changing animal disease patterns: warmer temperatures, shifting rainfall, and extreme weather events create new environments where diseases can spread more easily, jump between species, and appear in places they never did before. These challenges hit especially hard in Africa, where smallholder farmers rely on livestock for survival, and where animal illness can mean lost income, food insecurity, and greater vulnerability to climate shocks.

Governments must prioritise animal health as a matter of urgency. And there are plenty of reasons for them to do so.

Healthy animals are good news for the climate. Research shows that smart animal health and husbandry practices can reduce climate-warming emissions from livestock by up to 30 percent. They’re also more resilient to the effects of climate change which include more frequent and more intense heatwaves, droughts, and disease outbreaks.

Emmanuelle Soubeyran

Healthy animals protect human health by reducing the risk of disease spillover to humans. The risk is very real: without stronger prevention measures, zoonotic diseases could kill 12 times as many people in 2050 compared to 2020.

Fortunately, prevention is incredibly cost effective. Investing in measures to prevent zoonotic spillover would cost less than 5 percent of the damages those diseases could inflict on society.

Healthy animals underpin prosperous communities and nations. In Africa, livestock are a major source of income and nutrition for the large majority of people living in poverty. The good news is that we know what we need to do to keep our animals healthy and well. We need to support them with balanced diets, quality veterinary care, robust disease monitoring and control, and good husbandry practices. These are all proven, affordable, and scalable strategies.

Vaccination is essential to any effective animal health strategy. Safe, effective vaccines curb the occurrence and spread of diseases, reduce the need for antimicrobials, and boost productivity sustainably. Backed by science, vaccines are among the most cost-effective tools we have for keeping communities across Africa and the rest of the world safe and healthy, all while meeting animal health and welfare goals and building climate-resilient food systems.

Forward-thinking African nations are leading the way by adopting a One Health approach, which acknowledges that human, animal, and environmental health are deeply intertwined. Countries like Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia are moving away from fragmented, sector-specific responses in managing the health of humans, animals and the environment.

In Kenya, for example, the government has integrated One Health principles into national policy by fostering collaborations between agriculture, health, and environment ministries. Kenya’s multi-sector Zoonotic Disease Unit has helped to detect and control outbreaks of diseases like Rift Valley fever and anthrax – before they have had the chance to escalate.

In Côte d’Ivoire, a One Health initiative brought together experts in wildlife, veterinary health and public health to boost the surveillance and management of wildlife diseases, an important challenge in the country.

Some argue that the future of food should move away from animal-based systems altogether. But in many African countries, livestock remain indispensable as a main source of protein – especially in areas where an annual harvest isn’t guaranteed, or on arid lands, where growing crops isn’t feasible. The solution isn’t to abandon livestock; it’s to support farmers to keep their animals healthy.

The climate problems are not confined to the Horn of Africa. As governments across the continent look to raise the ambition of their climate commitments, leaders must seize the opportunity to elevate animal health as a national priority and integrate it as a critical component of their national climate action plans (NDCs).

The message is clear: It’s time to recognize healthy animals as essential for both climate change mitigation and sustainable development.

Professor Appolinaire Djikeng is the Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI); Dr. Emmanuelle Soubeyran is the Director General of the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).

IPS UN Bureau

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By External Source
Aug 5 2025 (IPS-Partners)

 
Artificial Intelligence is changing how we live, learn, work – and who gets heard.

It holds promise for humanity but, without safeguards, it risks becoming a new tool of domination.

For Indigenous Peoples, the stakes are not abstract – they are ancestral, material, and urgent.

Indigenous knowledge, images, languages and identities are already being used to train AI systems.

Much of this is happening without consent, consultation, or benefit-sharing.

In 2023, researchers identified over 1,800 AI training datasets containing Indigenous cultural content.

Most without evidence of Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

This is not inclusion – it is extraction in digital form.

When AI systems absorb Indigenous content without consent, they replicate colonial logic through code.

The dangers are not only cultural – they are also territorial and environmental.

AI requires data centers, rare earth minerals, and immense electricity – often sourced from Indigenous lands.

Over 54% of critical mineral projects worldwide are located on or near Indigenous territories.

In Chile, AI-optimized lithium mining threatens Atacameño water sources and sacred lands.

The environmental costs of AI include toxic e-waste, land degradation, and resource depletion.

When built without Indigenous participation, AI becomes a force multiplier for dispossession.

Meanwhile, Indigenous Peoples are excluded from decisions about AI governance, ethics, and policy.

They are rarely consulted – yet deeply affected.

But Indigenous Peoples are not passive victims in this story.

In New Zealand, Māori-led teams are using AI to revitalize te reo Māori.

In the Arctic, Inuit communities use AI to monitor ice patterns and adapt to climate change.

In Polynesia, Indigenous reef monitors combine traditional knowledge with machine learning to protect marine ecosystems.

These efforts show what AI can become – when rooted in rights, culture, and consent.

Indigenous Peoples have called for digital sovereignty, ethical frameworks, and funding for culturally-led innovation.

They must be co-creators of AI, not its collateral damage.

The future of AI is not just a technological question – it is a question of justice.

On August 8, join the global conversation. Defend rights. Shape futures

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