By Oxfam
LONDON, Jan 13 2026 – The richest 1% have exhausted their annual carbon budget – the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while staying within 1.5 degrees of warming – only ten days into the year, according to new analysis from Oxfam. The richest 0.1% already used up their carbon limit on the 3rd January.

This day – named by Oxfam as ‘Pollutocrat Day’ – highlights how the super-rich are disproportionately responsible for driving the climate crisis.

The emissions of the richest 1% generated in one year alone will cause an estimated 1.3 million heat-related deaths by the end of the century. Decades of over consumption of emissions by the world’s super rich are also causing significant economic damage to low and lower-middle income countries, which could add up to $44 trillion by 2050.

To stay within the 1.5 degrees limit, the richest 1% would have to slash their emissions by 97% by 2030. Meanwhile, those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis – including communities in poorer and climate-vulnerable countries, Indigenous groups, women and girls – will be the worst impacted.

“Time and time again, the research shows that governments have a very clear and simple route to drastically slash carbon emissions and tackle inequality: by targeting the richest polluters.

By cracking down on the gross carbon recklessness of the super-rich, global leaders have an opportunity to put the world back on track for climate targets and unlock net benefits for people and the planet,” said Oxfam’s Climate Policy Lead Nafkote Dabi.

On top of their lifestyle emissions, the super-rich are also investing in the most polluting industries. Oxfam’s research finds that each billionaire carries, on average, an investment portfolio in companies that will produce 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 a year, further locking the world into climate breakdown.

The wealthiest individuals and corporations also hold disproportionate power and influence. The number of lobbyists from fossil fuel companies attending the recent COP summit in Brazil, for example, was more than any delegation apart from the host nation, with 1600 attendees.

“The immense power and wealth of super-rich individuals and corporations have also allowed them to wield unjust influence over policymaking and water down climate negotiations.” Dabi added.

Oxfam calls on governments to slash the emissions of the super-rich and make rich polluters pay through:

Increase taxes on income and wealth of the Super-rich and proactively support and engage on the negotiations for the UN Convention of International Tax Cooperation to deliver a fairer global architecture.

Excess profit taxes on fossil fuel corporations. A Rich Polluter Profits Tax on 585 oil, gas and coal companies could raise up to US $400 billion in its first year, equivalent to the cost of climate damages in the Global South.

Ban or punitively tax carbon-intensive luxury items like super-yachts and private jets. The carbon footprint of a super-rich European, accumulated from nearly a week of using super yachts and private jets, matches the lifetime carbon footprint of someone in the world’s poorest 1 percent

Build an equal economic system that puts people and planet first by rejecting dominant neoliberal economics and moving towards an economy based on sustainability and equality. 

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court, has confirmed that countries have a legal obligation to reduce emissions enough to protect the universal rights to life, food, health, and a clean environment. 

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 2026 – Judging by the mass US withdrawal from 66 UN entities, including UN conventions and international treaties, is it remotely possible that the unpredictable Trump administration may one day decide to pull out of the UN, and force the Secretariat out of New York– despite the 1947 UN-US headquarters agreement?

Besides the 66, the withdrawals also include the pullouts from the Human Rights Council, the WHO, UNRWA and UNESCO– while imposing drastic reductions in funding for the remaining UN entities the US has not yet formally exited.

So, will the United Nations, which has come under heavy fire, be far behind?

That possibility is strengthened by the critical views of the UN both by President Trump and senior US officials.

Dr Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics, University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on issues relating to the United Nations, told IPS even the U.S. presidents most hostile to the United Nations– like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush– recognized the importance of the world body in terms of advancing U.S. interests, including understanding the importance of maintaining the UN system as a whole, even while violating certain legal principles in particular cases.

Similarly, he pointed out, the United States was willing to participate in various UN bodies in an effort to wield influence, even while disagreeing with some of their policies or even their overall mandates.

“The Trump administration, however, appears to be rejecting the post-WWII international legal system as a whole. His statements, particularly since the attack on Venezuela, appear to be a throwback to the 19th-century imperial prerogatives and a rejection of modern international law.”

“As a result, it is possible that Trump could indeed pull the United States out of the United Nations and force the UN out of New York”, declared Dr Zunes.

Addressing the General Assembly last September, Trump remarked, “What is the purpose of the United Nations? It’s not even coming close to living up to [its] potential.”

Dismissing the U.N. as an outdated, ineffective organization, he boasted, “I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.”

Martin S. Edwards, Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS “this is dubious language about cutting inefficiency and fighting diversity wrapped up in red meat to feed President Trump’s base”.

It’s a ploy to use foreign affairs to distract voters for whom he has yet to deliver. The fact that the actual follow-up documents haven’t been received by the Secretary General tells you everything here. It fits a pattern of the President carving out maximalist positions and then getting very little in the end, he pointed out.

But it’s a bigger challenge, he said, on two fronts:

1. This is going to continue to REDUCE US influence at the UN rather than increase it. Stable foreign relations are based on credibility. The US continues to squander its reserves, and other countries will step into the vacuum.

2. This policy might have been a good social media post for voters, but makes little sense in practice. What the White House wants is a line-item veto over every single aspect of UN operations. But assessed contributions are not an ala carte menu, declared Edwards.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Secretary General, CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations, told IPS retreat from international institutions by the Trump Administration is an attack on the legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who gave the people of the United States the New Deal and envisioned a bold framework for the establishment of the UN to overcome the horrors of the Second World War.

“Many of the impacted international institutions were built through the blood, sweat and tears of Americans. Pulling out of these institutions is an affront to their sacrifices and reverses decades of multilateral cooperation on peace, human rights, climate change and sustainable development,” he said.

Meanwhile, the attacks on the UN have continued unabated.

In an interview with Breitbart News, U.S. Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz said, “A quarter of everything the UN does, the United States pays for”.

“Is there money being well spent? I’d say right now, no, because it’s being spent on all of these other woke projects, rather than what it was originally intended to do, what President Trump wants it to do, and what I want it to do, which is focus on peace.”

Historically, the United States has been the largest financial contributor, typically covering around 22% of the UN’s regular budget and up to 28% of the peacekeeping budget.

Still, ironically, the US is also the biggest defaulter. According to the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee, member states currently owe $1.87 billion of the $3.5 billion in mandatory contributions for the current budget cycle.

The former US House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York, a one-time nominee for the post of US Ambassador to the UN, was quoted as saying, “In the UN, Americans see a corrupt, defunct, and paralyzed institution more beholden to bureaucracy, process, and diplomatic niceties than the founding principles of peace, security, and international cooperation laid out in its charter.”

Meanwhile, in a veiled attack on the UN, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “What we term the “international system” is now overrun with hundreds of opaque international organizations, many with overlapping mandates, duplicative actions, ineffective outputs, and poor financial and ethical governance.”

Even those that once performed useful functions, he pointed out, have increasingly become inefficient bureaucracies, platforms for politicized activism or instruments contrary to our nation’s best interests, he said.

“Not only do these institutions not deliver results, they obstruct action by those who wish to address these problems. The era of writing blank checks to international bureaucracies is over,” declared Rubio

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By SWAN
Jan 13 2026 – Nomadic Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay probably never dreamed that 21^st-century readers would be delving into his private correspondence some 77 years after his death. But that’s probably part of the professional hazard (luck?) of being a literary luminary, or, as Yale University Press describes him, “one of the Harlem Renaissance’s brightest and most radical voices”.

The Press recently released Letters in Exile: Transnational Journeys of a Harlem Renaissance Writer, edited by Brooks E. Hefner and Gary Edward Holcomb.

This is a comprehensive collection of “never-before-published dispatches from the road” with correspondents who have equally become cultural icons: Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Pauline Nardal, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Max Eastman and a gamut of other writers, editors, activists, and benefactors. The letters cover the years 1916 to 1934 and were written from various cities, as McKay travelled extensively.

While he’s considered a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, McKay was a cosmopolitan intellectual – an author ahead of his time, writing about race, inequality, the legacy of slavery, queerness, and a range of other topics

His daughter Ruth Hope McKay, whom the writer apparently never met in life (perhaps because British authorities at the time prevented him from returning to Jamaica), sold and donated his papers to Yale University from 1964 on.

The papers include his letters to her as well, and cast a light on this “singular figure of displacement, this critically productive internationalist, this Black Atlantic wanderer”, as a French translator has called him. But reading another’s correspondence, even that of a long-dead scribe, can feel like an intrusion. It’s a sensation some readers will need to overcome.

Born in 1890 (or 1889) in Clarendon, Jamaica, McKay left the Caribbean island for the United States in 1912, and his wanderings would later take him to countries such as Russia, England, France and Morocco, among others.

His acclaimed work includes the poem “If We Must Die” (written in reaction to the racial violence in the United States against people of African descent in mid-1919), the poetry collections Songs of Jamaica and Harlem Shadows, and the novels Home to Harlem, Banjo, and Banana Bottom.

Years after his death in 1948, scholars discovered manuscripts that would be posthumously published: Amiable with Big Teeth (written in 1941 and published in 2017) and Romance in Marseille (written in 1933 and published in 2020). McKay also authored a memoir titled A Long Way from Home (1937).

While he’s considered a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, McKay was a cosmopolitan intellectual – an author ahead of his time, writing about race, inequality, the legacy of slavery, queerness, and a range of other topics.

He wrote in a sharp, striking, often ironic or satirical way, and Letters in Exile reflects these same qualities. The collection “reveals McKay gossiping, cajoling, and confiding as he engages in spirited debates and challenges the political and artistic questions of the day,” according to the editors.

Some of the most interesting letters deal with France, the setting of a significant part of McKay’s oeuvre and a place where his literary stature has been rising over the past decade, through a rush of new translations, colloquia, and even a film devoted to his life: Claude McKay, From Harlem to Marseille (or in French, Claude McKay, de Harlem à Marseille), directed by Matthieu Verdeil and released in 2021.

The cover of Letters in Exile

McKay was the “first twentieth-century Black author associated with the United States to be widely celebrated in France,” write editors Hefner and Holcomb in their introduction. They say the letters show that France shaped McKay’s world view, and that he considered himself a Francophile as well as a perpetual étranger.

Through the selected correspondence, we see McKay experiencing France in a variety of ways – dealing with winter insufficiently dressed, participating in the community of multi-ethnic outsiders in Marseille, rubbing shoulders with various personalities during the Années folles, or observing French colonialism in Morocco. And nearly always short of funds.

In Paris in January 1924, after a bout of sickness, he wrote to New York-based social worker and activist Grace Campbell that he’d had the “bummest holiday” of his life: “I was down with the grippe for 10 days and only forced myself to get up on New Year’s day. I suffer because I’m not properly clothed to stand the winter. I’m wondering if anything can be done over there to raise a little money to tide me over these bad times.”

A month later, he wrote to another correspondent about the “cold wave” numbing his fingers and of having to sleep with his “old overcoat” next to his skin, while still not being able to keep warm. He also found the “French trading class” to be “terrible”, complaining that “they cheat me going and coming”.

During his early time in France, he called Marseilles a “nasty, repulsive city”. But a few years later, writing to teacher and arts patron Harold Jackman in 1927, McKay stated: “I am doing a book on Marseille. It’s a tough, picturesque old city and I would love to show it to you some day.”

Apart from references to his work, McKay discussed global events in his correspondence, made his opinions known, and described relationships. His letters, say Hefner and Holcomb, are at the very least “an essential companion to his most revolutionary writings, from the groundbreaking poetry he produced after he left Jamaica through his trailblazing novels and short fiction and into his extraordinary memoirs and journalism.”

While this may well be true, and as insightful as the correspondence proves, many readers will still have to reckon with the uncomfortable sensation of being a literary voyeur. – AM/SWAN

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Jan 12 2026 – We’re living in an age where the world is loudly proclaiming the death of empire, yet reproducing its structures. This is not nostalgia for colonial postcards — it’s a reinvention of foreign policy, international governance and global economic power that resembles colonial logic far more than it does meaningful cooperation.

The term “New Colonialism” feels extreme until you look not at poetry, but at power in motion — from military takeovers and genocides, to diplomatic withdrawal, to institutions that still perpetuate inequality and human rights’ abuses under the guise of neutrality.

I – Where Are We Today

“Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control.”
— Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993)

In January 2026, the United States executed what amounts to the most dramatic foreign intervention in Latin America in decades: a military incursion into Venezuela resulting in the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro. President Donald Trump openly declared that the U.S. would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” This is not coded language — it is overt control.

Critics and allies alike see the move not as a limited counternarcotics or law enforcement operation (as the Administration frames it), but as a return to the old playbook of hemispheric domination. Latin American governments from Mexico to Brazil condemned it as a violation of sovereignty — a modern mirror to the regime-change interventions of the 20th century.

Analysts at Foreign Policy have highlighted precisely how this intervention fits into a larger pattern of U.S. foreign policy ambition. Rishi Iyengar and John Haltiwanger note that under the banner of battling “narcoterrorism,” the United States has expanded the role of its military into actions that blur the distinction between security and political control — “adding bombing alleged drug traffickers to its ever-growing list of duties.”

Such actions reflect a foreign policy that is increasingly militarized and deeply unilateral in its execution.

This intervention was not an isolated blip. It fits into a broader dynamic which suggests Washington’s moves in Venezuela are less about drug interdiction and more about strategic positioning and resource control — especially Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

In the context of a “World-Minus-One” global order where U.S. power is contested by China and Russia, interventionist impulses have resurfaced not as humanitarian projects but as geopolitical gambits.

Viewed through the lens of colonial critique, the language of “rescuing” Venezuelans from an accused dictator echoes Kipling’s exhortation to take up the supposed moral burden. But those centuries-old justifications masked violence and labour exploitation; today’s rhetoric masks geopolitical self-interest.

The U.S. claims to be liberating Venezuelans from authoritarianism, yet asserts control over governance and economic infrastructure — a 21st-century version of telling another nation it cannot govern itself without direction from Washington. The result is not liberation, but dependency — a hallmark of colonial relationships.

II. The U.S. Withdrawal from Multilateral Institutions

“The White Man’s Burden, which puts the blame of the new subjects upon themselves without acknowledging the real burden — the systematic, structural and often violent exploitation — is the oldest myth of empire.”

Kumari Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During British Colonial Rule, (1995)

If the takeover of Venezuela reads like old-fashioned empire building, the withdrawal from multilateral institutions is a disengagement from the very forums meant to prevent that kind of unilateralism.

In early 2026, the United States signed a presidential memorandum seeking to withdraw support and participation from 66 international organizations — including numerous United Nations agencies and treaty frameworks seen as “contrary to U.S. interests.” This list contains both U.N. bodies and other treaty mechanisms, extending a pattern of U.S. disengagement from global governance structures.

Among the organizations targeted are the U.N.’s population agency and the framework treaty for international climate negotiations. Already, U.S. participation in historic climate agreements like the Paris Agreement has been rolled back, and the World Health Organization was officially exited — marking a return to a transactional, bilateral focus rather than deep multilateral cooperation.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres responded to the announcement with regret and a reminder of legal obligations: assessed contributions to the regular and peacekeeping budgets are binding under the U.N. Charter for all member states, including the United States. He also underscored that despite U.S. withdrawal, the agencies will continue their work for the communities that depend on them.

This move comes against a backdrop in which the U.N. and other institutions are already grappling with serious internal challenges — problems that critics argue undermine their legitimacy and point to deeper governance failures. For instance, allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and staff have repeatedly surfaced, with hundreds of cases documented and concerns raised about the trustworthiness of leadership responses.

In 2024 alone, peacekeeping and political missions reported over 100 allegations, and internal surveys showed troubling attitudes among staff toward misconduct.

Such abuses are not random flukes; scholars and advocates have documented persistent organizational cultures where power imbalances enable exploitation and harassment, and where transparency and accountability often lag.

These structural issues do not delegitimize the idea of multilateral cooperation — but they certainly challenge claims that these institutions function as equitable and effective global governance mechanisms.

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are likewise under scrutiny. Critics point to cases where aid workers have perpetrated sexual abuse and exploitation or where organizational priorities have at times aligned more with donor interests than with local needs.

A 2024 study on sexual exploitation and harassment in humanitarian work highlights how power imbalances and weak enforcement mechanisms within the sector contribute to ongoing abuses that remain under-reported and inadequately addressed.

These issues — within the U.N. and the humanitarian sector — fuel frustration that multilateralism too often protects institutional reputation at the expense of victims and local communities. That frustration helps explain why some U.S. policymakers see these organizations as outdated or corrupt.

But the response of walking away rather than strengthening accountability mechanisms plays directly into the hands of those who would hollow out global governance altogether.

III. It Takes Two to Tango

So, is the United States the villain in this unfolding story of fractured cooperation and revived colonial impulses? Yes — but only partially.

There is no denying that recent U.S. foreign policy has made unilateral moves that harm global norms: military intervention in sovereign states, withdrawal from key treaties and organizations, and politicized rejection of multinational cooperation reflect a retreat from shared leadership. Yet, the belief that multilateral institutions are inherently effective, just and beyond reproach is equally misplaced.

Structural weaknesses in international governance — from slow, opaque accountability mechanisms to insufficient representation of Global South voices — have long been recognized by scholars and practitioners. These deficiencies leave global organizations vulnerable to political capture, ineffectiveness in crisis response and the perpetuation of inequalities they are meant to dismantle.

The failures inside the U.N. and the aid sector are not the sole fault of the United States, but of a global system that institutionalized power hierarchies sustained by western donors, from the beginning.

The New Colonialism era does not show up as 19th-century conquest; it’s woven into the language of “interest,” “security,” and “institutional reform.” Whether it is a powerful state flexing military might under humanitarian pretences or “self defence”, or powerful states walking away from agreements that protect smaller nations’ interests, the pattern is the same: power asserts itself where it can, and multilateral norms are treated as optional.

If this moment teaches us anything, it’s that saving multilateralism requires both accountability and renewal — not abandonment. Countries that champion global cooperation must address colonial legacies in governance, ensure institutions are transparent and accountable, and democratize decision-making.

Likewise, powerful states must recognize that withdrawing from shared systems or using them to further their own limited interests, does not reset power imbalances — it entrenches them.

In the end, meaningful global cooperation cannot be the project of a single nation or a network of powerful elites. It must be rooted in shared accountability and genuine equity — a coalition of efforts for the common good, prepared not only to compromise, but to sacrifice.

Azza Karam is President of Lead Integrity and Director of Occidental College’s Kahane UN Program.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Melek Zahine
BORDEAUX, France, Jan 12 2026 – Before military aid is appropriated, troops deployed, or bombs dropped, the United States lays the groundwork for its political violence by first stripping adversaries of their humanity. Diplomacy is sidelined, legal restraints are treated as inconveniences, and profit is valued over human life. This machinery of dehumanization, imposed around the world for decades and honed in Gaza the past three years, has now returned home, turned inward against Americans by the elected officials and systems meant to protect them.

Melek Zahine

The human and financial costs of America’s addiction to war were a constant presence in my childhood. For my generation, war was relentlessly pursued by the political establishment, laundered through media narratives, and imposed on the working class and the poor in taxes and blood. I was not yet two when my family immigrated to the United States in April 1970, as the Vietnam War raged and Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia. By the time those wars ended, new interventions, proxy wars, coups, and “wars on terror” followed, with the language of dehumanization used to sell and sustain each conflict. Vietnamese civilians were reduced to “free-fire targets,” and indigenous farmers in Cold War Latin America were labeled “peasants and subversives” to justify massacres. After 9/11, Iraqis were written off as “collateral damage,” and during America’s longest war, Afghan “military-age males” were presumed “terrorists” and “guilty by default.” In every instance, dehumanization preceded and justified the violence.

The Laboratory for Dehumanization

And always, decade after decade, lingered U.S. patronage for Israel’s own wars, especially towards Palestinian self-determination. Israeli human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories—excessive force, collective punishment, illegal settlement expansion, and arbitrary detention—have been documented in U.S. State Department reports since the 1970s. Yet Washington continued to expand military aid, making Israel the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance in history. After October 7, despite warnings from multiple U.S. government officials that Israel’s response to Hamas amounted to the collective punishment of Gaza’s 2.1 million population, nearly half of which is children, both the Biden and Trump administrations approved tens of billions of dollars in emergency arms transfers. These transfers proceeded despite evidence that U.S.-supplied arms, including chemical weapons and 2,000-pound bombs, were being used by Israel on Gaza’s densely populated civilian neighborhoods—violating both international law and domestic laws, namely the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and the Leahy Law. Over decades of support, but especially the past three years, U.S. support to Israel helped refine its own language of dehumanization towards Palestinians by consistently framing the killing of civilians as nameless and “unavoidable” incidents of Israel’s right to self-defense and laying the rhetorical foundation for the genocide in Gaza.

The Empire Comes Home

The militarized ICE raids now taking place across the United States rely on tactics, equipment, and doctrines supplied by the very military industrial complex that has profited from Gaza. The same officials who reduced Palestinians to “terrorists” or those shielding them now use that language at home, casting Americans protecting their communities as “threats to be neutralized” rather than citizens with inalienable rights. President Trump’s reluctance to say Renée Good’s name after a federal ICE agent fatally shot her in Minneapolis last week—framing the encounter as “self-defense”—echoes how Palestinians killed in Gaza by U.S.-supplied weapons and political cover are discussed as abstract, unnamed casualties. Naming the powerful while rendering the vulnerable nameless shields perpetrators and exposes the persistent logic of dehumanization that now bridges U.S. foreign policy and domestic policing.

Reclaiming Our Humanity

In his 1961 Farewell Address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that an unchecked military-industrial complex could distort democratic governance at home. Yet even as he spoke, he oversaw the very coups and interventions that entrenched permanent militarization. We are now living in the reality he feared. Washington’s ongoing complicity in Gaza, its increasingly aggressive posture toward Venezuela and Greenland, and its authoritarian behavior at home are a stark reminder: when dehumanization goes unchecked in U.S. foreign policy, it is only a matter of time before it goes unchecked domestically.

If Gaza and America’s long history of dehumanization have taught us anything, it’s that Americans cannot depend on their political elites to restrain their appetite for abusive authority. Average citizens must move beyond mere condemnation and toward sustained civic action. This means voting out officials beholden to war-profiteering lobbies, reasserting congressional power over the executive branch, and demanding the enforcement of laws designed to prevent U.S. complicity in human rights abuses overseas and the rule of law at home. The challenge ahead is truly immense—but ending the machinery of dehumanization is not inevitable and remains within the reach of those Americans determined to reclaim their shared humanity for one another and the world.

Melek Zahine is a writer and advocate focusing on the intersection of humanitarian assistance and U.S. foreign policy.

IPS UN Bureau

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Despite early warnings reportedly reaching communities before the cyclones (Ditwah and Senyar) struck coastal regions in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia late in November 2025, over 1,500 people lost their lives and hundreds went missing even as millions were impacted by these disasters, which caused massive destruction. Scientists say that these disasters reflect a changing […]

By Mario Osava
NITERÓI, Brazil, Jan 9 2026 – “We moved from a context of socio-environmental exclusion to one of environmental justice,” said Dionê Castro, coordinator of the Sustainable Oceanic Region Program which led Brazil’s largest nature-based solutions project.

Having won national and global awards, the Orla Piratininga Park (POP) built 35,000 square meters of filtering gardens and improved the water quality of the Piratininga lagoon, in the oceanic south of Niterói, a municipality in metropolitan Rio de Janeiro, across the Guanabara Bay.

The project, named after the late Brazilian environmentalist Alfredo Sirkis, began in 2020, and aims to environmentally restore an area of 680,000 square meters on the lagoon’s shores whose waters cover an area of 2.87 square kilometers.

At the heart of the project are the treatment systems for the waters of the Cafubá, Arrozal, and Jacaré rivers, which flow into the lagoon. Sedimentation and pollution were deteriorating the water resource and the quality of life in the surrounding area.

A weir, which receives the river flow, a sedimentation pond, which removes solid waste, and the filtering gardens make up the chain that partially cleans the water before releasing it into the lagoon, reducing environmental impacts, in a process called phytoremediation.

The gardens are small reservoirs where aquatic plants called macrophytes are planted, which feed on the nutrients from the pollution, explained Heloisa Osanai, the biologist specialized in environmental management of the Sustainable Oceanic Region Program (PRO Sustainable).

Three polluted water treatment stations are in the neighborhoods crossed by the rivers, based on natural resources, “without the use of electrical energy, chemicals, or concrete,” explained Castro, the coordinator of PRO Sustainable.

Furthermore, some macrophytes produce abundant flowers. Only native Brazilian species are planted, with priority given to biodiversity, added Osanai.

Along with these water treatment systems, 10.8 kilometers of bike paths, 17 recreation centers, a 2,800-square-meter Eco-Cultural Center, and other environmental works with social goals were built.

The bike path, generally along a pedestrian sidewalk, caters to physical and leisure activities but is also a factor in protecting the lagoon shoreline by blocking urban occupation and real estate invasions, explain the officials.

The area where the water system was built at the mouth of the Cafubá river was highly degraded by an open-air dump and flooding. A reformed “belt channel,” in some sections also reinforced by macrophyte islands, corrected the waterlogging.

On the other side of the lagoon, 3.2 kilometers of bioswales improve the drainage of rainwater. They are trenches with pipes, stones, and other materials, plus vegetation, that accelerate drainage and prevent pollutants from reaching the lagoon.

The main result, according to Castro, reconciled the local population with the lagoon. The old houses that “turned their backs on the lagoon” are joined by new buildings facing the water, some with balconies overlooking the new landscape, said Mariah Bessa, the engineer in charge of hydraulic aspects of the project.

The local population was highly involved in the design and construction of the new environmental and social facilities that transformed the lagoon shoreline. This led to new attitudes, such as not littering on the ground or in the water and preventing others from doing so, according to Castro.

The Ecocultural Center promotes permanent environmental education, with films, children’s games, audiovisual resources, and a large space for visits and classes.

“We moved from a context of socio-environmental exclusion to one of environmental justice,” said the coordinator of PRO Sustainable.

Food solutions were on display everywhere around COP30—from the 80 tonnes of local and agroecological meals served to concrete proposals for tackling hunger—but none of this made it into the negotiating rooms or the final agreement. —Elisabetta Recine, IPES-Food panel expert

By Center for International Environmental Law
WASHINGTON, USA, Jan 9 2026 – The Trump Administration’s sweeping executive order to withdraw the United States from dozens of United Nations bodies and international organizations, as well as a treaty ratified by the United States with the advice and consent of the US Senate, is a targeted assault on multilateralism, international law, and global institutions critical to safeguarding human rights, peace, and climate justice.

This move, the constitutionality and legal effect of which are questionable, was announced under the guise of protecting US interests, but does exactly the opposite. By divesting from global cooperation on the environment, human rights, democracy, and peace, the US puts its own future, and that of the planet, at greater risk.

The Executive Order represents a deliberate effort to dismantle the international infrastructure designed to uphold dignity, protect children, improve gender and racial equality, advance sustainable development, preserve the oceans, and confront the climate crisis. It undermines bodies that safeguard the global commons and ensure basic protections for marginalized people and those in vulnerable situations around the world, including refugees, women, children, people of African descent, and many others.

Rebecca Brown, President and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) said:

“This executive order is not just a policy shift— it is a direct assault on the multilateral system that has helped prevent conflict, advance human rights, and protect the global commons for nearly eighty years. At a time when rising seas, record heat, and deadly disasters demand urgent, coordinated action, the US government is choosing to retreat.”

“The decision to defund and withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) does not absolve the US of its legal obligations to prevent climate change and remedy climate harm, as the world’s highest court made clear last year. This action is simply a continuation of this Administration’s efforts to prioritize corporate interests over people and planet, and flout the rule of law.

Withdrawing from institutions designed to support global climate action does not change the stark reality of the climate crisis, rebut the irrefutable evidence of its causes, or eliminate the US’s clear responsibility for its consequences. Withdrawal only serves to further isolate the US to the detriment of its own population and billions around the world.”

IPS UN Bureau

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By Anis Chowdhury
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jan 8 2026 – As many of you know, out of the blue, I have been called in to assist the Interim Government led by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus in stabilising the economy left in ruins by the fallen autocratic-kleptocratic regime that looted the banks, stole public money and robbed small investors in the capital market to siphon off billions of dollars out of the country. I had never served in a government; neither had I ever expected this opportunity. However, my UN experience and political economy understanding have been handy.

Anis Chowdhury

Reflecting back the year that we have just passed, I trust, you have been well as we wished each other at the start of 2025 the best of our health and spirit. Unfortunately, despite our earnest wish, the world was not peaceful during 2025.

Hopes and global disorder

Hopes kindled briefly for justice for the Palestinians as the European powers, including Australia (a European settler colony) were forced to recognise the Palestine State, and Narcissist Trump pushed for some peace in both Ukraine and Gaza in his mad desperation for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet Gaza is still being bombarded with Israel’s genocidal intent, making a mockery of deranged Trump’s rhetorical claim of achieving “peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years”, and the illegal occupation of the West Bank along with settler violence continues unabated with complete immunity in blatant violations of international laws.

Narcissist Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) in his desperate attempt to save Israeli war criminals, including Benjamin Netanyahu and justify Israel’s genocide and settler violence. Trump upended his assault on the rule-based order with arbitrary so-called ‘reciprocal tariff’.

Bangladesh

As for the post-fascist Hasina Bangladesh, the year 2025 began with high expectations. And as for me, the year 2025 has been extra-ordinary.

Today, I am pleased to say that we have been able to avert a full-blown crisis. Heart-felt thanks to our ‘remittance fighters’ who whole-heartedly trusted the Interim Government’s various reform initiatives. Expatriate Bangladeshis sent a record $30.04 bn in remittances in the 2024–25 fiscal year, the highest amount ever received in a single fiscal year in the country’s history. Forex reserves surged to $33 bn, hitting 3-year high as December remittances crossed $3bn. You can get a report card by Finance Advisor, Dr. Salehuddin and myself, published in the Daily Star on 18 August 2025.

Of course, not everything has been rosy. The much-hoped systemic transition remains full of uncertainty. I see systemic transition as the process of total transformation of a caterpillar inside a cocoon. We still do not know whether the ‘caterpillar in the cocoon’ will turn out to be a butterfly or a moth. People are genuinely worried as the past systemic transition opportunities were wasted.

I myself found road-blocks at every turn. Bureaucratic inertia and resistance have frustrated my efforts for genuine reforms. It has been a real-life experience of the classic British political satire, “Yes, Minister”. Like Sir Humphrey Appleby, the bureaucrats will display outwardly extra-ordinary humbleness, but will politely defy citing rules of business. Bureaucratic resistance is the main stumbling block for achieving coordination, coherence and integration in policy making and implementation, thus, causing wasteful duplications, inefficiency and lack of effectiveness.

Nevertheless, I achieved some success. One of them is the agreement to expand the voluntary Bangladesh National Cadet Corps programme to cover ALL youths (aged 18) in 10-12 years, so that we can have a disciplined workforce to be readily deployed during any national emergency. Needless to say, that this is an imperative to realise demographic dividend. We are hoping to roll out the programme from July 2026 to coincide with the July Revolution anniversary.

Despite frustrations and uncertainties, I am hopeful as I can see a seismic shift in the political dynamics of the country. This coincides with the demographic shift – the youth (15-30 years) representing nearly 30% of the population. These youths have a different vocabulary of politics; they want justice, inclusion, self-respect, and dignity – they are fiercely nationalist.

Recently martyred Hadi is their embodiment. The establishment is understandably threatened and tried to silence the youth by assassinating Hadi; but they failed to extinguish the flame, instead, everyone has become a Hadi, standing unwavering in their commitment to carry out Hadi’s mission of building a just nation where citizens can live with dignity, free from fear, subjugation, and oppression. Hadi re-centred our national conscience on Insaf: justice, dignity, and fairness not as rhetorical slogans, but as non-negotiable ethical foundations of the State and society.

In an era of moral drift, Hadi reminded the nation that no political order can last without justice at its core. He ignited a generation with civic courage and moral responsibility. Free from fear, patronage, or transactional politics, young people saw in Hadi a new model of leadership: ethical, principled, and accountable. In doing so, he reshaped the future political character of Bangladesh and moved national thinking beyond entrenched legacy power structures toward people-centric, principled governance. He challenged the inevitability of corruption and coercion, insisting instead that politics could be reclaimed as a moral vocation. His life poses an enduring question to those who seek power: Will you serve justice, or merely rule?

Let me end this year-end message with my personal tribute to Khaleda Zia, who has recently passed away after a long illness imposed on her by the vindictive Hasina regime, falsely convicting her and imprisoning in a substandard cell. Like her husband, Shaheed President Zia, she was thrust into the whirlpool of history. They never sought power; but when the responsibility fell on their shoulders, they carried out their duties to the nation whole-heartedly and selflessly; thus, they became a true statesman (woman), winning hearts and minds of their people.

Perhaps Khaleda Zia’s most enduring legacy lies in her extraordinary restraint and dignified disposition, even under severe and prolonged adversity. Her self-restraint, rooted in grace rather than weakness, distinguished her from many of her contemporaries and offers a powerful lesson for today’s often abrasive and confrontational political culture.

Warmest regards and best wishes for the New Year

IPS UN Bureau

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