All posts by CPNN Coordinator

About CPNN Coordinator

Dr David Adams is the coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace, proclaimed for the Year 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Earth Day Communiqué – 22nd April 2020 Making Peace with the Earth

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

A communiqué from Navdanya International for the Planetary Coalition

The Covid-19 pandemic is a Planetary wakeup call from the Earth to humanity.

It reminds us that we are one with the Earth, not separate from it, that we are not her masters, owners and conquerors, nor that we are superior to other species, as the anthropocentric dogma would have us believe.

The pandemic is reminding us that we violate the rights of the Earth and all her species at our own peril. And it would be necessary to value and learn from the ancestral knowledge, cosmo-vision and wisdom of the original peoples, guardians of the Earth down the ages, whose deep respect for the Earth is based on the awareness of the interconnectedness of all life. Harming one part means harming the whole.

This pandemic is not a “natural disaster”, just as the crisis of species extinction and climate extremes are not “natural disasters”. Emergent disease epidemics are anthropogenic – caused by human activities.

The Earth is an interconnected web of life.

The health emergency we face as a global community is connected to the health emergency the Earth is facing: its steady degradation, the extinction and disappearance of species and the climate emergency. When we use poisons and agro-toxins, such as insecticides and herbicides to kill insects and plants in the industrial model of agriculture, we produce desertification, we pollute water, soil, air, and destroy biodiversity. Agro-toxins are immunosuppressants, that weaken the body and make it more vulnerable to infections. Agro-toxins are driving species to extinction including pollinating agents, as we have seen in the decimation of bees. When we do open-pit metalliferous mining we use millions of liters of water that is essential for human and natural life. When we practice hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, we alter the geological conformation and increase the seismic risk. When we burn fossil carbon that the earth has fossilised over 600 million years, we violate planetary boundaries. By industrialising and globalising our food systems we contribute up to 50 percent of the greenhouse gases and climate change is the consequence.

Science informs us that as we invade forest ecosystems, destroy the homes of species and manipulate plants and animals for profits, we create conditions for new disease epidemics. Over the past 50 years, up to 300 new pathogens have emerged. It is well documented that around 70 percent of the human pathogens, including HIV, Ebola, Influenza, MERS and SARS emerged when the forest ecosystems are invaded, and viruses jumped from animals to humans.

When animals are cramped in factory farms for profit maximisation, new diseases like swine flu and bird flu spring up and spread. Agrochemical-intensive industrial agriculture and industrial food systems give rise to non-communicable chronic diseases like birth defects, cancer, endocrine disruption, diabetes, neurological problems, and infertility. With COVID-19 infections, morbidity goes up dramatically with these pre-existing conditions.

While claiming to feed the world, industrial agriculture has pushed a billion humans to hunger and this number is growing with the world-wide lockdown and the destruction of livelihoods. Our health and the health of the planet is one health. Respecting planetary boundaries, ecosystem boundaries and species integrity is vital to protecting the planet and our health. The solutions to Climate Change are also solutions to avoiding new disease epidemics. The debate on the climate change issue cannot avoid considering how the dominant technological and economic model, based on fossil fuels, does not take into account the finitude of the Earth’s resources. A global economy based on the myth of limitless growth and limitless appetite for Earth’s resources is at the root of this health crisis and future crises.

The holistic and integrated response to the health emergency is to make a transition from the fossil fuel intensive, chemical intensive paradigm of agriculture and globalised trade, with its heavy ecological footprint, to local, biodiverse, ecological systems of producing and distributing food, to healing the Earth, and healing ourselves as being part of the Earth.

Our Earth Day Commitment: Return to Earth, in our minds, our lives

During the COVID-19 crisis and in the post-Corona virus recovery we must learn to protect the Earth, her climate systems, the rights and ecological spaces of diverse species, and diverse peoples – indigenous people, youth, women, farmers and workers. For the Earth there are no expendable species and no expendable peoples. We all belong to and are part of the Earth.

To avoid future pandemics, future famines and a possible scenario of expendable people, we must move beyond the globalised, industrialised and competitive economic system, which is driving climate change, pushing species to extinction, and spreading life-threatening diseases. Localisation leaves space for diverse species, diverse cultures and diverse local living economies to thrive.

We must shift from the economics of greed and limitless growth, of competition and violence, which have pushed us to an existential crisis, and move to an “Economy of Care” – for the Earth, for people and for all living species. We must reduce our ecological footprint, to leave a just share of ecological space for other species, all humans, and future generations. We must stop seeing nature’s common goods as “resources”, abandon the utilitarian, colonial, capitalist and anthropocentric vision that has taught us to name nature’s gifts as “natural resources”. Only in this way will we be able to consciously reduce our ecological footprint: by acting responsibly as the ancestors of the future.

The health emergency and lockdown has shown that when there is a political will, we can de-globalise. Let us make this de-globalisation of the economy permanent, and localise production in line with Gandhi’s philosophy of “Swadeshi” – made locally. As the Pandemic shows, it is local food communities who are able to regularly provide and distribute food while globalised food chains, in some parts of the world, collapsed and even speculated with rising food prices.

Contrary to what we are made to believe, it is not globalisation that protects people from famines, which it produces and aggravates, but peoples food sovereignty, where people at the community level have the right to produce, choose and consume adequate, healthy and nutritious food, under fair price agreements for local production and exchange. Future food systems have to be based on seed sovereignty and food sovereignty, on local circular economies giving back to the earth , and ensuring fair prices to producers .

The mechanistic mind that dominates our societies, creates corporate and personal profits through extraction and manipulation. The corporations and billionaires who through their actions have declared war against the Earth and created the world’s multiple crises, are now preparing for the intensification of industrialised agriculture through digitalisation and artificial intelligence. They are envisioning a future of farming without farmers, and a future of fake food produced in labs. Such developments will deepen the ecological crisis, destroying biodiversity and increasing our separation from the Earth.

Food is the web of life and making peace with the Earth begins with food. We return to the Earth when we take care of the soil and biodiversity. We remember we are human because we are of “humus” – of the soil. Only our minds, hearts and hands working together with the Earth, as integral parts of her creativity, can heal the Earth, providing us and all other species with healthy food.

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(Click here for the Communiqué in French or click here for the Manifiesto in Spanish).

Question for this article:

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

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As our experience together with other Earth conscious organisations and networks for Seed Freedom and Food Freedom have taught us, local, biodiverse organic food systems regenerate soil, water and biodiversity and provide healthy food for all. The biodiversity richness in our forests, our farms, our food and our gut microbiome connect the planet and her diverse species, including humans. Thus, health becomes the common thread, as does disease which the Coronavirus is so clearly showing us today.

The war against the Earth is a war against the future of humanity.

All life-threatening emergencies of our times are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic and patriarchal world view of humans as separate from nature – as masters of the Earth who can own, manipulate and control other species as objects for profits. It is also rooted in an economic model that views ecological and ethical limits as obstructions that must be removed in the interests of unbridled corporate profit and power.

Scientific predictions indicate that if we do not stop this anthropogenic war against the Earth and her species, we will soon destroy the very conditions that allowed humans to evolve and survive. Human greed, arrogance and irresponsibility speeds us to the next Pandemic – and finally to extinction.

The Earth reflects who we are. She is showing us her inter-connectedness and calling us to start recognising her diverse living intelligences – in the soil food web, in plants and animals, and in our food.

The Earth has sent a tiny invisible virus to help us make a quantum leap to create a new planetary, ecological civilisation based on harmony with nature — today it is a survival imperative.

Our Resolve

In signing this manifesto, we commit ourselves as a planetary coalition, to urge and exhort the authorities and representatives of the governments in each one of our countries, cities, towns and communities, to shift from the paradigm of ecocide that today governs our models of productivity, to a paradigm where ecological responsibility and economic justice are central to creating a healthy and vibrant future for humanity.

Real climate change action means leaving behind our petroleum-based civilisation of extraction and greed and bringing in a new era of interconnection and care of the Earth. We call for concerted support of communities, territories and nations that put ecology at the centre of a paradigm of a new and just economy of care.

On Earth Day let us apologise for the harm we have done to the Earth through the illusion of separation, creating violent paradigms and violent tools which have waged war against the Earth. Let us commit to making peace with the Earth and all her species by co-creating with her on the basis of her laws of life.

The Earth has given us a clear message through the Coronavirus pandemic. It is our moral imperative to seize this moment in time to make a transition to an ecological civilisation so we sow the seeds of a common future for humanity and all beings.

Together we rise as Children of The Earth!

A Call to Action and Transformation – One Planet, One Health

It is time to abandon our resource intensive and profit intensive economic systems that have created havoc in the world, disrupting the planet’s ecosystems and undermining society’s systems of health, justice and democracy.

The Corona virus pandemic and consequent global economic collapse, and collapse of lives and livelihoods of millions calls us to urgently take action. Let us prepare for a post Corona Recovery where the health and wellbeing of all peoples and the planet are at the centre of all government and institutional policy, community building and civic action

Actions for sowing the seeds of a new Earth Democracy include:

> Promote and protect biodiversity richness in our forests, our farms and our food to stop the destruction of the earth and the sixth mass extinction

> Promote local, organic, healthy food through local biodiverse food systems and cultures and economies of care (farmers markets, CSAs biodistricts).

> Stop subsidising industrial agriculture and unhealthy systems that create a burden of disease. Public subsidies should be redirected to systems based on agroecology and biodiversity conservation, which provide health benefits and protect common goods.

> Halt subsidies and further investments in fossil fuels sector, including fossil fuel based agricultural inputs, as real climate action

> Stop favouring industrial junk food and unhealthy food systems based on toxic and nutritionally empty commodities.

> Put an end to monocultures, genetic manipulation of plants and factory farming of animals which are spreading pathogens and antibiotic resistance

> Stop deforestation, which is expanding exponentially through industrial monocultures for corporate interests. Forests are the lungs of the Earth.

> Practice sustainable agriculture based on integration of diversity of crops, trees and animals.

> Save, grow and reproduce traditional seed varieties to safeguard biodiversity. They need to be saved not as museum pieces in germplasm banks, but in living working seed banks as a basis of a health care system.

> Create poison free zones, communities, farms and food systems.

> Introduce policies to assess the costs of damage to health and the environment caused by chemicals and enact the polluter pays principle.

> Health must have priority over corporate interests with respect to chemical and pesticide use in food and agriculture. The precautionary principle must be enacted.

> Transition from globalisation to localisation and make permanent deglobalisation. Stop the corporate takeover of our food and health

> Introduce local circular economies which increase the wellbeing and health of people

> Support, regenerate and strengthen communities

> Create Gardens of Hope, Gardens of Health everywhere – in community gardens, institutions, schools, prisons, hospitals in the cities and countryside

> Stop using Growth’ and GDP as measures of the health of the economy. GDP is based on the extraction of resources from nature and wealth from society

> Adopt citizens wellbeing as a measure of the health of the economy..

We hope you will join us in this transformation for hope and care for the Earth. To endorse please go to this link. Please also invite your networks and friends to endorse.

* * * * *

The Planetary Coalition includes, among others, Navdanya International, Naturaleza de Derecho, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, Ifoam, Regeneration International, Third World Network, International Forum on Globalization, Biovision, Sarvodaya Movement, SAM-Sahabat Alam Malaysia and CAP-Consumers Association of Penang, Council of Canadians, Initiative for Health and Equity, Diverse Women for Diversity, Isde-International Society of Doctors for the Environment, Terra de Direitos, Conamuri – Organización de Mujeres Campesinas e Indígenas, Acción Ecológica. Also joining the call are renowned leaders, scientists and environmentalists including, Vandana Shiva, Nnimmo Bassey, Fernando Cabaleiro, Jerry Mander, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Maude Barlow, André Leu, Hans R Herren, Satish Kumar.

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

USA: The Rebirth of the Food Sovereignty Movement: The pandemic is reviving the push for locally produced foods

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Jason Mark reproduced from a Sierra Club website with permission of the Sierra Club (©2020 Sierra Club. All Rights Reserved)

As a veteran urban farmer, I often get questions from friends and family about best practices for backyard gardening. It wasn’t a surprise when my buddy Martin texted some questions for how to get a vegetable scene started. “Is it OK to start tomatoes outside now? Or better to start indoors?” (Indoors, I told him, if you have seeds, and outside as long as you have well-developed plants for transplanting.) Martin is a chef and a longtime fixture of the Bay Area’s farm-to-table scene. With his restaurant closed, he’s got time on his hands, some of which he’s using to make sure his family stays well fed. He has 10 pounds of rice and 15 pounds of split red lentils socked away (just in case) and thought he should also begin a little home-scale food production. Nothing unusual, he said—just tomatoes and squash, beans along with some herbs. “I’m trying to ride the line between being prepared and being a prepper,” he told me. 


Photo by Lori Eanes

Gardening seems to be having a moment  as the crisis pushes people to find constructive ways to use their time, reduce trips to the grocery stores, and benefit from its therapeutic aspects. 

Martin isn’t alone in his sudden enthusiasm for backyard food production. As the pandemic settles into a new normal, many people have pivoted from panic buying to “panic planting.” Seed companies are reporting an unprecedented surge in demand from home gardeners. Johnny’s Selected Seeds, an employee-owned company in Maine that is a favorite of organic growers, reported a 300 percent jump in orders since early March. Baker Creek Heirloom in Missouri had so many new orders that it had to shut down its website for three days to allow its staff to catch up. Some extension agencies—the land grand universities’ programs that provide research and educational support to farmers and hobbyist gardeners—are seeing a skyrocketing interest in gardening education programs. The new passion for home food production has even extended to livestock. Poultry-raising operations and feed stores are experiencing such a spike in interest for laying hens  that they are nearly running out of young chicks. As Katie Brimm wrote recently for Civil Eats, “We may be on the verge of a resurgence of World War II–style Victory Gardens.”

Searching for a silver lining to a deadly pandemic is dangerous business. But there are still glimmers in the dark. The renewed interest in local food production represents one positive consequence of this waking nightmare, among the other encouraging signs—the countless examples of selfless service, generosity toward others, and mutual aid. The pandemic is forcing people to think hard—and to feel deeply—about their connection to food. There’s nothing like the sight of stripped grocery store shelves to focus people’s attention on where their food comes from. 

This explosion of interest in food production can help create a new cultural landscape for long-term community and ecological resilience once the pandemic has passed. And the renewed passion for backyard agriculture couldn’t have come soon enough. 

For the past 15 years, I’ve been both a chronicler of and a partisan for the sustainable food movement. As a journalist, I have written about food safety regulations, local food systems, and the benefits (and limitations) of organic certification. In 2005, I cofounded a nonprofit educational garden and orchard called Alemany Farm  along with some guerilla gardeners, public housing residents, and community activists. Today, Alemany Farm is the largest urban farm in San Francisco—a 3.5-acre smidgen of soil tucked between eight lanes of Highway 280 and a public housing complex. Every year, we grow more than 25,000 pounds of organic fruits and vegetables, all of which we give away for free while at the same time educating thousands of people annually in the basics of regenerative agriculture. 

My belief in the importance of urban agriculture as a social, cultural, and ecological good is as strong as it was when I first planted my spade at Alemany years ago. I’ll admit, though, that in the past couple of years I’ve begun to experience doubts about the long-term sustainability of the sustainable food movement. Organic and regenerative farmers are mostly focused on improving the ecological practices of our agriculture system; food justice activists focus on ensuring that everyone has basic access to healthy foods, while also putting a spotlight on the exploitative conditions faced by farmworkers and food service employees; some activists promote a broader goal of “food sovereignty”—the idea that everyone should have a measure of agency over what they eat. Call it what you will, the good food movement no longer has the cultural currency it enjoyed during the heady days of the mid-to-late-aughts. 

Maybe you were there and remember what it was like. Michael Pollan’s food writing reigned atop the bestseller lists. New farmers’ markets were popping up across the country and farm-to-table was the hot new thing at restaurants. Urban communities—often led by people of color—were reclaiming asphalt and concrete to establish community gardens and neighborhood farms; in San Francisco, we planted a big and beautiful (if temporary) Victory Garden in front of city hall. Young people were fleeing office jobs and flocking to farms. Michelle Obama planted a vegetable patch at the White House. 

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Question for this article:

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

(article continued from left side of page)

At some point, though, the momentum stalled. Despite the best efforts of “ag-tivists,” it has proven impossible (so far, at least) to reform the perversities of a federal agricultural policy that sustains an unhealthful and even deadly American food system. Many beginning farmers found their dreams dashed on the hard realities of exorbitant land values and insultingly low prices for their product; there were whispers that we were approaching “a second farm crisis”  like the one that wiped out many family farmers in the 1980s. A lack of critical infrastructure  continued to bedevil the efforts to establish more regionalized food systems. Those of us in the nonprofit farm education sector saw philanthropies’ interests move to other issues. The movement suffered sustained small-arms fire from journalists  and academics  who argued that school gardens and urban farms were nothing more than a privileged affectation. And while it’s true that the sale of organic foods continues to skyrocket, the food sovereignty movement remains far from its goal of transforming chemically intensive agriculture and addressing the poverty that grips farm owner-operators as well as farm laborers. It has felt to me—along with some other farmers I know—like the bloom is very much off the rose. 

Now, the world has been turned upside down, and the winter of doubt has turned into a spring of guarded hope among food sovereignty activists. 

The pandemic has allowed people to see the world with fresh eyes. It’s as if the casing on the machinery of society has been opened up and, with a jolt, afforded us the opportunity to inspect the inner workings of things. Among other revelations, the pandemic has illustrated the fragility of our food system. The waves of panic buying and hoarding prove how totally dependent we are on global chains of production and distribution while also revealing a society-wide gut feeling that such a system might not be all that dependable: If people were confident there would be plenty of rice and pasta tomorrow, there wouldn’t be any need to squirrel away staples today.  

No wonder people are finding a solace in reconnecting to their food via backyard planting. To feel grounded, folks are getting their hands in the dirt.

During the past week, I’ve been talking with other urban farmers and food sovereignty activists here in California. In conversation after conversation, I’ve heard many of the same things: a sense of gratification that mainstream society is finally heeding their calls for local and regional food systems, combined with a worry that, once the pandemic passes, people will abandon the newfound interest in where their food comes from. 

“This is our 15th anniversary, and for 15 years we’ve been telling people, ‘In times of crisis, we need to grow our own food.’ Well, here we are,” Doria Robinson, the founder of Urban Tilth in the Bay Area industrial city of Richmond, told me. Urban Tilth  operates a three-acre farm along with seven smaller community gardens and employs mostly local youths of color to grow and distribute the crops. Before the pandemic hit, the organization had about 50 members in its community supported agriculture (CSA) program, which provides households with a box of fruits and vegetables grown at the Richmond sites and supplemented with produce from farms on the edge of suburban Contra Costa County. In the past few weeks, the number of CSA members has more than tripled, to 170. “Having a local source of some portion of your food just seems like a no-brainer, as opposed to depending on really long supply lines and food coming from way, way, way away,” she said.

For Robinson, the pandemic’s effects on her staff have been just as profound as the effects on her customers. Urban Tilth’s youth workers, Robinson told me, are experiencing a newfound sense of pride and importance in their work; their efforts, city and county officials agree, are quite literally essential. “In this moment, they [Urban Tilth’s youth workers] are stepping up like no one else. They are getting food to families every week. And they are hearing that all the work they have been doing matters. They’re saying, ‘I’m going to be a farmer in the hood, and that matters, it really matters.’”

Ron Finley, the self-described “gangster gardener” of South Central Los Angeles, expressed sentiments similar to mine. Since his 2013 Ted Talk  went viral, Finley has traveled the world like a sort of Paul Revere of the food sovereignty movement. He says this moment of crisis is finally bringing home the message he’s been spreading for years. “We are in this dire hoarding, oh-my-god, the-sky-is-falling, the-world-is-ending mode, when we really don’t have to be,” said Finley, who has been keeping himself busy tending his home garden and his public garden at the corner of Exposition and Chesapeake in L.A. since he started sheltering in place on March 11. “It’s like, are you listening now? Are any of you listening now? You can’t eat fucking diamonds. You can’t eat money. People have been valuing all of this dumb shit, and now they see how valuable food is. [The pandemic] has hit a values-system reset button.” 

Debbie Harris, a longtime organic grower who is now the farm manager at Urban Adamah, a two-acre urban farm in Berkeley inspired by Jewish ideals of service, agreed. “More than anything, this [new interest in food and farming] isn’t intellectual; it’s about connection,” she told me. “That’s the basis of a transformed food system, transformed planet, transformed way of living. . . . People are catalyzed on an emotional and personal level. Right now, people are being forced to think about how their food is grown and who their neighbors are.”

But Harris also worries that this passion for locally grown foods might evaporate once life returns to the status quo. “I feel that once COVID is over, I fear people won’t have the same fire to get involved in their community farm or to reform our food systems. . . . Because we have so much amnesia as a culture, because of the privileges that late capitalism has afforded us.”

It’s a concern Finley and Robinson both share. “How long is it going to last, and how long until we go back to how it was, with kids killing other kids over tennis shoes?” Finley wondered. Robinson told me, “People have that amnesia and [some of them] will go back to In-N-Out Burger, or whatever. I’m not holding my breath for everyone starting a garden. Because it’s a lot of work.” Still, she maintains a measure of hope that some of this beneficial change might hold. “When people get introduced to [gardening], they start to crave it. So I actually feel like a lot of folks are being introduced to us right now, and they will stay planted on the ground. Not all of them, but some of them.”

Will the people now swooping up seeds, vegetable starts, and baby chicks eventually decide to stick with their newfound passion? Will an emergency-fueled reaction deepen into a lasting way of life, or will people cast aside their gardens as relics of the germ-times? Those are just a few of the questions society will face as we come out of this dangerous moment. As Arundhati Roy wrote in a recent commentary for the Financial Times, the pandemic “is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world.”

I am cautiously optimistic that backyard food production may sink down roots in that other world. I’d like to imagine, as Robinson does, that once people get a taste of gardening and come to know their farmers, many of them won’t want to return to “normal.” Hopefully, people will keep their new gardens, not because backyard food production is an exercise in “living simply”—a home-scale back-to-the-land effort—but because it’s an example of living more resiliently. Home food production can teach habits of mind long after this crisis passes (as it will), when we find ourselves confronted by other crises like climate change (as we will). 

For one thing, to be a home gardener creates a routine of attentiveness toward the natural world, if only because a gardener must become, by necessity, a meteorologist, hydrologist, soil scientist, and entomologist. This kind of attention to more-than-human nature is a necessity if we are to navigate this hot and crowded century with as few regrets as possible. Community gardening and backyard food cultivation also create bonds of neighborliness. At the very least, you need your friends and neighbors to eat all of those beans and summer squash you’re going to be growing; at the very best, you find yourself relying on your community to share seeds and starts, gardening dos and don’ts. Such bonds are what we need—and will continue to need—to get through tough times together.

Finally, the plain physicality of gardening might help rebalance our lives away from the virtual and toward the real. As Finley said, you can’t eat diamonds—and you can’t eat ones and zeroes either. When you wring your sustenance out of the soil, you can’t help but understand that all life on land, the entirety of human civilization, depends on nothing more than the thin epidermis of the earth. 

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen some of this in action. My next-door neighbor, Josie, is normally a flower grower, but this spring she’s putting in a vast new vegetable garden. Our neighbor to the north, Brad, is doubling the size of his garden and building a hops trellis to fuel his home brewing hobby. They’ve been exchanging vegetable starts, and they decided to go in together on a bulk delivery of topsoil. The whole thing has the feel of an old-fashioned barn-raising—just with everybody dancing around each other at six feet apart. The scene of communal crop growing on my one little block gives me hope: A popular passion for food sovereignty might just be one unlooked-for harvest to come from this awful scourge. 

North America, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

USA: How Detroit’s farms and gardens are adapting to the COVID-19 crisis

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from Planet Detroit

Patrick Crouch has been spending long days in the greenhouse over the past few weeks, seeding and growing out transplants for eventual distribution to gardens across the city.

As a program manager at Earthworks Urban Farm, Crouch sees his role taking on a new importance during the COVID-19 crisis. “If you can get people to go out to the store once a month and just stockpile staples and then they are able to get fresh produce out of their backyard, you can really limit their movement,” he says.


Photo courtesy Keep Growing Detroit

Gardening seems to be having a moment  as the crisis pushes people to find constructive ways to use their time, reduce trips to the grocery stores, and benefit from its therapeutic aspects. 

But with Governor Whitmer’s recent order  shutting down the sale of landscaping and gardening supplies in stores larger than 50,000 square feet, some are anxious about getting their gardens planted. Note: Politifact debunks  the claim that it is illegal to purchase farm and garden supplies in Michigan. 

Detroit’s farm and garden community have had to adapt to new realities — including helping their workers and customers stay safe and adjusting to an expected increased need for fresh food. They’re working hard to grow as much as possible with limited staff and doing without volunteer labor.

Crouch says other operations at the Earthworks, like selling fresh produce and giving food to the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, have had to take a back seat to transplant production. “The ability to keep people in place and…have nourishing food seems like the most impactful work we can do right now,” says Crouch.

Ashley Atkinson, co-director of Keep Growing Detroit (KGD), which runs the Garden Resource Program  that supplies more than unemployment skyrocket  at the same time food banks are seeing a huge spike in demand. 

Kristin Sokul, a spokesperson for Gleaners Community Foodbank, told Planet Detroit that the organization distributed an additional 4 million pounds of food in Southeast Michigan since the crisis began— an increase of twenty-five percent. Although Gleaners has been able to maintain the volume of food they’re providing, they’ve run out of some items and are seeing long lines  at pickups. 

Homegrown produce could help this situation. But farmers are finding they need to adjust their operations in ways that can slow progress. For example, KGD’s distributions of plants and seeds are normally communal events that take place in locations throughout the city. However, this year, they plan on transitioning to curbside pickup to minimize or eliminate contact between KGD’s staff and program participants. 

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Question for this article:

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

(article continued from left side of page)

Although there’s currently a waiting list for resources, Atkinson encourages people to contact KGD  if they’re looking for seeds and plants. KGD has shifted its resources and programs by moving as much of the educational part of their programming  online as possible via free webinars and Facebook live events and is doubling down on growing as much food as possible in its own farms and gardens. 

Now, with the COVID-19 crisis hitting Detroit hard  and revealing issues with local food supply-chains — like how much of it caters to restaurants and wholesalers  instead of residents — Atkinson believes the work that her organization has done can help show a way forward.

“We’ve worked for two decades to build the capacity of this community to be able to feed itself,” Atkinson says of the work KGD has done to help create food sovereignty  in the city. 

For-profit farmers also face a series of hard choices during the pandemic. Andy Chae runs Fisheye Farms  with his wife Amy Eckert in Detroit’s Core City neighborhood. They’ve had to alter how they move produce in the last month or so, from selling primarily to restaurants to taking online orders from individuals for boxes of food that include items from other growers like Brother Nature Produce , Rising Pheasant Farms and The Mushroom Factory. 

On the bright side, Chae says the crisis has increased Fisheye Farms’ visibility; they’ve gained 1,000 followers on Instagram  since the stay-at-home-order went into place in Michigan. The increased following led to the farm selling about 30 boxes of produce in two different sizes at their last weekly farm stand, according to Chae.

To decrease interactions with the public, Fisheye Farms is using a pre-sale model where payments are made online and the only interaction is picking up the produce. Chae is also using overturned pails as “social distancing buckets” to help customers maintain separation between themselves during pickups. On the back end, workers harvest with gloves and face masks and are keeping volunteers off the farm for now.

Going forward, Chae says they plan to start a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program for the season, where customers buy a share of the farm’s produce for the upcoming season and make weekly pickups. They may also team up with local restaurants to take turns selling produce, giving customers more options for when and where they can pick up food. 

Chae says that a small, highly diversified farm like his can weather the economic downturn and he’s grateful to have meaningful work, but adds, “I’m burning out a little bit already, which usually I’m burning out in August and not in April.” 

For his part, Crouch is wondering if the new emphasis on people growing more of their own food or picking it up from a neighborhood farmer will become a permanent part of the way the city’s food producers operate going forward. 

But more immediately, he needs to figure out what Earthworks’ crop plan is going to look like this season, considering that the soup kitchen might not be able to process certain things without volunteers and that the farm stand may have to be run differently to keep people safe. 

“I’ve got to move from debate to action pretty soon,” Crouch says, contemplating the asparagus and greenhouse crops that will need to be harvested shortly. “I think we can hold for another couple of weeks before things really start coming on.”

North America, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Grow your own: Urban farming flourishes in coronavirus lockdowns

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Rina Chandran for Thomson Reuters Foundation (reprinted by permission)

Coronavirus lockdowns are pushing more city dwellers to grow fruit and vegetables in their homes, providing a potentially lasting boost to urban farming, architects and food experts said on Tuesday [April 7].


A post office employee harvests vegetables on the rooftop garden of the postal sorting center in Paris, France, September 22, 2017. Reuters / Charles Platiau

Confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, total more than 1.3 million, with about 74,000 deaths worldwide, according to a Reuters tally.

Panic buying in some countries during the crisis has led to empty supermarket shelves and an uptick in the purchase of seeds, according to media reports.

“More people are thinking about where their food comes from, how easily it can be disrupted, and how to reduce disruptions,” said landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom, who designed Asia’s largest urban rooftop farm in Bangkok.

“People, planners and governments should all be rethinking how land is used in cities. Urban farming can improve food security and nutrition, reduce climate change impacts, and lower stress,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

More than two-thirds of the world’s population is forecast to live in cities by 2050, according to the United Nations.

(Article continued on right side of page)

Question for this article:

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

Urban agriculture can be crucial to feeding them, potentially producing as much as 180 million tonnes of food a year – or about 10% of the global output of pulses and vegetables, according to a 2018 study published in the journal Earth’s Future.

The coronavirus outbreak is not be the first time that concerns about food security have led to more kitchen gardens.

During World War One, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson asked Americans to plant “Victory Gardens” to prevent food shortages.

The effort continued during World War Two, with vegetable gardens in backyards and schoolyards, on unused land, and even the front lawn of the White House.

In recent decades, the fast pace of urbanisation in developing countries is causing urban malnutrition, the Food and Agriculture Organization said, calling on planners to become “nutrition partners” and pay attention to food security.

Despite pressure on land to build homes and roads, there is more than enough urban land available within UK cities to meet the fruit and vegetable requirements of its population, researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Food at Britain’s University of Sheffield said in a study last month.

In tiny Singapore, one of the wealthiest nations in Asia that imports more than 90% of its food, urban farming including vertical and rooftop farms, is fast becoming popular.

The city-state, which ranks on top of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s global food security index for 2019, aims to produce 30% of its nutritional needs by 2030, by increasing the local supply of fruits, vegetables and protein from meat and fish.

On Monday, Singapore lawmaker Ang Wei Neng said that during the coronavirus outbreak, “it would be wise for us to think of how to invest in homegrown food”.

For Allan Lim, chief executive of ComCrop, a commercial urban farm in Singapore, the pandemic is a reminder that disruptions to food supplies can take place at any time.

“It has definitely sparked more interest in local produce. Urban farms can be a shock absorber during disruptions such as this,” he said.

(Thank you to Kiki Adams, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The New World Citizen Laboratory, Yali Gabon and PAYNCoP Gabon join forces to raise awareness about Covid 19

TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY . .

Sent to CPNN by Jerry Bibang

As part of the fight against the covid 19 pandemic, the New World Citizen Laboratory (LCNM), Yali Gabon and PAYNCoP Gabon platforms have joined forces to raise awareness among young people about the covid 19 pandemic using comic strips.



(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:
 
How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

(continued from left column).

The initiative supports government efforts since the start of the corona virus pandemic in our country. From the first cases of the disease, the highest authorities have declared war on this invisible enemy. Through this action, these three organizations want to make their modest contribution to this war.

The project consists in making young people aware of the myths surrounding Covid 19. “We started from an observation: several false ideas, relating to the treatment or prevention of covid 19, are conveyed by certain people” explained Dora from LCNM . “These people regularly use social networks (facebook and watsap) to disseminate their messages,” added Marcel Ebenezer.

Among these misconceptions that we call myths, there is, among others, the fact that corona does not exist in hot countries, the rainy season will wash the virus, the virus is also transmitted by mosquitoes, there is no real case in Gabon, the government is lying to us etc.
 
For Cédrick Kenfack of Yali Gabon, “the propagation of this false information constitutes an obstacle to the response against this pandemic. Reason why we thought it useful to fight against this false information by using the comic strip as a means of communication ”

In addition to the fight against fake news, the project also gives an important place to barrier gestures and useful advice to avoid the disease. A section entitled “Guide to good practice” is devoted to this effect. Each tip is illustrated with characters and explanatory texts.

“The idea was also to pool our skills and resources for a common goal in a collective intelligence approach. This is why the project brought together several organizations. Each contributed according to their resources. One wrote the texts, the other coordinated and the design was done by another, “said Jerry Bibang, PAYNCoP Gabon Coordinator.

(click here for the original version in French)

Africa, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY

English bulletin May 1, 2020

. CHARTING THE WAY FORWARD .

In the month since we wrote in our bulletin that “the medical and economic crisis associated with the coronavirus can be seen as an opportunity as well as a calamity,” many analysts have taken this position and proposed how we can move forward. This includes proposals regarding all aspects of the culture of peace:

Disarmament and Security: Three former Royal Navy Commaders of the United Kingdom sent a letter to parliament saying that the 2 billion pounds a year spent on nuclear submarines cannot be justified and the money should be used for health care. The activist David Swanson in the United States proposes that the American Department of Defense should be converted from military operations and should work for universal financial and medical security. Reacting to the latest American threat of war, that against Venezuela, it is said that “the US should fight COVID, not Venezuela” and that “President Trump has no business deploying US military assets threatening Venezuela.”

Readers will recall that last month we published similar calls from the International Peace Bureau and the Peace Pledge Union to convert military budgets to money for health care, and the call by UN Secretary-General for a global ceasefire.

Solidarity: Around the world, people have responded to the crisis with actions of local solidarity to care for those who are vulnerable to the pandemic. A good example comes to us from the youth of Gabon who are providing water stations for the people living in poor areas. As expressed by the organization Tamara, in Portugal “the crisis represents a great opportunity, in addition to all its challenges: now, we have the opportunity to join forces worldwide to achieve a shared goal, develop social cohesion, set up decentralized structures, a solidarity economy – a genuine reboot”

Democratic participation: The Moroccan professor Abdelmoughit Benmassoud Tredano states that the economic crisis has only just begun. He repeats the call for solidarity: “at the individual, group and national level, individualism is outdated and solidarity is needed instead.” “This certainly implies rethinking the organization of the world on all levels . . . the organization of the world by regional groups must be adopted because no single state can stand alone, unless it is an entire continent.” According to the Council of Europe, Iin many countries, the lead is being taken by cities rather than the state. They provide the example of Raseborg in Finland.

Women’s equality: Nazra Feminist Studies of Egypt proposes that we adopt the feminist values “such as joining forces in times of fear, loss and build, collective responsibility and action towards our survival, international cooperation and collectiveness in order to understand and identify ways to overcome this crisis.”

In the short term sustainable development has been set back by the pandemic, but according to the World Economic Forum, “now is the time to start redirecting the $5.2 trillion  spent on fossil-fuel subsidies every year toward green infrastructure, reforestation, and investments in a more circular, shared, regenerative, low-carbon economy.”

Education for peace: In a recent webinar by he International Institute on Peace Education  and Global Campaign for Peace Education, educators from the USA, Austria, Puerto Rico, South Africa, China, Nigeria, Philippines, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and South Korea shared how they are responding to the pandemic and associated systemic violence and injustices.

“How human rights can help protect us from COVID-19″ is the title of an article from Amnesty International, stressing the need to protect the human rights to health, access to information, employment, housing, water, sanitation and freedom from discrimination.

Free flow of information. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the global crisis has pushed us further into a digital world. There has been a leap in teleworking and online conferencing, but only 20% of the population in the least developed countries use the internet, so the world needs a coordinated multilateral response to deal with the challenge of digitalization.

Of course, the eight aspects of the culture of peace are all inter-related and need to be addressed in coordination. This is seen in the following analyses.

Mazin Qumsiyeh sends us a global call from Palestine Action for the Planet which calls for democratization of the United Nations, reorganization of development priorities, drastic reduction in military spending, defense of democratic participation, global solidarity and restoration of ecological balance (“We humans must recognize ourselves as part of nature and live in harmony with it”).

William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, gives us seven suggestions “to change America” [and, we may add, “to change the world”]. The first is to reduce military spending and the next two are to reduce the 800 US military bases around the world and to abandon the plan for waging two major foreign wars at the same time. He calls for a Works Progress Administration to rebuild America’s infrastructure and reinvigorate our culture (like that of President Roosevelt during the depression). He calls for “an end to fear-mongering and warmongering, and to recognize as true heros not warriors and sports stars, but rather those who are on the frontlines against the coronavirus. And “finally, we must extend our love to encompass nature, our planet.”

Nobel Peace Laureat Mairead Maguire reminds us that “If this virus has done anything, it has reminded us that we are only human and very vulnerable; we need each other to survive and thrive.  If anything, this virus hopefully will cement the opinion that we are All One, brothers and sisters; what affects one affects all. . . . Government policies of sanctions, militarism, nuclear weapons and war must be radically replaced by government policies that put their citizen’s health – both physical and mental – on top of the political agenda. . . . Capitalism does not work, the system is broken, and we are all challenged to build a system of real democracy that works for everyone.

Another Nobel Peace Laureate, Mikhail Gorbachev, calls for a “radical rethinking of international politics . . . Is it not clear by now that wars and the arms race cannot solve today’s global problems? War is a defeat, a failure of politics! . . . We need to demilitarize world affairs, international politics and political thinking and reallocate funds from military purposes to the purposes serving human security. We need to rethink the very concept of security. Above all else, security should mean providing food, water, which is already in short supply, a clean environment and, as top priority, caring for people’s health.”

Finally, here at CPNN, we are providing additional tools and proposals in our blog to chart the way forward, to take advantage of the crisis to reform the world’s governance structure and make the transition from the culture of war to a culture of peace.

WOMEN’S EQUALITY



From Nazra for Feminist Studies (Egypt): A Letter of Solidarity; Together, We Stand in Solidarity..To Build

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION



Coronavirus reveals need to bridge the digital divide

HUMAN RIGHTS




Amnesty International: How human rights can help protect us from COVID-19

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION



Covid-19: A new organization of the world is essential (Moroccan university professor)
          

EDUCATION FOR PEACE



Peace Education and the Pandemic: Global Perspectives (video now available)

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT



Could COVID-19 give rise to a greener global future?

TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY


PAYNCoP Gabon and Engineers Without Borders join forces to fight COVID 19

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY



Threatening Military Intervention in Venezuela During a Pandemic?
Uncategorized

Threatening Military Intervention in Venezuela During a Pandemic?

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

An article by Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flores in Common Dreams (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License)

Unbeknownst to most Americans—and as we are grapple with this terrifying pandemic—the Trump administration is currently carrying out the largest military operation in Latin America in 30 years, and has made it clear that alleged Venezuelan “narco-terrorism” is the target. It’s worth noting that the last deployment of similar size took place at the time of the 1989 U.S. military intervention in Panama to remove General Manuel Noriega. 


Littoral combat ship USS Detroit off the coast of Venezuela. (Photo: US Navy/DoD)

President Trump announced the deployment at the beginning of an April 1 COVID-19 press conference.  According to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, “included in this force package are Navy destroyers and littoral combat ships, Coast Guard Cutters, P.A. patrol aircraft, and elements of an Army security force assistance brigade.” General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that there are “thousands of sailors, Coast Guardsman, soldiers, airmen, Marines involved in this operation.”

The announcement came a week after U.S. Attorney General William Barr unsealed an indictment against President Nicolás Maduro and 13 other current or former Venezuelan officials. The officials were accused of “narco-terrorism” and millions of dollars in cash rewards were offered for information leading to their capture, including a $15 million reward for Maduro.

In their remarks during the press conference, Trump administration officials made it clear that the main target of this massive military mission is, in the words of Esper, “the illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela” that relies “on the profits derived from the sale of narcotics to maintain its oppressive hold on power.” National Security Advisor Robert O’Brian said “we will continue to execute our maximum pressure policy to counter the Maduro regime’s malign activities, including drug trafficking.” 

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Question related to this article:
 
US war against Venezuela: How can it be prevented?

(continued from left column).

With cities in Venezuela under lockdown and the country struggling to address a looming public health crisis and yet another economic shock, it is clear that the Trump administration sees a new opportunity to exercise “maximum pressure” to try to achieve regime change. President Trump has been threatening military intervention since 2017, and this massive deployment of naval assets in the vicinity of Venezuela takes the U.S. one step closer to an armed attack.  William Brownfield, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and one of the architects of the strategy to undermine the Venezuelan government, called the deployment “the application of [Trump’s] military option.”

According to Foreign Policy, the U.S. Defense Department opposed deploying such a great quantity of military assets to the Caribbean, especially at a time when the U.S. military is having to confront the spread of Covid-19 (as witnessed recently aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt). According to a former senior government official, Trump’s decision to deploy these assets over the objections of DOD commanders was driven entirely by “politics.”

 A senior official at the Pentagon told Newsweek  that “the premise of the operation is a surge against drug trafficking—but when have you ever heard of using that type of force for drugs? (…) The underlying purpose is to pressurize the Maduro regime.” This pressure could come in the form of the U.S. Navy boarding and seizing Venezuelan oil tankers, according to a senior Maduro government official. This is a valid worry, as the Pentagon has claimed—without offering any evidence—that drugs are trafficked “using naval vessels from Venezuela to Cuba.” Given the U.S. government’s targeting and sanction of ships that transport oil from Cuba to Venezuela, it hardly beggars belief that Venezuelan oil tankers could be boarded by the U.S. military.

As a recent report  by the Washington Office on Latin America reveals, the U.S. government’s own data has shown that only a small fraction of Colombian cocaine shipments pass through Venezuela on their way to the U.S. According to this data, six times more cocaine transited through Guatemala than Venezuela in 2018. 

Venezuela is battling COVID-19 within its own borders, as we are doing here at home. The country is also experiencing a deep economic crisis and facing severe shortages of medical supplies, a situation that has been compounded by U.S. unilateral economic sanctions.  President Trump has no business deploying U.S. military assets against Venezuela, a country that in no shape or form represents a threat to the security of the United States, especially not now when a pandemic is raging around the world and in our own country.

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, Latin America, North America,

Amnesty International: How human rights can help protect us from COVID-19

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article from Amnesty International

The way governments decide to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic will impact the human rights of millions of people.

Amnesty International is closely monitoring government responses to the crisis. These are extraordinary times, but it’s important to remember that human rights law still applies. Indeed, it will help us get through this together.

Here’s a quick look at how human rights can help protect us, and what the obligations of governments are in relation to the pandemic.

The right to health

Most governments have ratified at least one human rights treaty which requires them to guarantee the right to health. Among other things, this means they have an obligation to take all steps necessary for the prevention, treatment and control of diseases.

In the context of a spreading epidemic, this means ensuring that preventive care, goods and services are available to everybody.

In Hong Kong, one of the first places to be hit by COVID-19, a local NGO noted that nearly 70% of low-income families could not afford to buy the protective equipment the government was recommending, including masks and disinfectant. If states are endorsing the use of such items, they must ensure that everyone can access them.

Access to information

This is a key aspect of the right to health, but we have already seen governments ignoring it.

In December 2019, doctors in Wuhan, China, where the virus was first reported, shared with colleagues their fears about patients with respiratory symptoms. They were immediately silenced and reprimanded by the local authorities for “spreading rumours”.

Meanwhile, in the region of Jammu and Kashmir, authorities have ordered the continued restriction of internet services, despite a growing number of cases. This makes it extremely difficult for people to access vital information about the prevalence and spread of the virus, as well as how to protect themselves.

Everybody has the right to be informed of the threat COVID-19 poses to their health, the measures to mitigate risks, and information about ongoing response efforts. The failure to guarantee this undermines the public health response and puts everyone’s health at risk.

Rights to and at work

People in precarious forms of labour are being disproportionately affected by the pandemic, which is already starting to have a massive impact on people and the economy. Migrant workers, people who work in the “gig” economy, and people in the informal sector are more likely to see their rights to and at work adversely impacted, as a result of COVID-19 and the measures to control it.

(Article continued in right column.)

(Click here for the French version of this article or click here for the Spanish version.)

Question related to this article:

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

(Article continued from left column.)

Governments must ensure that everyone has access to social security – including sick pay, health care and parental leave – where they are unable to work because of the virus. These measures are also essential to help people stick to the public health measures states put in place.

Health workers are at the frontline of this pandemic, continuing to deliver services despite the personal risks to them and their families, and governments must protect them. This includes providing suitable, good quality personal protective equipment, information, training and psycho-social support to all response staff. People in other jobs, including prison staff, are also at higher risk of exposure, and should be protected.

Disproportionate impact on certain groups

Anyone can get COVID-19, but certain groups appear to be at greater risk of severe illness and death. This includes older people and people with pre-existing medical conditions. It’s also likely that other marginalized groups, including people living in poverty, people with disabilities and people in detention, including migrants and asylum seekers, will face additional challenges in protecting themselves and accessing treatment.

In designing responses to COVID-19, states must ensure that the needs and experiences of specific groups are fully addressed.

Rights to housing, water and sanitation

For people who are homeless or living in informal settlements, self- isolation, social distancing, and other protective measures are extremely difficult if not impossible to stick to.

The COVID-19 crisis has shone a spotlight on the importance of the rights to adequate housing, water and sanitation. These rights are critical for protecting oneself from the virus, for stopping its spread and also recovering from it. 

At a minimum, governments should ensure that people who are homeless, including children in street situations, are provided with emergency accommodation where they can protect and isolate themselves. Governments must also put in place measures to make sure no one is made increasingly vulnerable to COVID-19 because of a lack of housing – for example by being evicted if they can’t pay rent or mortgage.

Governments must also urgently put in place adequate, affordable and safe water and sanitation facilities that are accessible to everyone who is homeless or living in inadequate housing.

Stigma and discrimination

According to media reports, people from Wuhan have faced widespread discrimination and harassment in China. This includes being rejected from hotels or barricaded in their own flats, and having their personal information leaked online.

There have also been widespread reports of anti-Chinese or anti-Asian xenophobia in other countries, including US President Trump repeatedly calling COVID-19 a “Chinese virus”. In London, a student from Singapore was badly beaten up in a racially aggravated attack. There is no excuse for racism or discrimination. Governments around the world must take a zero-tolerance approach to the racist targeting of all people.

Meanwhile President Trump has used the pandemic to justify racist and discriminatory policies, and is reportedly planning a blanket ban on asylum-seekers crossing from Mexico.

Such an outright asylum ban would go against the government’s domestic and international legal obligations, and would serve only to demonize people seeking safety. A similar 2018 ban was swiftly declared unlawful by every court to have considered it.

Furthermore, during a public health crisis, governments must act to protect the health of all people and ensure everyone’s access to care and safety, free from discrimination. This includes people on the move, regardless of their immigration status.

The only way the world can fight this outbreak is through solidarity and cooperation across borders. COVID-19 should unite, not divide us.

(Thank you to the Good News Agency for calling this article to our attention.)

global, HUMAN RIGHTS

United Nations: Debt-laden countries at risk, as financial markets screech to a halt

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from United Nations News

Economists and finance experts are warning that countries with “high” or “distressed” public debt levels are at risk of severe economic shocks amid the COVID-19 pandemic and calling for restructuring plans based on the principle of solidarity.


A girl in Timor-Leste shows the online platform she will use to study while her school is closed, due to the new coronavirus pandemic. ©UNICEF/Bernardino Soares

Since the start of the pandemic, financial institutions including the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – along with UN entities, regional organizations and country groups such as the G20 – have been examining the tools available to stabilize markets, prevent job losses and preserve hard-fought development gains.

At a joint high-level meeting of the IMF and the World Bank on Mobilizing with Africa on Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres commended the bodies’ swift actions to support member countries, while emphasizing that more work will be needed.

“We know this virus will spread like wildfire and there are no firewalls,” he said.  “Alleviating crushing debt is absolutely crucial.”

The UN chief noted that in Africa, households and businesses were suffering liquidity challenges even before the virus gained a toehold on the continent.  As countries work to prevent millions from plunging into poverty, already unacceptable levels of inequalities are growing, fragility is increasing and commodity prices are declining.

Debt and pandemic: a ‘perfect storm’

The current health and economic emergencies sparked by COVID-19 have emerged against the backdrop of high indebtedness for many developing nations – including middle-income countries – around the globe.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, public external debt in many developing countries has spiked. Low interest rates and high liquidity boosted many countries’ access to commercial lending. By January 2020, the debt of 44 per cent of least developed and other low-income developing countries was already considered at high risk or in distress. 

(Article continued in the right side of the page)

Question for this article:

Can UN agencies help eradicate poverty in the world?

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

(Article continued from the left side of the page)

The COVID-19-induced contraction is having disastrous consequences. Global financial markets are coming to a standstill as investors race to pull funds out of emerging-markets and other high-risk sec­tors.  The pandemic is straining national budgets as countries struggle to meet health needs, respond to rising unemployment and support their economies.

UN experts warn that Africa may be in its first recession in 25 years, while Latin America and the Caribbean is facing the worst recession in its history. Similar decelerations are being seen in Asia and the Arab Region.

Shaping proactive responses

Against that backdrop, the UN is advocating for a comprehensive COVID-19 response package amounting to a double-digit percentage of global GDP.

It is also urging international financial institutions to do everything possible to prevent a devastating debt crisis with disorderly defaults, stressing that debt relief must play a central role in the global response to the pandemic.

Speaking at the joint IMF/World Bank meeting, the Secretary-General welcomed initial steps by the G20, including the suspension of debt service payments for all International Development Association nations. 

He also called for more resources for the IMF – including through the issuance of special drawing rights – as well as enhanced support for the World Bank and other global financial institutions and bilateral mechanisms.

Three-phase plan to tackle debt

The Organization has put forward a three-step strategy aimed at preventing heavily indebted countries from suffering the worst impacts of the COVID-19 emergency.

First, it calls for an across-the-board “debt standstill” for developing countries with no access to financial markets.  Second, it requests more comprehensive options for debt sustainability with instruments, such as debt swaps, and a debt mechanism for the Sustainable Development Goals.

Third, the plan calls for tackling structural issues in the international debt architecture, to prevent defaults.

The framework is built on a foundation of shared responsibility among debtors and creditors, as well as the understanding that debt restructuring should be timely, orderly, effective, fair and negotiated in good faith. 

“In all our efforts, we must focus on the most vulnerable and ensuring that the rights of all people are protected,” the UN Chief said.

(Thank you to Phyllis Kotite, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, United Nations,

Could COVID-19 give rise to a greener global future?

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from the World Economic Forum (reprinted according to terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License “CCPL”)

The COVID-19 coronavirus has forced entire countries into lockdown mode, terrified citizens around the world, and triggered a financial-market meltdown. The pandemic demands a forceful, immediate response. But in managing the crisis, governments also must look to the long term. One prominent policy blueprint with a deep time horizon is the European Commission’s European Green Deal, which offers several ways to support the communities and businesses most at risk from the current crisis.


The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that human societies are capable of transforming themselves more or less overnight.
Image: REUTERS/Muyu Xu
”

COVID-19 reflects a broader trend: more planetary crises are coming. If we muddle through each new crisis while maintaining the same economic model that got us here, future shocks will eventually exceed the capacity of governments, financial institutions, and corporate crisis managers to respond. Indeed, the “coronacrisis” has already done so.

The Club of Rome issued a similar warning in its famous 1972 report, The Limits to Growth, and again in Beyond the Limits, a 1992 book by the lead author of that earlier report, Donella Meadows. As Meadows warned back then, humanity’s future will be defined not by a single emergency but by many separate yet related crises stemming from our failure to live sustainably. By using the Earth’s resources faster than they can be restored, and by releasing wastes and pollutants faster than they can be absorbed, we have long been setting ourselves up for disaster.

On one planet, all species, countries, and geopolitical issues are ultimately interconnected. We are witnessing how the outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China can wreak havoc on the entire world. Like COVID-19, climate change, biodiversity loss, and financial collapses do not observe national or even physical borders. These problems can be managed only through collective action that starts long before they become full-blown crises.

The coronavirus pandemic is a wake-up call  to stop exceeding the planet’s limits. After all, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change all make pandemics more likely. Deforestation drives wild animals closer to human populations, increasing the likelihood that zoonotic viruses like SARS-CoV-2  will make the cross-species leap. Likewise, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns  that global warming will likely accelerate the emergence of new viruses.

(article continued in right column)

Question for this article:
 
Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

(Article continued from the left column)

Governments that succeed in containing epidemics all tacitly follow the same mantra: “Follow the science and prepare for the future.” But we can do much better. Rather than simply reacting to disasters, we can use the science to design economies that will mitigate the threats of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemics. We must start investing in what matters, by laying the foundation for a green, circular economy that is anchored in nature-based solutions and geared toward the public good.

The COVID-19 crisis shows us that it is possible to make transformational changes overnight. We have suddenly entered a different world with a different economy. Governments are rushing to protect their citizens medically and economically in the short term. But there is also a strong business case for using this crisis to usher in global systemic change.

For example, there is no good reason not to be phasing out fossil fuels and deploying renewable energy technologies, most of which are now globally available  and already cheaper than fossil fuels in many cases. With the recent oil-price plunge, perverse fossil-fuel subsidies can and should be eliminated, as the G7 and many European countries have pledged  to do by 2025.

Shifting from industrial to regenerative agriculture also is immediately feasible, and would allow us to sequester carbon  in the soil at a rate that is sufficient to reverse the climate crisis. Moreover, doing so would turn a profit, enhance economic and environmental resilience, create jobs, and improve wellbeing in both rural and urban communities.

Regenerative agriculture features prominently in many of the new economic models that are now being explored by city governments around the world – all of which are based on the principle of living within our planetary boundaries. As one of us (Raworth) argues in advancing her idea of “Doughnut Economics,” the goal should be to create a “safe and just operating space for all of humanity.” In other words, we must work within the planet’s natural limits (the outer boundary of the doughnut) while also ensuring that marginalized communities do not fall behind (into the doughnut hole).

For policymakers responding to the current crisis, the goal should be to support citizens’ livelihoods by investing in renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. Now is the time to start redirecting the $5.2 trillion  spent on fossil-fuel subsidies every year toward green infrastructure, reforestation, and investments in a more circular, shared, regenerative, low-carbon economy.

Humans are resilient and entrepreneurial. We are perfectly capable of beginning again. If we learn from our failings, we can build a brighter future than the one that is currently in store for us. Let us embrace this moment of upheaval as an opportunity to start investing in resilience, shared prosperity, wellbeing, and planetary health. We have long since exceeded our natural limits; it is time to try something new.
* * * * * * *

(Editor’s note: For a more pessimistic view, see Unfortunately, Coronavirus Is Bad News For Ecology In The Long Term.)

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT