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EDITOR’S LETTER
NATURE’S RESTORATION DINYAR GODREJ for the New Internationalist Co-operative newint.org
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THE NEW INTERNATIONALIST multistakeholder co-operative exists to report on the issues of world poverty and inequality; to focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and powerless worldwide; to debate and campaign for the radical changes necessary to meet the basic needs of all; and to bring to life the people, the ideas and the action in the fight for global justice. The New Internationalist magazine was founded by Peter and Lesley Adamson in 1970. Together with a range of other publications it is published by New Internationalist Publications Ltd which is wholly owned by the New Internationalist Co-operative Ltd and its co-owners. Accounts: Katalin Szombati Administration: Mary Murray Advertising: Michael York Design: Andrew Kokotka Editorial (Magazine and Website): Vanessa Baird, Dinyar Godrej, Amy Hall, Hazel Healy, Jamie Kelsey-Fry, Husna Rizvi Editorial (Publications): Chris Brazier Funding and engagement: Laura Veitch Mail Order: Emma Blunt, James Rowland Marketing (Magazine): Rob Norman Production: Fran Harvey Web and IT: Charlie Harvey .
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE:
Probably by mistake, a tiny bird flies up to my balcony in the busy, restless city and looks me in the eye. Is it sheer sentimentality that floods me with joy? Why does it feel like a visitation? I haven’t taken the train anywhere in months due to the Covid-19 pandemic and I find myself filled with irrational longings for the inquisitive, iridescently speckled starlings that used to dart about my feet at the station, threading the cavernous space with their silvery song. Many of us who live in urban areas feel a periodic yearning, an ache sometimes, for the wild. Even a cultivated green space becomes a refuge from daily stresses. And the scientific knowledge is piling up about all the ways simply being in nature helps our mental health, our immune systems, our wellbeing. Nature restores, but is itself in need of restoration. Due to our constant commodification of the natural world we are erasing huge chunks of its awe-inspiring variety and damaging ourselves in the process. This edition’s Big Story amplifies some of the concerns of those who live closest to nature, while attempting to get to grips with the complex challenges involved if we want to stop biodiversity’s catastrophic decline. In the words of author Lucy Jones, we can no longer view nature as ‘a luxury, an extra, a garnish’. Our continuing Food Justice series dovetails into the biodiversity theme with articles on the virulent consequences of Big Agriculture and forest farming in Ethiopia, a country in the news for reasons of conflict. Elsewhere we report on relatives’ agonizing search for Syria’s missing and what Finland has done to make its citizens so content. SUBSCRIPTIONS
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Jack Lo Lau is an awardwinning Peruvian journalist focused on indigenous communities’ rights, socioenvironmental conflicts, and natural territories and wildlife. Seirian Sumner is a Professor of Behavioural Ecology at University College London specializing in wasp behaviour. She runs the citizen science project The Big Wasp Survey. Liam Taylor is a freelance journalist based in Uganda since 2016. He has reported from 13 African countries, covering economics, politics and development. Tesfa-Alem Tekle is an Ethiopian journalist and an environmental writer based in Addis Ababa. He’s the Ethiopia correspondent for the Nation Media Group, and has worked for Reuters and other agencies.
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CONTENTS
THE BIG STORY
CURRENTS
LOREN MCINTYRE/STOCK CONNECTION BLUE/ALAMY
Stories making the news 8 Uganda’s popstar politician takes on ‘horrifying’ election battle Plus: Borderlines 9 Introducing: Luis Arce Catacora Plus: Seriously? 10 Enough! Nigeria’s youth find their voice Covid-19 solidarity for Argentinian queer tango Return to wild food sources in Mexico Plus: Inequality Watch Plus: Sign of the Times 12 Grief as sacred sites destroyed in Australia Plus: Open Window 13 Uncertain future after Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict Plus: Reasons to be cheerful
BIODIVERSITY 15
REGULARS
The case for nature As the alarm sounds on the sixth mass extinction, Dinyar Godrej squares up to what we need to do to avert it.
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Biodiversity – THE FACTS
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Why I matter A tiny but fierce hunter explains to Seirian Sumner why humans need it around.
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The limits of Eden Indigenous people living in Peru’s Manu National Park have been locked out of its management. Could change be on the horizon? asks Jack Lo Lau.
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‘Indigenous people respect all species’ An interview with environmental activist Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim.
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What it takes Four case histories of extraordinary efforts to save threatened species.
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Planet Farm Rob Wallace connects industrialized farming to the emergence of ever more deadly pathogens.
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Letters Plus: Why I…
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Letter from Manila Iris Gonzales on a most unusual homecoming.
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Country Profile: Argentina
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Cartoon history – Otto René Castillo ILYA sets ‘Apolitical Intellectuals’ to a modern tune, as he remembers the life of the Guatemalan revolutionary poet.
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Temperature Check Can Amazon really deliver a low-carbon future? Danny Chivers reveals the deep flaws of ‘net-zero’ targets.
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The debate Is it time for reparations for transatlantic slavery? Kehinde Andrews and KA Dilday deliberate.
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The Interview The intrepid Betty Bigombe talks about her immersive way of negotiating peace with the ultraviolent Lord’s Resistance Army.
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Southern Exposure Nyani Quarmyne’s bird’s-eye view of a community gathering in Ghana.
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Hall of Infamy Big Momma Carrie Lam is on a mission in Hong Kong.
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The Puzzler
Beyond the tourist trail Conservationists in the Global South are seeking sustainable pathways, finds Graeme Green.
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FOOD JUSTICE files
The sheltering forest Tesfa-Alem Tekle showcases the ancient agroforestry methods keeping hunger at bay in Ethiopia’s southern highlands.
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
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Agony Uncle When alcohol causes so much damage is it unethical to set up a brewery? Our Agony Uncle responds.
MIXED MEDIA 74
Spotlight Louise Gray turns her attention to the anti-slavery musical activism of Tse Tse Fly Middle East.
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Book Reviews Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic; Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev; How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm; Imagining Orwell by Julio Etchart.
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Film Reviews The Mole Agent (El agente topo) directed and written by Maite Alberdi; African Apocalypse directed and co-written by Rob Lemkin.
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Music Reviews Freedom by Yvette Janine Jackson; Kologo by Alostmen.
What if… We got real about sustainability? It might reverse the UN’s order of holiness, Vanessa Baird finds.
OPINION 53
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View from Africa Nanjala Nyabola argues that the criminalization of journalists is a threat to democracy. Plus: Polyp’s Big Bad World View from Brazil Bolsonaro sucked up to Trump but the favours were not reciprocated, observes Leonardo Sakamoto. Plus: Kate Evans’ Thoughts from a Broad View from India Working people have been thrown under a bus by the Modi government, according to Nilanjana Bhowmick. Plus: Marc Roberts’ Only Planet
FEATURES 58
The search for Syria’s missing The families of the disappeared are not giving up their search until they have answers. Jan-Peter Westad reports.
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The Long Read – Finntopia Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen explain how Finland has come to be so equal, peaceful and happy – and sketch out the lessons we might learn from its example.
IN THE NEXT ISSUE: DEMOCRACY
ONLINE FEATURES
newint.org
19.11.20 Enforcing ecological catastrophe at all costs After an activist is hospitalized in Germany following police action, Andrea Brock reflects on the criminalization of, and violence against, environmental defenders in Europe by state and private actors. 17.11.20 9 inspiring food-aid projects Emergency relief can be done in ways that go beyond sticking-plaster solutions. As part of the Food Justice Files, Frideswide O’Neill and Hazel Healy profile nine groups doing things differently…
ORIGINAL COLLAGE: TUOMAS NISKAKANGAS
12.11.20 A ‘coup’ in Peru John Crabtree reports on the shock ousting of ‘anti-corruption’ president Martín Vizcarra. 09.11.20 US election: What does it mean for democracy? Let’s enjoy Trump’s defeat, writes Vanessa Baird. But with realism and greater ambition. 30.10.20 ‘I cannot accept that there is no accountability’ Amy Hall speaks to Marcia Rigg of the United Families and Friends Campaign about the impact of deaths in state custody and how families in the UK have been fighting for justice. JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
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LETTERS
SEND US YOUR FEEDBACK The New Internationalist welcomes your letters, but please note that they might be edited for space or clarity. Letters should be sent to [email protected]. Please remember to include a town and country for your address.
Wrong impression Congratulations on NI 528. Excellent in so many ways. I do, however, think that the cover photo of a black carer (doctor or nurse) ought to have stated who she is, given her a name, an identity. Leaving her anonymous confirms the impression that carers, the people who serve society’s basic needs, don’t get thought of as human; they are just doing a job, over-worked and under-rated. This you are attempting to remedy. ROBERT PHILLIPSON LUND, SWEDEN [Fair point. We agree, and try to name photographed individuals unless revealing that information would be harmful. However, in this instance, a name was not available because the photographic agency did not provide it. – Ed]
Sanctions paradox Natalia Kaliada (Currents, NI 528) informs us that Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko seeks to oppress ‘democracy (and) freedom of expression’. She says unequivocally: ‘The future of the Belarusian people is to be the youngest democracy in Europe.’ She strongly argues for sanctions on ‘state broadcaster’ Russia Today. Does that mean I can call for the Russian Federation in turn to put sanctions on the BBC, another state broadcaster, whose ‘news’ content is often little more than an orgy
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of neoliberal drivel? It has always been an interesting concept, to advocate freedom of speech for everyone – except those you disagree with. NIGEL GREEN CROYDON, ENGLAND
Lack of respect The tragic story of the life of Minik and his people (Cartoon History, NI 527) made me weep with shame. Similarly, in the history of colonization and the inevitable clash of cultures that it brings, there are many examples of native peoples being treated as inferior by their captors, with little or no respect for them as human beings. In North America in the battles of the cavalrymen with First Nations peoples, in New Zealand/Aotearoa in the Maori wars after the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, and here in Australia where, after settlement, the Aboriginal people were shot down, or their drinking water was poisoned. For the Aboriginal people, the anniversary of 26 January 1788, now celebrated as Australia Day, is a ‘black day’ in their history for it marked the arrival of the first fleet of British ships in Port Jackson and the end of their freedom in their own land. Their calls to change this public holiday to a different day receive no co-operation from the ruling, predominantly White government. Unfortunately, when by now we should have had an apology and a treaty,
the lack of respect continues unabated. TREVOR SCOTT CASTLEMAINE, AUSTRALIA
Palestinian realities Re: your Country Profile on Palestine (NI 527). My husband and I have closely followed what’s happening in the Middle East, ever since our first trip to Israel and the West Bank in 2009. Seeing first-hand the reality of what Palestinians go through and yet retain their dignity and tradition of hospitality is a life-changing experience . A few points: 1) Hamas won political power in Gaza in a free and fair election. 2) The possibility of a Palestinian state died with Oslo. As many Palestinians have pointed out, Israel is a
One State Reality. The issue then is one of human rights, of apartheid on a much crueller scale than South Africa’s, of humanitarian norms. The issue is one of humanity. 3) Yes, teenager Ahed Tamini was imprisoned for slapping an Israeli soldier. She was enraged at her younger cousin being shot in the head, at close quarters. 4) Each year the Israeli regime detains many hundreds of Palestinian children (see the No Way to Treat a Child campaign). Human rights groups are pleading for pressure to be put on Israel to release child detainees. They are being deliberately held in unhealthy, unsafe conditions. Already two children have contracted Covid-19. Yet the West looks the other way. LOIS GRIFFITHS CHRISTCHURCH , NEW ZEALAND
Why I… am a humanist I am an atheist, which tells you what I don’t believe in, but nothing of what I do believe in. One response to atheism is that, without divine oversight, one may as well live self-indulgently. But I believe that without a god, my ethical decisions are based on empathy and a consideration of the consequences of my actions. Expecting only one lifetime, I try to make the lives of as many people as possible as good as I can, right now. It took me years to discover that the name for such a person is a humanist. MAGGIE HALL BRIGHTON, UK To share your passion, please email [email protected]
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
LETTER FROM MANILA
A HOMECOMING
ILLUSTRATION: SARAH JOHN
Iris Gonzales joins a repatriation flight bringing home Filipino workers – a bittersweet rite of passage.
Whenever a plane filled with returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) touches down at Manila’s international airport, a loud, thunderous applause reverberates around the cabin. Elsewhere in the world, travellers may roll their eyes over the lack of sophistication in clapping, or even see it as an insult to the pilots. But not in Manila, where the yearning for home among returning workers who have been away for years – decades even – is so intense that nothing can stop them from cheering at the exact moment when the plane’s wheels touch the runway. I heard it on the return leg, when I joined a repatriation effot to bring back 317 distressed Filipino workers from Beirut. Many in the cabin had not been home for more than 10 years. There are 2.2 million overseas Filipino workers toiling in distant lands as domestic helps, chefs, nurses, caregivers, mechanics and what-have-you. But since the Covid-19 pandemic battered economies worldwide, many have lost their jobs in their host countries. They have no choice but to return. When the government’s repatriation team invited me to cover the trip to Beirut, I knew the case was a bit different. Lebanon had already been on the brink of economic collapse even before the virus, putting the Filipinos there in a much more difficult situation. Weighing up the risks of travelling during the pandemic, I spent days considering whether I should join the trip or not. I would have to take a swab test before the flight and upon arrival, and undergo quarantine when I got back. But a voice inside me kept saying that I should go and tell their stories. It was the least I could do. I knew something of the hardships faced by the workers because at one point in my life I had been at the other end. My mother had worked abroad for a while in order to send my younger sister
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to school. It had been a sad time for our family. In the end, I decided to join the turnaround repatriation flight. We spent only five hours in Beirut. We fetched the OFWs at the Philippine Embassy in Lebanon where their friends and employers joined them in a send-off ceremony. As the sun set over the city, they boarded the plane, their lives packed in suitcases of varied shapes and sizes. On the flight back, I met 35-year-old Maricel, who had worked as a cleaner. ‘There are no more dollars in Lebanon,’ she lamented. It’s the reason she was going home. The Lebanese government and its banks have run out of foreign currency; the Lebanese pound has lost nearly 80 per cent of its value amid hyperinflation and unemployment. There’s no job waiting for her back home. But she was excited at the prospect of seeing her son again, only four when she had left and now a 15-year-old teenager. Looking down at the Nile from my seat, I kept wondering what would
happen to others like Maricel. At least 200,000 OFWs have returned to Manila as of this writing. My thoughts circled while waiting for the 11-hour trip to end. Many Filipinos were forced to leave our country to find better jobs abroad. Most of them dreamt that it would be temporary and they would return home one day. But that return has come about very differently from how they imagined it. They’re only home now because of equally difficult circumstances in their host countries. I fervently hope that one day these poignant narratives will come to an end and OFWs will have better stories to tell. My mother returned home long ago and is now retired. She spends her days gardening. But the time she had to spend toiling abroad, and away from us, is lost forever. O IRIS GONZALES IS A JOURNALIST FOR THE PHILIPPINE STAR, A LOCAL DAILY. SHE ALSO WRITES A TWICEWEEKLY COLUMN, FOCUSING MOSTLY ON THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN POLITICS AND THE ECONOMY.
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CURRENTS
UGANDA ‘LET THEM OWN THEIR COUNTRY’ What’s it like running for president of Uganda? ‘Horrifying,’ says Bobi Wine. The popstar-turned-politician has been riding a wave of popular support since he embarked on his bid to dislodge Yoweri Museveni, the ruling strongman who has held power since 1986. Wine’s popularity has got him in a lot of trouble. ‘I’ve been more or less declared a public enemy,’ he says. ‘In Uganda it is the biggest crime to stand up against injustice.’ Wine – real name, Robert Kyagulanyi – spoke to New Internationalist before setting out on the campaign trail. A lot has happened since.
Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as the popstar Bobi Wine, speaks during a rally in Hoima in the west of Uganda. OPA IMAGES/SIPA USA/PA IMAGES
In November, on the day he handed in his nomination papers, police harassed him, smashing his car window and dragging him away from his supporters. Two weeks later, as he met voters in eastern Uganda, he was arrested for violating Covid-19 restrictions, sparking protests across the country. Soldiers and police filled the streets, firing teargas and live ammunition (the president said that 54 people died, but the true number was almost certainly higher). It was the most significant unrest for a decade, with more tensions expected ahead of polling day on 14 January. Repression is par for the course in Uganda. Museveni, a former rebel involved in toppling Idi Amin and Milton Obote, fought his way to power and has ruled with a tight grip ever since. In the last four elec-
BORDERLINES Citizenship for sale tions his main rival has been Kizza Besigye, another old soldier, who has been repeatedly teargassed and arrested on dubious charges. But Besigye is sitting this one out, dismissing the whole process as hopelessly unfair. Wine has inherited much of Besigye’s support, but he also brings something new. At 38, he is half Museveni’s age. His star swagger and message of change endear him to young people, already familiar with his songs. A generational chasm runs through national politics: half of all Ugandans are under 16, making it the second-youngest population in the world. Frustration runs highest in the growing cities, where Museveni’s free-market policies have failed to create enough jobs. Wine was raised in Kamwokya, a poor neighbourhood in the capital Kampala.
As countries increasingly slam the door on travellers from low-income countries, there are some migrants who are actively courted: ‘high-value’ people with access to large sums of capital. Bulgaria and Cyprus both offer ‘citizenship by investment’, a scheme that was dreamed up by Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean. It waives naturalization rules – such as residency or language skills – in return for payments into government funds or the purchase of property. ‘Golden visa’ schemes operate on a similar logic, handing out residency permits – for a hefty fee – to those who may never have set foot in the county. Researcher Sarah Kunz describes how a global ‘corporate citizenship industry’ worth $3 billion has emerged – alongside concerns about money-laundering, tax evasion and corruption. She reports that in 2011 the UK Home Office introduced a fast track to naturalization for the super-rich at the same time as the punitive set of immigration regulations known collectively as the ‘hostile environment’. Transparency International discovered that due to a loophole, 3,000 applicants were granted these Investor visas without any checks on the source of their wealth between 2008 and 2015. The legal scholar Ayelet Shachar argues that we need to pay more attention to these privileged migrations that favour ‘credit lines over civic ties’. She warns that the commodification of citizenship will only further entrench social inequality. nin.tl/GoldenPassports
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NEW INTERNATIONALIST
In the News
LIAM TAYLOR
INTRODUCING... LUIS ARCE CATACORA
The bespectacled, 57-year-old Arce swept to power in Bolivia on 18 October 2020 as the presidential candidate of the
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
leftist Movement for Socialism (MAS). His total vote share – over 55 per cent – surprised even the most ardent of MAS partisans. His closest competitor, the old political warhorse of the centre-right Carlos Mesa, failed to top 30 per cent. All this proved to be much to the chagrin of Latin America’s neoliberal Lima Group (led ironically by Canada) and the Luis Almagro-led Organization of American States, which had helped orchestrate the 2019 coup that led to the removal of former president Evo Morales on suspect electoral fraud charges. It is hard to overestimate the importance of Acre’s victory at a time when conservative forces from Bogotá to Brasília have been organizing a full court press to turn back the continent’s pink tide with some success. Arce, who studied at the University of Warwick in Britain, was the economy minister under the government of Evo Morales for the entirety of its 14-year existence and made sure the boom in Bolivian commodities benefited the poorest, mostly indigenous, citizens. Under his watch extreme poverty dropped from 38 to 15 per cent of the population. He also oversaw Bolivia’s nationalization of hydrocarbon, telecommunications and mining companies, as well as the creation of the Bancosur (Bank of the South). A low-profile and modest man, Arce tends to eschew the ‘balcony politician’ style often taken on by Latin American leaders across the political spectrum. He has also successfully refuted the accusation that he is merely a ‘stand-in’ for Morales, whose controversial attempt to manipulate an unconstitutional third term opened the door for a seizure of power by Jeanine Áñez, backed by the Bolivian military’s high command. But a year of Áñez’s rule marked
by regressive economic policy, authoritarian assaults and a pattern of insults to Bolivia’s indigenous majority (including the burning of the Wiphala flag by racist demonstrators in conservative Santa Cruz) proved more than enough for most Bolivian voters. Despite ample potential for violence, the MAS leadership showed tactical sophistication in managing to avoid major street confrontations between its supporters and the well-armed military. A major lesson of Arce’s victory is the resilience of the MAS and how in the end it did not require a high-profile leader such as Evo Morales to rebound. This has allowed Morales to step back and Arce to proclaim that the former president ‘will not have any role in our government’. The landslide victory at the polls is a testimony to how deeply the desire for change and social justice is rooted in Bolivia. Unlike the besieged government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Bolivia’s version of the Bolivarian Left has eschewed the heavy hand and is much better placed to deliver for the country’s poor campesinos. The future will not be free of trouble but the strength of MAS and Arce’s own track record of committed integrity mean he should also avoid the fate of neighbouring Ecuador’s Lenín Moreno and keep Bolivia’s economy from crashing on the neoliberal rocks. Moreno, who had been vice-president in the Bolivarian government led by Rafael Correa, swung sharply to the right despite winning the presidency with a promise to maintain and deepen the reforms initiated by Correa. His cutbacks and privatization policies (including removal of popular fuel subsidies) brought tens of thousands of Ecuadorians into the streets to protest.
SERIOUSLY? Agricultural and food lobbyists have fought long and hard over the tedious (but enormously consequential) fine print on food labelling. In a more recent skirmish, the Irish Supreme Court ruled that fast food outlet Subway’s bread was in fact not bread, due to its high sugar content. In fact, in October the top judges compared the nutritional content of the main element of the chain’s famous sandwiches to confectionery product Jaffa Cakes, a biscuit-cake. ‘To summarize, Subway “bread” is actually cake,’ said one Twitter user of the debacle. This isn’t Subway’s first indiscretion; in 2014, they were ordered to remove a flour-whitening agent from their baked goods called azodicarbonamide (also found in yoga mats and carpets, The Guardian reported). But this is only one battle in an industrial war over transparency in food marketing. Despite ambitious climate pledges coming out of Brussels, the EU parliament caved to dairy lobbyists in the same month as the Subway ruling and voted to make it illegal for plant-based foods to compare their goods to dairy products. In practice, this means vegan brands won’t be able to champion their products using words like ‘cheese substitute’ or ‘yogurt-style’. Oatly, a plant-based milk brand, tweeted that it wasn’t surprised by the outcome, ‘considering there are more milk lobbyists in Brussels than actual cows in pasture during the summer months’.
ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER
He styles himself as ‘the ghetto president’ and his songs – about slum clearances, corruption, and the plight of street traders – expose a widening class divide. ‘Bobi Wine has captured the public imagination,’ says Su Muhereza, a political analyst. But it will be almost impossible for him to win an election, she adds. ‘The security forces seem to be quite focused on making sure they squash any growing popularity that he has.’ In fact, on 1 December, Wine suspended campaigning for one day due to the violence against him and his supporters. The real challenge that he presents is not at the ballot box, but on the streets. ‘This is no ordinary election,’ the singer says, calling on his supporters to come out and ‘defend’ the votes that they cast. Opposition politicians have tried and failed to ignite an uprising in the past; the odds are that Wine will fail too. But he has a surge of young people behind him. ‘Let them own their country,’ he concludes. ‘Let them think for themselves.’
RICHARD SWIFT
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CURRENTS
For years, Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) operatives profiled young people, branding them criminals for simply sporting tattoos or dreadlocks, carrying a laptop or iPhone, or driving flashy cars. But on 8 October 2020, after a viral video surfaced on social media showing a SARS officer killing a man, thousands of young Nigerians took to the streets to demand the notorious police unit’s dissolution. Along with deep inequality (over half of Nigeria’s population live in extreme poverty), a faltering economy, decrepit infrastructure and bleak job prospects, the unrest highlighted the broader, far-reaching problem of poor governance. Cutting across class, ethnicity and gender lines, and consisting mostly of tech-savvy 20 and 30-somethings, the protests grew in strength. The hashtag #EndSARS trended worldwide, bolstered partly by high-profile personalities and Nigerian celebrities, and solidarity protests took place in cities across the globe. But mass street mobilizations in Nigeria began to experience increasing brutality. Violent thugs attacked demonstrators; then on 20 October, soldiers reportedly opened fire on peaceful protesters in the commercial capital, Lagos, leaving at least 12 people dead and several others injured. Since then, several prominent activists have been detained or had their bank accounts restricted. Although the age requirement for public office was reduced in 2018 to encourage young people’s participation in politics, Nigeria’s two largest political parties and its ruling
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class remain the preserve of men over the age of 50. However, there is a sense that this movement has helped young Nigerians realize the power of their voices, which could have an impact on the 2023 general elections. ‘We’ve woken up and know our rights now,’ said Joy Okotie, an EndSARS protester based in the southern city of Port Harcourt, adding that the next item on their agenda was ending government corruption. ‘We’re coming for them very soon if they don’t stop the rubbish.’ SHAYERA DARK
INEQUALITY WATCH
14.2 0.5
MILLION EMPTY HOMES IN THE US
MILLION HOMELESS PEOPLE IN THE US
Source: US Census Bureau, National Alliance to End Homelessness
ARGENTINA WE DANCE Argentina’s strict lockdown measures have seen an outpouring of solidarity for queer tango in Buenos Aires. Edgardo Fernández Sesma, LGBTQI+ activist and queer tango teacher, has advocated for social inclusion and sexual and gender diversity in his home country for nearly 30 years. In his version of the quintessential Argentinian dance, there are none of the heteronormative gender dynamics traditionally assumed by ‘male’ and ‘female’ dancers. As Sesma’s classes have moved from the capital’s clubs, community centres and plazas to online platforms, his solidarity campaigns – raising awareness of homophobia, transphobia, femicide and the abuse of older people – have gained traction with social-media users across Latin America and in both the US and Europe. Sesma looks forward to a time when all social spaces or ‘salons’ (dance halls) are free from discrimination and prejudice. He’s optimistic, anticipating that post Covid19, queer tango ‘will proliferate, in a way which is different, but greater than before’. NINA MEGHJI
MEXICO RETURN TO THE WILD
SIGN OF THE TIMES Manchester Metropolitan University students protest the handling of Covid-19 after thousands were forced to stay in self-isolation, not long after arriving on campus for the new term.
PETER BYRNE/PA WIRE/PA IMAGES
NIGERIA ‘WE’RE COMING FOR THEM’
The Covid-19 pandemic has precipitated a global economic crisis, but it has also opened the door to a more sustainable way of living in Real de Catorce, Mexico. This semidesert town located in the stark mountains of central Mexico was badly shaken when tourism – the main motor of its economy – came to a sudden halt last March. Cut off from their regular income sources, the town’s inhabitants returned to har-
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
In the News
vesting the wild cacti, flowers and fruits of the desert. One of those falling back on the old ways was 77-year-old Socorro Aguilar, who carries the ancestral knowledge of how to collect wild foods and make agave syrup (or ‘god’s beverage’ as it was known by the Aztecs). Over the years, the consumption of wild plants has diminished in this area and traditional knowledge has been forgotten as foods are brought in from elsewhere. Aguilar worries about poor health among the younger generation in Mexico, where
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
over 30 per cent of adults are now obese. ‘They only want food from packets,’ she says. ‘They cast aside the great value that cacti, flowers and medicinal plants have to offer.’ The dual crisis of Covid-19 and climate change is proving the value of wild foods, which are usually overlooked by national policy. The Food and Agriculture Organization wants to move the hardy Opuntia cactus – which puts out prickly pears everywhere from Brazil to Madagascar – from a ‘food-of-last-resort’ to an integrated part of agriculture.
The cactus’ prevalence in harsh environments and water-fixing properties make it an important tool for fighting food shortages and drought. As a complement to cultivated crops, a diverse range of local food types like this may well be key to helping keep communities fed through future shocks.
Socorro Aguilar de-spines a cactus pad in Real de Catorce, Mexico. She likes to cook it up with onions, tomato and chillies or drink it in smoothies. ANTONIO CASCIO
NATALIA TORRES GARZON
11
CURRENTS
AUSTRALIA ‘WE’VE LOST TOO MUCH’ As some in the Australian state of Victoria celebrated the end of a long coronavirus lockdown, for many it was a day of mourning. In the northwest of the state, a yellow box gumtree, part of a cluster of ancient trees, was felled. The trees here are sacred to local indigenous Djab Wurrung people; women have traditionally gone to them to give birth. ‘They are part of our culture – they have watched over us, protected us, and been a part of our story for generations,’ says Aunty Sandra Onus, a Djab Wurrung elder. The tree in question, known as the Directions Tree, was removed on 27 October as part of a highway upgrade aimed at making the commute between the regional cities of Ballarat and Stawell safer, and two minutes faster. Onus, who is in her eight-
12
ies, set up the Djab Wurrung Heritage Protection Embassy, a patchwork of protest camps to protect the trees. Before Covid-19, it hosted hundreds of activists, but then numbers dwindled massively. The police swept in and made arrests. This story is not unique. Last May, the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge cave complex in Western Australia, thought of as home to the ‘dawning of humanity’, was blown up by mining company Rio Tinto. ‘This occurs almost every day in Australia,’ says Gary Highland of the First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance, ‘with urban development in the cities to mining companies wreaking havoc in our desert landscapes. Laws governing our heritage are woefully inadequate.’ ‘We are the oldest living culture on Earth and it feels like everywhere else gets that… but Australia. Still, many here have been outraged by some
of the events this year,’ Onus reflects, before offering more resolutely: ‘We just got to act on it and make change before it’s too late; we’ve already lost too much.’
Around 50 people were arrested trying to protect this sacred Directions Tree, eventually felled to make way for a road. SEAN PARIS
WILL HIGGINBOTHAM
OPEN WINDOW President Trump is defeated by Omar Al Abdallat (Jordan)
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
In the News
Father Hovhannes, the priest at the ancient monastery of Dadivank, is determined to stay put ‘whatever happens’. He spoke to New Internationalist as Kalbajar, the area surrounding the 9th-century monastery, was about to pass into Azerbaijan’s control. This handover was decided by the peace agreement of 10 November 2020, which ended a bloody 44-day conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus. Thousands of Armenians gathered to pay their respects at Dadivank, which stands above the road between Yerevan, the Armenian capital, and Stepanakert, the main city in the disputed area. The conflict over NagornoKarabakh can be traced to the breakup of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when the majority ethnic Armenian area ended up as part of Azerbaijan. Tensions first grew to a full-scale war in 1992 and have rumbled on ever since. The latest eruption of conflict in September claimed the lives of an estimated 4,000 people, including civilians from both sides. Armenia saw greater losses as shelling and drone attacks from Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, bombarded its soldiers in trenches. In the ensuing peace deal, which includes the deployment of Russian peacekeepers, Armenia has lost much of the territory that it captured in the 1990s war. In the days that followed the peace agreement, the road leading from Stepanakert to Armenia was in chaos. Armenians piled into cars and trucks full of belongings and headed out of Nagorno-Karabakh; some set fire to their own houses, determined not to leave them to Azerbaijan. Mean-
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
AZERBAIJAN
Kalbajar
ARMENIA
REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
NAGORNOKARABAKH Stepanakert
while, some of the Azerbaijanis who were expelled from their lands in the 1990s were preparing to return. The reality of what the ceasefire means for many Armenians is still emerging. The Human Rights Ombudsman in Stepanakert estimates that around 100,000 Armenians have lost their homes. In the outskirts of Yerevan, I met Stella Vardanyan, a 68-year-old piano teacher who fled the fighting with nothing but her official papers and a bag of clothes. ‘In the first war our house was damaged. This time it was totally destroyed,’ she said. With her village of Hadrut now in Azeri territory, Stella is one of thousands needing to be rehoused but her husband disappeared during the evacuation and shelter is the last thing on her mind. ‘We only worry for our loved ones,’ she says. Even inhabitants of Stepanakert, which remains under Armenian control, are uncertain about the future. Sushi, the town whose fall to Azerbaijan precipitated the peace deal, sits in clear view in the hills above the city. It was from there that Azerbaijan flattened huge parts of Stepanakert in the last war. ‘We are scared that we will not be safe, that we will be surrounded,’ says Diana, a physiotherapist who works at a rehabilitation centre in Stepanakert. The fighting is over for now, but Nagorno-Karabakh’s long and painful process of rehabilitation continues.
COAL MINES OUT
PARK LIFE
Environmentalists in Zimbabwe are celebrating after the government banned coalmining in all the country’s national parks. Two Chinese firms had previously been given a licence to explore for coal in Hwange, Zimbabwe’s largest reserve, which is a hub of biodiversity and home to more than 40,000 elephants and other species, including the endangered black rhino. The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association filed an urgent High Court application, forcing the government to act. It intends to keep up the pressure and secure legislative changes that protect parks from future incursions.
Singapore has unveiled plans to plant one million trees by 2030. A new 400-hectare park is also planned in the northern portion of the island to provide a haven for migratory birds – and a number of native animal species – and to connect green spaces. It is hoped that the reforestation will reverse decades of habitat destruction (between 1953 and 2018, researchers estimate that nearly 90 per cent of Singapore’s mangrove forests were lost) and bring a park to within a 10-minute walk of every household within the next 10 years.
CLEANERS IN After a decade of strikes, protests and a mass boycott, cleaners at the University of London have finally won their fight to be recognized as direct employees of the university. Between 60 and 80 cleaners, represented by the Independent Workers of Great Britain trade union, previously worked as contractors for private companies. They will now get the right to annual leave, better pay and pensions and enhanced
parental leave, joining porters, receptionists and other staff who were brought in-house by the university earlier in 2020.
AMY HALL
JAN-PETER WESTAD
13
ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER
NAGORNO-KARABAKH ANOTHER WAR OVER
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THE BIG STORY BIODIVERSITY
THE CASE FOR NATURE We have brought the natural world and its diversity to a breaking point. Dinyar Godrej surveys the damage and explores how we need to act to repair it.
I JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
15
THE BIG STORY
A It’s as if we’re playing a game of planetary Jenga. The first few bricks we tap out seem not to affect the overall structure, but as we proceed things get increasingly tottery, until all at once it could all come tumbling down 16
t the start of 2020 a strange, beautiful creature, whose kind had been around for at least 200 million years, was declared gone forever. By comparison, we homo sapiens have spent a mere 300,000 years on the planet. The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. The Chinese paddlefish could grow to an impressive seven metres in length, with a long snout used to sense the electrical activity of its prey, tiny comical eyes and a huge flapping mouth. Its premature demise was not a natural occurrence; it had been severely overfished – during the 1970s, 25 tons of paddlefish were being netted each year – and the damming of its Yangtze river habitat blocked the route to its spawning grounds. By the time efforts were made to save it, it was too late. The last sighting of a Chinese paddlefish was in 2003, and it probably became extinct years before the formal announcement.1 In June 2020, researchers concluded that 515 vertebrate species had fewer than 1,000 individuals remaining and were thus staring extinction in the face – of these more than half were down to under 250 individuals. 2 This is far from the full picture because so many species in our natural world are as yet undocumented and unknown. The estimated number of all species facing extinction is a sobering one million. 3 According to scientists, the extinction threat is equally as urgent as climate change and in one aspect worse – extinction is irreversible; once a species is gone, it’s gone for good. With it goes all its evolutionary adaptation, over millions of years, to its living conditions and all the interactions it had with its ecosystem. The fraying of nature’s web is dangerous – the extinction of one species, due to its interconnectedness within its ecosystem, has the potential to set off a cascade of other extinctions, continually impoverishing nature. Extinction, by itself, is not remarkable – it has been happening since life began on Earth. It’s the rate that has sped up. Based on the fossil record, the best (and admittedly highly imprecise) scientific estimate we have is that a vertebrate species goes extinct within one to three million years of its existence. Today the average expected lifespan is a mere 5,000 years. 4 Plant extinction is occurring 500 times faster than would be expected naturally. 5
Global collapse Extinction is the sharp edge of a more dramatic global thinning. While populations of the few animals humans rear for their consumption have exploded, wildlife is undergoing what conservationists are calling a biological annihilation. In the short span between 1970 and 2016 the global populations of wild mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles fell by a staggering 68 per cent.6 Insects are often overlooked in such studies and scores could be going extinct without humankind ever having known about them. Car drivers of a certain age can recount when a long journey resulted in a windscreen full of squashed bugs, now no longer the case. A recent study
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Biodiversity
Previous page: Another chunk of the Amazon rainforest goes up in smoke. In the last 10 years alone, 38,600 km2 (equal to 8.4 million football fields) has been deforested for ranching, logging, soy and oil-palm cultivation. LOREN MCINTYRE/STOCK CONNECTION BLUE/ALAMY
Above: A majestic Indian tiger on the prowl. India’s tiger numbers are up – to roughly 3,000 from fewer than 2,000 in 1970 – as a result of a massive conservation effort. But it has also forcibly displaced many tribal peoples, who had lived sucessfully with the animals, from their ancestral lands. PANORAMIC IMAGES/ALAMY
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
comparing long-term surveys across 41 countries in 5 continents found that landbased insects were declining at the rate of nearly 1 per cent each year.7 What would our reaction be if such disasters were befalling humans? At the time of writing Covid-19 has taken out 0.017 per cent of the total human population and the effects of what it has done to us are plain to see. Indeed the pandemic itself has emerged from some of the very factors that are driving biodiversity down the drain (see Rob Wallace’s article on page 34), in this case the proximity of wild animals and humans due to the fragmentation of habitats and the industrial farming of livestock.
Today scientists are talking of a looming sixth mass extinction – if the previous ones seemed like B-movie scenarios featuring gigantic volcanic explosions or meteorite hits, this one is being powered by human activity. We humans are stretching the limits of the natural world to such an extent that increasingly conservationists refer to our age as the Anthropocene, a term coined by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen in 2002. It’s as if we’re playing a game of planetary Jenga. The first few bricks we tap out seem not to affect the overall structure, but as we proceed things get increasingly tottery, until all at once it could all come tumbling down. Ecological collapse is now not just the stuff of dystopian
17
I
THE BIG STORY
fantasy; it could lead to our own extinction or the marginally less dim prospect of humans surviving, with great difficulty, in an ‘empty world’ as described by the acting executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema.
Conservation blues It need not be all doom and gloom. Nature, if given the space, protection and opportunity, can bounce back with surprising resilience. It tends to abundance. But turning this particular corner requires Herculean action on many interlinked fronts: on ongoing habitat destruction, unsustainable exploitation of wildlife (including the illegal international wildlife trade), the climate emergency, pollution and invasive species and diseases. And all those actions become much harder in an unequal world where the richest exert great extractivist pressure even on the most remote corners of the planet. The immediate response to nature’s destruction is conservation, focusing on particular habitats and species in order to secure them. It is difficult, complicated work that becomes even more uphill when faced with issues around a changing climate. You could possibly consider feeding elephants that are going hungry in the rainforest of the Congo Basin because the fruit they rely on is getting scarcer due to drier conditions. But how do you tackle the plunge in numbers of insect-eating bird species in the Amazon because the heat is also wiping out the creatures they require? What to do about plant species that would need to migrate to higher latitudes to survive warming but at a speed that is impossible? Or animals needing to do the same but being unable to because there are no migration corridors or new habitats to move to? What do you do with the knowledge that as much as 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest is at the tipping point of turning into grassland due to drought? As Robert Watson, the former chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), put it: ‘We cannot solve the threats of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity in isolation. We either solve both or we solve neither.’8 There is also a crisis in how conservation is done (and serious limits to what it can achieve). Too often the policy
18
framework and political will is lacking and conservation becomes reliant on NGOs. The giants among these have often made the case for nature in economic terms by expressing the dollar value of the services nature can offer us – a route that deviates from valuing wildlife for itself and makes it difficult to advocate for species that do not directly offer such value.9 In addition, these charities have gladly accepted funding from corporations that actively destroy nature – including mining and fossil-fuel transnationals – and help greenwash their activities by offering biodiversity credits and carbon offsets that do nothing to curb the harm done. It goes by the innocuous name of ‘partnering’. Worse still has been the top-down vision of conservation they espouse, dubbed ‘fortress conservation’ by its critics, which seeks to enclose land in the name of protecting biodiversity, often alienating, persecuting and dispossessing the indigenous peoples who live upon it and who are truly nature’s defenders. In case anyone was in doubt of this latter fact, a study of over 15,000 sites in Australia, Brazil and Canada compared protected areas with lands under indigenous management. It found the indigenous lands to be slightly more species rich than the protected areas and, in Brazil and Canada, they even supported more threatened species than protected areas.10 This despite indigenous people foraging and hunting on these lands. (See also our interview with Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, page 30, and Jack Lo Lau’s article on Peru’s Manu National Park, page 28.) Recently the US government cut $12 million worth of funding to conservation NGOs, including WWF and the Wildlife Conservation Society, citing human rights abuses in Africa, and stated that finance would no longer be available to such organizations unless they have the full consent of indigenous people.11
Voracious appetites It’s no wonder that organizations campaigning for the rights of indigenous peoples view current plans as proposed by the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to reserve a third of our planet for nature with alarm if it were to be done in the usual exclusionary way, warning it could be ‘the biggest land grab in history’.12 That nature needs space is unquestionable, but a vision to create
‘We cannot solve the threats of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity in isolation. We either solve both or we solve neither’
such space will only work if it includes nature’s defenders. Today such inclusion of indigenous peoples is mentioned again and again in policy aims and documents, even at the highest level. But there is much work to be done to make these promises a reality. Space for nature could also emerge by easing the relentless extractivist pressure upon it. Often in the popular imagination this is a result of, as megastar naturalist David Attenborough once put it, the world being ‘overrun’ by humans. This is far from the truth – such pressure as population exerts on nature comes mainly from the appetites of the world’s wealthiest nations, with their small clutch of uber-wealthy being the worst offenders. If we look at something as basic as food, the scientific consensus is that we grow enough to feed everyone comfortably without converting any more land to agriculture, and that’s not counting the full third that gets wasted or lost. Yet two-thirds of deforestation in the tropics is taking place due to big agribusiness players clearing land for soy, beef and palm oil.13 Livestock takes up nearly 80 per cent of global agricultural land to provide less than 20 per cent of the supply of calories. Further, if everyone
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Biodiversity
ate like a US citizen, 137 per cent of the world’s habitable land would be needed for agriculture alone, but just 22 per cent if we all adopted Indian diets.14 And to complete this picture of inequality, the largest 1 per cent of farms cover over 70 per cent of the world’s farmland.15 All one needs to do is join the dots to see who is really overrunning the planet. Today an infrastructure boom is taking place in numerous countries in the Global South and massive highway construction further threatens forests. Necessary development? Alas, most of these projects are not being designed to serve local communities and connect them to healthcare services or job opportunities, but to enable the extraction and transportation of their natural riches.16
Change gears To ease this relentless – and often needless – pressure on the natural world will require a gear change from the continual pursuit of growth and the exponential increases in consumption it requires. A critique of capitalist consumption is now finally being voiced from establishment environmental figures, not just fringe Lefties. Earnest pleas are also being made that it is time for the West to stop taking and meaningfully aid recovery. Institutions like the IPBES are writing out prescriptions that make it seem like the technocratic scales have finally fallen from their eyes, calling for transformative change. Including: ‘Embrace diverse visions of a good life; Reduce total consumption and waste; Unleash values and action; Reduce inequalities; Practice justice and inclusion in conservation…’ etc. 3 Will such dawning awareness bring real change? Indeed, can it be made to dawn a little faster? Let’s consider the 20 biodiversity targets set for 2011-20 by the 196 nations signed up to the Convention on Biological Diversity. As the decade closed not a single one had been met. The next round of talks is slated for May 2021 in Kunming, China. Can we hope for a bit more action this time? With the promise of vaccines on the way and the Covid-19 pandemic having caused an estimated $26 trillion in economic damage (and further enriching profiteering billionaires), will turbocapitalism rev up in the only way it knows – through an orgy of overproduction and natural destruction? Thus bringing the possibility of the next pandemic ever closer.
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
Or can we realize the political transformation that’s needed to allow us humans to behave less like vengeful gods towards the rest of the natural world? The key is equality. Author Jedediah Purdy makes the argument succinctly: ‘Without economic security and social provision, the world becomes an unsafe place, a place in which you can never have too much protection, that is, too much wealth. So insecurity brings insatiable demands on nature. ‘Here is where environmentalist and egalitarian projects meet. Only an economy with greater security is likely to produce political forces to limit economic growth because only a secure economy would make economic slowdown politically tolerable.’17 The web of life is fraying. Softly softly will not cut it. O 1 Douglas Main, ‘The Chinese paddlefish, one of world’s largest fish, has gone extinct’, National Geographic, 8 January 2020, nin.tl/paddlefish 2 G Ceballos, PR Ehrlich and PH Raven, ‘Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction’, PNAS, 1 June 2020, nin.tl/vertebrates 3 IPBES, Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, 2019, nin.tl/IPBES 4 Arne Mooers, ‘Bird species are facing extinction hundreds of times faster than previously thought’, The Conversation, 16 January 2020, nin.tl/birds 5 BBC News, 11 June 2019, nin.tl/plants 6 WWF, Living planet report 2020, nin.tl/WWF2020 7 Stuart Reynolds, ‘Insects: worldwide study reveals widespread decline since 1925’, The Conversation, 23 April 2020, nin.tl/insects 8 Robert Watson, ‘Loss of biodiversity is just as catastrophic as climate change’, The Guardian, 6 May 2019, nin.tl/diversity-cc 9 For a fuller discussion see Jeremy Hance, ‘Has big conservation gone astray?’, Mongabay, 26 April 2016, nin.tl/ big-conservation 10 Richard Schuster et al, ‘Biodiversity on Indigenous lands equals that in protected areas’, bioRxiv, 15 May 2018, nin.tl/ indigenous 11 ‘Atrocities prompt US authorities to halt funding to WWF, WCS in major blow to conservation industry’, Survival International, 2 October 2020, nin.tl/US-cuts 12 Stephen Corry, ‘The big green lie’, CounterPunch, 26 June 2020, nin.tl/big-green-lie 13 Claire Asher, ‘Brazil soy trade linked to widespread deforestation, carbon emissions’, Mongabay, 3 April 2019, nin.tl/ soy-trade 14 Hannah Ritchie, ‘How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country?’, Our World in Data, 3 October 2017, nin.tl/global-diets 15 International Land Coalition, Uneven Ground, 2020, nin.tl/uneven 16 Damian Carrington, ‘Megaprojects risk pushing forests past tipping point’, The Guardian, 19 November 2020, nin.tl/megaprojects 17 Jedediah Britton-Purdy, ‘An environmentalism for the Left’, Dissent, Fall 2015, nin.tl/JPurdy
ACTION
AND INFO African Biodiversity Network africanbiodiversity.org Indigenous knowledge, ecological agriculture and biodiversity-related policy Convention on Biological Diversity cbd.int Multilateral biodiversity agreement Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species cites.org Multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals Extinction Rebellion rebellion.global Direct action on various ecological fronts Forest Peoples Programme forestpeoples.org Working with forest peoples Friends of the Earth foe.org Campaigns for transformational change Greenpeace greenpeace.org/international Activism for the environment Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ipbes.net Aims to provide interface between science and policy IUCN Red List of Threatened Species iucnredlist.org Reference database maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (which accepts funding from companies like Rio Tinto) Rainforest Action Network ran.org Global network against destruction Survival International survivalinternational.org Advocacy for indigenous peoples * We have not included the biggest conservation charities due to concerns around human rights and/or inappropriate corporate influence. It is best to research and support smaller, trusted local groups.
19
BIODIVERSITY NATURE’S WEALTH 8M
5.5 M
estimated total animal and plant species, documented and undocumented.
½
>90% 1
of them are insect species. Previous estimates of unknown species have been as high as 100 million.
the world’s GDP – $44 trillion – is dependent on nature and its services.3
of fungi remain unknown to science.2
THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION
WHAT’S CAUSING IT?
1,000,000
Human activity is the biggest factor driving the decline of our natural world.
½
estimated number of animal and plant species threatened with extinction, including 1 in 3 freshwater species and 2 in 5 plants.1,3,2
are insects.
3.3 M Km2 terrestrial wilderness lost over the last 20 years.5
K47%
K68%
Natural ecosystems have declined by 47%.1
Populations of tracked wild animals declined by 68% between 1970-2016.3 DRIVERS OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS 3
Extinction rates have sped up dramatically.1
POLLUTION 6.7%
EXTINCTIONS SINCE 1500
CUMULATIVE % OF SPECIES DRIVEN EXTINCT
2.5 Cumulative % of species based on background rate of 0.1-2 extinctions per million species per year
2.0
Amphibians
Mammals Birds 1.5 Reptiles Fishes
1.0
0.5
18
0 190
Cumulative % of species based on background rate of 0.1-2 extinctions per million species per year.
CLIMATE CHANGE 6.2%
CHANGES IN LAND AND SEA USE LEADING TO HABITAT DECLINE 50.1%
MARINE FISH EXPLOITATION1
33% OVERFISHED
20
0 180
0
0 160
170
0 150
0
Rates for reptiles and fishes have not been assessed for all species.
INVASIVE SPECIES AND DISEASE 12.7%
SPECIES OVEREXPLOITATION 24.3%
YEARS
27% of documented species are threatened with extinction.4
20
These include: 41% Amphibians 34%
Conifers
33%
Reef corals
30%
Sharks and rays
28%
Selected crustaceans
26%
Mammals
14%
Birds
Among the great unknowns are insects. Only 0.9% of documented insects have been assessed for the threat of extinction.4
60% AT THE LIMIT OF SUSTAINABILITY
7% SUSTAINABLE
300-400 M
400
tons of industrial waste dumped annually into the world’s waters.1
ocean ‘dead zones’ caused by fertilizer outflow, bigger than half the UK’s land area.1 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
THE FACTS FOOD – AND FORESTS
REVERSING BIODIVERSITY LOSS
5
7,000
15
Of over 7,000 known edible plants, 417 are considered food crops.2
Only 15 make up nearly 90% of human energy intake.2
ACTIONS TO HALT AND REVERSE BIODIVERSITY LOSS
4 Bn
Reduced consumption
Business as usual
More than 4 billion people rely on just 3 crops: rice, maize and wheat.2 Greater diversity is needed to make food production climate resilient for the future.
Sustainable production
>75%
Reducing pollution, invasive species and overexploitation
global food crop types that rely on animal pollination.1
Climate change action
$235-577 Bn annual value of global crop output at risk due to pollinator loss.1
90% of the global soy crop is grown for the meat industry. Only 6% is eaten directly by humans.7
50
40
20
20
20
30
20 20
10
km2 deforested in Brazil alone between 2006-17 to grow soy.6
20
hectares of agricultural expansion in the tropics between 1980-2000, mainly cattle ranching in Latin America and plantations in Southeast Asia, half of it at the expense of intact forests.5
00
21,000
20
100 M
Conservation/ restoration
YEARS Without conservation activity the rate of bird and mammal extinction over the last decade would have been 2-4 times higher.1 But conservation alone won’t solve the problem.
8
HEALTH
BAD MONEY
MEDICINE1
More than $2.6 trillion = amount by which 50 investment banks backed economic sectors driving biodiversity loss in 2019.
723
70%
4 Bn
medicinal plant species (13%) threatened with extinction.
proportion of cancer drugs that are natural or synthetic products inspired by nature.
people who rely primarily on natural medicines.
DISEASE
17%
>500
infectious diseases in humans spread by animal vectors, causing
amphibian species declined, out of which 90 are thought extinct, due to chytrid fungal disease spread through trade in amphibians.5
>700,000 annual deaths.3 Nearly half of all new emerging infectious diseases from animals are linked to land-use change, agricultural intensification and the food industry.3
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
TOP 5 DESTRUCTIVE LENDERS
1
2
3
4
5
BANK OF AMERICA
CITIGROUP
JP MORGAN CHASE
MIZUHO FINANCIAL
WELLS FARGO
1 IPBES, Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, 2019, nin.tl/IPBES and related media release of May 2019, nin.tl/media-release 2 Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, State of the world’s plants and fungi 2020, nin.tl/Kew2020 3 WWF, Living planet report 2020, nin.tl/WWF2020 4 The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, iucnredlist.org 5 Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, 2020, nin.tl/gbo5 6 Claire Asher, ‘Brazil soy trade linked to widespread deforestation, carbon emissions’, Mongabay, 3 April 2019, nin.tl/Brazil-soy 7 Jack Bullett and Akash Naik, ‘Are vegans and vegetarians destroying the planet?’, Greenpeace, 1 October 2020, nin.tl/soy-meat 8 Portfolio Earth, Bankrolling extinction, 2020, https://nin.tl/bankrolling-extinction
21
USGS/UNSPLASH
THE BIG STORY
WHY I MATTER Seirian Sumner gives voice to a creature of amazing ecological value that humans usually consider a pest and the stinging scourge of summer picnics.
22
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Biodiversity
matter to you because I am one of nature’s most important pest controllers. I am a hunter. I hunt the spiders that terrify you in the rainforests of Northern Australia. In the endless savannahs of Africa, I feast on the flies that carry your diseases. In the peppered meadows of England, I hunt the bugs that suck the phloem from the flowers you so admire. I matter because without me, wherever you are in the world, you may be beset with plagues of flies, armies of spiders, teaming masses of locusts, caterpillars, grasshoppers, flies, flies, flies. And for you, the suburban dweller, I am your backyard’s housekeeper: I pluck the aphids as they siphon the life from your tomato plant; I hunt the caterpillars as they devour your garden crops. I matter to you, the crop farmer, especially in Africa, Asia, Latin America. I am part of your solution to providing food for your family, your livelihood. You may not know this yet: I am your route to sustainable agriculture. You know that those chemicals you spray on your crops are bad both for your own health and for nature’s; an indiscriminate chemical death sentence – slow or fast – for the little things that run the world. I understand, this is survival: your family, your children need that crop to grow, not to be gnarled and withered away by a wormlike caterpillar. I can help. I do help when you turn away and don’t notice me. Let me do my work: let me pluck those juicy worms from your crops. Let me feed my babies so you can feed yours. I help when I am incognito; living alongside you, among you, undiscovered. If you find me, you kill me. I understand why. Next time: don’t! Let my kind live: we’re on your side. Work with us, not against us. Use us. It’s a win-win. A mutualism of the Anthropocene. I matter because my kind are resilient. We do not fear you. This annoys you. We are largely unbothered by that interminable noise you make, that constant droning hum, rattle, buzz you do, that drowns out the symphony of nature. We hitchhike on your time-bending, time-stretching use of fluorescence and electrons: you turn the night sky into day, bedazzle our prey into easy pickings 24/7. Thank you. We notice the chemicals that you spray around like cheap perfume, and some of us die. But we are strong in numbers and our diverse hunting strategies mean we rarely binge on any single toxin-tanked prey. You might have taken
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My kind were pollinating plants millions of years before the bees: today, we matter to over 700 species of plants from more than 100 families away some of the natural nesting habitats that secured the success of our ancestors, but you’ve provided us with new ones: your loft, shed or barn make excellent nurseries for our hordes of babies. You hate our resilience, pestilence, tenacity, belligerence.
Well-oiled machine Some of my kind function as a machine. I matter even though I am a tiny cog among many thousands in the most perfectly oiled machine you can imagine. You have made factories; industries that churn and churn, eating the planet’s resources with your efficiency. This is your success. And your doom. Well done. But my kind, we did this millions of years before you. We are masters (or, more correctly, mistresses) of the factory line, the dividers of skills and successes, breaking down the ultimate task of life into small, precise segments that deliver efficiency, perfection, no space or time for error. Millions of years of evolution have honed that factory-conveyor-belt of labour to perfection. You can learn a lot from us, if you only take the time to care, to watch, to marvel. Yes, we are a marvel. We are a superorganism. We rival your largest factories, your cities, your modern society, with our co-operativeness, division of labour and efficiency. I matter because I am not a bee, but I am the original bee. The bees are my descendants, my evolutionary successors who have forgotten how to hunt. They are a vegetarian version of me. In the push-pull of natural selection, some of our kind lost their taste for meat, their babies adapted to a new diet of pollen and nectar, and the bee was born. But there is nothing redundant about my kind; we remain more numerous in species than our new cousins: for every bee species, there are at least five different species of my kind. And yet we are overlooked by you. You love our cousins, you plant
special flowers and even make special houses for them. You do this because you understand and value their usefulness to you, your society, your wellbeing, your food. But my kind were pollinating plants millions of years before the bees: today, we matter to over 700 species of plants from more than 100 families. Some plants, like orchids, depend on us, not bees, for reproduction. They have evolved to deceive us, lure us in as sexual decoys; smothered with pollen we flit from lure to lure. Pollinating. But remember this: bees pollinate because we pollinate. Bees, as our descendants, inherited our need to visit flowers for sugar; they evolved a new use for the pollen found in flowers, to raise their babies. Thank us for the pollinators you love. I matter to the future cancer patient because of the chemicals I produce. My venom is an untapped pharmacy, a complex cocktail of toxins, allergens, enzymes and amines. Evolution has equipped me with this pharmacological toolkit. Some of my kind use these chemicals to suspend life, turning living prey into helpless sacks of nutrition for hungry babies; others use these toxins to defend their fortresses from predators. I make a potent peptide – a mastoparan – which explodes cell walls, irreparably, causing cell death. I make this to defend myself and my society. You are learning to harness the power of my venom; my mastoparans are more toxic to cancer cells than normal cells. I matter quite a lot to you, the future cancer patient. I matter to you all because I am a wasp. O SEIRIAN SUMNER (AKA @WASPWOMAN) IS A PROFESSOR OF BEHAVIOURAL ECOLOGY AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON. SHE STUDIES THE ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION OF WASP BEHAVIOUR AND RUNS THE CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECT BIGWASPSURVEY.ORG
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THE BIG STORY
BEYOND THE TOUIRST TRAIL Graeme Green speaks with local experts about why wildlife protection in Africa and Asia must push beyond relying on international visitors and foreign professionals towards sustainable, locally led initiatives.
he devastating impact of the Covid19 crisis has been felt across Africa, not least in national parks, reserves and wildlife areas. With the dramatic loss of tourism, jobs have disappeared. Poverty has increased. Poaching has risen, fuelled by people’s need to eat or sell meat. There’s less money for vital conservation work. ‘The crisis has shown the vulnerability of depending on tourism as an income source,’ says Gladys KalemaZikusoka, a Ugandan vet and founder of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), that protects mountain gorillas and other wildlife. ‘Dependent communities are left with nothing to survive on. And it’s been a wake-up call to realize how much tourism is sustaining conservation efforts.’ Around the world, wildlife tourism supports 21.8 million jobs. Before the crisis, it was contributing $23.9 billion a year to the African economy. Gorilla tourism in Uganda alone brings in an
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estimated $34.3 million and contributes 60 per cent of the Uganda Wildlife Authority’s revenue. But, according to the World Tourism Organization, visitor numbers to Africa last summer were down by 99 per cent. Ebola outbreaks, terrorist attacks, conflicts and the global financial crisis had all also previously stopped people travelling, making tourism-related jobs precarious even prior to Covid-19. Ideas for diversification were already being explored, but the current crisis has increased the urgency. ‘Relying on tourism is dangerous because anything can happen,’ says Kalema-Zikusoka. ‘If there were more jobs around national parks and wildlife areas that don’t rely purely on tourism, the impact of Covid19 wouldn’t have been as great.’ For years, many wildlife charities have been paying local people to be part of conservation work, from planting trees to monitoring wildlife. But this requires large amounts of outside money.
People need jobs that are more sustainable. In Uganda’s gorilla hotspots, CTPH created Gorilla Conservation Coffee, a social enterprise where farmers get above-market prices for coffee. A donation for every bag sold goes to support communities and conservation work. ‘We’ve started to sell it outside Uganda, in the US, Europe, New Zealand and South Africa,’ Kalema-Zikusoka explains. ‘Even during the pandemic, people can still make a living.’ Beehives are being installed in Kenya, Tanzania and other countries, in order to reduce human-wildlife conflict by deterring elephants from villages, while providing food and creating jobs producing and selling honey. Chillies work the same: elephant deterrence, food, income. From Indonesia to Peru, conservationists are helping to develop sustainable agriculture in wildlife areas. ‘We’re developing alternative livelihood programmes in case another disaster hits in the future,’ explains Nabin Baidya,
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THE BIG STORY
Programme Manager for Wildlife Conservation Nepal, which is helping communities make a living from beekeeping, livestock and non-timber forest products, including cinnamon and herbal oils. ‘There have been many programmes initiated on a small scale but they might not be enough, especially in areas where large numbers of tourists used to visit. It’s essential to scale up, so more community members benefit.’ Small businesses, not just food but textiles, jewellery, clothing and soap, for example, can create sustainable incomes and reduce the need to poach wildlife or destroy natural resources. But currently it’s hard to match international tourism as an economic driver in wildlife areas.
‘The wrong colour’ There’s another more fundamental question about relying on international tourism and sectioning off vast spaces mainly for foreign travellers. ‘Kenyans have come to see wildlife as something only for tourists,’ says Paula Kahumbu, CEO of Kenyan non-profit Wildlife Direct. ‘But these national parks are also phenomenal outdoor classrooms, areas for recreation or for other income
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generation.’ She’d like to see more domestic tourism and local people using national parks for anything from education to engaging with indigenous cultures. ‘We’ve been stuck on international tourism because it’s been so profitable until now,’ says Kahumbu. ‘It’s time for us to change that. ‘Tourism is an economic activity. Wildlife is not just tourism – it’s a basic right. Kenyans don’t even have the basic right to go and enjoy the wildlife. You have to pay a lot of money because the whole thing was designed around income generation.’ That disconnect means a lack of ‘ownership’. ‘People think: “It’s not my problem if there’s a threat to wildlife. The problem is being experienced by foreigners who want to come and see these animals.”’ Such disenfranchisement has a long history. The creation of many African national parks involved local people being evicted, including the San people from Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana and the Makuleke from Kruger in South Africa in the 1960s. ‘Local people are still suffering from the impact of the abuses of colonialism,’ Kahumbu argues. ‘People were physically removed from
Previous page top: Tourists and photographers zoom in on wildlife at the Mara river during the great wildebeest migration, Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. ERIC BACCEGA/ALAMY
Previous page bottom: A Maasai man at a lodge on the tourist trail, Kenya. Maasai people are becoming participants in the tourist economy on their community-managed lands. TON KOENE/ALAMY.
This page, top left: Paula Kahumbu. WILDIFE DIRECT
This page, bottom left: Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. JO-ANNE MCARTHUR/CTPH
Main image: Bee keepers in Vanga, near Mombasa, Kenya. The honey contributes to local incomes and the hives act as an elephant deterrent. JOERG BOETHLING/ALAMY
their homes and forced out. Protected areas are for people who pay a fee. You lose access to water, to land. It’s saying that people are not part of the natural environment. A lot of Kenyans struggle to even engage on conservation when there’s still so much injustice that’s never been resolved.’ Conservation as a white Western concern is perpetuated on film and TV
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‘What does an adventurer or explorer look like? It’s a white man with a beard and a hat. I’m sick and tired that the people “exploring” Africa are still the exact same model’ explains Kahumbu, who produces the documentary series ‘Wildlife Warriors’. ‘The creators of wildlife documentary films captivate audiences. The images of white vets and scientists and black poachers have infected our view. Black stories are not often told. ‘I work with partners trying to pitch ideas for documentary series featuring African conservation heroes. There’s no appetite for it in global television networks: we’re the wrong colour for that story. What does an adventurer or explorer look like? It’s a white man with a beard and a hat. I’m sick and tired that the people “exploring” Africa are still the exact same model. If we’re to save our wildlife, we must change this image. The future of Africa’s wildlife will not be decided by somebody from England or America or Belgium, but by African leaders.’
Stark inequalities There are international charities and remarkable Western conservationists who work tirelessly to help protect threatened wildlife and habitats, but almost all NGOs now recognize that any strategy that alienates or omits local people is doomed to fail. The militarized ‘fortress conservation’ approach using fences, dogs and guns still goes on, and some will argue it is necessary. But many see long-term success being more likely if safe spaces are created for wildlife without dispossessing local populations, not least because wildlife is often found outside of protected parks, in corridors, dispersal areas and buffer zones on community land. Local people need to be integral as decision-makers, not just a labour force to enact an outsider’s plan. And they need to share in the benefits. ‘The biggest issue for conservation in Africa today is equity,’ says Kahumbu. ‘If you look at who’s making money from Africa’s wildlife, it’s clearly not the people
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on the ground who are living with it. They’re poor. They live from day to day. The tourism industry has until now been thriving. People have been getting extremely wealthy. The people who live on these lands need to thrive economically for conservation to work.’ Tourism offers a stark example of wealth inequality. In Africa, travellers can spend $2,000 a night in a lodge in places where some local people can’t afford to eat. The killing of Rafiki, a silverback gorilla in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, shocked the world last summer. ‘The poacher who killed Rafiki was a very hungry desperate poacher, among the most vulnerable in the community,’ says Kalema-Zikusoka. ‘He needed to eat and would’ve sold some of the meat. He wasn’t poaching gorillas but he came across Rafiki. It made me realize maybe we’re not reaching everybody. We need to start addressing hunger.’ Africa has its own homegrown inequality, too. The continent’s three richest billionaires have more wealth than the poorest 50 per cent of the population, around 650 million people. Land distribution, lack of opportunity and education, corruption and tax avoidance are all factors. Getting local people to protect wildlife in such dire and bitterly unfair circumstances is always likely to be difficult.
Local answers, local leaders One encouraging approach being used in Africa is the move towards conservancies, community-managed areas where landowners, often Maasai, lease their land for tourism uses. Community associations are often central to decision-making. It’s a tricky balance, but the wildlife is protected and the Maasai are still able to raise their cattle. Local people profit, while tourism and conservation provide additional jobs. Conservancies have been
hit hard by the drop in tourism, but as the Maasai can still make a living from cattle, the impact has not been as drastic as elsewhere. With the world’s wildlife in crisis, we’ll need more ideas like this in future. The race to find solutions will require the combined efforts of everyone: international organizations, local NGOs, politicians and communities. The biggest shift must be in leadership, argues KalemaZikusoka, who describes African wildlife conferences where there are just one or two Africans. She has spoken to African conservationists who left their careers early ‘because they never go up the leadership ladder’, a squandering of talent. The exclusion hasn’t just been based on race or class; Kahumbu recently criticized the Kenya Wildlife Service for a ‘webinar’ with an all-male panel. ‘What are the organizers telling us? That we are invisible? Unimportant? Irrelevant? Powerless?’ Having African leaders and local NGOs directing conservation in Africa (and Asian leaders in Asia, and Latin American leaders in Latin America…) would mean better understanding and communication, as well as more trust. ‘It’s easier for me to convince somebody in a local community to stop doing something, like bushmeat poaching, than somebody from another country,’ says Kalema-Zikusoka, ‘where people just see them as an outside visitor and think, “They’re only interested in the wildlife. They don’t care about us.” Rather than being the ones implementing the work, those big international NGOs should support local initiatives. It all has to work together.’ O GRAEME GREEN IS A WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER, JOURNALIST AND FOUNDER OF THE NEW BIG 5 PROJECT (NEWBIG5.COM), AN INTERNATIONAL WILDLIFE CONSERVATION INITIATIVE. GRAEME-GREEN.COM
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THE BIG STORY
THE LIMITS OF EDEN Peru’s Manu National Park is a biodiversity success story. But its management has left its ancestral peoples without voice and agency. Could that be about to change? asks Jack Lo Lau.
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Biodiversity
fter two hours’ travel through driving rain, Lucio arrived in the village with his two wives and children aboard a raft, all soaked to the skin. Four weeks earlier, they had decided to leave their nomadic life in the high reaches of the River Comerjali, where hundreds of Machiguenga and Mashco-Piro indigenous people live in voluntary isolation, and begin the journey to join the small settled community of Sarigeminiki, located slap in the middle of Peru’s Manu National Park. Having lived without any contact with other people, they spoke no Spanish and had no idea of their dates of birth. Such details were of no importance in the life they had come from. But life as huntergatherers had been becoming increasingly hard, which is why they decided to try their luck in a settlement that for them held the promise of a better quality of life – a school, medical station and neighbours. Manu National Park was created in 1973. It covers more than 1,700,000 hectares, ranging between 300 and 3,800 metres above sealevel, going from lowlying rainforest to elevated grasslands. Situated in the south of Peru, its territory stretches over the departments of Cusco and Madre de Dios. It is one of the most biodiverse areas of the world. Some 160 species of mammals, 1,000 birds, more than 140 amphibians, 210 fish and over half a million species of insects have been registered there. It has been recognized by UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage Site. Apart from the isolated communities in the deep forest, four small settled communities of semi-nomadic Machiguengas have existed for over 50 years, brought about through the intervention of evangelizing Dominican Catholic missionaries. These settlements sometimes draw out of isolation people like Lucio and his family, who previously had no fixed abode – just the vast forest whose limits were unknown to them. Manu is managed by the National Service of Protected Areas of Peru (Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas del Perú, or SERNANP), which is charged with its conservation and
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Opposite page: Machiguenga children at play in Manu’s spectacular wilderness, while their pet
protection. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of it is in a good condition. We have reduced to zero all the threats we had, like illegal logging and mining,’ says John Florez Leiva, head of Manu National Park.
Oppressed by conservation But the major complaint of the indigenous communities has been that park management has focused exclusively on biodiversity conservation upon their ancestral lands, without any true attempt at partnership with them. The Manu National Park Master Plan does not consider them in its management protocols and schemes. The small settled communities bristle under the restrictions placed on them, forbidding them to raise animals or farm, only allowing them to use the forest for bare survival. ‘They don’t need money,’ counters Florez Leiva. ‘The Park has everything [they need] for survival.’ He also refers to Machiguenga House, a tourist lodge whose income serves to cover the communities’ expenses – currently non-functional due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Julio Cusurichi, president of FENAMAD, which represents all the indigenous communities of Madre de Dios, does not see it this way. ‘How will they buy oil and sugar? What about those who want to study at university? Will they write on palm leaves?’ he asks. ‘This case is emblematic of the confrontation between nature and the special needs of indigenous peoples. Our kin are condemned to hunting and fishing for their subsistence, without the means to engage in productive economic activities that permit them to live with dignity. Without access to multicultural education, integrated healthcare, or basic social rights. ‘This is ancestral Machiguenga territory. The creation of the Park came later.
For this reason, we want this area to be administered by indigenous people, as it was for thousands of years. As things are now, the communities are not as free as people say.’ FENAMAD is working on a territorial vision strategy with the Machiguenga communities within Manu, which encompasses managing their territory to access better health and education services, conserving ancestral knowledge and protecting forest biodiversity. ‘All the plans carried out so far in the Park are not adequate to the reality of the populations,’ says Cusurichi. ‘The government has imposed rules in their own home, without consulting them. The school classes are given in Spanish, the health centres do not promote ancestral medicine, they cannot cut wood or hunt to earn money. They are being taught the value of money and the supposed benefits of Western life, yet they are not given options to earn money. They are oppressed in the name of conservation, when the people who live in Manu are the ones who have cared for this forest for thousands of years.’
Life changing While life goes on much as it has always done for the larger group of indigenous people in Manu, who shun contact with other people and remain remote from all external influence, it has changed dramatically for the settled communities.1 At the end of the 19th century Dominican missionaries began to evangelize the indigenous peoples of Manu. Apart from providing clothes and food, they eventually convinced them to live in settled communities, on the understanding that they would have a better life with a school and health post. Before, these people would have stayed in a place for a while, hunted and fished
‘They are oppressed in the name of conservation, when the people who live in Manu are the ones who have cared for this forest for thousands of years’
spider monkey explores a tree. CHARLIE JAMES/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/ALAMY
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in their environment and then moved on. However, once installed in just one place, they eventually exhausted the food resources of the surrounding area. The fruits and foods of the forest which they used to be able to gather are now found far away from their dwellings and it’s simpler to eat crackers and food in tins which the government sends as part of its social programmes. According to health officials, 70 per cent of children under five are malnourished. The health service prefers to provide aspirin and antibiotics instead of traditional plants to deal with ailments. Yomibato, a traditional healer and shaman, says that people only refer to him now when occidental medicine does not cure their ills. School lessons are in Spanish, with teachers who do not speak or understand the indigenous language. With Park rules restricting their economic activity, their lives have become circumscribed.
Looking for solutions Some organizations are working with SERNANP to ameliorate this situation and seeking to improve the lives of the communities. The Amazon Centre for Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) is leading a project with the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and San Diego Zoo Global, working in tandem with the indigenous organization FENAMAD, to train women leaders in the communities, diversify their diet, and learn how to live a settled life. Claudia Vega of CINCIA says: ‘They have been inculcated in occidental concepts. They are being turned into addicts of mobile phones and sugary foods, when they are not prepared for it. For this reason, we have organized workshops on basic gastronomy and indigenous wisdom. Options that respect their culture and values, without imposing things from outside.’ Sadly, the Covid-19 pandemic has halted this work, but it is hoped that it will be started again soon. The Frankfurt Zoological Society is focusing on helping in terms of education. ‘We have been working since 2008 in helping the management of the Park by strengthening education. We are improving and creating educational centres, training leaders and helping children to get better opportunities,’ says Juvenal Silva, co-ordinator of FZS’s Pro Manu programme, which is about to
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sponsor the first batch of Machiguenga university students. ‘They are 16 youngsters, who are going to university,’ says Ingrid Chalán, communications coordinator of FZS. ‘The idea is that they will come back to carry on contributing to the development of their communities as intercultural bilingual teachers.’ Last year marked a decade since the agreement between San Diego Zoo Global and SERNANP to co-administer the renowned Biological Station at Cocha Cashu, located in the heart of Manu. The station is dedicated principally to scientific investigations, but in recent years has been reaching out to indigenous communities. ‘Our relationship with the indigenous populations today is stronger on themes of intercultural environmental education. One of the principal activities is school visits from communities in the interior of the Park and in the buffer zone,’ says Roxana Arauco, Joint Director of the Biological Station at Cocha Cashu. ‘From our corner we stimulate the academic thinking on integrating the communities in the management of the Park,’ says Arauco, who has among her plans a publication that compiles all the traditions of the communities to help keep them alive. Ever since Manu National Park was created, many people have made decisions for the people who live there. They told them how to live in their own home and restricted their rights, making them ask permission for everything and wait for help. Now, at long last, some organizations are asking them: ‘And you? How do you want to live?’ O JACK LO LAU IS A PERUVIAN JOURNALIST FOCUSED ON INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES’ RIGHTS, SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS, AND NATURAL TERRITORIES AND WILDLIFE. JACKLOLAU.COM
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is an environmental activist and member of Chad’s pastoralist Mbororo community who believes in twinning traditional knowledge with science to tackle ecosystem challenges. The founder of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, she spoke to Dinyar Godrej about how indigenous people preserve nature.
1 Estimates for the population of indigenous peoples in isolation are not reliable. The best guess is 7,000 for the entire region of which Manu National Park is a part.
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‘INDIGENOUS PEOPLE RESPECT ALL SPECIES’ Can you explain more about indigenous peoples’ relationship to nature? Indigenous people from every corner of the globe recognize that other species are part of nature and as human beings we are also part of nature. We do not see other species as separate. My community in Chad, the Mbororo people, when we leave one place to go to another, we give way for the ecosystem to get regenerated. We know that we can learn from the birds, the insects, the cattle, the trees and flowers, because we observe them. They give us the information we need for our food, for our medicine. All the species for us are important and they are equal; we respect each of them. As a cattle-rearing community, how do you strike a balance between maintaining the herds and living with predators and other species? In my region, the savannah, we have all the different predators that you can imagine. But you can get a young boy of seven who can take a hundred cattle away from other people for the whole day and come back. He does not get attacked by a lion or by other predators. They know how to live in harmony, how to move in harmony, by knowing and respecting each other. The time that the predator comes and drinks the water is not the time that the cattle can come and drink. When we go out, we know the spaces and the appearance of
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all the animals that live in our path and they also know that we are respecting them. They do not attack because of the centuries-old knowledge that we have of the behaviours of each animal. In the dry season, when there is not enough food for the lion or other predators in the bush, the communities meet and they sacrifice some cattle. They feed the predators, if they do not have anything else to eat. Then the predator does not attack. We never hear that people are scared to go out with their cattle just because there is a lion there. What do you think of the ‘protected area’ approach of conservation? There have been instances when indigenous people have been evicted from their lands to create national parks. We do not agree that they create a national park and then lock it down completely, because it is not the way that nature lives. They also lock down the diversity of the ecosystem. We know how to keep the balance, how to avoid that one species becomes dominant. The hunter-gatherers know which animals to hunt and which to leave. It is all about balance, about how we can manage all the resources in a better way. But when you close it, the pastoralists cannot get access to water, you have to go around the park. Each park has hundreds of kilometres and some of them
are transboundary. They think they can put nature in a box and lock it and say, ‘Oh, we are protecting it.’ But protecting nature is not like this. Nature is a natural state, a natural way and it is really about living in harmony. It has become a business, at the end of the day. We don’t want nature to become a business. When they lock it down, who can pay to get inside and watch? It is the rich tourists. You do not get a tribal person who can pay to go into Zakouma [a 3,000 km 2 national park in southeastern Chad] and then say, ‘Oh, I fed a giraffe and that has made my day.’ We already live with them, we do not take a photo of them, we leave them to live their lives. There is now UN recognition of the need for participation of indigenous communities in biodiversity conservation. Is that happening on the ground? It does not happen. That’s why we are asking to have full and effective participation at all levels. If they only involve us at the international level, it’s going to be only a declaration or paper – but those who will implement it will be at the national level and at the local level. If they accept what we propose – respecting rights, involvement, participation – they have to apply it in laws and decisions at the national level. And that is not happening. O
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THE BIG STORY
Words: Dinyar Godrej
WHAT IT TAKES Around the world thousands of conservation projects are trying to rescue wildlife species in peril, often against huge odds. Each of them will face unique challenges, as these brief case histories demonstrate.
Something to whoop about The whooping crane, a migratory species that traversed between sites in the US and Western Canada, had all but died out by the mid-1940s, with just 21 birds remaining. Habitat loss and indiscriminate hunting had just about done it in. Hunting the birds had been banned for over 20 years by then, but recovery from such small numbers was not guaranteed. In the 1960s biologists embarked on a captive breeding programme to boost numbers. This involved getting the monogamous birds to produce more than one clutch of eggs every breeding season, by taking away the first eggs laid for artificial incubation, encouraging the couple to mate again and lay more. Chicks born from eggs left in the nest were raised by the adult birds, but those hatched in an incubator imprinted with their human keepers. In order to make these birds capable of being released in the wild, keepers dressed head to toe in white crane costumes and taught the hatchlings whooping crane behaviour. By the early 1990s, the first chicks raised in this manner were reintroduced to central Florida, where they successfully mated and produced a wild whooping crane chick in 2000. Another hurdle successfully tackled was teaching these newly reintroduced chicks how to migrate from Florida to Wisconsin for the summer – a 1,900-kilometre journey.
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For this the team partnered with Operation Migration, whose volunteers began training the chicks to follow an ultralight aircraft driven by a pilot dressed in full crane costume. Landowners along the way provided safe overnight rest stops. And so began the first human-led migrations of whooping cranes. The human effort involved – much of it voluntary – has been staggering. Today whooping crane numbers have risen to 826: still endangered but no longer critically. Whether theirs is a success story will depend on whether the next challenge is overcome – conserving their wetlands habitat.
This frog went to market In 1998 Ivan Lonzano, then director of Bogotá’s wildlife rescue centre, was called to the city’s airport by Colombian police who had intercepted two boxes destined for Europe. Inside were crammed nearly 800 highly colourful poison dart frogs, many from critically endangered species, most either dead or dying. The shock of this encounter spurred Lonzano on a conservation journey that nearly ruined him financially and also almost ended his marriage. Colombia has 734 frog species of which 160 are critically endangered. Unfortunately international frog collectors and unscrupulous traffickers paid little heed to that latter fact. Lonzano hit upon the controversial idea of creating a legal
trade of captive bred poison frogs (which, incidentally, lose their poison but none of their exotic colouration in captivity), hoping this would drive down market prices and thus make it less attractive to lift specimens from the wild. It took him years building up the knowhow to breed the frogs and trying to convince the Colombian government of his good intentions so they would permit him to export them legally. His efforts are now beginning to pay off – collectors are attracted by this legal channel for obtaining frogs and prices for specimens from the species he breeds have tumbled, pulling the rug from under the traffickers. Lonzano notes that many of the collectors have successfully bred frogs from specimens he has supplied and sold them on, further lowering prices. His next step is to breed frogs for reintroduction into the wild.
The shy rhino’s fertility experts Desperate efforts have been underway for over three decades to prevent the shy Sumatran rhino from going extinct. A lonely species prone to emitting melodious squeals, the Sumatran has earned the nickname ‘the singing rhino’. Once ranging across an arc of Southeast Asia from Bhutan down to Indonesia, today the few that remain in the wild (numbers are estimated as anywhere between 30 to 80) are found in pockets of jungle in
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From left to right: A conservationist demonstrates to a class of schoolchildren the whooping crane costume used to rear chicks. NATURE AND SCIENCE/ALAMY
Bullseye harlequin poison dart frog from the rainforest of Colombia. DIRK ERCKEN/ALAMY
Andatu, the first Sumatran rhinoceros born in captivity in Indonesia. REYNOLD SUMAKYU/ALAMY
Sumatra and Borneo. As their habitat has dwindled and fragmented over time, the few that remain are further separated. Over the years this has led to inbreeding and shrinking genetic diversity. While there is a renewed push towards habitat preservation (though recent roadbuilding plans in Aceh province form yet another new threat), conservationists have long felt the only chance of survival rests in captive breeding. So, back in 1984, the decision was made to capture individuals in the wild, keep them safe in captivity and thus try to bring up numbers. Easier said than done. Of the 40 rhinos first captured, 13 had died by the end of the decade due to issues ranging from disease and injury to being fed the wrong diet (hay instead of the fresh vegetation they ate in the wild). There were also no calves. It looked like conservationists were helping this species to extinction. Two Sumatran rhinos in the Cincinnati Zoo in the US developed eye problems which keepers discovered were due to too much time in the sun – in the wild they would have been shaded by the forest canopy. The zoo spent $500,000 for special awnings to provide shade. The fertility problem was partly due to this species being induced ovulators; females only ovulate in the presence of males. Another problem was that if females didn’t mate regularly, they developed uterine cysts and growths and
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if they didn’t get pregnant and deliver babies often enough they rapidly became infertile. When natural mating was attempted, miscarriages were common. The first calf was not born until 2001 and so far only two captive females, one in the US and another in Sumatra, have produced babies. This does not augur well for the future as the small population in the wild continues to not produce enough offspring. The race is now on to try IVF techniques using surrogate mothers. This means trying to capture yet more animals. Extracting eggs from rhinos is fraught with danger due to their anatomy – one wrong move and a major blood vessel could be punctured. Even if the efforts succeed, it looks likely that the Sumatran rhino’s future could be as a captive species, as its wilderness home continues to shrink.
The recalcitrant tree The Sicilian Zelkova (Zelkova sicula) was first discovered in 1991 in a single population of 230 in the Iblei Mountains, eastern Sicily. A second patch of about 1,000 trees was found within the same mountain range in 2009. Considered one of the most endangered tree species in the world, the hunt is on for further sites. Due to a chromosomal irregularity, the Sicilian Zelkova produces sterile seeds and propagation is via root suckers.
Scientific research has shown that the remaining populations could likely be traced back to a single ancestor. The two known sites have been fenced off to prevent grazing and afforestation activities are afoot in the region but the threat to the trees could come from climatic sources, with prolonged dry weather a particular enemy. So conservationists have decided that the best bet is to raise enough new saplings to be trialled in other locations where the environmental conditions might be more favourable. That’s easier said than done, as scientists have discovered. While the team at the Conservatoire National Botanique of Brest has worked on obtaining new plants from root cuttings, scientists at the Institute of Biosciences and BioResources of Palermo have been trying in vitro techniques. After many years of trial and error, during which the species was described as ‘recalcitrant’ to in vitro culture, the researchers finally succeeded. But of all the saplings so far produced, only eight per cent managed to acclimatize outdoors. Reintroductions in the wild are underway and investigation into what role this rare species plays within the ecosystem is ongoing. O
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Planet Farm As industrial agriculture encroaches into the last wild places of the Earth, it’s unleashing dangerous pathogens. Time to heal the metabolic rift between ecology and economy, suggests Rob Wallace.
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ARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind Covid-19, is on the march. It’s infecting hundreds of thousands of people a day the world over. In countries that handled the outbreak badly – among them the US, Britain and Brazil – government rhetoric has at times suggested, in the early days and pre-vaccine, letting the virus largely ‘run its course’. With little scientific backing, politicians such as Donald Trump have declared that a mythical herd immunity – leaving perhaps millions dead in its wake – will save us.1 Agribusiness likewise proclaims that the industry that helped set loose many of this century’s deadly outbreaks is exactly the right path forward. The likes of the Animal Agriculture Alliance and the Breakthrough Institute say biosecurity, technology and economies of scale – bigger is better – are the only way to protect us from another pandemic. Never mind that agribusiness production and land grabs conducted in its name are documented to have driven the emergence of multiple pathogens in the past two decades.
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How did we arrive at a historical moment when the very causes of the ongoing crisis are repeatedly presented as its solution? Modern agriculture emerged handin-hoof with capitalism, the global slave trade and science. European countries deployed early imperial scientists to decode the new landscapes and peoples their ships encountered on their voyages of conquest. Imperial science also helped recode these lands and peoples for capital accumulation. From Europe and Africa, the various stages of capitalism that followed expanded across the Americas, the Caucuses and the tropics, turning locally tended food landscapes into export commodities. From 1700 to 2017, large-scale croplands and pasture expanded fivefold to 27 million km 2. The practice of industrializing livestock and crop production took off to new heights after the Second World War. Forty per cent of Earth’s ice-free surface is now dedicated to agriculture and represents the planet’s largest biome. Many millions more hectares are
Industrializing pathogens? Cattle pictured in a feedlot in South Africa. MARTIN HARVEY/GETTY IMAGES
When thousands of genetically identical birds are stacked together – like these chickens on a farm in France – there are no immunological firebreaks to stop the spread of disease. GETTY IMAGES
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Intensive poultry operations are so inundated with avian and swine influenza that they now serve as their own reservoirs for new strains
to be brought into production by 2050, especially in the Global South, where what little ‘virgin’ farmland remains is to be cut out of the last of the rainforests and savannahs. The poultry and livestock alive today represent 72 per cent of global animal biomass, far surpassing the total biomass of vertebrate wildlife. 2 Industrialized food animals are beginning to spread across the globe in veritable cities of pigs and chickens. What was once Planet Earth has been turned into Planet Farm. These expansions are networked by circuits of capital and consumption. The circuits source an increasing volume of trade in live animals, produce, processed food and germplasm. The growing patches of monoculture are characterized by declining diversity in animals and crops, as technical interventions select a few genetic breeds over all others. 3 Varieties also are being lost as companies consolidate. Such economically driven shifts have produced profound impacts upon both our ecology and public health.
Enter the celebrity pathogen
We must reintroduce agrobiodiversity to serve as an immunological firebreak against deadly pathogens 36
The production of limited lines of monogastric (‘single-stomach’) species, primarily pigs and poultry, is displacing locally adapted breeds of a wide array of animals across nonindustrial countries. Similar trends are found in crops feeding both human populations and industrial livestock. Along agriculture’s advance, primary natural habitat and nonhuman populations are contracting at record rates, destroying indigenous and smallholder land and livelihoods along the way. Deforestation and development are increasing the rate – and taxonomic scope – of pathogen spillover from wildlife to food animals and the labourers who tend them. Covid-19 represents only one of a series of novel pathogen strains to have suddenly emerged or re-emerged in the 21st century as threats to humanity. These outbreaks – avian and swine influenza, Ebola Makona, Q fever, Zika, among many others – have all been tied to changes in production or land use associated with intensive agriculture, as well as logging and mining.4 Pathogens emerge differently, depending upon place and commodity. But all are connected within the same web of environmental damage and global expropriation, which explains the cross-continental
nature of the new pathogens. SARS in China. MERS in the Middle East. Zika in Brazil. H5Nx in Europe. Swine flu H1N1 in North America. How does production drive these outbreaks? At one end of a region’s nascent commodity chain, the diverse complexity of primary forest typically bottles up ‘wild’ pathogens. 5 Potential hosts are irregularly encountered. But transnational logging, mining and intensive agriculture change these dynamics. They drastically streamline that natural complexity. While many pathogens on such neoliberal frontiers die off along with their host species, a subset of infections that once burned out relatively quickly in the forest can suddenly propagate much more widely. Ebola offers a classic example. Since the mid-1970s, Ebola outbreaks typically besieged a sub-Saharan village or two before dying out. In 2013-15, the Makona strain emerged along a frontier of monoculture oil palm and other crops out of an increasingly expropriated and globalized West African landscape.6 Although little differentiated it in its genetics or clinical course compared to previous Ebola outbreaks, the Makona strain would go on to infect 35,000 people, killing thousands living in major cities and suddenly only a flight away from the rest of the world.
Selecting for greater deadliness Other diseases emerge at the other end of the production chain. Deadly and human-adapted avian and swine influenzas typically crop up in intensive operations located closer to major cities North and South. Of the 39 documented transitions from low to high deadliness in avian influenzas from 1959 onwards, all but two occurred in commercial poultry operations, typically of tens or hundreds of thousands of birds. 7 Intensive operations are so inundated with circulating avian and swine influenza that they now serve as their own reservoirs for new strains. 8 Populations of wild waterfowl are no longer the only source. What is it about industrial farms that makes them breed such infections? Industrial turkeys are grown in barns of 15,000 birds. Industrial layers (hens that lay eggs) are stocked in barns of up to 250,000 birds. Growing animals in vast monocultures removes the immune firebreaks that would ordinarily cut off outbreaks in more diverse populations.9
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Pathogens routinely evolve around the now commonplace host immune genotypes of industrial livestock. Overcrowding and poor hygiene induce intense stress in such food animals, which can depress their immune response and make them more vulnerable to infection. Housing high concentrations of livestock and poultry rewards those strains that can burn through them fastest. Animals are now slaughtered at ever younger ages. Growing out chickens in only 6 weeks and pigs in 22 weeks may select for greater pathogen deadliness, including infections that are able to survive younger, more robust immune systems. ‘All-in/all-out’ production – an attempt to control outbreaks by growing out livestock in batches – may unwittingly select for an infection threshold that lines up with finishing times the industry sets for its herds and flocks. That is, successful strains evolve life histories that kill grown-out farm animals near slaughter, when stock is most valuable. With no reproduction on-site and breeding conducted offshore – largely for market traits like more meat and fast growth – livestock populations are also unable to evolve resistance to circulating pathogens. As survivors do not breed, they cannot pass on their resistance. Beyond the farm gate, the increasing distance live animals are shipped has expanded the diversity of the genetic segments that pathogens exchange, increasing the rate and combinations over which diseases explore their evolutionary possibilities. The greater the variation in their genetics, the faster pathogens evolve. In short, in industrializing meat production, global agribusiness is also industrializing the pathogens that circulate among its livestock and poultry.
Emergence of Covid-19 Covid-19 origins are something of a mixture of these two ends of our circuits of production, the forest and the industrial farm.10 Coronaviruses are hosted by bats around the world. But the strain that bats host in China appears to hit humans worse once it successfully jumps species. The environment in which these bats live has also changed in foundational ways. Upon its economic liberalization postMao, China undertook the BRICS route of development, intent on feeding its own people with its own natural resources. Millions were pulled out of poverty.
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Millions were left behind. Pro or con, in taking this course, Chinese agribusiness and an increasingly capitalized wildfoods sector cut into the landscape of central and south China, where many of these bat populations are located. As with Ebola, the interfaces among the bats, livestock, wild-food animals, farmers and miners on this commodity frontier expanded, boosting the traffic of various SARS-like coronaviruses. Increasing pesticide applications, at a scale far beyond even an already drenched US, may have reduced the insect populations bats feed on. This may have increased the interface coronavirus hosts shared with human populations as bats expanded their foraging range looking for food. With the wild-foods and agricultural production lines increasing in extent and speed, many a SARS-like coronavirus that successfully spilled over into a food animal or into a human could now make its way in short order across the periurban landscape to regional capitals such as Wuhan before hopping on the global travel network.
A way out It all seems such a trap. Is there anything we can do? Yes, there is. We first must reject the ‘normal’ that brought us this mess. Growing food isn’t about making objects. Food items aren’t widgets. Agriculture must be turned from an industrial economy back to something more like a natural economy. We must return to assimilating a respect for food’s context – the soil, water, air, ecological matrix and community wellbeing on which food, and the people who eat it, depend. To box out the deadliest of pathogens, we must preserve forest (and wetland) complexity, maintaining ecological buffers across bats, geese, other natural disease reservoirs, our food animals and our communities. We must reintroduce agrobiodiversity into livestock and poultry to serve as an immunological firebreak against deadly pathogens both on farms and across whole landscapes. We must return to letting livestock reproduce on-site so that herds and flocks can protect themselves against pathogens in real time. Such interventions require restoring the locus of control to rural communities, and away from agribusiness. In short, to keep the worst of outbreaks from emerging in the first place,
we must turn to the kind of state planning that centres farmer autonomy, community socioeconomic resilience, circular economies, integrated co-operative supply networks, land trusts and reparations. We must undo deeply historical race, class and gender trauma at the centre of land grabbing and environmental alienation. On the world stage, we must end the unequal ecological exchange between Global North and South. Healing the metabolic rift between ecology and economy that drives pathogen emergence (and climate damage) at the heart of modern agriculture involves planting a different political philosophy. Betting that agribusiness, the major source of the pandemic problem, will provide the solution is otherwise at best futile. We can do better thinking (and acting) anew. O ROB WALLACE IS AN EVOLUTIONARY EPIDEMIOLOGIST WITH THE AGROECOLOGY AND RURAL ECONOMICS RESEARCH CORPS BASED IN ST PAUL, US. HE IS AUTHOR OF BIG FARMS MAKE BIG FLU AND THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED DEAD EPIDEMIOLOGISTS: ON THE ORIGINS OF COVID-19. HE HAS CONSULTED FOR THE FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION AND THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION.
1 C Aschwanden, ‘The false promise of herd immunity for Covid-19’, Nature 587, 2020. nin.tl/HerdImmunity. 2 N Ramankutty et al, ‘Trends in global agricultural land use: Implications for environmental health and food security’, Annual Review Plant Biology, 69, 2018. nin.tl/ LandUseSecurity 3 R Wallace et al, ‘Ebola in the hog sector: Modeling pandemic emergence in commodity livestock’ Neoliberal Ebola: Modeling Disease Emergence from Finance to Forest and Farm, Springer Cham, 2016. nin.tl/PandemicHogs 4 M Gilbert et al, ‘Income disparities and the global distribution of intensively farmed chicken and pigs’, PLoS ONE, 10(7). nin.tl/PandemicPigs 5 BA Jones et al, ‘Zoonosis emergence linked to agricultural intensification and environmental change’, PNAS 110(21), 2013. nin.tl/ZoonosisAg 6 R Wallace et al, Clear-Cutting Disease Control, Springer Cham, 2018. 7 J Olivero et al, ‘Recent loss of closed forests is associated with Ebola virus disease outbreaks’, Nature Scientific Reports, 2018. nin.tl/ForestLoss 8 MS Dhingra et al, ‘Geographical and historical patterns in the emergences of novel Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5 and H7 viruses in poultry’, Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 5, 2018. nin.tl/AvianInfluenza 9 SH Olson et al, ‘Sampling strategies and biodiversity of influenza A subtypes in wild birds.’ PLoS One, 9(3), 2014. nin.tl/Wildbirds 10 RG Wallace, Big Farms Make Big Flu, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2018. 11 RG Wallace, Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2020.
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The sheltering forest Tesfa-Alem Tekle travels to meet the Ethiopian farmers whose unique agroforestry system has kept hunger at bay for millennia.
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An ingenious agroforestry farming system, which combines trees, shrubs and crops is practiced throughout Ethiopia’s lush southern highlands. OLIVIER BOURGUET/ALAMY
No need for aid
E T H I O P I A GEDEO Bule
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s we drive along a dirt road up into the hills towards Gedeo in southern Ethiopia, the forest becomes noticeably denser and the air increasingly humid. I roll the window all the way down, close my eyes and smell the fresh, sweet air flowing in. I am on my way to the district of Bule, home to the Gedeo people, who practice a unique form of agroforestry on their land. The United Nations reports that nearly eight million people in Ethiopia do not have adequate food. But while poverty levels are high in Gedeo, food does not run short. To understand why this is, I’ve come to meet Aster Gemede, 32, a farmer and mother of six. She appears at the entrance to her bamboo-fenced compound, flanked by three daughters and a small barking dog. I’m welcomed in with a warm smile and one of her elder daughters starts to roast coffee beans. ‘We grow it here in our yard,’ explains Aster. ‘We plant coffee in our home gardens together with food crops like enset [sometimes known as ‘fake banana’], cabbage, potatoes, maize and carrots.’ A tapestry of trees, shrubs and crops covers over 95 per cent of the land in Gedeo, which runs along the eastern edge of Ethiopia’s southern highlands, 370-kilometres from the capital Addis Ababa. It’s a farming system that also supports wildlife such as the black and white Mantled Colobus monkeys, which we see en route to Aster’s farm in the tops of giant trees, leaping away noisily on our approach.
‘For my family, hunger has never been a concern,’ Aster says. ‘Unlike other areas, we have never been aid-dependent.’ She reports that her multi-storey garden on this steep-sloped high-altitude land provides a nutritious diet for all her children. Data from the local agriculture bureau confirms this. Despite high levels of chronic undernourishment in southeastern Ethiopia, Bule district is classified as food sufficient. The bureau reports that
Gedeo is one of the few places never to have experienced famine, even as severe hunger and drought spread to southern Ethiopia in the 1980s. When I ask how the latest shock – Covid-19 – has impacted her family, Aster’s answer is immediate: ‘Not at all’. Aster has no formal schooling. Her parents taught her the indigenous farming system in their back yard as a young teenager: how to water seedlings in a nursery, plant trees and weed. She is now passing on the knowledge to her own children. During the last rainy season, Aster’s eldest daughter, 14-yearold Meseret Ayano, planted 11 fruit trees, which are expected to start bearing fruit in about 6 to 7 years, when Meseret might be starting her own family.
Agroforesty has been passed down from generation to generation in Gedeo since Neolithic times Agroforesty has been passed down like this from generation to generation in Gedeo since Neolithic times, making it one of the oldest farming systems in the world. The system endures in an area with the highest rural population density in Ethiopia (1,300 people per kilometre squared), without degrading the land, while sustaining great diversity. A study from Gedeo’s Kochore district found 165 plant species within and around home gardens.1 In Gedeo culture, nature is seen as an intermediary between God (magenno) and humans and therefore demanding
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Aster can provide for all her family’s needs on a very small landholding – less than 0.5 hectare of respect. Under their belief system, the mass-felling or cutting of immature trees is taboo, along with the killing of birds. Certain areas of the forest are set aside as sacred (some of them shelter megalithic monuments). They act as reservoirs of biodiversity, home to large and very old species of trees that are critically endangered elsewhere.2
Bountiful enset Before I arrive, Aster and her daughters were cooking kocho, a baked flat-bread made from the fermented carbohydraterich stem of the enset plant. Aster tells me enset products don’t perish and can last for months or even up to 10 years if buried underground. The drought-resistant enset crop is a major source of food in Bule and across large parts of southern Ethiopia. The tree takes four years to mature – when it yields 40 kilograms of food – so planting must be staggered. ‘Kocho is our main meal. We’ll have it with cabbage for lunch,’ Aster says. For breakfast this morning they had bulla, a porridge made from the liquid squeezed
out of enset pulp after grating and chopping the pulverized stem. ‘It’s tiresome work,’ acknowledges Aster, ‘but it brings many benefits to our family.’ Their diet is further supplemented by chickens, raised for their meat and eggs, and Aster’s mango and apple trees. Farms at lower altitudes also grow avocados, bananas and pineapples. The home garden also provides fuel, fodder for livestock, timber and maintains the fertility of the soil. Any surplus is sold on for cash. Women in Bule play a critical role in managing home garden agroforestry and are in charge of selling their produce, unlike in other areas where cash crops are dominant. ‘Every two weeks I go to a nearby market to sell our home garden products such as coffee and fruits,’ reports Aster. She also sells enset fibre, locally known as kancha, which is traded on to factories for industrial use. Aster can provide for all her family’s needs on a very small landholding – less than 0.5 hectare (slightly over half a football pitch). The secret to such high productivity is that each plant supports
the other. So, for example, the baker tree (millettia ferruginea), which is prized for improving soil fertility, is grown next to enset and coffee plants for its shade. The baker sheds its small leaves just as coffee fruits appear, to aid their ripening. In the middle of our discussion, Aster’s daughter, Meseret, who has been roasting coffee beans serves up the aromatic organic coffee, accompanied by fresh flatbread made from enset.
Cash crop vulnerability The next day I travel to Wondo Genet, an area in the neighbouring area of Sidama where farmers have abandoned agroforestry in favour of khat, a mild stimulant which is chewed throughout East Africa. In Mola Wondumu’s house, the mood is sombre. For the last 16 years, the 58-year-old farmer tells me, his family has been solely dependent on khat. It was a lucrative cash crop – some farmers had seen their yearly incomes more than quadruple – until this year, when an unknown pest ravaged the plants. ‘My income has halved,’ he says. ‘I’m not getting enough to feed my family and pay my children’s school fees.’ His loss coincides with an increase in the cost of food. ‘Since the Covid-19 pandemic, food prices have gone up in the markets to the point where we can’t afford to buy the main staples,’ he says, adding that several households in Wondo Genet have had to buy agroforestry produce as a cheaper alternative.
Farmers in neighbouring Sidama have cleared the forest to plant khat, a profitable cash crop. But a pest infestation and Covid-19 have now left them food insecure. TESFA-ALEM TEKLE / Mongabay.com
Opposite page: Forest of plenty: women in Bule collect produce from their home gardens, which provide food, animal fodder, firewood, medicines and timber. TESFA-ALEM TEKLE/Mongabay.com
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‘The pest invasion you observed in Wondo Genet area is becoming a major problem for khat farmers,’ confirms Beyene Teklu, assistant professor at the nearby Hawassa University. ‘At the moment it is very difficult to name the type of disease or pest whether fungal, bacterial or viral).’ Beyene’s team is due to begin research into the pest but is unlikely to publish their findings until later in 2021. Meanwhile, Mola’s family risk going hungry. Many Ethiopian smallholders have moved towards market-orientated ‘monocropping’ (growing a single crop year after year on the same land). In Gedeo, khat and coffee monocultures are starting to expand at the expense of intercropping of enset and coffee, leaving people exposed to shocks. The agroforestry system, productive as it is, is struggling to keep pace with population growth. ‘The population size is beyond the carrying capacity of the system, creating an imbalance,’ explains Tesfaye Abebe, professor of Agroforestry and Production Ecology at Hawassa University. ‘The burden leads to the degradation of forest
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species, which are the backbone of the system.’ Gedeo has seen its inhabitants increase from 800,0000 a decade ago to an estimated 1.5 million today. As farms get subdivided between heirs, there is less and less land available.
To the rescue? Ethiopia’s agroforestry specialists say intervention is needed to stop ancient agroforestry practices being lost. Professor Tesfaye believes one solution would be government agricultural extension programmes to help farmers plant higher-value coffee – which is grown throughout the southern highlands and accounts for 30 per cent of national output. Speciality coffee can fetch hundreds of dollars per kilogram in the capital. Many proposals hinge around bringing modern science to support Gedeo’s farmers. ‘There is an on-going effort by agricultural and forestry research and development institutions to compliment indigenous knowledge,’ says Teshome Tesema, an adviser at the Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute. Ideas include the introduction of higher
yielding crops, new fruit and vegetable varieties and training for farmers. ‘If we work together, I’m optimistic we can improve the livelihoods of local communities,’ he says. One hopeful development is the Ethiopian government taking the first step towards getting Gedeo recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, by submitting it to the ‘Tentative List’ in January 2020.3 Given the unpredictable environmental shocks that may lie ahead, Teshome believes improved agroforestry schemes may be the best future hope for millions of smallholder farmers across Ethiopia. ‘It will be a long process but it is achievable,’ he says. O TESFA-ALEM TEKLE IS AN ETHIOPIAN JOURNALIST AND ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER BASED IN ADDIS ABABA.
1 Yoseph Maru et al, ‘Indigenous ways of environmental protection in Gedeo community, Southern Ethiopia’, Cogent Food & Agriculture, Vol 6, No 1, 2020. nin.tl/BeliefSystem 2 Getachew Mulugeta et al, ‘Production and Ecological Potentials of Gedeo’s Indigenous Agroforestry Practices in Southern Ethiopia’, Journal of Resources Development and Management, Vol 30, 2017. nin.tl/GedeoAgroforestry 3 UNESCO, nin.tl/TentativeList
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COUNTRY PROFILE
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n the swanky Buenos Aires district of Puerto Madero, there are rooftop bars where a sausage sandwich costs $10. In the not-so-swanky district of Barrio 31, popularly known as the Villa 31 informal settlement, many workers don’t see $10 in a day. They are next door to each other and worlds apart at the same time, in what feels like a microcosm of Argentina. The eighth-largest country in the world by area, Argentina spans nearly 4,000 kilometres from the terracotta-red hills of Jujuy, on the Bolivian border, to where the gelid waters of the southern Atlantic lap at the shores of Tierra del Fuego. Buenos Aires, a port city on the Rio de la Plata, is an economic and cultural hub. Between the official capital and its vast suburban sprawl, Greater Buenos
Aires is home to almost 40 per cent of the country’s population. Argentina is home to indigenous peoples including the Mapuche, Tehuelche, Qom, Wichí and Guaraní. These groups were massacred during colonization by the Spanish and in postindependence military operations such as the 1878-85 Conquest of the Desert,
ARGENTINA decimating their populations. Today, indigenous people face an ongoing struggle to defend basic rights such as access to their ancestral lands. Argentina declared independence from Spain on 9 July 1816. It went on to be
shaped culturally and politically by waves of immigration from Europe, especially Spain and Italy, as well as from the Middle East. The country also has Latin America’s largest Jewish community. During the 20th century, Argentina was gripped by a series of military coups and dictatorships. During the last of these, from 1976 to 1983, 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured and murdered. The country has a strong commitment to never repeating these atrocities. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, whose children were disappeared during the dictatorship, still march around the square outside the the president’s offices every Thursday, supporting social causes and human rights. Since December 2019, Argentina has been ruled by centre-left president Alberto Fernández. Vice-president Cristina
BOLIVIA PARAGUAY CHILE
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STAR RATINGS Fernández de Kirchner was one of the ‘pink wave’ of leftwing leaders who ruled South America during the 2000s. Massive foreign debts and an impoverished population are intensifying age-old conflicts over natural resources and land ownership as the government casts about for export earnings that will bring dollars. Enormous monocultures of genetically modified soy destined for export have reshaped both land ownership dynamics and the land itself. The government gave the green light to genetically modified wheat in October. Environmentalists also rail against mega-mining and fracking. In December 2019, a controversial decision to remove water-protection laws in the picturesque Andean region of Mendoza was reversed after massive protests broke out. The change would have paved the way for
mining companies to use toxic chemicals such as cyanide and sulphuric acid. Argentina was already experiencing a severe economic recession before the Covid-19 pandemic. Sky-high inflation was making it harder for workers to reach the end of the month and poverty and unemployment were rising, highlighting the vast gap between the haves and the have-nots. A strict Covid-19 lockdown, which started on 20 March and has been gradually relaxed, pushed many more into poverty. With over a million Covid cases, the economy ailing, and campaigners desperate to avoid devastation of the country’s natural resources, Fernández will have to perform an almost impossibly delicate balancing act to guide the country back to prosperity. O AMY BOOTH
AT A GLANCE
POPULATION: 44.9 million. Population annual growth rate: 1.0%. People per square kilometre: 16 (UK 271). HEALTH: Infant mortality 8 per 1,000 live births (Bolivia 21, US 6). HIV prevalence 0.4%. Lifetime risk of maternal death 1 in 1,100 (US 1 in 3,000).
LITERACY +++++ 99%. Argentina has a strong tradition of public education and university is free. State and activist-run initiatives help adults to finish school. LIFE EXPECTANCY +++++ 77 years (Bolivia 71, US 79). POSITION OF WOMEN +++ +++,, ,, A vibrant feminist movement is driving progress, but key challenges remain. Abortion is only allowed in cases of rape or health risks, and even then, access is often denied in more conservative provinces. A debate on the issue in Congress was stalled for months because of the pandemic but the government is finally making moves to push this on. In 2018 there was 1.1 femicide per 100,000 women. ++++, FREEDOM ++++ A lively media ecosystem expresses a broad range of perspectives. Protests are common and tolerated, but the police sometimes use violent repression. SEXUAL MINORITIES +++++ Same-sex marriage is legal and the government recently implemented a trans labour quota.
LEADER: President Alberto Fernández ECONOMY: GNI per capita: $11,200 (Bolivia $3,530; United States $65,760) Monetary unit: Peso Main exports: Soya, oil and gas, corn, wheat, cars. Argentina is notorious for its economic instability and inflation is a perennial problem. Recent government figures show poverty at 40.9% and unemployment at 13.1%, a result of the recession and the Covid-19 pandemic.
INCOME DISTRIBUTION ++ ++,,, ,,, While the country’s elites protest a proposed wealth tax to assist pandemic relief, the working-class poor are being left destitute in increasing numbers.
monocultures and toxic agricultural chemicals on soils and rivers. CO2 emissions per capita 4.6 tonnes (Bolivia 2.0, US 15.5). RELIGION: Predominantly Roman Catholic, though only an estimated 20% are practising. Around 2% are Protestant and 2% Jewish. LANGUAGE: Spanish (official). Indigenous languages include Mapudungun and Quechua. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: 0.830, 48th of 189 countries (Bolivia 0.703, US 0.920).
++++, POLITICS ++++ The government is attempting to rebuild social institutions cut by the previous government of market-loving Mauricio Macri. Although its agenda has been hampered by Covid-19, it has pushed some progressive policies. President Fernández himself has now presented a bill to legalize abortion, and medicinal cannabis was legalized in mid-November. However, the state’s enthusiasm for extractivist and commodity-export projects as a path to growth has been repudiated by environmentalists.
ENVIRONMENT: Argentina has everything from dense, jungly subtropical forest near the Brazilian border to vast glaciers in Patagonia. Drought is a growing problem and wildfires during dry periods, often deliberately set, are degrading the country’s biodiverse Paraná delta. There are concerns about the impact of large-scale Photos (clockwise from top left): The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo during their weekly demonstration to establish the fate of their disappeared children and grandchildren during the 1976-83 dictatorship; statues of footballer Carlos Tevez and revolutionary icon Che Guevara in the La Boca quarter of Buenos Aires; colourful houses and artwork also in La Boca, which is famous for the Argentine tango; harvesting the traditional way near the village of Juella in the northwest of the country. ALL PHOTOS FROM MAJORITY WORLD: JULIO ETCHART, JULIO ETCHART, JEREMY JOWELL, ANDRES LOFIEGO.
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Otto René Castillo
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Otto René Castillo
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TEMPERATURE CHECK
Words — Danny Chivers
CAN AMAZON DELIVER A ZERO-CARBON FUTURE? Here’s a fun fact: online sales giant Amazon has a carbon footprint of over 50 million tonnes of CO2. That’s roughly equivalent to the emissions of the whole of New York City.1 But wait – back in 2019, Amazon pledged to go ‘net-zero’ by 2040, a full ten years before the 2050 in the 2015 climate deal – known as the Paris Agreement. So, is this corporate behemoth now a climate hero? Some of the company’s climate pledges look positive – building solar farms to power its operations, and purchasing 100,000 new electric vehicles. However, a key part of Amazon’s strategy looks less convincing: its $100-million ‘Right Now Climate Fund’, which uses ‘nature-based solutions’ to pull carbon from the air and ‘offset’ its carbon emissions. In 2020, Amazon announced that $10 million of this fund would be spent on US forestry projects. Landowners in Appalachia are rewarded for reducing harvesting in their woodlands, allowing trees to grow more densely and thus store more carbon. Amazon claims this will save 18.5 million tonnes of CO2 between now and 2031. Experts are already contesting these figures. For starters, they don’t fully take account of ‘leakage’ – the fact that demand for lumber will likely increase
elsewhere. There are also doubts around how the scheme will be monitored – any impacts would take place over many years and be very hard to measure. 2 These are common problems for any ‘nature-based’ methods for absorbing carbon. It’s true that the expansion of forests, wetlands and grasslands worldwide will be vital to avoid the worst climate impacts – but any attempt to measure the exact amount of carbon saved by any specific project will be approximate at best, and dangerously misleading at worst. The scale of its investments suggests that Amazon may plan to use these kinds of numbers to claim up to 20 per cent of its emissions will be ‘cancelled out’.
Net-zero = not zero? Amazon can use these forestry ‘carbon savings’ in its calculations because they’ve pledged to reach ‘net-zero’ emissions – in other words, they plan to show that, on balance, they are ‘absorbing’ as much greenhouse gas as they’re emitting. According to the UN, by late 2020, over 1,700 major organizations had set net-zero targets along with 22 countries and regions including the European Union, UK and Japan. The concept of net-zero took shape as a 2050 milestone in the 2015 Paris Agreement. It’s an important marker, and one
we need to urgently pass to reach ‘net negative’ emissions – the point where nature is absorbing more carbon than human society is emitting and global heating may begin to slow. The target makes sense on a planetary level. But the twin tasks of reducing emissions and restoring nature need very different solutions, in very different places. So setting these two things against each other within individual countries or businesses is harder to justify, and – as unscrupulous companies and governments have found – opens the door to all kinds of loopholes. If Amazon had set a straightforward carbon reduction target – say, a 50 per cent cut by 2030 – it would be much easier to hold it to account. Instead, it chose to announce a ‘net-zero by 2040’ target, safe in the knowledge that any shortfall can be plugged with nice-sounding (but near impossible to measure) forestry projects. Oil companies like BP and Equinor are also using vague promises of unproven carbon capture technology to claim they can reach net-zero while still extracting fossil fuels, as mentioned in Temperature Check NI528.
Whose carbon? Another caveat: why on Earth would we give tech giants and oil companies responsibility for the world’s forests? We know that locally controlled solutions – particularly those led by indigenous peoples – are the best at preserving and restoring forests and wildlands.3 Allowing corporations to control ‘natural solutions’ instead, while writing off large chunks of their emissions, is the worst of all worlds. O 1 nin.tl/AmazonSustainability, nin.tl/ NewYorkInventory2016 2 ‘How Amazon offsets could exaggerate its progress…’, MIT Technology Review, 2 November 2020 nin.tl/ForestryOffsets 3 Eg. ‘Investing in indigenous communities most efficient way to protect forests…’, July 2018, Mongabay.com nin.tl/InvestIndigenous
Amazon for the Amazon? Founder Jeff Bezos at his firm's HQ in Seattle. TED S WARREN/AP
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THE DEBATE
YES
KEHINDE ANDREWS Kehinde Andrews is a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University and author of Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century. His next book, The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World, will be published by Penguin in February 2021. He is the founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity and editor-in-chief of Make it Plain.
REPARATIONS – AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME? Does a racially just future need to include reparations for transatlantic slavery or is that a distraction from achieving equality for future generations?
KEHINDE: Transatlantic slavery was pivotal in the efforts to build what we now think of as the West. It was hundreds of years of slaughter, enslaving millions of Africans – turning us into commodities – in order to create unparalleled wealth for the West. So profitable was this system that in order to end slavery, the state provided the biggest ever bailout to private industry: 40 per cent of government revenue in 1834 was handed over to compensate slave-owners for their losses. So enormous was the sum that the loan from the Bank of the England was only paid off in 2015. If I and generations of families who descended from the enslaved have been paying to compensate slave-owners, then it is simply absurd to argue that this is an issue of the past. The wealth accrued from slavery is very much still with us and so is the poverty. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is necessary in the 21st century because the legacies of slavery still shape the present: poverty, institutional racism and even the racial stereotypes that dehumanize us into targets for state violence. Money is not the only issue but slavery unbalanced the playing field to the extent that there is no rational argument against the principle of reparations. K: When the writer TaNehisi Coates made the case in favour of
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reparations for slavery in The Atlantic, Daniel Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation, responded by writing that many of his fellow indigenous Americans were not fighting for reparations for the injustices done to them: ‘America’s ceremonies, habits and dominant institutions are all shaped by money. In such a society, it makes sense that monetary reparations will play a role in addressing injustice. However… the injustices of slavery and its real legacy may not be recompensed with dollars.’ Slavery is a human failure, a moral abyss. It stems from greed – free labour! – as does its long-enduring aftermath: the boot on the neck of those who might try to share in limited riches. American society believes in winners and losers. Mr Wildcat touches on the fundamental problem with the call for reparations: it affirms the ideals that birthed slavery. Money is power, worth – the only thing that matters. The greatest reparation for the cosmic violence of slavery is to reform society to one where everyone is able to live a decent life and has the opportunity to flourish and grow. I want that to be possible for all people regardless of colour, background or national origin. This call for reparations is a distraction. Were it to happen, in 50 years, some who receive
FULL REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY, GLOBALLY, WOULD GIVE US THE RESOURCES – WHICH ARE RIGHTFULLY OURS – NECESSARY TO CREATE THE WORLD ANEW – KEHINDE
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Reparations
reparations will be wealthy and secure, and some will again be living lives of degradation and despair and then we will be right back to where we started: in a country where people live lives of degradation and despair alongside those who thrive. In 50 years, I may just be alive. But I am not going to fight to hand my child the same broken system I came into. KEHINDE: Native Americans are a curious example to use given reparations have been a key component of much indigenous activism and there have been attempts at government compensation in both dollars and land. Indigenous peoples’ relationship with the political and economic system is also very different. America is founded on trying to erase the natives, whereas Africans were imported by the millions and forced to labour for free. The wealth generated from this exploitation fuelled the development of the US and there are tens of millions of AfricanAmericans living in poverty as a direct result. To pretend that repaying the substantial debt to the descendants of the enslaved can be repaid without money severely misunderstands the problem. Compensation to Native Americans is instructive in terms of the pitfalls that must be avoided in any serious scheme. The amount eventually paid out was the equivalent of less than $2 billion, hardly a genuine figure for genocide and theft of the land. The US government and corporations also largely controlled where the money went. I agree that the only route to true freedom is to build an alternative political and economic system. Full reparations for slavery, globally, would give us the resources – which are rightfully ours – necessary to create the world anew. K: I don’t dispute that the United States government at best meddles and at
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worst controls Native affairs despite the reparations and other attempts at restitution. And this ill-gotten abused land will never be returned. But I bring up Native Americans not to provide a balance sheet of who has been compensated (among whom have been Japanese-American internment victims and others) and who has not. I bring it up to disavow the selfcentredness of the claim. If I look far ahead to a future 20 years after reparations have been paid to formerly enslaved ethnicities and races, I can see a glimmer of an even more distant future in which those who receive reparations take control of societal institutions and plough the monies restituted into societal transformation. But mostly what I see looming in that future is a continuation of an unequal society – the mores that our winner-takes-all form of capitalism affirms. ‘Me and my kind first’ has long been the refrain of most peoples. From where I sit, it seems to me that Black people have yet to prove a claim of higher, better morality. Fighting for transformation instead of reparation could be that moment. KEHINDE: True reparations are not about individual claims for prosperity, or arguing that Black people should be at the head of the queue. Real reparative justice is by its nature transformative, because there is no way to repair the damage done by slavery that does not involve a fundamental shift in the way that society works. Legacies of slavery underpin our way of life, seeping into every institution and interaction. Once we understand how central slavery was to making what we currently have, we realize that the transfer of wealth necessary to rebalance the scales is impossible without rethinking the entire political and economic system. Even I
THE GREATEST REPARATION FOR THE COSMIC VIOLENCE OF SLAVERY IS TO REFORM SOCIETY TO ONE WHERE EVERYONE IS ABLE TO LIVE A DECENT LIFE –K
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KA DILDAY KA Dilday is a journalist based in New York City. She has worked at publications including The New York Times, Essence Magazine and openDemocracy.
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THE DEBATE
if it were possible to find the money, the payment would destroy the current economic order. The power of the reparations debate is that it reveals the necessity for revolutionary change. We are not interested in a pay-off so we can be slightly better off in an unequal society. Repairing the damage done in slavery means building a just society. There can be no tinkering at the margins. Reparations are a reminder of the scale of change needed to build the word anew, not just for the descendants of the enslaved. K: This discussion has convinced me that we are more in step on this topic than apart: we agree that the true goal is fundamental societal change. Yet, while I see focusing on reparations for slavery as an ancillary topic that distracts, and a positional demand that divides, it seems to me that you see reparations as the redistribution necessary to jump-start this
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Tell us here: [email protected] We will print a selection of your views in the next issue.
fundamental societal transformation. It’s true that I want white people (and others around the world who have enslaved fellow humans) to acknowledge that their wealth and position in society were achieved by climbing on our backs and the backs of others. Will financial recompense make up for the horrors my people have suffered? No. There is no monetary price that can recompense what we lost and there is no amount of money that will warm me while I know that others are still living in the cold. I once asked a wealthy friend, ‘Isn’t it hard to enjoy your money when you see so many others suffering?’ I ask those calling for reparations the same. But the goal of a fundamental transformation of global society to one that makes its best attempt to provide everyone with a safe, healthy life and the opportunity to flourish as they choose – ‘a world anew’ as you call it – that is a vision we share. O
YOUR VIEWS ON: COULD THE SDGS DELIVER ON THEIR PROMISES? A reader responds to a debate in a previous issue (NI526).
It is intellectually dishonest of the 191 countries Rynhart cites to make ‘promises’ they have no intention of keeping. But New Internationalist is quite right to give the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) airtime. One (perhaps unintended) consequence of the SDG process lies in its evidence base. Its framework is in the public domain, equally revealing is what is concealed and reported on annually. This improves on past global efforts like the Millennium Development Goals or Global Negotiations. Your two dialecticians are both as badly off track as the SDGs themselves. Probably because of their institutional background, they both fail to note that developing country progress without the sine qua non of good governance is impossible, leaving the other SDGs as walk-on parts. A recent progress report on SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions boldly states that ‘realizing the goal of peaceful, just and inclusive societies is still a long way off. In recent years, no substantial advances have been made towards ending violence, promoting the rule of law, strengthening institutions at all levels, or increasing access to justice.’ The Goal is in freefall. Beirut, Belarus? With 230 indicators underpinning the 17 SDGs, all to be achieved by 2030, the SDGs are just a bureaucrat’s dream, or a further insult to all poor and marginalized people. Finally, just as the MDGs’ omission of a governance goal neatly short-circuited their strategic purpose, the expanded SDG framework ignores the growing number of displaced people worldwide (nearly 80 million by the end of 2019). That’s the emergency and the scandal. Your contributors seem to avoid the tough questions. With just 10 years to go, don’t we deserve better? JOHN GIBB
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The assault on journalists is an assault on democracy
As I write, Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono is locked up in a highsecurity prison in Harare, again. Dragged through the courtroom in leg irons, Chin’ono’s crime was using Twitter to criticize Zimbabwe’s government, apparently in breach of his bail conditions. This time he raised questions about a senior government official caught allegedly smuggling gold. Chin’ono was only released in October after another arrest for using social media to criticize the state. Chin’ono is not the only African journalist who has suffered this kind of violence in recent months. On 10 November, Ethiopian journalist Bekalu Alamrew was arrested for his reporting on the escalating crisis in the country’s Tigray region. Towards the end of October, several Angolan journalists were beaten and detained while covering anti-government protests. In Burundi, journalists from the independent outlet Iwacu marked one year behind bars for the crime of ‘undermining state security’. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, around the world
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ILLUSTRATION: KATE COPELAND
VIEW FROM AFRICA
22 journalists have been killed and 248 imprisoned so far in 2020, another shocking indicator that democracy is under threat across the globe. The statistics from the last 10 years show that journalism remains a most dangerous profession. On aggregate the numbers of those killed has happily decreased in the last two years but arbitrary and indefinite detentions, like those endured by Chin’ono, are increasingly common: states using vague laws, particularly on new media, to intimidate and harass journalists. For digital journalists, bloggers and activists in particular, vaguely worded criminal law has become the go-to intervention for power to reclaim its position. When the people who hold up a mirror to power are viewed as a threat, it not only speaks to the insecurities of those with power, but also to the lengths they will go to preserve it. To put it simply, when journalists start dying then so does democracy. This more longitudinal view affirms that the red flag about global democracy around the world went up years ago, even if public anxiety on this score is only just taking root. Particularly in countries like Zimbabwe, the fact that journalists have never enjoyed peace under the current regime indicates that it was never going to depart from the military rule it replaced. In places like Kenya, government actions can look tame in comparison. Here bloggers are routinely arrested and held overnight as acts of intimidation, but again this is an indicator that the quality of the
nation’s public sphere has been compromised by the interests of power. Of course, that still leaves the question of what people can do about it. Zimbabwean activists have raised the alarm about Chin’ono, as have various other groups about different cases of arbitrary arrest and detention. One awful outcome for a political inmate is to be abandoned in prison, where states routinely resort to petty tyrannies like denying visits or physical safety just to drive their intimidation home. We must pay attention to what is happening to these people and amplify their cases so that, at the very least, democracy is not assaulted unimpeded. O NANJALA NYABOLA IS A POLITICAL ANALYST BASED IN NAIROBI, KENYA. SHE IS THE AUTHOR OF DIGITAL DEMOCRACY, ANALOGUE POLITICS: HOW THE INTERNET ERA IS TRANSFORMING KENYA (ZED BOOKS) AND TRAVELLING WHILE BLACK: ESSAYS INSPIRED BY A LIFE OF TRAVEL (HURST).
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Betty Bigombe Ignoring death threats, Betty Bigombe threw herself into the deep and dangerous end of peace-making in her bid to end the war in Uganda between Joseph Kony’s brutal Lord’s Resistance Army and the government of Yoweri Museveni.
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orn into a poor community in 1950s Uganda, the eighth of eleven children, Betty Bigombe seemed to be destined to a life of carrying water and fetching wood. But her talent as a natural ‘problem solver’ was spotted while she was still at school. At that time, she says, ‘You finished education; the next thing was to get married, be a good housewife.’ However, she was determined to continue her studies, getting to and graduating from Harvard Kennedy School, the public-policy wing of Harvard University, in 1979. During her time in the US she did not lose sight of what was going on back home – which in early 1980s Uganda was a civil war against the rule of Milton Obote. ‘The war stayed with me all the time.’ Fast forward to 1986; the civil war is over, and former rebel leader Yoweri Museveni is now the country’s president and he wants Betty’s help. He knows that people in northern and eastern Uganda are vehemently opposed to his government. He asks Betty to go there and quietly observe how his troops are handling the civilian population. Betty does so and reports back that his soldiers are committing serious human rights abuses. ‘I made it very clear to him. He made changes. But it was already too late.’ The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, had taken up arms and was enjoying local support. Betty recalls: ‘I was asked by the president to live there and try to end the war by peaceful means, by persuading armed people to lay down
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their weapons. I thought all this was going to take me a couple of months.’ She was soon to learn otherwise. Although she originates from northern Uganda and is of the same ethnic Acholi group as Kony, this did not help initially. ‘I was perceived as a traitor.’ Kony himself sent a warning: ‘Get out of here or else we’re going to kill you. This is not a woman’s job. This is a big insult to us... Get out of here. You’re not part of us any more.’ She realized that instead of telling people to ‘stop fighting’ she needed to listen to their grievances. ‘This is something I learned on the job: that listening, being patient, even with the worst killer, helps a lot because in the process, you remove that mask of a killer, the brute.’ People came to see her ‘ready to kill, shaking, not blinking’ and she would put on ‘a very calm face’ so that slowly they would settle and be ready to talk. At first she met people in town halls. But the breakthrough was when she decided to go and stay in the internal displacement camps where the mothers,
wives, fathers, uncles and aunts of the fighters were living. ‘The grassroots. They know exactly who is doing what; they know who you can talk to and make a difference. And that is how I lowered myself in… I said, if they wanted to insult the president, they should feel free. It was better than fighting. If they wanted to insult me, feel free.’ Then one day, several victims of the LRA turned up, limbs freshly amputated, bearing a blood-drenched warning letter for her from Kony. ‘Seeing people freshly cut, looking at human beings drenched in blood, and they could still talk and I could see their hearts were still beating, ears and arms cut off, it was devastating.’ She resolved to write a personal letter to the mothers, wives, sisters. ‘I used women to reach out to their sons or their husbands who were fighting, offering them amnesty and resettlement. If we could work together and end the conflict, they would get out of these squalid camps.’ It worked. There was a big defection from Kony’s camp. But was someone as
‘Listening, being patient, even with the worst killer, helps a lot because in the process, you remove that mask of a killer, the brute’ NEW INTERNATIONALIST
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brutal as Kony capable of making peace? ‘At the beginning, I didn’t think so. But through talking and staying in camps, I got to know whether he could be talked to.’ Her first meeting with Kony’s commanders was at a secret location. ‘They cautioned me not to rush anything; if I did he would not trust me at all. It was a long process to convince him that I was not selling him out.’ One of the things that helped was that she had stuck around in spite of the threats, surviving ambushes, landmines. ‘I was ready to do whatever it took to bring peace.’ But there was something else: ‘He realized that if he came out, if the war ended, only I could save him, because President Museveni trusted me.’ At one of her meetings with Kony he asked her to spend the night. ‘My heart was almost coming off my chest,
Previous page: Betty Bigombe with the late General Robert Aronda Nyakairima, a Ugandan military commander who led the fight against Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. UGANDA PEOPLE'S DEFENSE FORCES
but I laughed and I said, “God is great. We are going to have peace now. Now, you’re asking me to spend a night with you. That’s a good sign. But I have to go because there will be a problem on the other side if I don’t go back to my base.”’ Against the odds, Betty was making progress: building trust, negotiating with different factions to sign a peace accord; getting resettlement and reintegration programmes established for combatants from the LRA. But then, just as a major peace deal was about to be signed in 1994, Museveni’s attitude hardened. Betty recalls: ‘Joseph Kony had written me this letter to say, “We’re going to sign the agreement on a particular date”… I went with a big smile to President Museveni to tell him and that is when he said: “No more peace talks. That’s the end of it. He comes out in two weeks or we go in and kill him.”’ What had happened? She reflects: ‘I was naïve. I didn’t watch my back. In this kind of initiative, there are always spoilers, people who benefit from conflict. In this case, the government soldiers were benefiting from the war; they were selling
vehicles, food, fuel, uniforms. The president was getting all these other reports that there was nothing genuine about the peace talks. I felt betrayed. Now that I’ve been exposed to many more mediation programmes – in Colombia, in Sri Lanka – I realize that there are always spoilers.’ Asked whether her own president was one of the spoilers for having listened to those military commanders over her, Betty replies: ‘Of course. Absolutely.’ She did not give up though, trying again to make peace in 2004, her work paving the way for further talks in Sudan in 2006. The LRA is much depleted now, with Kony living in a contested enclave on the border between Sudan and the Central African Republic. He is no longer considered a threat by Museveni. Betty is involved in a different peace mission now, as special envoy to the government of Uganda in South Sudan’s peace process. O In partnership with the Oslo Forum. This article was adapted by Vanessa Baird from an interview by Adam Cooper in The Mediator’s Studio, a new Oslo Forum podcast from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The full podcast can be heard at hdcentre.org/osloforum/podcasts
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Highlighting the work of artists and photographers from the Majority World
NYANI QUARMYNE/MAJORITY WORLD
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
Kids hang around the edges as a community meeting gets underway in Ada, Ghana, to discuss the encroachment of private commercial interests on the salt-rich Songhor Lagoon, traditionally a communal resource. Women are particularly disadvantaged, as they do not have the same access to land and capital as men. They were discussing making their case on local radio. The image was clicked by self-taught photographer Nyani Quarmyne, who refers to himself as a ‘hybridized African’ having been born in India to a Ghanaian father and Filipino mother. Nyani says: ‘Being multi-ethnic and having lived a life that spans five continents, I’ve learned that I sometimes see things a little differently to other people. I’m often drawn to focus on things that I feel are not as they should be, and sometimes the camera is my way of making sense of them.’ JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
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FEATURE
The search for Syria’s missing 58
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Syria’s disappeared
As conflict in Syria fades from the headlines, Jan-Peter Westad reports on the dogged international efforts to find missing persons, spearheaded by the families of the disappeared.
FREEDOM JASMINE
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he day began like any other. Mohamad al-Sheikh, then aged 14, walked to school with his father in their home town of Moudamiah al-Sham, near Damascus. He had his lessons, chatted with friends, went home and watched some television while his mother prepared dinner. When Mohamad’s father, Ahmad, didn’t come home from his work as a business relationship manager for a local branch of the Swiss transnational Nestlé, they began to worry. Ahmad would always ring if he was running late, but that evening the family heard nothing. ‘Both my mother and I had a terrible feeling,’ remembers Mohamad. ‘We went outside and saw two cars at the end of our road. Then we heard gunshots and I was sent inside the house.’ Neighbours later told them they had seen security agents bundle Ahmad into one of the cars. It was 7 May 2012 and the last time Mohamad saw his father alive. It is a bitter truth that this kind of story is heartbreakingly common in Syria. Since the revolution began in March 2011, more than 130,000 people are believed to be missing. There are a number of reasons people disappear. Combatants and civilians are missing as casualties of war. Others have been kidnapped and detained, or executed and buried in mass graves. Still more have been lost along the migrant routes. The majority, tens of thousands of people, are thought to have been detained and forcibly disappeared by the government of Bashar al-Assad. ISIS and other militia groups
– including those supported by Western powers – have also taken, tortured and killed prisoners. With fighting dragging on for nearly a decade, encompassing almost the entire country, the missing come from all sides. Right from the first days of the revolution, joining the demonstrations, criticizing the authorities, or being suspected of either, was enough to get arrested. Mohamad, who once saw his father with a kitbag full of medical supplies, believes Ahmad’s support for protesters may have been the cause of his arrest, though his father was careful to keep any revolutionary activities a secret from his family. ‘He was afraid of endangering us,’ says Mohamad. As with nearly all cases of those detained, when the family tried to get information out of the authorities, they denied holding Ahmad. When the country descended into full-blown war, Mohamad, his mother and three sisters had no choice but to flee, first to nearby Drosha (a suburb of Damascus), then to Egypt, before finally settling in Germany.
Lives split in two Mohamad, who now studies economics in Munich, remembers the anger he felt at seeing life carrying on as normal in Europe while his own home country was being destroyed and his father was gone. ‘When someone you are close to is missing, you live two lives,’ he says. ‘One part of you is always waiting for this person, wanting to hear anything about them. On the other hand, you have to work. You have to study. You
‘When someone you are close to is missing, one part of you is always waiting for this person, wanting to hear anything about them’ JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
have to meet people. You have to go on. This is the hardest thing.’ All the families I speak to mention this double existence. They describe the same difficulty of settling into new lives, sometimes on another continent, while also being tied to the moment when their loved ones disappeared by their memories and their search for answers. Their emotions are complicated by the fact that Syria is still reeling from the effects of war, particularly in Idlib, the last major anti-government area in northwest Syria, which was under siege from April 2019 until a ceasefire was agreed in March 2020. While the ceasefire has largely held, the extent of the violence meted out against the Syrian people is still being uncovered. In October 2020, Human Rights Watch published a 167-page report detailing evidence of war crimes perpetrated by the Syrian-Russian alliance during the Idlib siege.1 It highlights dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian areas – striking homes, schools, hospitals – and cites the use of ‘cluster munitions, incendiary weapons, and improvised “barrel bombs” in populated areas to deadly effect’. At least 1,600 civilians are thought to have been killed and 1.4 million displaced. The latest report from the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria, covering the period of January-July 2020, found that ‘Syrians continue to be killed, on a daily basis, and to suffer gross human rights violations at the hands of all actors controlling territory in Syria’, including ‘arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and deaths in custody’. 2
Fighting for remembrance With millions in need of immediate assistance, advocating for those who have been missing for years is not always easy. Fatigue in the Western media is clear to see. Defeated rebels who have played a role in torture and disappearances flee the country. At the same time, Assad, with the backing of Russia, looks to have I 59
FEATURE
A government undertaker tasked with burying the bodies of dead detainees spoke of corpses disfigured to the point of being unrecognizable
Wafa Ali Mustafa holds up a picture of her father during a demonstration on the International Day of the Disappeared, at Alexanderplatz, Berlin. AHMAD KALAJI
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secured his presidency. Families left behind worry perpetrators may never go on trial and that, if they do, it may not be for decades. Even as we get closer to the full extent of the crimes against innocent Syrians being revealed, there is a risk of history being lost or rewritten. In this context, recording testimony and fighting for the memories of those gone becomes an important act of resistance in the long process of justice. Spearheading attempts to locate missing Syrians are a network of family associations and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), an intergovernmental organization based in The Hague. The first stage is to collect and process data on missing persons in a central repository, so that it can support investigations. The aim is to find all missing persons, regardless of their background, circumstances or location of their disappearance, and to ensure a future peace agreement in Syria establishes mechanisms to enable this search. ‘First and foremost, we are preparing the ground for a process of finding missing persons that is in line with the rule of law and will lead to accountability,’
Lena Alhusseini, head of ICMP’s Syria programme, explains. In the best-case scenario, perpetrators of disappearances would face trial and the missing would be located and reunited with their families, whose rights to justice, truth and reparations would be fully met. But the reality is that many of those gone will not return alive. At that stage, a process of DNA identification of bodies is necessary. Irrefutable evidence of identity – provided by DNA analysis – is critical to secure rights to justice, and to property claims and custody of children. At the very least, it offers the families hope for some form of closure. With Assad’s control looking more assured, this may sound like an idealistic proposition, but the programme builds on previous successes where the odds seemed insurmountable. ICMP was created in 1996 in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars. It played the central role in documenting the Srebrenica genocide, when more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered by the Bosnian Serb army. Despite concerted attempts to hide the bodies – including disturbing mass graves with bulldozers
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Syria’s disappeared
and reburying body parts miles apart – more than 90 per cent of those killed have since been identified using DNA and the process continues today, 25 years on. ICMP’s findings were used as evidence in numerous successful criminal trials in The Hague. With genocide denial on the rise among the Serb population of Bosnia, the work of ICMP and the voices of families are as important today as they ever have been. ‘It is unimaginably painful to be in Srebrenica,’ Munira Subasic, president of the Mothers of Srebrenica organization, told me ahead of the 25th anniversary of the genocide in July 2020. Munira lost more than 20 family members in the Bosnian war. Even today, she is haunted by seeing many of the perpetrators who have never faced justice on the streets of the town. ‘Srebrenica is a living genocide and it is denied just like the killings of our loved ones were denied.’
The data collectors Syria’s case presents its own distinct challenges. Fighting has led to the internal displacement of 6.6 million Syrians. A further 5.6 million are now refugees. With so many people separated from their homes and families, finding the missing is a global task. ‘We only take information in person from close family members. This means we have to work in Syria, but also Lebanon, Iraq, across the Middle East and Europe,’ says Lena. Despite the difficulties, progress is being made. More than 14,000 names have been collected in the past 18 months alone. The process of data collection is a careful one, particularly in Syria, where reporting cases risks reprisals from armed groups or Syrian intelligence. Mahmoud Aswad, who was an orthopaedic surgeon in Idlib before the war, now works with ICMP to find and train data collectors within Syria. Mahmoud’s own uncle went missing from Idlib in 2018, most probably taken by one of the armed groups in the area. He says choosing the right person is the most important factor. ‘We locate people who are respected in the communities – teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers. They have to be trusted and have good networks so that they hear of cases and people feel comfortable coming forward.’ Once selected, these data collectors are trained to record information responsibly and accurately, which is then uploaded to ICMP’s secure, confidential database in
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The Hague. Families have sole ownership of the information and can choose to update or remove their files anytime. It is also paramount to be realistic and not raise expectations. ‘We always make clear that this is a long process that could take 10 or 20 years, or may produce no results at all,’ says Mahmoud. It is difficult work. Mahmoud tells me colleagues have quit due to a lack of obvious progress towards justice. ‘A lot of Syrians are totally frustrated. They feel human rights abuses are only important when it suits the politics of Western countries. But our duty is to keep on educating people about their rights now and in the future.’
Why the truth matters Wafa Ali Mustafa understands this frustration only too well. Her father, Ali, disappeared from Damascus more than seven years ago. Since that time, Wafa, now 30, has become one of the most vocal campaigners for justice with the organization Families for Freedom. In July 2020, she gave evidence to the UN Security Council, expressing concerns about what the families view as an abdication of responsibility. While the Council acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, no action has been taken. ‘We are calling for the UN Security Council to pass a resolution on detention and enforced disappearance in Syria,’ says Wafa. ‘This would make a real difference, but there doesn’t seem to be a will to actually enact change.’ But there are also some more encouraging developments. Families for Freedom members travel throughout Europe demonstrating in major cities – London, Berlin, Brussels – with pictures of their loved ones. More recently, Wafa has found herself demonstrating outside the main court of Koblenz in Germany where two former Syrian security officials are facing trial. It is the first trial for Syrian state torture in the world. Witness statements from family members have helped reveal to the world the extent of the torture undertaken by Assad’s intelligence services. So, too, have statements from former security officials. On 9 September 2020, the court heard from a government undertaker – referred to as ‘Z’ to protect his family in Syria – tasked with burying the bodies of dead detainees. He told the court of ‘rivers of blood and maggots’ and corpses disfigured to the point of being ‘unrecognizable’. His testimony shows that killings were not
random acts by wayward officers, but crimes that were systematic and organized by state authorities. The revelations currently coming out of Koblenz will come as no surprise to Mohamad, who finally learned in 2015 that his father Ahmad had been killed in custody. Ahmad was one of the victims identified in more than 54,000 photographs leaked by a military defector known as Caesar. Many of the photos showed bodies of detainees killed after torture. Mohamad doesn’t have the words to describe how he felt searching for his father among them. ‘Before that moment, the worst thing was imagining my father was dead,’ he says. ‘But after seeing the suffering in those photos, I hoped he was dead so that he could be at peace.’ Learning of his father’s fate has only hardened Mohamad’s resolve to ensure the memories of those missing are not forgotten – not just for himself, but for future victims. As with Srebrenica, he worries that the narrative of the Syrian conflict is already being distorted and simplified to become a story of a ruling government against radical terrorists. ‘I think the people responsible for killing my father are the same people who have tried to change the image of the Syrian people. We must not let that happen. If we do not remember the people who are gone, we will let others experience the same tragedy.’ The work of the families and their supporters does not just provide testimony to help locate loved ones and prepare for future legal challenges. It shows that uncovering and preserving the truth is a difficult, constant and sometimes thankless task, especially during a fast-moving and hugely complex conflict. The fighting in Syria may have all but stopped, but with the country entering its next chapter, the vigilance of those tirelessly documenting Syria’s missing sets an important example for all. O JAN-PETER WESTAD IS A JOURNALIST AND RESEARCHER CURRENTLY BASED IN LONDON.
1 HRW, ‘Targeting Life in Idlib’: Syrian and Russian Strikes on Civilian Infrastructure, 2020, nin.tl/HRW-Syria 2 Press conference speech by Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, 15 September 2020, nin.tl/Syria-Inquiry International Commission on Missing Persons icmp.int Families for Freedom syrianfamilies.org Caesar Families Association caesarfamilies.org
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With Trump’s defeat, Bolsonaro loses his imaginary friend At a civilian event in Texas, in May 2019, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro saluted a US flag, military style. Then he said: ‘Brazil and the United States above everything’ – echoing his campaign slogan ‘Brazil above everything’. That scene of subservience in the early days of his administration was not an isolated case. Rather, it was a glimpse into the future. Everyone in Brazil knows that Bolsonaro established more than an idol-fan relationship with Donald Trump. It was one of vassalage and suzerainty. And in an attempt to help the Republican candidate’s re-election, Bolsonaro made it clear that his personal loyalty to the US president might outweigh his concern for Brazil’s national interests. A part of the population, connected with other elites in Latin America who see Miami as their capital, agrees with him and supports him. In Bolsonaro’s view, any pre-election support he could provide Trump would be well rewarded if the Republican candidate won. The problem is that a government that willingly accepts to be another’s
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ILLUSTRATION: KATE COPELAND
VIEW FROM BRAZIL
vassal will never be able to complain when it is not treated with due respect. In a meeting with Brazil’s foreign minister Ernesto Araújo on 18 September, in Boa Vista, a city close to the Venezuelan border, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo used the Brazilian territory to provoke the neighbouring country’s government. After that, the foreign minister was summoned by Brazil’s Senate to explain why he had helped create a factoid to be used in the US election campaign. When Trump needed to stress that he had allies in the US dispute against China, Bolsonaro gave signs that he intended to exclude or limit Huawei’s participation in Brazil’s choice of a 5G system. And he stepped up his attacks against the Chinese government, not only by blaming the country for the novel coronavirus – echoing Trump’s statements – but also by attacking the vaccine produced by Sinovac. Let us keep in mind that China is Brazil’s largest trading partner. In order to help Trump, who was seeking votes in states that produce corn – the raw material for ethanol in the US – Bolsonaro made life difficult for Brazilian producers, who had large stocks of sugar-cane ethanol due to reduced consumption caused by the pandemic. The Brazilian president renewed the quota of US ethanol that could enter his country without paying import taxes. And that happened after the US reduced the quota of tariff-free semifinished steel that Brazil could sell them. Interestingly, during his term in office, Trump visited several countries
but Brazil was not one of them. And he pointed to the Bolsonaro government, more than once, as a bad example in the fight against Covid-19, saying that if it were not for his administration the US would be as bad as Brazil. Especially humiliating as the US under Trump leads the world in deaths from Covid-19. Brazil’s current administration has abandoned more than a century of peaceful diplomacy towards its South American neighbours and independent, non-aligned relations. In exchange for promises – that were never kept – of free trade and supporting Brazil in its quest for a seat at the OECD, and under a far-right ideology, Brazil has become a satellite state, not of the United States, but of Trump. Today, the country waits for crumbs to fall from a friend’s table. An imaginary friend, of course. O LEONARDO SAKAMOTO IS A POLITICAL SCIENTIST AND JOURNALIST BASED IN SÃO PAULO. HE IS A CAMPAIGNER WITH THE INVESTIGATIVE NGO REPÓRTER BRASIL, WHICH HE ESTABLISHED IN 2001.
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THE LONG READ
Finntopia Finland is rarely mentioned as an example by leftists and Greens who want to build a better future. Yet this little-noticed country is one of the most equal, peaceful and happiest on the planet. Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen explain how Finland came to demonstrate the benefits of investing in people – and suggest what its model might have to offer the rest of the world.
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inland has become the ‘by way of contrast’ country, as the British Medical Journal described it in 2018. Finland is the one place that shows that something much better is possible than the status quo. That is a weighty responsibility. Of course, Finland is not Utopia, but today it offers one of the closest approximations. In 2018, when Finland first achieved its top placing in the UN’s World Happiness Report, a UK newspaper reported the news with the caveat: ‘… even though its GDP is below that of the US and Germany’.1 When Finland overtook Norway to take first place in the World Happiness Report, it did so with a GDP per capita that was more than a third lower than that of Norway; and it then went on to hold that top-ranked position in both 2019 and 2020. The World Happiness Report ranks countries according to GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption levels in each country to evaluate the quality of their current lives on a ladder scale ranging from 0 for the worst possible life to 10 for the best possible life. Finland is the country that most clearly shows how it is possible for world-beating happiness to be achievable without becoming ever richer, and while having living standards in terms of material wealth that are below those in the most
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affluent parts of the world, including its more affluent Scandinavian neighbours. Recent research conducted in Finland has established that ‘well-being is to a significant extent conditioned by the position one occupies in the social structure and by the welfare regime one lives in’.3 However, that research also found that Finland is unusual in one other way, namely when it comes to the thoughts and feelings of recent migrants to the country. In affluent countries, immigrants usually tend to be more optimistic than the natives of their new country. When the UN measured the happiness of immigrants for the first time in their 2018 report, Finland scored the highest of any country being compared.4 However, in general in Nordic countries, including Finland, where people’s well-being is generally so high, being of an immigrant background is an adverse factor, when all else is taken into account. It is possible that it is very hard for outsiders to fit into a society that is already so equal and cohesive. If you turn up in London or New York as an immigrant, you are just one of many similar others in cities full of immigrants. What is more, you have just arrived in a society that is deeply divided. The rich do not trust the poor, and the poor have good reason not to trust the rich. Almost everyone is an outsider in one way or another. Many, if not most, people you meet will be migrants
like you, or their parents were. The same cannot be said of Finland or of other countries that top the list of most happy or most politically stable places. The Fragile State Index (previously the ‘Failed State Index’) has been published annually since 2005. It ranks 178 countries across 12 indicators that attempt to summarize the key risks and vulnerabilities faced by individual nations. Currently, Finland ranks highest overall in this index, as the least fragile state in the world. It also ranks highest on many components of the index, including on low group grievance, on high (as well as socially even) economic development, on good public services, and on low demographic pressures – all as compared with the other countries in the top ten shown in the table. At first it appears quite remarkable that as well as performing very strongly on so many other international rankings, Finland ranks highest of all 178 countries for political stability. However, international rankings are very positively correlated with each other. It is easier for your people to be happy if your state is not fragile, your press is free and responsible, your schools are cohesive, the health of your infants is good and the health of the population as a whole is improving rapidly from what used to be quite a poor record. Finland today is one of the few environments on earth that replicates most closely the situation in which we are most
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Finland The happiest countries in the world, and selected others, 2016-182 1
Finland
2
Denmark
7.600
3
Norway
7.554
4
Iceland
7.494
5 Netherlands
7.488
6
Switzerland
7.480
7
Sweden
7.343
8 New Zealand
7.307
9
Canada
7.278
10
Austria
7.246
15
UK
19
USA
93
China
140
India
7.769
Finland is the country that most clearly shows how it is possible for world-beating happiness to be achievable without becoming ever richer
7.054 6.892 5.191 4.015
156 South Sudan
2.853 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
External Intervention
Refugees and internally displaced
Demographic Pressures
Human Rights and Rule of Law
Public Services
State Legitimacy
Human Flight and Brain Drain
Economic Decline
Group Grievance
Rank Total
Factionalized Elites
Country
Security Apparatus
The ten most politically stable countries in the world in 20195
Uneven Economic Development
Happiness Index
Finland
1
16.9 2.5 1.4 1.2 2.9 0.7 2.0 0.9 0.7 0.7 1.0 1.9 1.0
Norway
2
18.0 2.1 1.1 3.3 1.9 1.0 1.3 0.6 0.8 0.9 1.2 2.8 1.0
Switzerland
3
18.7 1.1 1.0 3.3 1.9 1.8 1.7 0.7 1.0 1.4 1.4 2.7 0.7
Denmark
4
19.5 1.3 1.4 4.3 1.6 1.2 1.9 0.9 0.9 1.7 1.6 2.0 0.7
Australia
5
19.7 2.7 1.7 3.3 1.6 1.6 1.0 1.0 1.5 1.7 1.2 1.7 0.7
Iceland
6
19.8 0.7 1.8 1.0 3.1 0.9 2.5 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.3 1.7 3.8
Canada
7
20.0 2.8 2.5 2.8 1.5 2.1 1.7 0.7 1.0 1.4 1.3 1.6 0.7
New Zealand
8
20.1 1.4 1.4 3.2 3.2 1.9 2.3 0.6 1.0 0.8 1.7 1.7 0.9
Sweden
9
20.3 2.7 1.8 1.7 1.5 1.5 1.1 0.8 0.9 0.9 1.6 4.9 0.9
Luxembourg 10
20.4 1.3 3.4 2.7 1.2 1.2 1.7 0.7 1.7 1.0 1.6 3.1 0.8
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content: when we are caring for each other and not competing; where we are each valued very similarly, and where no one is greatly elevated or diminished. In another affluent country that is in many ways Finland’s opposite, in today’s UK, 1 in every 200 people are homeless. In Finland the proportion is at least four times lower and almost no people are to be found actually sleeping on the streets. Countries that care less count less carefully. Crude estimates by the UK government show that the number of people who were street homeless rose by 169 per cent between 2009 and 2018 in England. In Finland over the same time period, much more precise estimates revealed that long-term homelessness fell by 35 per cent, and rough sleeping was all but eradicated in Helsinki, where only one 50-bed night shelter now remains.6 In recent years, every week on the streets of England, three people die because they have nowhere safe to sleep. The BBC recently reported that Finland was ‘the only EU state not suffering from a housing crisis which is the result of Finland’s Housing First initiative which started in 2008… in Finland housing is seen as a right, not as a reward, as it often is in other EU countries. The Finnish system is financed by public funds and Finnish slot machines’ 7, and the Finnish government is considering using new (including online) gambling taxes and
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The leaders of Finland’s five coalition parties in power in December 2019. This image was widely circulated in a tweet that ‘went viral’ upon Sanna Marin becoming Prime Minister on 10 December 2019. People around the world immediately commented on all five being women and four being in their early thirties. Four remain in these positions but Katri Kulmuni resigned as Deputy Prime Minister in June 2020 and as Centre Party leader in September (replaced in the latter role by Annika Saarikko who is also female and in her thirties). ORIGINAL COLLAGE: TUOMAS NISKAKANGAS
By choosing the right path more often when there was an option, Finland has shown that any nation could do as well. And by doing so well it achieves so much else as a by-product of greater equality.
How Finland established its model – and then challenged it
licences as well. Finland is abandoning transitional and temporary housing for the homeless. Instead, they are given a normal apartment, immediately. However, as news spreads of Finland’s success across so many areas of public life, there is a risk of success fatigue setting in, of Finns resting on their laurels, and of people who would like lower taxes proclaiming that enough has already been achieved. On the other hand, success also encourages success, and Finland has a reputation to maintain. As a small nation, Finland inevitably pays a lot of attention to its high ranking on many international indices. The general population is aware of the country’s prominent position in such measures, and the Foreign Ministry shares news of its success frequently via social media. Finland’s high rankings appear to help draw attention to the value of Finnish institutions. The current government tends to speak of restoring honour to the Finnish education system (by investing once again, rather than cutting). In a more theoretical sense, happiness or achievement is always relative; you value good times more when you’ve had bad
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times. In one of his best-known works, Eino Leino, a pioneer of Finnish poetry in the late 19th and early 20th century, wrote ‘he who has happiness, should hide it’. Jukka Ukkola, whose columns in the weekly newspaper Suomen Kuvalehti are typically satirical, quoted this line when Finland was first proclaimed the world’s happiest country, and joked that because Finns can no longer hide their happiness, they should learn to market it. As with the PISA educational rankings, he suggested, perhaps researchers will soon start arriving to ask how Finland has become so happy. The good news for the rest of the world is that Finland will not always be at the top of the rankings, because its achievements are not an unobtainable extreme. In Finland, as elsewhere, there are always things that could be better. And Finland has only a fairly modest amount of natural resources, no unusual historical advantages, no innate national characteristic, no special trick or magic word to account for its current position. To treat each other with respect is to be human; not to do so is inhumane. Regrettably, all of us are capable of both.
Progress, it is often said, is the battle to remember in a time of forgetting, including remembering some lessons learned over a century ago. Finland’s equality was not a gift given by the profits from natural resources, or the spoils of an empire. Finland does not have Sweden’s larger population and legacy of imperial wealth, nor does it have the petroleum riches of Norway. It cannot use geothermal activity to smelt aluminium as in Iceland, or use its proximity to the rest of Europe to its advantage, as Denmark does. Nor did Finland have equality imposed upon it, as was the case in Japan, and to a lesser extent in Germany, after 1945. Many of the policies that are fundamental to Finland’s success have come out of compromise. One of the first major interventions by the state into social and health services was accomplished many decades ago in 1937 with the Maternity Grants Act by a government made up of the Social Democratic Party and Agrarian League (now the Centre Party) – the country’s first left-right coalition since the civil war (and dubbed a ‘red-mud coalition’). Even before this, land reforms passed into law in 1918 which enabled the rural proletariat to purchase small holdings of land immediately after the most bloody of civil wars, required the Social Democratic Party to approve private ownership which it had previously opposed, and the bourgeois parties to accept that parts of larger estates would have to be sold off. By no means did Finns put acute
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Finland
civil-war tensions behind them quickly, but, as author Kjell Westö explains, Finns were pragmatic and worked together despite their history of both internal conflict and oppression from outside. Policies that emerge from compromise between parties of different ideological stripes can also become policies that are broader, more innovative and stronger than those forged by any single political party. Problematic elements of how a society is organized, such as maintaining segregation in education, can then be discarded later when empirical support emerges for action, as comprehensive education reform following the 1968 Basic Education Act illustrated. People in Finland were no doubt influenced greatly by what was occurring elsewhere in the world, not least the radicalism of the 1960s in the US and to a lesser extent in the UK, France and Germany at that time. Finland’s most significant student protests in that era, which are not widely known outside of the country, occurred in 1968 when the Old Student House in Helsinki was occupied. While it may be overstating the case to suggest that Finland had a ‘summer of love’, nevertheless Finns travelled and brought home useful stories. From the 1960s onwards, a vision of what the greater welfare state could achieve became a widely shared dream. That dream became a reality through establishing common ground and common agendas between political left and right. This alliance helped all of Finnish politics to (in fits and starts) drift leftwards. It was also during the 1960s that Finnish activists created the anti-authoritarian November Movement, which advocated for stigmatized peoples, among them the disabled, LGBTQI+ (referred to in Finland as ‘rainbow people’), prisoners, alcoholics, the mentally ill and the homeless. The movement’s goal was to reduce the pressure for uniformity in society. When viewed from a British or American standpoint, a Finnish conservative today is likely to look very much like a socialist. Finland avoided the alternative that often arises when Social Democrats are dominant for a time and introduce a more wishy-washy welfare state, one that could have been more easily eroded. Instead, the left in Finland in the 1960s and 1970s managed to establish in the national mindset the idea of social investments and from there, the idea of investing in people entered the normal
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When viewed from a British or American standpoint, a Finnish conservative today is likely to look very much like a socialist practice of the National Coalition Party, the country’s moderate right. In this sense, Finland’s practice of investing in universally good schooling, health insurance, and the only genuinely comprehensive safety-net housing system in Europe, were not conceived of as social transfers from rich to poor, but as sound macroeconomic policy. The Finns are, above all, pragmatic. The Finnish welfare state developed through consensus politics in a parliamentary democracy; it has never been an idea owned by a single party. However, in the past few decades political parties on the right (by Finnish standards), such as the National Coalition Party, have advocated for greater outsourcing and privatization. They have called for greater choice and decision-making capabilities being given to citizens with regard to public services; this would represent an ever-so-small step towards the US model for healthcare and other services that is in marked contrast to the aims and norms of welfare-state provision. Finland may be the pre-eminent model of the Nordic welfare state. But there are, of course, Finns who find fault with that model. They might well point out that, until very recently, Finland had been moving away from this model, and they might argue that this shift was for good reasons. The government in power in Finland until early 2019 had made changes reminiscent of the British, or in some cases the US, model. These changes included the attempts to further outsource healthcare services, and levying fees for university tuition for non-EU students, unlike say in Germany, where university education remains essentially free for all. However, Finland is still to a very large extent the exemplar Nordic welfare state, even if the foundations of those ideals have been under recent attack.
In the past couple of decades, like acid rain eroding the façade of a once-beautiful building, neoliberal arguments and reasoning have etched scars deep into the surface of the body politic of Finland. This would not have happened had all been well in paradise, or if those outside of Finland had not wanted to change the direction in which it was going. In recent years rightwing think tanks in the UK and US have been targeting Finland, as have far-right parties and politicians who hate and fear the Nordic model. Many of those think tanks are almost certainly largely funded by US businesses and billionaires but they claim to present independent research and their funders hide behind a dark veil of anonymity.13 In the not-so distant past, and still occasionally today, some far-right and extreme-right groups have lauded Scandinavia as the home of the ‘white race’. The notion of the true Aryan home of the white master-race is an extreme fantasy that never quite goes away. Because eugenic practices, including the sterilization of those deemed unworthy to have children, were permitted in Sweden – right through to the 1970s – Scandinavians have partly lived up to their bit-part in this fantasy. Thankfully, however, Scandinavians and the Finns then looked out to the rest of the world. They saw the criticism of eugenics and reacted. Just as importantly, they saw how else society could be arranged, especially when children are not allocated to schools based on eugenic assumptions about inherent ability. Due in part to recent policy proposals running counter to established Finnish practice, such as the previous government’s plans for privatization, the more leftwing parties now in power have become steadily more vocal in their opposition to conservative economic
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policies. Their positions are far more critical than those heard from, for example, today’s UK Labour Party, and are emphatically far to the left of the US Democratic Party. Today Finland is arguably the antithesis of what the world’s political right admires, and the government elected in 2019 is moving Finland again in the direction of greater equality.
Inequality and tax Improving competitiveness in global markets is currently high on the Finnish political agenda, just as it was in the postwar reconstruction era. Finland is not just aiming for international competitiveness in economic terms, but achieving it with due concern for its social values and institutions. With significantly higher taxes, but little wage stagnation and much lower income inequality than, say, the UK, Finnish political parties rarely emphasize social transfers from the rich to the poor as their fundamental aim. Instead, they focus on how health, housing, education, financial security are of benefit to the whole community, not just the present recipients. This is easier to achieve in a parliamentary democracy where compromise and consensus are essential and there is widespread use of public services, than it is in countries where two-party systems prevail. Ideas such as transfers from the rich to the poor being beneficial to all don’t necessarily sell as well abroad to a set of people who have yet to encounter the results of such choices. Wealth inequality has been increasing in Finland and is higher than income inequality, which, despite a small increase since 2017, has remained relatively low and stable after a rise at the end of the 1990s. Wealth inequality is probably greater than official measurements indicate given the wealth that is hidden in tax havens, and it has become more difficult to measure accurately since the abolition of the wealth tax. But if inequality is considered from the perspective of post-tax national income, then the share of the richest one per cent decreased from the year 2002 (when it was 7.2%) to 2016 (6.1%). Finland’s high levels of happiness and contentment can be understood partly in relation to the accepted social norms and expectations of what is possible in Finnish society. These norms are good due to excellent public services and low levels of inequality, particularly in comparison to the conditions prevailing
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today in all other countries, including most other affluent societies. We know that Finns are happy and contented with their lives, although they are often disinclined to show it. Public displays of emotion of any kind are rare. This may be part historical, reflecting the former dominance of Russia and Sweden, and has now become cultural. It is also possible that both Finns’ reserve and their contentment makes funding excellent public services easier, as higher taxes are more accepted. Today employees in Finland still contribute some of the highest proportions of their personal income in tax. In 2016, when the take in income of Finland’s richest 1 per cent was less than 6 per cent of the country’s total (compared with 15 per cent in the UK and 22 per cent in the US), the tax collected from personal incomes in Finland made up 13 per cent of GDP. In Chile, one of the rich world’s most unequal countries, it amounts to just 1.8 per cent of GDP by OECD estimates.13 As the mass protests (and police repression) of late 2019 demonstrated to the rest of the world, the toll taken by Chile’s economic travails have for many years been falling most heavily on its badly paid, indebted and politically voiceless majority. When income is more evenly spread, overall taxation is far more effective, public services can be far better, and civil unrest is very rare. A huge proportion of Finns, 79 per cent, say they are ‘happy to pay their
taxes’. An astonishing 96 per cent, when asked, agree that ‘it’s important to collect tax to maintain the welfare state’.13 The tax bills of everyone in Finland are public documents, although individuals earning above €100,000 ($119,000) a year can, as of 2019, request to opt out of their tax information being released on the list of high-income earners provided to the media (4,400 such requests were successful in 2020). Individual tax records remain public and can be found, but this list facilitates the media’s commentary on income and wealth distribution. This publicity has made it harder to hide corruption and tax evasion. In an equitable country with well-run public services, tax avoidance is rightly seen as no different from shop-lifting.
Trust in journalism – and critical thinking Part of how Finland avoids fatigue is the robustness of its press. Ed Miliband, a former leader of the Labour Party in the UK, has been a passionate and early campaigner on climate change and helped steer his political party to becoming both greener and more democratic, with every party member having the opportunity to vote for the next party leader. As a result, Britain now has a far more Finnish-style party in its Labour Party than it would have had if it were not for Ed; but Ed was often subjected to personal attacks in place of criticisms of his policies. His successor, Jeremy Corbyn, was attacked
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Trust in journalism, 2016, European countries8 Netherlands .
44
Finland ...................................................
41
Portugal .
38
Sweden .
23
Denmark .
20
Belgium .
18
Germany .
17
Luxembourg .
14
Lithuania .
12
Austria .
12
Estonia .
11
Slovak Rep. .
3
Czech Rep. .
1
Italy .
1
Poland .
0
EU 28 .
-2
Latvia .
-2
Ireland .
-3
France .
-3
Spain .
-4
Turkey .
-5
Bulgaria .
-6
Croatia .
-9
Romania .
-9
Slovenia .
-14
Montenegro .
-17
Cyprus .
-20
Malta .
-20
Hungary .
-27
Greece .
-28
Serbia .
-36
FYR Macedonia .
-37
UK -51 -60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10
0
10
20
30
Net Trust Index - Written Press
Opposite page: The vintage poster on the left aimed to attract tourists to Finland while the one on the right was adapted to carry a satirical message.
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even more relentlessly, and in particular during the 2019 election, where he was misrepresented and demonized by both privately owned media and the stateowned BBC. It is true that the Labour Party has recently proposed some policies that would be too leftwing for Finland. For instance, in November 2019 the Labour Party proposed nationalizing the largest broadband company in the UK and providing free broadband for all. However, it is more often the case that Labour’s policies, including most of those when Corbyn was leader, are significantly to the right of Finnish public policy; in its 2019 election manifesto, the UK’s Labour Party proposed raising spending on public services, but only to German levels, rather than those of Finland. You would know little of this from reading the British press. Recently featured on Ed Miliband’s podcast ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’, Vesa Häkkinen, the director of current affairs communications at Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, spoke of the anti-disinformation campaign that was launched in Finland in 2014. The campaign encourages critical thinking and awareness to increase people’s ability to spot fake news, from training election officials to reforming the education curriculum. When Miliband asked at what age Finnish children were educated about identifying disinformation, Häkkinen mentioned seeing a children’s television show featuring a teddy-bear that was critical of the news during its adventures. To prevent cynicism rising, a good press and an aware citizenry are both vital. According to Reporters Without Borders, Finland rose back up the global freedom of the press ranking from fourth place in 2018 to second place in 2019. Finns typically see press freedom and responsibility as a more serious matter than citizens of other states do. Finland is in the minority of countries where freedom of the press is characterized as good. In 2018, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, arriving for a summit in Helsinki, were greeted with billboards and posters created by Finland’s highestcirculation daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, welcoming them to the ‘land of free press’. Even in Finland, though, things could be better. A concern raised by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom’s annual Media Pluralism Monitor is the concentration of media ownership
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in Finland, and the lack of government regulation of that ownership. The centre’s 2017 report found that the four largest companies in Finland’s televisionbroadcasting sector together claimed a 92-per-cent audience share and 72 per cent of revenues; in radio the figures were 94 per cent and 87 per cent respectively, and in the newspaper market it was 55 per cent and 71 per cent, respectively.9 Another concern raised by the report is the lack of proportional access to airtime by Finland’s minorities. Media ownership became even more concentrated in February 2020 when media conglomerate Sanoma acquired another major media company, Alma Media. Although concerns were raised over the decreased media pluralism, the deal was not considered a significant risk to competition in the media market by the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority.
Universal basic income When we think of Finland as a role model for other countries, one initiative that comes up often is the idea of introducing a universal basic income (UBI). Universal basic income could represent a major shift in the current welfare state model of the West. Pilot experiments have recently been run in the city of Seattle and the Canadian province of Ontario, and in 2016 the Finnish government launched a basic-income experiment involving 2,000 participants. UBI is not the only proposal for reforming social security in Finland. Most of the country’s political parties have their own models, and the experiment itself was targeted rather than universal. Dutch historian and journalist Rutger Bregman stated that universal basic income ‘is all about freedom’ at the 2019 World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos.10 The first Finnish Basic Income trial, which ran from 2017 to 2018, was initiated in response to the changing nature of work and the fact that a greater proportion of the population are now employed in temporary and part-time jobs. The participants, who were unemployed when they began the trial, received a basic income of €560 ($665) every month for two years regardless of any other income and regardless of whether they were actively seeking work. The trial aimed to assess whether the existing socialsecurity system could be simplified, and whether the alternative basic-income system encouraged employability, since
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currently benefits diminish on starting paid employment or on receipt of other sources of income. The theory was that because basic-income payments alone are not necessarily sufficient to cover all living costs in the long term (such as holidays), it therefore would not discourage recipients from finding work. One participant, journalist and writer Tuomas Muraja, responded to critics of the experiments saying: Concerns have been voiced about the high cost of the basic income model. But free school meals, free basic education and universal basic healthcare are expensive too… The system requires more investment to boost the minimum income level, to improve the level of financial incentives and to simplify it. Critics fear that basic income will make people lazy. However, limited evidence from several basicincome trials from around the world prove that people use basic income to improve their quality of life and not as a license to do nothing.11 The results published in 2019 showed that the intervention did not increase the number of people who found employment, but neither did it reduce it. Some attributed this to the design of the experiment; but even with these results, Rutger Bregman argued that other outcomes of the study warranted attention – namely, that participants reported higher levels of well-being, less stress, and greater overall happiness.12 The experiment was criticized on the basis that in addition to including unemployed youth, the pool of participants was limited to primarily the long-term unemployed who would benefit more from services to help with health issues or outdated skills rather than from financial incentives. In addition, taxation was not taken into account, and halfway through the experiment the ‘activation model’ was introduced, which skewed comparisons with the control group – that is, everyone else who was unemployed. One thing worth bearing in mind about the early results of the trial is that increasing employment need not be a major aim of basic income. If people in Europe are to consume less, and pollute less, then they need to also produce less and learn to live on lower incomes than they currently do. A basic income makes it possible to live on a very low income and spend your time doing what you really want to do,
including useful unpaid work. If you need a little more money, you can work, but it need not be high-paid work. If Finland is to remain one of the happiest countries in the world, it won’t be because everyone works for as many hours as they can, for as much money as they can get.
One day… One day, a country will provide a universal basic income (UBI) to everyone. Finland may not be the first to do so, but it will experiment further and remains very open to similar new ideas. Many people say that UBI is unaffordable. But how much more unaffordable is it than the practice in the UK and especially the US of keeping large numbers of people in overcrowded prisons, with plans to build more prisons and calls for more and longer sentences? A universal basic income would not be compatible with wasting money on antisocial activities such as locking so many people up. It would, however, be compatible with massive reductions in carbon emissions, as those who chose to consume less would be able to. They would not have to drive to work if they chose not to work, and a basic income means exactly what it says – basic. A universal basic income is only unaffordable if you think it is necessary for some to go hungry, cold and homeless to keep many of the rest of us at the grindstone of paid employment, much of which is of little ultimate benefit to society. One day, a country will have no need for prisons; and Finland already has very few prisoners. People find the idea of no prisons strange, because when it is suggested they think of a future society that is just like their current society, but without jails. However, as a journalist based in the Bronx in the United States, Alice Speri, explains: ‘in a society that is tackling things like white supremacy, economic deprivation, toxic masculinity, and that is providing connections between people, and where communities are responsible for each other, I actually don’t think it would be weird at all. You wouldn’t even need the things that we now think of as elemental parts of our society, like the local jail.’15 One day, a country will have no homeless people. Finland is very nearly that country. One day, no one will die prematurely. This utopian vision is at least two centuries old. In Western countries it is best remembered through the words of mill owner Robert Owen, and his address to the
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inhabitants of New Lanark in Scotland on New Year’s Day 1816: ‘What ideas individuals may attach to the term ‘Millennium’ I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.’ Finland is not Utopia and its people are well aware that there is much that could still be better. However, they also know that they live under a flexible system in a pragmatic country that will permit better ways to be found and further improvements to be made. Knowing that things are going to get better, especially for the
less well-off, is often more important than how the situation is today. We will always worry, but we also need to be able to hope. Finland’s recent history can give us all hope. On 20 March 2020 it was announced – for the third year in succession – that Finland was once again the happiest country in the world. The report in which this was declared included a chapter dedicated to the Nordic countries which concluded: ‘There seems to be no secret sauce specific to Nordic happiness that is unavailable to others. There is rather a more general recipe for creating highly satisfied citizens: ensure that state institutions are of high quality, non-corrupt, able to deliver what they promise, and generous in taking care of citizens in various adversities’.16 Of course, Finland excels at much
more than just happiness, and we should learn more about how and why the Finnish recipe works in practice – because it urgently needs to be made more widely available in the world. O DANNY DORLING IS PROFESSOR OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY; ANNIKA KOLJONEN IS A RECENT POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS GRADUATE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE WHO LIVES IN HELSINKI. THIS IS AN EDITED EXTRACT FROM THEIR BOOK FINNTOPIA: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE WORLD’S HAPPIEST COUNTRY (AGENDA PUBLISHING, 2020, AGENDAPUB.COM).
1 S Boseley, ‘Nordic countries’ “happy” reputation masks sadness of young,’ The Guardian, 25 Aug 2018. 2 J Helliwell, R Layard & J Sachs, World Happiness Report 2019, as summarized at statista.com/chart/17428/happiest-countries-in-the-world/ 3 T Kemppainen, ‘Well-being in socio-political context,’ Studies in Social Security and Health, Working Paper 123, 2012, Kela Research Dept, Helsinki. 4 P Collinson, ‘Finland is the happiest country in the world, The Guardian, 14 Mar 2019. 5 Fragile States Index, 2019, fragilestatesindex.org/data/ 6 J Henley, ‘“It’s a miracle”: Helsinki’s radical solution to homelessness,’ The Guardian, 3 Jun 2019. 7 ‘Homelessness in the UK versus Finland,’ BBC Three, youtu.be/yKrZIYBF7ks. 8 D Ponsford, ‘Survey finds that UK written press is (by some way) the least trusted in Europe,’ Press Gazette, 26 May 2017. 9 V Manninen, ‘Monitoring media pluralism in Europe,’ Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, European University Institute, 2018. 10 E Klein, ‘The case for a universal basic income, open borders, and a 15-hour workweek,’ Vox, 6 Jul 2019. 11 T Muraja, ‘Universal basic income hasn’t made me rich,’ The Guardian, 7 Aug 2018. 12 S Samuel, ‘Finland gave people free money,’ Vox, 9 Feb 2019. 13 A Ramsey & P Geoghegan, ‘Revealed: how the UK’s powerful right-wing think tanks and Conservative MPs work together,’ Open Democracy, 31 Jul 2018. 14 K Whiting, ‘Finland recently published everyone’s taxes on “National Jealousy Day”,’ World Economic Forum Blog, 2 Nov 2018. 15 A Speri, ‘The criminal justice system is not broken,’ The Intercept, 9 Nov 2019. 16 F Martela, B Greve, B Rothstein & J Saari, ‘The Nordic exceptionalism,’ in World Happiness Report 2020.
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HALL OF INFAMY CARRIE LAM JOB: Chief Executive of Hong Kong REPUTATION: Yea-sayer to Beijing’s authoritarianism
No-one can accuse Carrie Lam of not taking her duties seriously. She shows an almost obsessive dedication to maintaining law and order and imposing a ruthless Chinese sovereignty over a recalcitrant Hong Kong. She is a notorious micro-manager, unwilling to allow even a modicum of autonomy to her subordinates. She boasts of having to sleep only three to five hours a night and has given up badminton, her sole recreation, as all that changing clothes and showering just takes up too much valuable time away from official duties. The 1997 transfer of Hong Kong from a British colony to a special administrative region of China, based on ‘one country, two systems’, has played out as a fraught affair riddled with contradictions. As autocracy in the guise of Chinese capitalism shows no sign of relenting,
the pressure to clamp down on public freedom in Hong Kong has gathered force. Lam, a career bureaucrat-turnedpolitician with roots in both Britain and Beijing, is at the helm of this repression as it reaches critical mass. A devout Catholic, Lam quickly developed a reputation for being a hardworking and committed technocrat. Throughout her methodical rise to prominence she unfailingly sided with those in power and against those who dared resist. After being appointed Secretary for Development in 2007, she beat back conservationists who wanted to preserve the city’s landmark Edinburgh Place Ferry Pier, took on housing rights advocates to push through her Urban Renewal Strategy and cracked down on indigenous villages in the New Territories section of Hong Kong. She quickly gained the reputation as a ‘hard fighter’ used to getting her own way, gaining the attention of the powers that be in Beijing. Lam was ‘elected’ Chief Executive in 2017 (by a 1,200 member committee) in a rigged system that ensured Beijing’s veto over the popular will of Hongkongers. At the time it was widely held that the Umbrella Movement that had mobilized Hong Kong against Beijing’s electoral manipulations in 2014 was a spent force. But this calculation failed to take into account the ineptitude and lack of political skills of a Carrie Lam more used to bureaucratic decree than gaining consent
through the give-and-take of coalition building. She threw herself behind an extradition law aimed to circumvent Hong Kong’s semi-independent judicial system and put troublemakers on trial before the rubber-stamp judges of the mainland. The reaction was quick and predictable with masses of Hongkongers (particularly the young) regularly hitting the streets in defence of the city’s autonomy. Predictable too was the escalation in violence as police teargas and rubber bullets rained down on the increasingly desperate demonstrations. Hong Kong’s police force, once lionized for its efficiency and integrity, is now seen as little more than a marauding band of occupying enforcers. For both the Chinese Communist Party leadership and the order-obsessed Lam any form of social disorder (read public exercise of political views) is tantamount to major crime. Over 10,000 have been arrested and many more brutalized. It is worth remembering that the current anti-Covid-19 measures being used to suppress opposition in Hong Kong have been enacted using British colonialera emergency legislation. During the 150 years of British rule, the authorities supported a liberal economic order (the city was seized as a conduit for the opium trade) but were decidedly undemocratic in their exercise of political power – not unlike the model advocated by the Chinese Communist Party today. In the 1960s those opposed to British rule were routinely arrested and sometimes killed by Hong Kong police. Figures like Carrie Lam are very much a product of an undemocratic bureaucracy fostered by British colonial policy. O
LOW CUNNING: Lam has cloaked her arbitrary actions and the closing of democratic space in Hong Kong in her claim: ‘I do not want to give the people false hope.’ Patterning herself as a mainland Party apparatchik, she is committed to removing not just rights but the hope for rights.
SENSE OF HUMOUR: The dour Lam set off a firestorm of jokes when she portrayed herself as mother to ‘spoiled children’, ie democracy protesters. It wasn’t long before ‘Big Mother is Watching You’ signs and posters started to pop up all over town. Sources: Coconuts Hong Kong; The Guardian; The Atlantic; Yahoo News; The Oriental Despot; Reuters; BBC; South China Morning Post.
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ILLUSTRATION: KATE COPELAND
VIEW FROM INDIA Adding pain to the pandemic As India staggers on under the Covid-19 pandemic, the fallout for working people has been devastating. Between April and June last year the economy underwent a massive unplanned contraction of 23 per cent. Millions lost their jobs; farmers and day-wage labourers are looking at years of penury. Today the employment situation remains dire. Those finding work often have to accept rock-bottom wages. There has been an upsurge of child labour as families get desperate for earnings and employers look for the most exploitable workers. At the time of writing, salaried workers also appear to have bleak prospects with over 21 million such jobs lost. Meanwhile Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government sticks to its abiding principle of corporations over people, carrying out off-base ‘reforms’ with the impact landing mainly upon middleclass and poor people. In the midst of a pandemic and a rapidly spiralling rural crisis, the Modi government decided it was the right time to bring in new farm bills and a labour wage code in September – bulldozed through without debate, scrutiny or consultation. Both have the potential of pushing India’s small farmers and
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informal workers into deeper poverty. The labour bills have at one stroke undone the decades of struggle of India’s working classes. The new farming bills are bad news for small farmers who will now be able to sell directly to big institutional buyers, thereby putting them at their mercy. Previously, it was mandatory for farmers to sell in more than 7,000 regulated wholesale markets so that small farmers (over 85 per cent of Indian farmers own less than 2 hectares of land) were not exploited by big institutional buyers. Here there were also minimum price guarantees. The new labour code goes in much the same direction, promoting business interests over the welfare of the worker, making it easy for companies to hire and fire while complicating workers’ right to strike. The Working People’s Charter, a network of more than 150 local organizations of informal workers, in a memo sent to Members of Parliament ahead of these bills being tabled, called the reforms ‘anti-working class’, saying that they would push ‘India back to the British era when slavery was a norm’. Even as these bills were being passed, activists and student leaders – mostly Muslim – were being indiscriminately jailed under a draconian anti-terror law
for their alleged role in instigating deadly communal riots in February 2020 in the Indian capital, which killed at least 53 people and caused widespread damage to property. Activists claim they are being punished for taking part in countrywide protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register for Citizens – two measures that were globally panned for being anti-Muslim. ‘This current witch-hunting of antiCAA protesters is not only an attack on a few individuals,’ reads a statement released by over 1,000 journalists, activists, academics and civil-society representatives, ‘it erodes public faith in rule of law and chokes democratic dissent.’ 2020, the year that everyone will remember, is finally over and with it much of our belief that India is still a democracy for the people, by the people, of the people. O NILANJANA BHOWMICK IS A MULTI-AWARD WINNING JOURNALIST BASED IN NEW DELHI. SHE TWEETS @NILANJANAB
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SPOTLIGHT TSE TSE FLY MIDDLE EAST
Words: Louise Gray Photo: Nour Sokhon by Myriam Boulos
hen the FIFA World Cup kicks off in Qatar in November 2022, it will be more than the adventures of a soccer ball that the world’s press will be following. Some will be asking awkward questions about the Gulf state’s humanrights record, especially in relation to migrant workers labouring under what’s known as the kafala system. Kafala (‘sponsorship’ or ‘to take care of ’ in Arabic) is, on the surface, a way of getting visas for migrants to Qatar and other Middle Eastern states. But at a deeper level, kafala means that migrants endure multiple indignities. With little or no freedom of movement, they often live and work in hugely dangerous conditions. Sexual abuse – especially against female domestic workers – is common. Local laws do little to protect anyone who complains. So how can experimental music and online exhibitions do anything to alleviate these problems? Enter Simon Coates, a UK-based arts curator who runs a non-profit organization called Tse Tse Fly Middle East. Like the insect that the project is named after, Tse Tse Fly is meant to deliver a sting to the hindquarters of authorities, making a noise as it does so. Produced in association with MigrantRights.org, Tse Tse Fly Middle East’s new album, This Is Kafala, aims to resonate in a world where defending kafala workers is dangerous. Drawing together an international cast of musicians, artists and sound artists – some of them working under pseudonyms to protect themselves – This Is Kafala advances a compelling multimedia argument for
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workers’ rights. Profits from the sale of the download-only album are destined for non-profit organizations campaigning against kafala. Coates first became aware of kafala while living in the United Arab Emirates between 2011 and 2017. He had gone there to help create a counter-cultural art and club scene and was, he admits, ‘a bogstandard left-leaning artist, with all the self-righteousness that entails.’ In the UAE he saw things that struck him as ‘odd’. ‘There’s a clear social stratification organized by country of origin. Emiratis are at the top, with anyone from the West just beneath. At the bottom are the Filipinos, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis… people who work the lowly jobs on construction sites and as domestic help, for example.’ Asking questions was unwelcome. ‘People would change the subject, or reply in whispers. Questioning is considered seditious and can lead to prison.’ Coates launched Tse Tse Fly Middle East in 2015 with ‘a remit of highlighting rights and free-speech abuses’. Its methods are old-fashioned grassroots activism translated to a digital platform for the speed and ease of rapid communication. Mariam Rezaei, a musician and academic who appears on This Is Kafala, first became involved with Tse Tse after contributing to These Are Our Friends, Too (2019), an album made to promote the work of FORWARD, an African-led group that advocates against female genital mutilation. ‘Siren’, her alarum to the Kefala album, is stark. ‘It’s a transformation of my own voice, where the singing is almost completely lost through the manipulation of two turntables and
effects units. The resulting sirens propose that not only can a human voice be completely transformed into a soulless, corporate machine, but that the ease with which a person’s identity can be lost is a cause for alarm. The siren calls for change and for demands to be heard.’ The album is united by an urgent sense of activism. Nour Sokhon’s ‘Before She Lost It’ is a bricolage of grinding digital noise and voices; ‘Signals From an Abandoned Railway Station’ by miserable.noise.club and Ainkaran Sivaaji’s ‘Revagupti’s Escape’ are brooding soundscapes. Checkpoint 303, the international ‘artivist’ collective which uses music and sonic reportage to draw global attention to the Palestinian struggle, is present in the form of ‘Kafa Kafala’. Getting involved with the Kafala album was a ‘no brainer’ for Checkpoint’s SC MoCha. ‘Tse Tse’s work is perfectly in line with our strong commitment to using sound art to raise awareness about injustice in all its forms.’ Will this do anything? Coates and the contributing artists know that the leaders of the kafala countries are sensitive to adverse publicity. Right now, that’s even more critical. Covid-19 has run riot through communities of migrant workers in the Middle East and local economic slowdowns mean many are no longer receiving wages. ‘If there’s enough visible, tangible indignation around the kafala system, and the rights abuses it represents, the hope is that minds are changed,’ Coates says. Here’s hoping. O For more info, visit tsetseflymiddleeast.org and migrant-rights.org
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BOOKS Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic, translated by Frances Riddle (Charco Press, ISBN 9781916465657) charcopress.com
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Tamara’s early life is overshadowed by conflict and tragedy. Her father cannot escape his own childhood memories of war and hunger. Her mother is addicted to painkillers. They tell her that history is for those who have no present, yet Tamara instinctively knows that she must work through the tangled memories, assumptions and conflicts in her family’s history to discover who she is and where she belongs. For much of her childhood, she plays a secondary role, observing the drama unfold around her. Looking back, the narrator says she felt safer staying behind the scenes, and the episodes that she shares through the acts (not chapters)
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of the novel are presented to the reader without judgement. Yet as she grows older, she finds her voice and the courage to consider who she wants to be when the curtain falls on the prologue of her life. The conceit that we are but characters in a play, acting out our parts, is hardly new (Shakespeare’s ‘All the world’s a stage’ and Oscar Wilde’s ‘The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast’ being just two examples). Yet in the exquisitely constructed and executed Theatre of War, Chilean writer Andrea Jeftanovic pushes beyond the idea that we are bit players at the mercy of an unknown director, to show that an exploration of the past, with all its horror and tragedy, can ultimately be the route to creating (or recreating) one’s identity as an adult. Originally published in Spanish in 2000, this English translation of Theatre of War finally allows a wider audience to experience this unique and moving novel. JL
Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev, translated by Antonia W Bouis (New Vessel Press, ISBN 9781939931900) newvesselpress.com
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Not long ago, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was fighting for his life in a German hospital, following a poisoning attempt almost certainly ordered by Putin, the bargain basement Borgia. Poisoning as an assassination method has become the preferred modus operandi of the Kremlin kleptocracy, the most infamous recent cases being the nerve-agent attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, UK, and the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko by means of radioactive polonium. Untraceable, the new novel by rising star Russian author Sergei Lebedev, takes us deep into the evil world of the scientists and state operatives
who develop and deploy such lethal toxins. The novel follows the life of Professor Kalitin, the scientist who developed Neophyte, the deadly undetectable substance of the title. Kalitin defected following the collapse of the Soviet Union and is living under an assumed identity in rural Poland. Worried that he will spill the secret of Neophyte, Moscow dispatches Lieutenant Colonel Shershov, a veteran of the dirty wars in Chechnya, to track him down and kill him, using the very poison Kalitin was central in developing. As Shershov stalks Kalitin, the interplay between the hunter and the hunted is interwoven with flashbacks illuminating the compromises and betrayals that have led the two men to this point. The book is far from the breathless thriller this synopsis might suggest. Lebedev has imbued his prose with an entirely appropriate cloying atmosphere of claustrophobia and paranoia and the novel tumbles to an unexpected and deeply unsettling conclusion. Untraceable is a consummate dissection of the nexus between the scientist’s responsibilities and the despot’s will to power. PW
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Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird Reviewers: Jo Lateu, Peter Whittaker, Horatio Morpurgo
How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm (Verso, ISBN 9781839760259) versobooks.com
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If you do an image web search for the letters XR, the standard abbreviation for the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, in the hope of finding the iconic hourglasscircle logo, you are confronted with picture after picture, page after page, of the Apple XR6 iPhone in all its shiny overpriced glory. The Extinction Rebellion logo is nowhere to be seen. A better illustration of rampant capitalism obliterating protest could hardly be imagined. It is this destructive systemic momentum on the road to climate catastrophe that is the subject of Andreas Malm’s provocative and hardhitting polemic. His central question is: by what means
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can protest movements best effect a change in the centre of political gravity? Citing the anti-slavery movement, the Suffragettes, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Malm interrogates the notion of whether XR should move beyond its present principle of exclusively nonviolent activities and include sabotage of the fossil-fuel industry infrastructure in its repertoire of direct actions. His impassioned conclusion, at the end of a closely argued and disputatious book, is that it should. Citing Covid-19 as a game-changing exemplar, he argues that the climate change movement should do whatever it takes to end our fossil-fuel dependency, up to and including blowing up pipelines. As he says: ‘If a pandemic can induce governments to take emergency actions, why can’t a climate breakdown that threatens to kill off the very life-support systems of the planet do the same? After this, there can be no more excuses for passivity.’ PW
Imagining Orwell by Julio Etchart (Just Press, ISBN 9781907352119) justpress.co.uk
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Julio Etchart, several times detained under the 1973-85 dictatorship in his native Uruguay, escaped into exile in Britain and became an international photojournalist. This book is his affectionate tribute to George Orwell, a guiding spirit throughout. Etchart retraces the writer’s steps across three continents, combining travelogue, photographs and pertinent quotes from Orwell’s own writings and diaries. The young Orwell worked as a police officer in Myanmar, then Burma. He watched the machinery of empire at close quarters (memorably depicted in Burmese Days). Etchart wanders the town of Katha today, where children learn maths in what was the European Club House and Chinese timber companies reign in place of British ones. In Republican Barcelona, Orwell both experienced a genuinely egalitarian society and witnessed its crushing by Russian-backed Stalinists,
telling the story in Homage to Catalonia. Questioning the ‘pact of forgetting’ whereby Spain keeps this memory at bay, Etchart climbs the roof-top from which Orwell watched the in-fighting. He finds the trench in which the writer was later shot by a sniper. Marrakech is one of the best things Orwell ever wrote about empire, race and invisibility. His insights shadow Etchart’s images of the town today as they switch from colour to black and white. We see the town’s once-bustling Jewish Quarter and the Christian cemetery in which colonial troops, brought from Senegal, lie buried. Made-up ‘Orwell quotes’ have been widely circulated by far-right groups in France who claim measures against Covid-19 are the actions of a sinister dictatorship. We need to keep ‘imagining’ Orwell as he was, lest his memory be conscripted by those who would misquote and reinvent him in their own image. HM
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MIXED MEDIA
FILM The Mole Agent (El agente topo)
African Apocalypse
directed and written by Maite Alberdi 84 minutes
directed and co-written by Rob Lemkin 88 minutes
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Sergio Chamy is a small man with large glasses and a big heart. For three months he has been a widower and, although he has three children and five grandchildren living nearby, he’s struggling. He needs something. Then he sees a newspaper ad offering temporary employment to someone aged 80 or older. He follows it up – a detective agency wants a mole, someone to go undercover, to live in a care home and to check that the mother of a client is being properly cared for. Sergio is an unlikely secret agent and struggles with the technology, such as making a call on a mobile phone and using it to film. He has a camera hidden inside his glasses, but he drops and breaks them. Even so, once placed inside the ‘objective’ as a resident of the care home, he’s pretty good – as we see, since the care home
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has agreed the filmmakers can film there, ostensibly for a documentary about life in care homes in Chile. The early jauntiness, the James Bond parody with John Barry-style score, Sergio’s identification of the ‘target’ and recording of her living conditions, give way to something else. He connects with people there. A gentle bright-eyed woman, losing her memory. An octogenarian who thinks her long-dead mother is alive but doesn’t ever visit her. A poet who declaims her own passionate verse about life and ageing. From an unlikely premise, director Alberdi has cleverly, respectfully put together a tender film about loneliness, loss of purpose and our need for connection with others. ML
This doc’s great strength is its revelation of a little-known episode in Europe’s colonization of Africa. In 1898, a French military column set out from Dakar, Senegal, with the brief ‘to place under French control the area between the River Niger and Lake Chad’. It led to its co-option into French West Africa, bordering British-ruled Nigeria. But, in villages along the way, the column massacred thousands of people. Along what is now a tarmacked stretch of Niger’s Route Nationale, the filmmakers, 120 years on, follow the expedition’s route. Their translator-guides are taken aback by people’s detailed knowledge of what had happened and where, the passions aroused, the raw anger and distress. We see historical black-and-white stills of brutality by contemporary Belgian, German and British colonists. We hear accounts of atrocities by expedition members, held
in French archives. The cruelty and depravity are jolting. The film’s co-writer and presenter, Femi Nylander, who is Britishborn of Nigerian parentage, is stunned. Yet the focus on Nylander and on the psychology of imperialism and racism, depicting the expedition leader as a prototype Kurtz, from Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, is limiting and eurocentric. There is nothing about the wider history of the area, the broader politics and economics of how money and power divide and rule globally. Then, and now. The expedition, with hardly more than a dozen European officers and soldiers, had Africans do the dirty work. Today Chad and Niger are, from UN figures, the world’s poorest states. Yet, somehow, one of the few stretches of tarmacked road in Chad runs from the airport to the Frenchbacked president’s palace. ML
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
MIXED MEDIA
MUSIC
Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird Words: Louise Gray and Malcolm Lewis
Freedom
Kologo
by Yvette Janine Jackson (Fridman Gallery, LP) yvettejackson.com
by Alostmen (Strut Records, CD + LP) griot.de
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Afro-futurism has a long history within jazz music. Simply expressed, it parallels written sci-fi texts: stories describing alternative and alien worlds, places where politics, cultures, relationships are different. Musicians such as Sun Ra and, more recently, Shabaka Hutchings have used the method with incredible levels of creativity as a way of circumnavigating racism. The US-based artist and composer Yvette Janine Jackson works very much in this imaginary tradition: the difference is that she is travelling in the opposite direction. Freedom, a limited edition LP comprising of her two radio operas, Destination Freedom and Invisible People, goes backwards to works that imagine the horrors of the Middle Passage on the one hand, and, also, closer to our time, President Obama’s support of marriage equality in 2015.
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
Jackson uses various tools to construct her work. Tape cut-ups, electronics from a vintage synthesizer, as well as more conventional music from her improvising ensemble are her compositional methods. Destination Freedom begins with water slapping against a surface, we segue into soundscape where we might be hearing whispers, a few lines of a contralto singing, cries, a scream. A pressure of sound builds and then a terrible silence. Invisible People is a powerful indictment of the US black community’s opposition to equal marriage. That so often the voices collaged here are beautiful ones – the lilt of a pastor’s voice, music from a church service, is painful. We hear litanies of homophobic remarks and then, finally, the jazz breaks through – an imaging, perhaps, of a better world. LG
‘Kologo here before the banjo, kologo here before the lute… kologo music be the root.’ So goes the refrain to the opening song to the Alostmen’s homage to their instrument of choice. The kologo is a two-stringed lute, a precursor of the banjo, and an instrument known throughout West Africa. It’s also an instrument that is easily at hand, with a resonating chamber which might be carefully made from a gourd, or, in a more ready way, with an oil can. Either way, the diversity of the ways to construct the kologo speaks to its essential popularity. Headed by Ghana’s Stevo Atambire, the Alostmen quintet opens up its debut album with a griot-style song of lineage. However, this time, it’s an instrument rather than a human that is the object of praise. It’s a nice way of underlining the family tree of objects which reminds us
of the African ancestry of so much guitar music. This upbeat song is delivered, like sections of the album, in English, a lingua franca employed here to make the point about African heritage. Alostmen is for the most part an acoustic ensemble, which, for the purposes of this album, imports a bit of extra support – horns, viol and bass guitar – when needed. The music is intricately patterned, easy on the ear and intended to get its audience moving. Atambire’s kologo playing sets up some blistering tempi: ‘Atubga’, an ode to his kolongo-playing grandfather, zips along. Strong percussive rhythms and sinuous vocals make for compelling listening. The raw recording productions complement the music: hearing Kologo, you feel like you’ve turned a corner into a vivacious party. LG
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THE PUZZLER CROSSWORD 248 by Axe CRYPTIC ACROSS 7 Alright to turn back a couple of degrees west of African capital (6) 8 Curiously add up Americans first into church somewhere NW of Chennai... (8) 9 ...not female, maybe Goan, visiting a Maharashtra city (8) 10 Nigerian’s capital’s nearly halved by small boy’s total volte-face (6)
The crossword prize is a voucher for our online shop to the equivalent of £20/$30. Only the winner will be notified. Send your entries by 31 January to: New Internationalist Puzzle Page, The Old Music Hall, 106-108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK; or email a scan to: [email protected] Winner for 247: James Ellison, Montreal, Canada.
11 Stink with bird kept in reserve somewhere in Africa (8) 12 Indian city’s reported vermin seen west of mineral deposit (6) 13 Sort of lingo to expect in Asia, or in Indiana? (4-7) 18 Foreign Office soldier’s infiltrating Georgia’s Italian settlement (6) 20 Typical of Scottish upland: immense but lacking in the end gradient to access interior (8) 22 African city party in the style of Ugandan capital earlier (6)
23 British invaders, the old English reflect, build this place in Wales (8) 24 Old Asians, alas many floundered (8) 25 Keep left between roundabouts here in Portugal (6) CRYPTIC DOWN 1 German confirmation to turn up after appalling little weight thrown at the Peninsular battle (7) 2 Preston, a fussy town in New Jersey (8) 3 Swedish settlement built upward from ethical atomic parts (6) 4 One into home improvements, perhaps, key in this part of Turkey (8) 5 Hares and rabbits risk injury – shooting starts here in the Hebrides (6) 6 Meat infection resistance is to be found in the source of fast food (7) 8 One enlisting Spaniards to take in Ivy Leaguers (13) 14 Approve a horse, and give a name to this British Columbian mount (8) 15 Wisconsin city’s over-weighed by fruit (8) 16 Too camp the way Washington sits on this? (7) 17 Master spy spotted in Lombardy town (7) 19 Maybe needs half a month to alter course for the longest Andes river to flow west (6) 21 Cambodian city’s no good in Korea: out of place with no English (6) QUICK ACROSS 7 Capital of Mali (6) 8 City and administrative area of Andhra Pradesh (imperial spelling)... (8) 9 ...and one of Maharashtra (8) 10 Largest ethnic group of Nigeria (6) 11 African country, previously Bechuanaland (8) 12 Indian state, formerly called – Karnataka since 1973 – and its capital (6) 13 Relating to a subfamily of European languages featuring Indic (4-7) 18 City of Apulia, SE Italy (6) 20 Scottish Region, capital Aberdeen (8) 22 Largest city, port and economic capital of Cameroon (6) 23 Island and one of the ancient counties of Wales (8)
ASSOCIATION WORDS 15
Solutions here are alluded to by ‘association’ words or phrases, eg ICE as a solution could have association words like ‘melting (ICE)’ or ‘(ICE) skating’, so the association words in each clue could appear in a phrase before or after the solution word. ACROSS
DOWN
1 Nile: Force (5) 4 Surprise: Holiday (7) 8 Cape St: Van Gogh (7) 9 Donkey: Shotgun (5) 10 Next: Post (4) 11 Earl of: College (8) 14 Silver: One’s pockets (6) 15 Perfidious: Rovers FC (6) 18 Maundy: ‘s Child has far to go (8) 20 Begin to: Officer (4) 23 Emergency: Stage left (5) 25 Payment’s in: Australia Fair (7) 26 Music of the: Of influence (7) 27 Early: section of the stair (5)
1 The Boy: Copperfield (5) 2 President: Green (7) 3 For ever and ever: To That (4) 4 Harry: About (6) 5 Bubble: Park (3) 6 So: It ends (3,2) 7 Brian: -Barr virus (7) 12 On the: Is in your court (4) 13 Flying: In one’s pants (4) 14 Love: Of marque (7) 16 Leeward: In the stream (7) 17 Venice, the city of: Of Mars (6) 19 Letter of: Heep (5) 21 Germaine: Garson (5) 22 Maiden: The rainbow (4) 24 Dear: Loin (3)
24 Former inhabitants of Kuala Lumpur (8) 25 Portugal’s second city (6) QUICK DOWN 1 French heavily fortified Spanish town, besieged and taken by Wellington in 1812 (7) 2 Third town of New Jersey, known as the Silk City (8) 3 Swedish industrial town on Lake Vattern, midway between Stockholm and Gothenburg (6) 4 Department of SE Turkey, and its capital (8) 5 Southern region of the most northerly of the Outer Hebrides, famous for its textiles (6) 6 German port, officially the Free and Hanseatic City of ------- (7) 8 Members of Cambridge (UK and USA) or Harvard University (13) 14 British Columbia mountain, lake and river resort area (8) 15 -------- Layer: in the upper atmosphere it reflects short-wave radio waves to earth (8) 16 US river emptying into Chesapeake Bay (7) 17 Lombardy textile town, site of a battle in 1859, whose name was given to a mauve-crimson dye (7) 19 Longest S American river flowing west into the Pacific (6) 21 Capital of the former Khmer kingdom (6)
SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD 247 ACROSS: 7 Kalamata, 9 Aliyah, 10 Bata,
11 Le Lamentin, 12 Hawkes, 14 Nimbyism, 15 Gangetic Plain, 17 Bulawayo, 19 Lydian, 21 Beachy Head, 22 Gila, 23 Menton, 24 Newstead. DOWN: 1 Parana, 2 Naga, 3 Carlisle, 4 Hammam, 5 Disneyland, 6 Davidson, 8 Atlantic Ocean, 13 Kansas City, 15 Gruyères, 16 Piltdown, 18 Aryans, 20 Allgau, 22 Goth.
WORDSEARCH 94
Find the 20 river deltas hidden here.
SOLUTION TO ASSOCIATION WORDS 14 ACROSS: 1 Attack, 5 Word, 9 Scarlet, 10 Scare, 11 Evens, 13 Species, 14 Nut, 16 One, 17 Age, 21 Bridges, 22 Costs, 25 Spout, 26 Boiling, 27 Emma, 28 Thames. DOWN: 2 Trade, 3 Atlas, 4 Kit, 5 Washer, 6 Reading, 7 Isle, 8 Feast, 12 Van, 13 Sands, 15 Uniform, 18 Eat, 19 Abuse, 20 Agatha, 22 China, 23 Slice, 24 Sign, 26 Bat.
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SOLUTION TO WORDSEARCH 93 The 16 Latin American countries were: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay.
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
AGONY UNCLE
Q: I love the odd beer and in recent years have become a bit of a connoisseur, as well as starting to brew my own. Those who have tried it have been very complimentary about my beer. I’m really fed up in my current line of work and this could become a vocation for me as well as providing an ecofriendly alternative to corporate breweries. I was excited about my plan until a conversation with a friend who let slip that he really disapproved of it as a business venture. My friend enjoys the odd half pint but is of the strong opinion that any promotion of alcohol is bad. Globally, millions of deaths each year are attributable to alcohol consumption and my friend has a family history of alcohol abuse so has seen first-hand the devastation it can cause. Is there such thing as responsible drinking or drink promotion? A: As I write this, England is in its second national lockdown to reduce the transmission of Covid-19. I’m not a fan of lockdowns: they are a sign of public-health policy failure and have deleterious social consequences, like the rise in domestic violence we have been seeing. But one small silver lining of the enforced restrictions on our movement has been the turn towards local and small businesses in our consumption patterns. Just down the road from me is
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021
a locally owned brewery, and a few young cyclists can now regularly be seen delivering cartons of freshly brewed ales around the neighbourhood. For this brewery, the pandemic has been a boon and receiving its drinks has added some variation to otherwise monotonous evenings. An eco-friendly small business that sells something that local people want is obviously a good thing. From a labour perspective, one that pays its employees well above a living wage, encourages trade union membership and has democratic internal structures is even better. And that’s before you consider the way a small brewery acts as a necessary corrective for the wider industry. This is a sector dominated by a handful of huge transnationals; after a $100-billion merger in 2016 with SABMiller, the Belgian company AB InBev was said to produce a third of the world’s beer. And the investigative journalist Olivier van Beemen’s work into the activities of Heineken in Africa has revealed the textbook way in which large corporations with addictive products can play a nefarious role in the Global South.1 My contention is that since people are always going to enjoy alcohol and have done since time immemorial, you’re doing a good thing by setting up an ethical alternative. But this is unlikely to
ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER
Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective. Enter stage: Agony Uncle
convince your friend. To have had a personal relationship with alcoholism must surely change one’s perspective: from losing friends to suffering at the hands of abusive family members, it is not hard to see how someone might associate the sight of moderate drinking with the worst of human behaviour. The socio-economic angle here cannot be ignored either: a 2017 study in The Lancet found that ‘heavy drinkers from deprived areas are at a greater risk of dying or becoming ill’ than others.2 This is where your friendship comes into play. The implication of your friend’s criticism is that their experience outweighs yours. But what about your life, and the fact that this enterprise would offer a way out of a job you’re fed up with? Friendship requires negotiation and I can’t see any evidence of this.
Perhaps your job, therefore, is to convince them that what you’re setting up isn’t a drinking hole that will abet alcoholism, but a gastronomic and social endeavour. You could commit to setting up a physical space where locals can try freshly brewed drinks, as do many small breweries, and put the emphasis on the conviviality, the pub quizzes, the food – even let community groups use the space. This wouldn’t be a den of iniquity but a hub of socially distanced social life, at a time when we have never needed such spaces more. O 1 Olivier van Beemen, ‘Heineken claims its business helps Africa. Is that too good to be true?’, 12 Feb 2019, the Guardian, nin.tl/Heineken 2 ‘Poorest at greater risk from heavy drinking, says study’, 10 May 2017, BBC, nin.tl/Drinking SEND YOUR DILEMMAS TO ADVICE @NEWINT.ORG
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WHAT IF…
WE GOT REAL ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY?
ANDY CARTER
Ditching the UN’s way of measuring it might be a good start, finds Vanessa Baird.
How well are countries doing in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) they signed in 2015, designed to put the global economy back into balance with nature by 2030? The obvious place to look is the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals Index. There you can see the 166 countries that signed up, ranked by their overall progress in achieving all 17 goals. The ambitious goals include: no poverty, zero hunger, quality education, gender equality, clean water, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry and innovation, reducing inequality, sustainable cities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, peace, justice and so on. But economist, and occasional contributor to New Internationalist, Jason Hickel has spotted a problem. According to the 2020 index, the best performers are Sweden, Denmark and Finland. But, as he points out in an article for Foreign Policy, they are also some of the ‘most environmentally unsustainable countries in the world’. Star country Sweden, for example, has a ‘material footprint’ – the natural resources it uses a year – of 32 metric tons per person. That’s on a par with the US, way over the global average of 12 tons and the sustainable level of 7 tons per person. And it’s not just an oddity about Sweden. Other good sustainability performers are also rich, high consumers. For example, France ranked at 4, Germany 5, Britain 13, New Zealand/Aotearoa 16, Canada 21, US 31 and Australia 37. At the bottom of the index, we have Madagascar – a country rich in biodiversity – but ranked at 161, Liberia 162, Somalia 163, Chad 164, South Sudan 165, and Central African Republic 166. All are among the poorest countries in the world. So, what’s going on? Several things, according to Hickel.
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First, there’s a problem of weighting. There are 17 goals and a total of 169 indicators attached to them. But these indicators are far more concerned with economic and social development than with ecology – the third part of ‘sustainability’. Ecological concerns are ‘swamped’, he says. Nor does the index take proper account of the impact of globalization and international trade. It’s so much easier to be squeaky clean if your companies have offshored their most environmentally damaging activities to poorer countries. No wonder the cities with the worst air quality tend to be in the Global South. And there’s imports. If rich high-consuming countries buy in goods or raw materials from the Global South then that’s where the harmful impacts – deforestation, mining pollution or CO2 emissions – are likely to show up. Countries near the bottom of the index – South Sudan, Central African Republic, Somalia – are also recent war zones. But what about the countries profiting from conflict and instability: top arms-dealing nations like the US, Britain, France,
Germany, Russia, China? The UN recognizes the difficulties poor countries face in trying to achieve the SDGs. Project director of the SDG Index Jeffrey Sachs writes: ‘They will need considerable global assistance to supplement national leadership.’ And the UN does acknowledge ‘spill-over effects’ including pollution embedded in trade; biodiversity loss embedded in trade; and the misuse of the global commons, such as overfishing in the high seas. When these are calculated on a separate ‘spill-over’ index, countries like Somalia, South Sudan, Chad, Burundi come out best, having more positive and fewer negative effects on other countries. Countries like France, Sweden, Britain, Germany and the US are among the worst. But this ‘spill-over’ index is not what gets highlighted in the news. So, what if ecological concerns were given as much attention as economic and social ones; offshoring of carbon emissions by richer onto poorer highlighted? What if the sustainability impacts of international trade were made fully visible and arms sales as well as conflict were a core sustainability issue? We might end up with a very differentlooking sustainability index. And maybe, if we went further still, and dropped the UN fixation on the nationstate as the only lens through which to look at the world, peoples with no state or living across state boundaries – indigenous peoples of the Amazon, for example – might earn the bouquets while the Swedens of this world got the brickbats. If targeting assistance is an underlying purpose of the SDGs Index, then perhaps it’s the economically richer countries that need assistance in adjusting how they view – and measure performance in efforts to save – the world they are so busily and efficiently trashing. O
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
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