UNGA 76: Towards Uncommon Collaborations

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A Global Affairs Media Network SP EC I AL U N GA 76 EDI TI ON I S EP TEMBER 2021

UNGA 76 TOWARDS UNCOMMON COALITIONS

PEACE

DIPLOMACY

SOCIETY

ECONOMY

BUSINESS

THE TWIN TESTS FACING THE UN IN AFGHANISTAN AND MYANMAR

INTERVIEW WITH THE FIRST LADY OF UKRAINE OLENA ZELENSKA

CURRENT DISINFORMATION RESPONSES DETRIMENTAL TO HUMAN RIGHTS

MAKING SUPPLY CHAINS MORE RESILIENT POST-PANDEMIC

NEW TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS FOR INCLUSIVE RECOVERY

SEASON ONE Featured Guests

DANTE DISPARTE Circle

MANJULA DISSANAYAKE Educate Lanka Foundation

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LISA GABLE FARE

PIERRE FERRARI Heifer International

MARGERY KRAUS APCO Worldwide

BRIAN SPEARS New Age Meats

STAVROS YIANNOUKA WISE | Qatar Foundation

LOUKA PARRY The Learning Future

FABIAN HEDIGER World Web Forum

ANDREA BONIME-BLANC GEC Risk Advisory

WELCOME TO [Y]OUR FUTURE! Join us as we demystify what leaders are saying and doing so that every global citizen can join the conversation. www.futuretensepod.com

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D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m

Contents

SP EC I AL U N GA 76 EDI TI ON I S EP TEMBER 2021

28 I SDG 16 | Peace & Justice

The Twin Tests Facing the

UN in Afghanistan and Myanmar

08 I Cover Story

UNGA 76: Towards

Uncommon Coalitions

By: Dante A. Disparte

14 I Interview

The First Lady of Ukraine

Olena Zelenska

36 I Feature | Misinformation

Misinformation and Conventionalism:

The Gatekeepers

Against Progress

By: Ana C. Rold

20 I UNGA 76 Agenda

A Common Agenda and

New Types of Partnerships

For Inclusive Recovery

By: Anna Tunkel

24 I

SDG 17 | Partnerships For the Biggest Multilateral Challenges Global Leadership Is in Short Supply By: Lulio Vargas-Cohen

By: Gregoire Verdeaux

38 I SDG 4 | Quality Education

The Other Education Crisis

By: Mandeep Tiwana

By: Stavros Yiannouka

40 I SDG 5 | Gender Equality

Women Are Key to Solving

the UN SDGs

By: Rima Kawas

26 I SDG 17 | Partnerships 42 I Feature | Economy

Making Supply Chains

The Private Sector’s Role

More Resilient

in Achieving the SDGs

By: Puru P. Trivedi & Nico Rios

By: Dalia Marin

44 I Feature | Politics

A Dangerous New

Variant of Populism

By: Michael Burleigh

46 I Feature | Climate Change

A World of Heat and Headwinds

By: Michael Spence

48 I Feature | Society

Are Central Banks to

Blame for Rising Inequality

By: Kenneth Rogoff

50 I Report | Human Rights

Current Disinformation

Responses Detrimental

to Human Rights

By: Thomas Plant

52 I Feature | Food Security

Empowering Smallholder

Farmers Key to Food

Security in Africa

By: Raphael Obonyo

Masthead Publishing house Medauras Global publisher & ceo Ana C. Rold Editorial Advisory board Asmaa Al-Fadala Andrew Beato Fumbi Chima Dante A. Disparte Kerstin Ewelt Ghida Fakhry Sir Ian Forbes Amb. Lisa Gable Greg Lebedev Anita McBride Clare Shine

CONTRIBUTORS Michael Burleigh Joshua Huminski Rima Kawas Dalia Marin Raphael Obonyo Carol O’Donnell Thomas Plant Nico Rios Kenneth Rogoff Michael Spence Mandeep Tiwana Puru P. Trivedi Anna Tunkel Lulio Vargas-Cohen Gregoire Verdeaux Stavros Yiannouka

Managing Editors Winona Roylance Shane Szarkowski Creative Director Marc Garfield Contributing EDITORS Kelly R. Bailey Manjula Dissanayake Paul Nash Chris Purifoy Dominic Regester Jacksón Smith Meredith Yanora Creative Contributors Michelle Guillermin Sebastian Rich

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SEPTEMBER 2021 04

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Welcome SP EC I AL U N GA 76 EDI TI ON I S EP TEMBER 2021

Ana C. Rold Publisher & CEO

Despite COVID-19’s fast-spreading Delta variant and lack of access to vaccines for a good 2/3 of the world, more than 80 world leaders plan to speak in person at this year’s UN General Assembly in New York. However, outside of the UN Headquarters, high-level side meetings and events continue to be in hybrid or virtual format.

As the UN tries hard to avoid a superspreader event, it is notable who will be there in person and who will not. On the agenda to speak at the building are U.S. President Joe Biden, Indian President Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Notably absent will be Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

This is a tough spot for diplomats and civil society leaders to be in. During the pandemic, hybrid and virtual diplomacy flourished. But diplomacy is a contact sport and the relationships and negotiations that are forged behind the scenes at UNGA cannot be replicated via Zoom.

So, we find ourselves in this paradox: while UNGA this year is the most open it has been in decades, the hybrid format actually widens diplomatic inequity.

There is another issue at play: we know the UNGA that was established after World War II is not the body that can adequately respond to the multiple threats—some of them existential—humanity faces today. But does it have to be?

The solutions—as I have been saying for a while now—will come from all corners of the world and not just the power halls of Washington, New York, and Geneva. This is what we set out to demonstrate with our selection of essays and features in our special UNGA 76 edition and with the series of events and meetings we are broadcasting with our partners this week.

While the pandemic, climate change, inequity, and the slowdown of progress towards the SDGs weighs heavily on our minds, we believe inviting additional actors—besides the usual leaders attending UNGA in person—will widen our opportunity for interdisciplinarity and transformative solution-making.

Because the UN SDGs are everyone’s business. ●

SEPTEMBER 2021 06

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COVER STORY UNGA 76

UNGA 76

Towards Uncommon Coalitions

By Dante A. Disparte

SEPTEMBER 2021 08

CROEV FE RU G S TEOERSY UNGA 76

it is looking like time’s up for grand bargains, hollow pronouncements, and “summiteering.”

It is time to form uncommon coalitions focused on action.

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COVER STORY UNGA 76

T

his is not a drill. As heads of state gathers for the United Nations General Assembly marking the 76th anniversary of the venerable institution, the world seems ill-prepared to mount a meaningful response to the series of challenges arrayed against humanity. The event itself may be an unceremonious blend of inperson and virtual discussions among world leaders. The issues on the agenda are no longer faint matters on the horizon doomsayers, Cassandras, and superforecasters were warning about. These are now ever-present, multifaceted, and tangible risks not only shaping the world, but jarring it. From the grinding effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, whose persistent mutations continue to outpace our inequitable game of vaccine catchup with disparate efficacy and global availability—to the very real effects of climate change, which must now be dealt with in the present tense. Combine these two “risks of risks” with the persistent drum beat of sociopolitical upheaval and anemic economic performance with few policy arrows left in the quiver, it is looking like time’s up for grand bargains, hollow pronouncements, and “summiteering.” It is time to form uncommon coalitions focused on action.

These uncommon coalitions must be formed for action and forged by a deep, abiding crosssector commitment to not merely admire global problems, but to do something about them in a span of time and with a sense of urgency

measured in years, not decades. It is impossible to build a fortress nation, company, or institution in the face of global threats that do not respect national boundaries, any more than they respect customs, border enforcement, or passport control. In short, we are all in this together. It is not without a sense of irony or tragicomedy that despite the rising tendencies of ultranationalism, populism, and national retrenchment, the world was dealt a pandemic threat that can only be arrested with deep multilateralism and uncommon coalitions, the likes typically seen during the era of Great Wars—the aftermath of which gave rise to new global institutions like the United Nations and its predecessor League of Nations. This era where the world faces the specter of the many-headed Hydra of complex global threats, requires not only renewing global institutions and norms, it may very well require entirely new ones, for we are as strong as the weakest link amid so much peril.

Renewing global institutions and irrigating the wellspring that can inspire the world to act requires not only new voices at the table, but new ideas and new approaches. Mounting a credible response to 21st century challenges using institutions created in the last century, coalitions mobilized a generation ago and infrastructure designed and built in the post-War era, is showing deeply enfeebled links in our armor. While technology alone is not a panacea, it does show where policy and incumbents are falling short. Herein lies an area of great untapped opportunity, with the caveat that

These uncommon coalitions must be formed for action and forged by a deep, abiding cross-sector commitment to not merely admire global problems, but to do something about them in a span of time and with a sense of urgency measured in years, not decades.

SEPTEMBER 2021 10

just because you can do something with code, does not mean you should.

Looking back at the onset of COVID-19, which seized up the world’s travel, trade, and economic arteries—like a horrible case of business continuity arteriosclerosis— the internet (and technology, more generally) was one of the few global systems to perform well. Indeed both the antifragility and the inequity of the internet were on display with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as some countries and people (those born in the right postal codes and endowed with service or knowledge work) were able to plow through the crisis with all but cabin fever and screen fatigue being their worst maladies. Others, however, including millions of people in advanced economies, were revealed to have little hope at all for any semblance of operating, household, or personal continuity because they exist on the margins of low-cost, reliable internet connectivity. If ever there was a case for extending digital public goods or upgrading our global digital commons, how the world mounted a response to COVID-19 was it. The provision or continuity of virtually every service, from the mundane to absolute necessities like education, healthcare, and the movement of money, were all made possible through technology. The fact that this infrastructure or these rails do not exist at population (and global) scale, is a deep source of prepandemic vulnerability and an area of great opportunity for uncommon coalitions to get to work.

COVID-19 accelerated digital adoption and technological dependency by a decade. By the same token, this decade’s worth of digital acceleration has made the barriers to entry that much higher for developing and emerging countries, whose people remain on the margins laboring under the deleterious effects of traditional numeracy, literacy, and now adding internet technocracy to the threepart development roadmap of human progress. As a painfully

CROEV FE RU G S TEOERSY UNGA 76

acute example, typically recessionresistant global remittance corridors, which in an average year provided more than $700 billion in remittances cash flows from the world’s diaspora populations to their family and loved ones back home, lost more than $200 billion during the pandemic. True of all risks, the people who can afford it the least, pay the highest price when it comes to basic resilience. And yet, on this issue, which is called out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), technologies exist that can achieve lowering remittance costs

globally to 3% from the stubbornly high 7% average costs. Indeed, but for large-scale digital transformation of the payments and banking system, the first of the SDGs, eradicating extreme poverty, seems hopelessly out of reach. Herein, technology is not the problem. The failure of governments and regulators to catalyze, harness, and unleash digital financial inclusion is.

As the spectrum of possibility widens on the direst challenges facing the world—from climate change to unchecked income inequality, to the likelihood that

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COVID-19 is not the last pandemic we will deal with in the coming decades (during which the UN will turn 100)—one thing is clear, doing the same things expecting different outcomes is not working.

We need to reformulate how we respond to societal challenges.

Rather than piecemeal approaches to buying insurance when the house is on fire, the world’s leaders gathered for the 76th UN General Assembly this September, would be wise in framing global resilience as a “share of GDP” investment rather than a cost. ●

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D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m

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Interview with the First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska Interview by Ana C. Rold

F

irst Ladies have always been more than their office and it is now well-documented that they play a pivotal role in the success and prosperity of their nation. The role of the First Lady depends, of course, on the country she serves. In some nations there is a formal role and office that comes along with resources and staff. But that’s not always the case and it’s usually up to the First Lady herself to explore how she could bring resources, partnerships, and independent initiatives to benefit the people of her country and beyond.

The First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska has fully embraced this role that often comes with no “rulebook” but with plenty of challenges and opportunities. We caught up with her during her recent trip to Washington, DC at the end of August in order to learn more about her initiatives in the Ukraine and around the world.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

[ANA C. ROLD]: First Ladies around the world play an important public diplomacy role for their countries,

especially in foreign visits. How do you use your office to advance public diplomacy in other countries? Can you comment on your trip to the U.S.?

[FIRST LADY ZELENSKA]: From the moment I became First Lady of Ukraine, I realized the role I could play in supporting humanitarian causes, as social causes have been a passion of mine throughout my career. One of the things I’ve done throughout my time as First Lady, is to learn through my engagement with other First Ladies around the world, from France to Israel

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and Canada to Japan, and many others. This was part of the driving force behind my initiative to convene the “Kyiv Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen” in August of this year to coincide with the 30th Anniversary of Ukraine’s second independence.

Attendees of the summit made a common commitment to address humanitarian challenges on a global scale and to pursue the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic, including those to education, healthcare, and gender equality are our immediate priorities. While it is only a first step, the fact that we are now working together to use soft power to address these issues in a more integrated way is making a difference already. Countries are collaborating more and making a commitment to do more to address these issues.

Former U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton, Actress Robin Wright, and Lebanese author Nassim Taleb were among the special guests who highlighted the rights of women and the challenges they face. Another special guest was Afghan Filmmaker Sahraa Karimi, who was evacuated in a joint effort between Ukraine, Slovakia, and Turkey—demonstrating in practice the type of cooperation envisioned by the Kyiv Summit.

While in the United States, I participated in a luncheon meeting with “Power Women,” an organization of U.S. women from diverse backgrounds focused on promoting the achievements and connection of female leaders. We discussed how the formal and structured office of the United States First Lady could be a model for other countries, and I shared my experience establishing the First Lady Institute in Kyiv, which can serve as a resource for the research of First Ladies.

[ANA C. ROLD]: Can you comment on your work and advocacy on issues such as health education and gender equality? How do you hope your work to influence domestic and international initiatives? Can you speak about your role in the G7 partnership for gender equality?

First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska at Mt. Vernon during her visit to Washington, DC in August 2021.

Photo courtesy of the First Lady’s office.

“As a parent, one of the issues closest to home for me is child nutrition and its connection to both health and education. It is why I held a roundtable with Ukraine’s ministries to develop a new school nutrition program that better serves Ukraine’s students.”

[FIRST LADY ZELENSKA]: I believe that today we share a lot of things in common. Common values, ideas, problems. We should care about the issues that concern the whole world - health, education, gender equality.

And surely, they get closer when it comes to you. As a parent, one of the issues closest to home for me is child nutrition and its connection to both health and education. It is why I held a roundtable with Ukraine’s ministries to develop a new school nutrition program that better serves Ukraine’s students. They can improve their health so that they can improve their learning.

Equal opportunity is also a focus of my work and the agenda has many parts. One is gender equality. I led Ukraine’s efforts to formally become a member of the Biarritz Partnership for Gender Equality, which happened in September 2020. This effort was led

by French First Lady Brigitte Macron, in part, to use the soft power that First Ladies and Gentlemen have to address social challenges. She and I discussed efforts in France to promote health, health workers, and mental health during the COVID-19 crisis, as well as the ongoing work to secure equal opportunity for women. I was proud to work with TV Host and Ukraine’s

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Ambassador of the UN Fund for Population Masha Efrosinina to advance a National Call Center for domestic violence through Ukraine’s Ministry of Social Policy. I’ve also pressed Ukraine to join the Equal Pay International Coalition to address the gender pay gap, which is an ongoing problem in our country.

Gender pay equality and eliminating domestic violence are two parts of the overall Biarritz Partnership goals Ukraine has committed to pursuing.

The other parts are a barrier free space for families and people with limited mobility, teaching the principles of equality of men and women, and expanding childcare and the tools for men to take care of children. Ukraine has committed itself to these principles and I am proud to have the opportunity to lead these efforts in Ukraine with many good people across the country.

[ANA C. ROLD]: Can you speak about the “Barrier Free Ukraine” initiative? Do you have mechanisms in place for these programs and initiatives to go on after your husband leaves office in the future?

[FIRST LADY ZELENSKA]: I am proud of the work we have done in our effort

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to make a barrier free environment the new social norm, not just for people who face physical or mental health barriers, but for the promotion of equal rights and opportunities for all Ukrainians. Our National Strategy for Barrier Free Environment and our Council of Barrier Free Environment in Ukraine are the tools we are using to pursue our goals.

One example is breaking down barriers for girls in STEM education.

Working with UNICEF, I led a partnership to promote a Ukrainian women in science art exhibition and a girls’ science essay contest called “SCIENCE is SHE.” The realization of the talents of Ukraine’s girls and women in science is important for Ukraine’s future and important in breaking down the barriers that we have. Our competition showcased 12 leading female scientists from Ukraine and had over 1,000 girls from 14 years old to 21 competing. Top prizes included a $4,000 study grant. It also included portraits of the 12 female scientists for a travelling exhibition to towns and cities across Ukraine, focused on schools, libraries, and colleges who can show the art for free.

Our work in Ukraine to remove barriers for those with disabilities is another area where we are taking action. We have worked with cities across Ukraine to provide inclusive infrastructure, which not only removes barriers but helps to change attitudes and biases. My goal has been to be a public voice to empower people to promote the rights of the disabled. Supporting Ukraine’s National Paralympics team is a symbolic but important way to build momentum for change in Ukraine and in other parts of the world.

As I said before, another place where we’ve seen barriers and worked to change them is in domestic violence against women. The President signed a Presidential decree on measures to prevent and combat domestic and gender violence last year. It was the number two health problem after COVID-19 which doubled after the pandemic took hold.

The important thing about these initiatives is that they have been institutionalized in Ukraine beyond

the office of the First Lady and I think that makes them national priorities and ones that will continue, particularly since Ukraine has made commitments to the rest of the world.

[ANA C. ROLD]: Can you comment on your cultural diplomacy efforts, especially your efforts during your current visit to the United States?

What have been some of the key highlights that you can share with us?

[FIRST LADY ZELENSKA]: I truly believe in soft power and cultural diplomacy. It is a part of that power, which is important for Ukraine.

Our nation and society have a rich history spanning centuries and we’ve contributed to the world in many ways.

The arts and history are two of the most effective ways to highlight and connect cultures using soft power. I’ve led an initiative to provide Ukrainian language audio guides at key historical and heritage sites around the world and we’ve done 31 so far, including Versailles in Paris and on my recent trip to Washington, D.C. at Mt. Vernon, the home of America’s first President George Washington. As one of the founders of America’s democracy, the link to Ukraine, which is fighting for its own democracy, is an important one for Ukrainians and Americans.

Something else I have done, close to home, is host meetings of women Ambassadors in Ukraine in partnership with British Ambassador to Ukraine Melinda Simmons. It is a chance to discuss and promote collaboration on the humanitarian goals and social goals we are all working on, particularly our barrier free environment.

[Ana C. Rold]: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you personally and your country? What initiatives are you supporting in order to help the Ukrainian people?

[FIRST LADY ZELENSKA]: The COVID-19 crisis has tested Ukraine, and me personally, but we have taken steps to improve Ukraine and it has worked. Our vaccinations have tripled since June this year and we have the lowest case levels in a year. We are SEPTEMBER 2021 16

also grateful for the support the United States was able to provide when President Biden, working with my husband, arranged for 2.2 million new vaccinations to be provided to Ukraine.

Ukraine’s economy shows slow but steady grows, which is a mark that our nation remains strong in difficult times.

I know from personal experience how difficult this deadly virus can be. While I took all proper precautions last year as part of Ukraine’s efforts to slow the disease, I contracted COVID which led to moderate complications with pneumonia. My husband and children tested negative and I was able to work remotely and quarantine for two weeks while I recovered. Many people have suffered more than I did. Ukraine is continuing to do more to stop COVID and deal with its impacts.

[ANA C. ROLD]: You are considered one of the most stylish First Ladies in the world, having graced the pages of several fashion magazines. Fashion diplomacy is a type of diplomacy that many women diplomats have used to make important statements (a great example is Secretary Madeline Albright).

It is my understanding that you do not miss opportunities to support Ukrainian artists and designers. How have you been doing that during your visit in the U.S.?

[FIRST LADY ZELENSKA]: The way you dress and the way your present yourself, not only speaks for you, but for your country and what you are trying to accomplish. The President and I always want to represent Ukraine in a positive and strong way. It is a reflection of our actions and values.

It is also a way to promote Ukrainian designers and the fashion industry and tell the world more about Ukraine, what we can do, and what we offer.

In using fashion as a way to communicate, we work to meet the protocol needs on all our trips, as protocol can also be a tool of soft power during state visits and international trips. In the United States, we worked to make sure that the message we sent, whether at the White House, Mt. Vernon, or the Holodomor memorial, sought to represent Ukraine in the best way. ●

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D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m UNGA 76

A COMMON A AGENDA AND NEW TYPES OF PARTNERSHIPS FOR INCLUSIVE RECOVERY By: Anna Tunkel

s the 76th UN General Assembly (UNGA) opens in New York, the world is at a point of inflection. COVID-19 is still raging around the world destroying lives and livelihoods, humanitarian crises are on the rise creating disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable, especially women and children, and the dire consequences of climate change are felt in every corner of the world like never before.

The two weeks around the official UNGA deliberations of heads of state and ministerial delegations have become a convening moment for business, academic, and non-profit leaders to discuss and align on actions around critical global challenges, in particular around the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets agreed to by the 193 UN member states for the next nine years (2030). Pre-COVID, there were over 500 side events taking place in a span of two weeks; more than 150 heads of state and ministerial delegations; 250 CEOs of global multinationals, and a global media presence, transforming New York into a hotbed for catalytic partnerships and cross-sector action on global challenges. This year, similarly to last year, official UN and SEPTEMBER 2021 20

This year, similarly to last year, official UN and side meetings will mostly take place virtually or in a limited hybrid format. side meetings will mostly take place virtually or in a limited hybrid format, with the potential to make the critical agenda-setting moment of the year more inclusive and bring input and participation from far and wide.

What Is on the Global Agenda?

On the eve of the UN General Assembly, UN Secretary General released Our Common Agenda—a landmark report designed to accelerate the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that have been severely set back by the pandemic. Six critical priorities of the agenda focus on: •

Embrace global solidarity towards the common good, equitable COVID vaccine distribution, and taking bolder steps together to address climate mange and biodiversity loss.

IN FOCUS

transforming education, skills training, and lifelong learning.

•

•

Renew social contract between governments and their people and within societies, ushering in a new era of universal social protection, health coverage, education, skills, decent work and housing, as well as universal access to the internet by 2030 as a basic human right.

•

Combat the Infodemics plaguing our world, defending empirically backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge, and ending the “war on science.”

•

Redefine how we measure economic prosperity and progress with new measures to complement GDP, so that people can gain a full understanding of the impacts of business activities and how we can and must do better to support people and our planet.

Prepare youth and the next generation for challenges ahead, building meaningful, diverse and effective engagement incorporating the next generation—both within and outside the United Nations, including through better political representation and by

•

The UN Global Compact, the International Chamber of Commerce, and other partners will be organizing series of events under broader Uniting Business Live theme. Open to UN Global Compact members and partially livestreamed, the sessions will also include the Private Sector Forum (September 20), the Global Impact Forum (September 21), the Young SDG Innovators Summit (September 21) and the SDG Business Forum (September 22).

•

The WEF Sustainable Development Impact Summit, themed “Realizing a ‘Great Reset’ for Sustainable Development” will be fully virtual (September 21-24) and partially livestreamed. Sessions will focus on macro issues from social justice to stakeholder capitalism, new pathways towards net zero, and food and biodiversity systems resiliency. Uplink, WEF’s digital platform will crowdsource, promote, and connect innovative solutions for SDGs.

•

Concordia’s Annual Summit will be in a hybrid format open to members, and will focus on environmental sustainability, economic empowerment, and financial inclusion, technology and digital transformation as main themes.

•

World’s Largest Lesson, a platform developed in collaboration with Project Everyone, UNICEF and private

Many of the official UN side events and multistakeholder initiatives convened around this year’s UNGA will focus on advancing collaboration and cross-sectoral action and advocacy on these priority topics. Here is a roundup of some of the major moments and ways to follow the discussions: •

• •

Powered by the UN Office of Partnerships and SDG Strategy Hub, the SDG Action Zone, previously a physical space at UN HQ, will be fully virtual and accessible to all this year.

The events bring together the highest levels of UN leadership, activists, government officials, business leaders, changemakers, and disruptors in a virtual collaborative space—to highlight the ecosystem-wide solutions, plans, and investments needed to positively impact people’s lives and the future of our planet.

Promote a more networked and inclusive multilateral system, advancing a new agenda for peace, multi-stakeholder dialogues on outer space, and a Global Digital Compact, as well as a Biennial Summit between the members of the Group of 20 and of the Economic and Social Council, the SecretaryGeneral and the heads of the international financial institutions.

The Secretary General called 2022 a pivotal year for people and planet and proposed series of international summits focused on tackling the climate emergency, rising inequalities and threats to peace and security, culminating with a Summit of the Future.

Photo via Pixabay.

•

UN Food Systems Summit (September 23) will be open to all in fully virtual format. Over the past 18 months, the Summit has brought together all UN Member States and constituencies around the world—including thousands of youth, food producers, Indigenous Peoples, civil society, researchers, private sector, and the UN system—to bring about tangible, positive changes to the world’s food systems. As a people’s summit and a solutions summit, it calls for everyone to take action and work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food.

Climate Week is working in partnership with the UN— including the COP26 and Race to Zero campaign teams—and other business groups, associations, and corporate leaders on advancing and increasing commitments to climate action will have series of virtual and in-person events.

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D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m UNGA 76

Infographics by APCO Worldwide.

sector companies developed an interactive toolkit of activities for children to celebrate Global Goals week (September 20-24), with activities ranging from advocating for climate education, researching gender inequalities in their community or discussing the changes they want to see in the world.

Partnerships for a More Inclusive Recovery and Greater Collective Impact. Despite COVID’s devastating impact across sectors and geographies, the past 18 months have seen a tremendous acceleration in innovative partnerships and collaborations, spearheaded by leaders that grasp both their organizational strengths and limitations, joining forces with partners that help extend and multiply collective impact.

UN Secretary General’s Common Agenda called for new partnerships between governments, multilateral organizations, the private sector, and civil society, putting renewed emphasis on SDG-17 and global partnerships for sustainable development.

From new initiatives in the works— like the UN Futures Lab that would bring together partners including governments, academia, civil society, and the private sector, to issue regular reports to anticipate and assess catastrophic risks, there are a number of inspiring initiatives that are shaping multi-stakeholder solutions to challenges on the global agenda at UNGA and beyond.

Catalyzing Investment in Renewable Energy. The IKEA Foundation, the

International Finance Corporation, and the Rockefeller Foundation joined forces to set up a $1 billion initiative to reduce 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. The global platform will combine the organization’s combined funds to deliver clean and reliable power to 800 million people worldwide who are currently lacking electricity.

Accelerating Digital and Financial Inclusion. The EDISON Alliance, a cross-sectoral partnership, was launched by the World Economic Forum to address inequality and connect critical sectors of the economy. This alliance is the first global mobilization of the public sector and industry leaders from all industries to close to digital divide, focusing on the acceleration of digital infrastructure and global broadband rollout.

Closing the gender gap. The Gates Foundation, Data2x, the International Labor Organization, The World Banks Group, Women Count, as well as others collaborated on the brief titled: “An Urgent Need for Change Strengthening Gender Measures and Data in the COVID-19 Era.” This multi-stakeholder initiative called for gender data collection infrastructures to be put in place by all data collectors—official and non-official— to recognize gender disparities in the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Across Asia, the biggest trend in recovery-related partnerships has been about skills building—ensuring competitiveness in an increasingly digital-first world, and support for small entrepreneurs to keep their business afloat and reach new SEPTEMBER 2021 22

customers. In Singapore, Grab and Microsoft launched training and development programs for drivers, delivery partners, and students. In Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand ILO is working with J.P. Morgan to support small businesses owned by women in the manufacturing, service and retail sectors to provide them with access to financial resources, training, market information, and networks.

In India, Facebook and online lending platform Indifi launched a new program called “Small Business Loans Initiative” enabling small businesses and microenterprises who advertise on Facebook quick access to credit.

Informal economy jobs— particularly in the tourism sector across developing markets have been hit hardest by COVID. Airbnb developed more than 100 partnerships with regional and national tourism agencies to promote tourism recovery around the world, while also building local capacity through the Airbnb Entrepreneurship Academy, a program that empowers emerging hospitality entrepreneurs.

Airbnb partnered with The Self-Employed Women’s Association in India, The Western Cape Government in South Africa, and the Sustainable Travel and Tourism Agency in Kenya to run Academies in each local community.

There is an increasing trend of thinking bolder and broader, beyond one’s organizational boundaries to shape partnerships that advance business and societal objectives, at a time when our world needs it the most. ●

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m UNGA 76

FOR THE I BIGGEST MULTILATERAL CHALLENGES GLOBAL LEADERSHIP IS IN SHORT SUPPLY By: Lulio Vargas-Cohen

t is the more unusual or indecorous moments in UN General Assembly history that are best remembered. Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez once whiffed that the podium “smells of sulfur,” comparing George W. Bush to the devil. More recently, former U.S. President Donald Trump drew chuckles when boasting of “accomplishing more than almost any administration” in U.S. history.

While we do not know yet whether similarly memorable pronouncements will take place this year, the forum’s role to advance and attract support for global policy remains unique.

Persuasive leadership is needed to catalyze collective action on issues that are imposible for any state, or small collection of states, to confront on their own.

Unfortunately, on the most critical near- and long-term challenges— overcoming the pandemic, strengthening the state of democratic governance across the world, and curbing climate change—robust global leadership remains in short supply.

With good reason, the campaign against COVID-19 will dominate the plenary. With most rich countries having vaccinated large segments of their populations, the focus must SEPTEMBER 2021 24

Global powers are adopting a path of international retrenchment in the face of public health, political rights, and climate disasters. shift to ensuring developing states are able to begin en masse inoculations. This is made difficult given that advanced countries have already reserved large portions of the current supply and future production, significantly hindering vaccine distribution efforts such as COVAX. Today, fewer than 3% of Africans have received their first dose of vaccine while tremendous supplies sit in reserve for vaccine skeptic Westerners.

To date, the U.S. has pledged to donate more than 580 million doses—a considerable amount, though short of the 11 billion doses needed to eradicate the pandemic.

While the U.S. commitment is more than China or Russia have offered, those countries’ state-developed jabs—while less effective than Western variants—have reached countries unable to procure the gold-standard shots. In an instance

IN FOCUS

The nature of the problems at stake will require concerted collaboration. How vigorously this retreat of multilateralism is rebuffed by the global community should merit more attention than any dignitary’s unglued commentary.

UN Photo/Loey Felipe.

of diplomatic one-upmanship, China announced a two million dose pledge to Vietnam hours before Vice President Kamala Harris was set to announce a one million contribution.

Vaccines have become not only vehicles for public health, but instruments of strategic aid.

Vaccine pledges will not be the only topic of discussion. Pharma companies are facing pressure to transfer vaccine know-how to manufacturers in poorer countries.

There will also be debate on global vaccine certifications to replace the current country-by-country patchwork. Ultimately, more robust universal frameworks and distribution mechanisms are needed. Concrete action is not merely good diplomacy or charity but calculated self-interest; new strains will continue to eclipse vaccine immunity until tackled on a global scale. That goal, at this juncture, still remains largely theoretical.

The pandemic has magnified the discontent many feel about their country’s governance. Polling suggests that citizens across the world continue to lose trust in their governments. Early rally-aroundthe-flag effects buoyed national leadership at the earliest stages

of the pandemic, but has given way to lingering dissatisfactions that predate the current crisis.

Regions as varied as Central America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe have suffered democratic backsliding.

Freedom House announced that in 2021 “nearly 75% of the world’s population lived in a country that faced [political rights] deterioration.”

It seems that Jair Bolsonaro’s notion that “only God will get me out” of the president’s chair is a general fear likely felt not only by Brazilians.

While this overall trend is negative, there are few indications that the U.S. or the European bloc will make governance and democracy reform a central pillar of foreign engagement in the near-term. On the heels of withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. leaders are focused domestically; Gallup polling suggests Americans view foreign affairs as far less important relative to the economy, immigration, and race relations.

Meanwhile, Europe is navigating the delicate challenge of illiberal governments and rising political parties among the Union’s own member states, as well as diverse risks in its near-abroad—tempering focus to a narrower set of interests.

China will also be taking a standoff approach to reform—though for different reasons. Advocating non-interference, China will continue to foster relations disconnected from any governance or human rights measures. Worryingly, Chinese companies also continue to export cutting-edge surveillance technology.

This makes it easier for countries with poor civic protections to mete out repressive control.

Buffeted by so many issues on the home front, Western leaders’ willingness to expend scarce political capital to pressure reforms abroad will remain depleted. While the sentiment may not be laid bare in speeches, a retrenchment in the

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scale of foreign commitments is inevitable—and regrettable.

Finally, with climate change, this summer’s landmark UN study makes evident that the science is clear and further inaction is unconscionable.

Unfortunately, even as natural disasters become ever more calamitous and routine, international consensus to tackle the root causes remains fluid and uncertain ahead of a major UN climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland this November.

In the U.S. the path ahead for a $3.5 trillion spending bill advanced by the White House—which will aim to promote green industries, as well as improve the resilience of the nation’s infrastructure—remains anything but certain. With the slimmest of majorities in Congress, any number of defections among Democratic legislators will imperil the entire effort.

Across the Atlantic, with German federal elections later this month, the Green party is polling competitively, with potential to influence the country’s future direction.

Perhaps the biggest question mark ahead of Glasgow remains China.

While the world’s largest carbon emitter, Beijing argues that the country should not be held to the same standard as more developed nations. The country has pledged to peak its emissions by 2030 before becoming carbon neutral by 2060— but has not shared how it will execute this ambitious plan. China has rejected calls to commit more clearly ahead of the Glasgow conference, having already “its own plans and road map for achieving its climate goals.”

Clearly, on climate and other affairs, this go-it-alone approach may suit Beijing’s preferences. The nature of the problems at stake, however, will require concerted collaboration. How vigorously this retreat of multilateralism is rebuffed by the global community should merit more attention than any dignitary’s unglued commentary. ●

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m UNGA 76

THE PRIVATE W SECTOR’S ROLE IN ACHIEVING THE SDGs By: Puru P. Trivedi & Nico Rios

ith the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA76) set to commence Tuesday, September 14, among the plethora of pressing issues will be a continued discussion on the progress made towards achieving sustainable development and implementing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

The implementation of this agenda, sidetracked by the exacerbating effects of the pandemic on global health, security, and economics, is as important as ever.

Prior to the onset of the spread of the novel coronavirus, progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was only a veritable truth for the gross minority of the 17 SDGs. Moreover, we have seen the first increase in global poverty in decades with the onset of the pandemic. Our food, energy, and transportation systems as well as our global supply chains that support them have repeatedly been disrupted and our global economy is now facing the worst economic recession since The Great Depression.

As an international community, to say that we are facing an uphill battle to achieve sustainable development by 2030 is an understatement.

SEPTEMBER 2021 26

This global deadline for achieving all 17 SDGs by 2030 is a daunting task, but which sector is better suited than the private sector to address these goals on a tight schedule?

This global deadline for achieving all 17 SDGs by 2030 is a daunting task, but which sector is better suited than the private sector to address these goals on a tight schedule?

Direct investment, collaboration, and innovation are necessary drivers to fast track our progress towards achieving sustainable development.

The private sector, with multiregional and international footholds, is best equipped to fully implement sustainable development agendas across their industries. Not only does the private sector house the knowledge, technological, and capital resources necessary for achieving the SDGs but they are directly invested in the infrastructural development of countries internationally.

Take, for example, the case of companies operating in financing micro and small business enterprises

IN FOCUS

The private sector and corporations not only have a clear vested interest in achieving these goals and the wherewithal to do so but they are also increasingly becoming intersections of global governance, policy, and development. These private entities are, essentially, a new class of diplomat.

Photo via Pixabay.

in developing countries through corporate foundations. Capital investment through these foundations have the potential to create noticeable and measurable positive economic impacts in developing nations. These direct investments in small private enterprises can translate into long term socioeconomic capacity and growth and promote increased employment and a more inclusive and accessible economy.

Similarly, a wide swath of corporations is directly involved in social capacity through education and vocational training programs abroad, working towards SDGs 1, 2, 4, and 8—No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Quality Education, and Decent Work and Economic growth respectively. As part of a corporate foundation’s investments, these programs are aimed at uplifting communities and marginalized populations by providing financial training and education to sow sustainable growth in the long term.

For private corporations in the energy sector, shifts in investment portfolios toward biodiesels and renewable energy has had not only a positive impact in terms of carbon reduction, but also in terms of economic growth. The renewable energy sector, previously valued at

around $928 billion in 2017, is now expected to reach $1,512.3 billion by 2025, reflecting popular demand for more sustainable industries. While full divestment from coal, oil, and natural gas remains a far-off reality given the sheer size of companies in these sectors and the degree of capital investment and entrenchment on part of national governments, the growth of the clean energy sector signals a positive opportunity for continued innovation, employment, and growth.

These wide-ranging strides towards achieving the SDGs have been championed by private and corporate commitments through corporate social responsibility (CSR) and to environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. The private sector and corporations not only have a clear vested interest in achieving these goals and the wherewithal to do so but they are also increasingly becoming intersections of global governance, policy, and development.

These private entities are, essentially, a new class of diplomat.

Corporate diplomacy, however, is nothing new. Since the rise of the first multinational corporations dating as far back to the 17th century, there has been a confluence of international affairs, business relations, and economic

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development. These private entities have continued to be brokers of both culture, goods, services and in the face of these formidable global challenges, they continue to provide a common forum and intersection to align vastly diverse international interests.

Certainly, there is no replacing the current international diplomatic corps. Nation states and governments remain the primary actors in world affairs and drivers of international relations, but what gets distracted in the play of international politics between sovereign states can be expedited in the private sector.

National governments will continue to be critical for the safeguarding of citizen interests, but the international stage will always need more common ground, which can be provided by additional actors, especially the private sector. The private sector is not only set apart by its comparative flexibility, but also by its substantial purchasing power, which is now more and more positioning it for investment in research and development geared towards achieving the SDGs by 2030.

With global advancement towards achieving sustainable development effectively stunted by the pandemic and diverging national interests in connection with biomedical supply and vaccine scarcity, pressure is mounting to reach all seventeen goals by the end of the decade.

Looking ahead to UNGA76, assembly members must consider our current set of approaches to reaching sustainable development and way to continue incorporating our corps of corporate diplomats.

For our partners in the private sector, there remain plenty of open seats at the table. If we are to meet these goals, more businesses and corporations must be brought in to help meet these challenges head on and commit to sustainability. ●

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m UNGA 76

THE TWIN F TESTS FACING THE UN IN AFGHANISTAN AND MYANMAR By: Mandeep Tiwana

ollowing the negotiated departure of international security forces and overthrow of the internationally backed government in Afghanistan, the Taliban ominously claimed freedom and sovereignty. They then went on to appoint an all-male cabinet comprising controversial figures under international sanctions for overseeing grave human rights abuses. The situation in Afghanistan—which has parallels with events in Myanmar some 2,000 miles east—presents several dilemmas for the rules-based international order overseen by the United Nations (UN) since the end of the Second World War. In Myanmar, too an internationally recognized government was deposed this year. Myanmar’s military junta engineered a coup in February and imprisoned several elected politicians.

The junta—suspected of committing crimes against humanity—presents multiple challenges for the UN’s Credentials Committee, which decides states’ representation at the UN General Assembly.

Already, governments in countries neighboring Afghanistan and Myanmar appear to have calibrated their positions with an eye on natural resources in the two countries and in SEPTEMBER 2021 28

The situation in Afghanistan, which has parallels with events in Myanmar, presents several dilemmas for the rules-based international order overseen by the UN. line with perceived short-term geopolitical interests. Others with strategic influence in the two countries are deliberating ways by which they can overlook the abysmal human rights records of these two illegitimate governments under international law. All this runs counter to the UN Charter, which promises to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, safeguard fundamental human rights and dignity, establish conditions for justice under international law, and promote social progress and better standards of life.

The Taliban’s attempts to position themselves as more moderate than was previously believed have already been exposed by their brutal treatment of political opponents and protestors. They have a long history of using indiscriminate violence to spread fear and enforce their rule.

IN FOCUS

UN Photo/Manuel Elías.

The record shows that anyone seeking to promote inclusive values and expose the truth about their brutality is considered a target.

Women human rights defenders, civil society leaders, and journalists have long been in the Taliban’s firing line.

Earlier this year, the Afghan Human Rights Defenders Committee documented the killings of several civil society leaders and journalists with impunity. In July, Danish Siddiqui, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist covering a clash between Afghan security forces and the Taliban, was captured and executed by the Taliban.

His body was mutilated.

After the fall of Kabul, lists of names of civil society activists were circulated by the Taliban who also raided their homes to intimidate them.

The UN’s human rights chief raised alarm in August of credible reports of summary executions being carried out by the Taliban. A prominent Afghan politician and activist involved in the peace negotiations pointed out in vain that women were being forced to marry fighters and were being prevented from going out without a male companion.

The response from the international community has been apathetic. The UN Human Rights Council, the world’s

premier human rights body, issued a weak resolution on 24 August following a one-day special session steered by Pakistan, on behalf of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation.

The resolution expressed customary concerns about grave violations but failed to even mention the Taliban by name let alone mandate a fact-finding mission to identify perpetrators and report on atrocities taking place.

Following the terrorist attack of 26 August on Kabul’s airport which killed over 150 people, the UN Security Council passed a resolution urging the Taliban to provide safe passage to anyone wishing to evacuate, allow access to humanitarian groups, and uphold human rights. But no plan of action was outlined for failure by the Taliban to comply.

In Myanmar too, international inaction fails the victims of violations.

Since the military junta grabbed power hundreds of protesters have been killed with impunity. Thousands have been tortured, arbitrarily detained and imprisoned. Calls by national and international civil society groups for the imposition of an international arms embargo on the regime to curb it from attacking civilians remain ineffective. In June, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the military takeover and urging a halt to the flow of arms. The UN’s special envoy on Myanmar urged that time was of the essence to put the country back on the path to democracy. But the UN Security Council, the world’s most powerful body has looked the other way. Two of its veto-wielding governments—China and Russia—are unwilling to curb Myanmar’s junta and subject it to international scrutiny.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries have also failed to address the crisis in any meaningful way, raising questions once again about their commitment to human rights and democratic values.

As in Afghanistan, civil society activists and journalists are prime targets for Myanmar’s regime in its quest to impose totalitarian rule and suppress information about violations.

Many have had to go into hiding or flee the country. In August, in a tragic incident two pro-democracy activists were killed and three others injured after they jumped out of a building

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seeking to escape a police raid.

Recent experiences from countries as diverse as Burundi, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Zimbabwe show that when the international community and the UN Security Council fail to act consistently and swiftly in the face of egregious human rights violations, the consequences can be devastating. The UN’s Refugee Agency estimates that by the end of 2020 some 82 million people around the world were forcibly displaced.

Today, this number continues to rise despite ample warnings by civil society about the dangers of allowing rogue regimes to persecute their populations with impunity.

In Afghanistan and Myanmar, a window of opportunity still exists for the international community to aid the 90 million people who live in these countries. There are several ways to demand compliance with the principles enshrined in the UN Charter.

These include imposing targeted sanctions against regime leaders responsible for abuses, putting in place an effective plan to deplete the regimes’ capacities to obtain weapons, and creating independent investigative mechanisms to collect evidence of abuses and hold perpetrators to account.

Further, democratic countries that believe in rights, equality, and justice must use diplomatic influence and resources at their disposal to ensure safe havens for those most at risk.

Activists facing death threats in Afghanistan should be swiftly evacuated to countries where they are not at risk while those wrongly imprisoned in Myanmar should be immediately released through international pressure.

Notably, the UN and other multilateral institutions should firmly remain on the ground in Afghanistan and in Myanmar in three capacities: first, as observers to monitor conditions and document human rights abuses, along with civil society; second, as governance partners with civil society to preserve the fragile and painstaking development progress made over the years; and third, to support civil society in providing much needed humanitarian assistance to communities at risk. ●

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m S M I T H S O N I A N S C I E N C E E D U C AT I O N C E N T E R

T A STEM EDUCATION FRAMEWORK FOR EMPOWERING YOUTH TO SOLVE THE GLOBAL GOALS By: Carol O’Donnell

his year’s UNESCO 2021 World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development was held from May 17 – through May 19, 2021. At the conference, UNESCO called for learners of all ages to be empowered to #LearnForOurPlanet and act for sustainability. They wrote: “The current health crisis has reminded us that climate change and the collapse of biodiversity are major challenges facing humanity.

As the pandemic has tragically shown us, our health is inextricably linked with the health of our planet. Education is crucial for raising awareness and generating action to protect the health of our planet and to ensure the wellbeing of all, within the limits of nature. In light of the major environmental challenges the world is facing, education is key as a means of making our societies and economies greener, more sustainable, and more harmonious with nature.”

(UNESCO, ESD, 2021) Across the globe young people are working with educators, scientists, SEPTEMBER 2021 30

Today, science educators must not just teach the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for the purposes of workforce development, STEM education must also give students the opportunities to discover, understand and act on the most pressing global issues of our time. and community members to put in place local actions to address the unprecedented complex global challenges we are all facing. Many of these global challenges, if gone unaddressed, will disrupt our way of life—poverty, education, the digital divide, and urbanization. And, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, other global challenges, if unaddressed, will eliminate our way of life—including infectious disease, food security, water scarcity, energy security, cyber security, climate change, biodiversity, ecosystem loss, and deforestation. Underlying many of these global challenges is science, which is crucial for solving

SPONSORED EDITORIAL

Figure 1: Discover, Understand, and Act framework.

Photo via Pixabay.

these problems and understanding the world around us. Today, science educators must not just teach the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for the purposes of workforce development, STEM education must also give students the opportunities to discover, understand and act on the most pressing global issues of our time.

The Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project provides freely available online community research guides for youth ages 8-17 developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center in collaboration with the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP)—a collaboration of 142 national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine from across the globe—as well as experts across the Smithsonian and beyond. These community research guides use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to focus on sustainable actions that are student-defined and implemented at a local level.

Smithsonian Science for Global Goals brings together inquiry-based science education (IBSE), social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies, and civic engagement.

Students engage firsthand with issues

of critical importance, such as climate change, the health of the world’s oceans, and clean energy, while examining each issue from multiple perspectives: social, ethical, economic, and environmental. It is our belief that educating youth about complex socio-scientific issues will help to mobilize young, educators, community members, and parents to take action against societal and health problems that can adversely affect their lives.

Each Smithsonian Science for Global Goals guide utilizes a Discover, Understand, and Act framework to guide students’ learning both within each lesson and across the lessons. The framework is based on UNESCO’s Global Citizenship Education three domains of learning—socialemotional, cognitive, and behavioral: 1.

Discover. In this portion of every lesson (and at the start of every community research guide), students conduct community surveys or analyze local or global data as “scientific phenomena” to discover how the socioscientific issue is affecting their local and global communities;

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students create identify maps to better understand themselves and others and prepare to make informed decisions; the goal of “Discover” is to improve social-emotional outcomes; 2.

Understand. In this portion of every lesson (and in the middle of every community research guide), students investigate the underlying science and social science of these issues using their community as their laboratory; the goal of “Understand” is to improve cognitive outcomes; and,

3.

Act. In this portion of every lesson (and at the end of every community research guide), students use their new scientific knowledge to take action locally (e.g., protect themselves and others from COVID-19); the goal of “Act” is to improve behavioral outcomes.

Through the Discover, Understand, and Act Lesson framework, shown in Figure 1, students move through a learning progression that builds

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m S M I T H S O N I A N S C I E N C E E D U C AT I O N C E N T E R

By developing Sustainability Mindsets, young people are building new thought routines and habits that set them up to engage with global issues on a long-term basis.

Global Goals project uses the Discover, Understand, and Act framework to: •

Create a transdisciplinary approach to learning focused on real-world problems.

•

Engage young people’s ideas, enthusiasm and energy, inviting them to take the lead on creating a better world.

•

Use science and social science to help young people arrive at sustainable solutions.

•

Drive young people to become action takers, collecting data in their own communities to better understand the world’s most pressing issues, and arriving at locally sustainable solutions.

•

Reflect local communities’ needs, interests, and priorities.

•

Support young people to develop scientific literacy and sustainability mindsets.

Figure 2: Sustainability Mindsets.

their social-emotional, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes through three stages: (1) Discover – students discover their own identity (including their own learning disposition and background knowledge) and the identity of their community (their own cultural context through questioning others through community surveys); (2) Understand – students understand the underlying science of the issue by engaging in critical reasoning and systemic understanding; in this important phase, young people examine their own values and perspectives (environmental, social, ethical, economic) and reflect on how their perspective changes as they learn more about the world around them; and ultimately, (3) Act – students engage in synthesizing all that they have learned and put their new knowledge to use by taking action. The process is cyclical and not linear, with students revisiting any portion of the framework at any time.

Through the Discover, Understand, and Act framework, young people

develop sustainability mindsets and scientific literacy, as shown in Figure 2. We are: trying to encourage the belief that personal action can lead to positive change (developing empowerment and agency); shining a light on the connections between local and global issues and people (creating a global-local interconnection); promoting the respect of oneself, others, and the environment (promoting equity and justice); and encouraging and developing an understanding of different perspectives and contexts for knowledge (leading to openmindedness and reflection). By developing Sustainability Mindsets, young people are building new thought routines and habits that set them up to engage with global issues on a long-term basis. By developing an understanding of Global-Local Interconnection, young people are also primed to investigate and explore how what is happening in their local community is connected to what is happening at a global level.

The Smithsonian Science for SEPTEMBER 2021 32

At the Smithsonian Science Education Center, we believe that the foundation for achieving sustainable development is through education, and specifically through educating youth in STEM subjects.

To achieve STEM education for sustainable development, we bring together materials designed for youth, teacher professional development, and leadership development for schools and communities to collectively prepare the next generation of learners to not only be workforceready but be prepared to make change in their own communities.

Through their actions, students can meet not only their own needs, but the needs of their fellow humans while also ensuring a successful future for the planet. ●

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D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m M I S I N F O R M AT I O N

MISINFORMATION AND CONVENTIONALISM: THE GATEKEEPERS AGAINST PROGRESS By: Gregoire Verdeaux

A

s world leaders convene for the 76th United Nations General Assembly, there is much to discuss; issues like the pressing need to rebuild sustainably, to take better care of our planet and its people, and to revitalize our collective actions. The return of national borders and the drop in international trade caused by COVID-19 has brought globalization to a brutal halt, after decades of uninterrupted development. As the convener of most global discussions, the United Nations fights for its own relevance. We are at a turning point in policymaking, faced with the powerful headwinds of opinions, facts, and convenience in dictating our future.

It may be tempting to shut the doors and keep quiet; but that would just continue the trend of the past 30 years. With the steady rise of global and regional trade and the explosion of technological innovation in the ’90s—not least the internet— public debates have shifted gradually away from classic, ideological politics and toward concrete, often very technical issues. The prevailing notion was that such issues would be more competently handled by experts and shared with an educated audience.

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Technological growth and the expansion of social media has enabled, everyone to become a media. We have moved from the technocratic era to that of digital democracy where people expect not only to be able to express their opinions freely, but also for these opinions to be considered.

There is no question that the extraordinary progress of European integration, both in substance and in geographical scope, was driven by the strong grip of a technocratic machine of experts in Brussels.

But is it realistic today for the key topics of public debate to be left only for experts to answer?

Big global challenges have rightly become a matter of public debate.

Take climate change, for example— there has not been a single climate change summit in the past 20 years that has not been subject to growing intense public scrutiny. The same is true with the pandemic. The fact that

F E AT U R E

Photo via Adobe Stock.

COVID-19 and the response to it has been the number one public debate item since the beginning of 2020 has made it a topic of public scrutiny that cannot be left only to a few. Experts can no longer say, “This is too complicated for you to understand.”

People want to know, and they want to intervene.

Technological growth and the expansion of social media has enabled, in turn, everyone to become a media. We have moved from the technocratic era to that of digital democracy where people expect not only to be able to express their opinions freely, but also for these opinions to be considered.

The challenge lies in deciphering these opinions. What is the difference between facts, claims, interpretation, opinions, and misinformation?

For most people, these apparently distinct categories of information blur into each other. To paraphrase the political theorist Hannah Arendt, opinions are as true to a private person as “factual truths.”

Even people who are trained to scrutinize information and seek out objective truths may come to different conclusions—a phenomenon that’s by no means uncommon in science, as well.

With so much information freely and easily available online, how do ordinary citizens seek it out and critically evaluate it? How many read articles reporting “new research shows …” and then go on to check whether the report links to sources, then follow the links and read the sources? The farther one delves into scientific and academic papers, the more technical they will find them and the less likely they are to reach definitive, unqualified conclusions.

For legislators and public policymakers, the challenge is acute.

They have a responsibility to seek out, examine, and evaluate the facts and collect public and private opinions to inform their decision-making. And they must be mindful of public opinion, not least because they risk being pilloried and removed from office if they deviate too far from what their constituents think and want.

Everyone has a role to play in helping establish objective factchecking mechanisms—from governments, multilateral bodies, and news organizations to technology companies and companies like ours.

To do our part, we strive for transparency as we transform our business to deliver a smoke-free future, inviting policymakers, the

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scientific community, and NGOs to review and verify our scientific findings and progress.

Today more than ever, we need to be able to collaborate and take decisive action against the many challenges our world is facing.

There need to be new ways— quicker ways—to have the right level of technical and scientific consensus around certain topics, particularly as the world progresses rapidly thanks to the intensity and scope of scientific progress and technological innovation. Too often the incentive is for legislators and public policymakers to “play it safe.” Without robust processes in place to ensure that the facts are understood and that the necessary policy changes are objectively debated, it is natural that some people will just want to hit pause and say: “You know what, let’s stay with what we know.”

Lack of perspective, relying on the status quo for convenience and ideology, and misinformation will continue to hold us back unless we address them head-on. We need to fast-track truth, facts, and science.

This is our shared responsibility and the least we can do if we want to drive positive change for the world. ●

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m E D U C AT I O N

Photo via Unsplash.

THE OTHER O EDUCATION CRISIS By: Stavros Yiannouka

ver the past 18 months or so, much has been said and written about the pandemic induced crisis in education—learning loss, loss of socialization, declining levels of mental health, etc.—brought about primarily because of the prolonged closure of schools; as well as the exacerbation of pre-existing challenges around access to quality education. While these challenges remain acute and demand urgent action from the international community, there is another subtler but equally consequential crisis in education that the pandemic did not cause but rather has thrown into stark relief.

COVID-19 has exposed the failure of our education systems to provide a shared ethical and intellectual framework around which our societies can coalesce to determine the best approach to take in addressing the pandemic and its consequences. While early on, a certain amount of confusion and improvisation was to be expected given the relative novelty of the crisis— the world had not experienced a public health emergency of this scale and immediacy in over a century—what is deeply troubling is that 18 months into the pandemic, the world is still in hoc to vaccine nationalism (an ethical failure), and vaccine hesitancy (an intellectual failure), which are likely to prolong the SEPTEMBER 2021 38

Without a shared ethical framework we will not be able to address issues such as the obligations that we might owe future generations both born and unborn. pandemic and add to the toll of lost lives and livelihoods. More worrying still, the failures associated with the pandemic are only the latest manifestations of a more general malaise. Across a range of issues from the climate crisis to the migration of refugees, and rising income inequality, we seem to be losing our capacity to conduct reasoned debates aimed at building actionable consensus.

Perhaps it is unfair to lay the blame for these failings at the feet of our education systems; education systems are not immune to the political, social, and economic contexts in which they operate. However, over many decades (if not centuries) bold claims have been made positioning education as something of a panacea for many of the world’s political, social, and economic ills, from discrimination to inequality.

So, as education leaders we need to

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account for these failings and propose a way forward.

A good place to start is by acknowledging the persistently low standards of foundational skills in language, mathematics, and science, even in some of the worlds most developed nations. According to the latest available PISA Scores (2018) across the whole of the OECD—a multilateral grouping of most of the world’s wealthiest countries—only around 25% of 15-year-old students tested scored above level 3 (level 1 being the lowest), and less than 10% attained the highest levels 5 or 6. What this means, is that less than 10% of students are according to the authors of the PISA 2018 report “able to comprehend lengthy texts, deal with concepts that are abstract or counterintuitive, and establish distinctions between fact and opinion, based on implicit cues pertaining to the content or source of the information” (language); and “capable of advanced mathematical thinking and reasoning” (mathematics).

While sceptics can point out that it might be unreasonable to expect the average 15-year-old to perform at such high levels, it is worth noting that in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, and in Singapore, the equivalent percentages are, in language, over 50% above level 3, and over 25% at levels 5 or 6; in mathematics, over 65% above level 3 and over 40% at levels 5 or 6; and in science, over 50% above level 3 and over 20% at levels 5 or 6. Simply put, China’s top urban education systems, and that of Singapore have proportionately twice as many students attaining the higher levels of proficiency than do the countries of the OECD. This should not be surprising because both China and Singapore have avoided the relativist trap of treating all subjects as of more or less equivalent value, and have consequently overinvested in these core foundational subjects.

Language (especially verbal reasoning), mathematics, and science, are critical because it is only through these that we will achieve a better understanding of the challenges that confront us, and develop the necessary solutions. Much as I personally love the arts, literature, and history, and am convinced that they significantly enrich

We urgently need a course correction and this can only happen if we rediscover the universal language of science, reason, and applied ethics and use it to interpret the world around us, and build actionable consensus. our lives, solutions to the climate crisis for example, will not primarily come from these domains.

But these foundational subjects are also important not just because the world could do with a few more doctors and engineers, but because, science and reason (both verbal and mathematical) provide a universal problem-solving framework that is immune to cultural or other forms of relativism. Coronaviruses are completely agnostic about the political, religious, or ethnic identities of the people they infect, and as long as they are able to find hosts, they will continue to mutate and evolve in ways that maximize their potential to propagate. Carbon dioxide atoms are also agnostic particularly about geopolitics, borders, exclusive economic zones, etc. As more of them are added to the Earth’s atmosphere, they will continue to trap more and more heat, warming the planet, and amplifying all manner of natural disasters from storms to floods, and forest fires. And both Coronaviruses and Carbon Dioxide atoms really don’t care if we believe in their existence or not.

The world is in urgent need of broad-based scientific literacy, and verbal and mathematical reasoning programs. We can no longer afford to have significant segments of our societies who are unaware that science is not just a collection of academic disciplines with its own canon of works (no doubt reflecting the dominance of the white Anglo-Saxon protestant patriarchy), but by far the most rigorous and robust method at our disposal for interpreting reality; an approach that has embedded within it processes for refinement, reinterpretation, and where appropriate wholesale revision of acquired knowledge. Nor can we afford to have reason relegated to the status

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of just one of a number of ways of knowing alongside imagination, intuition, and faith; no matter how important and necessary these may be, they are not of the same order of importance or utility when it comes to addressing the common challenges that we face. Whose intuition, imagination, or faith should we trust and why?

Beyond science and reason, the world is also in need of a broad-based revival in the study of applied ethics. We can no longer afford to have ethics be something that only philosophy majors study seriously. Most secular education systems shy away from ethics for fear of offending cultural sensibilities. At the root of this reticence is the close identification of ethics with morality.

While moral codes are a product of ethics, the study of applied ethics involves understanding the different processes one can employ to make value judgments and to weigh competing interests. Again, ethics is more than just a list of thou shalt and shalt nots. Moral codes vary and change significantly across time and place. But the processes for thinking ethically tend to be evergreen.

Without a shared ethical framework we will not be able to address issues such as the obligations that we might owe future generations both born and unborn. In the context of the climate crisis this is a critical question because we can be reasonably sure that unless we act now, the worst effects of runaway global warming and the burden of coping will be carried disproportionately by those who will be alive at the turn of the 22nd Century.

We can also be reasonably certain that most of them have yet to be born, and that a plurality of those born over the course of the coming decades will be in Africa; the UN projects that by 2090 around half of all children under the age of 15 will be in Africa.

COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for the existential crises coming our way. Sadly, at the level of our education systems and beyond, we are failing this dress rehearsal. We urgently need a course correction and this can only happen if we rediscover the universal language of science, reason, and applied ethics and use it to interpret the world around us, and build actionable consensus. We cannot simply cross our fingers and hope that it’ll be alright on the night. ●

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m WOMEN

T WOMEN ARE KEY TO SOLVING THE UN SDGs By: Rima Kawas

he economic impact of the COVID-19 continues to disproportionately affect women. A new United Nations report, “The Impact of COVID-19 on Women” shows the effects of the pandemic are reversing previous gains toward achieving gender equality and women’s economic autonomy. Across the globe, women continue to play the primary role as caregiver in their families and as children stayed home from school in 2020 during the global pandemic, women did too.

McKinsey recent research on the impact of COVID-19 concludes “one in four women considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers versus one in five men.” In addition to social and cultural norms of women’s role in both the workforce and family expectations, there are also legal barriers women continue to face that hinder their ability to become economically independent.

As world leaders meet for the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, there is an opportunity to improve the impact of COVID-19 on local economies by lifting legal restrictions of women’s ability to participate in the workforce. Laws that prohibit women from becoming SEPTEMBER 2021 40

According to the World Bank, 74 countries around the world ban women from working in specific industries. Women are prohibited from mining in 65 of those countries. Other examples include the restriction of women from being bus drivers, working at night, or owning property. contributors to the country’s economy will hinder the ability of countries in making progress and eventually achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Various restrictions in countries prohibit women from being active members of the economy. According to the World Bank, 74 countries around the world ban women from working in specific industries. Women are prohibited from mining in 65 of those countries. Other examples include the restriction of women from being bus drivers, working at night, or owning property. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-

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Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash.

operation and Development (OECD) and World Bank data, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has the widest entrepreneurship gender gap in the world. Only 20 percent of women in the region are participating in the workforce, the lowest in the world. An additional $575 billion per year could be gained if these gaps were closed.

In addition to bans on women’s participation in specific industries, there is a lack of protection for women currently in the workforce.

Equality Now, an international network supporting the rights of women, states that “in 50 countries there are no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace and in 18 countries husbands are legally allowed to prevent their wives from working.” Women that do have jobs aren’t thriving either. Women can still be fired in 38 countries if they become pregnant. These legal restrictions and lack of legal workplace protections impact all SDGs. If women are barred from certain professions, forbidden from owning property, or forced to obtain permission from men in their family to travel, then the other SDGs suffer (e.g. ending poverty, eliminating hunger, and improving quality education).

Now is the time to eliminate discrimination against women and improve economic conditions of affected countries, which will help move forward the SDG agenda.

As a step forward, three key areas should be considered. First, further emphasis should be placed on the importance of WEE within the current SDGs. For example, although SDG5, “advance gender equality and empower all women,” has a target goal to improve women’s rights to equal access to economic resources as well as focused on legal restrictions regarding land ownership, this does not adequately reflect the vast legal impediments to women’s economic independence as a significant barrier to development.

In addition, SDG9 which is focused on economic development, could have an indicator explicitly focused on addressing women’s participation in the economy. We must seize this moment during the global economic crisis by leveraging the SDGs to focus on dismantling the legal barriers to women’s economic participation.

Second, there should be more emphasis on leveraging of SDG17, which is focused on partnerships to further engage with the private sector, to help make the case for

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in 50 countries there are no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace and in 18 countries husbands are legally allowed to prevent their wives from working.” Women that do have jobs aren’t thriving either. Women can still be fired in 38 countries if they become pregnant. the importance of eliminating various legal restrictions to leverage a more diverse global workforce. And finally, further domestic pressure needs to be placed on governments to achieve these goals and break down these barriers. Local civil society organizations should bring further public awareness to these international commitments and place domestic public pressure on the national governments to achieve these international objectives. It’s past due to help improve equal rights and move the global economy forward. ●

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m S U P P LY C H A I N S

MAKING SUPPLY CHAINS MORE RESILIENT By: Dalia Marin

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utomobile and electronics manufacturers worldwide have recently had to reduce output because a severe drought in Taiwan has hit the island’s production of semiconductors. This and other global supply-chain disruptions – many of them caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – have prompted advanced economies to take steps to mitigate the potential impact. But what types of government action make economic sense?

Supply-chain bottlenecks can have a significant economic effect.

Germany, for example, imports 8% of its intermediate products from low-wage countries (the United States relies on these economies for just 4.6% of its inputs). Problems with input deliveries recently led Germany’s Ifo Institute to lower its forecast for German GDP growth this year by almost half a percentage point, to 3.3%.

This vulnerability helps to explain why the European Union has earmarked part of its €750 billion ($884 billion) Next Generation EU recovery fund to bolster Europe’s semiconductor design and manufacturing capabilities.

The US chipmaker Intel plans to invest in several European countries SEPTEMBER 2021 42

In June, a task force appointed by President Joe Biden’s administration presented its assessment of America’s supply-chain vulnerabilities across four key products. and to open a semiconductor factory in the region with EU help.

Meanwhile, Bosch, Europe’s largest automotive supplier, recently opened a chip-manufacturing plant in Dresden with the help of European subsidies. Bosch’s investment in eastern Germany is the latest in a series of battery cell projects in “Silicon Saxony,” which policymakers hope will reduce Europe’s dependence on Asian suppliers and make it more resilient to future global health and climate crises.

US policymakers have similar concerns. In June, a task force appointed by President Joe Biden’s administration presented its assessment of America’s supplychain vulnerabilities across four key products: semiconductors and advanced packaging, large-capacity batteries of the sort used in electric

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Recent supply chain disruptions have had significant impacts on the world’s advanced economies. Governments are stepping in to help mitigate these disruptions and their impacts, but government action often doesn’t make economic sense, writes the Centre for Economic Policy Research’s Dalia Marin.

Image by Adobe Stock.

vehicles, critical minerals and materials, and pharmaceuticals and advanced pharmaceutical ingredients.

Some might argue that rich-country governments’ efforts to strengthen domestic and regional production networks reflect a new form of economic nationalism driven by fear of China. But the crucial question is whether companies really need state help to protect themselves against supply-chain turbulence.

There are three ways advancedeconomy firms can make their input supplies more resilient, and only one of them requires government involvement. One option is to reshore production from developing countries. Recent research that I co-authored shows that the COVID-19 crisis, by increasing the relative costs of supply chains, accelerated the reshoring trend that began with the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

The production disruptions and higher transport costs resulting from the pandemic made supply chains more expensive; the price of containers used to ship goods from Asia to Europe and the US increased about eightfold. At the same time, lending rates fell sharply relative to hourly wages after the financial crisis, making robot-based production much

cheaper than employing workers.

A second way for firms to insure against supply-chain shocks is to build up inventories. Rich-country firms long ago adopted lean Toyotastyle manufacturing operations that enabled them to reduce costs substantially. But many may now switch from “just in time” production to a “just in case” model that, while more expensive, offers greater safety and predictability.

Third, companies can dual-source or even triple-source inputs, relying on suppliers from different continents in order to hedge the risk of natural disasters or other regional disruptions. But this diversification strategy has its limits. For example, a highly specialized supplier that invests in research and development in order to provide a specific input is not easily replaceable, and sourcing others can be costly.

Heavy regional concentrations of suppliers also make diversification difficult. Most producers of chips, battery cells, rare earth materials such as cobalt and lithium, and pharmaceutical ingredients are based in Asia. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and South Korea’s Samsung dominate the global semiconductor market, while China produces about 70% of the world’s battery cells for electric vehicles.

The current global semiconductor shortage illustrates how geographic clustering of input suppliers can generate upheavals in the rest of the world. In a 2012 paper, MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and his co-authors showed that disruptions to an asymmetric supply-chain network – in which one or few suppliers deliver inputs to many producers – can spread throughout the world economy and potentially lead to a global recession.

Two recent studies support the conclusion that supply-chain

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disruptions can have economy-wide effects. Jean-Noël Barrot of HEC Paris and Julien Sauvagnat of Bocconi University studied three decades worth of major natural disasters in the US, and found that suppliers affected by a flood, earthquake, or similar event impose large output losses on customers. When a disaster hit one supplier, firms’ sales growth declined by an average of 2-3 percentage points. And the effect spilled over to other suppliers, amplifying the initial shock.

Similarly, Vasco Carvalho of the University of Cambridge and his co-authors show that the disruption caused by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake spread upstream and downstream along supply chains, affecting direct and indirect suppliers and customers of disaster-hit companies.

They found that the earthquake led to a 0.47-percentage-point decline in Japan’s real GDP growth in the year following the disaster.

In such cases, governments can play a useful role by helping to provide firms with more potential alternative suppliers. By providing incentives to firms to move into sectors with high vulnerabilities to supply disruptions, governments in the EU and the US can ensure that a sufficient number of suppliers are available in both Europe and North America to hedge against the risk of disruption.

The world has recently experienced a cascade of supply-chain disruptions, and will likely suffer from more global pandemics and extreme weather in the future. Business leaders and policymakers must think about how to minimize the effects of such shocks on production networks and the global economy – and when government should step in. ● Copyright Project Syndicate 2021.

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m POPULISM

M A DANGEROUS NEW VARIANT OF POPULISM By: Michael Burleigh

ost of the “geopolitical” threats, real or confected, that capture headlines in the West nowadays are exogenous – emanating from China, Russia, Iran, and so forth. But others lie within the world’s democracies. Among these are the US Republican Party’s embrace of Trumpian authoritarianism, which is eroding the country’s democracy, and the possibility that new unanticipated variants of populism will take hold around the world.

One new variant of populism might involve hostility toward both costly green policies and vaccination against COVID-19. And it would be driven by a combination of genuine concerns about pocketbook issues and the kinds of conspiratorial lunacy that thrive on the internet.

Anti-green populism is particularly likely to flourish in the more fossil fuel-dependent economies of Central and Eastern Europe, in response to the European Union’s new strategy for reducing greenhouse gases by 55% by 2030. Indeed, the so-called Fit for 55 plan would seem to call for the wholesale remodeling of these economies.

Consider Poland, which generates 70% of its energy from coal and SEPTEMBER 2021 44

A new and deadly variant of populism is proliferating across Europe, as opponents to vaccination efforts and opponents to environmental policy combine their efforts, writes LSE IDEAS Senior Fellow Michael Burleigh. receives additional supplies through a gas pipeline from Russia. Coal is especially abundant in southern Poland, where it is used to fuel giant power stations that provide industry with cheap electricity.

If it is to meet EU emissions targets, Poland is going to have to decarbonize more extensively and rapidly than anyone else. The government recently set an ambitious goal of reducing the proportion of coal in the country’s energy mix from 70% to 11% by 2040. But that will have massive implications for mining, which employs some 100,000 heavily unionized and politically influential workers.

Moreover, with little wind or sunshine in winter, Poland is ill suited for renewable-energy deployment.

Instead, it has set its sights on

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Photo by Jordan Bracco via Unsplash.

“solutions” like nuclear power and the “Baltic Pipe” gas pipeline – subsidized by the European Commission to the tune of €215 million ($251 million) – to import gas from Norway via Denmark.

But neither of these options has gone down well in Germany. If Poland’s efforts to align with EU policy put it at loggerheads with key neighbors and trade partners, it will be damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. The conditions are set for a thriving anti-green populism.

Yet this populist threat is hardly limited to Central and Eastern Europe.

Opposition to climate action could just as easily spread to Europe’s more established democracies if costly items like air source heat pumps and smart meters are rendered technologically redundant, or if vehicles with internal combustion engines are forced off the road by government fiat.

In fact, France was briefly the epicenter of an anti-green backlash in Europe, with the rambunctious gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests that began in 2018. Angry citizens who rely on cars to get around their country districts eventually forced President Emmanuel Macron to rescind a new tax on diesel fuel.

They had a point, considering that

the infrastructure for more expensive electric vehicles simply does not exist in France (or anywhere else).

More recently, a significant share of this cohort seems to have joined with militant anti-vaxxers (many of them on the far right) who have adopted various libertarian poses propagated on the internet. This confluence of grievance may have traction, especially as more conventional populist movements have begun to take a battering, notably in Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and elsewhere.

People have grown weary of authoritarianism, corruption, and divisiveness during the pandemic – a crisis that was grossly mishandled by populist governments, in particular.

The likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán are the elite, not some anti-systemic opposition to it.

Opposition to vaccination is as old as inoculation itself. The English city of Leicester used to be a hotbed of it.

In 1885, 100,000 people there attended an anti-vaccination rally, complete with a child’s coffin and an effigy of Edward Jenner, the pioneer of smallpox vaccination. Such movements were often based on a fusion of fundamentalist Christianity (which opposed interference in God’s work) and suspicion of powers being arrogated by the modern state, which made vaccination mandatory for infants or children entering school.

The only unique contribution of our current age is the role of social media in amplifying the views of crank medics and scientists, as happened after The Lancet published (and then retracted) Andrew Wakefield’s false claims that there is a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.

Nowadays, any online search of vaccines immediately reveals a disproportionate number of antivaccination sites, as well as pernicious guff claiming that the barring of unvaccinated youth from nightclubs is akin to Jews being sent to Auschwitz.

Versions of that analogy have long appeared in the British Daily Telegraph, courtesy of its dogmatically libertarian commentators, who have made common cause with the likes of the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), Italy’s homegrown fascist movement.

Any enemy of the EU is their best friend by default. Although

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the overwhelming majority of Italians support the government’s green pass initiative, the Fratelli’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, loudly does not.

In the homeland of Louis Pasteur, such militants are particularly exercised by the government’s vaccine-passport rules, which exclude the unvaccinated from concerts, cinemas, museums, swimming pools, theaters, and restaurants where 50 people or more are gathered. More trouble may ensue if nurses (only 50-58% of whom are vaccinated) are prevented from working until they receive two doses; or if railway workers raise objections about having to enforce vaccine-passport rules on local and commuter trains. No job should involve the risk of being headbutted or punched in the face.

It was perhaps inevitable that the parasitic populist right would latch onto these issues. Although Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally party has typically hedged her bets, her former right-hand man, Florian Philipott, was very vocal at the biggest of the many anti-vaccine rallies in July. These are growing in size by the month, with 200,000 attending the first one in August.

This “movement” flourishes among the semi-educated in small towns and in cities like Marseille, where obdurate pastis guzzlers and religious immigrant communities also contribute to its ranks.

However, it is worth stressing that 62% of the silent majority in France supports vaccine passports, and 70% want all hospital and care-home workers to be fully vaccinated. That is probably why Macron has stuck to his guns: he hopes that rationality will prevail and that any increase in economic activity will benefit his campaign in 2022. Let’s hope he is right.

Still, one can see the outlines of an emerging political fusion between irrationality and pocketbook issues.

As anti-vaxxers and anti-greens join forces, any number of stray populist demagogues might seek to lead such a movement. That underscores the importance of UN initiatives such as Team Halo, which has brought together scientists to publicize the importance of vaccines, especially on social media platforms. ● Copyright Project Syndicate 2021.

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m C L I M AT E C H A N G E

A WORLD A OF HEAT AND HEADWINDS By: Michael Spence

s recently as three months ago, the global economy seemed to be on track for a relatively robust recovery. The supply of COVID-19 vaccines had expanded in the developed countries, raising hopes that it would spill over to developing countries in the second half of 2021 and into 2022. Many economies were posting impressive growth numbers as pandemicsuppressed sectors reopened. While clogged supply chains had produced a host of shortages and high prices for key inputs, these were seen as merely transitory problems.

The world looks very different now.

The Delta variant is spreading rapidly, including in developed countries and among cohorts who were hitherto less vulnerable to the virus. The unvaccinated parts of the world – mostly lower-middle and lowerincome countries – are now more vulnerable than ever.

Moreover, the vaccine supply chain is failing. The principal reason is that developed countries have option contracts to buy many more vaccine doses than they need (even after accounting for an expansion of their programs to vaccinate younger people and administer booster shots). This lengthens the vaccine queue, thereby SEPTEMBER 2021 46

Though we lack precise measures of economic fragility (that is, resilience in the face of shocks), it is hard not to conclude that the global economy, and especially some of its more vulnerable parts, is becoming more fragile. delaying the arrival of vaccines in much of the developing world.

The rich world’s “excess orders” need to be released and made available for purchase by other countries. A program to fund such purchases would not be very costly in global terms (on the order of $60-70 billion), and would yield immediate and long-term benefits in controlling the virus and preventing the emergence of dangerous new variants.

Another problem is that global supply chains have been more severely disrupted than previously thought. It is now apparent that the resulting shortages – in labor, semiconductors (which are used in countless industries), construction materials, containers, and shipping capacity – are not going away

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Globally, supply chains have faltered in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn has made it more difficult to get vaccines to more vulnerable countries and delayed economic recovery. This will only get worse as climate change worsens, writes Nobel Laureate Michael Spence.

Photo via Unsplash.

anytime soon. Surveys indicate that the inflationary effects are widespread across sectors and countries, and are likely to act as a persistent headwind to recovery and growth.

Adding to the uncertainty, there have been pandemic-induced shifts in domestic and global supply chains that are not yet well understood and will most likely be difficult to reverse.

Indeed, the disruptions coming out of the pandemic are broader and appear to be exerting a stronger drag on the economy than did the recent trade war between the United States and China.

But the most eye-opening development of the past three months has been the dramatic increase in the frequency, severity, and global scope of extreme weather: storms, droughts, heat waves, higher average temperatures, fires, and floods. Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered a new report that has been bluntly characterized as announcing “code red for humanity.”

The collective judgment of the scientific community suggests that this year’s brutal experience is not an outlier; it is the new climate normal.

We therefore can expect more of the same (and probably much worse) for the next 20-30 years. The window

for preventing the kinds of events we have seen this summer is closed. The challenge now is to accelerate the pace of reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions to avoid even more serious – and potentially life-threatening – climate-driven outcomes in the coming decades.

Given the economic and climatic headwinds confronting the world, and that they will blow over a longer time horizon, future growth and development are in peril. In addition to being an obvious drag on growth, today’s supply-chain disruptions may contribute to inflationary pressures that will demand a monetary-policy response.

Similarly, a constantly morphing virus that becomes a semi-permanent feature of life will retard global growth and specialization.

International travel will continue to struggle to recover. And while digital platforms can serve as partial substitutes, the impediments to mobility eventually will hit all the global economic and financial ecosystems that support innovation.

In the past, extreme weather events were infrequent and local enough that the risks did not really affect the global macroeconomic outlook.

But the new pattern already seems different. It is hard to think of a region that is not subject to elevated weather-related risks. A recent US Federal Reserve paper warns that climate change could increase the frequency and severity of economic contractions, thereby reducing growth. Apart from the resources devoted to driving the recovery, this new reality must eventually be reflected in asset and insurance prices.

The bottom line is that climate change is quickly becoming a noticeable factor in macroeconomic performance. Though we lack precise

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measures of economic fragility (that is, resilience in the face of shocks), it is hard not to conclude that the global economy, and especially some of its more vulnerable parts, is becoming more fragile. Lowerincome developing countries already face significant challenges when it comes to demographic trends, adapting growth models to the digital era, and solving localized governance problems. Add fiscal constraints, climate-related volatility and pressure, and the long queue for vaccines, and you have the makings for a perfect storm.

Much of this is already baked into our immediate future. But not all of it is. Capital markets, for example, appear to be adjusting to the new reality, and solving the global vaccine supply challenge is neither impossibly complex nor prohibitively expensive.

All that is needed is multilateral focus and commitment.

The United Nations climate-change conference (COP26) in Glasgow this November will be crucial, and even more difficult than past climatechange conferences. The objective is to strengthen the national decarbonization commitments made in Paris at COP21, so that the global aggregate is consistent with a carbon budget that limits global warming to 1.5°C relative to the pre-industrial level.

Finally, since extreme climate events will occur more frequently and globally – striking randomly almost anywhere – private and social insurance systems will need a major upgrade to become multinational in scope. We may need a new international financial institution to take this on, working closely with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. ● Copyright Project Syndicate 2021.

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m INEQUALITY

ARE CENTRAL J BANKS TO BLAME FOR RISING INEQUALITY? By: Kenneth Rogoff

udging by the number of times phrases such as “equitable growth” and “the distributional footprint of monetary policy” appear in central bankers’ speeches nowadays, it is clear that monetary policymakers are feeling the heat as concerns about the rise of inequality continue to grow. But is monetary policy to blame for this problem, and is it really the right tool for redistributing income?

Recently, a steady stream of commentaries has pointed to central-bank policy as a major driver of inequality. The logic, simply put, is that hyper-low interest rates have been relentlessly pushing up the prices of stocks, houses, fine art, yachts, and just about everything else. The well-off, and especially the ultra-rich, thus benefit disproportionately. This argument may seem compelling at first glance. But on deeper reflection, it does not hold up.

Inflation in advanced economies has been extremely low over the past decade (although it accelerated to 5.4% in the United States in June).

When monetary policy is the main force pushing down interest rates, inflation will eventually rise. But, in recent times, the main factors causing interest rates to trend downward SEPTEMBER 2021 48

In many countries, including Japan, banks are essentially required to provide very low-cost or free basic accounts to most low-income citizens. Oddly, this is not the case in the U.S. include aging populations, low productivity growth, rising inequality, and a lingering fear that we live in an era where crises are more frequent.

The latter, in particular, puts a premium on “safe debt” that will pay even in a global recession.

True, the US Federal Reserve (or any central bank) could impulsively start increasing policy rates. This would “help” address wealth inequality by wreaking havoc on the stock market. If the Fed persisted with this approach, however, there would almost certainly be a huge recession, causing high unemployment among low-income workers. And the middle class could see the value of their homes or pension funds fall sharply.

Furthermore, the dollar’s global dominance makes emerging markets

F E AT U R E

Concerns over rising inequality and more frequent crises are widespread, and central bankers are saying the right things about addressing these concerns.

Yet there is evidence that central banks share a great deal of blame for inequality, writes former IMF Chief Economist Kenneth Rogoff.

Photo by Etienne Martin via Unsplash.

and developing countries extremely vulnerable to rising dollar interest rates, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging. While the top 1% in advanced economies would lose money as one country after another was pushed to the brink of default, hundreds of millions of people in poor and lower-middle-income economies would suffer much more.

Many rich-country progressives, it seems, have little time for worrying about the 66% of the world’s population that lives outside the advanced economies and China. In fact, the same criticism applies to the burgeoning academic literature on monetary policy and inequality. Much of it is based on US data and gives no thought to anyone outside America.

Still, it is useful to try to understand how, under different assumptions and circumstances, monetary policy might affect the distribution of wealth and income. It is possible that, as artificial intelligence advances and monetary policy becomes much more sophisticated, economists will find better metrics than employment to judge the stabilization properties of monetary policy.

That would be a good thing.

Even today, central banks’ regulatory role means that they

can certainly help at the margins in addressing inequality. In many countries, including Japan, banks are essentially required to provide very low-cost or free basic accounts to most low-income citizens. Oddly, this is not the case in the US, although the problem could be elegantly solved if and when the Fed issues a central bank digital currency.

But interest-rate adjustments are far too blunt a tool for conventional monetary policy to play any kind of leading role in mitigating inequality.

Fiscal policy – including taxes, transfers, and targeted government spending – is far more effective and robust.

One popular solution to the problem of wealth inequality, notably advocated by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley, is a wealth tax.

But although far from a crazy idea, it is difficult to implement fairly and does not have a great track record across advanced economies. Arguably, there are simpler approaches, such as reforming the estate tax and raising capital-gains taxes, that could achieve the same end.

Another idea would be to shift to a system of progressive consumption taxes, a more sophisticated version of a value-added or sales tax that

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would hit wealth holders when they go to spend their money. And a carbon tax would raise huge revenues that could be redirected toward low- and lower-middle-income households.

Some might argue that political paralysis means none of these redistributive proposals are advancing fast enough, and that central banks need to step into the gap if inequality is to be tamed. This view seems to forget that although central banks have a certain degree of operating independence, they are not empowered to take over fiscal policy decision-making from legislatures.

As extreme poverty has declined in many countries in recent decades, inequality has become the leading societal challenge. But the view that a central bank’s interest-rate policy can and should be the main driving force behind greater income equality is stupefyingly naive, no matter how often it is stated. Central banks can do more to address the inequality problem, particularly through regulatory policy, but they cannot do everything. And please, let’s stop ignoring the other twothirds of humanity in this crucial debate. ● Copyright Project Syndicate 2021.

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m C L I M AT E C H A N G E

Photo via Adobe Stock.

CURRENT DIS- C INFORMATION RESPONSES DETRIMENTAL TO HUMAN RIGHTS By: Thomas Plant

urrent international responses by states and companies to combat disinformation are “problematic, inadequate, and detrimental to human rights,” concluded Special Rapporteur Irene Khan in a new report by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The arrival of this report coincides with a period of heightened disinformation, as rampant false claims about COVID-19 have contributed to the pandemic’s grave effects on global public health.

“Although empirical research suggests that only a small proportion of people are exposed to disinformation, the impacts on institutions, communities, and individuals are real, broad, and legitimate,” stated Khan in the report.

The UNHRC identified several of these consequences in addition to those seen with the COVID-19 pandemic, including the generation of violent ethnic and religious tensions in Ethiopia and Myanmar, the discrediting of climate scientists around the world, and the erosion of trust in the U.S. electoral system after unfounded claims of voter fraud.

In response to disinformation, both states and companies have implemented measures to contain SEPTEMBER 2021 50

A new report by the UNHRC finds current international responses to combat disinformation are problematic and inadequate with catastrophic implications for human rights globally. false or misleading narratives. The UNHRC surveyed these recent efforts, condemning those which violated international human rights standards.

Specifically, the report addressed how some state or corporate actors have violated the rights to freedom of opinion and freedom of expression in order to combat disinformation.

According to the UNHRC, the freedom to hold an opinion is absolute and does not permit any exceptions. Meanwhile, it acknowledged that the freedom of expression may be limited by states, but only in narrow circumstances to protect national security, public order, or public health.

TRENDS IN STATE RESPONSES First – and flagged as the most extreme reaction to disinformation – is state-led disinformation. According

U N R E P O RT R E V I E W

to the UNHRC, this situation occurs when “governments systematically and simultaneously suppress other sources while promoting their own false narratives.” Pursuing state-led disinformation clearly violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), according to the UNHRC, because it denies individuals the right to seek and receive information.

As an example, the report referenced an instance of state-led disinformation that occurred in Myanmar, when military officials spread doctored and mislabeled photographs on Facebook in 2018 to change the narrative of the Rohingya crisis, a state-sanctioned effort that resulted in the displacement of Myanmar’s ethnic Muslim minority group.

The report also condemned measures by states to shut down internet connections – especially before and during elections – to limit disinformation. This response has occurred in Belarus, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Myanmar, claimed the UNHRC. But how do these shutdowns violate human rights?

When select citizens are deprived of online information, they are disproportionately robbed of vital factual sources, explained the report.

The third response condemned by the UNHRC is states’ use of criminal laws to address disinformation. “They often do not define with sufficient precision what constitutes false information or what harm they seek to prevent,” wrote Khan. ‘Nor do they require the establishment of a concrete and strong nexus between the act committed and the harm caused.”

Lastly, the UNHRC criticized states whose authorities have excessive discretionary power over social media. The report highlighted that governments in Kenya, Pakistan, and Russia have removed online expression and imposed fines on users without due process or court order.

TRENDS IN COMPANY RESPONSES In addition to state efforts, the UNHRC recognized that media companies hold critical positions as intermediaries of information. Initially, the UNHRC acknowledged that some recent measures by companies to fight disinformation have been positive and comply with human rights standards,

including the use of labels, warnings, and fact-checking features.

However, it is the inconsistency of companies in applying these mechanisms that concerns the UN. By disproportionately applying content-sharing policies to some users while excluding others, a company can create adverse impacts on human rights for certain groups of people, explained the report.

There are various reasons why a company may fail to consistently protect its users’ freedom of expression and opinion. For instance, the UNHRC identified that a platform’s policies are usually incoherent and vague, and curation algorithms can unknowingly promote false information to some users over others. Moreover, the report specified that these algorithms tend to follow an advertisement-driven model, rewarding addicting content like extreme posts and conspiracy theories.

Additionally, there are external political pressures that could influence how a platform’s executives treat specific information. For this factor, the report described a situation in which Facebook inconsistently applied its rules to censor content in two different countries. In February of 2021, Facebook banned accounts linked to leaders from the military coup d’état in Myanmar. However, it had refused to follow a similar course of action a year prior in Vietnam, when Facebook reportedly increased its compliance with the Vietnamese government’s request to censor anti-state content.

The UNHRC also criticized media companies for withholding their platform’s data from the public, which blocks scholars from understanding intricacies within trends in disinformation. “Most of the largest social media companies produce transparency reports twice a year, but they do not share more precise and meaningful information about action taken to address disinformation or misinformation,” wrote the UNHRC. Among social media companies, the report emphasized Facebook’s transparency reports as particularly insufficient. Although the platform provides information about the removal of fake accounts, it does not reference the content that the removed accounts promoted or any information relating to user

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engagement, including shares, views, reach, and the number of complaints or requests for removal.

RECOMMENDATIONS Although the UNHRC report prioritized the identification of human rights violations in state and company responses to disinformation, it also offered guidelines for future responses.

However, it noted that these responses are not comprehensive for all contexts.

Given this broad framing, the UNHRC proposed three overarching goals for its recommendations: ensure public trust in institutions, increase levels of media literacy, and secure an independent and diverse media environment.

In pursuit of these goals, the UNHRC claimed, “The need for multi-stakeholder dialogue and partnerships cannot be overstated.”

It recommended that all measures to combat disinformation should occur through a cooperative interaction between states, companies, international organizations, civil society, and the media.

States – as the primary dutybearers for human rights – must hold companies and other partners to human rights standards and require complete transparency for all decisions to regulate disinformation, recommended the UNHRC. Additionally, states were recommended to implement national curricula for media literacy.

Companies, according to the UNHRC, have the duty to comply with states but should take active measures to assess the risk that their platforms hold to spread disinformation. For example, they should conduct impact assessments that could identify potential adverse effects stemming from built-in features on the platform, such as content-curation algorithms.

These companies should also review their business models to ensure that the platform’s data collection and data processing are compliant with human rights standards, recommended the UNHRC. Finally, the UNHRC addressed its own role. It committed itself to the continued monitoring of human rights standards around the globe, and it shared its future intent to consider the implementation of additional initiatives to protect human rights in the digital space. ●

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m FOOD SECURITY

EMPOWERING A SMALLHOLDER FARMERS KEY TO FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA By: Raphael Obonyo

frica has a lot of untapped agricultural potential that can feed the continent and spur socio-economic growth right from the bottom of the pyramid. The key to this lies in the mass of struggling smallholder farmers, comprised largely of women and a youthful population that governments and policy makers in Africa have left to their own devices.

Recent assessments by the African Development Bank (AfDB) reveal that there is an increase in the severity of food insecurity in Africa, and urgent interventions are required in the continent. Across the continent, hunger poses an even greater risk than COVID-19. The number of people living with hunger increased from 214 million to 246 million between 2015 and 2020.

According to AfDB, Africa spends about $35 billion annually on food imports and the figure is projected to rise to $110 billion by 2025. In its 2016-2025 strategy for agricultural transformation in Africa, the AfDB reports that to achieve the goal of a food-secure continent governments need to empower smallholder farmers, women, and youth.

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of AfDB, said in a recent interview that SEPTEMBER 2021 52

Africa has a lot of untapped agricultural potential that can feed the continent and spur socio-economic growth. African policymakers must empower struggling smallholder farmers, comprised largely of women and a youthful population, explains Raphael Obonyo.

Africa should be a global powerhouse in food and agriculture because 65% of the cultivatable arable land left in the world is in Africa.

“If you take a look at Thailand’s smallholder farmers, they produce the bulk of the rice we eat globally.

Smallholders in India are the ones that produce rice and some of the pulses we eat globally. That tells me there is nothing wrong with smallholder farmers,” said Adesina.

“What we must do is make sure that smallholder farmers are provided with the support systems that they need. They need access to finance, information, markets, the best technologies in the world (including mechanization), and rural

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African governments focus on large-scale commercial farms on the premise that they are more efficient compared to the smallholder farmers who run the existing agricultural sector.

Photo via Adobe Stock.

infrastructure to transform the rural economy.”

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)Food and Agriculture’s study; Smallholders, Food Security, and the Environment, Smallholders manage over 80% of the world’s estimated 500 million small farms and provide over 80% of the food consumed in a large part of the developing world, contributing significantly to poverty reduction and food security.

Some experts agree that smallscale farmers, women, and youth in Africa can play a key role in ending food insecurity in the continent, if supported and included in the agriculture value chain.

Dr. Alex Awiti, a policy and development expert, explains that inadequate sound policies and strategies that support smallholder farmers are to blame for the food production crisis in Africa.

“Improving agricultural productivity is a complex public policy problem—it is influenced by a number of complex socioeconomic and political factors,” said Awiti.

Some of the factors—such as the use of inappropriate technology or inaccessible farm inputs—which are more often attributed to low

agricultural productivity are symptoms of other deep structural problems in policy formulation.

Low agricultural productivity in Africa is further compounded by quality of inputs and technology. For example, “fertilizer use in smallholder farms in Africa is about 13-20 kilograms per hectare. This is about a tenth of the global average,” says Awiti. Besides, most of the smallholder farmers in Africa do not use high yielding fertilizers and seed varieties.

Another concern is that African governments focus on large-scale commercial farms on the premise that they are more efficient compared to the smallholder farmers who run the existing agricultural sector. Denying the existing local agriculture models opportunities for growth and attention only exacerbates the food productivity shortages and fails to improve the value addition chain.

African governments seem to be unaware that such large-scale commercial farms focus on industrial production at the expense of smallholder producers and are highly destructive and largely to blame for the agricultural productivity gap in Africa. Invariably, private sector investments tend to target international export markets with

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little commitment to local food and nutritional security goals.

Since they grow their own, such investments do not in any way boost the earnings of the local smallholder farmer, creating a cycle of poverty when clusters of farmers in remote rural villages cannot even afford to purchase farm inputs. This makes agriculture in Africa appear detestable, even to the youth, making its future look grim even when research shows that agribusiness is the future of the continent given that 50% of the region is arable land.

The agricultural sector in Africa continues to face numerous constraints that include diminishing farming land, over-reliance on rainfed agriculture, poor soil fertility, fake fertilizer inputs in the market, low quality seeds, variability of crop prices, and an under developed credit market.

“Less than 10% of Africa’s land is under irrigation and most of the production is exposed to the vagaries of weather and climate,” says Awiti.

Add to the litany of roadblocks the lack of agricultural inputs, bad technology and poor agricultural practices like the over-use of nitrogen fertilizers, which acidifies the soils and affects crop production. When inappropriately addressed and

D I P L O M AT I C O U R I E R .c o m FOOD SECURITY

compounded together they lead to crop failure and poor yields.

Declining government support in agriculture, especially to smallholder farmers in African countries has had tremendous effect; a matter that needs to be addressed.

For example, in Ghana, absence of accessible storage and warehousing facilities means that farmers have to travel to long distance markets. With poor infrastructure in the rural areas, transportation costs are high.

This makes farming a very costly undertaking that drains their resources. “Many smallholder farmers in Ghana farm on poor and degraded soils. Lack access to affordable and appropriate inputs including quality seeds, fertilizers and pesticides,” says Kofi Yeboah, a knowledge mobilization strategist from Ghana.

In South Africa, smallholder farmers do not have adequate access to research and extension services, and often lack information about pricing. Combined with their lack of negotiation skills, it is hard for them to achieve optimal prices for their output.

“Small-scale farmers and the youth face the challenges of not receiving necessary funding and support from government and financial institutions. This is in part due to high risks associated with framing, and government’s slow pace of land reform/redistribution,” says Mabine Seabe, a young farmer and youth leader in South Africa.

Mr. Mabine points out that youth and small-scale farmers struggle to access markets that will purchase their goods—large-scale and commercial farmers dominate the markets. “Ultimately, I would like to see commercial farmers partnering with and mentoring small-scale and youth farmers. The success of small-scale farmers is imperative in achieving food security” he adds.

Africa’s Progress Panel, believes that Africa can close the productivity gap in the agriculture value chain if smallholder farmers are supported to make use of the latest agronomic practices in combination with appropriately adapted seeds and fertilizers to boost their crop yield. However, to

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Low agricultural productivity in Africa is further compounded by quality of inputs and technology.

For example, fertilizer use in smallholder farms in Africa is about 13-20 kilograms per hectare.

This is about a tenth of the global average. get there, African governments must support smallholders and give them incentives that would increase their productivity in order to generate surpluses to sell.

Similarly, Awiti notes that smallholder farmers are the future of agricultural development in Africa.

“If governments prioritize the provision of agricultural inputs, value addition and make technology affordable; this will drive cottage industries to enable intensification,” he says. This is especially relevant when you consider rapid population growth, shrinking land resources, and climate change.

“Enabling smallholder farmers to grow more food and sell in formal markets for a fair price would be a game SEPTEMBER 2021 54

changer in the agricultural productivity in the continent,” adds Awiti.

If empowered, smallholder farmers can contribute immensely to food security in Africa. But more efforts and sound policies are needed to unleash the smallholder farmers’ full production potential to contribute to and benefit Africa’s socio-economic growth. There is a growing need to develop robust policies and strategies that will connect the smallholders to markets. In fact, the biggest challenge that smallholder farmers in Africa face is access to markets.

As the magnitude and impact of food crises in the continent continues to take shape—aggravated by the over exploitation of natural resources and climate change—more and more support should be given to smallholder farmers.

At the unveiling of a new partnership titled Partnership for Inclusive Transformation in Africa, designed to improve food security for 30 million smallholder farm households in at least 11 African countries by 2021, Dr. Agnes Kalibata, then president of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, urged governments and other stakeholders to invest in smallholders, especially the youth, to increase food production in the continent.

“It is important to invest in modern technologies and give the youth and women more resources to venture into productive agriculture,” said Kalibata.

It is a matter of urgency that Africa’s governments intensify their efforts to increase the resilience, financing, access to markets, and capacity of smallholder farmers to engage in agriculture and improve food production in the continent.

This requires proper formulation of agricultural policies that focus on the youth and women as the primary producers and that capacity builds the entire value chain to produce more and gain more, says Kalibata.

The world is focusing on Africa to ensure that food security becomes a reality. Empowering the continent’s smallholder farmers with inputs, improved farm technologies and practices, adequate training, access to ready markets and financial support, among others, is the surest way out of food insecurity. ●

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