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A study of the socio-economic benefits associated with improvements in early earning systems in coastal areas of Tanzania.

Building understanding of how to maximise the impact of international public finance and to reform its architecture.

Informing more effective collaboration between public and private sectors in financing impactful investments.

Inclusive education should be a “non-negotiable” right for all children, the head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said in a new report launched on Tuesday.

Par Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, directrice France de l’ONG ONE Ce blog fait partie d’une série sur la lutte contre le COVID-19 dans les pays en voie de développement. Visitez la page dédiée de l’OCDE pour accéder aux données, analyses et recommandations de l’OCDE sur les impacts sanitaires, économiques, financiers et sociétaux de COVID-19 dans le monde. Alors que le monde … Continue reading Moratoire sur la dette des pays africains : tout le monde doit participer !

Reports that temperatures in a Russian town in the Arctic Circle likely reached a record 38C (100.4F), last weekend, have been approved by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) pending final verification, it said on Tuesday.

Latin America has become a global epicentre of COVID-19. In order to provide swift assistance, the German Development Ministry today sent a team of experts and laboratory materials to Peru. German Development Minister Gerd Müller said, "Worldwide, nine million people have been infected with the coronavirus. 140,000 new infections are added to that number every day, the highest increase since the beginning of the pandemic. We have to do everything we can to contain the further spread of the ...

Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development plans to reduce the number of partners for bilateral governmental cooperation

The strategy paper points out that several global crises are escalating. Climate change, violent conflict and fragile statehood are mentioned explicitly, and so is hunger, which has recently begun to spread again. As the world population further increases, moreover, ecological habitats are shrinking. The authors warn that our species would need two Earths if all nations lived the way the high-income countries do, but we only have one. Given that it is UN consensus to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within this decade, time is said to be short.

Development policy, the BMZ argues, is a cross-cutting issue that concerns the entire federal government. The reform proposals are meant to make the use of official development assistance (ODA) even more strategic, effective and efficient. One way to achieve this is to focus on a smaller number of Germany’s partner countries for bilateral governmental cooperation. It will sink from currently 85 to 60 in the future.

Germany’s bilateral governmental cooperation is implemented by federal institutions including the GIZ, KfW, PTB (the national metrology institute) and BGR (which specialises in geosciences and resources). Other forms of cooperation – for example with churches or civil-society agencies engaging non-governmental organisations abroad – are not affected by the reduction. Funding for multilateral programmes (EU, UN, international finance institutions, et cetera) will also continue as before. Finally, the BMZ wants to intensify support for private-sector investments in developing countries and emerging markets. Such support is not bilateral cooperation.

The top priority of German ODA remains to overcome hunger and poverty. The strategy paper lists the following core topics:

• food security,
• peace,
• skills training and sustainable economic growth,
• climate/energy and
• ecology/natural resources.

Moreover, spending on public-health programmes is to increase.

Henceforth, the BMZ expects bilateral partners to make even faster progress in regard to governance, human rights and fighting corruption. Countries with particularly strong developmental ambitions – for example Ethiopia, Ghana or Tunisia – are to get particularly strong support. They are called “Reform Partners” in the strategy paper. On the other hand, progress in some countries, including Costa Rica or Mongolia, is considered to have been so good in recent years that further governmental funding from Germany is no longer appropriate.

Where governance disappoints – think of Myanmar or Burundi for instance – bilateral German agencies will no longer be active in the future. They will also withdraw from partner countries where Germany’s role has been only marginal compared with that of other donor countries. Haiti in Sierra Leone are indicated as examples.

For bilateral cooperation, the BMZ has defined three categories of partners: “Bilateral Partners“, “Global Partners” and “Nexus and Peace Partners”. To a large extent, conventional ODA will characterise cooperation with bilateral partners. The above-mentioned Reform Partners are a subcategory of Bilateral Partners, and so are Transformation Partners in the former East Bloc. Global Partners, by contrast, are emerging markets like Brazil China or India, and cooperation with them will be geared to tackling global challenges such as climate change. Cooperation with Nexus and Peace Partners, in turn, will focus on regions marked by strife and the flight of refugees. The goal is to reduce violence and stabilise societies.

Link
BMZ, 2020: „BMZ 2030“.
www.bmz.de/en/publications/type_of_publication/information_flyer/information_brochures/Materilie520_reform_strategy.pdf

Irrigation is helping many of Zambia’s rain-dependent small-hold farmers to survive

Zambia’s once vibrant agriculture sector is falling victim to climate change. Steadily rising temperatures, prolonged droughts and erratic rainfall are threatening crop yields and livelihoods. The trend is likely to worsen as climate change proceeds, environmental experts say.

Severe drought in the western and southern provinces during the rainy seasons in 2017 and 2018, as well as floods in the north, made more than 2.3 million Zambians dependent on food aid, according to donor organisations.

Ironically, Zambia as a whole has plenty of water. Its rivers, lakes and underground reserves account for 40 % of southern Africa’s water resources. But the water is not always available in the right place or at the right time.

Zambia’s most cultivated crop is maize, and it is a thirsty plant. Others include cotton, soybeans, tobacco, groundnuts and paprika. Agronomists say that irrigation boosts yields to between twice and four times the levels of rain-fed agriculture and could be an important part of the solution to a shortfall in productivity in the sector.

In view of the country’s twin water calamities – too much water in some places and too little in others – Zambia is investing in dams and irrigation systems to even out its supplies. As part of these plans, several programmes are under way to bring irrigation systems to small farms and reduce their centuries-old dependence on rain.

The Agricultural Sector Investment Programme, a joint initiative of the government and the World Bank, informs farmers and investors about “climate-smart” technologies, including irrigation. The programme also promotes crop diversification, commercial horticulture and reducing post-harvest losses.

The government and outside donors are also investing in early warning communication networks to alert communities to coming natural disasters such as droughts and floods, so they can prepare.

Separately, Zambia’s National Environmental Action Plan is promoting sustainable agricultural practices. Among other measures, the government is encouraging more efficient use of water and the use of computer-based tools for mapping drought- and flood-prone areas.

Currently, irrigation systems are found mostly on large-scale commercial farms, while small-scale farmers tend to depend on increasingly unpredictable rainfalls. But under various educational and subsidised financing schemes, this is starting to change. Irrigation equipment, including drip-watering systems and solar-powered water pumps, are appearing on small farms as well.

“This equipment is in high demand among farmers, and even small-scale farmers see the value of irrigating instead of depending on rainfall,” says Kelvin Tembo, who sells irrigation equipment in Mkushi District in central Zambia.

Smallholder farmer Charity Bumba of Chongwe, east of Lusaka, agrees. She has been irrigating her winter maize crops with a combination of underground water sources and irrigation equipment for several years, as the impact of climate change has become increasingly clear. “I cannot imagine how I would earn income without irrigation,” she says. “It keeps my business running year-round.”

In Gwembe in southern Zambia, smallholder farmer Pauline Kandela is still depending on rain. On a recent Sunday morning, a downpour finally came after a prolonged dry spell. “This is encouraging after a long while,” she says. “I hope for a good harvest next year.”

Improved infrastructure will help Zambia adapt to global warming. If climate change spins out of control, however, that will simply not do. The advanced nations must do more to mitigate the risks by curbing carbon emissions. Since sub-Saharan Africa hardly emits relevant gases, its countries have not contributed much to causing the problem (see Jakkie Cilliers in Tribune section of D+C/E+Z e-Paper 2020/07).

Derrick Silimina is a freelance journalist based in Lusaka, Zambia. He focuses on Zambian agriculture and sustainability issues.
derricksilimina@gmail.com

Without urgent action, COVID-19 will continue to unravel decades of progress across South Asia, destroying the “hopes and futures of an entire generation”, warns a new report released on Tuesday by the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.

The figure sounds impressive: With a total amount of 36 billion euros the EU wants to help its partner countries in the Global South to deal with the economic and social consequences of the Corona virus crisis. However, the official communication by the EU no longer discloses which part of the package is fresh money and which part is reallocated from existing programs.

The capacity building programme, which focuses on integrating behavioural insights into the work of international NGOs, launched its second round in a virtual gathering across 10 different time zones and with an outstanding line-up of expert speakers on behaviour change topics.

The CSCP tapped into its expertise with digital collaborative tools to turn the opening event into an insightful and interactive webinar during which expert speakers shared their knowledge on some of the key elements related to behaviour change as a powerful means for improving our societies’ sustainability performance.

Becky Rowe, founder of Revealing Reality spoke about the role of behaviour insights as a means of understanding people in their own habitat, challenging our own assumptions, and viewing the world from different perspectives. Models as a method to diagnose behaviours, design behavioural strategies, and work as checklists for key tasks before, during, and after interventions, were the focal point of the presentation of Dr. Joe Hale, Research Associate at the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change. Toby Park, Head of Energy and Sustainability at the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), also emphasised the need to shift away from understanding people as strictly rational beings and presented various tools that could be used in support of positive behaviour change. Jonathan Breckon, from NESTA and Director of the Alliance for Useful Evidence, provided an overview of the different approaches to evaluate behaviour change interventions and exploring the nexus between evidence and policy-making.

In addition to these valuable insights, the AoC participants will have the opportunity to follow a full-fledged programme consisting of seven different modules. The AoC modules cover the following: Behavioural and decision-making insights, models and tools of understanding and changing behaviours, designing and implementing behaviour change interventions, as well as learning how to evaluate related impact. The programme will run for four months. You can find detailed information about the Academy of Change programme here.

The Academy of Change (AoC) is a unique capacity building programme on sustainable behaviour change, designed for NGO leaders working on climate change and sustainability. The AoC enables its participants to incorporate evidence-based expertise and insights about citizens’ behaviours into their strategies and projects, generating greater impact from their activities.

Did you miss the chance to apply for the AoC second round? Don’t worry, we are happy to announce that a third round will be held in 2021. Get in touch with the AoC team to be informed or sign up for the Academy of Change newsletter for the latest updates.

The Academy of Change (AoC) is a non-profit initiative of the Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP), Behaviour Change (BC) and the International Civil Society Centre (ICSC). The AoC is funded by the KR Foundation.

For further information, please contact Mariana Nicolau.

Der Beitrag The Academy of Change Second Round Kicked Off Virtually with 50 Participants from 25 Countries erschien zuerst auf CSCP gGmbH.

Coronavirus has led to education disruption across the world, coordination by humanitarian actors to ensure education continuity is crucial.

Investigating equitable and sustainable social policy financing options and implementation.  

Investigating jobs and livelihoods to ensure the future of work benefits all involved and social and labour policies are fit for purpose.

Analysing vulnerability and supporting the delivery of social protection, education and health services.

Analysing inequalities in education and health and policy reform with the aim of strengthening education and health systems.

Supporting the design and implementation of effective social protection policy and systems.