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By Laura Parry-Davies, Digital Communications Officer, OECD Development Centre

The number of migrants in the world has increased by more than 46% in the last 30 years. Yet, global development agendas have, up-to-this-point, failed to adequately integrate the role of human mobility into country strategies for growth and wellbeing. What needs to change?

The post Migration is accelerating – How can everyone benefit? appeared first on Development Matters.

The worldwide wave of autocratization is doing away with many of the democratic achievements made since 1989. Scholarship on international democracy promotion is yet to theorise how democracy can be protected from autocratization. Such a theory must account for different democratic and autocratic trajectories as well as integrate theoretical approaches from international relations and comparative politics in the study of democracy promotion. However, such a combined perspective is still missing. One reason for this is that the field lacks a clear concept of “protection” and does not yet systematically integrate evidence from democratization research. This paper addresses this research gap. It is the first attempt to develop a concept theory of democracy promotion, which includes support and protection of democracy. Coupling this with a depiction of six phases of regime change, this paper makes a second contribution: based on the proposed conceptual and theoretical integration, it generates a series of testable anchor points for further empirical analysis on what strategies are most likely to be effective during the various phases of regime change.

This empirical analysis investigates whether and to what extent social cohesion and the coverage of social protection schemes influence governments’ decisions about the stringency of COVID-19 containment policies during the first and second waves in 2020 in Africa. Our results indicate that societal and social factors influenced the stringency of containment policies. Social cohesion has a negative effect on the stringency of containment policies in response to COVID-19 over time. Social protection coverage has a positive effect on the stringency of containment policies in response to COVID-19 over time. States implemented more stringent containment policies in less cohesive societies if they already had social protection schemes in place before the pandemic. Contextual factors mediated these effects. While stringency of containment policies softened over time where levels of democracy, poverty, and inequality were higher, social protection made a mediating difference only in autocratic states and societies with higher poverty. Three contributions of the empirical analysis stand out. First, the conceptual integration of societal and social factors (“societal triangle”) provides a novel basis from which to analyse policy responses during external shocks like a global pandemic. Second, to overcome the limitations of current measurements of social cohesion, we use a novel measurement to determine pre-pandemic levels of social cohesion. Third, this is the first cross-national study that addresses a world region, Africa, which has gained little attention in the study of policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Rachid Bouhia, Economist, and Patrick Kacmarczyk, Consultant, UNCTAD

In many developing countries, the prolonged debt burden has been the major cause of financial stress and obstacle to further mobilising financial resources for the SDGs. For more than a decade, those economies have been trapped in a spiral of high public indebtedness with disadvantageous economic and social outcomes, hampering structural transformation and Agenda 2030. All these countries have periodically sought assistance from the IMF, with a new unsurprising wave in the summer of 2022, but never managed to get out of the red despite implementing macroeconomic policies and reforms that came with the financial assistance. With little reason to assume that public debt will stabilise soon, especially post-pandemic and with the ongoing war in Ukraine, financial vulnerabilities and hindrance to financing for development are likely to persist.

Under the exceptional global circumstances, these countries would benefit from a significant round of debt cancellation targeting low- and middle-income countries that request it.

The post It is time to give highly indebted countries a fresh start appeared first on Development Matters.

PRESS RELEASE

15 December 2022

In a statement following the Third High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) (HLM3) in Geneva, civil society organisations (CSO) under the platform CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) acknowledged key milestones achieved in the Summit, and vowed to continue championing the effectiveness agenda.

The document listed these milestones to move the agenda forward:

• the mixed participation which may signal revitalised political buy-in of the effectiveness agenda;
• the emphasis on building trust to make development cooperation more effective, especially to enable civil society, that was a running theme throughout the Summit; and,
• the new delivery model anchored on the revised monitoring framework that seeks to rally multi-stakeholder dialogue and action at country level.

The civil society delegates especially claimed contributing greatly towards these milestones by calling on development stakeholders to:

• uphold the importance of the Effectiveness Agenda with the core business as its foundation;
• provide an enabling environment for CSOs in light of shrinking and closing civic spaces;
• hold the private sector accountable based on the Kampala Principles;
• address the systemic causes in reversing the impacts of ongoing conflicts, to prevent an irreversible web of sustained crises; and promote stability and just peace in conflict-affected areas; and,
• deliver on climate finance commitments.

Around 60 civil society delegates from around the world participated in the Summit in person, to bring the sector’s positions. The delegation also held its action called the Unmet Gala, which featured the same positions messages around effective development cooperation, climate finance, conflict and fragility, private sector engagement, and shrinking civic space.

The full document is available in English here, and in French here.

“CSOs are known for their determination, optimism and creativity in the face of dire circumstances. We will continue to be relentless champions of the effectiveness agenda and do our part to deliver a just and sustainable development,” the statement concludes.#

 

 

The post Post-HLM3, civil society vows to continue championing effectiveness appeared first on CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness.

As the year is ending, so comes the time to reflect. This year especially since it is our 10 years anniversary, making it the perfect to celebrate the great work done, but also to learn. And what better way to learn than to reflect on what we have been doing and to take stock?

Why INCLUDE?

INCLUDE, the knowledge platform for inclusive development policies, was initiated in 2012 by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs to bridge the gap between (academic) knowledge and policy in the field of Inclusive Development (ID) in Africa. The focus on ID was and still is an important one, as many people in Africa do not reap the benefits of economic progress and are socially, politically or otherwise excluded. For INCLUDE reducing poverty and inequality in both monetary and non-monetary dimensions is at the core of inclusive development. We look at outcomes and, more importantly, at the distribution of outcomes and always ask ourselves who gets what, when, where and why. We also look at the processes underlying the design and implementation of development interventions.

The African voice

From the very beginning our African members have been crucial in developing our knowledge agenda and ensuring that the African perspective is the starting point and core of our work. Our African members have also been the ones to point out the importance of policy implementation and who benefits or doesn’t benefit from that. This for example became visible during COVID times, when certain African countries implemented policies to waive electricity bills. However, people in poverty often did not have access to electricity in the first place. Through our work, we tried to make the barriers that people face to benefit from policy visible for policymakers, both in Africa and for Dutch development actors.

What we have done

In the past 10 years we have worked on many different topics in several African countries and with many partners. We did this through three types of activities: research, knowledge sharing and policy dialogues. Early on we started with topics such as youth employment, youth engagement, social protection and more recently we added equity in COVID-19 policies, digitalization of basic services, green jobs and green economy transition. Through our work, in the past ten years we have managed to contribute to several policy processes both in the Netherlands, e.g. on social protection, and in Africa through our African Policy Dialogues, for example on homeschooling in Kenya and labour externalization in Uganda.

What we have learnt

So what have these 10 years brought us in terms of learning? A few incredibly valuable insights, namely:

• Having policies and interventions aimed at inclusion of certain groups does not automatically lead to inclusion of people, it is the implementation that matters greatly.
• Even today there is still policy thinking that assumes a trickle down effect of benefits, when in fact we know this does not work. Redistribution is a much better route to inclusive development.
• It is thus important to continue to deconstruct myths and provide evidence so we know what we are talking about.
• Realizing that investing in a certain group or geographical area may create new inequalities for other groups or areas. It is important to at the very least be aware of this and to seek possible ways to balance this.
• Therefore, we need to ask the right questions to uncover barriers to access and we need to ask those questions to people who experience the barriers. That way we can connect the realities of every day lives of people to policy formulation and have a better shot at reaching our overarching and shared goals, to reduce poverty and inequality.

At INCLUDE we look forward to continue asking the right questions, gathering the right evidence and bringing the right people together.

 

Het bericht A moment to reflect verscheen eerst op INCLUDE Platform.

Policy, programming, regulation and research must focus on creating sustainable livelihoods for young people. We must build a supportive scaffold for young people to navigate complex and shifting employment trajectories, taking into account the blurred lines between the formal and informal sector. This is a central finding of our final partnership synthesis paper, which offers guiding principles for advancing more just employment futures for Africa’s youth.

Over the next decade in Africa, there will be nearly three times as many young workers as there will be decent jobs. A key barrier to solving the employment challenge is a lack of research to guide policies. To overcome this barrier, INCLUDE Knowledge Platform, the International Development Research Centre, and the International Labour Organisation – under the guidance of the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth – joined forces in a collaborative research partnership built on a vision of a world where youth have greater access to decent jobs.

The publication of this partnership synthesis paper comes at the time that the partnership celebrates three years of collaboration. In these three years, the partners respectively conducted 8 research projects, commissioned and published 12 evidence synthesis papers and organised numerous knowledge dissemination events. All of these knowledge products are now collected in this partnership synthesis paper. The paper calibrates cutting-edge evidence from across Africa, centring knowledge produced from INCLUDE’s, ILO’s and IDRC’s collaborative research project, and draws out best practice for a more just, sustainable and inclusive approach to decent jobs for young people.

For more information, please visit this page.

Download Paper

 

Het bericht The partnership synthesis paper: three years of evidence for boosting decent youth employment in Africa verscheen eerst op INCLUDE Platform.

Delegates from nearly every country in the world are meeting in Montreal for the UN Biodiversity Conference known as COP15. Their goal is to come up with a new global action plan to preserve nature and global biodiversity. Top among those goals is agreeing to a new global target to protect for conservation 30% of land and 30% and marine habitats by 2030.

To discuss the importance of this UN Biodiversity Conference, Ongoing at time of recording, we are joined by John Reid, co-author of Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet (co-authored with the late Thomas Lovejoy), and the senior economist and partnership lead at the non-profit Nia Tero

We discuss the recent history of global efforts to protect biodiversity and its link to climate change, as well as the key issues at play at COP 15 in Montreal.

Apple Podcasts  | Google Podcasts |  Spotify  | Podcast Addict  |  Stitcher  | Radio Public 

 

The post A Major UN Biodiversity Conference Seeks New Goals to Save Nature appeared first on UN Dispatch.

Countries must ramp up investments to provide safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to all people by 2030, the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners said on Wednesday in a bid to save more lives. 

Managing and responding efficiently to disaster situations, requires a high-level of coordination and cooperation from those in charge of the command through to the first responders on the ground. Emergency events linked to waterborne pathogen contamination are among those where stakeholder engagement is crucial to ensure the deployment of appropriate technologies and responses.

Our PathoCERT project is driving forward the development of novel and easily usable technological solutions, services, and governance mechanisms to increase the situational awareness and coordination of first respondents on the ground and key actors operating along the command and control chain, enabling them to rapidly and safely respond to threats. The preparedness level to effectively and timely react and operate in the occurrence of waterborne pathogen contamination events requires not only a set of tailored technologies, but also an effective coordination and collaboration among different stakeholder groups.

PathoCERT brings together those two lines of action connecting key actors with a series of novel tools and technologies. Over the past months, 19 Community of Practice meetings have been organised in the six pilot cities: Granada (Spain), Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Limassol (Cyprus), Thessaloniki (Greece), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Seoul (South Korea), engaging a total of approx. 383 participants between external stakeholders and project partners. The latest Community of Practice meeting took place in November 2022 in Cyprus and represented a key milestone. It was the first time that the PathoCERT technology outputs were presented to local stakeholders who were able interact with the tools in real time and provide direct feedback to the technology providers.

Similar Community of Practice meetings will follow up in 2023 combined with on-the-ground training activities and/or tabletop simulation exercise.

If you want to know more about multi-stakeholder engagement processes, check out the PathoCERT explainer video.

Further details on stakeholder management activities within the PathoCERT project are included in the project publications:

• Stakeholder Mapping and Requirements Analysis
• Stakeholder Engagement Plan
• Community of Practice: Best Practices and Key Learnings

The PathoCERT project is funded under the European Union research programme, Horizon 2020 and runs until 2023.

For further information, please contact Francesca Grossi.

The post Improving Emergency Response Technologies: Watch the PathoCERT Explainer Video! appeared first on CSCP gGmbH.

Design is on everyone’s lips, so we asked our design team to share how they integrate design in our work. In this interview, Nikola Berger, Head of Creative & Communication and Eva Rudolf, Senior Designer at the CSCP explain how design can be a lever to achieve greater impact.

The CSCP lives by a holistic and impact-oriented understanding of design. Can you explain what this means in a nutshell?

Nikola Berger: Design has been an integral part of how we work for more than a decade: to translate research into language and visuals that can be grasped by a wide audience has supported our goal to mainstream sustainability and often sets us apart from other organisations in the field. Beyond translating, we use design processes (design thinking, service design, human and non-human centric design processes) to bring holistic sustainability perspectives to people in change processes—which is a core aspect of our work.

The majority of our projects have a change component, where design helps achieve solutions on many levels and through different means. Sometimes this happens in creative workshop formats that bring experience and interactive participation into the focus in order to support collaboration and inspire. We call it “getting unstuck!“ Other times we support impactful solutions by working with non-human personas to challenge fixed conceptions and open the door for new ideas.

Can you give us an example?

Nikola Berger: In our Sustainable Island Mauritius (SIM) project, our design team was tasked to support over 40 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to develop new products or redevelop existing ones more sustainably. Most of these organisations don’t have a product designer and consist of rather small teams that multitask to grow their business on an island with limited local resources. For this group, we translated the enormous amount of design resources that is now available (through many great organisations) into basic modules focused on values and impact closely linked to the local context. We started with sustainable design concepts but included the CSCP’s handprint approach. Then we created a co-creation process between SMEs and the tourism industry to work together to have a positive impact but our approach applies to any design process: A video summary shows a detailed account of our work in the SIM project, highlighting the co-creation process. In addition, our Creative Guide Book summarises our extensive work on the island for 5 years and shares some of the tools that SMEs can adjust and use based on their needs.

You mentioned the handprint approach, how does that apply to design?

Eva Rudolf: We start off with basic sustainable design principles, which means considering the whole lifecycle of a product (or a service, infrastructure, or system) and its impact across all stages. We take a look at the negative impacts of all lifecycle stages and try to reduce it as much as possible. This is key, but an additional aspect that we are trying to include is to also to consider what positive impacts (handprint) a product or the whole organisation/system can have.

In real contexts, how do you design for positive impact?

Nikola Berger: We should design with people and the environment in mind. Is this product (or a service, infrastructure, or system) needed? How will it make the world (someone’s life) better? Does it have to be a product or can we develop a service or experience? Then, as we develop sustainable products or services with the smallest possible footprint, we can consider the positive and regenerative effects we want to have. This often means that we need to collaborate, maybe with the community, across sectors, with civil society organisations (CSOs) and our clients.

So, basically, we need more design in our projects?

Eva Rudolf: Exactly! A lot of the things that we use, look at, or are surrounded by are made by humans. No matter if you use your mobile phone, read a newspaper, watch an ad, use an APP or commute to work – all these things and processes have been designed by people. To make it short, our world is permeated with design and this is what brings it to the centre of transformation processes, making design a key driver of change. To bring it to the sustainability field, it is claimed that about 80% of the environmental impact of a product or service* – in particular its resource and energy consumption along its entire value chain – are already determined in the design phase.

To fully leverage this potential, we advocate bringing experts from our creative network from various disciplines (e.g., product design, design for sustainable behaviour, design for sustainable social innovation, design for system innovations and transitions, and others) into projects and onto the table. For example, when we run a project where developing circular products/models is at the centre, a product designer in the mix of stakeholders is very important.

Across all our projects, we work toward achieving the goals and visions set in major frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the EU Green Deal. All of these frameworks refer to design as a core tool in change processes.

For further questions, reach out to Nikola Berger or Eva Rudolf directly.

*Ellen MacArthur Foundation

The post Why Design Is Key for Positive Impact appeared first on CSCP gGmbH.

The number of tourists that Mauritius welcomes every year almost matches that of its 1.26 million inhabitants. This shows the importance of tourism for the country’s economic development. But how could tourism be used as a force for good and support Mauritius to become a “Green Destination”, a goal that the government aspires to achieve by 2030.

To make this happen, comprehensive strategies that reduce the footprint (negative impacts) while increasing the handprint (positive impacts) are essential. As part of the Sustainable Island Mauritius (SIM) project, the CSCP collaborated with the Mauritius Tourism Authority to promote sustainable tourism by demonstrating and scaling up mechanisms for improving sustainability impacts along the value chains. The project brought all relevant stakeholders together through capacity building programmes, networking activities, co-creation workshops, and awareness-raising campaigns.

In recognition of its work, the SIM project was awarded the prize “Best Tourism NDC Investment Initiative of the Year” at the African NDC Investment Summit & Awards at COP27 in Egypt. Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are targets that countries determine themselves to stop and mitigate climate change. The Sustainable Island Mauritius project has been awarded for its contribution toward circular, sustainable, inclusive, and regenerative tourism, supporting Mauritius to make substantial progress on its NDC targets. The shortlisted candidates included 100 projects from 43 African countries and all 5 African sub-regions.

The SIM project was funded under the Switch Africa Green Programme, implemented by the Mauritius Tourism Authority (TA) and the CSCP. The recently published final project report highlights promising solutions in the tourism industry that can support Mauritius to achieve the goal of becoming a Green Destination by 2030 as well as to increase its resilience toward global and local challenges, including climate change and biodiversity loss. You can find the full report in our library.

For further questions, please contact Kartika Anggraeni.

 

The post Our Sustainable Island Mauritius Project Received “Best Tourism NDC” Award at COP 27! appeared first on CSCP gGmbH.

Businesses from all sectors, from pharmaceutical companies to agricultural corporations, depend on healthy ecosystem services as a prerequisite for their production processes. Our German Biodiversity & Business (UBi) project is supporting businesses to integrate biodiversity into their strategic planning and environmental management and develop goals that reduce biodiversity loss in the first place.

With the launch of its new website, UBi offers companies and business associations a platform where information and know-how are shared in order to support them make forward-looking decisions and find solutions that contribute to biodiversity protection and conservation.

UBi develops sector-specific biodiversity checklists, provides information on greening companies’ premises, shares concrete examples of sustainable supply chains, and offers relevant actors a network to engage and act.

Among others, the UBi website provides detailed insights into the topics:

• Getting started with environmental management
• Sustainable supply chains, a key factor in countering biodiversity loss
• Nature-oriented company premises – redesigning company grounds can be a first step
• Biodiversity checks, developed for five sectors aiming to make it easier for companies to measure their impact
• Standards and certificates as a means for sector representatives to improve their environmental management

The UBi website is also a platform to enable learning and exchange, including webinars, coaching sessions, lectures and further training as well as numerous networking events to come together on current relevant topics such as the new German supply chain act, deforestation free supply chains, ESG and other upcoming policies.

For further questions, please contact Ellen Land.

The post Supporting Businesses to Achieve Their Biodiversity Targets appeared first on CSCP gGmbH.

Nucleus-outgrower schemes (NOSs) are supposed to be a particularly effective private-sector mechanism to support smallholder farmers and contribute towards mitigating the problematic aspects of pure large-scale agricultural investments. This discussion paper uses panel household survey data collected in two rounds in Zambia to analyse some agro-ecological and socio-economic impacts of the outgrower programme of one of the largest agricultural investments in Zambia: Amatheon Agri Zambia (AAZ) Limited. The descriptive results show that the type of participation in the programme varies across participants and components, with most participating in trainings. Econometric results suggest the following key findings. First, although the overall impact of the AAZ outgrower programme on the uptake of conservation agriculture practices is robust and promising, impacts on the adoption of other agricultural technologies is less obvious and the effect depends on the type of support provided. Second, the programme has had a significant impact on maize productivity promoted in the initial phase but not on the other crops – mainly oilseeds – promoted later. Third, the initially less productive farmers seem to benefit slightly more than already better performing ones. Fourth, although the impact on overall household security was insignificant, there is some suggestive evidence (although the effect is weak) that the programme has a positive effect on improving women’s uptake of micronutrients. Finally, our findings show that the three components of the programme (trainings, seed loans and output purchases) have different effects on the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and productivity, and to some extent on food security. Overall, the results suggest that NOSs, with all their risks, can play a role in the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, improving farm-level agricultural technologies, providing input credit, and thereby improving productivity and smallholder livelihoods. However, this is not automatically the case, as it crucially depends on the design and management of the project; the availability of good policies and institutions governing the rules of operation; the types of crops promoted; the duration of the project; and the political commitment of host countries, among others.

Extreme weather is causing increasing damages, and it is possible to reduce

The worst weather-related disaster hit Pakistan in the summer. About a third of the country was flooded due to unusually heavy monsoon rains. As our correspondent in Islamabad pointed out, Pakistan suffered the impacts of the human-made climate crisis, to which its people have hardly contributed. Pakistani policymakers, as Imran Mukhtar wrote, had irresponsibly failed to prepare the nation for the impacts in the course of at least a decade.

African suffering

The media pay attention to things that happen suddenly, not slow-moving developments. Therefore, many people around the world are unaware of the Horn of Africa suffering devastating drought for the third year in a row. Humanitarian relief is needed, and experience shows that it should not only be linked to longer-term development, but peacebuilding efforts as well. Our contributor Christoph Schneider-Yattara who works for the Protestant agency Bread for the World, spoke of a “sustainable development nexus”.

As climate impacts worsen, more and more international support is needed. Burundi is one of the 20 countries that are most exposed to global heating. As a result, tens of thousands have been internally displaced in the past two years. The most important reason was flooding. State agencies and international organisations are making efforts, both to provide humanitarian assistance and to prevent further damage. On our platform, Mireille Kanyange shared her insights from Bujumbura.

All too often, smaller-scale disasters are not taken note of by international media. However, extreme weather conditions continue to haunt many parts of the world, causing local-level devastation. Agriculture is often affected. Our correspondent Ronald Ssegujja Ssekandi reported from Uganda.

Multilateral policymaking remains insufficient

Humankind has been aware of climate change for decades. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed 30 years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Nonetheless, we still do not have a grip on the problems. My colleague Jörg Döbereiner assessed the results of this year’s climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

In Rio in 1992, the consensus was to focus on mitigating climate change. The idea was that adapting to the phenomenon would be too expensive, require funds that would better be used to phase out fossil fuels. As action was inadequate, the international community had to put adaptation on the global agenda some 15 years later. We now know that adaptation efforts have been insufficient too, so it has become necessary to set up a fund for losses and damages.

The good news is that competent action actually makes a difference.

How insurance schemes and governmental social protection can help

Around the world, there are good examples of what needs to be done. Insurance policies can help, and promising progress has been made in the Caribbean archipelago, which is severely exposed to hurricanes. Marjorie Pons Piñeyro from the Dominican Republic assessed the situation for us.

More generally speaking, far too many people are not insured against climate risks, and that is especially so in low income countries. For things to change, the business environment must improve. A team of co-authors from the Munich RE foundation – Renate Bleich, Dirk Reinhard and Christian Barthelt – elaborated things on our platform.

Social protection systems help to shield vulnerable people from climate risks and reduce social disparities. The great challenge is that they tend not to exist where they are needed most. Stefan Beierl of GIZ discussed the implications in D+C/E+Z.

Physical infrastructure matters too, of course

To limit the impacts of global warming, infrastructure must improve in many places. The Ganges Delta is a region that has always been exposed to extreme weather events, and Bangladesh has made remarkable progress towards becoming climate resilient. Cyclones today claim far fewer lives than those of the past did – when the country’s population was actually smaller. Md Bodrud-Doza from the Dhaka-Based International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCD) elaborated on what makes the difference.

Adaptation measures, of course, must not worsen other environmental problems. In particular, ecosystems must not be harmed. Nature-based solutions are therefore best. David Mfitumukiza of Uganda’s Makerere University told my colleague Jörg Döbereiner and me about African experiences in an interview.

German development agencies such as KfW Development Bank are keenly aware of global heating and the erosion of biodiversity being mutually reinforcing. This vicious circle must be broken, argues Svenja Schulze, Germany’s federal minister of economic cooperation and development.

On her behalf, these international development agencies are paying increasing attention to environmental issues. At the same time, it has become evident that domestic action is needed at home too. The food disaster in Germany’s Ahr Valley in the summer of 2021 would have been less devastating had the authorities learned lessons from previous events in Germany and other countries. In regard to civil protection, Germany can take a page from other countries, as Wolf R. Dombrowsky of Steinbeis University Berlin argued on our platform.

Moving beyond denial

The USA too is increasingly hit by weather-related disasters. Wildfires, heatwaves, hurricanes and floods are becoming more frequent, more dangerous and more costly. Nonetheless, conservative forces still deny the climate crisis. Katie Cashman, a Minnesota-based environmental activist believes it would be good to stop speaking of “natural” disasters when it is human-made climate change that is causing serious damages.

When Katie wrote her comment, US President Joe Biden’s climate agenda was still stuck in the Senate. The good news is that he has managed to make Congress pass ambitious climate legislation which should achieve at least 80 % of what he had proposed. That is enough to keep alive, but more must certainly happen.

IPCC, UNEP and other multilateral bodies sound the alarm

We have seen that lagging behind what is needed to be done proves costly. The big question is: Will policymakers heed the warnings? There is no lack of scientists sounding the alarm.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the 1.5 degree-Celsius limit will almost certainly be breached, at least temporarily. Our Indian colleague Roli Mahajan summarised its most recent global report on adaptation to global heating.

Other multilateral documents point in the same direction. Extreme weather is causing disasters. Mahwish Gul, who is based in Nairobi, read several publications of the UN Environment Programme on the matter.

We must not forget that the climate crisis is exacerbating other environmental problems. The core message of the second Global Land Outlook was that humanity must take urgent action to restore and protect land. Desertification and global heating are mutually reinforcing phenomena. Our Nigerian author Chimezie Anajama wrote about the Global Land Outlook, which was published by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

So far, the editorial I wrote for the May issue of our Digital Monthly – the focus section dealt with extreme weather – has aged well. There really are no more excuses for not acting fast.

Hans Dembowski is the editor in chief of D+C Development and Cooperation / E+Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit.
euz.editor@dandc.eu

Civil-society organisation is teaching local people in Matabeleland to make effective use of digital communication

To assess the reliability of information, it is essential to check and verify sources of information. When an author only quotes one source and does not include other views, a story is less trustworthy. Whether it is coherent and logically consistent matters too. Comparing the content of individual messages and articles with other information is useful too. In doubt, it makes sense to consult knowledgeable people. When dealing with photographs, one should check whether identifiable landmarks are correct and whether other pictures show the same scene in a very different perspective.

Users of social-media platforms and new portals, moreover, must know that something is not simply true because it goes viral and is reiterated in many places. As a matter of fact, disinformation is often spread in a sensationalist and catchy way. It differs from unintentional misinformation in the sense of being designed to mislead as many people as possible. Media literacy means that a person knows these things.

Unfortunately, school education pays little attention to media literacy even in countries with high incomes, as the excited debate on fake news has shown in recent years. In low and middle income countries, things tend to be worse – and that is particularly true where governments have authoritarian attitudes. In Zimbabwe, the party that orchestrated genocidal violence four decades ago is still in power (see main story).

The CITE trains individual persons at the local level to assess messages diligently before reaching a conclusion or forwarding them. The young generation matters in particular. On the one hand, they are avid users of digital technology, on the other, they have little knowledge of what happened in Matabeleland four decades ago. At the same time, it is important to detect current disinformation that keeps being used strategically.

Telling one’s own stories

The project also makes an effort to teach them how to tell their own stories on digital platforms. Young people deserve to learn how to use their mobile phones and social-­media platforms effectively. The CITE courses thus include the production of text, images and videos.

The starting point for the media-literacy workshops is to make people in Matabeleland aware of how disinformation became a weapon in the Gukurahundi genocide. That includes providing information from reliable sources, which are indeed available on the internet.

Another important topic is digital security. There is a general tendency to use predictable passwords such as birth dates of the names of loved ones. Many people use the same password for every account they have online. Far too many share their passwords freely. They need to learn that unsafe passwords put them at risk of being attacked and losing stored information as well as money.

Zenzele Ndebele heads the independent Centre for Innovation & Technology (CITE) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. This contribution is based on a presentation of his and his team’s at the 2022 annual FOME conference in Hamburg. It was hosted by the Interlink Academy on behalf of German organisations that support independent media in developing countries. FOME stands for “Forum Medien und Entwickung“ (Forum Media and Development).
https://twitter.com/zenzele
https://cite.org.zw/

Bhekizulu Tshuma is a journalist and media scholar at the Bulawayo-based National University of Science and Technology.

Zimbabwe’s ruling party still uses aggressive identity politics to stay in power

The country’s independence was won by the combined efforts of two liberation movements. One was the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), the other was the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), which is now the ruling political party.

Both ZAPU and ZANU had military wings. They fought on different fronts, but their shared goal was to free the people from white minority rule.

The sense of unity did not last. ZANU won the first post-independence elections and soon started a disinformation campaign against the erstwhile partner during the struggle. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, who served as president from 1987 to 2017, accused ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo of destabilising the country. Mugabe claimed Nkomo, bitter after losing the elections, was mobilising dissidents. ZANU demonised ZAPU and accused its leaders of wanting to “topple a democratically elected government.” Mugabe publicly declared that the “dissident party and its dissident father” deserved total destruction.

Gukurahundi atrocities

ZAPU had been strong in Matabeleland, the southern part of the country, where the predominant language is Ndebele. The region’s people, whether ZAPU supporters or not, were hoping to celebrate independence in 1980. Instead, they soon suffered a great betrayal. ZANU leaders now claimed to be the young nation’s only true patriots, though they basically represented the Shona speakers they had organised in the independence struggle. A brutal genocide followed. It is called Gukurahundi.

Politically uninvolved citizens were killed. Women and children were slaughtered, accused of being the wives and children of dissidents. Pregnant women were brutally murdered “for carrying children of dissidents”. Ndebele speaking men too were killed for either being dissidents or supporting dissidents. More than 20,000 people, mostly Ndebele speakers, died due to the ZANU government’s efforts to exterminate ZAPU and Nkomo.

In Matabeleland, black majority rule thus turned out to be the tyranny of an electoral majority. ZAPU supporters had expected “independence” and “freedom” to apply to all Zimbabweans universally. That was what they had fought for. What they got instead was genocidal bloodshed.

Deadly disinformation

The violence was facilitated by the disinformation campaign that smeared Nkomo and his party. The campaign created fear and suspicions, deeply dividing Zimbabwe’s two most important ethnic groups.

ZANU is actually still using identity politics to rally its base. Stoking tensions helps it to stay in power, distracting from poverty and corruption, which are undermining the common good. To this day, mistrust shapes the relations of Shona speaking people with their Ndebele speaking compatriots.

It fits the pattern that the government systematically neglected Matabeleland after the genocidal campaign. It hardly invested in the regional infrastructure and other dimensions of development. Spending on schools, hospitals, electric-power provision, housing et cetera lagged behind what happened in predominantly Shona-speaking areas.

Matabeleland also has rather few media outlets. Political discourse is thus largely shaped by the media houses based in Harare, the capital, not Bulawayo, the major urban centre of Matabeleland.

Media literacy makes a difference

The rise of the internet, however, gives marginalised people opportunities to take charge of their information needs in a more independent manner. It is against this background, that the non-governmental Centre for Innovation & Technology (CITE) has launched the project “Media and Information Literacy in Matabeleland” in 2021 (see box).

In the course of four years, it aims to empower people to detect misinformation, which is unwittingly inaccurate and false, and disinformation, which is not only fake, but spread with the intention of misleading people. It is also designed to empower local communities to use digital technology for sharing their world view with others. More generally speaking, the internet is a space where Zimbabweans can resist authoritarian disinformation.

The CITE project can thus prove transformative in a double sense. It helps local people collect reliable information but also empowers them to counter disinformation with more accurate messaging.

Zenzele Ndebele heads the independent Centre for Innovation & Technology (CITE) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. This contribution is based on a presentation of his and his team’s at the 2022 annual FOME conference in Hamburg. It was hosted by the Interlink Academy on behalf of German organisations that support independent media in developing countries. FOME stands for “Forum Medien und Entwickung“ (Forum Media and Development).
https://twitter.com/zenzele
https://cite.org.zw/

Bhekizulu Tshuma is a journalist and media scholar at the Bulawayo-based National University of Science and Technology.

The potential of recycling multilayer packaging in Europe is not an easy topic. The packaging solutions are popular with major food manufacturers due to product safety and particular suitability for branding. However, multilayer packaging is prone to numerous challenges related to sorting, separation, and delamination at the end-of-life phase.

How can we increase the rate and recycling quality of multilayer packaging? Are new technologies on waste sorting, layer separation, and material recovery suitable for the waste management sector in Germany? Industry experts discussed these questions in a multi-stakeholder workshop in Cologne in November 2022. At the ‘Packaging Club’ meeting, the CSCP presented new technologies currently under development in MERLIN, an EU-financed project. This included robotic units for detection and sorting of flexible and rigid packaging waste, chemical delamination of the various layers, and recovery of PE and PET monomers.

Waste managers, recycling companies, research institutions, and industry associations discussed the innovation potential of these technologies and critically reflected on the economic and technological feasibility of adopting them for use in the German waste management systems. This feedback from the participants is key for the MERLIN project to gauge the interest, concerns, and reactions of potential end-users to MERLIN products and will help the project align its research and development focus with the demand.

In the following months, the CSCP will co-organise further Packaging Club meetings with international experts around Europe to create a holistic view on MERLIN technologies.

Do you want to participate in the next Packaging Club meeting? Are you interested in the results and first insights of this meeting? Email packagingclub@merlinproject.eu and we will keep you updated!

For further questions, please contact Fiona Woo.

The post Recycling of Multilayer Packaging: Engineering Struggle or Technological Innovation? appeared first on CSCP gGmbH.

Demands on packaging are increasing: it should be protective, stackable, informative but also practical, attractive and circular. To fulfil these requirements, consumers should be taken on board. That’s why understanding their behaviour is crucial, also in order to understand how behavioural challenges can be overcome.

Circular packaging – that is, packaging designed to be reused, recycled, or composted – is both a question of supply and demand. Of course, companies can and need to opt for the most sustainable packaging approaches. But what if certain types of packaging have a low acceptance level, leading consumers to break the loop?

In the “Club for Sustainable Packaging Solutions” as part of our Consumer Insight Action Panel, the CSCP has worked with retailers, manufacturers, recyclers, academia, civil society, and a consumer community to identify behavioural challenges of consumers when aiming to establish circular packaging solutions. Drawing from the Club member’s expertise, we digged deeper to better understand consumer behaviour and their underlying needs and reasons.

In this video series (in German), we present our findings to decision-makers in companies to encourage and enable them to package both sustainably and in a consumer-friendly way. The series comes shortly before the demand to offer reusable packaging for all to-go food and beverages sold in Germany becomes mandatory on 1 January 2023. The demand (Mehrwegangebotspflicht) is part of the new Packaging Act and obliges companies to offer reusable packaging that is not more expensive or worse off (higher overall product price, limited packaging sizes) than disposable alternatives. The CSCP is part of the Implementation Alliance for the regulatory request and actively involved in the question of how new reusable packaging solutions can also be accepted by consumers.

The video series includes practical and easily-digestible chunks of information (10-18 min per video), including the topic of re-usable packaging. Starting with the chicken-and-egg problem of responsibility for circular packaging, the series also covers packaging myths and complexities, approaches to multiple uses of packaging, and presents design and evaluation tools. Since the retailer’s point of view is always of central importance for manufacturers, we interview experts from two German retail companies in the last video.

The videos are in German and you can watch them by clicking on the respective links below:

• Responsibility for sustainable packaging- what you need to do now
• The most common packaging myths – and how you can deal with them
• Complex packaging- perception and disposal
• Reusable packaging and ReUse – on the rise?
• Design and evaluate sustainable packaging
• Sustainable packaging strategies – interview with dm-drogerie markt and REWE Group

The Consumer Insight Action Panel is a CSCP programme. This round of the Club for Sustainable Packaging Solutions was made possible with the support of the German Federal Foundation for the Environment (DBU).

For further questions, please contact Stephan Schaller.

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