Weekending Sunday, 20 January 2008

AMBITIOUS SATELLITE LAUNCH AGENDA WILL ALLOW WMO TO MONITOR WEATHER AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN 2008

15 JANUARY 2007[MEDIAGLOBAL]: Satellites are a valuable tool for monitoring climate change and should be increasingly used to help track its effects, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN’s authoritative voice on climate, weather and water. “Satellites have a unique role, first of all because they have a global view, and second because there is no other way to measure some parameters.” Jerome Lafeuille, Chief of the Space-based Observing System division of the WMO’s Space Programme told MediaGlobal. While 16 satellites currently orbit the Earth as part of the WMO’s Global Observing System, a record number of 17 satellites are planned to launch in the coming year. This ambitious new plan for expansion of the existing satellite program was presented at a high-level meeting in New Orleans this week. “The meeting in New Orleans is one particular aspect of the dialogue we are developing between the WMO user community and the space agencies,” said Lafueille, who helped to arrange the two-day meeting. “What WMO is doing is providing a forum where various space agencies can coordinate their plans and make sure that the data can be best used by the meteorological and climate community.” Overall the plan met with resounding approval at the meeting, Lafeuille told MediaGlobal. “The meeting expressed a clear support for the new vision, and they expressed a willingness to contribute to such an ambitious plan,” he said, suggesting that the WMO’s vision may soon become reality.

ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN IN RICH COUNTRIES WILL IMPACT OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE TO POOR COUNTRIES

16 JANUARY 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: “For the first time we have a situation in the world economy where growth is actually protected from a major slowdown by the projected performance of the developing emerging market economies,” said UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis on Wednesday, addressing journalists at the UN Secretariat on the world economy and UNDP’s development priorities. “Never before have the emerging markets had a sufficient percentage part of the world economy to make that possible, and never before were they growing as rapidly as they have grown over the last three years.” In response to a question by MediaGlobal on the impact on Official Development Assistance (ODA) on developing countries as a result of the slowdown of the economies of rich countries, Dervis said, “Significant slowdown in the North will make the fiscal situation in the rich countries more difficult. Therefore, it will be a challenge to maintain ODA increases, because that is, after all, what the promise is.” Dervis indicated that there was a social dimension in the financial sector that was vital. “If financial sector failures in one part of the world or the other take place, everybody will be affected.” He predicted that the problem would have a major impact on farmers in Africa, workers in India, and civil servants in Latin America.

CHILDREN SUFFER IN POST-ELECTION CRISIS IN KENYA

16 JANUARY 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Since the post-election crisis in Kenya began last month, over 100,000 children have been displaced, estimates the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). In addition, over 75,000 children are living in camps for displaced people, and thousands children are believed to have found temporary shelter with other family members. While schools have reopened, few children are returning to class, largely due to the constant movement of displaced people and the fear of unsafe conditions. “In Eldoret and other hot spots of violence and displacement, I doubt anywhere is particularly safe and that schools are operating at all. Access for supplies into Eldoret has been stopped since Wednesday as criminal elements have taken over the roads and have set up roadblocks. Where schools are open and running, they are certainly the safest places for children to be and give us and partners a chance to address the violence often being carried out by young people in the 10 to 20 year-old range,” Patrick McCormick of UNICEF told MediaGlobal. Currently, UNICEF and the ministry of health are working together to set up and run screening centers in several camps to identify and treat malnourished children. To reduce vulnerability to disease and malnutrition, the camps will be provided with emergency measles and polio vaccination, as well as Vitamin A and de-worming medicines. A statement released by UNICEF noted, “Priority is being given to the reunification of families, the establishment of safe play areas for children, as well as the protection of girls and women from violence.”

HIV/AIDS PROGRAMS SHOWING SIGNS OF SUCCESS IN COMBATTING EPIDEMIC, SAYS UNAIDS

18 JANUARY 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: AIDS prevention programs are showing signs of success, according to the 2007 AIDS Epidemic Update, presented this week by the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). While the prevalence of the disease has clearly decreased over the past decade, many questioned whether this was in response to the billions of dollars in aid spent fighting the virus, or whether the epidemic was simply running its course. “It is generally true that a lot of infectious diseases will go through that type of dynamic. There will be a growing epidemic phase, then at some point you will have saturation. That has been long-recognized for the AIDS epidemic,” Dr. Peter Ghys, Chief of the epidemiology unit at UNAIDS told MediaGlobal, “[but] if you look at the trends in young people, and you see continuing declining prevalence in young people, that is actually beyond what a natural history [alone] would give you.” According to the UNAIDS report, of the 15 countries with sufficient data on youth, 11 showed a steady decrease in youth HIV prevalence since 2000-2001. While in many of these countries the decrease was statistically insignificant, some countries such as Malawi, Cote d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe and Kenya saw decreases as high as 25 percent. “This supports that [the observed decrease in overall HIV prevalence] is linked to programs.” Ghys said.

CAPE VERDE, NO LONGER A LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRY, CONFRONTS NEW CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

18 JANUARY 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: This month marks the start of a new era for Cape Verde. The small island nation off the coast of western Africa has increased its gross national income (GNI) and its score on the Human Assets Index enough to graduate from the list of Least Developed Countries (LDCs). “We accepted the challenge,” Antonio Pedro Monteiro Lima, Cape Verde’s Permanent Representative of to the UN, said in an exclusive interview this week with MediaGlobal, expressing optimism about his country’s continued growth without the high levels of development aid and favorable economic policies granted to the LDCs. With a GNI of US$2130 in 2006, well over the US$900 required for graduation from the LDC group, and a growth rate of six percent in 2005, Cape Verde has attracted considerable foreign investment. Its high life expectancy, literacy rates and stable government have made it a success story among African nations, and yet, as a country of small islands short on natural resources and plagued by drought, Cape Verde remains particularly vulnerable to climate change. “We have these new worries, these new challenges, but that does not mean that we can’t go forward. We have to go forward. And the international community has to help us,” Lima said, highlighting the importance of developing alternative sources of energy. With the spike in oil prices and rising shipping costs, Cape Verde’s continued prosperity depends, in part, on new forms of energy. “We have the sun and we have wind,” Lima said. Windmills have been in use since the 1980s, and the country working to create a market for solar panels. “We are thinking very seriously on the alternative possibilities for energy,” Lima explained. “We cannot confront the increase in energy [costs]. How can a country that doesn’t produce oil develop with this kind of price? It is totally impossible. So we are trying to educate our country, our people, to lower the consumption of energy.”

NATIONAL SURVEYS PLAY KEY ROLE IN IMPROVING HIV ASSESSMENT

18 JANUARY 2007 span>[MEDIAGLOBAL]: The incorporation of data from national surveys is providing a much more accurate view of HIV prevalence around the world. The statistics released this week by UNAIDS on the AIDS epidemic in 2007 showed what Dr. Peter Ghys, chief of the epidemiology unit at UNAIDS called “a drastic change” from last year. In 2006, UNAIDS estimated that there were over 39 million people in the world living with AIDS. For 2007, this figure has been revised to 33 million. This decrease, however, does not represent an actual decrease in AIDS patients globally, but instead represents a reassessment on the part of UNAIDS, due to improvements in data availability and more accurate collection methods, such as national surveys, which provide a more representative sample than other proximate measures previously used. These surveys, said Ghys, are often simply extensions of the already existing demographic and health surveys already carried out by many countries to assess population and public health. “With increased attention to AIDS, it became an opportunity for these surveys, that were going to be conducted anyway, to add a component, a measurement of the prevalence of HIV.” Ghys told MediaGlobal. “It’s been extremely useful to have that information because it leaves us with a much better assessment of what the true status is of the epidemic.” Accurate information, he emphasized, is essential. “As the analysis, the interpretation of the data becomes more complex, with opposing effects of treatment and prevention programs, there is a need to invest much more in data collection and also in analysis, so that we will be better able to sort out what the real dynamics are in epidemics in each country.”

HIV/AIDS PROGRAMS FORGING CLOSER TIES TO FAMILY PLANNING

18 JANUARY 2007 span>[MEDIAGLOBAL]: HIV/AIDS treatment programs are increasingly joining forces with reproductive health initiatives, reversing a trend of isolation and competition for resources, Bunmi Makinwa, head of the UNAIDS Office in New York, told MediaGlobal at briefing on AIDS in 2007, held Friday at UN Headquarters. Over the last two decades, activists have fought hard to make the HIV/AIDS epidemic an international priority. The resulting funds were directed toward initiatives that dealt specifically with the disease, while sexual and reproductive health services, such as family planning clinics, complained of a lack of support. “But as time went on, people found that there were the same factors, the same issues, the same clientele,” Makinwa said. “People [providing] reproductive health [services] in places where HIV is the first important problem, not pregnancy-wouldn’t it make sense to offer something to make sure pregnancy is stopped, and at the same time HIV infection is stopped? Which would be a condom. But family and reproductive health people don’t offer condoms as a first [intervention].” Similarly, reproductive health workers stress the need for comprehensive prevention and treatment centers, where patients can receive effective birth control while learning how to protect themselves from HIV. In a world where funds and resources are scarce, cooperation is key. “It’s coming together,” Makinwa said. “Not exactly as fast as we would have wanted it, but it is coming together more than ever before.”

CREATIVE ECONOMY ISSUES IN AFRICA IGNORED BY GLOBAL MEDIA

21 JANUARY 2008 span>[MEDIAGLOBAL]: “Major media outlets tend to focus on the problems of conflict and poverty to the exclusion of stories that highlight cooperation and local wealth creation,” said Karol Boudreaux, Senior Research Fellow for Enterprise Africa, in an exclusive interview with MediaGlobal. Enterprise Africa, an arm of the Mercatus Center of George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, researches free-market solutions to poverty in Africa. Boudreaux is investigating, analyzing, and reporting on enterprise-based solutions to poverty in Africa. “I think that the global media is largely, though not entirely, blind to the positive stories that do exist in Africa and in the developing world more generally,” she added. In response to a question on whether the least developed countries would come close to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015, Boudreaux responded, “I do think there is some progress being made towards achieving the MDGs. Strong economic growth rates in East and Southern Africa have been very encouraging and are essential in the fight against poverty and hunger.” Boudreaux, during her several visits to Africa since 2005, told MediaGlobal, “I was extremely impressed by the progress being made in Namibia to develop a sustainable and locally driven conservancy movement. Namibia seems to have developed a strong paradigm for achieving rural economic development, local empowerment, and economic development. I have also been impressed by the dedication and hard work of educational entrepreneurs, who are building and running schools, often times in difficult circumstances, and are meeting the needs of parents for a relevant, challenging education for their children.” She felt that the mainstream media must talk about how people in the developing world create and build sustainable businesses. “This is not to deny that bad things happen in the developing world – obviously they do.” Boudreaux recounted the stories of women setting up and managing organic vegetable farms and farmers in Rwanda coming together to build successful coffee cooperatives. Referring to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as a successful model for South-South Cooperation, she said she expected greater cooperation between the countries of the South.