Weekending Sunday, 24 February 2008

ALL-WOMEN NEPALI MOUNTAINEERING GROUP DRAWS ATTENTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE

18 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: A former beneficiary of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will join a team of Nepali women to climb Mt. Everest this spring, WFP and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced Tuesday. “The members of the expedition hope that their efforts will not only open up mountaineering as both a sport and a career for women in Nepal, but will also encourage women, no matter what community they are from, to work together to pursue their goals,” WFP reported. “The team is also very concerned about the effects of global climate change on Nepalese people and their livelihoods and its impacts on one of Nepal’s greatest resources – the Himalayas.” The team is expected to observe the shrinking of glaciers and the lack of snow coverage on mountains in the area along the way to Mt. Everest, Heather Sutliff of WFP told MediaGlobal. “Almost 67 percent of the glaciers in the Himalayas have retreated, in Nepal [the retreat has been] as rapid as 10 meters a year,” she added. WFP is providing the team with organizational support and some funding. UNDP is also providing financial support. However, the expedition is still in need of additional funds in order to begin. “We hope that their observations will provide additional ideas on how to ecologically better manage and preserve this unique tourist and world heritage site,” said UNDP in a recent public statement.

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS FIRST-EVER SPECIAL ENVOY FOR MALARIA

18 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: On Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Ray Chambers as the first-ever Special Envoy for Malaria, a position created to help raise awareness of the disease and elevate its profile on the global development agenda. “While we’ve managed to solve malaria in much of the developed world, malaria continues to prey on the least developed countries—those that lack the resources to effectively fight back, but are increasingly committed to doing so,” Chambers told MediaGlobal. Every year, malaria kills over 1 million people, 90 percent of whom are in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of these deaths, he said, could be prevented with medicines and simple technologies that already exist. To achieve mass distribution of these technologies “we’ll need to invest in further health and distribution systems,” Chambers said, adding that he believes his new appointment will show the international community that the United Nations is committed to addressing malaria. Chambers was hopeful that this commitment will encourage greater attention to the disease and investment in its prevention. “Having the full force and support of the Secretary-General and the United Nations is likely to increase the potential for raising awareness and funding to accomplish the objective of defeating malaria,” he said.

UNFPA CREATES NEW FUND FOR MATERNAL HEALTH

18 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has created a new fund for maternal health in order to boost global efforts to reduce the number of women who die during pregnancy and childbirth. “Every minute a woman dies due to complications in pregnancy or childbirth, adding up to half a million women dying every year. Another 10 to 15 million women suffer serious or long-lasting illnesses or disabilities,” UNFPA reported. Improving maternal health and reducing maternal deaths are at the heart of the UN’s fifth Millennium Development Goal. Even so, “in the past 15 years progress has been too slow and unequal,” Yves Bergevin, the manager of the fund, told MediaGlobal, pointing out the high maternal death rates in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Bergevin stated that the fund will work with governments and civil society to increase women’s access to health centers and emergency care, even in rural areas where women are at high risk during home births. The fund will also increase the capacity of health systems to provide a broad range of quality maternal health services, strengthen mechanisms to reduce health inequities and empower women to exercise their right to maternal health. UNFPA states that the fund will focus on supporting the 75 countries with the greatest need.

PREDICTABILITY OF AID IS CRUCIAL TO PROVIDING CHEAP MEDICINES

19 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The medical inequities between rich and poor nations are glaring. Developed countries have the medicines, developing countries claim the vast majority of the people who need them. A considerable increase in donor funds and a relaxation of intellectual property laws, which restrict the movement of cheaply produced generic drugs, are urgently needed. But perhaps most importantly, Grégoire Verdeaux, Manager of Strategy and Finance for UNITAID, told MediaGlobal, aid must be reliable and ongoing. “The issue of predictability is at the heart,” Verdeaux said. “It’s not only the way you raise money, it’s the fact that it’s predictable.” UNITAID, which works to increase access to drugs and medical care in the developing world, relies heavily on cheap generic pharmaceuticals, an industry it considers crucial to the effective delivery of aid, but which has fallen prey to tighter international patent laws. “We’re not paying top dollar,” Verdeaux said. “We work massively with Indian manufacturers.” Alongside the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, UNITAID has negotiated price reductions on anti-retroviral drugs. But an important part of making deals with pharmaceutical companies is knowing how much money will be available in the future, Verdeaux said. “If you want to treat people effectively, it has to be sustained.”

NEW TECHNOLOGIES ESSENTIAL TO DEVELOPMENT, SAYS UNCTAD

22 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Developing countries must embrace technology if they are to develop and engage in the global economy, says a report recently released by the United Nations Convention on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). “We tend to think in terms of aid, or capital investment. This is necessary, yes, but thinking in these terms is not enough,” Anh-Nga Tran-Nguyen, Director of UNCTAD’s Division for Services Infrastructure for Development and Trade Efficiency, told MediaGlobal. Developing nations “have to create their own momentum,” she said. “If there is no effort to improve technology, to improve efficiency, the process of development cannot be sustainable.” Tran-Nguyen emphasized that adopting new technologies should be a priority even for the least developed countries, who are often faced with tough decisions about where to spend their limited resources. “Poor countries often say ‘we are so poor, we don’t even have money to feed our own people,’” Tran-Nguyen said. “But if you think in these terms, you will never break the poverty circle.” Many developing nations, such as Ghana and Rwanda, are already embracing new technologies and making their promotion a part of their national agendas. “They have a plan of action,” Tran-Nguyen said. “There is a willingness to modernize, and to use science and technology as a driver for development.”

INSECT FARMING OFFERS INCOME SOURCE TO DEVELOPING WORLD

22 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The commercialization of edible insects could help boost food security and generate income for farmers in the developing world, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said this week. A workshop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, brought together FAO experts and leading scientists to discuss the ways to regulate, promote and market edible insects. Prized for their taste and nutritional content, over 1,400 species, including caterpillars, grasshoppers, beetles, termites, wasps and butterflies, have been eaten for centuries in Africa, Asia and North and South America. While most edible insects are collected from the wild, “there are some people making money from raising insects, and processing them and marketing them,” Patrick Durst, Senior Forestry Officer for the FAO, said in an interview with MediaGlobal. “There do seem to be some livelihood opportunities at stake.” Durst pointed to uncorroborated reports that some farmers in Thailand, where insects are a popular snack, have found raising crickets to be so lucrative that they’ve stopped planting altogether. While the business of insect farming may be slower to catch on in other parts of the world, gathering and selling insects on the informal market provides important income to many rural and forest-dwelling people. “There’s virtually no doubt that many of the insects that are eaten are highly nutritious and big sources of protein,” Durst said. “What we want to try to emphasize is to ensure food safety, hygienic raising and collecting, so we avoid chemical residues [and] ensure that the quality of the food is really good.”

full story at http://mediaglobal.org/index.php/2008/02/23/fao-serves-edible-insects/

Fried bamboo worms are a Thai treat. (Photo courtesy of Surangkanang Phoungpan)

BOTTLED WATER COSTS MORE IN DEVELOPING NATIONS THAN IN LONDON

24 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Earlier this month, readers of the Weekend Edition of the Financial Times came across an ad that asked, “Where does a litre of water cost more than in central London?” The answer: “In a developing country slum.” The ads were the product of a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) campaign to publicize its 2006 Human Development Report and voice its concern over the unmet need for suitable drinking water in developing countries. “The ad campaign you saw was initially designed to run alongside the launch of this report” in 2006, UNDP’s Niamh Collier-Smith told MediaGlobal. The ads were re-released this month to highlight the roles wealth and location play in the inequalities of prices, particularly in the structuring of water markets. Poorer households in the developing world are at the mercy of private water markets that offer poor quality water at extremely high prices. Working to provide adequate amounts of clean water to all, the UNDP Water Governance Programme is active in over 150 nations and monitors water supply, sanitation, trans-boundary water management and water resources management. The need for clean water is at the heart of many health problems caused by poor sanitation. Nearly two million children die each year due to a lack of clean water and toilets. Another one billion people lack access to safe water.

REMOTE INDIAN VILLAGES TO BENEFIT FROM INEXPENSIVE SOLAR-POWERED LIGHTING

24 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation, a non-governmental organization, has launched an initiative that will provide millions of people in rural Indian villages with low-cost lighting. Lamps will be distributed that can be charged at a nearby station that uses solar power. Dr. Leena Srivastava, Executive Director of the Energy and Resource Institute, explained to MediaGlobal that the lamps will need to be charged daily. Installation will cost around US$55. The project is currently active in about ten villages, she said, adding that she hopes the initiative will successfully garner support from the private sector to help cover and curb many of the costs. The lamps will have the ability to light entire villages while using less energy than a 100-watt bulb. The citizens themselves will incur no fees to obtain the power. Currently, kerosene lamps are highly popular among Indian communities for nighttime illumination; however, such lighting is both economically and environmentally costly. With over 78 million Indian households lacking electricity, this initiative will also look to entirely do away with other crude forms of lighting such as firewood, dung cakes and crop residue.