The man Archbishop Desmond Tutu love to hate Jacob Zuma sworn in as South African president

Jacob Zuma is sworn in as president of South Africa in Pretoria on Saturday, may 9, 2009. Photo/REUTERS 

By REUTER 

Jacob Zuma was sworn in as South African president on Saturday after a remarkable political comeback and quickly highlighted the challenges he faces as Africa’s biggest economy heads towards recession.

Former South African leader Nelson Mandela, considered a symbol of the anti-apartheid struggle, attended the presidential inauguration ceremony, in a huge political coup for Zuma.

Zuma, 67, taking the oath of office before heads of state was unthinkable during turbulent years when graft and rape charges nearly ruined him, crises that might have buried many politicians.

While Zuma promised to help South Africans realise their dreams, he took a sober view of the country’s economy which may already be in its first recession in 17 years.

“We must acknowledge that we find ourselves in difficult economic times. Jobs are being lost in every economy across the world,” Zuma said in his inauguration speech.

“We will not be spared the negative impact, and are beginning to feel the pinch.”

During the ceremony, air force jets flew over the presidential offices where Zuma will have to make tough decisions.

He must juggle the interests of union and communist allies who helped him rise to the top, and foreign investors who fear he will steer the economy left.

The charismatic politician won a wide mandate to lead with a ruling African National Congress (ANC) landslide victory in the April 22 election.

South Africans respect the ANC for its long anti-apartheid struggle but they are growing impatient with rampant poverty and crime which Zuma has promised to tackle.

Investors are eager to see who forms his economic team and are especially interested in the fate of respected Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, praised for his fiscal management.

Stacking the cabinet, to be named on Sunday, with loyalists could hurt the credibility of Zuma, who has said ANC officials should not expect positions just because of their loyalty.

source.nation.ke

ASIA: Capital boost will not help the poor – NGOs have their own opinion on this

Photo: IUCN Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, more than 60,000 small farmers, fishermen and households could lose their livelihoods, land and crops due to an ADB water resource management project in the southwest, ActionAid says (file photo)

BALI, – NGOs have criticised a decision by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to triple its capital, claiming projects it funded have done more harm than good to communities it aims to help.

On 30 April, ADB shareholders agreed to increase the bank’s capital base from US$55 billion to $165 billion to allow it to respond to the global economic crisis and help Asia’s poorest countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including halving the number of people living in poverty by 2015.

In a new report, the ADB said the economic crisis was broader and deeper than the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

The report said an ADB study estimated that 60 million people who would have been lifted out of extreme poverty would remain very poor this year and the figure could reach 100 million by the end of 2010.

ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said on 2 May that an “immense infrastructure deficit” in Asia was a huge constraint on investment and economic growth and efforts to reduce poverty.

But the NGO Forum on ADB, a network of 250 activist groups that has been monitoring the bank’s activities since 1992, called the move “irresponsible and dangerous”, alleging the region had experienced forced displacement and environmental degradation caused by ADB-funded projects.

The NGO Forum said the capital increase was largely designed for private sector clients and big infrastructure, and numerous studies had shown that such financing did not benefit the poorest.

“If not managed well, this 200 percent general capital increase could easily translate into a more than 200 percent increase in social and environmental harm,” Red Constantino, executive director of the NGO Forum, said in a statement.

Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN

An ADB study estimated that 60 million people who would have been lifted out of extreme poverty would remain very poor this year (file photo)

Displacement

According to the International Accountability Project, a global development watchdog, at current rates, approximately 15 million people in the world every year are forcibly displaced from their homes, communities and lands to make way for large development projects such as mines, dams, power plants, infrastructure and plantations.

In Nepal, 20,000 people will be forced to move from their land to make way for the planned ADB-funded West Seti Hydropower Project in the northwest, said Ratan Bandari, whose family will be among those relocated if the project goes ahead.

“We’re not provided with any information about the project, except from reports,” Bandari told IRIN at the ADB annual meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali from 2 to 5 May.

“There’s no internal investment in the project. There are so many problems. There’s no information and there’s no meaningful consultation with the locals,” he said.

Kuroda said the bank had done its best to make its projects environmentally sustainable.

“We have appropriate accountability mechanisms through which any complaints regarding environmental safeguards, resettlement issues could be resolved appropriately,” Kuroda told a news conference on 2 May in Bali.

“I think ADB has learned quite a lot from past experiences and we have made substantial progress and I must say most of our infrastructure projects actually improve the environment,” he said.

Photo: Naresh Newar/IRIN

In Nepal, 20,000 people allegedly will be forced to move from their land to make way for the planned ADB-funded West Seti Hydropower Project in the northwest (file photo)

Rethinking development finance

But Stephanie Fried of the Environmental Defense Fund, a New York-based environmental advocacy group, said problems surrounding Nepal’s West Seti project were not unique, and similar issues had been reported by communities affected by ADB-financed projects across the Asia-Pacific region.

“Globally, this is a real opportunity to rethink development finance. Will the ADB use its capital increase in a responsible manner or will it continue business as usual at the cost of local people and the environment?” Fried asked.

ActionAid International in a report released on 3 May said case studies from Vietnam, Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia suggested that ADB-financed projects had failed to reduce poverty and vulnerability to climate, food and economic crises.

In Bangladesh, more than 60,000 small farmers, fishermen and households depending on wetlands could lose their livelihoods, land and crops due to an ADB water resource management project in the southwest, ActionAid said.

The Theun-Hinboun hydropower project sent 30,000 people in Laos into poverty by depriving them of the natural resources needed for their livelihoods, it said.

More than 1,500 families have been displaced by the ADB-funded Highway 1 project in Cambodia, said Leak Kay of Conservation and Development Cambodia, an NGO.

“ADB only massages the food, economic and climate crises but does not cure, and its own version of development has added to the crisis facing poor people in Asia,” said Rashed al Mahmud Titumir, ActionAid’s head of policy for Asia, in a statement.

ActionAid said the bank should create a condition-free funding facility in addition to the current schemes and increase investment in agriculture with a focus on protecting small farmers.

atp/ds/mw source. www.irinnews.org

The suffering Columbians: Food security threat as economic crisis takes hold

Photo: WFP Cambodia

For many impoverished Cambodian families, food prices are already prohibitively high

PHNOM PENH,  – Coming only months after Asia’s food crisis, the economic crisis has renewed food insecurity among women and children as incomes dip, even though prices have fallen, with the World Bank predicting that Cambodia will be hardest hit among Southeast Asian countries.

As of 4 May, 1kg of rice cost 2,500 riel (US$0.61), against 3,200 riel ($0.78) a year earlier, according to the Economic Institute of Cambodia.

Declining food prices are creating difficulties for farmers who need to pay off debts, raising fears that urban workers returning to the countryside will not find work in the agricultural sector.

“Back-to-back effects of, first, the high food price crisis of last year and now the economic slowdown are likely to not only create categories of new poor… but also push into deeper food insecurity the already chronically poor,” Jean-Pierre de Margerie, Cambodia country representative for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN.

“Last year, a majority of poor households facing higher food prices had to resort to very damaging coping mechanisms such as contracting new debts or even cutting back on food consumption,” he added.

Acute malnutrition in poor urban children increased to 15.9 percent in 2008 from 9.6 percent in 2005, as poor families cut back on food expenditure, according to the 2008 Cambodia Anthropometrics Survey, released in February by the government.

More women are also forgoing proper nutrition and healthcare during pregnancy, raising the risk of death during childbirth, the UN said in its 8 April statement.

Five pregnant women die every day in labour, giving Cambodia one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Asia at 472 deaths per 100,000 births, according to the most recent government data from 2005. 

Shrinking growth

The World Bank expects growth to shrink to minus 1 percent in 2009 – the lowest in a decade after average growth of a record 10.5 percent since 2005, mirrored in Phnom Penh’s construction and property booms.

About one-third of Cambodia’s 14.5 million people live below the national poverty line of $0.50, according to government statistics.

In 2009, another 200,000 people could fall below the World Bank’s regional poverty line of $1.25 a day – the highest number in Southeast Asia – it announced in April.

Photo: David Swanson/IRIN

The World Bank estimates economic growth to shrink to minus 1 percent in 2009

Poverty crisis

Food insecurity and retrenchment will result in rising child malnutrition and maternal mortality rates, the UN has warned.

Falling demand for clothing from the US and European Union and dwindling foreign investment have cost at least 60,000 garment jobs nationwide and 25,000 construction jobs.

Between 80 and 85 percent of garment workers are women, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).

“When faced with layoffs, most workers will consume much of their savings while looking for a new job,” Tuomo Poutiainen, ILO’s chief technical adviser in Cambodia, told IRIN.

Many will ultimately return to the countryside, he said.

Poor families will also cope by removing children from school to work and selling household assets or land, the UN warned, although it was too early to provide figures.

Joblessness could pressure women and children into sex trafficking, hindering the progress made in the past decade against sexual exploitation, the statement added.

Training schemes

To cushion these effects, the government has announced it will release $25 million to the agriculture and garment sectors for training programmes.

“The economic downtime, when people are searching for jobs, can be used to enhance their existing skills or to train on new ones that will help them find work,” Poutiainen said.

“In this way Cambodia will have a much more competent and productive labour force after the downtime ends,” he said.

A report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Asia and the Pacific, released on 24 April, recommends policymakers enact work-for-food schemes that guarantee employment, encourage poor people to grow private gardens rather than rely solely on income, and establish common property rights over water.

gc/ds/mw source.www.irinnews.org

NEPAL: Experts call for climate change adaptation plans – This will require some technological interventions and investment

Photo: Naresh Newar/IRIN

Dig Tsho lake in eastern Nepal, which is filling with icy water as rising temperatures accelerate glacier melt

KATHMANDU,  – Nepal is one of a number of South Asian countries directly affected by global warming, especially in mountainous regions which have seen rapid glacier melt: Local experts warn that climate change adaptation plans urgently need to be put in place.

Some organisations have been involved in small-scale community activities designed to promote sustainable agriculture, alternative energy and biodiversity conservation, but these are insufficient, they say.

“There has to be planned adaptation which will require some technological interventions and investment. We need a good understanding of the extent of the impacts,” Arun Bhakta Shrestha, a climate change specialist from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), told IRIN in Kathmandu.

The Asian Development Bank, which is helping the Nepalese government to assess and address climate change risks, says water shortages in the dry season and the melting of over 3,200 glaciers are the main challenges.

However, Nepal lacks the institutional, scientific and economic resources to adapt effectively to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Quantifying the impact

Experts said there was an urgent need to quantify the likely impact of climate change and assess Nepal’s scope and capacity for adapting to climate change.

ICIMOD’s Shrestha said carefully evaluated plans were essential “otherwise, it will be a haphazard way of spending money and you won’t get the kind of return you want”.

Up to now most climate change information relating to agriculture, food security and water resources has been anecdotal or general, a fact which, however, does not mean that adaptation programmes should be shelved pending further scientific evidence. “We should not wait,” said Shrestha, adding “we can support what some people are already doing.”

“We are already quite late in identifying the impact of climate change. We need constant scientific records of temperature, and the changes experienced during all seasons, and in that way we can identify proper solutions,” said expert Dinanath Bhandari, of the UK-based international NGO Practical Action.

Hazard mapping

Some organisations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have already started their own hazard mapping exercise in mountainous areas to assess livelihood vulnerabilities related to agriculture, flood patterns and erosion.

“Our priority is adaptation and the building of the resilience of the most vulnerable communities,” WWF Nepal official Ghana Shyam Gurung old IRIN.

“We haven’t had rain for more than six months and because of that crops have suffered – and definitely you have productivity going down a lot,” he added.

The drought has led to the loss of winter crops like wheat, maize and mustard – with serious implications for food security.

“We can already see the problems becoming visible now. This obviously means a severe crisis in future,” said Bhandari of Practical Action.

Local NGO ENPHO, which has been lobbying for action on climate change, says adaptation measures should be given top priority

“We shouldn’t lose any time now, especially in an agricultural nation which is totally dependent on the weather. Changing weather patterns are not a good sign,” Bhushan Tuladhar, the ENPHO executive director, told IRIN.

nn/ds/cb source.www.irinnews.org

In Brief: Disputes may affect Sudan’s upcoming polls – analysts: May be characterised by vote-buying, intimidation and government interference

Photo: Heba Aly/IRIN

Sudanese president Omar el-Bashir – middle right (file photo)

NAIROBI, – Sudan is planning to hold general elections in 2010, but weaknesses that undermined previous elections could be seen again, according to an NGO involved in social research.

Past elections, according to the Rift Valley Institute, were characterised by vote-buying, intimidation and government interference in news media, and deliberate exclusion of candidates.

A dispute also looms between parties to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended conflict between the Khartoum government and Southern Sudan in 2005, over the results of last year’s population census.

The elections were scheduled for 2009, in accordance with the provisions of the CPA. The new date will mean the polls take place a year before a referendum on the southern autonomy.

aw/eo/mw source.www.irinnews.org