Despite the global consensus on the importance of shifting to a model of sustainable development, identifying pathways that can simultaneously and equally fulfil social, economic and environmental goals remains extremely difficult. After briefly tracing the evolution of the concept of sustainable development to its central place in current international development debates, the paper explains what is understood by eco-social policies. This paper analyses opportunities for and barriers to the effective adoption of eco-social policies in national programmes by undertaking a comparative analysis of three case studies: Payment for Ecosystem Services in Costa Rica, the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputin (ITT) proposal for Yasuní National Park in Ecuador and the Virunga Alliance in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The three programmes had varying degrees of success. The Virunga Alliance is a development project that aims to foster peace and prosperity through the responsible economic development of natural resources for 4 million people who live within a day’s walk of the park’s borders. The project identified poverty and the lack of a sustainable business sector as the root causes of Virunga’s problems, forcing the park’s inhabitants to over-exploit natural resources for their daily fuel and food needs. While the Payment for Ecosystem Services was a successful national programme that led to unprecedented forest recovery in Costa Rica, the ITT proposal was a governmental policy initiative that failed due to various national and international issues. The Virunga Alliance operated with an eco-social logic by involving job creation and clean energy provision. While the outputs were successfully achieved, the outcomes were at risk in part due to regional insecurity and a fragile national economy. The author looks at the different approaches taken in each country, analysing the benefits and trade-offs as well as the factors that led to their adoption or defeat. After briefly tracing the evolution of the concept of sustainable development to its central place in current international development debates, the paper explains what is understood by eco-social policies.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
Vedanta Ltd is a mining company which various subsidiaries has operations in India, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Liberia, Ireland and Australia in copper, zinc, silver, aluminium, oil, gas, iron ore and power segments. This article reports on Vedanta’s annual general meeting in London and some of the debates that took place at the meeting, including in relation to the report back by shareholders who visited mine sites and reported on what they had seen on working and environmental conditions. The author comments that in part a promise of “zero harm” by large extractive corporations is illusory and can lead to real problems being hidden. The author argues for reports to rather be clearer about the real conditions and situation on the ground to include and allow debate on the improvements intended to manage them.
A new report published by Public Eye, 'Dirty Diesel' reports that Swiss commodity trading firms exploit lax regulatory standards to sell African customers fuel with high sulfur content that have been banned in Europe. Operating behind the Energy brands, trading companies have a dominant position in the import and distribution of petroleum products in many African countries. Public Eye researchers drew fuel at local pumps in eight countries, viz: Angola, Benin, the Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and Zambia. The result revealed that the diesel samples contained up to 378 times more sulfur than is permitted in Europe. Furthermore, other toxic substances, such as benzene and polycyclical aromatic hydrocarbons, were also found in concentrations that are also banned in Europe. The 160-page report further indicates that the traders mix up a petrochemical cocktail from refinery products and other components known in the industry as "African Quality". These toxic fuels are reported to be mainly mixed in the ARA-Zone (Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp) where Swiss trading firms have their own refineries and storage facilities. Many West African countries that export high grade crude oil to Europe receive toxic low quality fuel in return. The authors indicate that these fuels investigated contribute to rising air pollution in African cities and jeopardise health, as noted in studies on rapidly increasing levels of air pollution and estimates that by 2030 Africa will have three times as many deaths from traffic-related particle dust than Europe, Japan, and the US combined. Respiratory illnesses are already a major health issue and diesel fumes can cause cancer. The authors argue that African governments need to set and enforce stricter standards. In a petition addressed to Trafigura, Public Eye and its West African partners call on the Geneva-based commodities giant to only sell fuel that meets European standards in all of its global operations, and the UN-Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights adopted in 2011.
Members of the Ugandan Parliament (MPs) under the Parliamentary Committee on Science and Technology have tasked scientists at Kawanda Agricultural Research Institute(KARI) to educate the public more on Genetically Modified crops. The MPs raised concern over the unawareness of the public about genetically modified crops, the misconceptions people have concerning genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and problems in some of the genetically modified crops that have been introduced locally. This was during a meeting at the Agricultural Research Institute. Hon. Rose Mutonyi (Bubulo West) said the public is not convinced about genetically modified crops.
The boundaries between scientific and technological knowledge are nebulous in some technical fields, such as the biological sciences and their applications. This has led to the appropriation under patents of knowledge (such as on specific genes) of scientific nature, which may not only have negative effects for the further development of science and new technological contributions, but also encroach on the fundamental right of access to science. The South Centre argues in this paper that the patenting policies adopted by some universities and other research institutions may aggravate this problem. Court decisions in the USA and Australia and some national laws (e.g. Brazil) have limited the possibility of that appropriation, but this is still feasible in many jurisdictions. The authors argues that other measures – such as a well formulated research exception, the limitation of the patent claims’ scope, and legislation mandating open access to research results achieved with public funding – may mitigate the effects of the exclusivity granted by patent rights, but more fundamental policy changes may be necessary in order to preserve scientific outcomes in the public domain for free use and follow-on research.
A detailed new database provides information on Chinese loans to African governments and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Started in 2007 the database details a total of $86.9 billion of Chinese loans from 2000 to 2014, with the loans verified on the ground or with relevant stakeholders and cross-checked the data in multiple languages. This paper reports five initial lessons that emerge from the endeavour. Media perceptions of Africa-China relations tend to emphasise high sums of money going from China to Africa – such as reports that $1 trillion in Chinese financing destined for Africa by 2025 – but the reality appears far more modest. According to the database, China loaned $86.9 billion to African governments and SOEs from 2000 to 2014. Although the average value of Chinese loans to Africa from 2000-14 may be just $6.2 billion/year, this number has been growing in recent years. While China is sometimes portrayed as only being interested in Africa’s natural riches, the data paints a more complex picture. 28% of Chinese financing goes to transport; 20% to energy; and 8% communication. When China’s engagement in Africa is talked about in the international media, “aid”, “loans”, “investment”, and “development finance” are often mixed up or used interchangeably. That means that whenever China offers any money to an African country, it is typically interpreted as a combination of aid and development assistance. The database avoids these conceptual confusions by focusing on loans without trying to define these as either aid or not. It tracks both concessional and commercial lines of credit extended by government, policy, and commercial banks and their corresponding suppliers/contractors. The project shows that using clearly defined categories such as loans can be a much more meaningful and unambiguous approach to understanding the impacts of Chinese money in African countries than many previous methods.
In May 2010, 192 Member States endorsed Resolution WHA63.14 to restrict the marketing of food and non-alcoholic beverage products high in saturated fats, trans fatty acids, free sugars and/or salt to children and adolescents globally. The authors examined the actions taken between 2010 and early 2016 – by civil society groups, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its regional offices, other United Nations (UN) organisations, philanthropic institutions and transnational industries – to help decrease the prevalence of obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases among young people. By providing relevant technical and policy guidance and tools to Member States, WHO and other UN organisations have helped protect young people from the marketing of branded food and beverage products that are high in fat, sugar and/or salt. The progress achieved by the other actors the authors investigated appears variable and generally less robust. The authors suggest that the progress being made towards the full implementation of Resolution WHA63.14 would be accelerated by further restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy food and beverage products and by investing in the promotion of nutrient-dense products. This should help young people meet government-recommended dietary targets. Any effective strategies and actions should align with the goal of WHO to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by 25% by 2025 and the aim of the UN to ensure healthy lives for all by 2030.
An internal IMF report admitting the destructive nature of neoliberalism may have come too late for many African countries. The neoliberal structural adjustment programs have led to economic hardships, political instability and conflicts in most African countries where they have been implemented. The report makes three devastating conclusions: One, that the neoliberal reform program has not delivered increased economic growth. Secondly, neoliberal reforms have increased inequality. And thirdly, the increased inequality caused by neoliberal reforms has in turn undermined the level and sustainability of economic growth. The report states that the removal of barriers to capital flows, or financial openness, has often resulted in short-term speculative, so-called “hot” inflows, in developing countries. However, such speculative capital inflows to African countries are often quickly withdrawn by industrial country investors as they seek better returns elsewhere, destabilising African economies which were initial recipients of such “hot” inflows. Such speculative inflows neither boost growth nor allow the African country to share the costs of such destabilisation with the industrial countries from which speculators originate. The authors conclude that there was an increased “acceptance of controls to limit short-term debt flows that are viewed as likely to lead to – or compound – a financial crisis”. They argue that while exchange rates and financial policies could help to alleviate risks of increased financial instability, “capital controls are a viable, and sometimes the only, option when the source of an unsustainable credit boom is direct borrowing from abroad”. The report says that although high public debt is detrimental to growth and welfare, it would be better for African and developing countries to pay off their public debt over a longer time, rather than cut current productive spending needs. To lower public debt, proponents of neoliberal reforms have proposed that taxes should be raised or public spending cut, or both. If African countries do not come up with quality policies, or if they have them, but the policies are captured by corrupt elements, or half-heartedly implemented, or not implemented at all, they won’t be able to take advantage of the seeming retreat of the four-decade long globally dominant “neoliberalism”.
Conditionalities attached to loans from the World Bank and IMF were among the key negative influences on health and its social determinants between 1980 and 2000 in many of the more than 75 low- and middle-income countries in which they were applied. Best available evidence suggests that this 'neoliberal epidemics' era is not over. In the future, neoliberalism is likely to reflect the erosion of territorial divisions between core and periphery, or the global North and the global South, in the world economy. The authors write that the success of efforts to fight neoliberal epidemics and reduce health inequalities will depend on blurring boundaries: between the global and local frames of reference, and between public health practice and the politics of health. This last blurring means a return to the wisdom of Rudolf Virchow, to the effect that ‘medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale’. As Martin McKee and colleagues wrote in a 2012 commentary on the failure of austerity policies, ‘Virchow’s words are as relevant today as they ever were’. Understanding how to translate that insight into political action will require the development of a comparative political science of health inequalities – a critically important project that remains in its infancy.
How Africa urbanises will be critical to the continent’s future growth and development, according to the African Economic Outlook 2016. Africa’s economic performance held firm in 2015 amid global headwinds and regional shocks. The continent remained the second fastest growing economic region after East Asia. In 2015, net financial flows to Africa were estimated at USD 208 billion, 1.8% lower than in 2014 due to a contraction in investment, while official development assistance increased by 4%; and remittances remain the most stable and important single source of external finance at USD 64 billion in 2015. According to the authors, if harnessed by adequate policies, urbanisation can help advance economic development through higher agricultural productivity, industrialisation, services stimulated by the growth of the middle class, and foreign direct investment in urban corridors. It also can promote social development through safer and inclusive urban housing and robust social safety nets. Finally, it can further sound environmental management by addressing the effects of climate change as well as the scarcity of water and other natural resources, controlling air pollution, developing clean cost-efficient public transportation systems, improving waste collection, and increasing access to energy. Seizing this urbanisation dividend requires bold policy reforms and planning efforts, however, such as by strengthening local governance, tailoring national urban strategies to specific contexts and diverse urban realities and harnessing innovative financing instruments.