International
United Nations
2012 is the “International Year of Sustainable Energy for All”
Today at the World Energy Summit in Abi Dhabi the UN officially declared 2012 the “International Year of Sustainable Energy for All”. This declaration marks the increased recognition of, and support for tackling, energy poverty.
In the opening address of the Summit UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon officially announced 2012 as the “International Year of Sustainable Energy for All” to the 157 nations and 57 international organisations present. In addition the Secretary General also launched his initiative of the same name. The Sustainable Energy for All Initiative will call for private sector and national commitments and attract global attention to the importance of energy for development and poverty alleviation. There are three specific goals of initiative to meet by 2030:
• Ensuring universal access to modern energy services.
• Doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency.
• Doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
Addressing energy poverty is a huge priority for Africa. Most people in Africa rely on biomass for cooking, which often is from an unsustainable source and a major cause of respiratory disease. A shocking 500 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are yet to have access to an electricity supply – this means they have no evening light, limited access to modern communications, inadequate education and health facilities, and not enough reliable power to build their businesses. In fact nearly 70% of surveyed African businesses cite unreliable and expensive power supplies as a major constraint to economic growth and job creation.
Addressing Africa’s energy poverty is crucial for poverty reduction, job creation and sustainable economic growth. African businesses and governments know this, and have clearly communicated the need for a coordinated effort to address the continent’s energy poverty. In 2012 there is an immediate need to drive this agenda forward and tackle the continent’s energy poverty.
When doing this the continent must not overlook its massive potential for renewable energy growth: only 0.6% of its geothermal energy has been exploited, less than 2% of its wind energy has been exploited and only 7% of its hydropower potential has been exploited. Africa is rich in sustainable energy sources. As such it has the potential to lead the world in a new form of sustainable economic growth. In the International Year of Sustainable Energy of All leaders must look at how it can work with Africa to achieve this vision and in doing so lift the African people out of energy poverty.
“This is the right time for the initiative,” UN secretary General BanKi Moon told world leaders in his opening address to the World Energy Summit.
“Across the world we see momentum building for concrete action that reduces energy poverty, catalyses sustainable economic growth, and mitigates the risk of climate change. Achieving sustainable energy for all is both feasible and necessary, and my initiative will help us meet these objectives simultaneously. It can be a triple win for all.”
Please Act Now to support the world’s newest nation
After a civil war that lasted for over 20 years and saw over 2 million people killed 5 months ago the people of southern Sudan took part in peaceful referendum on whether to separate from the north of Sudan and become their own country. The outcome of this vote was an overwhelming majority decision (over 98%) to separate from the North. The decision was made that on July 9 South Sudan will separate from the north and become the newest country on the planet.
With only a couple days to go till separation the atmosphere in the South Sudan capital Juba is joyous. Plans are already being developed to encourage investment and development but this new nation faces numerous challenges. It will begin life as one of the least developed countries on earth with less than 100km of paved roads, one in three children severely malnourished, maternal mortality rates the highest in the world, more than half of primary school age children not in school, and a girl being more likely to die in child birth than finish primary schooling.
Northern military leaders and southern rebel groups have also increased their activities since the referendum. According to UN reports in recent weeks violence along the disputed border regions and across southern Sudan, has forced 180,000 people to flee their homes and seen over 1000 civilians killed.
The southern Sudanese people have great plans for their development but conflict undermines this, it deters investment by indigenous or external businesses and restricts the activities of international development NGOs and other bodies. As such there is a need to make sure this conflict doesn’t escalate. With the current UN South Sudanese Peacekeeping Mission ending on July 9 there its renewal programme needs to be strengthened. Right now, the UN Security Council is debating the size and scope of the next UN mission in South Sudan, and they are going to make their decision in the next 24 hours.
We at ONE, along with other NGOs such as Oxfam are supporting the Ch16.org campaign and asking our members to tweet their UN Security Council Ambassadors to fully fund the South Sudanese peacekeeping mission. You can do this through the links below:
UK, @UKUN_NewYork
Germany, @GermanyUN
France, @franceonu
Now is NOT the time to cut the peacekeeping budget – South Sudan, is about to be the world’s newest independent country. But like most places starting out it needs support.
For more information visit www.ch16.org
Our take on Ban’s new Global Strategy
Initiatives worth $40 billion don’t often go unnoticed, so you may have seen that on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health (PDF), a plan designed to accelerate progress toward Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 by galvanizing global commitments around a comprehensive plan. The Secretary-General’s office announced that the commitments made so far will:
In addition to financial commitments, the Global Strategy promotes country-led health plans with sustainable investment, integrated delivery of health services, health systems strengthening, innovative approaches to financing and improved monitoring and evaluation of programs to ensure that maximum benefit will be derived from commitments made to women and children.
On paper, it sounds pretty incredible, and at ONE, we celebrate the renewed focus on maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) — an issue which we feel is long overdue. We’re also thrilled to see the diversity of partners (PDF) who have come together and have committed to achieving real outcomes in health — not just financial inputs.
It wasn’t just the usual crop of donor countries who made commitments (though many pledged substantially). Benin agreed to provide antiretroviral treatment to 90 percent of their HIV-positive pregnant women. Ethiopia pledged to increase the proportion of its children immunized against measles to 90 percent. Niger provided free care for maternal and child health. And NGOs and philanthropies of all sizes, UN agencies, members of academia and the private sector rounded out a true 21st century global partnership.
But now that the confetti has settled in New York City, what will the Global Strategy really amount to? To be frank, it’s hard to tell. Though each entity’s commitments were outlined, it was not clear how the $40 billion figure was calculated and how much of it was actually new money. We know that some of the $40 billion has been generated in the period “since April,” meaning chunks could have come through commitments made at prior forums, including this summer’s G8 Summit in Canada. And speaking of which, we’re having flashbacks to our analysis of the Summit’s Muskoka Initiative for MNCH, where money was pledged and the rhetoric was great, but ultimately, there was no great accountability mechanism established by which the advocacy community could measure commitments, progress or gaps.
While that’s frustrating for us, it’s a matter of life and death for the mothers and children depending on these initiatives for support. So at ONE, we will stay engaged and work to ensure that a monitoring body is established to ensure that these and other commitments made this week are kept.
What next for the Millennium Development Goals?
In an article entitled ‘What Next for the Millennium Development Goals’ in the Global Policy Journal, Todd Moss of the Center for Global Development discusses what he sees as the strengths and weaknesses of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and suggests possible next steps. This article joins a variety of other commentary in the buildup to the mid-point review for the MDGs at a UN summit September 20-22 in New York.
Moss’ piece commends the MDGs for their successful fundraising role in helping to reverse aid cuts and for its useful contribution in focusing the developing community on outcomes instead of loosely linking inputs to “hoped-for changes”. However, Moss also criticises the MDGs for being used as replacements for national targets, for leading to a difficult notion of “collective accountability” which holds “no one accountable”, and as being “unrealistically ambitious for many countries”. This in turn leads to disappointment, which helps fuel the anti-aid argument.
His suggestions for the future are, in summary, for them to be bottom up; ambitious yet realistic; aimed at “intermediate outcomes”; used as bellwethers instead of “operational goals”; and to help recognise and commend success.
1 Billion Hungry
Yesterday was the kickoff of the World Food Summit in Rome. This weekend, the Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Jacques Diouf, undertook a 24-hour fast to protest the astonishing figure of over 1 billion hungry people around the world. The FAO is also currently running a campaign against global hunger, which you should check out at www.1billionhungry.org.
3 million children
Oh, these UN weeks. Every year when the UN General Assembly meets (and this year, the Clinton Global Initiative and the G20 are putting their heads together, too), advocates for the world’s poor try to build momentum towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight targets designed to reduce global poverty and disease by 2015. In years past, we’ve entered these discussions with hugely complicated problems to solve. But this year is a bit different. There is big progress to report on MDG 4 – reducing preventable childhood deaths.
Last Thursday, UNICEF released a report announcing that the number of children dying each year before their fifth birthday had dropped to 8.8 million—the lowest number on record (an achievement that flew under most of the major medias radar screens). And while this is still 8.8 million too many deaths, it’s down from 12.5 million deaths in 1990. That means that doctors, nurses, community health workers, educators—even politicians and donors—have helped prevent 10,000 children from dying each day. TEN THOUSAND! One of these saved sons or daughters could hit upon the next big life-saving idea.
But there’s a catch. Right now, we actually don’t need any new big idea to take a significant step forward. Three million of the 8.8 million children are dying from things that we know how to prevent and treat: pneumonia and diarrhea. In the next year, vaccines for pneumococcal disease and rotavirus—two of the main causes of the diseases—will be introduced at approximately $7 a piece, a price cheap enough to realistically be distributed in the developing world. So we have the life-saving vaccines, and we know what it takes to distribute. Now we just need the money to do it.
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI)—an innovative financing organization that funds the purchasing and distribution of vaccines—will be largely responsible for purchasing the pneumonia and rotavirus vaccines. And while they’re running short on funds, exciting progress was made during the busy UN week.
At a UN event yesterday afternoon, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and World Bank President Robert Zoellick announced a landmark $5.3 billion international deal that would tackle women’s and children’s health in the developing world—and save an estimated 10 million lives. The $5.3 billion investment, which marks the culmination of a year’s work by the Taskforce on Innovative Financing for Health Systems, includes:
•New commitments by leaders of Nepal, Malawi, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone to expand access to health services
•A $1 billion expansion of the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm)
•A new mechanism for making voluntary contributions when buying airline tickets, expected to raise up to $3.2 billion by 2015
•$515 million for results-based funding health programs
•$360 million worth of debt conversions
•Launch of a value-added (VAT) tax credit pilot, expected to raise up to $220 million a year
•The commitment to explore a second Advance Market Commitment for life-saving vaccines
While this exciting announcement is not going to fulfill all of GAVI’s financing needs, it hopefully sets an important precedent that other donors will soon follow. It would be quite an achievement if at next year’s meeting of the UN General Assembly, there is even more good news to report.
The lives of 3 million children depend on it.
-Josh Lozman
The G20: A Chance to Address Climate Change
Climate change is more firmly on the global agenda now more than ever, not just because the final round of the UN Climate Change Conference is taking place this December in Copenhagen, but because we are increasingly seeing the effects of climate change. ONE is also calling for the G20 to address climate change this weekend at the Pittsburgh G20 summit, but we’re keeping with our theme looking at it from the perspective that ‘Africa can be a part of the solution.’
Despite contributing only 3.6% of total global carbon emissions, sub-Saharan Africa will feel these effects—through droughts, floods, erratic rains that disrupt growing seasons—both first and worst. Any deal brokered in Copenhagen later this year must include the impact that climate change will have on the world’s poorest—and take into account the potential that developing countries hold to address climate change. The G20 meeting in Pittsburgh is the perfect place to get ahead start by working to do the following:
•Ensure that any global climate deal mobilizes funding to support the response to climate change in developing countries. In the short-term, agree on a down-payment to help developing countries deal immediately with the impact of climate change and build trust in international negotiations;
•Agree on principles to ensure that climate financing is spent predictably, effectively and through transparent governance structures;
•Ensure that a global climate deal considers Africa’s potential contribution toward reducing global carbon emissions, particularly in regard to carbon markets.
Not only will Africa bear the brunt of the climate change impact, but sub-Saharan African countries have the potential to help reduce global carbon emissions. The development of robust carbon markets, the adoption of low-carbon and leap-frog technologies, and the institution of carbon-offsetting programs like re-forestation projects can all flourish in the developing world—without sacrificing development, and maybe even encourage it.
ONE’s message at Pittsburgh is that no global recovery can be constructed in a stable manner if it excludes Africa, and the same goes for any discussion on climate change. We’ll be bringing you the latest from Pittsburgh as the week progresses, so keep an eye out here on the blog.
-Beth Adler
Great news for Global Health
It’s a crazy week with all that’s been going on in New York at the UN and Clinton Global Initiative but before the world’s attention turns to the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, I wanted to flag two pieces of great news on global health that came out this afternoon, which you understandably may have missed.
First, it was announced that an extra $1 billion has been secured in support of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), which funds major programmes to protect children from preventable diseases, such as pneumonia, measles, meningitis and diarrheal diseases. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown helped make the announcement yesterday during one of the many events in New York. GAVI will use the additional funding not only to support and distribute more vaccinations to save more children’s lives from these diseases, but also to improve health systems in comprehensive ways in poor countries.
ONE sees this as an especially important announcement in light of the fact of last week’s historic UNICEF report on child mortality, which found the number of children dying before their fifth birthdays each year had been cut to the lowest level ever on record—8.8 million. This progress was largely thanks to scaled up support for relatively inexpensive solutions, many of which GAVI supports, such as vaccinations and supplements.
However, the UNICEF report also found that although great gains were made thanks to the targeting of many major diseases, a lack of investment in pneumonia and diarrheal diseases have made them the two main causes of children’s deaths worldwide. Today’s $1 billion announcement means that vaccines that can help prevent deaths from these two diseases—which account for 3 million deaths each year—will be available soon at greatly reduced costs through GAVI.
As ONE’s President David Lane said in a press release ONE put out: “We know how to stop deaths from pneumonia and diarrheal diseases, but these conditions are the biggest killers of children under five. Today’s GAVI announcement is an important step to accelerate progress in areas where we’ve seen big results, but will also target more diseases that so far have not been targeted and that needlessly take the lives of children.”
The second big announcement was a new airline ticket programme that will allow you to voluntarily contribute $2 each time you fly to help fight global disease. The programme was announced today, also in New York, by the U.N. agency UNITAID, which is attached to the World Health Organization. UNITAID helps reduce the costs of treatment for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, making these lifesaving medicines available to those that need them.
As David Lane said in the press release: “Paying $2 to help save lives in the fight against preventable disease sure beats baggage fees.”
The initiative, which in particular will help fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa as well as help improve maternal health, is backed by several major travel industry companies, the Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Recipients of the donations will include UNICEF and the Clinton Foundation. It looks like you can expect to see the initiative start at airports this January.
We expect lots more news in the days ahead, so stay tuned to the blog. To read more about ONE’s reaction to today’s two announcements, you can see ONE’s full press release here.
-Steve Wilson
Era of engagement
This morning, US President Obama addressed the UN General Assembly in New York, saying that it was time to “embrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interests and mutual respect.”
He noted that over the past nine months, the US has tried to lead by example on issues of national security, climate change and food security. But he said that this was just the beginning—and the U.S. couldn’t go it alone. He said that it was time for leaders from across the globe to “take their share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.” He noted that the UN was founded on the belief that nations could work together to solve global issues, but that too often, it became a place to play politics and air grievances. Leaders gathered there today could either be remembered as the generation that put off hard choices and defined themselves by their differences, or the generation that worked together to build on common interests.
President Obama then laid out four pillars to achieving this future. The first was non-proliferation and disarmament. The second was the pursuit of peace and security, both by targeting violent extremists and strengthening peacekeeping efforts. He noted in particular the importance of securing peace in Darfur. The third pillar was the preservation of the planet. He noted that the dangers of climate change could no longer be ignored—land will disappear, wars will erupt over resources and “development will be devastated by drought and famine.” President Obama said the U.S. would press ahead with deep emission cuts and would share new technologies with countries around the world. And while the wealthy nations must take the lead, he noted that “any effort that fails to help the poorest nations both adapt to the problems that climate change has already wrought–and travel a path of clean development—will not work.
The final pillar was a global economy that promotes opportunities for everyone. As President Obama noted:
“At a time of such interdependence, we have a moral and pragmatic interest in broader questions of development. And so we will continue our historic effort to help people feed themselves. We have set aside $63 billion to carry forward the fight against HIV/AIDS; to end deaths from tuberculosis and malaria; to eradicate polio; and to strengthen public health systems. We are joining with other countries to contribute H1N1 vaccines to the World Health Organization. We will integrate more economies into a system of global trade. We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s Summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”
-Kara Arsenault
Assembly time
On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly began its 64th session in New York City. But what does this group really do—and why should we pay attention?
Founded in 1945, the General Assembly is (among other things) the chief policymaking arm of the United Nations (the UN consists of five main bodies: General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council and International Court of Justice). Made up of all 192 members of the UN, the Assembly provides a unique opportunity to discuss a range of issues affecting countries across the globe. It also gives each member state—regardless of size or stature—one equal vote. That means that developing countries can often help determine the agenda of the Assembly and the character of its debates.
While the Assembly issues only non-binding recommendations for member nations, many of these proposals have affected the lives of millions across the globe. In 2000, for example, the Assembly adopted the Millennium Declaration, a landmark agreement highlighting eight goals to reduce global poverty and disease by 2015, now commonly referred to as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Since 2000, substantial progress has been made toward some of the MDGs. For example, an estimated 3.2 million HIV-positive Africans are currently on antiretroviral treatment and 88 million bed nets have been delivered by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, substantially reducing malaria deaths in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya.
The General Assembly is one of the few world bodies that has representation from every country—and while it’s voice may not be binding, it is representative and resounding. And this year, there is much that needs to be done in the fight against extreme poverty and disease—including accelerating progress toward the MDGs—particularly in light of the food, financial and climate crises. Next week as the General Assembly meets, and the G20 gather in Pittsburgh, let’s hope for some important life-saving action.
The UN General Assembly’s yearly regular session runs from September to December. We’ll keep you posted on any news during this year’s session.
-Kara Arsenault
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About the Blog
The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
TAGS: United Nations