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	Universal social protection for climate action and a just transition by ILO, Social Protection Floors Coalition   Sep. 2024   World Social Protection Report 2024-26: Universal social protection for climate action and a just transition. (ILO)   Governments are failing to make full use of the powerful potential of social protection to counter the effects of the climate crisis and support a just transition, according to a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report. The report also finds that those countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change often have the lowest levels of social protection.   The World Social Protection Report 2024-26: Universal social protection for climate action and a just transition finds that, for the first time, more than half of the global population (52.4 per cent) has some form of social protection coverage. This is up from 42.8 per cent in 2015, the year when the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted.   However, in the 20 countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis, 91.3 per cent of people (364 million) still lack any form of social protection. Looking more broadly, in the 50 most climate-vulnerable countries, 75 per cent of the population (2.1 billion people) lack any social protection coverage. Globally, most children (76.1 per cent) still have no effective social protection coverage.   There is also a substantial gender gap, with women’s effective coverage lagging behind men’s.   These gaps are especially significant, given the potential role of social protection in softening the impact of climate change, helping people and societies adapt to a new climate-volatile reality, and facilitating a just transition to a sustainable future.   "Climate change does not recognize borders, and we cannot build a wall to keep the crisis out. The climate crisis affects us all and represents the single, gravest, threat to social justice today,” said Gilbert F. Houngbo, ILO Director-General.   “Many of the countries experiencing the most brutal consequences of this crisis are particularly ill-equipped to handle its environmental and livelihood consequences. We must recognize that what happens to impacted communities will affect us all".   Social protection can help people adapt to and cope with climate-related shocks by providing social protection benefits, such as income security and access to healthcare.   Moreover, social protection can cushion families, workers, and enterprises during the green transition and enable more sustainable economic practices. This includes supporting workers with training and upskilling so that they are equipped with knowledge and skills for employment in green and low carbon sectors. Social protection also ensures that all jobs are decent, with adequate protection and benefits.   “Social protection is essential to ensure that the ongoing green and low-carbon energy transition leaves no one behind. And the imperative to make social protection universal is not only ethical, it is also practical: by supporting and protecting workers everywhere, we can help to alleviate fears about the transition, which is essential to mobilize popular support for a sustainable and just transition,” added the Director-General.   Yet, despite its role as a catalyst and an enabler of positive climate action, governments are failing to make the most of social protection’s potential, largely because of persistent coverage gaps and significant underinvestment.   On average, countries spend 12.9 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on social protection (excluding health). However, while high-income countries spend an average of 16.2 per cent, low-income countries allocate only 0.8 per cent of their GDP to social protection.   Low-income countries – which include states most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – need an additional US$308.5 billion per year (52.3 per cent of their GDP) to guarantee at least basic social protection, and international support will be needed to reach this goal.   The report calls for decisive and integrated policy action to close protection gaps, arguing that, “it is time to up the ante” and invest significantly in social protection. The report offers important recommendations to help guide policy and ensure effective and sustainable outcomes, including:   Preparing for both ‘routine’ life cycle risks, as well as climate-related shocks by having social protection systems in place ex-ante by ensuring everyone enjoys adequate social protection.   Using social protection to support climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and secure public acceptance of those measures. Prioritizing investment in social protection, including external support for countries with limited fiscal space.   http://www.ilo.org/publications/flagship-reports/world-social-protection-report-2024-26-universal-social-protection-climate http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/social-protection-is-a-prerequisite-for-climate-justice/ http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org/2024/05/policy-brief-social-protection-for-climate-justice-why-and-how/ http://www.ilo.org/publications/financing-gap-universal-social-protection-global-regional-and-national http://www.ilo.org/resource/news/social-protection-has-strong-impact-reduction-inequalities http://www.ilo.org/publications/combating-inequalities-what-role-universal-social-protection http://www.social-protection.org/gimi/ShowMainPage.action http://www.wiego.org/research-library-publications/governance-and-social-protection-for-informal-workers/ Visit the related web page
	Climate, conflict, and debt keep hunger stubbornly high globally by FAO, New Humanitarian, agencies   Climate, conflict, and debt keep hunger and malnutrition stubbornly high globally. Yet funding to tackle key drivers is insufficient or unavailable, writes Thin Lei Win for The New Humanitarian, agencies.   The world is woefully off track when it comes to eliminating hunger and malnutrition, with one in 11 people going hungry in 2023 – a level that has remained unchanged for three consecutive years – and more than one in four slashing the quantity and quality of the food they consume or skipping meals, data from a UN flagship report shows.   Africa is the worst affected region, with one in five people facing hunger and more than one in two eating less or none at all for days at a time, said The State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), released today.   More than a third of the global population – about 2.8 billion people – could not afford a healthy diet in 2022, and rates of adult obesity and anaemia among women are rising, according to the annual report, which was produced by five UN agencies.   “Hunger level remains high, higher than in 2015, when we launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and actually as high – in terms of percentage of the global population – as in 2009, 15 years ago,” reports the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Under the SDGs, governments pledged to end hunger by 2030.   Leading causes for rising hunger are conflicts, climate change, and economic upheaval, and they are “increasing in frequency and intensity” and “occurring concurrently more often”, said the report. Despite this, they are often not adequately addressed in official development assistance (ODA) and governments in low-income countries do not have the capacity to do so, it added.   Rich countries should be doing much more, including boosting the resilience of local food systems, fulfilling promises to increase ODA, and releasing poor nations from their heavy debt burdens, said international aid agencies such as Oxfam and Action Against Hunger.   Developed countries have failed to meet the commitment to use 0.7% of gross national income for ODA as well as a long-standing pledge to provide $100 billion in climate finance, said Hanna Saarinen, food policy lead for Oxfam International.   “Quite simply, there is a lack of political will to allocate sufficient political attention and financial resources to tackle hunger,” she told The New Humanitarian.   Charles Owubah, chief executive officer of Action Against Hunger USA, agreed.   “The issue of hunger today is not what to do” but “weak political will”, he said. “Food and proper nutrition are the foundation upon which global productivity rests. So we should reclassify our priorities and make it number one, because if they are addressed, health issues are addressed as well. The hunger crisis is also a health crisis.”   Over the past two years, The New Humanitarian has been documenting how wars, climate extremes, international trade, agricultural policies, and national debt affect hunger through our “Emerging hunger hotspots” series of articles.   The eight middle- and lower-middle-income countries covered – Sri Lanka, Peru, Egypt, Georgia, Argentina, Ghana, the Philippines, and Pakistan – not only span the globe but also have starkly different geographies, climate, culture, and political systems. Yet what is most striking is their commonalities.   In all countries, soaring inflation and stagnant incomes have put healthy food out of reach for many people, while a reliance on global markets to feed the population has made them hostages to either spiking import bills or market volatility.   Diets heavy in starch and input-intensive agriculture caused many nations to depend on a handful of countries for staples and farm inputs, but this trade was disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A large number of food- and fertiliser-importing countries had relied on these two key agricultural exporters for supplies.   Compounding the challenges are high levels of public debt and wild weather patterns that are either already reducing crop yields or threatening to do so. At least four countries – Sri Lanka, Argentina, Ghana, and Pakistan – were facing significant debt distress.   Data from the latest SOFI report showed the situation has not improved. In all countries except the Philippines, which does not have available data, the percentage of people who are eating less or lower quality food, or not eating at all, grew between the years 2021 and 2023 compared to 2014-2016. Adult obesity figures have risen in every single country, and a majority are also seeing an increase in the absolute number of women with anaemia and people who cannot afford healthy diets.   Aid workers say the heavy debt burden, in particular, is preventing countries from helping their citizens more. The recent deadly protests in Kenya against a tax bill proposed by the cash-strapped government illustrate the challenges governments are facing.   Saarinen said Oxfam’s own calculation showed low- and middle-income countries paid $106 billion in debt repayments and interest to G7 countries in 2023. Taking into account a 2020 report by development and food policy experts which estimated that approximately $330 billion in additional funding over 10 years could help the world reach global goals to tackle climate change and end hunger, the significance of the debt burden is clear, she added.   “There are countries who spent more on debt and debt reimbursements than they spent on health and education combined,” Saarinen said. “So we do call for rearrangement and debt cancellation for such unsustainable situations.”   The cost of delayed action is clear: A newer estimate found lifting 700 million people out of hunger and malnutrition by 2030 would require $512 billion over a six-year period between 2025 and 2030.   The FAO agrees that tackling the debt issue is a priority. This requires both global solidarity and more innovative financial solutions: The latter is the theme of this year’s SOFI, which provided a number of options for different countries and also came up with a new definition for measuring how much funding is dedicated to food security and nutrition.   The report also criticised the current financing structure on these issues as ineffective due to fragmentation; lack of consensus on priorities; and the prevalence of numerous actors delivering mostly small, short-term projects. In addition, only 34% of the ODA currently going to food security and nutrition helps address the major drivers and underlying factors such as persistent inequality and unhealthy food environments.   One of the biggest obstacles is the lack of financing options for nearly two thirds of the 119 low- and middle-income countries, which also tended to be affected by one or more major drivers and where hunger and child stunting tend to be much higher, according to the UN.   For these countries, the report recommends a raft of financial innovations: grants and low- or no-interest loans with technical assistance from international development flows; debt-for-development swaps and special drawing rights (an international reserve currency created by the International Monetary Fund); and insurance and guarantees on investments related to improving food security and nutrition. It is crucial to make these instruments available to populations facing more difficulty accessing financial services, such as women, Indigenous peoples, smallholder farmers, and small and medium agrifood enterprises, it said.   Transformative policies may cost billions of dollars, but “the cost of not financing them would easily be in the trillions”, warned the UN, which said in a previous report that the hidden costs of the current agrifood systems on public health, environment, and society amount to at least $10 trillion a year.   “The more we wait, the more we will need to spend because the problems get worse, and we have potentially less time to deliver (and therefore we have to rely on less cost effective solutions),” said the FAO.   The financing is all the more important because climate change would further worsen global hunger and malnutrition, aid agencies warned.   Action Against Hunger’s Owubah, who was born in Ghana, remembered a nearby stream he used to fetch water from that flowed at a steady pace throughout the year.   “Not long ago, I visited and that has shrunk significantly. Another time, that same stream [had] burst its banks and was flooding all over,” he said. “The extremes right in the village where I grew up… are making agriculture very unpredictable because in many of those villages, it's all rain-fed agriculture. It’s about the timing, knowing when to prepare the land and getting your seeds ready for the first rains.”   Now, the rains are becoming erratic. If they come early, farmers have not finished preparing the land, and, if they come late, the plants will die before the rains. Droughts are also becoming more common.   “Take Ghana, Pakistan, or Egypt. We're talking of sunlight being available 12 months of the year. Soils are relatively good. What’s the challenge? They don’t have irrigation,” said Owubah. “They're still dependent on rain-fed agriculture at a time when we have climate extremes.”   http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2024/07/24/climate-conflict-debt-keep-hunger-and-malnutrition-stubbornly-high-globally http://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/hunger-numbers-stubbornly-high-for-three-consecutive-years-as-global-crises-deepen--un-report/en http://www.fao.org/interactive/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/ http://news.un.org/en/story/2024/07/1152451 http://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/a-new-era-for-social-protection/   http://ipes-food.org/industrial-food-system-failing-as-un-finds-733-million-still-hungry/ http://ipes-food.org/local-markets-amp-food-chains-key-to-tackling-global-hunger-crisis/ http://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/oxfam-reaction-to-the-un-state-of-food-security-and-nutrition-report-2024/ http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/top-1-percent-bags-over-40-trillion-new-wealth-during-past-decade-taxes-rich-reach http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/press-releases/733-million-people-are-food-insecure-new-un-report-shows/ http://www.fian.org/en/press-release/article/sofi-2024-privately-funded-false-solutions-instead-of-structural-change-3512 http://odi.org/en/insights/from-g20-to-cop30-can-article-21c-of-the-paris-agreement-work-for-climate-resilient-development-in-food-systems/ http://actalliance.org/act-news/not-linked-to-reality-bonn-climate-talks-missing-urgent-action/   http://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/21/developing-countries-face-worst-debt-crisis-in-history-study-shows http://slettgjelda.no/en/theme/mr http://www.development-finance.org/en/news/831-11-october-the-worst-debt-crisis-ever-shocking-new-debt-service-numbers http://www.kirkensnodhjelp.no/contentassets/c1403acd5da84d39a120090004899173/ferdig-time-for-a-nordic-initative-lowres.pdf http://www.eurodad.org/debt_demands_and_debunking_distractions_for_climate_action http://www.eurodad.org/reports http://cepr.net/press-release/debt-relief-is-needed-to-ensure-climate-resilience-report-warns/ http://cepr.net/report/a-broader-impact-than-ever-before-an-updated-estimate-of-the-imfs-surcharges/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2024/10/imf-just-made-case-irrelevance/ http://cepr.net/press-release/14-congress-members-urge-imf-to-end-harmful-conditions-embrace-pro-worker-agenda/ http://unctad.org/publication/world-of-debt http://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/world-social-report-2024/ Visit the related web page
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