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	How tackling climate change can help tackle inequality by IIED, UN-Habitat, agencies   July 2018   How tackling climate change can help tackle inequality - Report from International Institute for Environment and Development   Inequality is one of the great challenges of this age, and one that will only be exacerbated by climate change. Most pronounced is the problem in cities, where skyscrapers may tower over slums and street vendors hustle outside air-conditioned supermarkets.   But new research has revealed that taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within cities could be one of the great levellers, with the largest social and economic benefits enjoyed by the poor.   Energy use alone is responsible for nearly three quarters of global greenhouse emissions, and most energy is consumed by the rich: to drive their cars, heat their buildings and manufacture goods such as refrigerators, air conditioners and televisions - all of which then demand more energy throughout their lifetime. Globally, the wealthiest ten per cent of people may be responsible for more than 50 per cent of emissions.   Though high-income households bear more responsibility for climate change, its most severe impacts will be felt by the poor, who are more likely to live in areas exposed to environmental hazards, such as floodplains or steep slopes, and whose homes may also lack basic infrastructure that might reduce the impacts of extreme weather, such as drains to safely carry away storm-water. Then, in the aftermath of natural disasters, it is the poorest in society who struggle to access the financial resources they need to rebuild their homes and lives, turning a storm into a catastrophe.   But vulnerability to climate change is not just a function of low incomes. Women, for instance, are less likely than men to know how to swim or to be reachable through conventional emergency warning systems, which puts them at greater risk in the event of a flood or storm.   Climate change can therefore compound existing inequalities, further widening the chasm between rich and poor, powerful and powerless.   Having reviewed over 700 studies on transport, buildings and waste management, the research team fom the Coalition for Urban Transitions found that choosing low-carbon options would not only improve public health, create jobs, enhance productivity and cut energy bills, but that many of the gains would be mostly enjoyed by low-income urban residents. Those most vulnerable to climate change are therefore also those who would benefit most from climate action.   Consider outdoor air pollution, which causes around 4.2 million deaths every year, and asthma, bronchitis and other chronic diseases for millions more. This burden of ill-health is overwhelmingly borne by low-income urban dwellers, who more frequently live in polluted areas along highways or near power plants, and are more likely to work outdoors as street vendors, labourers or waste collectors.   Producing electricity from renewables instead of coal, making vehicles more energy efficient, and shifting to lower-carbon fuels for heating and cooking can cut both pollutants and carbon emissions. Since the poor suffer the most from toxic air, they also enjoy the greatest health improvements.   Or consider road safety. More than 1.25 million people die every year from traffic accidents. 90 per cent of whom live in developing countries and nearly half are pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists. Many of these people cannot afford a car or even public buses, but face a terrible risk on every trip. Women may face additional constraints, as cultural norms and additional physical risks often deter them from cycling or walking freely around the city.   Segregated walkways and bike lanes are essential to keeping pedestrians and cyclists safe, and the provision of street lighting and street furniture such as benches can further enhance people's safety by turning the pavements into a place where people want to be. It's those who are unable to afford any other means of travel that benefit the most, and at the same time, these measures can reduce greenhouse gases by establishing non-motorised transport as a safe, enjoyable way to commute.   The costs of air pollution and road accidents are immense, and overwhelmingly borne by the poor. People are dying because they cannot breathe easily or move safely within cities. This new paper shows that there are opportunities to tackle these everyday inequalities, and simultaneously reduce the risk of dangerous global warming.   Ambitious climate action can therefore lay the foundations for healthier, safer and more equal cities for decades to come.   http://www.iied.org/how-tackling-climate-change-could-tackle-inequality   Cities need to move faster to meet their 2030 SDG targets, says UN-Habitat   Local and national authorities are making uneven progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 of making cities safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable by 2030.   That is the conclusion of a new report by UN-Habitat and partners tracking the progress made since the SDGs were adopted in 2015 and the challenges encountered. It coincides with the first review of SDG 11 at the High Level Political Forum, the main United Nations platform on sustainable development which reviews the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development including the SDGs.   UN Member States adopted Sustainable Development Goal 11 in 2015, the first time that cities and urban development were given a standalone goal. Several other SDG goals are directly connected to urbanization including water and sanitation, affordable and sustainable energy, environment and sustainable consumption.   'Urbanization is one of the most important issues when it comes to sustainable development. We must make sure we do it right if we are to achieve the SDGs and move towards a world where we see an end to poverty, the protection of our planet and everyone enjoying peace and prosperity', said Ms Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director of UN-Habitat. 'Cities are the spaces where all SDGs can be integrated to provide holistic solutions to the challenges of poverty, exclusion, climate change and risks'.   With the current rate of expansion, more than 700 cities will have populations of over 1 million by 2030. Without proper planning and regulation, this could lead to soaring levels of poverty, crime, pollution and sickness due to expanding slums, lack of clean water and sanitation, congested roads and few or no safe open spaces.   Humanitarian crises, climate change-related disasters, conflict and migration are also closely related to cities.   However cities and towns, where half the world's population now live, can be power houses of economic growth and development. And that can mean an improved quality of life for everyone. No country ever reached middle income status without being urbanized and cities generate around 70 per cent of global GDP.   The report shows that with the global population growth, the total number of people living in slums and informal settlements has increased from 807 to 883 million from 2000 to 2014. Housing is increasingly unaffordable for large swathes of the population with those in Africa particularly badly affected.   Air pollution is on the rise and although the provision of public transport is rising, it is still inadequate. Cities are growing at a faster rate than their population - leading to higher costs for infrastructure, more traffic and more pollution.   SDG 11 is also linked to the empowerment of women and girls through access and safety in public spaces, use of basic infrastructure and participation in local governance and decision making.   'By ensuring cities are also planned for women, urbanization can be a true transformative force, that challenges inequality and creates an enabling environment, where everyone can realise their own potential', said Ms Sharif, UN-Habitat Executive Director.   http://unhabitat.org/press-release-cities-need-to-move-faster-to-meet-their-2030-sdg-targets/   Leilani Farha, UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, says that although there are no global homeless statistics, housing conditions are fraught.   'Half of humanity - 3.5 billion people - lives in cities today. By 2030, almost 60 per cent of the world's population will live in urban areas. As it stands, globally, housing conditions are fraught. It is estimated that 1.6 billion people are inadequately housed worldwide and that close to 900 million people are living in informal settlements and encampments in both the global North and South.   Beyond statistics, let me relay experiences. I have seen people living in countries North and South in complete darkness, without electricity and without water. I have seen children playing on garbage heaps in informal settlements like they are trampolines and I have seen persons with disabilities languishing, prisoners in their own homes.   There are few cities I visit where I don't see people having to live on the streets, forced to eat, sleep, cook and defecate on sidewalks. They cling to dignity and life, but it is a thin thread. I have seen communities evicted from their homes often by brutal force to make way for a new shopping mall or so that luxury flats can be built. And I know of private equity firms using unprecedented wealth and power gobbling up entire neighbourhoods, only to use housing as a vehicle to grow profits for a few who have no intention of living there, while displacing the many who do.   What is perhaps most worrying of all is that these assaults on dignity and life are accepted as fixed features of a new global economic order. If we do not find housing solutions, no State will be able to meet their other Agenda 2030 commitments.   Without access to adequate, secure and affordable housing there is no equality, no health and well-being, no access to education or employment and there is no end to poverty.   Housing is at the centre of the SDGs: it's what sustains us and it's what makes us resilient.   My recommendation is that if States are going to meet their commitments under Goal 11, Target 11.1, tinkering with existing programs won't work. A fundamental shift is required, a shift whereby housing is recognized and implemented by States as a human right, not a mere matter of policy, nor a commodity, and certainly not something to be left to the whims of unregulated markets and private developers.   Homelessness, and inadequate housing are an assault on dignity and life and as such go to the heart of what triggers human rights concern.   Human rights violations of this nature demand human rights responses. A rights-based approach to housing clarifies who is accountable to whom: all levels of government are accountable to people, particularly marginalized and vulnerable groups, who are recognized as rights holders, not the beneficiaries of charity.   And human rights incorporate universal norms providing a common purpose and shared set of values to laws and policies. I recently presented a report to the Human Rights Council which articulates for States the 10 core principles that should inform a human rights based strategy.   Let me elaborate on a few. Strategies must prioritize those most in need and must make an absolute priority of eliminating homelessness.   The 2030 Agenda itself requires States to end homelessness - what else could ensuring access to adequate, affordable, secure housing for all mean?   Strategies must put in place institutional mechanisms to monitor progress and hold governments accountable to goals and timelines. They must also ensure access to justice, including access to hearings and remedies in courts or elsewhere. Strategies must be based in law and affirm the right to housing as a legal right, and they must clarify the obligations of private actors.   If States intend to rely on the private sector for housing (and most will), then States must understand that the obligation to realize the right to housing still remains with them and cannot be delegated. Housing strategies will have to include robust measures to regulate and reorient financial, housing and real estate markets to ensure inclusive cities and affordable housing.   I think meeting these requirements of Goal 11, Target 11.1 will not be easy. But there is no choice. Because anything else creates cities that surely none of us want to live in.   http://bit.ly/2NaUhEs http://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/housing/pages/housingindex.aspx
	Land degradation caused by human activities is occurring at an alarming rate by IPS, IPBES, agencies Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service   July 2018   IPS correspondent Tharanga Yakupitiyage speaks to Robert Scholes, ecologist and co-chair of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES) assessment, about land degradation and efforts needed to halt and reverse the catastrophe.   Land degradation caused by human activities is occurring at an alarming rate across the world, and the cost will be steep if no action is taken.   In recent years, environmental groups have been sounding the alarm on land degradation while stories of the human impact on the environment have inundated development news with good reason.   This year, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES) produced the world’s first comprehensive, evidence-based assessment highlighting the dangers and far-reaching impacts of land degradation.   The United Nations-backed study found that land degradation has reached “critical” levels across the world as 75 percent of land is already degraded and projections show that such degradation will increase to over 90 percent by 2050.   Since then, more reports have highlighed concerns over the issue. Most recently, the Joint Research Centre at the European Commission created a “World Atlas of Desertification” and found that an area half the size of the European Union is degraded every year by farming, city expansion, and deforestation.   Before that, the U.N Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) reported that the global economy will lose a staggering USD23 trillion by 2050 because of land degradation.   Not only will it affect economies, but the phenomenon will impact two-thirds of humanity who will be food-insecure while societies are left with a heightened risk of instability.   IPS spoke to Robert Scholes, co-chair of IPBES assessment, about land degradation and efforts needed to halt and reverse the catastrophe.   Q: How is land degradation caused, and what are the dangers?   Land degradation is kind of at the overlap of many contemporary concerns. For instance, a very long proportion of the current drivers of climate change come out of things that are related to land degradation.   About one-third of current climate change relates to processes of land degradation—either deforestation or decrease in soil carbon for agriculture and other similar processes.   Climate change has a reverse effect on land degradation—as the climate changes, the ecosystems that were in a particular place can no longer exist there. In the transition period while ecosystems try to sort everything out, those ecosystems lose their ability to supply the things on which we come to rely.   The current major driver of biodiversity loss is the loss of habitat, and loss of habitat is directly related to land degradation.   From the human side, these direct impacts come through the supply of food.   The result of a lot of this is that for people who depend on ecosystems for their livelihoods, their livelihoods are undermined. So those people are either worse off or are forced to move off the land and into other people’s territories and that leads to problems of conflict.   Q: What were some of the more concerning or surprising findings in the IPBES assessment?   This is quite likely the single environmental issue within the world today that affects the largest number of people.   There are many environmental issues that are going to have a big effect as the century unfolds; things like climate change and biodiversity loss and there are many environmental issues that affect limited populations, like air pollution.   But when you look over the entire world, about two people out of every five are directly materially impacted by land degradation.   Q: What are some of the challenges around acting on land degradation? And what action/s should governments take to overcome such challenges?   The biggest single constraining factor is the fragmentation of land issues across many authorities … This is costing us, in terms of lost production and risks, billions and billions of dollars. But it’s not obvious to anyone because no one sees the full picture.   I think you need to attack the problem of integration between authorities at multiple levels.   First, the kind of management we do on the land physically has to move to what we call landscape-scale management. In other words, you don’t look at all the little bits individually, you actually look across the landscape and then you fit the bits into it.   When you get a level up, which is national management, it’s probably better that we do this by arranging for more than communication but coordination between the various agencies which have partial responsibility.   We also need coordination at the international level because although land degradation has its primary impact on the local level, many of the drivers of the causes of it have international manifestations.   So you can’t solve it purely at the local level—you have to have a national level which sets in place the right policies, and you need an international level to ensure, for instance, that global trade does not take place in such a way that it drives land degradation.   Q: Is it a matter of achieving land degradation neutrality or do people need to make a shift in lifestyle?   Those two things are not mutually exclusive. We do need to achieve land degradation neutrality, which is basically equivalent to saying that you are halting the decline. The only way to achieve that in the long term is to alter many of our lifestyle impacts because it is those that are ultimately driving the increasing degradation of the land.   Land degradation neutrality is the strategy we would take but it has to be underpinned by these bigger scale changes in the demands that we put on ecosystems.   Q: What is your message to the international community to act on this issue?   I am concerned that not enough is being done. There’s a distribution of responsibility; you can’t solve this all at the international level nor all at the local level. It requires really strong action at all of those levels.   If you think of the Rio Conventions; the three conventions including the Climate Change Convention, the Biodiversity Convention, and the one related to land degradation, which was specifically around dry land degradation the climate convention has moved forward with some international collaborative agreements. Biodiversity is sort of moving forward but perhaps not as fast, and the convention on desertification hasn’t gone anywhere at all.   The question is why? Partly, because up until now, this has not been seen as a critically important issue.   What we point out is that both the causes and the consequences ultimately end up being international so it does affect everyone.   It’s a key driver of both the biodiversity loss and climate change, and that’s one of the reasons we have to raise its profile and address it sooner rather than later. Other ambitions like many of the Sustainable Development Goals will not be possible unless we sort this one out too.   * Access the IPBES report: http://bit.ly/2I6BdVF http://www.unccd.int/ http://bit.ly/1J4iPuG   June 2018   Revealing Food’s Hidden Costs: New Framework for Food and Agriculture. (Global Alliance for the Future of Food, agencies)   A new report released this week offers a platform to evaluate the real costs and benefits—including environmental, health, and social impacts—of our agriculture and food systems. This Scientific and Economic Foundations Report provides the basis for a major paradigm shift in how we view and manage our agriculture and food systems, demonstrating how to evaluate not just the visible but also the hidden costs and benefits. The timing is critical—with 10 billion people to feed by 2050 and 40 percent of available land already growing food—we need to consider new frameworks and models for how we grow, process, distribute, and consume food, and manage food waste.   The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), known for its ground-breaking research on the economic values of nature in 2010, brings together more than 150 experts from 33 countries to deliver a strong and urgent message to the global community on the need for a transformation of our agriculture and food systems that is sustainable, equitable, and healthy.   With this report, policymakers, researchers, and citizens now have more reliable and integrated information on the hidden (and unaccounted) costs and benefits—the “externalities”—of the whole system, not just parts of it.   Agricultural productivity is typically measured by yield per hectare, a simplistic metric that provides an incomplete picture of the true costs and benefits associated with agriculture and food value chains. Current patterns of production, processing, and consumption are generating large and unacceptable impacts on the health of the environment and humans, particularly on vulnerable populations.   For example, take the cost of a tomato at a supermarket. The cost does not take into account how it was raised, such as the environmental damage from fertilizer and pesticide runoff, the regeneration of soil, or a fair wage payment to laborers.   The TEEB for Agriculture & Food (TEEBAgriFood) Scientific and Economic Foundations report, a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) project, funded by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, is looking at all the impacts of the value chain, from farm to fork to disposal, including effects on livelihoods, the environment, and health. This framework can help tackle the challenges currently faced by our global agriculture and food systems in achieving universal food security and reducing large impacts on climate, ecosystems, and environments.   “If we want to bend the curve on biodiversity loss we must understand the true impacts of the food system on our planet,” says Joao Campari, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Food Practice Leader. “WWF works across the full spectrum of the food system, from production to consumption, loss and waste, and we welcome TEEBAgriFood’s research as it assesses a multitude of impacts on both people and planet, instead of trying to distill the complexities into one over-simplified metric. We look forward to seeing the evaluation framework be applied to real-world projects and hopefully contributing to transformational change.”   Some of the consequences of our current systems outlined in the report include:   Agricultural production contributes over one-fourth of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). When considering land-use change and deforestation as well as processing, packaging, transport, sale, and the waste of agricultural products, 43 to 57 percent of GHG emissions are from food production. 70 to 90 percent of global deforestation is from agricultural expansion.   An estimated 80 percent of food consumed in food-insecure regions is grown there, mainly by women, while agri-business is a marginal player in food security. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, if women had the same access to resources (land, credits, education, etc.) as male farmers, they could raise yields by 20 to 30 percent and lift as many as 150 million people out of hunger.   Approximately one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted, enough to feed the world’s hungry six times over. Around 40 percent of available land is used for growing food, a figure that would need to rise to an improbable 70 percent by 2050 under a “business-as-usual” scenario.   33 percent of the Earth’s land surface is moderately to highly affected by some type of soil degradation mainly due to the erosion, salinization, compaction, acidification, or chemical pollution of soils. Six of the top eleven risk factors driving the global burden of disease are diet-related. The World Health Organization estimates the direct costs of diabetes alone at more than US$827 billion per year, globally.   Unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites, or chemical substances causes more than 200 diseases, and an estimated 600 million people; almost 1 in 10 people in the world—fall ill after eating contaminated food, while 420,000 die every year.   61 percent of commercial fish populations are fully fished and 29 percent are overfished. In a “business-as-usual” scenario, the ocean will contain more plastic than fish (by weight) by 2050.   In order to demonstrate how real-world applications of such a comprehensive approach might take shape, a framework for evaluation has been developed to provide a solid basis from an economic and accounting perspective. The report also identifies theories and pathways for transformational change in government, business, farming, and consumer contexts.   “The overarching importance of this work is that we must link the health of people with the health of the planet, and we can only ensure long-term food security if our food systems don’t destroy the basis of food production,” says Alexander Müller, Study Leader of TEEBAgriFood.   “If you look at food production only from a price perspective, and the old paradigm of the cheaper the better, you run into a trap because the long-term sustainability of our food production system is not a given and requires hard work.”   “We are trying to pull together the latest scientific results on food systems,” says Müller. “We tried to link together the latest findings of economists, environmentalists, agriculturalists, people looking at labor and trade, and science to fight poverty. If you bring these results together in a new way, you can see that the system is more than all the different parts of the disciplinary sciences working on it.”   To ensure the sustainability of agriculture and food systems, an important step is to account for externalities through market mechanisms. By creating a more comprehensive evaluation framework, decisionmakers can better compare different policies, programs, and strategies, while the market can more accurately value food. TEEBAgriFood hopes their new framework will help achieve their vision of a world where informed decision making upholds public good and ensures nutrition and health for all humans so they can live in harmony with nature. http://futureoffood.org/   * TEEBAgriFood report: http://teebweb.org/agrifood/scientific-and-economic-foundations-report/ (400pages) Visit the related web page
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