What's next for environmental peacebuilding? Lessons learned and opportunities from conflict-affected states 17 February 2021 — 3:00PM TO 4:00PM Anonymous (not verified) 8 February 2021 Online

 This event explores lessons and opportunities from conflict-affected states.

In the field of peacebuilding, scholars and policymakers increasingly recognize the importance of environmental restoration, afforestation and infrastructural renewal for creating the sustainable livelihoods necessary for successful peacebuilding efforts.

Featuring academics writing for International Affairs on environmental peacebuilding in Colombia, Yemen and the Sahel, this webinar discusses the policy implications of the turn to environmental peacebuilding.

This event is part of the Chatham House’s Environment and Society Discussion Series in which the Energy Environment and Resources Programme brings together leading academics and policymakers to discuss key issues in environmental policy.

In particular, this event focuses on the role of environmental peacebuilding in creating sustainable livelihoods. From the impact the destruction of infrastructure can have on poverty as a driver of conflict, to the role environmental peacebuilding can play in bringing communities together by creating sustainable shared spaces of employment, the importance of the environmental livelihood creation is difficult to overstate.

Panellists focus on how policymakers can best encourage inclusive and sustainable livelihood creation and on addressing the key challenges such approaches face in the context of environmental peacebuilding efforts.

Enhancing the role of women in peacebuilding and politics in Ethiopia 29 June 2022 — 1:00PM TO 2:30PM Anonymous (not verified) 16 June 2022 Online

Panellists discuss the priorities for promoting the agency of women in politics and peacebuilding in Ethiopia and approaches for combatting gender-based discrimination and violence.

The war in northern Ethiopia and conflicts elsewhere have disproportionately affected women and girls – including through the infliction of physical and sexual violence, the heightened impacts of displacement and disruptions to education, and the co-option of women’s experiences in narratives by aggressors of conflict.

Hard-won political gains in women’s rights have been undermined and deep-rooted gender inequalities exacerbated. Despite this, women remain central actors in politics, as well as in conflict resolution and mediation efforts. However, more needs to be done to promote the security and inclusion of women in finding sustainable solutions for Ethiopia’s long-term recovery and to institutionalize reforms for gender equity and development.

At this public event, panellists will discuss the priorities for improving women’s participation and equality in public decision-making in Ethiopia and how to strengthen the implementation of legislation on women’s rights. They will also discuss what societal shifts and approaches are needed to combat gender-based discrimination and violence and to promote the agency of women in peacebuilding.

This webinar is part of a series of events and outputs on Ethiopia’s political transition.

This event will also be broadcast live on the Chatham House Africa Programme’s Facebook page.

Eight ways to build better African cities The World Today mhiggins.drupal 2 August 2022

Young professionals from across the continent tell Emmanuel Adegboye how city life could be improved: from high-speed rail to people-centred urban planning.

Ahmed Elsawy, 33, Director of Talent
Cairo, Egypt
We must amend employment law in Egypt to support individual contractors to match with the global demand for short-term and project-based assignments within the tech and service industries. While we have a new, decent education system, I think we should care more about foreign languages to have a higher rank when it comes to the global competition of skilled workers.

Iman Abubaker, 31, Urban Mobility Project Manager, WRI Africa
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Rapid urbanization and increased motorization have exacerbated the city’s urban challenges. Addis Ababa would benefit from safer street design and people-centred city planning. Urban amenities should be located within walking and cycling distances. For longer trips, the city needs to invest in improving the accessibility, safety, integration and multimodality of its public transport system. I would love to see more pockets of green spaces and parks all around the city. 

Bree, 31, Project Manager
Nairobi, Kenya
I have a love-hate relationship with Nairobi. I spent four years smack in the middle of the city while attending the University of Nairobi. Being in the middle of all the hustle and bustle made the transition to a sleepy-ish coastal town easy. I would happily trade matatus [shared taxis] for tuktuks any day. I do miss the conveniences that come with a big city like a 24-hour grocery store and delivery services on those lazy days.

Mfon Bassey, 30, Co-Founder, TalentX Africa
Lagos, Nigeria
The government should improve the road networks and public transport systems, because the common challenge most Lagosians face is commuting from point A to B without traffic. There are so many private cars on the road because the public transport system isn’t optimally efficient yet. Once you take away the commute time most workers spend just to get work done, we’ll surely have happier Lagosians.

Olga Kiconco, 32, Innovation Strategist
Kampala, Uganda
As one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities with a projected 112 per cent population growth by 2035, there are a number of critical changes that need to be made in preparation for this. Our leaders should embrace coherent policies that will catalyze socio-economic transformation. We need to hold them accountable for better infrastructure and delivery of public services, while taking personal responsibility to protect our environment against the prevalent threat of climate change.

Etienne Amougou, 30, Curator/Arts Project Manager
Yaounde, Cameroon
What would make Yaounde better would be a good ecosystem that provides more opportunities for young people. If it was possible, I would like to see the creation of more cultural spaces, like parks, zoos, cinemas and sport areas. Also, we could use a more effective approach to waste management – sometimes we have trash everywhere in the ’hood.

Valentino Fernandez, 23, Writer
Johannesburg, South Africa
 We need better transportation to bridge the inequality gap and allow the youth to access spaces to be inspired and create change. Apartheid spatial planning is still affecting us. People of colour were relegated to the outskirts of the city, and very little has changed. It’s virtually impossible to move out of your childhood home, which means you’re looking at a two-hour commute every morning and two more hours to get home. I would like a reliable, affordable, high-speed rail system.

Jean-Louis Mbaka, 34, Co-Founder and Director, Education at Kinshasa Digital
Kinshasa, DRC
Our youth must receive a sufficient education that is in line with the strategic requirements of their future workplaces. By 2030, more than 130 million jobs in Africa will require digital skills, according to the International Finance Corporation. To close the gap between the conventional educational system and the labour market, our organisation is providing training for digital jobs. Initiatives like ours must be supported if the current and next generations are to have the means for their economic and social advancement. Scaling up investments in vital facilities like the internet is also necessary.

Building carbon markets that work for Africa 31 January 2023 — 2:00PM TO 3:30PM Anonymous (not verified) 19 January 2023 Online

At this webinar, held in partnership with UNDP, speakers share experiences on carbon market advancement in Africa, highlighting challenges and obstacles.

Carbon finance offers a major opening towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement but progress across regions has been uneven, with the African continent accounting for just 15 per cent of voluntary carbon credits issued globally in 2021.

Harnessing the potential of carbon markets may offer one route towards closing the significant shortfall in climate financing for Africa, as well as accelerating transition in cooking and energy solutions and limiting deforestation.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement requires significant adjustment of regulatory and policy frameworks at national level in order to align with emerging global imperatives within carbon markets. Various stakeholders, including the private sector, need to take these realities into considerations as they seek to meet commitments towards a more sustainable future.

Governments and the private sector alike need to address the obstacles that have held back Africa’s participation in carbon markets, and should explore all options including both the compliance and voluntary markets, and market-based alternatives such as emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes.

At this webinar, held in partnership with UNDP, speakers share experiences on carbon market advancement in Africa, highlighting challenges and obstacles. Speakers also explore in-country experiences and make proposals on how Africa might benefit from a functional global carbon market.

If you have configured more than one SAS Application Server, then SAS Visual Data Builder might unexpectedly use the wrong application server when you preview or schedule queries. This problem occurs even though you h

Rebuilding Zimbabwe's Economy: Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Immediate Priorities Expert comment sysadmin 13 December 2017

Zimbabwe cannot expect to rebuild in the same economic model that brought previous prosperity.

Returning to Harare as Zimbabwe’s president-designate Emmerson Mnangagwa declared, ‘We want to grow our economy, we want peace, we want jobs, jobs, jobs.’

Robert Mugabe leaves a legacy of an independent Zimbabwe in a deep economic crisis. Much remains uncertain as to what a new government in Zimbabwe will look like, and there is sure to be continuity as well as considerable change.

What is clear is that a new administration under Mnangagwa will need to turn the economy around to garner support and legitimacy from the Zimbabwean people. Zimbabwe’s economic output halved over the period 1997–2008, and it has not recovered. With more than 80 per cent of Zimbabweans in the informal economy, and with social and economic resilience undermined by previous crises and decades of mismanagement, the stakes for the new leader are very high.

Reform will be difficult particularly because politically connected elites have acquired businesses through uncompetitive means. They will be reluctant to see significantly more competition. But they will also want an improved economic environment. And there is scope for the people of Zimbabwe to benefit from this.

An important change will be in the prioritization of economic stability. Mugabe demonstrated that he was willing to make political decisions irrespective of the economic consequences. Mnangagwa is thought to be less ideological and more of a pragmatist. For him, delivering economic recovery will be crucial to building political support.

The most pressing fiscal priority is the public wage bill. Employment costs account for over 80 per cent of government expenditure, crowding out spending on social programmes, health and education. But the fragility of the economy means that reform cannot be fast-tracked. The public wage bill accounts for over 20 per cent of GDP and is an essential driver of demand. Public sector workers are also politically influential. Another further priority is the reform of state-owned enterprises that are pressuring the fiscus.

A new administration will need to rebuild confidence. Policymakers have been operating in a low-confidence environment for a long time, but for any meaningful change to take root there has to be trust between the government, businesses and the people of Zimbabwe. Businesses and citizens will want to see a plan of action for remonetizing the economy. Zimbabwe faces an acute liquidity crisis. A shortage of US dollars and a lack of confidence in government-issued bond notes are testing resilience.

The financial system has recovered from a crisis of nonperforming loans – triggered by high debt amassed during the post-dollarization boom, and weak corporate governance. But the system remains highly fragile and swamped with government debt. Hard cash US dollar deposits fell from 49 per cent ($582 million) in 2009 to just six per cent ($269 million) in 2016. In 2015, industrial utilization stood at just 34.3 per cent of installed capacity, and it was estimated that just five per cent of the country’s businesses were viable.

The crux of the Zimbabwean economy is the linkage between agriculture and manufacturing. Commercial agriculture contributes approximately 12 per cent of the country’s GDP, and more than 60 per cent of inputs into the manufacturing sector. Tobacco in particular is a vital earner of much needed foreign exchange. Policies to support mid-scale farmers will have multiplier effects. They drive agricultural growth and generate jobs throughout the supply chain.

Zimbabwe also has world-class natural resource endowments including ferrochrome, gold, copper, iron ore, lithium, diamonds and platinum group metals. But longer investment-gestation periods and industry risk adversity will mean that payoffs from fresh investments in this sector will take longer to materialize.

Domestic finance will need to be mobilized to generate recovery, and this will need to be supported by international investment. But international investors entering the country must be cognizant of Zimbabwean’s expectations and also historical perceptions – especially around the scepticism of neoliberal economics as a result of failed structural adjustment programmes in the 1990s.

Zimbabweans have high social expectations for international investors. Educated, tech-savvy, internationally connected youth are at the core of the consumer class that investors will be targeting, to both sell products to but also to staff offices in country. But this cohort also has a greater expectation of international companies to adhere to the norms and standards that they abide by at home and not take advantage of weak governance or poor regulation to exploit citizens.

Investors in Zimbabwe must also recognize that behind the controversial Mugabe policies of land reform and indigenization – the empowerment of local citizens through shared ownership – was a popular desire for postcolonial economic transformation. This sentiment remains. Working in partnership with local entities and communicating the economic contribution made to society will be necessary to build a long-term presence in Zimbabwe, and reap the dividend of what many hope to be a new start for the country.

Fresh thinking is required from domestic policymakers and international partners. A skilled population and estimated 3-5 million-strong diaspora will bring international experience and make a considerable contribution to this process. Some of this thinking has been done. The Lima process of re-engagement with international financial institutions that was agreed at the end of 2015 has laid some of the groundwork, especially around international expectations regarding both economic and governance reform – the substance of which was analysed in a 2016 Chatham House paper. The implementation of recommendations of the well-regarded auditor-general’s report on SOE reform will also be a key prerequisite for long-term reform.

Zimbabweans are not alone in processing what has happened and how to react. Investors have long been poised to capitalize on what is perceived to be one of the continent’s best long-term prospects. A lot will remain unchanged following the transition. But significantly, for the first time in decades, there is a real opportunity to effect positive change and improve the livelihoods of millions of Zimbabweans.

This article was originally published at the Huffington Post.

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What if you could take something as tiny as a grain of sand — and as common as a glass bottle — and use it to tackle the climate crisis? Waste alchemist Franziska Trautmann shares how the spark of an idea turned into a large-scale operation helping restore the eroded shores of Louisiana and beyond. (Created in collaboration with Ignite Talks)

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