2616. Cuba Calls for Universal Health Coverage at WHO World Assembly

By Redacción Internacional, Granma, May 24, 2017 

“Cuba supports the strengthening of systems geared toward achieving universal health coverage, recognizing that health is a fundamental human right and at the center of public policies for sustainable development,” stated Dr. Roberto Morales Ojeda, Cuban Minister of Public Health, during the World Health Organization’s 70th World Assembly plenary session, taking place at the body’s headquarters in Geneva through May 31. 

Morales Ojeda reported that by the end of 2016, life expectancy at birth in Cuba was 78.45 years, while the country also has an immunization program which protects against 13 diseases, and is comprised of 11 vaccines; eight of which are produced on the island, providing for over 98% coverage. 

He also noted that Cuba continues to maintain key indicators which, in 2015, saw the island become the first country in the world to officially eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. 

“The foundations for the National Health System in Cuba were drawn up in 1959, the driving force behind which was the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz,” he stated. 

The Cuban official also commented on the damage caused by the U.S. blockade to Cuba’s healthcare services, which in 2016 amounted to more than $87 million dollars. 

Morales Ojeda once again condemned policies such as the “brain drain” which encourage Cuban professionals, above all those linked to the healthcare sector, to emigrate. Human capital is our most valuable resource. We have 493,000 healthcare sector workers and over 50,000 collaborators offering services in 63 countries, he added. 

Among the challenges currently facing Cuba he noted the country’s rapidly ageing population, non-communicable chronic diseases, low birth rates, and the negative effects of climate change. 

The UN 2030 Sustainable Development agenda provides the opportunity to develop better health systems and improve the population’s wellbeing in an unequal world, stated Dr. Roberto Morales Ojeda, noting that political will and collaboration are vital to such efforts. 

2070. In a 191 to 2 Vote, United Nations Condemns U.S. Embargo of Cuba

By Edith L. Lederer, The Associated Press, October 27, 2015

The United States on Tuesday voted against a U.N. resolution condemning its embargo on Cuba, even though President Barack Obama has called on Congress to lift the trade restrictions.

The vote was the first since the U.S. and Cuban leaders agreed to restore diplomatic ties last December, and the U.S. had considered taking the unprecedented step of abstaining.

The General Assembly voted 191-2 to condemn the commercial, economic and financial embargo against Cuba, the highest number of votes ever for the measure. Only Israel joined the United States in opposing the resolution, and when the vote lit up on the screen many diplomats jumped to their feet in a standing ovation.

General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding and unenforceable but the annual exercise — now in its 24th year — has given Cuba a global stage to demonstrate America's isolation on the embargo and its Cuba policy.

The Associated Press reported last month that the United States considered abstaining in hopes of pressuring Congress to end the embargo.

Instead, the U.S. decided to vote against the resolution as it has since 1992, telling AP last month and saying again Tuesday that the measure didn't reflect "the spirit of engagement" between Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro.

U.S. deputy ambassador Ronald Godard told the assembly before the vote that the Cuban government is "mistaken" if it thinks the measure will improve efforts to normalize relations.

He said it was "unfortunate" that Cuba decided to introduce a resolution whose text "falls short of reflecting the significant steps that have been taken and the spirit of engagement President Obama has championed.”

Nonetheless, he said the United States "will not be bound by a history of mistrust" and remains committed to working toward normalizing relations with Cuba, a process he said will require "years of persistence and dedication on both sides.”

Obama and Castro announced last Dec. 17 that they were restoring diplomatic ties, which were broken in 1961 after Fidel Castro took power and installed a communist government.

On July 20, diplomatic relations were restored and embassies of the two countries were reopened, but serious issues remain, especially the U.S. call for human rights on the Caribbean island and claims for expropriated property.

The resolution welcomes the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and recognizes "the expressed will" of Obama to work for the elimination of the embargo.

Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told a news conference he was "disappointed" with the U.S. vote and said it was not necessary to reply to Godard's explanation of the U.S. vote.

"First and foremost what needs to be modified is the reality of the implementation of the blockade, not the text of the resolution," he said.

Rodriguez said the United States must lift the embargo to fully normalize relations.

"The lifting of the blockade will be the essential element to give some meaning to the progress achieved over the past few months in the relations between both countries and shall set the pace towards normalization," he told the General Assembly.

He said it is "a unilateral act of the United States and should be lifted unilaterally, without asking anything in return.”

But many Republican lawmakers, and some Democrats, oppose lifting the embargo at this stage, and Rodriguez was critical not only of the U.S. Congress but of Obama's failure to take executive action to ease it.

The Cuban foreign minister said the embargo isolates the United States and goes against its national interest and as long as it remains in effect Cuba will continue to present its annual resolution to the General Assembly.

Despite the U.S. vote, Rodriguez said, "Cuba will continue to do its best to improve relations with the United States."

1891. Organic Farming Supports Food Security and Fights Climate Change

By Willy Blackmore, Takepart, September 23, 2013

Organic produce harvested from small, diverse farms may be fine and good for anyone who can afford to pay $3 or more per pound for tomatoes. But to the hungry masses of the developing world? What’s the heirloom-tomato-and-baby-lettuce model going to do for them? Sating that kind of hunger will take acre after acre packed with staple crops like rice and corn, grown with the aid of whatever chemicals and technology can optimize yields—at least that’s what many think.

A new report published last week by the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development suggests a far different approach, however, one that has more in common with the style of agriculture that produces your favorite tomatoes than a 1,000-acre field of corn in the Midwest. And it might not only be able to feed the world—the authors says it can help mitigate climate change too.

The report is exhaustive, with six full pages dedicated to listing the different acronyms referenced throughout the 321-page document. Topics range from the benefits of locally developed plant varities, to carbon sequestration as social justice, and democratizing access to seeds and other products. Full of sometimes dense, academic writing, it isn’t exactly something you’d want to curl up on the couch with. But the title—“Wake Up Before It Is Too Late: Make Agriculture Truly Sustainable Now for Food Security in a Changing Climate”—comes through like a shout.

The document makes a lengthy case for organic, low-input, small-scale agriculture as the best means for not only feeding the world, but for also managing the stresses of drought, rain and other catastrophic weather brought on by climate change. It’s not a new idea, nor does the U.N. explicitly endorse it—you won’t hear Ban Ki-moon talking about it at the General Assembly this week. But even if the report carries no weight beyond its rhetorical value (the U.N. isn’t making any policy recommendations by publishing it), having the organization’s logo, that top-down view of the globe, stamped on the cover still carries significance.

In the chapter “Strengthening Resilience of Farming Systems: A Prerequisite of Sustainable Agricultural Production,” Miguel Altieri and Parviz Koohafkan offer a lay thesis for the report, one that’s less confrontational than the title. Describing the importance of the various forms of traditional agriculture found around the world, the pair write, “They tell a fascinating story of the ability and ingenuity of humans to adjust and adapt to the vagaries of a changing physical and material environment from generation to generation.”

The approach they and their co-authors advocate for is based on that history of adaptation. “Whether recognized or not by the scientific community, this ancestral knowledge constitutes the foundation for actual and future agricultural innovations and technologies,” the pair concludes.

That’s a very different proscription for the future of agriculture—which will soon be taxed with feeding eight billion mouths—than is often put forward. Last year, for example, the Director of National Intelligence’s Global Trend Report for 2030 singled out biotechnology as the most promising means of managing increased demand and resources diminished by climate change. The report says that GMOs, “hold the most promise for achieving food security in the next 15-20 years.”

“What people are realizing is, first of all, industrial agriculture is not feeding the world,” Altieri, Professor of Agroecology at UC Berkley, said in a phone interview. “Most of what it produces is biomass, which is for cattle, biotech crops, and biofuels.”

What he wants to see instead is an approach to agriculture that does acknowledge the “ancestral knowledge” he writes about, whether it takes the form of drought-tolerant varieties of grains that have been selected over generations or learning more about agroecological (that’s what they call sustainable agriculture in the academy) systems’ abilities to cope with and rebound from catastrophic weather events like hurricanes.

“What we are trying to come up with is a western scientific approach, and people who have been farming for centuries have developed their own ethnosciences and we need to learn from them,” he says. “That’s going to be what helps us in the future.”

“Wake Up Before It Is Too Late” may be passively critical of GMOs, but it directly indicts the Green Revolution, the approach to agriculture championed by Norman Borlaug. In the 1960s, the Nobel Laureate agronomist helped transition farming in Latin America and Asia to modern hybrid wheat and rice varieties grown with the assistance of irrigation and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. “The world needs a paradigm shift in agricultural development: from a ‘green revolution’ to a ‘ecological intensification’ approach,” read the UNCTAD report’s “Key Messages.”

Borlaug, who also advocated for GMOs in the years before his death, in 2009, saw organic farming and criticisms of the Green Revolution as being diametrically opposed to feeding people the world over.

“Some elements of popular culture romanticize older, inefficient production methods and shun fertilizers and pesticides,” he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2009. “People should be able to purchase organic food if they have the will and financial means to do so, but not at the expense of the world’s hungry—25,000 of whom die each day from malnutrition.”

The Borlag Institute for International Agriculture declined to comment on the UNCTAD.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working to continue Borlag’s approach, but with an eye toward sustainability, and biotechnology—not just hybrid varieties—as the key tool in what some call a second Green Revolution. Addressing the debate over genetic engineering’s role in global agriculture (and not the report in particular), the Foundation’s communications officer Amy Enright wrote in an email, “Essentially, the foundation believes that people in the developing world should have the same access to innovation that benefits the rich world, and we believe that GM crops have the potential to provide benefits to farmers in the poorest parts of the world.”

“Advances in agriculture, just like in medicine, must be guided by regulations to ensure new products (seeds, vaccines or medicines) are safe and effective,” she adds. “We work with many partners across both the public and private sectors to ensure that farmers will have access to seeds that are affordable—so ultimately the farmer can choose what seed or technology is right for them.”

Despite Gates’ clout and cash and the legacy of the Green Revolution, Ben Lilliston of the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy gets the sense that the conversation is changing. “I’m optimistic that there is a shift taking place at the global level in the institutions and in the sort of larger dialog,” he says, referencing other reports from U.N. groups that advocate for sustainable approaches to agriculture.

But Lilliston admits that even if there’s a sense that he and like-minded people and institutions increasingly feel like they’re winning the argument, until ag policy and practice follow suit, it’s all academic. “When it come to global changes that are more concrete,” he says, “we haven’t really got there yet.”

Altieri agrees, saying documents like this, “give credibility to the approach, and it has an impact in academia. But it doesn’t change many things. At the end of the day, the debate isn’t scientific—it’s political.” According to him, reports like “Wake Up Before It Is Too Late,” “strengthens the social movements that are going to put the change on the politics.”

Pointing to the debate over Golden Rice trials in the Philippines and protests against GMO crops in India, Peru and parts of Africa, Lilliston believes that those social movements are already being empowered. “All of that is a sort of push back and resistance to the Green Revolution, chemical approach—and monoculture approach—to producing food.”

1368. United Nations Climate Change Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come

By Justin Gillis, The New York Times, March 31, 2014

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans, scientists reported on Monday, and they warned that the problem was likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct.

The oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off by cars and power p

Organic matter frozen in Arctic soils since before civilization began is now melting, allowing it to decay into greenhouse gases that will cause further warming, the scientists said. And the worst is yet to come, the scientists said in the second of three reports that are expected to carry considerable weight next year as nations try to agree on a new global climate treaty.

In particular, the report emphasized that the world’s food supply is at considerable risk — a threat that could have serious consequences for the poorest nations.

“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the intergovernmental panel, said at a news conference here on Monday presenting the report.

The report was among the most sobering yet issued by the scientific panel. The group, along with Al Gore, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its efforts to clarify the risks of climate change. The report is the final work of several hundred authors; details from the drafts of this and of the last report in the series, which will be released in Berlin in April, leaked in the last few months.

The report attempts to project how the effects will alter human society in coming decades. While the impact of global warming may actually be moderated by factors like economic or technological change, the report found, the disruptions are nonetheless likely to be profound. That will be especially so if emissions are allowed to continue at a runaway pace, the report said.

It cited the risk of death or injury on a wide scale, probable damage to public health, displacement of people and potential mass migrations.

“Throughout the 21st century, climate-change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hot spots of hunger,” the report declared.

The report also cited the possibility of violent conflict over land, water or other resources, to which climate change might contribute indirectly “by exacerbating well-established drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks.”

The scientists emphasized that climate change is not just a problem of the distant future, Studies have found that parts of the Mediterranean region are drying out because of climate change, and some experts believe that droughts there have contributed to political destabilization in the Middle East and North Africa.

In much of the American West, mountain snowpack is declining, threatening water supplies for the region, the scientists said in the report. And the snow that does fall is melting earlier in the year, which means there is less melt water to ease the parched summers. In Alaska, the collapse of sea ice is allowing huge waves to strike the coast, causing erosion so rapid that it is already forcing entire communities to relocate.

“Now we are at the point where there is so much information, so much evidence, that we can no longer plead ignorance,” Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said at the news conference.

The report was quickly welcomed in Washington, where President Obama is trying to use his executive power under the Clean Air Act and other laws to impose significant new limits on the country’s greenhouse emissions. He faces determined opposition in Congress.

“There are those who say we can’t afford to act,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement. “But waiting is truly unaffordable. The costs of inaction are catastrophic.”

Amid all the risks the experts cited, they did find a bright spot. Since the intergovernmental panel issued its last big report in 2007, it has found growing evidence that governments and businesses around the world are making extensive plans to adapt to climate disruptions, even as some conservatives in the United States and a small number of scientists continue to deny that a problem exists.

“I think that dealing effectively with climate change is just going to be something that great nations do,” said Christopher B. Field, co-chairman of the working group that wrote the report and an earth scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif. Talk of adaptation to global warming was once avoided in some quarters, on the ground that it would distract from the need to cut emissions. But the past few years have seen a shift in thinking, including research from scientists and economists who argue that both strategies must be pursued at once.

A striking example of the change occurred recently in the state of New York, where the Public Service Commission ordered Consolidated Edison, the electric utility serving New York City and some suburbs, to spend about $1 billion upgrading its system to prevent future damage from flooding and other weather disruptions.

The plan is a reaction to the blackouts caused by Hurricane Sandy. Con Ed will raise flood walls, bury some vital equipment and conduct a study of whether emerging climate risks require even more changes. Other utilities in the state face similar requirements, and utility regulators across the United States are discussing whether to follow New York’s lead.

But with a global failure to limit greenhouse gases, the risk is rising that climatic changes in coming decades could overwhelm such efforts to adapt, the panel found. It cited a particular risk that in a hotter climate, farmers will not be able to keep up with “When supply falls below demand, somebody doesn’t have enough food,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist who helped write the new report. “When some people don’t have food, you get starvation. Yes, I’m worried.”

The poorest people in the world, who have had virtually nothing to do with causing global warming, will be high on the list of victims as climatic disruptions intensify, the report said. It cited a World Bank estimate that poor countries need as much as $100 billion a year to try to offset the effects of climate change; they are now getting, at best, a few billion dollars a year in such aid from rich countries.

The $100 billion figure, though included in the 2,500-page main report, was removed from a 48-page executive summary to be read by the world’s top political leaders. It was among the most significant changes made as the summary underwent final review during an editing session of several days in Yokohama.

The edit came after several rich countries, including the United States, raised questions about the language, according to several people who were in the room at the time but did not wish to be identified because the negotiations were private. The language is contentious because poor countries are expected to renew their demand for aid this September in New York at a summit meeting of world leaders, who will attempt to make headway on a new treaty to limit greenhouse gases.

Many rich countries argue that $100 billion a year is an unrealistic demand; it would essentially require them to double their budgets for foreign aid, at a time of economic distress at home. That argument has fed a rising sense of outrage among the leaders of poor countries, who feel their people are paying the price for decades of profligate Western consumption.

Two decades of international efforts to limit emissions have yielded little result, and it is not clear whether the negotiations in New York this fall will be any different. While greenhouse gas emissions have begun to decline slightly in many wealthy countries, including the United States, those gains are being swamped by emissions from rising economic powers like China and India.

For the world’s poorer countries, food is not the only issue, but it may be the most acute. Several times in recent years, climatic disruptions in major growing regions have helped to throw supply and demand out of balance, contributing to price increases that have reversed decades of gains against global hunger, at least temporarily.

The warning about the food supply in the new report is much sharper in tone than any previously issued by the panel. That reflects a growing body of research about how sensitive many crops are to heat waves and water stress. The report said that climate change was already dragging down the output of wheat and corn at a global scale, compared with what it would otherwise be.

David B. Lobell, a Stanford University scientist who has published much of the recent research and helped write the new report, said in an interview that as yet, too little work was being done to understand the risk, much less counter it with improved crop varieties and farming techniques. “It is a surprisingly small amount of effort for the stakes,” he said.

Timothy Gore, an analyst for Oxfam, the antipoverty group that sent observers to the proceedings in Yokohama, praised the new report as painting a clear picture of the consequences of a warming planet. But he warned that without greater efforts to limit global warming and to adapt to the changes that have become inevitable, “the goal we have in Oxfam of ensuring that every person has enough food to eat could be lost forever.”