The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
URBANA, Illinois, US, Feb 6 2026 (IPS) - South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe are currently experiencing severe flooding. According to the World Health Organization, 1.3 million people have been affected. In addition, hundreds of people have died , infrastructure has been destroyed, access to health services has been disrupted, and the risks of water- and mosquito-borne diseases are rising.
Alarmingly, the devastating impacts of flooding on crop production, an important source of livelihoods in Africa, and on agricultural crops relevant to meeting food security needs rarely receive coverage or make headlines. If they do, the coverage does not comprehensively capture the extent of the damage or the immediate and long-term consequences of flooding.
Time and again, research has shown that flooding affects global crop production and has immediate and long-lasting consequences for agricultural production, food systems, national economies, and food security
Also disturbing is the lack of coverage of the devastating impacts of flooding on soils, soil quality, soil health, and the billions of beneficial soil microorganisms that support the production of healthy and nutritious crops.
This needs to change. Time and again, research has shown that flooding affects global crop production and has immediate and long-lasting consequences for agricultural production, food systems, national economies, and food security.
For example, a 2022 study reported that flooding threatened food security for more than 5.6 million people across several African countries. The study also found that an estimated 12 percent of food-insecure households in several African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, and Malawi, experienced food insecurity due to flooding, which compromised their ability to produce, access, and utilize food.
Notably, this comprehensive study revealed that flooding impacts emerge at different spatial and temporal scales. Damage to crops and displacement of families occur immediately following flooding, but secondary impacts persist, leaving soils unhealthy and unable to support the production of healthy crops in subsequent seasons. In addition, infrastructure destroyed by flooding and livelihoods disrupted take time to rebuild.
Current and future climate forecasts indicate that flooding and other weather and climate extreme events will continue flooding and other weather and climate extremes will continue, underscoring the need for countries across Africa and around the world to prioritize efforts to understand and mitigate flooding.
So, what can be done?
First, to develop sustainable and sufficient solutions, it is important to comprehensively map flooding and the many dimensions through which flooding and other climate change-associated stressors can lead to food insecurity.
Certainly, flooding can lead to and affect food insecurity through several driving mechanisms , including crop losses that reduce agricultural production, infrastructure damage that disrupts supply chains while hindering people’s ability to access markets. For example, the recent flooding events in South Africa and Mozambique have reportedly resulted in losses of economically important crops such as avocados and citrus, disrupted food transportation corridors, slowed cross-border logistics networks, and isolated communities, disrupting food distribution networks. Additionally, studies in Burkina Faso , Malawi, and South-Eastern Nigeria demonstrated that flooding can lead to crop failures and affect food security.
Second, there is an urgent need to develop a comprehensive understanding and assessment of who is most affected by flooding, at what scale, and how the multidimensional impacts of flooding on food security evolve over time.
Developing this kind of understanding requires systems thinking and cross-disciplinary coordinated collaboration, bridging disciplines such as climate science, agronomy, plant science, entomology, economics, nutrition, hydrology, epidemiology, public health, social science, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and infrastructure.
For example, agronomists can quantify crop losses from flooding, soil changes, and recovery timelines. Economists, on the other hand, can model the impacts of flooding on livelihoods, markets, and national economies.
Data scientists can track floods and map flood risk zones, and infrastructure specialists can assess the vulnerability of current infrastructure to flooding. When these disciplines converge, they can help governments and humanitarian agencies develop data-driven action plans to prepare for, prevent, and implement timely flood response solutions.
Third, there is a need to proactively invest in both short- and long-term solutions to mitigate the negative impacts of flooding on food security and enhance livelihoods resillience and food security . Some proactive measures include restoring wetlands, which naturally act as flood buffers to absorb excess rainfall; building climate-resilient infrastructure; sharing early warning information with communities about upcoming flooding events; making affordable insurance policies available to farmers to protect their farming enterprises; and strengthening agrifood systems.
Strengthening agrifood systems can take multiple forms, including ensuring that farmers have access to flood-resilient crop varieties and that they plant diversified crops and adopt climate-smart agricultural practices, all of which can help buffer farmers, communities, and citizens of countries from flooding-related impacts.
Flooding is quickly emerging as a threat that is compromising and undermining food security, health, infrastructure, and economies both in the short- and long-term.
We must normalize accounting for the multidimensional impacts of flooding events on agriculture, soil health and quality, and the infrastructure that supports agricultural food systems and ecosystems. In doing so, the worst outcomes of flooding could be prevented in agriculture and food security.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 2026 (IPS) - On February 3, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its 2026 global appeal to help millions of people living in protracted conflicts and humanitarian crises access lifesaving healthcare. Following a trend of sharply declining international funding, the agency warns that it is becoming increasingly difficult to respond to emerging health threats, including pandemics and drug-resistant infections.
According to figures from the United Nations (UN), roughly a quarter of a billion people are currently living through humanitarian crises that threaten their access to healthcare and shelter, even as global defense spending has surpassed USD 2.5 trillion annually. Meanwhile, WHO estimates that approximately 4.6 billion people lack access to essential health services and 2.1 billion face significant financial strain from rising health costs.
These disparities are expected to worsen in the coming years, as the world is projected to face a shortage of 11 million healthcare workers by 2030—more than half of whom are nurses. Seeking nearly USD 1 billion to support civilians across 36 emergency settings—14 of which are classified as extremely severe—WHO aims to protect and support millions of people living in the world’s most fragile crisis settings.
“This appeal is a call to stand with people living through conflict, displacement and disaster – to give them not just services, but the confidence that the world has not turned its back on them,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “It is not charity. It is a strategic investment in health and security. In fact, access to health care restores dignity, stabilizes communities and offers a pathway toward recovery.”
Since its founding in 1948, WHO has served as a critical lifeline for crisis-affected populations—promoting universal health coverage, coordinating international responses to health emergencies, and tracking emerging health threats and progress worldwide. In 2025 alone, WHO and its partners provided emergency health services to approximately 30 million people, delivering vaccinations to 5.3 million children, facilitating 53 million health consultations, supporting more than 8,000 health facilities, and deploying 1,370 mobile clinics.
“In today’s most complex emergencies, WHO remains indispensable – protecting health, upholding international humanitarian law, and ensuring life-saving care reaches people in places where few others can operate,” said Marita Sørheim-Rensvik, Deputy Permanent Representative of Norway to the UN Office at Geneva. “From safeguarding access to sexual and reproductive health and rights to supporting frontline health workers under immense strain, WHO’s role is vital.”
The 2026 appeal follows a year in which humanitarian financing fell below 2016 levels, forcing WHO and its partners to reach only one-third of the 81 million people originally targeted for health assistance. Additionally, this comes after the United States exit from WHO on January 22, which is estimated to reduce the agency’s budget for 2026 and 2027 from USD 5.3 billion to USD 4.2 billion.
Ghebreyesus addressed WHO’s Executive Board in Geneva on February 2, warning of the far-reaching consequences expected after last year’s steep funding cuts, describing 2025 as one of the organization’s “most difficult years” in its history. “Sudden and severe cuts to bilateral aid have also caused huge disruptions to health systems and services in many countries,” he said.
Ghebreyesus also noted that the agency narrowly avoided a far more severe financial collapse due to a host of member states agreeing to raise mandatory assessed contributions. This would reduce WHO’s dependence on voluntary designated funding. These reforms have enabled WHO to mobilize roughly 85 percent of its core budget for 2026-2027, though Ghebreyesus warned that the remaining gap will be “hard to mobilize” in today’s strained financial environment. He cautioned that “pockets of poverty” remain across critically underfunded areas, including emergency preparedness, antimicrobial resistance, and climate resilience.
Ghebreyesus also warned noted that the funding crisis has exposed deeper challenges for global health governance, especially among low and middle-income countries that struggle to maintain access to essential services. He stressed that the crisis presents a crucial opportunity for transformation, noting that a “leaner” WHO can become more focused on its core mission and mandate within the broader UN80 reform initiative. “This means sharpening our focus on our core mandate and comparative advantage, doing what we do best – supporting countries through our normative and technical work – and leaving to others what they do best,” he added.
As a result of shrinking global funding, WHO says that it and its partners have been “forced to make difficult choices” about which operations to sustain going forward. The agency stated its intentions to concentrate solely on the most critical, high-impact interventions–such as keeping essential health facilities running, delivering emergency medical supplies and trauma care, restoring immunization efforts, ensuring access to reproductive, maternal, and child health services, and preventing and responding to disease outbreaks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is working with health authorities in South Sudan and partners to scale up cholera prevention efforts, including a vaccination campaign. Credit:WHO/South Sudan
“In 2026, WHO is adapting its emergency response again. We are applying the discipline of emergency medicine: focusing first on actions that save lives,” said Ghebreyesus. “We are placing greater emphasis on country leadership and local partnerships. We are concentrating on areas where WHO adds the greatest value and reducing duplication so that every dollar has maximum impact.”
In 2026, WHO will prioritize its emergency health response in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Afghanistan, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, and Myanmar, while also addressing ongoing outbreaks of cholera and mpox. As the lead agency for health coordination in humanitarian crises, WHO works with more than 1,500 partners across 24 emergency settings worldwide to ensure that national authorities and local organizations remain at the center of emergency response efforts.
Additionally, WHO’s strategy going forward places strong emphasis on helping countries reduce reliance on external aid and build long-term financial self-sufficiency. A key element of this approach is domestic resource mobilization, including the introduction of higher health taxes on harmful products such as tobacco, sugary beverages, and alcohol.
In recent months, WHO has made important progress in strengthening global responses to emerging health threats, even as antimicrobial resistance continues to escalate—with one in six bacterial infections worldwide now resistant to antibiotics. The agency has also expanded its disease surveillance capabilities, relying on AI-powered epidemic intelligence tools to help countries detect and contain hundreds of outbreaks before they evolve into major crises. WHO’s work has also been reinforced by last year’s adoption of the Pandemic Agreement and amended International Health Regulations (IHR), which aim to bolster global preparedness in the post-COVID-19 era.
“The pandemic taught all of us many lessons – especially that global threats demand a global response,” said Ghebreyesus. “Solidarity is the best immunity.” He emphasized that the future effectiveness of WHO hinges on predictable, sustained funding:“This is your WHO. Its strength is your unity. Its future is your choice.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
GENEVA, Feb 6 2026 (IPS) - The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has launched a USD 400 million funding appeal for 2026 to address global human rights needs, warning that with mounting crises, the world cannot afford a human rights system in crisis.
“The cost of our work is low; the human cost of underinvestment is immeasurable,” Türk told States at the launch. “In times of conflict and in times of peace, we are a lifeline for the abused, a megaphone for the silenced, a steadfast ally to those who risk everything to defend the rights of others.”
In 2025, staff working for the UN Human Rights Office in 87 countries observed more than 1,300 trials, supported 67,000 survivors of torture, documented tens of thousands of human rights violations, and contributed to the release of more than 4,000 people from arbitrary detention.
Türk also stressed that addressing inequalities and respecting economic and social rights are vital to peace and stability. “Human rights make economies work for everyone, rather than deepening exclusion and breeding instability,” he said.
The Office in 2025 worked with more than 35 governments on the human rights economy, which aims to align all economic policies with human rights. For example, in Djibouti, it helped conduct a human rights analysis of the health budget, with a focus on people with disabilities. It provided critical human rights analysis to numerous UN Country Teams working on sustainable development.
Türk outlined several consequences of reduced funding in 2025. For instance, the Office conducted only 5,000 human rights monitoring missions, a decrease from 11,000 in 2024. The Office’s programme in Myanmar suffered cuts of more than 60 percent. In Honduras, support for demilitarisation of the prison system and for justice and security sector reforms was reduced. In Chad, advocacy and support for nearly 600 detainees held without legal basis had to be discontinued.
“Our reporting provides credible information on atrocities and human rights trends at a time when truth is being eroded by disinformation and censorship. It informs deliberations both in the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council, and is widely cited by international courts, providing critical evidence for accountability,” he said.
The liquidity crisis of the regular budget also significantly affected the work of the broader human rights ecosystem. For instance, 35 scheduled State party dialogues by UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies could not take place.
Four out of eight planned country visits by the Sub-Committee on Prevention of Torture had to be cancelled. UN Special Rapporteurs’ ability to carry out country visits was curtailed, and the Human Rights Council’s investigative bodies were unable to fulfil their mandates fully.
The UN Human Rights Chief also regretted that the Office lost approximately 300 staff out of a total of 2,000 and was forced to close or radically reduce its presence in 17 countries, erasing entire programmes critical for endangered, threatened, or marginalised communities, from Colombia and Guinea-Bissau to Tajikistan.
“All this is weakening our ‘Protection by Presence’ – a simple idea with powerful impact: that the physical presence of trained human rights officers on the ground deters violations and reduces harm,” Türk said.
In 2025, the Office’s approved regular budget was USD 246 million, but it received only USD 191.5 million, resulting in a USD 54.5 million shortfall. It had also requested USD 500 million in voluntary contributions and received only USD 257.8 million.
The UN Human Rights Chief thanked the 113 funding partners – Governments, multilateral donors, private entities, among others – who contributed to the 2025 budget and helped save and improve lives.
For 2026, the UN General Assembly has approved a regular budget of USD 224.3 million, which is based on assessed contributions from Member States. This amount is 10 per cent lower than in 2025, and further uncertainty remains about the actual amount the Office will receive due to the liquidity crisis the UN is facing.
Through its 2026 Appeal, the Office is requesting an additional USD 400 million in voluntary contributions.
“Historically, human rights account for an extremely small portion of all UN spending. We need to step up support for this low-cost, high-impact work that helps stabilise communities, builds trust in institutions, and supports lasting peace,” the High Commissioner said.
“And we need more unearmarked and timely contributions so we can respond quickly, as human rights cannot wait.”
IPS UN Bureau
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Feb 6 2026 (IPS) - In early January, an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Venezuela followed a familiar path of paralysis. Members clashed over the US government’s abduction of Nicolás Maduro, with many warning it set a dangerous precedent, but no resolution came.
This wasn’t exceptional. In 2024, permanent members cast eight vetoes, the highest since 1986. In 2025, the Council adopted only 44 resolutions, the lowest since 1991. Deep divisions prevented meaningful responses to Gaza and to conflicts in Myanmar, Sudan and Ukraine.
Designed in 1945, the Security Council is the UN’s most powerful body, tasked with maintaining international peace and security, but also crucially protecting the privileged position of the most powerful states following the Second World War. Of its 15 members, 10 are elected for two-year terms, but five – China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA – are permanent and have veto powers. A single veto can block any resolution, regardless of global support. The Council’s anachronistic structure reflects and reproduces outdated power dynamics.
Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has continually used its veto despite breaching the UN Charter. On Gaza, the USA vetoed four ceasefire proposals before the Council passed Resolution 2728 in March 2024, 171 days into Israel’s assault. By then over 10,000 people had been killed.
When the Council is gridlocked, it means more suffering on the ground. Civilian protection fails, peace processes stall and human rights crimes go unpunished.
The case for reform
Since the UN was established, the number of member states has quadrupled and the global population has grown from 2.5 to 8 billion. But former colonial powers that represent a minority of the world’s population still hold permanent seats while entire continents remain unrepresented.
Calls for reform have been made for decades, but they face a formidable challenge: reform requires amendment of the UN Charter, a process that needs a favourable two-thirds General Assembly vote, ratification by two-thirds of member states and approval from all five permanent Council members.
The African Union has advanced the clearest demand. Emphasising historical justice and equal power for the global south, it calls for the Council to be expanded to 26 members, with Africa holding two permanent seats with full veto rights and five non-permanent seats.
India has been particularly vocal in demanding a greater role on a reformed Council. The G4 – Brazil, Germany, India and Japan – has proposed expansion to 25 or 26 members with six new permanent seats: two for Africa, two for Asia and the Pacific, one for Latin America and the Caribbean and one for Western Europe. New permanent members would gain veto powers after a 10-to-15-year review period.
Uniting for Consensus, a group led by Italy that includes Argentina, Mexico, Pakistan and South Korea, opposes the creation of new permanent seats, arguing this would simply expand an existing oligarchy. Instead, they propose longer rotating terms and greater representation for underrepresented regions.
The five permanent members show varying degrees of openness to reform. France and the UK support expansion with veto powers, while the USA supports adding permanent African seats but without a veto. China backs new African seats, but virulently opposes Japan’s permanent membership, while Russia supports reform in principle but warns against making the Council ‘too broad’.
These positions reflect competition and a desire to prevent rivals gaining power. Current permanent members fear diluted influence, while states that see themselves as rising powers want the status and sway that comes with Council membership.
Adding new members could help redress the imbalance against the global south, but wouldn’t necessarily make the Council more effective, accountable and committed to protecting human lives and human rights, particularly if more states get veto powers.
A French-Mexican initiative from 2015 offers a more modest path: voluntary veto restraint in mass atrocity situations. The proposal asks permanent members to refrain from vetoes in cases of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. This complements efforts to increase the political costs of vetoes, including the Code of Conduct signed by 121 states and General Assembly Resolution 76/262, which requires debate whenever a veto is cast.
New challenges
Now a new challenge has emerged from the Trump administration, which recently launched the Board of Peace at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This has mutated from a temporary institution set up by a Security Council resolution to govern over Gaza into a seemingly permanent one that envisages a broader global role under Trump’s personal control. Its membership skews toward authoritarian regimes, and human rights don’t get a mention in its draft charter.
Instead of legitimising the Board of Peace, efforts should focus on Security Council reform to address the two fundamental flaws of representation and veto power. Accountability and transparency must also be enhanced. Civil society must have space to engage with the Council and urge states to prioritise the UN Charter over self-interest.
Some momentum exists. The September 2024 Pact for the Future committed leaders to developing a consolidated reform model. Since 2008, formal intergovernmental negotiations have addressed membership expansion, regional representation, veto reform and working methods. These became more transparent in 2023, with sessions recorded online, allowing civil society to track proceedings and challenge blocking states.
However, reform efforts faced entrenched interests, geopolitical rivalries and institutional inertia even before Trump started causing chaos. The UN faces a demanding 2026, forced to make funding cuts amid a liquidity crisis while choosing the next secretary-general. In such circumstances, it’s tempting to defer difficult decisions.
But the reform case is clear, as is the choice: act to make the Council fit for purpose or accept continuing paralysis and irrelevance, allowing it to be supplanted by Trump’s Board of Peace.
Samuel King is a researcher with the Horizon Europe-funded research project ENSURED: Shaping Cooperation for a World in Transition at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.
For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 2026 (IPS) - The current UN financial crisis, described as the worst in the 80-year-old history of the world body, triggers the question: is the US using its financial clout defaulting in its arrears and its assessed contributions to precipitate the collapse of the UN?
If the crisis continues, the UN headquarters will be forced to shut down by August, ahead of the annual meeting of world leaders in September this year, according to a report in the New York Times last week, quoting unnamed senior UN officials.
But apparently there is still hope for survival —judging by a report coming out of the White House.
Asked about the current state of finances, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters February 5: “We’ve seen cuts by the United States. We’ve seen cuts by European countries over the last year. And every day, I talk to you about what happens when there’s no money, right?”
“Rations are being reduced, health care not being delivered. So, I mean it’s pretty clear. In terms of the Secretariat, should it come to pass, it will impact our ability to run meetings in this building, to do the political work we do, the peacekeeping work that we do”, he pointed out.
About hopes of a possible resolution, he said “I do also have to say that we saw the reports…earlier this week – of the President of the United States signing a budget bill, which includes funding for the United Nations”.
“We welcome that, and we will stay in contact with the US over the coming days and weeks to monitor the transfers of those monies,” said Dujarric.
Meanwhile, in an interview with IPS last week, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Founder/CEO, International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), said the potential financial collapse of the UN is depressing and yet so indicative of these times, when leadership everywhere is devoid of any sense of responsibility and has no care for the future.
They are the antithesis of the UN’s founding fathers and mothers, who, having experienced the hell of war and destitution first hand, committed themselves to creating a global peace and security architecture with the goal of preventing such hell for us – the future generation – their descendants, she argued.
“We all know that the UN system has never been perfect. It has never lived up to its potential. Often this has been due to the shenanigans of the powerful states, who persist in manipulating the institution for their own interests”.
The UN Security Council has long been the insecurity Council, given how the P5 are all implicated in one or other of the worst wars and genocides of the past 25 years, she said.
“But they are not solely to blame. Within the system too, we have seen both leadership and staff with vested interests, benefitting from the inertia, and unwilling to uphold new practices and priorities that would have brought transformative impact”.
“But dysfunction should not lead to abandonment and the dismantling of the system. The UN cannot be stripped and have its key assets and functions sold to the lowest bidder”.
Already, she said, the dystopian (US-created) Board of Peace is akin to the corporate raiders and vulture funds of the finance world – trying to strip the UN of its key functions but with no accountability or guard rails pertaining to its actions.
As it stands, the U.S. currently owes about $2.196 billion to the U.N.’s regular budget, including $767 million for this year and for prior years, according to U.N. sources.
The U.S. also owes $1.8 billion for the separate budget for the U.N.’s peacekeeping operations overseas, and that also will rise.
As of February 5, only 51 countries had paid their dues in full for 2026—that’s 51 out of 193. A breakdown of the last four payments follows: Australia, $65,309,876, Austria, $20,041,168, Croatia, $2,801,889, and Cyprus $1,120,513.
Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS on the one hand, the United States has been in arrears in its payments to the United Nations quite a bit in recent years, but the UN has managed to get by.
However, the extent of the Trump administration’s cutbacks and the ways they are being targeted at particularly vulnerable programs has resulted in this unprecedented fiscal crisis.
“The hostility of the Trump administration to the United Nations is extreme. Trump has made clear he believes there should be no legal restraints on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, so it is not surprising he would seek to undermine the world’s primary institution mandated with supporting international law and world order,” declared Dr Zunes.
Addressing the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee last week Chandramouli Ramanathan, Assistant Secretary-General, Controller, Management Strategy, Policy said: “The UN staff is progressively losing confidence in the entire budget process,” referring to cash shortages that have led to severe spending and hiring restrictions. The United Nations needs to find a compromise that allows the Organization to function effectively, he added.
Anderlini, elaborating further, told IPS “now more than ever, the institution must be sustained and enabled to thrive and deliver on the promise of the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the body of conventions and policies that have been developed through painstaking work to meet the challenges of today’s world.”
When global military spending is topping $2.6 trillion, she said, the UN’s approved annual budget of $3.45 billion seems like pocket change.
“It is absurd for our governments to be borrowing billions to fund weapons, but nickel and diming the UN, governmental agencies and civil society organizations that work to prevent conflict, build peace and ensure human and environmental security.”
“We live in an era where one man’s assets may soon be valued at over one trillion dollars and the world’s billionaire class wealth increased by $2.5 trillion in just one year 2025. They are lauded and applauded even though their wealth is made on the backs, bodies and lands of “We the people of the United Nations” – whether through tax avoidance or investment in high climate impact sectors such as fossil fuels and mining.”
Perhaps they should be taxed and forced to foot the bill for their complicity in the disasters that the UN is forced to clean up.
Peace and development are good for business, she argued. “They are essential for any society to survive and thrive. The UN and the global ecosystem of institutions and people dedicated to caring for the world give us our humanity – far beyond anything that can be limited to monetary value. But in dollar terms they are a great investment with returns that benefit billions of people worldwide, not just a stockpile of deadly weapons or a handful of billionaires”.
Thanks to member states’ abrogation of responsibility to uphold human rights and prevent the scourge of war, violence cost the world $19.97 trillion in 2024, or 11.6% of global GDP. According the Institute of Economics and peace this represents $2,455 per person, includes military spending, internal security, and lost economic activity, declared Anderlini.
IPS UN Bureau Report
DELHI, Feb 5 2026 (IPS) - Melanie Brown has been fishing salmon in Bristol Bay, Alaska, for more than 30 years. An Indigenous fisherwoman and a coordinating committee member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples, she speaks about the sea with deep care and lived knowledge.
When interviewed for IPS on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), a global conservation policy introduced by the IUCN in 1999, Brown sounded both hopeful and cautious.
“It’s interesting,” she said. “Where I fish in Bristol Bay, if you follow the river upstream, it eventually reaches a lake system. Right at the point where the lake meets the river, there is a national park.”
Brown fishes the Naknek River, which has had a steady salmon run for years.
Melanie Brown, an Indigenous fisherwoman and a Coordinating Committee member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples.
“I really believe it’s because of that park,” she said. The park, Katmai National Park, was created long before the UN’s 30×30 target — the global goal to protect 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030 — was signed in December 2022. It was first protected after a historic volcanic eruption in 1922 and later became a tourist attraction. Inside the park is Brooks Falls, where bears are often seen catching salmon.
Indigenous people are still allowed to fish in parts of the park, but only with special permission. Brown explained how salmon change when they enter freshwater.
“In the ocean, they’re shiny and silver. In freshwater, they turn red. They look different. They taste different.” Brown continues, “They stop feeding once they hit freshwater. All they care about is spawning. Dried salmon is important for us. It’s how we preserve food.”
She said this kind of protection has worked because it didn’t erase Indigenous fishing. But when it comes to Marine Protected Areas, she has mixed feelings.
“If an MPA stops people from doing their traditional fishing in places they’ve always fished, that’s wrong,” she said. “That shouldn’t happen unless there’s a real overfishing problem.”
Brown believes decisions should be made with the fishing communities.
“You can’t just draw a fenced area on a map and tell people they can’t go there anymore,” she said. “You need to work it out with the regulatory bodies and the fishers.”
Still, Brown knows MPAs can work if they are written well. In southeast Alaska, she said, a marine protected area was created to stop factory trawlers. “Small boat fishing is still allowed. The big industrial boats are kept out, but local fishers can continue.”
For her, the lesson is simple: protection and fishing do not have to be in conflict when communities are involved.
Community Custodianship in Kerala
Kumar Sahayaraju, a marine researcher with Friends of Marine Life (FML).
That idea of community involvement also emerged in an interview with Kumar Sahayaraju, a marine researcher with Friends of Marine Life (FML), who is also from a traditional fishing community in Trivandrum, Kerala, and a scuba diver. He believes MPAs only make sense when they are shaped by the people who live with the sea.
“It would be good if marine protected areas were created with community involvement,” he told IPS. “That’s why internationally there is a push for co-management — a bottom-up approach.”
Sahayaraj spoke about reefs off the coast of Trivandrum — underwater ecosystems that fishing communities have used for generations. “These reefs were part of our traditional fishing grounds,” he said. “They were like a commons.”
But large mechanised and trawler boats have now entered these reef areas. “They are damaging the reefs and catching all the fish,” he said. “These reef fish supported traditional fishers for generations.”
Like Brown, Sahayaraju sees MPAs as a possible tool.
“In a situation like this, an MPA could give custodianship back to traditional fishers and stop destructive fishing methods,” he said. But he stressed that protection alone is not enough. “Access, authority and custodianship must remain with the community. That’s the only way MPAs can work for people and for the ocean.”
This tension between protection and access is playing out across the world as governments push new conservation solutions to deal with climate change and biodiversity loss. One of the biggest is the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s 30×30 target. MPAs are now central to this goal.
Global Targets, Local Realities
Nayana Udayashankar, Senior Programme Officer at Dakshin Foundation.
Nayana Udayashankar, Senior Programme Officer at Dakshin Foundation, who works at the intersection of law, policy and marine conservation, explained that in India, Marine Protected Areas are legally set up under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and future MPAs will follow the amended Act of 2022.
“This law allows two kinds of conservation measures,” she said. “One is area-based protection, and the other is species-based protection.” MPAs, she added, fall under different categories of protected areas within this law. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has notified several MPAs across the country, including the Gulf of Mannar National Park off the coast of Tamil Nadu.
But Udayashankar questioned the core logic behind how many MPAs are designed.
“The fundamental idea of MPAs is often ‘no-take’ and the exclusion of humans from certain spaces,” she said. “That approach doesn’t always work for marine conservation.”
According to her, area-based protection in the sea is especially difficult.
“Marine life doesn’t stay in fixed ranges,” she explained. “Fish move constantly. You can’t just draw a boundary or fence off a part of the ocean and expect everything to stay inside it.”
She also pointed to wider contradictions in how conservation is practised.
“Several studies by agencies like CMFRI and the Gulf of Mannar Marine Biosphere Reserve Trust have clearly shown the ecological importance of both the Gulf of Mannar and the adjacent Palk Bay,” she said. “But at the same time, ecologically damaging activities just outside these MPAs continue.”
Unsustainable fishing practices and other coastal activities, she warned, threaten this rich marine ecosystem and undermine both conservation goals and sustainable development efforts.
Udayashankar stressed that she is not against conservation.
“A large number of people depend on marine resources for their livelihoods and income,” she said. “Sustainable fishing and other nature-based activities should be at the heart of any serious marine conservation approach.”
She argued that conservation strategies must be site-specific and shaped by local ecology.
“Most importantly, fishers need to be at the forefront of fisheries and coastal management, because they are directly dependent on healthy ecosystems.”
This may require changes in existing laws and policies. She pointed to alternatives such as Locally Managed Marine Areas, which Dakshin Foundation supports.
“These allow more flexibility and can meet multiple conservation objectives,” she said.
Udayashankar also highlighted Kerala’s fishing councils under the Kerala Marine Fisheries Regulation Act, where fishers participate in managing local fisheries.
“These initiatives are not perfect,” Udayashankar said, “but they are a step in the right direction.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 5 2026 (IPS) - Will trade be enough to navigate the current waves of chaos and disorder that are underpinning the ongoing rifts among competing powerful and hegemon nations and the rest?
Amid tectonic shifts in the realm of geopolitics and international relations, amid what the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently defined as a “rupture” in the rules-based multilateral order, trading is seen almost as a panacea.
Yet are we really sure that new and alternative trading partnerships like the ones the European Union has signed with the Mercosur and India are the only ways to cope with an increasingly unpredictable American administration and an over confident and more ambitious China?
Mark Carney in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few weeks ago offered a blueprint for middle powers like Canada on how they can become less dependent on big hegemon powers.
While he was tacitly describing a tactic to tackle a bossy, unpredictable and more and more authoritarian president south to the border, Mr. Carney provided a foundational framework on how countries like Canada can leverage its natural resources and bet big on the power of trade with alternative markets.
No one doubts that trade can open valuable new options for established economies as well for new emerging ones like India.
The EU has also pivoted to this realm, using new commercial deals as a way to strengthen its own resilience and boost its economy while having no other options than maintaining a good relationship with the USA. But a playbook entirely focused on trade will also hit the wall.
While useful in the short term to escape from or at least try dodging expansionist maneuverings from Washington or Beijing, trade has limitations as well. A comprehensive and long-term response to these new difficult emerging circumstances cannot but be political.
Trade should be seen as a part of a broader toolkit of policies centered on nations committing themselves to invest more on regional projects of cooperation with other nations.
Strengthening political ties among neighboring nations through enhanced economic partnerships could offer the initial impetus to a new form of international regionalism.
Yet nations, while capitalizing on the economic dimensions of their bilateral relationships, should also be powered by a bolder, wider and importantly, more inspiring design.
The need for initiatives that, by intent, go beyond economics while dealing with other nations, would provide the space to imagine new political entities that could get respected and even compete with the existing hegemonic powers.
Imagine how trade and economics was underpinning and turbocharging the project of regional cooperation in post second world war Europe.
With the time, what was a mere economic association, a successful story of cooperation among equals , the European Economic Community turned into something more visionary and braver, a project of regional integration.
As we know from the recent episodes of confrontations generated across the Atlantic that humiliated and defamed Europe, this project is far from being accomplished.
Capitals from around the world, in the Global South and Global North alike, need to understand one thing: only the pursuit of a wider vision with multiple and complementary elements of integration that transcend economy, can offer them the safest route to be able to remain independent.
The building of regional cooperation frameworks, think of Association of South East Asian Nations or the Southern Africa Development Community, can offer a pathway to uphold their members’ internal legitimacy among the citizens while at the same time, cementing their power in the realm of international relations.
Yet the lesson from Europe is clear: economic cooperation and even economic based integration can only go so far.
Only an unequivocal support for more audacious projects can provide states with the leverage needed to deal with few but unrestrained hegemonic powers like China and Russia but also the USA with the second Trump administration.
As difficult and daunting as it is, only regional integration can offer nations a degree of collective power that will earn them some decent amounts of respect. Unfortunately, even regional cooperation is in shambles.
The Southern Common Market or Mercosur despite hitting the headlines with the recent signing of a trade agreement with the EU, (an agreement that the European Parliament, the semi-legislative chamber of the EU, “paralyzed” it with a vote to deferring its legality to the European Court of Justice) is nowhere resembling a politically integrated body of nations.
Who remembers the existence of the Union of South American Nations or UNASUR? Even ASEAN, seen as a model of regional cooperation, is at risk of losing its credibility with its famed “centrality” being put in question.
In Africa, the potential of SADC has evaporated while the most promising and bold attempt of building a political union, the East African Community (EAC) that was supposed to transform itself into a real federation, the East African Federation, also lost considerable steam.
Thanks to Mr. Trump’s ego and dramas stemming from it, the EU is now forced to reconsider its current trajectory of regional integration.
At this current pace and course, the EU will never be able to stand its ground and remain united and cohesive in tackling both overt and veiled threats and blackmails from the hegemonic powers vying to dominate the world.
The EU must be able to project power beyond its economic realm as Mario Draghi, the former Italian Prime Minister and President of the European Central Bank recently shared at the KU Leuven University in Belgium.
“Power requires Europe to move from confederation to federation” because as things stand now, Europe cannot even imagine to be able to survive as it is now.
“ “This is a future in which Europe risks becoming subordinated, divided and de-industrialized at once, and a Europe that cannot defend its interests will not preserve its values for longer.”
Mr Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, should be praised for mincing no words in Davos. But rupture in the current multilateral order cannot be fixed with band aid solutions.
As much as important trade remains, it is going to be delusional to believe that, alone, it can do the job, in sewing and patching up the rupture that has been created and offer a very potent but still incomplete solution for nations.
We need initiatives that, by design, are fit to build political projects that, while start with nation states at the center, are able to envision, in a not too far horizon, a much more daring political project.
Brussels, as the de facto capital of the EU, could again provide a blueprint for this quantum jump towards a new phase of the European political project that can finally pursue deeper forms of union that, inescapably, would embrace federalism.
After all, the best way to preserve a nation’s standing is to invest in new forms of shared sovereignty.
This should not be a priority only for middle powers like Canada or the members of the EU. Even developing nations must come to terms with this new order and understand that their survival will be only guaranteed through ambitious initiatives of regional cooperation that have only the sky as the limit.
Unfortunately for Mr Carney and Canada, geography is unforgiving.
Who knows, perhaps we could imagine what are now unimaginable ties that would perpetually bind Ottawa with Europe or Mexico and the Caribbean.
Simone Galimberti writes about the SDGs, youth-centered policy-making and a stronger and better United Nations.
IPS UN Bureau