The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2026 (IPS) - On January 27, the United States officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement, an international treaty adopted in 2015 aiming to reduce global warming and strengthen countries’ resilience to climate impacts. Following a year of regulatory rollbacks and sustained efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle federal climate policy, this move is expected to trigger wide ranging ripple effects—undermining international efforts to curb climate change, accelerating environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, and increasing risks to human health, safety, and long-term development.
Since its adoption, the Paris Agreement has been instrumental to global climate action initiatives—mobilizing countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, expand renewable energy, strengthen climate adaptation, and protect vulnerable communities. The agreement requires member states to regularly update their emissions-reduction targets and submit plans for achieving them, serving as a vital framework for sustaining collective progress and maintaining transparent communication among nations.
Amnesty International warns that these actions by the Trump administration risk defunding “key multilateral and bilateral climate institutions and programming,” a shift that would have significant repercussions for not only the United States but for the broader international community. The organization warns that U.S. funding for United Nations (UN) agencies is expected to cease imminently, which would halt lifesaving support for climate-sensitive communities and disrupt critical climate monitoring and mitigation efforts.
Specifically, the U.S. withdrawal is expected to undermine global efforts to address climate-induced displacement, disaster recovery, and infrastructure rebuilding. Communities in developing countries are projected to bear the heaviest burdens, as reduced support will leave them more vulnerable to escalating climate-driven losses.
Before the withdrawal, the UN was already grappling with a severe funding crisis – one made worse by the U.S.’s refusal to pay its assessed contributions to the regular budget and its sharp cuts to foreign assistance. The U.S. has also withdrawn from the board of the UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), a crucial mechanism supporting vulnerable communities facing climate-driven disasters. Its previously pledged USD 17.5 million remains uncertain, raising further concerns about the fund’s ability to operate effectively.
With this move, the United States becomes the only nation to exit the agreement in history, joining Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the few states not party to it. With the U.S. being a major global actor in climate change negotiations, the withdrawal risks reducing diplomatic pressure on other wealthy nations to scale up contributions.
“The US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement sets a disturbing precedent that seeks to instigate a race to the bottom, and, along with its withdrawal from other major global climate pacts, aims to dismantle the global system of cooperation on climate action,” said Marta Schaaf, Amnesty International’s Programme Director for Climate, ESJ and Corporate Accountability.
“The US is one of several powerful anti-climate actors but as an influential superpower, this decision, along with acts of coercion and bullying of other countries and powerful actors to double down on fossil fuels, causes particular harm and threatens to reverse more than a decade of global climate progress under the agreement,” she added.
“For us, the fight against climate change continues. The fight for a just transition continues. The fight to get more resources for climate mitigation and adaptation, especially for those most vulnerable countries continues and our efforts will not waver in that part,” said UN Spokesperson to the Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric.
On January 22, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its annual State of Finance for Nature report, which monitors global finance flows toward nature-based solutions. The report found that investments in activities that harm the climate are roughly 30 times the investments for ecosystem conservation and restoration.
According to figures from UNEP, the private sector makes up approximately 70 percent of global financing that harms the environment, only giving back 10 percent of funding that works to protect it. In 2023, roughly USD 7.3 trillion was invested into global activities that harmed the environment, with USD 4.9 trillion coming from private sectors and USD 2.4 trillion coming from the public sectors, which aim to maximize support for fossil fuel usage, agriculture, water, transport, and construction.
This, compounded with President Donald Trump’s renewed “drill, baby, drill” policy, is expected to further destabilize global climate efforts by accelerating fossil fuel dependence, undermining emissions-reduction targets, and widening the financial gap for urgent climate adaptation and ecosystem restoration.
Jeremy Wallace, a professor of China studies at John Hopkins University, told reporters that the U.S.’s expanding reliance on fossil fuels sends a signal to the international community that scaling back climate ambition is acceptable. This risks encouraging other major emitters to pursue weaker energy transitions and less lofty emissions-targets.
China, for instance, recently pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only 7-10 percent over the next decade, a target that has been widely criticized by climate experts as unambitious and insufficient to meet global emissions-targets.
“If the domestic market in the US continues to be dominated by fossil fuels through the fiat of an authoritarian government, that will continue to have an impact on the rest of the world,” said Basav Sen, climate justice project director at Institute for Policy Studies. “It will be that much harder for low-income countries, who are very dependent on fossil fuel production and exports, to be able to make their transitions with the US saying that we won’t fund any of it.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 30 2026 (IPS) - India’s productivity growth over the past two decades has been impressive, reflecting rapid expansion in high-value services, gradual efficiency-enhancing reforms, and scale advantages from a large domestic market.
That said, additional gains would support the country’s ambitions of becoming an advanced economy.
Better supporting innovation, including by removing business barriers, can boost the productivity growth rate by nearly 40 percent, as we show in our 2025 Article IV report. That significant productivity dividend would be like adding the output of the state of Karnataka, the fourth-largest state by output, to India’s economy each decade.
India’s productivity performance, measured by output per additional worker, has been uneven. Services have delivered strong productivity gains, benefiting from advances in adoption of digital technology and their integration into global value chains.
Manufacturing, however, has seen only small productivity growth, while agriculture—still employing over 40 percent of the workforce—remains far less productive than other sectors.
In fact, an additional worker in services produces more than four times the output of a worker in agriculture with the same education level, underscoring the large potential gains from shifting activity to other sectors of the economy.
India’s unusually large share of very small firms is one reason manufacturing productivity has fallen behind. Nearly three quarters of factories employ fewer than five paid workers—almost double the US share. Even more striking, the smallest enterprises produce less than 20 percent of the output per worker of large counterparts, compared with nearly 45 percent in the United States.
These challenges reduce India’s aggregate productivity. Many of these enterprises remain small for decades due to complex compliance requirements, rigid labor regulations, and product market rules that discourage growth. Easing these constraints would help businesses expand and, in turn, dramatically lift productivity. India’s welcome announcement to implement its new labor codes may set the stage for further reforms along this route.
Subdued dynamism
Another factor underlying India’s subdued manufacturing productivity is that business dynamism remains low. The frequency of new business creation and when firms close or exit a market is far lower than in economies such as Korea, Chile, or the United States. Subdued dynamism discourages competition and slows the reallocation of resources toward more productive entities.
Further, a sizable share are zombie firms, which don’t generate enough earnings to cover their borrowing costs yet are continuing to absorb capital and labor. Our analysis shows that firm entry and exit have only a small effect on productivity in India, highlighting the need for a more dynamic business environment in which unproductive firms can wind down while those that are newer and more innovative can grow and thrive.
Innovation, meanwhile, has remained constrained. India invests less in research and development than the average for emerging market economies in the Group of Twenty, and few firms engage in it, with limited adoption of foreign technology.
Larger firms tend to innovate more, while smaller ones have more barriers to scaling up and improving. Strengthening innovation could deliver substantial productivity gains, our analysis suggests.
Specifically, lifting India’s innovation metrics, including business sophistication and creative outputs, to the 90th percentile of emerging markets could raise productivity growth by almost 0.6 percentage point, or nearly 40 percent relative to India’s long-term average.
Role of AI
Artificial intelligence could reinforce these gains. Nearly 60 percent of Indian firms already use some form of AI—well above global averages. AI can make businesses more efficient, speed up technology diffusion, and strengthen innovation. But adoption remains uneven: employers cite skill shortages, inadequate tools, and integration challenges.
Ensuring that AI enhances productivity without widening disparities requires further investment in India’s already strong digital infrastructure, training workers, and protecting those who may lose jobs.
IMF staff simulations show that AI-driven productivity gains—scaled by AI preparedness and exposure—could raise total factor productivity in emerging Asia (including India) by roughly 0.3 to 3 percentage points over a decade—depending on sectors and scenarios.
India has already laid important foundations for productivity-enhancing reforms and can build on a world-class digital public infrastructure. Unlocking the next wave of growth requires a coordinated agenda: easing regulatory burdens so firms can grow, boosting innovation and university-industry collaboration to promote innovation, strengthening business dynamism, and enabling labor to move to higher-productivity sectors.
With these reforms, India can convert its structural strengths into sustained productivity gains, supporting its endeavors to become an advanced economy.
Harald Finger is the IMF mission chief for India. Nujin Suphaphiphat is a senior economist in the Asia and Pacific Department.
IPS UN Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2026 (IPS) - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was dead on target when he told the Security Council last week that the rule of law worldwide is being replaced by the law of the jungle.
“We see flagrant violations of international law and brazen disregard for the UN Charter. From Gaza to Ukraine, and around the world, the rule of law is being treated as an à la carte menu,” he pointed out, as mass killings continue.
“The New York Times on January 28 quoted a recent study pointing out the four-year war between Russia and Ukraine has resulted in over “two million killed, wounded or missing”. The study published last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington says nearly 1.2 million Russian troops and close to 600,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed, wounded or are missing.
In the war in Gaza, over 70,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including women and children, have been killed since October 7, 2023, with figures reaching over 73,600 by early January 2026, according to various reports from the Gaza Health Ministry and human rights organizations.
These killings have also triggered charges of war crimes, genocide and violations of the UN charter, as in the US invasion of Venezuela and the takeover threats against Greenland.
Guterres said in an era crowded with initiatives, the Security Council stands alone in its Charter-mandated authority to act on behalf of all 193 Member States on questions of peace and security. The Security Council alone adopts decisions binding on all.
No other body or ad hoc coalition can legally require all Member States to comply with decisions on peace and security. Only the Security Council can authorize the use of force under international law, as set out in the Charter. Its responsibility is singular. Its obligation is universal, declared Guterres.
Dr Ramzy Baroud, Editor of Palestine Chronicle and former Managing Editor of the London-based Middle East Eye, told IPS the statement by the Secretary-General is long overdue.
Too often, he said, UN officials resort to cautious, euphemistic language when describing egregious violations of international law—especially when those responsible are UN Security Council veto holders, states that have ostensibly sworn to uphold the UN Charter and the core mission of the international system.
Unfortunately, the UN itself has become a reflection of a rapidly shifting world order—one in which those with overwhelming military power sit at the top of the hierarchy, abusing their dominance while steadily hollowing out the very institutions meant to restrain them, he pointed out.
“We must be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that this crisis did not begin with the increasingly authoritarian misuse of law by the Trump administration, nor is it limited to Israel’s absolute disregard for the international community during its two-year-long genocide in Gaza.”
The problem is structural. It is rooted in the way Western powers have long identified—and exploited—loopholes within the international legal system, selectively weaponizing international law to discipline adversaries while shielding allies and advancing their own strategic agendas, he declared.
Responding to a question at the annual press briefing on January 29, Guterres told reporters it is obvious that members of the Security Council are themselves violators of international law –and it doesn’t make life easy for the UN in its efforts.
Unfortunately, he said, there is one thing that we miss. “It’s leverage. It’s the power that others eventually have, to force countries and to force leaders to abide by international law. But not having the power, we have the determination, and we’ll do everything possible with our persuasion, with our good offices, and building alliances to try to create conditions for some of these horrible tragedies we are witnessing. And from Ukraine to Sudan, not to mention what has happened in Gaza, we will be doing everything we can for these tragedies to stop”.
Dr Jim Jennings, President of Conscience International, told IPS the global humanitarian situation described by the Secretary-General is grim but very real. The climate crisis, natural disasters, numerous ongoing and expanding conflicts, and the impact of new technologies, all add to today’s global economic instability and affect every person on earth.
While President Trump continues bombing countries and strutting the world stage with his adolescent dream of US territorial expansion, a major readjustment of the global power balance among China, the US, Europe, and the BRICS nations is underway, he noted.
Stripping life-giving aid away from the poorest countries on earth to benefit those already rich, as his policies guarantee, is a recipe for even more global suffering and violence.
“Clearly one of the most blatant and harmful reasons for the present disastrous situation worldwide is the reduction of funding for UN agencies by the United States, which has traditionally paid a high percentage of their costs”.
With the further curtailment of The Department of State-USAID’s enormous support for people in critical need in almost every country in the world, the Trump administration’s one-two punch has already threatened to make a challenging set of problems unmanageable.
What is to be done? People and governments everywhere must stand up, speak out, and act against the colossal forces now arrayed against some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. How to do that has never been easy, Dr Jennings argued.
Put in the simplest terms, Secretary-General Guterres was merely pointing out the glaring fact of the true global situation and appealing for the critical need UN agencies have for support if their mission is not to fail. The answer is straightforward— more private funding.
Why not raise the level of our individual, corporate, and foundation donations to the UN Agencies and other aid organizations while continuing to advocate for responsible government backing for the irreplaceable United Nations agencies? he asked.
Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS international relations, for a very long time, were dependent on the whims of powerful states and empires. Might was right and disputes were settled by using force. Land inhabited for centuries was annexed to empires and native populations were dispossessed or even exterminated.
From such fractured beginnings, an orderly world governed by agreed rules began to emerge gradually, although most of the rules were established by the powerful.
Thousands of treaties were concluded, customary rules were respected and a rudimentary judicial structure began to be established. The world rejoiced in the establishment of the United Nations.
Though lacking in proper enforcement mechanisms and largely dependent on voluntary mutually beneficial compliance, a rule based international order was beginning to emerge.
“Many, including the present writer, wrote enthusiastically about the consolidation of a rules-based international order. The violence that was commonplace in international dispute resolution prior to the Second World War appeared to be limited to distant parts of the world.”
But like a cozy dream being shattered in mid-sleep, he said, the USA has rudely disrupted the illusion of a new international rules-based world order of which it was once a champion. The trade rules, so painfully developed, have been ditched. Mutual deal making has resurfaced, he said.
“Now it would seem that the powerful would determine the rules, based on self-interest. Rules relating to sovereignty, territorial integrity and rights of people would now seem to depend on the whims of the powerful. The weak will draw their own conclusions. Acquire counterattack capabilities that would make an aggressor think twice”.
“Unless the medium powers and powerless band together and resolve to maintain the international rule of law, we may be entering an era of extreme uncertainty in international relations”, declared Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN and Ambassador to China.
Dr Baroud also pointed out that the 2003 US-British invasion of Iraq stands as a textbook example, but the same pattern has repeated itself in Libya, Syria, and across large parts of the Middle East and beyond. In each case, international law was either manipulated, ignored, or retroactively justified to accommodate power rather than principle.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and the ongoing atrocities in Sudan and elsewhere are not aberrations. They represent the culmination of decades of legal erosion, selective enforcement, and the systematic degradation of the international legal order.
While I agree—and even sympathize—with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which he expressed criticism of the new power dynamics that have rendered the international political system increasingly defunct, one cannot help but ask why neither he nor other Western leaders are willing to confront their own governments’ historical role in creating this reality.
Without such reckoning, calls to defend international law risk sounding less like principled commitments and more like selective outrage in a system long stripped of credibility.
European powers that are critical of Trump have not raised their voice with the same intensity and vigor against Netanyahu for doing a lot worse than anything that Trump has done or threatened to do.
This also begets the same question about the latest comments by the UN Secretary-General. He should offer more specifics than generalized decrying the collapse of international morality.
“Moreover, we expect a roadmap that will guide us in the process of re-establishing some kind of a sane global system in the face of the growing authoritarianism, dictatorship, and criminality all around”, declared Dr Baroud.
IPS UN Bureau Report
BRATISLAVA, Jan 29 2026 (IPS) - “I’d never encountered anything like it before. I had no idea that there could be a place that needed humanitarian aid and that a government entity wouldn’t allow physicians or health workers into [that place],” says Jane.*
Jane, a nurse from a Western country, was part of a volunteer medical team that went into Gaza in early 2025 during a ceasefire that ran from January 19 to March 18 last year.
Gaza’s healthcare system had been devastated over the course of the Israeli offensive which had followed Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. According to UNICEF, 94 percent of hospitals have been damaged or destroyed.
Jane tells IPS her team had hoped that during the stop in fighting they would be able to help deliver vital treatment and services which were desperately needed by so many people in the country.
But she says that instead she and her colleagues, who set out for Gaza within weeks of the ceasefire coming into place, ran into seemingly arbitrary obstacles before they even set foot in the country.
Within hours of landing in Jordan, they found out that three physicians and one nurse in the team had been denied entry into Gaza. The following day there were more problems.
“We were at the border with many other NGOs and all of us had been approved to go in [to Gaza]. But then towards the end of the day, they decided that they were going to close the border and not allow anybody through that day. So we had to make our way back to Jordan,” Jane tells IPS.
She says her team lost a week of time when they could have been helping people before they managed to get in. And when they did, she was shocked at what she found.
“It was when we drove into Gaza that it really hit me. You see these kinds of dystopian places in movies or read about them in novels… a van came to pick us up and drove us to our hospital and on this drive I could see nothing but demolished buildings, rubble everywhere. I had to look away a few times because there were skeletons of animals. I’m not sure if there were skeletons of people because I had to look away once I saw the skeletons of animals,” she says.
Things did not improve when she got to the hospital.
“We got to the hospital and at first, although it was different from what I’m used to, it seemed like a functioning hospital… until I started work the next day.”
She describes the hospital, which is one of the largest in Gaza, as lacking even the most basic resources. “They didn’t have paper, they didn’t have gloves, they didn’t have hand sanitiser,” Jane says.
Life-saving equipment such as ventilators for patients struggling to breathe was unavailable, forcing physicians to perform emergency intubations in some cases.
Worst of all though, even when help could have been easily administered to relieve suffering, seemingly arbitrary decisions meant it was not.
“I had a patient – a little girl who had an infection that caused three out of four of her limbs to become gangrenous. All she needed to treat it was a simple medication. But, of course, we weren’t allowed to bring medications in – if [the authorities] found [those medicines on us], they could have either thrown them away or just completely denied us access in.
“This little girl had been in this hospital for at least more than a month – she’d been waiting for a medical evacuation to Jordan, but Israel continued to deny her medical evacuation. At the time I was there, she was supposed to be evacuated, but they denied it – twice while I was there. The first time they did not give a reason and then the second time they said it was because they wouldn’t allow her mother to go with her,” says Jane.
“This little girl was maybe two or three years old and for me, a paediatric and neonatal ICU nurse, this was unfathomable. To expect this toddler to go to another country, likely get her limbs amputated and then have rehabilitation in another country without her mother was ludicrous,” she adds.
Eventually, approval was given for the mother to go with her daughter. But, says Jane, the girl eventually had to have all three limbs amputated.
“It’s a tragedy in and of itself because this could have been remediated with a simple medication or an earlier evacuation. Her limbs became necrotic – they didn’t start out being necrotic. Her limbs being amputated was not something that needed to happen.”
Jane says that of all the patients she treated and all the suffering she saw in the hospital, the case of that girl stands out among her memories today.
Testimony from other doctors and healthcare workers shows that Jane’s experience was not unusual.
Two recent reports which detailed the almost complete destruction of maternal and reproductive healthcare in Gaza as a result of Israeli attacks were based on, or included, testimonies from physicians and healthcare workers, as well as affected women, which highlighted the appalling conditions in healthcare facilities.
Critics of Israel’s offensive in Gaza have variously described Israeli forces’ actions, including attacks on healthcare and other civilian infrastructure, as breaches of international humanitarian law, war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide.
Israel has repeatedly denied such charges and claimed that Hamas’s extensive use of the civilian environment for military purposes meant that large parts of urban Gaza had become legitimate military targets and accused the militant group of building a huge tunnel network under Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and other civilian buildings, housing its command centres and weapons stores.
But critics have also pointed to how the suffering caused by such attacks has been compounded by restrictions on aid coming into Gaza.
Jane, who is now back in her home country, says that these restrictions are continuing, despite a ceasefire having been in place since October.
Israeli authorities have banned certain items from being brought into Gaza over concerns they could be used by militants. But humanitarian and rights groups are critical of both the breadth and scope of ‘dual use’ restrictions imposed by Israel, a lack of clarity over what exactly constitutes a ‘dual use’ item, and seemingly ad hoc limitations on what can be brought in.
Jane said she knew of colleagues who were being refused entry to Gaza for carrying the most basic medical equipment.
“One doctor recently got denied entry because he was trying to bring his stethoscope in and when he said he needed it, the authorities said no, and they took his stethoscope from him and denied him entry,” she says.
Some rights groups say that continued restrictions appear to be irrational and could give rise to questions about their intent.
“Israeli officials, like Hamas officials, are being investigated for international crimes. Israel is being questioned as a state about its compliance with the Genocide Convention. There are provisional orders from the International Court of Justice about complying with the Genocide Convention, which demand that aid restrictions be lifted and that aid be provided, in particular medical aid. The refusal to follow those orders is legally significant,” Sam Zarifi, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), told IPS.
“In analysis of criminal intent, reckless or intentional disregard of foreseeable harm is, and can be, viewed as evidence of intent. The Israeli government has some of the best lawyers in the world, and I hope those lawyers are advising their clients that some of these policies raise very, very important questions about the intent behind them, because they do not seem to be otherwise rational,” he added.
Regardless of any intent, humanitarian groups say restrictions on aid are driving ongoing massive, widescale misery and suffering in Gaza.
This is despite the fact that vital aid is available and ready to be delivered quickly if allowed.
“We have hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving assistance ready outside Gaza. The supplies exist. What we need is more access,” Ricardo Pires, Communication Manager, Division of Global Communications and Advocacy at UNICEF, told IPS.
“We are still hearing about significant restrictions on medical supplies under the notion of being dual use. But we’re [also] looking at things like antibiotics, painkillers, specialised baby food. And these are all available. I mean, what’s very frustrating is that we know from the UN that there are trucks and warehouses full of the necessary supplies, and they can be, and they need to be, and they must be moved in as soon as possible. It is absolutely heartbreaking and mind-blowing and tragic that people in Gaza are still suffering from completely avoidable misery and harm,” added Zarifi.
It remains unclear when, or if, such restrictions will be eased, while a recent announcement by Israel of plans to ban 37 NGOs from operating in Gaza has also been criticised by rights groups who say it will further hinder the delivery of humanitarian aid in the country.
Jane, who would like to return to Gaza for further humanitarian work soon, says she is not hopeful of any improvement for the people there in the near future.
“This has gone on for almost two and a half years and we still don’t have [political] leaders who will stop sending arms to Israel, who will call for a ceasefire when a ceasefire was needed, and then who would actually make sure that the terms of the ceasefire are being are being honoured, because as we’ve seen recently, [Isreal is] continuing to drop bombs. But more than that, you can’t just create a ceasefire, then still not allow aid in. So, it’s hard to have hope for the future for Gaza,” she says.
*Jane’s name and country of origin have been excluded from this feature for her safety.
IPS UN Bureau Report
Excerpt:
Damages from the war and significant restrictions on medical supplies mean that "people in Gaza are still suffering from completely avoidable misery and harm." - Sam Zarifi, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 29 2026 (IPS) - The International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation in 2025 was a timely reminder that the stability of Mongolia’s economy rests on fragile mountain systems that are melting faster than ever recorded. The loss reverberates across the country’s energy and agricultural systems, two development pillars that draw from the same finite resource: water.
Warming and glacial retreat
Mongolia’s average surface air temperature is already 2.3°C higher than the pre-industrial baseline, about 1.3°C above the global average. The most fossil fuel-intensive climate scenario (SSP5) indicates nearly 8°C of warming by the end of the century with the steepest increases expected in the northern and western provinces; home to the country’s glaciers.
These glaciers contribute more than 70 per cent of Mongolia’s freshwater, sustaining agriculture, hydropower, and domestic use. Since 1940, glacier volume has declined by about 28 per cent, and total glacier area has decreased by 35 per cent between 1990 and 2016, leaving only 627 glaciers covering 334 km².
Between the 1980s and 2010, Mongolia lost 63 lakes larger than 0.1 km² and about 683 rivers, many in the foothills of the Altai ranges with the highest concentration of glaciers. Groundwater storage on the Mongolian Plateau is also decreasing at nearly 3 mm per year, linked partly to reduced glacial input.
Analysis using downscaled IPCC climate projections available on ESCAP’s Risk and Resilience Portal suggests that this trend is likely to continue in the coming decades and by 2,100 many western Altai glaciers may disappear entirely (Figures 1A and 1B).
Figure 1(A and B) Change in glacier area during 1990-2010 and (B) projected change in glacier mass balance (2021-2100) in Mongolia under climate change scenarios (Source: Kemp et al (2022). Mongolia’s cryosphere. Geomorphology)
Figure 2 change in glacial mass balance in the Altai Mountain region under existing and climate change scenarios
Water, energy and agriculture: A tightening nexus
Mongolia’s semi-arid climate has always made water a strategic asset for development.
Agriculture remains the largest water consumer, accounting for roughly two-thirds of total use. Since 2008, more than 1,000 hectares of irrigated land have been added annually, driven by food and livestock-security goals.
With prolonged dry conditions (Figure 3), farmers in western and northern provinces report increasing reliance on shallow wells and groundwater pumping, while pastures dry earlier in the season. These demands coincide with a growing push to expand hydropower for domestic energy security.
Figure 3 Exposure of livestock (sheep and goats) to soil moisture drought under climate change conditions
Hydropower in transition
Hydropower accounts for nearly one-fifth of Mongolia’s electricity generation, but its viability depends on stable water flow. In the western region, hydropower provides 93 per cent of locally produced energy.
The Durgun Hydropower Plant (HPP) in Khovd Province, for example, provides over 28 per cent of regional power but operates in one of the driest parts of the country. With glacier retreat and declining summer precipitation, inflows have become less predictable.
ESCAP drought-exposure modelling shows that the western provinces already face chronic low-to-medium drought intensity, with worsening conditions under future scenarios (Figure 3).
Figure 4 exposure of hydropower plants to drought (Standardized streamflow index) under climate change scenarios in the western region (Source: ESCAP Authors)
When summer river levels fall, reservoir storage drops, hydropower generation declines and diesel generation must fill the gap raising both costs and emissions. Meanwhile, agricultural water withdrawals upstream further constrain available flows for power generation.
The result is a feedback loop: limited water cuts hydropower output, leading to higher reliance on fossil energy, which in turn intensifies warming and glacier melt.
Competing pressures in a semi-arid economy
In the Western Energy Systems, consisting of provinces closest to the glaciers, rising demand compounds these stresses. Between 2018 and 2019, electricity consumption in the region rose 5.6 per cent, driven by population growth and mining expansion.
In summer months, when electricity demand peaks for irrigation pumping and cooling, river discharge often reaches its lowest levels. This mismatch between energy demand and hydrological supply poses a systemic risk. Climate projections show that long-term discharge in key basins will decline, reducing the economic lifespan of existing hydropower assets.
Addressing this challenge requires coordinated planning across water, energy, and agriculture. Three areas stand out:
1. Water-efficient agriculture. Expanding drip irrigation, adopting drought-resilient crop varieties, and improving on-farm water storage can reduce demand during low-flow periods. Aligning irrigation schedules with projected runoff cycles would ease pressure on hydropower reservoirs.2. Diversified renewables. Mongolia’s wind and solar resources can complement hydropower seasonality. Integrating hybrid systems with storage or pumped hydro can maintain grid stability during drought years.
3. Data-driven basin management. Glacier monitoring and real-time hydrological data should inform both irrigation allocation and hydropower operation. This shared evidence-based approach can prevent conflicts between sectors during dry spells.
Mongolia already emphasizes renewable diversification. By embedding glacier and river monitoring within sector planning, the policy can better anticipate seasonal stress rather than react to it.
From vulnerability to transformative adaptation
Glacier retreat, once viewed as an environmental concern, is now an economic one. For Mongolia, without adaptation and foresight, the combined stress of reduced meltwater, erratic rainfall, and rising temperatures could destabilize both food production and energy security.
Protecting these frozen reserves and managing the water they release means securing not only the country’s rivers but its power and food systems as well.
Resilience begins where risk meets foresight.
Madhurima Sarkar-Swaisgood is Economic Affairs Officer, ESCAP; Prangya Paramita Gupta is Disaster Risk Reduction Consultant, ESCAP; Parvathy Subha is Disaster Risk Reduction Consultant, ESCAP
IPS UN Bureau
Jan 28 2026 (IPS) - Gambia’s Supreme Court is considering whether a law protecting women and girls from female genital mutilation (FGM) is constitutional. The practice, common in Gambia, often involves forcibly restraining girls while parts of their genitals are cut, sometimes with the wound sewn shut.
FGM constitutes torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under international human rights law. It can result in death or life long health problems such as infections, fetal deaths, obstetric complications, and psychological effects. Now the Supreme Court will decide whether women and girls will continue to be protected from such harmful practices.
Religious leaders and a member of parliament failed to get parliament to overturn Gambia’s 2015 FGM ban in 2024. They have taken their fight all the way to the Supreme Court, contending that the ban violates constitutional rights to cultural and religious freedom. This effort isn’t just a setback for one small West African country—it’s part of a global backlash against women’s rights that threatens to unravel decades of progress protecting women and girls from a widespread form of gender-based violence.
There’s no medical justification for FGM, according to the World Health Organization. Medicalization of FGM, in which the procedure is carried out by health personnel, does not reduce the violation of human rights. Regardless of where and by whom it is performed, FGM is never safe.
There's no medical justification for FGM, according to the World Health Organization. Medicalization of FGM, in which the procedure is carried out by health personnel, does not reduce the violation of human rights. Regardless of where and by whom it is performed, FGM is never safe. Nonetheless, over 230 million girls and women have undergone FGM, with about 63 percent of these survivors (144 million) in Africa
Nonetheless, over 230 million girls and women have undergone FGM, with about 63 percent of these survivors (144 million) in Africa. In Gambia in 2020, nearly three-quarters of women and girls between 15 and 49 reported having the procedure, with almost two-thirds cut before age 5. This isn’t an abstract human rights issue—it’s a public health crisis affecting millions of women and girls and the consequences follow them for life.
FGM violates the right of women and girls to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to physical integrity, and life. Women and girls who have experienced FGM face complications during childbirth, chronic infections, psychological trauma, and in some cases, death. In August 2025, a one-month-old baby girl bled to death after FGM was performed on her.
The government’s 2015 ban was a breakthrough. Gambia joined dozens of countries recognizing that FGM violates fundamental human rights, the rights to health, bodily integrity, and freedom from torture. The government even adopted a national strategy to eliminate the practice entirely by 2030, aligning with global Sustainable Development Goals. The government’s implementation of the ban and the strategy has been slow and now faced with challenges.
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments that should chill anyone who cares about human rights. Media reported that one witness, a prominent Muslim leader, attempted to justify the violence against women and girls, saying that “female circumcision” is part of Islam and isn’t harmful. When asked about two babies who died from the procedure, he replied: “We are Muslims and if someone dies, it’s God’s will.” He went on to say that the practice’s benefit is reducing women’s sexual desire, “which could be a problem for men.”
The plaintiffs’ courtroom arguments don’t hold up to scrutiny. There’s no requirement for FGM in Sharia (Islamic law). It’s not part of the Sunna (Prophetic traditions) or considered an honorable act. The practice predates Islam and isn’t universal among Muslims—it’s a cultural practice that some communities have incorrectly linked to faith.
Moreover, framing FGM as a constitutional right to religious freedom is misleading. The Gambian constitution restricts rights, including religious or cultural, that impinge on other people’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as to life, from torture or inhuman treatment, and nondiscrimination.
Gambian organizations, including the Network Against Gender Base Violence and Women in Liberation and Leadership (WILL), are fighting this case. Civil society organizations mobilized survivors, community leaders, and women’s groups across the country to defeat efforts to repeal the law in Parliament in 2024. The opposition to the case is coming from women and girls whose lives literally depend on maintaining these protections.
“This is happening despite individuals being harassed, particularly on social media, for speaking out against the case creating an atmosphere where many survivors, including women’s rights defenders, are now choosing to be silent,” said Fatou Baleh, an anti-FGM activist, FGM survivor, and founder of WILL.
Gambia has ratified the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, its Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Article 5 (b) of the Maputo Protocol explicitly prohibits all forms of FGM and medicalization of the practice.
In July 2025, the government signed the African Union Convention on Ending Violence Against Women, which was adopted earlier that year, reaffirming its commitment to adopt and enforce legal measures to prevent harmful practices and protect survivors, reinforcing the constitutional duty to uphold the FGM ban.
The health and well-being of girls and women in Gambia now rests with the Supreme Court. However the court rules, the government needs to invest in ending FGM through comprehensive education programs, community-led initiatives, strong enforcement of existing laws, and medical and psychological support for survivors to protect hundreds of thousands of women and girls’ lives.
Juliana Nnoko is a senior women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
KABUL, Jan 28 2026 (IPS) - Young women in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, are trying their hands at unfamiliar tasks in embroidery, tailoring and designing beads in market stalls. Many should instead have been sitting at desks writing computer software or reporting news, the fields they trained for.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, highly educated women have been removed from their official positions and shut out of much of the formal workforce, compelling them to take up jobs unrelated to their field of training to cope with economic hardship and to avoid the mental strain of unemployment.
Professional opportunities for women have been drastically limited. Almost all women are barred from working in offices, the media, and other fields related to their education.
Lida, (a pseudonym) a computer science graduate, previously earned a good salary as an IT officer at the Ministry of Economy, a job she held for more than six years. She now lives in southeastern Kabul, working as a tailor and running a small shop. Her late husband, who worked for the Ministry of Rural Development, was killed in a Kabul bombing ten years ago.
Lida now shares a house with the family of her brother along with her five children, and says she is in dire financial straits. To make ends meet, she has sent one of her sons to sell plastic bags on the streets. Her younger son is still at school. Her daughter’s education has been suspended following Taliban’s edicts.
“When the Taliban returned to power I was forced out of my job, says Lida, “and I have not been able to find any within my profession in the last four years and therefore, had no option but to work as a shop assistant”.
The Taliban do not directly grant work permits to women to operate the shops. Instead, either a male family member or another man must first obtain the work permit for the shop
Many women are flocking to Kabul’s informal sector, but it provides limited opportunities, crowding them into shops, which only sell women’s clothing and cosmetics, serving primarily female customers.
The Taliban do not directly grant work permits to women to operate the shops. Instead, either a male family member or another man must first obtain the work permit for the shop. Only then can women work in the shop as salespeople or assistants, receiving a salary or a commission based on an agreed arrangement.
“Working in a tailoring workshop is very difficult and frustrating”, Lida complains adding, “I wish I could at least work in a computer shop, which is related to my field of study”.
Mursal, (a pseudonym) 27, a journalism graduate, has faced a similar fate. She worked as a reporter for eight years in various media outlets and, before the Taliban returned, was employed in an advocacy organization for journalists, where she enjoyed a good income and benefits.
Mursal, like dozens of other educated women, has become a shopkeeper. Private media outlets do not have adequate capacity to absorb many women, so instead of reporting the news, she now sells traditional Afghan clothes and products geared towards women.
Voicing her frustrations Mursal said she initially felt “very undervalued”. “People used to cast strange glances at us and, apart from that, my family wasn’t very happy with the job I was engaged in”. It is uncommon for women to operate shops in Afghanistan,
Mursal sells women’s clothes in southwestern Kabul, where she lives with her parents, both former government employees who are now unemployed.
“I have six sisters and one brother”, says Mursal, adding, “I cannot get married until they are on their feet, because I am responsible for all of them”. Her brother is only ten years old. Mursal makes about ten thousands Afghanis (127 euros) a month selling in the shop, which is hardly sufficient for the family to get by.
Even so, the Taliban’s moral police do not give the women any breathing space under the increasing precarious job situation. According to Mursal, officials from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice visit their shops three times a week to enforce an all-day rule requiring them to wear masks, which they find suffocating. They are also forced to conceal or remove pictures on women’s sleepwear.
“If the sleepwear is hidden, how would customers know which ones or what to buy?” she points out.
Defiance in the face of adversityWhile the women agonize over the likelihood of years of academic effort going to waste, they have nevertheless turned their situation as shopkeepers into a form of resistance to Taliban’s violations of their rights.
Forced to run shops to support their families, they may be glad to earn a little income, but their deeper pain comes from knowing that their skills and dreams in their chosen professions remain unused.
Still, it is a testament to their resilience in the face of severe restrictions imposed by the Taliban that they have readily taken up often unwanted jobs in the informal sector simply to survive and support their families.
The shift is not just about earning a living; it is a silent resistance. By taking on these roles, Afghan women are sending a clear signal that they will not remain silent and be airbrushed from the society.
Even when doors are closed to them in their professions, they find ways to stay active, contribute, and make a difference. They demonstrate that even a small window of opportunity can be transformed into meaningful participation, proving that Afghan women will continue to fight for their rights in any way they can.
Their resilience is a reminder that Taliban restrictions may limit opportunities, but they cannot erase ambition or their determination to create change.
By taking up these jobs, they make sure their presence is felt in society and stand strong in the face of the Taliban, who are trying to erase them from public life. Afghan women refuse to stay silent. They make it clear Afghan women will not disappear, they insist on being seen, heard, and counted.
Excerpt:
The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons