The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
ROME, May 20 2026 (IPS) - The tea in your cup this morning began its journey in someone else’s hands. Hands whose work most of us never think about. Almost certainly, those hands belonged to a smallholder farmer tending a small plot of land, plucking leaves by hand beneath long mornings of mist and rain.
Two leaves and a bud. Two leaves and a bud. Thousands of times. Smallholders account for about 60 percent of global tea supply. The industry built on their labor is worth US$19.5 billion a year and supports the economies of some of the world’s poorest countries. Yet the conditions that sustain that work – ecological, economic and climatic – are under growing pressure.
Smallholders account for about 60 percent of global tea supply. The industry built on their labor is worth US$19.5 billion a year and supports the economies of some of the world's poorest countries. Yet the conditions that sustain that work – ecological, economic and climatic – are under growing pressure
Tea is the most popular drink on earth after water. Global production reached 7.3 million tonnes last year, and per capita consumption continues to rise steadily. From the outside, the sector appears healthy.
Yet the millions of smallholder farming families driving that growth in China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi, Rwanda and beyond need stronger support if the sector’s momentum is to endure.
The geography of tea production is also a geography of economic necessity, linked to patterns of economic dependence and rural livelihoods. Kenya is the world’s largest tea exporter.
Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi and Rwanda rank among the global top ten. In these economies, revenues from tea exports help finance food imports and sustain rural livelihoods across entire regions. The sector remains a major source of employment and income for millions of poor families worldwide.
That income is more fragile than the industry’s headline numbers suggest. International tea prices, adjusted for inflation, have been declining for four decades.
The sector’s nominal value has expanded, while the real purchasing power of many producers has stagnated. FAO has documented what this means at the household level: when farmgate prices fall, smallholder families reduce spending on food, education and health care.
Smallholder producers also face limited market access, inadequate extension services, weak access to credit and technology, and persistent asymmetries in how value is distributed across the supply chain.
As production costs rise and price increases transmit unevenly through markets, many farming families struggle to generate sufficient returns to reinvest in farm renewal, climate adaptation or productivity improvements. These pressures heighten income volatility and make long-term planning increasingly difficult.
Tea production and processing are major sources of employment and income for women across East Africa and South Asia. When smallholder tea farming families prosper, women’s economic participation will determine whether that prosperity and stability hold.
Programmes that support women directly through training, market access and financial resources consistently produce stronger outcomes for both households and communities. In many tea-growing regions, women sustain not only household economies, but also the continuity of the knowledge and labor on which the crop depends.
Tea cultivation relies on highly specific agro-ecological conditions: altitude, rainfall patterns and temperatures shaped gradually over centuries in the regions where production became concentrated.
These conditions are becoming harder to predict and increasingly difficult to sustain. More erratic rainfall, fluctuating temperatures, and extreme weather events are already impacting both yields and quality.
For a smallholder farmer without savings or insurance, a lost harvest is not a temporary setback. It immediately affects household spending on food, medicine and schooling.
The unevenness of that burden is a central challenge. Larger operations often possess greater capacity to adapt through irrigation, diversification, upgrading and financial reserves.
Smaller producers, by contrast, frequently get trapped between increasing climate risks and limited investment capacity. Investment needs to be calibrated to the realities of smallholder tea farming rather than assumptions drawn from larger commercial operations.
What is at stake extends beyond a commodity market. Several tea-growing landscapes have been formally recognized by FAO as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems. These landscapes were shaped over generations through accumulated farming knowledge and long relationships between land, crop and community.
Tea cultivation depends on delicate balances of shade, slope, rainfall, soil health, and inherited knowledge built gradually over generations. Climate-related stress threatens these landscapes alongside the livelihoods and agricultural continuity they sustain.
More efficient, inclusive and sustainable value chains, including greater local value addition and stronger producer participation in markets, are essential if the benefits of the growing tea economy are to reach both the people and the environments that sustain it. Per capita tea consumption in many producing countries remains relatively low, meaning the sector’s growth potential is still substantial.
Ensuring the sector’s viability, however, requires more than rising consumption levels. Smallholder producers need better access to finance, markets, technology, and climate adaptation support calibrated to their realities.
More transparent and balanced value chains, targeted investment that reaches women directly, and stronger incentives for reinvestment at farm level will determine whether the industry’s future growth will remain economically and socially sustainable.
The farmer who grew your tea will get up again tomorrow morning before sunrise. The future of the sector depends on ensuring this remains a viable livelihood option.
You want to see a bright tea future? Join us in celebrating International Tea Day on 21 May!
Boubaker Ben-Belhassen is Director of the Markets and Trade Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
UNITED NATIONS, May 20 2026 (IPS) - The ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue to put immense stress and risk on the global economy.
A new UN report highlights that slowing growth, re-emerging inflation rates and heightened uncertainty affect the world entirely, but they are playing out differently across different economic brackets. Developing and vulnerable economies are feeling the shocks more acutely without sufficient resources or robust policies to address incoming challenges.
Released this week on May 19, the World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2026 report provides a breakdown of growth and inflation rates and the capacity of different regions to deal with the impact of the Middle East crisis. The consequences of the current conflict have reverberated across multiple sectors. Trade, energy and commodity prices, tourism, labor, and public and centralized financing have been disrupted as a result of the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
“What began as a blow to energy markets on the 28th of February has turned into a broader supply shock of uncertain scope, magnitude, and duration that is ripping across the world,” said Shantanu Mukherjee, Director of the Economic Analysis and Policy Division of UN DESA.
Ingo Pitterle, Senior Economist and Officer-in-charge of the Global Economic Monitoring Branch of the Economic Analysis and Policy Division of UN DESA, remarked that the current crisis “did not arrive in isolation.” It is only the latest in a “series of shocks in recent years” that has left the global economy “more vulnerable than before.”
“What makes this shock so difficult to absorb is the range of transmission channels,” said Pitterle. “Ultimately, the impact on each economy will depend on two things: how exposed it is to these channels, and how much room for policy it has.”
Mukherjee and Pitterle emphasized that the findings of their report were based on early projections, even as policies are shifting at a faster rate than the forecast cycle can capture, and as such, acknowledged that there may be certain limitations to their forecasts.
Global GDP growth is now forecast at 2.5 percent in 2026—0.2 percentage points below projections from January and well below pre-pandemic norms. A modest recovery is projected at 2.8 percent in 2027. Solid labor markets, resilient consumer demand, and AI-driven trade and investment in select economies are expected to provide some support, but the downgrade underscores a further weakening of an already subdued global outlook. When it comes to the environment, high energy prices may signal a short-term return to carbon-intensive fuels, though the report suggests that this may strengthen the case for a structural shift away from fossil-fuel dependence and toward renewable energy.
The shock is primarily felt in the energy sector—through constrained supply, surging prices, and rising freight and insurance costs—with effects cascading through supply chains and increasing production costs globally. While the surge in prices delivers substantial windfall gains for energy companies, it has intensified cost pressures for households and businesses worldwide. So far, lower-income households have been particularly vulnerable to cost pressures with a dearth of resources to handle the shocks. The overall impact will depend on the duration of disruptions in energy markets, leaving the outlook highly uncertain.
The current downgraded global outlook understates the scale of the setback. The conflict in the Middle East threatens the hard-won gains toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and will only slow further progress. The economic shocks are eroding food security, income streams and investments. The report warns that renewed pressures also compound a development financing squeeze, where debt-service costs are crowding out spending on health and education, and the financing and development gap sits at USD 4 trillion.
Broadly, regional impacts have manifested differently across countries. There are mounting pressures on countries dependent on fuel exports from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, particularly in South Asia and Western Asia. Developing economies within these regions are expected to be hardest-hit by the conflict.
The report shows that Western Asia is projected to be severely impacted by the current crisis. Growth is projected to plunge from 3.6 per cent in 2025 to 1.4 per cent in 2026. In addition to energy shocks, the destruction of critical infrastructure, disruptions to oil production, trade and tourism, and escalating regional conflicts all contribute to the uncertain economic prospects for the region.
The economic outlook for Africa is weakened by shipping and energy market disruptions as well. Its growth in 2026 is projected at 3.9 percent, 0.1 percentage points below what initial forecasts predicted earlier in January. High food and fuel costs are expected to push inflation rates to 9.9 percent in 2026, an upward revision of 0.8 percentage points from January projections. Oil and gas exporters in countries like Algeria and Angola may benefit from higher prices, but gains may be offset by imports.
Remittances are a vulnerability, given that several economies in Africa, South and Southeast Asia are dependent on remittance inflows from migrant workers, including those in Gulf states. In Egypt and Ethiopia, where flows from Gulf states account for 73 percent and 20 percent, respectively, this represents an exposure to income shocks. In the case of South Asian countries like Bangladesh and Nepal, weaker remittance flows also threaten their GDPs.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the current conflict will affect labor markets long after it has ended. As with economic growth, trade and energy prospects, it will be determined by the scale and duration of the conflict. At present however, the Arab states and the Asia-Pacific regions are likely the most affected by the economic shocks due to their integration with Gulf energy flows, trade routes, supply chains and labor migration. Disruptions have already manifested, such as weakening remittance flows and declines in labor deployments to GCC states.
Although these reports paint a somber picture of global prospects, they also reveal the potential for international cooperation to address these vulnerabilities and build resilience. Multilateral actors, including financial institutions, need to take deliberate measures to increase productive capacities and address structural barriers that restrict fiscal space. Renewable energy is increasingly shown to be strategically important for reducing exposure to fossil fuel shocks. Yet, investments toward renewable energy remain uneven, which limits the ability of developing economies to reap the benefits.
IPS UN Bureau Report
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, May 20 2026 (IPS) - Sharp surges in energy, fertilizer, and food prices triggered by the ongoing conflict in the Persian Gulf strikingly illustrate the deep interconnections between geopolitical conflict, food insecurity, and the fragility of fossil fuel–dependent food systems.
Besides carrying roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day (about 27 percent of global oil exports), the Strait of Hormuz also handles 20–30 percent of internationally traded inorganic fertilizers, which uses natural gas as a key ingredient in its production. Its closure has immediately disrupted the flow of these essential commodities, triggering sharp price spikes in fuel and key agricultural inputs.
This situation demonstrates how geopolitical instability can rapidly disrupt essential agricultural functions under current input-dependent, industrial production systems that rely heavily on external energy and supply chains. This crisis highlights, more clearly than ever, a critical reality: food systems tied to fossil fuels are inherently unsustainable, continually undermine food sovereignty, and disproportionately affect farmers, particularly smallholders in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). World Food Programme estimates warn that, if the conflict continues, the soaring oil, shipping and food costs will push an additional 45 million people into acute hunger, driving the global total beyond its record 319 million1.
Reducing food systems’ reliance on fossil fuels and external inputs is essential to strengthen our collective resilience to future shocks. The truth is that fossil fuels courses through every stage of the food system – from fertilizers and pesticides to processing, preservation, transportation, packaging, food waste disposal, and even food preparation. Moreover, entrenched economic and political structures lock in this fossil-fuel dependence through massive subsidies and price protections – estimated at over $1 trillion in recent years2.
Food systems account for at least 15 percent of total fossil fuel use – mostly through synthetic fertilizers 4 – but also to power machinery and vehicles, and generate electricity and heat for key processes like irrigation, grain drying, livestock housing, and food storage.
Agroecological approaches to food production offer an alternative to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels while still meeting the needs of a growing global population. This supports a transition from energy-sink systems to regenerative ones, radically enhancing food systems’ resilience in the face of escalating geopolitical instability and environmental vulnerability.
Agroecology is based on natural processes and local resources for sustainable soil fertility. Crucially, many of these practices draw directly from indigenous knowledge systems, where local communities have long maintained soil health through time. Practical steps include the use of organic fertilization (often blended with minimal synthetic inputs), efficient soil microorganisms, nitrogen-fixing plants, and soil health practices like crop rotation, cover cropping, intercropping, reduced tillage, and crop-livestock integration.
Research consistently shows that agroecological approaches – such as farm diversification and tree integrated systems – outperform conventional systems in climate resilience, nutrient cycling, and soil health5,6, often while boosting yields7-9. Agroforestry also provides a source of wood fuel, making it a valuable alternative during fossil fuel shortages and price spikes.
Examples can be found worldwide. Peruvian cocoa farmers are using bokashi and bio-oil amendments to restore soil organic matter, regenerate microbial activity, and enhance nutrient cycling10. In Vietnam, rice-fish coculture systems optimize nutrient cycling, curb pests, and diversify outputs – lowering costs while stabilizing farmer incomes11. Ethiopian farmers practicing wheat-fava bean rotations are cutting fertilizer needs while improving soil structure and building long-term fertility11. India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)’, delivers biodiversity benefits while more than doubling farmers’ economic profits and maintaining comparable crop yields, than chemical-based farming 12,13.
Other farm-level steps to curb fossil fuel dependence include integrating renewable energy sources for on-site generation and operations – like solar panels, biogas digesters, and wind turbines; solar water pumps, adopting fuel-efficient engines and draft animals; and embracing practices such as minimum tillage, precision irrigation, integrated pest management, and low-input crop-livestock systems.
More fundamentally, shifting from global, industrial commodity chains toward territorial, agroecological food networks can relocalize production, processing, and consumption – shortening supply chains and reducing energy-intensive operations. Shorter, localized supply chains reduce reliance on long-distance transport, lower packaging demand, and promote reusable packaging systems, thereby decreasing fossil fuel consumption.
These efforts can be reinforced by complementary practices that strengthen food sovereignty, such as home gardens and urban agriculture. Crucially, agroecology also aligns with reduced production of ultra-processed foods – among the most energy-intensive products – helping to curb fossil fuel use while potentially improving public health.
In the short term, it is crucial that the allocation of emergency funds are earmarked to procure or purchase organic alternatives to synthetic fertilizers, particularly in the most affected regions. Longer-term, it is necessary to reduce structural barriers to farmers’ adoption of these agroecological approaches including reforms to agricultural subsidies and strengthening support for technical assistance and local governance.
References
1. Farge, E. Iran war may push 45 million people into acute hunger by June, WFP says. Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-war-may-push-45-million-people-into-acute-hunger-by-june-wfp-says-2026-03-17/ (2026).
2. IPES-Food. Fuel to Fork: What Will It Take to Get Fossil Fuels out of Our Food Systems? https://ipes-food.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/FuelToFork.pdf (2025).
3. FAO, UNDP, and UNEP. A Multi-Billion-Dollar Opportunity – Repurposing Agricultural Support to Transform Food Systems. (FAO, UNDP, and UNEP, 2021). doi:10.4060/cb6562en.
4. Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Power Shift: Why We Need to Wean Industrial Food Systems off Fossil Fuels. https://futureoffood.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ga_food-energy-nexus_report.pdf (2023).
5. Niether, W., Jacobi, J., Blaser, W. J., Andres, C. & Armengot, L. Cocoa agroforestry systems versus monocultures: a multi-dimensional meta-analysis. Environ. Res. Lett. 15, 104085 (2020).
6. Beillouin, D., Ben‐Ari, T., Malézieux, E., Seufert, V. & Makowski, D. Positive but variable effects of crop diversification on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Glob. Change Biol. 27, 4697–4710 (2021).
7. Dittmer, K. M. et al. Agroecology Can Promote Climate Change Adaptation Outcomes Without Compromising Yield In Smallholder Systems. Environ. Manage. 72, 333–342 (2023).
8. Rodenburg, J., Mollee, E., Coe, R. & Sinclair, F. Global analysis of yield benefits and risks from integrating trees with rice and implications for agroforestry research in Africa. Field Crops Res. 281, 108504 (2022).
9. Jones, S. K. et al. Achieving win-win outcomes for biodiversity and yield through diversified farming. Basic Appl. Ecol. 67, 14–31 (2023).
10. Altieri, M. A. & Nicholls, C. I. Agroecology and the reconstruction of a post-COVID-19 agriculture. J. Peasant Stud. 47, 881–898 (2020).
11. FAO. The State of Food and Agriculture 2022. (FAO, 2022). doi:10.4060/cb9479en.
12. Berger, I. et al. India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’, delivers biodiversity and economic benefits without lowering yields. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 9, 2057–2068 (2025).
13. O’Garra, T. Agroecology benefits people and planet. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 9, 1973–1974 (2025).
14. IPES-Food. Food from Somewhere: Building Food Security and Resilience through Territorial Markets. https://ipes-food.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FoodFromSomewhere.pdf (2024).
15. Einarsson, R. Nitrogen in the Food System. https://tabledebates.org/building-blocks/nitrogen-food-system (2024) doi:10.56661/2fa45626.
Lulseged Desta, CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program; Jonathan Mockshell, Alliance Biodiversity International – CIAT
IPS UN Bureau
HELSINKI, Finland / SANTIAGO, Chile / SUVA, Fiji / TOKYO, Japan, May 20 2026 (IPS) - Just four years of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development remain. What comes after 2030 is already a political battleground.
The next global development framework is being shaped now: through quiet agenda-setting, shifting alliances, financing choices, contested norms, and decisions about who gets to participate and who is pushed to the margins. That matters because the world that will shape what comes next is not the world that adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.
The context is harsher, more fractured and less generous. Geopolitical fragmentation is deepening. Armed conflicts are distorting priorities. Climate impacts are accelerating. Development finance is under growing strain. Civic space is shrinking. Public trust in multilateralism is weaker. And too often, the rights, equality and accountability commitments that gave the SDGs their normative force are treated as negotiable.
“We step into the next decade against the background of climate chaos, growing inequality and increasing poverty. The scaffolding for positive change shall be to infuse democratic values in the blood stream of all our governments from the Right to the Left,” says Dr. Moses Isooba, executive director of the Uganda National NGO Forum and Vice-Chair of Forus.
The post-2030 debate must confront the political and structural weaknesses that limited implementation the first time around.
As a civil society network, we have been here from the very beginning. We have secured the adoption of the SDGs with the Beyond 2015 campaign, pushed for innovation and ambition, challenged power, brought forward the voices of communities, and held systems accountable. That role evolves and as we now look “beyond 2030”, we remain present, engaged, and determined to influence what comes next.
One message comes through clearly: the next agenda will only be credible if we are clear about three things — what must be defended, what must be demanded, and what must be declined.
What must be defended
Some foundations of the current framework remain essential and must not be traded away for the sake of political convenience.
The first is universality. One of the most important achievements of the SDGs was to establish that sustainable development is not only a concern for lower income countries, but a universal responsibility. Policies, consumption patterns and economic models that drive inequality, exclusion and ecological harm must be addressed in all regions. High-income countries must not only finance development but also reform their own adverse policies. If the next framework weakens the recognition that sustainable development must integrate social justice, equality, environmental sustainability, peace and human rights, it will not move us forward. It will mark a retreat.
The second is civic space. Civil society participation is one of the conditions that makes accountability, inclusion and implementation possible yet it is increasingly constrained by financial pressures, exclusion from global decision-making processes and erosion of fundamental rights. A future agenda which prioritises resources and protection for civil society supports the building of stable, sustainable societies.
The third is local leadership. Communities and local civil society actors remain closest to the realities that global frameworks claim to address, yet they are still structurally under-resourced and under-represented. Localisation beyond the “buzzword” can bring essential resources for problem diagnosis and planning, increasing effectiveness and legitimacy for sustainable development and peacebuilding.
And finally, what must be defended is multilateralism itself, not as an abstract ideal, but as the shared political space where common commitments can still be built.
“Safeguarding the structures created to advance peace, cooperation and rights sustains global hope and possibilities to address common global challenges. This is in the interests of us all, future generations and the planet.” Silla Ristimäki, Adviser at Fingo. “This is why ambitious reform of the UN cannot be separated from the post-Agenda 2030 discussion.”
What must be demanded
Defending core principles is not enough. Negotiations about the future must also correct what the Agenda 2030 left unresolved.
At the centre of this is financing. A credible post-2030 framework cannot rest on the same unequal financial architecture that has constrained implementation for years. Debt burdens, unequal fiscal space, volatile aid flows and weak commitments have all narrowed the room for governments and communities to act. Financing reforms must include debt restructuring and relief, fairer lending terms, increased concessional finance, stronger domestic resource mobilisation, tax justice, policy coherence and predictable support for civil society.
“Many countries are spending more on debt than education or health. We need to reform the current unjust international financial architecture,” says Aoi Horiuchi, Senior Advocacy Officer at JANIC, the civil society network for international cooperation in Japan.
Accountability must also be stronger. Voluntary reporting and soft review mechanisms have not been enough. A future agenda must be backed by mandatory, transparent and regular review, with independent oversight and a formal role for civil society and local actors in tracking progress and exposing implementation gaps.
And participation must mean more than consultation after decisions are already taking shape. Civil society needs a formalised, meaningful and safe role in both negotiating and implementing the future framework, especially for local actors and groups continuing to face structural or political exclusion.
“Meaningful change comes from meaningful participation. That’s why we need to defend civic space,” says Horiuchi.
What must be declined
Some directions already visible in early discussions must be rejected outright.
A thinner agenda that lowers ambition in the name of consensus must be declined. So must any attempt to weaken universality, rights, gender equality, civic freedoms or climate ambition for political expediency.
The continuation of a financial status quo that deepens inequality while speaking the language of partnership must also be declined. So must accountability arrangements that remain symbolic, selective or performative.
And tokenistic participation must be named for what it is. A process that brings civil society into the room for appearance’s sake while excluding it from agenda-setting, decision-making and follow-through is managed exclusion.
Finally, as development governance evolves, the expanding role of private and philanthropic actors must not come without public-interest safeguards, democratic oversight and accountability. Public goals cannot be left to unaccountable power.
We must get out of silos, create spaces of dialogue, of co-responsibility and raise the question of whether the post-2030 framework will be more honest about power, more serious about accountability, more capable of confronting structural inequality, and more open to those whose lives and rights are most at stake.
Our answer is here:
Defend what must not be lost.
Demand what must be corrected.
Decline what would weaken the future.
IPS UN Bureau
KATHMANDU, Nepal, May 20 2026 (IPS) - Normally, resolutions voted at the United Nations General Assembly do not make the headlines.
As nonbinding and mostly symbolic, rich in principles yet empty and lacking the power to carry consequences, these statements are shrugged off and ignored.
But there are exceptions, and today’s (May 20) UNGA vote is one of them. The reason is that a positive vote would constitute a significant development in the evolution of international environmental law. To understand what we are referring to, let us allow a small flashback.
Far from South Asia, a trailblazing effort to hold a private corporation accountable for climate-damaging harm played out in a German court in recent years. For the first time, a Peruvian farmer filed a case against a major German energy company, accusing it of gravely damaging his livelihood due to its contributions to climate warming.
Even though this case, known as Lliuya v. RWE, was ultimately rejected in May 2025, it opened a new era in one of the most promising fields for achieving climate justice: climate litigation.
In the words of experts from the Grantham Research Institute, Lliuya v. RWE “established a powerful legal precedent that can be replicated in courts worldwide and will shape the trajectory for future climate litigation: corporate greenhouse gas emitters can, in principle, be held liable for their contribution to climate change impacts.”
Climate litigation, as an approach to pursue justice, is relatively new but is on the rise worldwide. There are more and more legal cases being filed in courts of law to uphold the principles of climate equity and climate justice and to pursue the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, a precondition to the enjoyment of other rights, such as the right to life, health, and an adequate standard of living.
After years of litigation, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the state has an obligation to reduce emissions because adaptive efforts alone are insufficient. More groundbreaking cases followed. In the Los Cedros case, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court established another pioneering precedent, affirming the primacy of the Right of Nature over mining concessions.
These rulings created momentum for bolder climate action, both in courts and in the streets, where millions of people across the Global South and North protested vigorously against climate injustice.
Within the international climate regime established by the Paris Agreement in 2015, the voices of developing nations, especially small island developing states, grew louder in opposition to unchecked greenhouse gas pollution, mostly from the Global North.
Unfortunately, there have been only very partial advancements within the UNFCCC framework. Last year, Climate COP 30, chaired by Brazil in Belém and supposed to be the COP of action and implementation, ended in another major disappointment. It is difficult to find optimism that the upcoming COP 31 in Türkiye will bear the transformative results humanity so desperately needs.
But an extraordinary legal effort, initially launched by law students from the Pacific in 2021 and later embraced by the Government of Vanuatu, paid off. On 23 July last year, the International Court of Justice issued the landmark Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change. It was a truly game-changing moment for the fight for climate justice, even if the AO is non-binding.
Among its several remarkable aspects, the Paris Agreement’s obligations are not only procedural but also substantive, and states have stringent due diligence obligations. The ICJ also rejected the concept of “Lex Specialis,” clarifying that states’ obligations extend beyond the Paris Agreement, which, as a treaty, does not take precedence over other sources of law.
In plain terms, governments cannot hide behind the negotiations within the various climate COPs. They must do more. The ruling explicitly demands that states do whatever they can, within their means, to meet their commitments to reduce climate change.
It is not enough for a state to submit a Nationally Determined Contribution, its national plan to mitigate greenhouse emissions. A state may also be considered responsible for failing to take regulatory and legislative measures to limit not only its own emissions but also greenhouse gases produced by the private sector within its own borders.
The AO could not be clearer: “A breach by a State of any of the obligations identified by the Court in relation to climate change constitutes an internationally wrongful act entailing the responsibility of that State.”
Today, the Pacific island of Vanuatu, a true trailblazer showing that small developing nations can punch above their weight with moral leadership, is once again attempting to make history by bringing a UNGA Resolution on the AO.
Even without enforceable power, this resolution wants to reaffirm the principles enshrined in the Advisory Opinion, marking another step toward states’ accountability under international law.
According to the Climate Litigation Database, hosted by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, more than 3,000 lawsuits have been filed against governments and private-sector carbon emitters, including banks and asset management companies.
Today’s UNGA Resolution was supported by a diverse coalition including the Netherlands, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Barbados, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Jamaica, the Philippines, and Burkina Faso.
Despite Nepal’s limited international engagement in recent months due to its own political transitions and elections, the new government led by Prime Minister Balendra Shah must join this group of nations.
Nepal must devise a strategy to revamp its climate efforts at the international level and, critically, do so beyond the Paris Agreement negotiations. There must be recognition that future negotiations within the UNFCCC will not be less fraught or complicated.
A series of policy papers published by the British think tank ODI exposed the hypocrisy of many governments that, in theory, are sympathetic and supportive of the climate fight of small island developing states, yet in their own submissions before the ICJ, resisted and opposed further legal obligations beyond the Paris Agreement.
This duplicity is embraced not only by developed nations but also by India and China, two of the most vocal defenders of the rights of developing nations within the Paris Agreement framework.
The incredibly complex politics of climate negotiations mean only one thing: courts of law may end up offering the only realistic venue for climate-vulnerable nations to pursue redress. As explained by The Guardian, Vanuatu was even forced to compromise some of the most progressive and climate-justice-centered aspects of this resolution in order to build the widest possible coalition of supporting nations.
Meanwhile, the ongoing tensions in the Gulf are offering a silver lining: more and more nations are realizing that phasing out carbon emissions is becoming irreversible. A few weeks ago, a pioneering gathering was held in Santa Marta, Colombia, the first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Although Nepal was invited, there was no news of the government’s participation.
While climate negotiations within the UNFCCC should not be dismissed, it is time to embrace another approach to seeking climate justice. The pursuit of climate justice through local and international courts may offer the most effective remedy to ensure the primary goal of the Paris Agreement, limiting climate warming to 1.5°C, is realistically pursued.
Nepal’s government will surely cast the right vote at the UNGA today. At the same time, we hope the new federal government will do whatever it takes to reiterate and expand its commitment to international law to stop climate change in the highest courts and global forums. We also hope it will create a conducive environment for climate litigation to thrive and become a tool for climate accountability that reaches everyone.
Shristi Gautam is the Past Co-Lead of World’s Youth for Climate Justice, Nepal, and Founder of Nyaya Vatika; Simone Galimberti is the pro bono co-founder of The Good Leadership.
IPS UN Bureau
May 19 2026 (IPS) -
Where does real power reside in the UN development system? A new policy brief from Cepei, a Colombian development policy institute, and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), presented earlier in May, poses this deceptively simple question. The answer matters because institutions that cannot govern fairly or transparently struggle to sustain legitimacy, and legitimacy is essential for peace.
The Cepei-IDOS diagnosis identifies a “triple disconnect” that structures contemporary development governance. Formal oversight bodies (the Executive Boards, ECOSOC, the General Assembly) set policy directions but control only a fraction of financing. Real resources flow through bilateral arrangements between major donors and agency leadership, operating largely beyond collective scrutiny. The ten largest donors shape system priorities through informal channels of influence. Meanwhile, the programme countries that host the vast majority of UN development operations report significantly weaker upstream influence than traditional donor states. This misalignment between authority, resources and voice is no longer incidental. It has become embedded in the way the system operates.
What transforms this observation from an efficiency problem into a peace imperative is the reality that ungovernable systems cannot respond to prevention and peacebuilding needs. A development architecture shaped disproportionately by donor priorities and limited programme-country voice lacks the legitimacy, flexibility and democratic accountability required to address the structural drivers of conflict. When host countries experience UN operations as imposed rather than negotiated, and when funding priorities reflect donor interests rather than local prevention priorities, the development system becomes an actor in grievance production, not prevention.
The governance–legitimacy nexus works in both directions. Ungovernable institutions erode the multilateral system’s credibility in the Global South. Successive rounds of ineffective UN reform, driven by incremental adjustments within existing power structures, signal to programme countries that the system is designed to resist their inclusion. This perception is strengthened when donors can navigate around formal governance bodies through bilateral arrangements. Over time, institutional opacity breeds delegitimation. The UN is then weakened as a platform for both development cooperation and conflict prevention, because confidence in its democratic character has fractured.
The Cepei-IDOS brief positions the first 1000 days of the next Secretary-General’s term as a narrow window for visible structural change. The argument is neither revolutionary nor naive. It does not propose wholesale redesign of the UN system. Rather, it suggests that an incoming Secretary-General with political capital and an informed strategic agenda can make power visible, realign financial flows with governance decisions, strengthen coordination across fragmented programme delivery, and treat programme country inclusion not as charitable consultation but as an operational requirement. Small shifts in how decisions are made, where resources are allocated and whose voice is heard can accumulate into meaningful redistributions of power.
For those committed to multilateral peace and development, the brief is important precisely because it refuses the false choice between institutional realism and structural ambition. It recognises that the current system is durable and resistant to change. It also demonstrates that durability does not mean immutability. The Secretary-General occupies a unique position to convene, name problems and propose sequenced shifts in practice. Whether that role is exercised for incremental adjustment or for visible realignment of power depends on the strategic choices made in the first 1000 days, when institutional attention is high and political mandates are fresh.
The launch event captured something essential about the moment. Participants acknowledged that the system is ungovernable as presently designed while recognising that accepting that reality is not the same as accepting its inevitability. The brief itself can serve as an anchor for what peace advocates and policymakers need to argue in the months ahead: that the next Secretary-General should treat governance reform not as a technical fix but as a peace imperative. When multilateral institutions are trusted by the countries they purport to serve, they become more effective instruments of prevention and cooperation. When they are experienced as vehicles for donor capture, they become part of the problem they claim to address.
If the next Secretary-General treats governance reform as a peace imperative rather than a technical exercise, the UN development system can begin to rebuild the legitimacy it is steadily losing among the countries and communities it exists to serve.
Related articles from this author:
The Secretary-General This Moment Demands
From Reform to Reinvention: Reimagining the United Nations for the 21st Century
The UN’s Withering Vine: A US Retreat from Global Governance
Jordan Ryan is a member of the Toda International Research Advisory Council (TIRAC) at the Toda Peace Institute, a Senior Consultant at the Folke Bernadotte Academy and former UN Assistant Secretary-General with extensive experience in international peacebuilding, human rights, and development policy. His work focuses on strengthening democratic institutions and international cooperation for peace and security. Ryan has led numerous initiatives to support civil society organisations and promote sustainable development across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He regularly advises international organisations and governments on crisis prevention and democratic governance.
This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished from the original with their permission.
IPS UN Bureau
ROME, May 19 2026 (IPS) - For thousands of years, humans have kept bees. Beekeeping is a key agricultural activity, yet its full potential remains largely unrealized. Beekeeping produces far more than honey and generates far more income than many have chosen to acknowledge.
The contribution of bees to global agrifood systems runs to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, a figure that should anchor national policy and investment decisions, not appear as a footnote in environmental reports.
The case for investing more substantially in sustainable beekeeping and pollinator conservation can be and has been made at the farm level. When farming practices actively support pollinator health through crop diversification, reduced agrochemical use, and biodiversity-friendly habitat management, the results are measurable and can be significant.
As an example, in cashew cultivation in South India, agroecological farming practices increased the abundance of insect pollinators visiting flowers by nearly 400 percent, with yields trending substantially higher as a result.
Beekeeping generally requires relatively low capital investment, generates income across multiple product streams, and is well-suited to the resource constraints of small-scale producers
Cashew, like many high-value crops, suffers acute yield losses in the absence of pollinators, losses that better conservation of bees and other pollinators can directly address.
Beekeeping generally requires relatively low capital investment, generates income across multiple product streams, and is well-suited to the resource constraints of small-scale producers. In increasingly fragile and climate-stressed environments where other agricultural activities face growing uncertainty, beekeeping has shown unusual resilience.
Of the roughly 25,000 bee species on Earth, only 8 to 11 are honeybees. Around those species, humanity has built very advanced management systems, refined over millennia and now increasingly integrated with modern science. Many countries across the world have made beekeeping a pillar of rural livelihoods, and in 2017 World Bee Day officially entered the United Nations calendar.
Celebrated each year on 20 May, it marks the birthday of Slovenian Anton Janša, a founding figure of modern apiculture. We have made great strides in raising awareness of the importance of bees and other pollinators and the role they play in our lives and now we need to step up our efforts.
One important action that can promote sustainable beekeeping and realize its true economic and food security potential is to recognize bees as a valuable natural asset. When governments include beekeeping in national agriculture investments and support its potential to generate income, they can promote fair and just development of domestic value chains for a range of hive products.
This enables beekeepers to earn higher prices in international markets by producing honey that is sustainable and traceable. FAO’s “Good Beekeeping Practices for Sustainable Apiculture” provide guidelines for sustainable colony management, integrated pest and disease control, habitat stewardship, and the value chain development that allows beekeepers to generate returns beyond raw honey.
These practices, which have been tested across developing country contexts can raise both hive productivity and beekeeper income.
Another key action is to promote sustainable beekeeping through improving extension services, input subsidies, and training programs; these should be designed to help small-scale producers to integrate beekeeping into their production systems, capturing both the pollination benefits and the income from hive products that conventional farm support systems often overlook.
A further and equally important action is to ensure that benefits from beekeeping are accessible and reach those who need them most. Women and young people represent a growing segment of the global beekeeping community and have a lot to gain from having diversified income sources. When they can access training, equipment, and markets on equal terms, productivity and hive health have shown to improve.
The partnership between humans and bees has lasted for thousands of years and continues to evolve.
From the forests of Ethiopia to the pine slopes of Turkey, from the clover fields of Argentina to the manuka hillsides of New Zealand; farmers and beekeepers have long understood what agricultural policy is only beginning to recognize: that sustainable beekeeping and pollinator conservation can be a key asset for not only farming communities but for sustainable agrifood systems, the environment and the global community as a whole.
Thanawat Tiensin is the Assistant Director-General, Director, Animal Production and Health Division, FAO