The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
MANDERA, Kenya, , Feb 10 2026 (IPS) - Every morning before sunrise, 10-year-old Amina Adan walks away from school and toward a shrinking water pan on the outskirts of Rhamu, Mandera County. By the time her classmates would be opening exercise books, Amina was already balancing a yellow jerrycan almost half her size.
Her mother, Fatuma Adan, says the choice is no longer between education and chores — it is between water and survival.
“When there is no water, there is no food, and there is no school,” Fatuma explains. “The children must help; we don’t make it through the day.”
Amina’s story reflects a widening crisis across Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), where prolonged drought is reversing hard-won gains on poverty reduction, food security, health, and education — core pillars of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
A Drought Stretches Systems Beyond Their Limits
According to Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority (NDMA), Mandera remains in the alarm phase, following repeated rainfall failures that saw the October–December 2025 short rains deliver just 30–60 per cent of the long-term average. Water pans have dried up, pasture has collapsed, and households dependent on pastoralism are rapidly losing their main source of food and income.
National food and nutrition security assessments show that more than 2.15 million people in Kenya’s ASAL counties are currently in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, while over 800,000 children aged 6–59 months require treatment for acute malnutrition. County health officials in Mandera report rising admissions to Outpatient Therapeutic Programmes (OTPs) as families exhaust food reserves and milk production from livestock dwindles.
The crisis is not confined to Kenya. Across the Horn of Africa, the United Nations estimates that nearly 24 million people in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are facing acute water insecurity, following years of recurrent drought and climate shocks. UNICEF warns that 2.7 million children across the region are already out of school due to drought-related displacement, with another 4 million at risk if conditions persist.
“These climate shocks are no longer one-off emergencies,” says a county education officer in Mandera. “They are structural, and they are shaping how — or whether — children grow, learn, and thrive.”
Education Disrupted, Futures Delayed
In Mandera North, schools sit at the front line of the crisis. Teachers describe classrooms thinning out as families migrate in search of pasture and water, taking children with them. Others remain behind but struggle to concentrate amid hunger and exhaustion.
Abdikadir Adan Alio, a county education official in Mandera, says attendance in some drought-affected schools has dropped sharply, with girls disproportionately affected as water collection and household responsibilities fall on them first.
For development experts, the implications go beyond short-term learning loss. Interrupted education weakens human capital, undermines long-term economic productivity, and reduces communities’ ability to adapt to future climate shocks — a direct setback to SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 1 (No Poverty).
“If children miss school year after year, the damage becomes generational,” warns Dr Ali Abdi, a humanitarian education specialist working in northern Kenya.
Health and Nutrition Under Strain
Health workers say drought is accelerating a dangerous cycle of hunger, disease, and vulnerability among children. With water scarce, hygiene suffers, increasing the risk of diarrhoeal diseases that further weaken malnourished children.
At mobile clinics operating in remote parts of Mandera, health teams screen children for malnutrition, provide therapeutic foods, and refer severe cases to stabilisation centres. Many of these services are delivered through partnerships between county governments and humanitarian agencies.
“Early detection is saving lives,” says a nutrition officer involved in outreach programmes. “But the caseload keeps rising, and the distances families travel are growing.”
These pressures directly threaten SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) — goals that had shown gradual progress before climate extremes intensified.
Protection Risks Rise as Coping Mechanisms Fail
As drought erodes livelihoods, families are forced into negative coping strategies. Humanitarian agencies report increased risks of child labour, early marriage, and gender-based violence, particularly in remote settlements where social safety nets are weakest.
Girls are especially vulnerable. When resources run low, education is often the first to be cut.
“Drought doesn’t just take food and water,” says a community leader in Mandera. “It takes safety and dignity from children.”
What Is Working: Integrated, Child-Centred Solutions
Despite the scale of the crisis, evidence from Mandera and other ASAL counties shows that integrated responses can cushion children from the worst impacts and protect progress on the SDGs.
Mobile health and nutrition clinics, supported by county governments and organisations such as UNICEF and Save the Children, are reaching nomadic and displaced families who would otherwise fall outside the health system. These clinics combine nutrition screening, immunisation, and maternal health services, reducing the need for long journeys to fixed facilities.
Cash transfer programmes, implemented by government agencies with support from partners including World Vision, are enabling households to prioritise food, water, and healthcare according to their most urgent needs. Studies show that cash support can significantly reduce negative coping strategies and help keep children in school during shocks.
Meanwhile, investments in water trucking, borehole rehabilitation, and climate-resilient water infrastructure are stabilising access in drought hotspots. Although costly, experts argue these interventions are essential to safeguarding SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and preventing repeated humanitarian emergencies.
Community-based approaches are also proving effective. Trained volunteers conduct nutrition screening at the household level, identifying at-risk children early and linking families to services before conditions deteriorate.
“These interventions work best when they are combined,” says a humanitarian programme manager. “Health alone is not enough. Water, food, income, and protection must move together.”
The Challenge of Scale and Sustainability
While these programmes are saving lives, gaps remain. Funding cycles are often short, and responses remain largely reactive rather than preventive. Local officials say scaling up climate-resilient livelihoods — such as drought-tolerant agriculture, livestock insurance, and alternative income sources — is critical to breaking the cycle.
Development analysts warn that without sustained investment, drought will continue to erode gains across multiple SDGs, forcing repeated emergency responses that are more costly in the long run.
“The question is not whether drought will return,” says Eunice Koech, a climate expert at IGAD. “It is whether systems will be strong enough to protect children when it does.”
Childhood at a Crossroads
Back in Rhamu, Fatuma Adan hopes her daughter will return to school full-time when conditions improve. For now, survival comes first.
“I want Amina to learn,” she says. “But first, we must live.”
As climate shocks intensify across the Horn of Africa, the stakes could not be higher. Without coordinated, long-term action, drought will continue to steal not just water and food — but childhood itself, undermining global commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals.
IPS UN Bureau Report
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 10 2026 (IPS) - New findings from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reveal that millions of children are having their images manipulated into sexualized content through the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), fueling a fast-growing and deeply harmful form of online abuse. The agency warns that without strong regulatory frameworks and meaningful cooperation between governments and tech platforms, this escalating threat could have devastating consequences for the next generation.
A 2025 report from The Childlight Global Child Safety Institute—an independent organization that tracks child sexual exploitation and abuse—shows a staggering rise in technology-facilitated child abuse in recent years, growing from 4,700 cases in the United States in 2023 to over 67,000 in 2024. A significant share of these incidents involved deepfakes: AI-generated images, videos, and audio engineered to appear realistic and often used to create sexualized content. This includes widespread “nudification”, where AI tools strip or alter clothing in photos to produce fabricated nude images.
A joint study from UNICEF, Interpol, and End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT) International examined the rates of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) circulated online across 11 countries found that at least 1.2 million children had their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in the past year alone. This means roughly one in every 25 children—or one child in every classroom—has already been victimized by this emerging form of digital abuse.
“When a child’s image or identity is used, that child is directly victimised,” a UNICEF representative said. “Even without an identifiable victim, AI-generated child sexual abuse material normalises the sexual exploitation of children, fuels demand for abusive content and presents significant challenges for law enforcement in identifying and protecting children that need help. Deepfake abuse is abuse, and there is nothing fake about the harm it causes.”
A 2025 survey from National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) studied the public’s attitudes toward deepfake abuse, finding that deepfake abuse had surged by 1,780 percent between 2019 and 2024. In a UK-wide representative survey conducted by Crest Advisory, nearly three in five respondents reported feeling worried about becoming victims of deepfake abuse.
Additionally, 34 percent admitted to creating a sexual or intimate deepfake of someone they knew, while 14 percent had created deepfakes of someone they did not know. The research also found that women and girls are disproportionately targeted, with social media identified as the most common place where these deepfakes are spread.
The study also presented respondents with a scenario in which a person creates an intimate deepfake of their partner, discloses it to them, and later distributes it to others following an argument. Alarmingly, 13 percent of respondents said this behavior should be both morally and legally acceptable, while an additional 9 percent expressed neutrality. NPCC also reported that those who considered this behavior to be acceptable were more likely to be younger men who actively consume pornography and agree with beliefs that would “commonly be regarded as misogynistic”.
“We live in very worrying times, the futures of our daughters (and sons) are at stake if we don’t start to take decisive action in the digital space soon,” award-winning activist and internet personality Cally-Jane Beech told NPCC. “We are looking at a whole generation of kids who grew up with no safeguards, laws or rules in place about this, and now seeing the dark ripple effect of that freedom.”
Deepfake abuse can have severe and lasting psychological and social consequences for children, often triggering intense shame, anxiety, depression, and fear. In a new report, UNICEF notes that a child’s “body, identity, and reputation can be violated remotely, invisibly, and permanently” through deepfake abuse, alongside risks of threats, blackmailing, and extortion from perpetrators. Feelings of violation – paired with the permanence and viral spread of digital content – can leave victims with long-term trauma, mistrust, and disrupted social development.
“Many experience acute distress and fear upon discovering that their image has been manipulated into sexualised content,” Afrooz Kaviani Johnson, Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF Headquarters told IPS. “Children report feelings of shame and stigma, compounded by the loss of control over their own identity. These harms are real and lasting: being depicted in sexualised deepfakes can severely impact a child’s wellbeing, erode their trust in digital spaces, and leave them feeling unsafe even in their everyday ‘offline’ lives.”
Cosmas Zavazava, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), added that online abuse can also translate to physical harm.
In a joint statement on Artificial Intelligence and the Rights of the Child, key UN entities, including UNICEF, ITU, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Commission of the Rights of the Child (CRC) warned that among children, parents, caregivers and teachers, there was a widespread lack of AI literacy. This refers to the basic ability to understand how AI systems work and how to engage with them critically and effectively. This knowledge gap leaves young people especially vulnerable, making it harder for victims and their support systems to recognize when a child is being targeted, to report abuse, or to access adequate protections and support services.
The UN also emphasized that a substantial share of responsibility lies with tech platforms, noting that most generative AI tools lack meaningful safeguards to prevent digital child exploitation.
“From UNICEF’s perspective, deepfake abuse thrives in part because legal and regulatory frameworks have not kept pace with technology. In many countries, laws do not explicitly recognise AI‑generated sexualised images of children as child sexual abuse material (CSAM),” said Johnson.
UNICEF is urging governments to ensure that definitions of CSAM are updated to include AI-generated content and “explicitly criminalise both its creation and distribution”. According to Johnson, technology companies should be required to adopt what he called “safety-by-design measures” and “child-rights impact assessments”.
He stressed however that while essential, laws and regulations alone would not be enough. “Social norms that tolerate or minimise sexual abuse and exploitation must also change. Protecting children effectively will require not only better laws, but real shifts in attitudes, enforcement, and support for those who are harmed.”
Commercial incentives further compound the problem, with platforms benefitting from increased user engagement, subscriptions, and publicity generated by AI image tools, creating little motivation to adopt stricter protection measures.
As a result, tech companies often introduce guardrails only after major public controversies — long after children have already been affected. One such example is Grok, the AI chatbot for X (formerly Twitter), which was found generating large volumes of nonconsensual, sexualized deepfake images in response to user prompts. Facing widespread, international backlash, X announced in January that Grok’s image generator tool would only be limited to X’s paid subscribers.
Investigations into Grok are ongoing, however. The United Kingdom and the European Union have opened investigations since January, and on February 3, prosecutors in France raided X’s offices as part of its investigation into the platform’s alleged role in circulating CSAM and deepfakes. X’s owner Elon Musk was summoned for questioning.
UN officials have stressed the need for regulatory frameworks that protect children online while still allowing AI systems to grow and generate revenue. “Initially, we got the feeling that they were concerned about stifling innovation, but our message is very clear: with responsible deployment of AI, you can still make a profit, you can still do business, you can still get market share,” said a senior UN official. “The private sector is a partner, but we have to raise a red flag when we see something that is going to lead to unwanted outcomes.”
IPS UN Bureau
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Feb 10 2026 (IPS) - It is a pleasure for me to join His Excellency, Minister Al Hussaini in welcoming you to this important dialogue here in the United Arab Emirates—a fast-growing global AI hub. A recent Microsoft study reports that 64 percent of the UAE’s working age population uses AI, which is the highest rate globally.
This illustrates the dynamism we see in the region—and the major investments and partnerships that some of the world’s biggest tech companies are making here.
Why such a huge commitment to this region? Because the UAE and the members of the GCC all understand just how transformative AI can be. They have made systemically significant investments in human capital over the last decades. IMF estimates show that, with the right measures in place, AI could fuel a boost to global productivity of up to 0.8 percentage points per year. This could raise global growth to levels exceeding those of the pre-pandemic period.
Here in the Gulf region, AI could boost non-oil GDP in Gulf countries by up to 2.8 percent. For economies that have long been dependent on hydrocarbon exports, this presents an enormous opportunity to diversify and build new sources of growth.
Now, major technology changes often bring disruption. And sure enough, we can expect disruption from AI. Especially to labor markets. On average, 40 percent of jobs globally will be impacted by AI—either upgraded or eliminated or transformed. For advanced economies, 60 percent of jobs will be affected. This is like a tsunami hitting the labor market.
We are already seeing the evidence: about one in 10 job postings in advanced economies now require at least one new skill. Workers with in-demand skills will likely see productivity and wage gains. This will create more demand for services, and increase employment and wages among low-skilled workers. But middle-skilled jobs will be squeezed.
That means that young people and the middle class will be hit hardest.
We can expect to see a similar divergence between countries. Those with an economic structure conducive to AI adoption—that is, strong digital infrastructure, more skilled labor forces, and robust regulatory frameworks—are likely to experience the largest and fastest benefits. Countries that don’t may get left behind. This is why we gathered here today. AI looks unstoppable.
But whether or not countries can successfully capitalize on AI’s enormous promise is yet to be determined. And this will largely depend on the policy regimes they put in place. So then, what must be done to ensure AI translates into broad-based prosperity for this region?
First, macro policies. Investment and innovation in AI will boost growth. Fiscal policies can support this by strengthening tax systems and by funding research, reskilling, or sector-based training programs. However, tax systems should not encourage automation at the expense of people. Likewise, effective financial regulation will be essential to ensure financial market efficiency and improved risk management.
Second, guardrails. AI needs to be regulated to ensure it’s safe, fair, and trustworthy—but without stifling innovation. Different countries are taking different approaches, ranging from risk-based frameworks to high-level principles. Whatever approach they take, it’s critical that countries coordinate.
That brings me to my third point: cooperation and partnerships. Scale is a big advantage in AI. But you can’t get scale without cooperation among governments, AI researchers and developers, including when it comes to data sharing and knowledge transfer.
Let me conclude. AI will transform our economies. It will present immense opportunities and pose significant risks. And it falls to you, the world’s policymakers, to ensure that the opportunities are maximized for your countries and the risks controlled.
IPS UN Bureau
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines, Feb 10 2026 (IPS) - Despite lacking both evidence and theory, many economists claim trade liberalisation accelerates development. But only a few economies have gained many jobs from external market access.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Multilateral trade liberalisation
In conventional trade theory, gains from trade liberalisation are mainly one-time increases in output and exports due to static comparative advantage.
Post-World War Two (WWII) US foreign policy transformed multilateral relations and transnational institutions, including international economic governance.
With the growing power of transnational corporations, many multilateral institutions, including the United Nations system, have been reconfigured or marginalised.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was a ‘second-best’ compromise after the US Congress vetoed the creation of the International Trade Organisation, despite widespread international enthusiasm for the 1948 Havana Charter.
Almost half a century later, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established in 1995, following the 1994 Marrakesh Declaration concluding the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations.
Trade mahaguru Jagdish Bhagwati argued that multilateral trade has been undermined by plurilateral and bilateral arrangements favouring dominant partners.
With the era of trade liberalisation essentially over since the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC), free trade advocacy has received a new lease of life from mythmaking about the ‘pre-Trump’ era.
Uneven, mixed effects
Mainstream trade theory does not entertain the possibility of ‘unequal exchange’, however defined.
Nor does it even incorporate Bhagwati’s notion of ‘immiserising growth’ when productivity gains reduce prices for consumers, rather than increase producers’ earnings.
The three decades of trade liberalisation from the 1980s saw slower, but more volatile growth than the post-WWII quarter-century termed the ‘Golden Age’. More recently, stagnationist tendencies have dominated since the GFC.
With trade liberalisation, many developing countries have experienced greater food insecurity and deindustrialisation, as the manufacturing shares of their national income shrank.
Much import-substituting industrialisation after WWII or independence has since collapsed. Besides resource processing, very few new industries have emerged in Africa.
‘Aid for Trade’ for poorer developing countries implicitly acknowledges trade liberalisation’s adverse effects by mitigating some of them. Why then should they abandon protectionism if they need to be compensated for doing so?
Wealthy nations have also insisted that developing countries end manufacturing tariffs. But as Dani Rodrik has quipped, why rich nations “need to be bribed by poor countries to do what is good for them is an enduring mystery”.
African nations and Caribbean and Pacific small island developing states enjoyed preferential access to European markets, which full multilateral trade liberalisation would eliminate.
Such preferences for Sub-Saharan Africa have pitted African against Asian least developed countries, undermining the collective negotiating strengths of both.
Many countries had expected the current Doha Round to eliminate rich nations’ producer subsidies, tariffs, and non-tariff barriers, but that has not happened.
Cutting farm support in the North could make food agriculture in developing countries more viable, but would also raise food import prices in the interim.
World Bank ‘structural adjustment’ programmes and IMF fiscal discipline requirements have undermined rural infrastructure and productivity, setting back smallholder agriculture in most developing countries.
Setbacks, not gains
Trade liberalisation also reduces tariff revenue. Such losses have hurt developing nations, especially the poorest, for whom tariffs often accounted for up to half of all tax revenue.
Such revenue cuts severely undermined the fiscal means of developing nations, crucial for government spending and investment, including for development and welfare.
Most governments are unable to replace lost tariff revenue with new or higher taxes. Meanwhile, more borrowing to offset lost tariff revenue has worsened indebtedness.
Trade liberalisation advocates are typically vague about how it is supposed to raise exports, incomes, and tax revenue, besides compensating for lost tariff revenue.
Instead, tax burdens typically become more regressive as overall tax revenue declines. Real consumption is supposed to rise as import prices fall with lower tariffs, but could also decline due to increasing consumption taxes.
Less policy space
Trade liberalisation has also reduced available development policy tools, especially those relating to trade, investment, and industrialisation.
The constraints imposed by trade liberalisation and investment agreements have generally limited the scope for and potential of development policy initiatives.
The actual role and impact of trade policy for growth and employment remain moot. But there are no analytical reasons or robust empirical evidence that trade liberalisation per se ensures sustainable development.
World Bank and most other studies acknowledged modest, if not negative, net gains for most developing countries from any realistically achievable outcome.
It is often ignored that realistic expectations of gains from trade liberalisation rely crucially on a strong positive export supply response.
However, such a response is unlikely when internationally competitive, productive and export capacities do not already exist, as in most developing countries, especially the poorest.
Hence, most of the Global South has not been able to overcome the worst consequences of trade liberalisation to achieve sustainable development.
In any case, the WTO Doha Round talks were ended by rich nations in 2015.
With the increasingly blatant self-interested contravention of WTO rules by the US, European and other wealthy nations, developing countries may best enhance their development prospects by reverting to GATT rules.
This would allow them to opt in, as appropriate, rather than resign themselves to the uniform ‘one size fits all’ WTO rules and regulations, regardless of context, circumstances, capacities and capabilities.
IPS UN Bureau
Feb 9 2026 (IPS) -
The Pacific Island countries are at the frontline of climate change. Their territories mostly consist of small, low-lying islands, with long coastlines and vast ocean spaces between them. Many livelihoods are based on agriculture or fishing, and importing water or food is often infeasible or expensive. This makes those large ocean nations highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as storms, droughts, and rising sea levels. Analysts have expressed concerns that this can result in various forms of socio-political conflict.
However, the Pacific Island countries have received scarce attention in research on climate change and conflict. This is surprising given the Pacific Island countries’ high climate vulnerability and increasing geopolitical relevance. A few years back, a Nature article did not find a single peer-reviewed study on the climate-conflict nexus in the Pacific. And while recent work added important insights on potential pathways between climate and conflict in the Pacific Island countries, the region remains understudied.
A new study tackles this knowledge gap by systematically collecting data on conflict events (such as protests, riots, and communal violence) in Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. It then determines statistical associations between the occurrence of such conflicts—protests, riots, communal violence etc.—and climate extremes like storms, heatwaves, and floods. The results are surprising.
Climate extremes do not drive conflict risks
The researchers found that climate disasters are not a significant predictor of conflict events. This is true for both cities and rural areas. In cities, high values of (and competition for) land, immigration after disasters, and opportunities for political mobilisation have long been considered to make climate-related conflicts more likely, yet no such statistical signal was detected. Even when looking only at conflicts around natural resources like water or forests, climate extremes are not a good predictor.
These findings could nuance common wisdom about climate change and conflict. Experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have concluded that climate change increases conflict risks, even though other conflict drivers are more important. Such a linkage is particularly likely in climate vulnerable regions with a history of political instability, and it is also more applicable to low-intensity conflicts like protests (as compared to large-scale violence like civil wars). Yet, the study focuses on such smaller-scale conflict. Fiji, Solomon Island, and Vanuatu are also highly vulnerable to climate change and suffered through political instability (coups, civil war, and unrest) in the past.
How to make sense of the absence of conflict
As a starting point, it is important to clarify three things. First, the absence of conflict does not necessarily imply peace, particularly if those least responsible for climate change suffer most from its consequences. Second, the study focuses on visible and collective forms of conflict. Disasters, but also competition for disaster-related support schemes, might well result in lower-level, less visible forms of conflict, such as household and intimate partner violence or lower social cohesion within communities. Studying these forms of conflict is certainly a key task for future work. Third, evidence is not perfect. The new study, for instance, covers only the period 2012 to 2020, studies just three Pacific Island countries, and could not include rainfall anomalies due to a lack of data.
That said, the absence of a correlation between climate extremes and socio-political conflict events is still noteworthy. It indicates the Pacific Islands have significant levels of agency and resilience. This is not to romanticise local communities and national governments—as everywhere in the world, they have their share of tensions and shortcomings. But the Pacific Island countries possess well-established traditional institutions and, at least in some areas, strong community and civil society networks. Given their remote location, tropical climate, and oceanic geography, they have plenty of knowledge and experience in dealing with climate extremes like droughts, floods, and storms as well. These are important assets for coping peacefully with the impacts of climate change.
Consider the example of Vanuatu after cyclone Pam in 2015. Despite being one of the most intense storms to ever hit the South Pacific, the death toll was relatively low, and the country recovered rather quickly from its impacts. This was the case because local community structures and NGO-led Community Climate Change Committees coordinated well, and they thus played a key role in preparing for the storm and in delivering disaster relief and recovery. These activities did not just utilise but also strengthened traditional social networks. Furthermore, state institutions effectively utilised the inflow of international aid to deal with the cyclone’s impacts, thereby increasing trust in the government. Consequentially, no major conflicts erupted in the aftermath of Pam.
Avoid doomsday thinking – and provide tailored support
Which insights can decision makers draw from these findings?
It is important to avoid doomsday scenarios when thinking about climate change in the Pacific. For sure, the respective countries are highly exposed to and quite vulnerable to climate change. But if policy makers and media portray the Pacific Island countries as helpless victims of climate change and prone to conflict, the consequences are problematic: a lack of economic investment, external support mostly focussed on relocation, and an ignorance of local capacities.
By contrast, emphasising how Pacific communities successfully deal with and maintain peace in the context of climate change provides different perspectives. It highlights how local communities and state institutions (despite not being perfect) have significant capacities for climate change adaptation and bottom-up peacebuilding. National governments and international donors should utilise those capacities by providing tailored support, responding to the needs and priorities of those on the frontline of climate change. Rather than preliminary resignation or relocation, this can support the building of climate-resilient peace.
Related articles:
There Is No Security Without Development, Anything Else Is a Distraction
Do We Need a Pacific Peace Index?
The Trump Presidency and Climate Security in the Indo-Pacific Region
Tobias Ide is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Murdoch University Perth. Until recently, he was also Adjunct Associate Professor of International Relations at the Brunswick University of Technology. He has published widely on the intersections of the environment, climate change, peace, conflict and security, including in Global Environmental Change, International Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, Nature Climate Change, and World Development. He is also a director of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association.
This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished from the original with their permission.
IPS UN Bureau
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe & MANCHESTER, United Kingdom, Feb 9 2026 (IPS) - Business can still remain profitable while protecting the environment but invest in nature-positive operations, says a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which finds that global companies have contributed to the escalating loss of biodiversity.
The IPBES Methodological Assessment Report on the Impact and Dependence of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People, known as the Business and Biodiversity Report, says global business has benefited from nature but has immensely contributed to the decline in biodiversity. It is time it changes how it does business because biodiversity decline is a “critical systemic risk threatening the economy, financial stability, and human well-being.”
The global economy, driven by business, is dependent on healthy biodiversity and nature for materials, climate regulation, clean water, and pollination. However, the current economic system treats nature as free and infinite, creating perverse incentives for its exploitation. Businesses are largely rewarded for short-term profit, even when their activities degrade the natural systems they rely on, creating a huge risk to the economy and society, the report said.
The cover of the Business and Biodiversity Report. Credit: IPBES
It Must Be Business Unusual Now
Approved at the recent 12th session of the IPBES Plenary, held in Manchester, United Kingdom, the report calls for the end of business as usual. Global businesses, heavily dependent on nature and impacted by nature, must quickly change their operations or face collapse.
“Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction… both of species in nature but potentially also their own,” noted the report.
Based on thousands of sources and prepared over three years by 79 leading experts from 35 countries from all regions of the world, the report is the first assessment of the impacts and dependencies of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.
Current conditions perpetuate business as usual and do not support the transformative change necessary to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, said the report, pointing out that large subsidies that drive biodiversity losses are directed to business activities with the support of businesses and trade associations.
For example, in 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature were estimated at USD 7.3 trillion. Of this amount, private finance accounted for USD 4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies at about USD 2.4 trillion, the report said.
In contrast, USD 220 billion in public and private finance flows were directed to activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity, representing just 3 percent of the public funds and incentives that encourage harmful business behaviour or prevent behaviour beneficial to biodiversity.
The new report shows that business as usual is not inevitable – with the right policies, as well as financial and cultural shifts, what is good for nature is also what is best for profitability, said Prof. Stephen Polasky, co-chair of the assessment, who highlighted that the loss of biodiversity was among the most serious threats to business.
“Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points,” Polasky said.
Polasky said during a press briefing today (February 9, 2026) that business can immediately act without waiting for governments to create an enabling environment. They can measure their impact and dependencies by increasing the efficiencies of their operation, reducing waste and understanding new business opportunities and products.
A 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by IPBES warned that one million species face extinction in the next few years as a result of overexploitation of resources, development, and other human activities, posing serious consequences for people and the planet.
Global business, which turns profits from nature, has contributed to the loss of biodiversity as a result of poor production practices that have poisoned river systems, emitted dangerous high greenhouse gases and led to land degradation. This is despite business being affected by natural disasters, from extreme weather floods and droughts to climate change.
The report is the latest assessment by IPBES, an independent intergovernmental body comprising more than 150 member governments. IPBES, often described as the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) for biodiversity, provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity, ecosystems and the contributions they make to people.
IPBES Chair, David Oburo, said the assessments done by IPBES are balanced by the knowledge systems needed to integrate information business and its impacts and dependencies on biodiversity.
He said there is a need to move away from the scientific language often used in talking about impacts and dependencies of businesses to simplifying it to be about risks and opportunities “so that the messaging that comes out from our assessments is really accessible to the audience that needs to access that information.”
The IPBES methodological assessment report warned that the current system was broken because what is profitable for businesses often results in loss of biodiversity.
A Peruvian indigenous Quechua woman weaving a textile with the traditional techniques in Cusco, Peru. The IPBES Business and Biodiversity Report suggests business should integrate Indigenous knowledge into their operations. Credit: iStock/IPBES
IPBES Executive Secretary, Luthando Dziba, said nature was everybody’s business. The conservation and restorative use of biodiversity is central to business success. Although businesses have contributed to innovations that have driven improvement of living standards, that same success had come at the cost of biodiversity.
An Enabling Environment Is Good for Biodiversity
The report offers a key solution of creating a new “enabling environment” where what is profitable for business aligns with what is good for biodiversity and society. Current conditions — laws, financial systems, corporate reporting rules, and cultural norms — do not reward businesses for protecting nature.
There are many barriers to protecting nature, such as the focus on short-term profits versus long-term ecological cycles. In addition, there is a lack of mandatory disclosure and accountability for environmental impacts, inadequate data, metrics, and capacity within the business community, as well as the failure to integrate Indigenous and local knowledge in biodiversity protection.
The creation of an enabling environment needs coordinated action policy and legal frameworks where governments should integrate biodiversity into all trade and sectoral policies. Besides, there is a need to redirect the USD 7.3 trillion in harmful flows using taxes, green bonds, and sustainability-linked loans to reward positive action.
Businesses must engage with Indigenous Peoples and local communities with Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), while access to and sharing of location-specific data on business activities and biodiversity should be improved. Leverage technology such as remote sensing and artificial intelligence for better monitoring and traceability across business supply chains.
Measure It to Manage It
Another key finding of the report is that business could improve the measurement and management of its impacts and dependencies on nature through appropriate engagement with science and Indigenous and local knowledge.
Assessment co-chair Prof. Ximena Rueda noted that data and knowledge are often siloed, as scientific literature was not written for businesses. Besides, a lack of translation and attention to the needs of business has slowed uptake of scientific findings.
“Among business there is also often limited understanding and recognition of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as stewards of biodiversity and, therefore, holders of knowledge on its conservation, restoration and sustainable use,” said Rueda in a statement.
Industrial development threatens 60 percent of Indigenous lands around the world, and a quarter of all Indigenous territories are under high pressure from resource exploitation. However, Indigenous Peoples and local communities often find themselves inadequately represented in business research and decision-making, said the report.
Commenting on the report, Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), noted that while all businesses depend on nature, some were more exposed to risks stemming from resource depletion and environmental degradation. She said companies need a deeper understanding of the breadth of their dependencies and impacts on biodiversity to act better.
“In too many boardrooms and offices around the world, there is still a dearth of awareness of biodiversity protection as a business investment,” said Schomaker in a statement. “Too often, public policy still incentivises behaviour that drives biodiversity loss.”
While Alexander De Croo, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said too often biodiversity is an invisible and expendable asset on a balance sheet of global companies, but that was changing.
“Awareness is now accelerating of the risks to development if biodiversity fails—and of the economic opportunities and future prosperity that emerge where it thrives,” De Croo said.
The report underscored that we cannot business-as-usual our way out of the biodiversity crisis. Governments need to stop incentivising the destruction of biodiversity and start rewarding environmental stewardship. Besides, business leaders should now integrate natural capital accounting into their business strategy to disclose their environmental footprint while contributing to a positive global economy.
The evidence is clear: our economic prosperity is inextricably linked to nature’s health, and we are severing that vital link at our peril.
IPS UN Bureau Report
Feb 9 2026 (IPS) -
CIVICUS discusses the genocide case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with Mohammed Nowkhim of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace & Human Rights (ARSPHR), a civil society organisation led by Rohingya people born out of refugee camps in Bangladesh to document atrocities, preserve survivor testimony and advocate for accountability and justice.
Mohammed Nowkhim
What atrocities were committed against Rohingya people and what is being examined in court?
During what were called ‘clearance operations’ in 2017, Myanmar security forces burned entire villages, raped women, killed children and threw them into fires and wells. According to documented reports, over 10,000 people were killed and around 700,000, including me, were forced to flee Myanmar. These were not random acts of violence; they were systematic and targeted attacks aimed at erasing our community.
In 2019, The Gambia, supported by 11 other states, filed a case against Myanmar at the ICJ, accusing it of genocide. Judges are now examining evidence of mass killings, sexual violence, village destruction and forced displacement. They are also reviewing official policies and actions that show intent to destroy Rohingya people as a group, including patterns of violence, coordination by state forces and the systematic denial of basic rights.
This case shows that genocide claims can be examined through law rather than dismissed for political convenience. But for the Rohingya, this is not just a legal process. It represents acknowledgment and a source of hope for present and future generations. After decades of denial and silence, our suffering is being heard at the world’s highest court and recognised in a legal space where truth matters. The hearings can’t erase our wounds, but they can offer some solace and a path towards justice.
What evidence supports the case against Myanmar?
The case was built on years of evidence-gathering. The Gambia relied on extensive material from the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar and United Nations (UN) fact-finding missions, as well as documentation collected over many years by human rights organisations, including Fortify Rights, Human Rights Watch and Rohingya-led groups.
Civil society played a key role when states failed to act. Even when the world looked away, organisations continued to document the truth and refused to let these crimes be erased or rewritten. Long before any court agreed to listen, groups including the ARSPHR were collecting survivor testimonies, documenting violations and carefully preserving evidence, knowing it might one day be used in court. Without that work, much of what happened would have been lost and perpetrators couldn’t have been challenged.
In a way, civil society became the memory of the Rohingya people. Today, this evidence forms part of the case before the ICJ.
Why is accountability so difficult?
Politics often protects perpetrators. Those with power choose stability over justice and shield those responsible for crimes. Myanmar’s authorities continue to deny wrongdoing and refuse to cooperate, which delays justice.
International law also has its limits. Justice moves slowly because ICJ rulings do not automatically lead to consequences. International courts can establish the truth, but they can’t force states to act. Enforcement depends on political will, often through the UN Security Council, where countries such as China and Russia can block action, even when crimes are clear and well documented.
What must happen to ensure justice?
There must be real action. Perpetrators must be held accountable, Rohingya citizenship must be restored and discriminatory laws that enabled genocide must be removed. Any return of refugees must be voluntary, safe and dignified. It can’t happen without international monitoring and guarantees of protection. People can’t be sent back to the same conditions that forced them to flee.
Ultimately, justice is not only about the past, but also about ensuring that future generations of Rohingya can live with rights, safety and dignity. This case is only the beginning. What happens after the judgment will decide whether justice is real or only symbolic.
CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.
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