tag:theconversation.com,2011:/institutions/institute-of-development-studies-1132/articlesInstitute of Development Studies2024-01-21T07:07:01Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207932024-01-21T07:07:01Z2024-01-21T07:07:01ZLes jeunes africains pourraient perturber les États autoritaires, mais ils ne le font pas : voici pourquoi<p>L'Afrique a la <a href="https://www.un.org/ohrlls/news/young-people%E2%80%99s-potential-key-africa%E2%80%99s-sustainable-development#:%7E:text=Africa%20has%20the%20youngest%20population,to%20realise%20the%20best%20potential.">plus population jeune la plus importante au monde</a>. D'ici 2030, <a href="https://www.prb.org/resources/africas-future-youth-and-the-data-defining-their-lives/">75%</a> de la population africaine aura moins de 35 ans. Le nombre de jeunes Africains âgés de 15 à 24 ans devrait atteindre <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2023/06/27/investing-in-youth-transforming-afe-africa">500 millions</a> en 2080. </p>
<p>Bien que la dynamique démographique varie sur le continent, la plupart des pays subsahariens ont un <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/africas-median-age-about-19-median-age-its-leaders-about-63">âge médian inférieur à 19 ans</a>. Le Niger est le pays le plus jeune du monde avec un âge médian de 14,5 ans, tandis que l'Afrique du Sud, les Seychelles, la Tunisie et l'Algérie ont des âges médians supérieurs à 27 ans. </p>
<p>Ces données démographiques constituent une <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/three-myths-about-youth-employment-in-africa-and-strategies-to-realize-the-demographic-dividend/">force de croissance potentielle</a>. Toutefois, le potentiel du dividende démographique de l'Afrique a été éclipsé par les préoccupations des gouvernements et des donateurs internationaux concernant la relation entre les fortes populations de jeunes, les taux de chômage et l'instabilité politique. </p>
<p>De nombreux pays ayant une forte population de jeunes et des taux élevés de chômage et de sous-emploi des jeunes <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820348858/the-outcast-majority/">vivent dans la paix</a>. Mais le discours politique dominant soutient que les jeunes chômeurs constituent une menace pour la stabilité. </p>
<p>En outre, le rôle des jeunes dans les manifestations populaires - comme au <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/7420-after-the-uprising-including-sudanese-youth">Soudan en 2019</a> - a suscité de grandes attentes quant à leur rôle dans la lutte contre les gouvernements autocratiques et la contribution à la démocratie. </p>
<p>En tant que politologue et sociologue, nous souhaitons comprendre l'interaction entre les jeunes et les régimes autocratiques, d'autant plus que les autocraties élues <a href="https://alinstitute.org/images/Library/RetreatOfAfricanDemocracy.pdf#page=1">s'imposent</a> en Afrique. </p>
<p>Les autocraties électorales sont des régimes élus au pouvoir en utilisant des stratégies autoritaires. Celles-ci comprennent la manipulation des élections et la répression de l'opposition, des médias indépendants et de la société civile.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/projects/2177-nfr-youth-in-africa">Notre recherche</a> se concentre sur les interactions entre les jeunes et les régimes en Éthiopie, au Mozambique, en Ouganda et au Zimbabwe. Il s'agit dans tous les cas d'autocraties électorales.</p>
<p>Ces régimes sont conscients de l'importance de leur population de jeunes qui les défient parfois. <a href="https://theconversation.com/bobi-wine-has-shaken-up-ugandan-politics-four-things-worth-knowing-about-him-153205">Bobi Wine</a>, musicien populaire devenu candidat à la présidence, en est un exemple. </p>
<p>Les quatre pays étudiés ont également connu des guerres civiles, au cours desquelles les groupes armés victorieux ont pris le pouvoir et y sont restés depuis la fin de la guerre. Cela a créé une dynamique particulière entre les gouvernements rebelles vieillissants et la majorité des jeunes.</p>
<p>Dans des contextes autocratiques comme ceux-ci, les efforts visant à responsabiliser les jeunes peuvent facilement être manipulés pour servir les intérêts du régime. Certains jeunes peuvent décider de jouer le jeu et de saisir les opportunités offertes par les acteurs du régime. D'autres peuvent y résister. Certains saisissent les opportunités en espérant qu'elles servent leurs propres intérêts et non ceux du régime. Cependant, cela pourrait reproduire des formes de clientélisme. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abiy-ahmed-gained-power-in-ethiopia-with-the-help-of-young-people-four-years-later-hes-silencing-them-195601">Abiy Ahmed gained power in Ethiopia with the help of young people – four years later he's silencing them</a>
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<p>Tout cela est important parce que l'avenir de la démocratie est en jeu et que l'utilisation des opportunités offertes par l'État pourrait contribuer à la reproduction de l'autoritarisme.</p>
<p>Nos équipes de recherche dans chaque pays ont <a href="https://www.cmi.no/projects/2177-nfr-youth-in-africa">étudié</a> la panoplie de politiques mises en place par les gouvernements pour “s'occuper” des jeunes. Elles ont notamment accordé des prêts aux jeunes entrepreneurs et mis en place des conseils de jeunes et des quotas de jeunes dans les institutions politiques. </p>
<p>Nous avons constaté que les stratégies ciblées sur les jeunes - qui visent essentiellement à promouvoir l'emploi et la participation politique - font partie des règles du jeu dans les quatre pays que nous avons étudiés. Les programmes d'emploi et d'entreprenariat sont suscpetibles de faire l'objet d'abus par le biais des réseaux clientélistes du parti au pouvoir et ont été orientés vers les partisans du régime. </p>
<h2>Les jeunes ne parviennet pas à sauver la démocratie</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/projects/2177-nfr-youth-in-africa">Notre recherche</a> a révélé que les jeunes d'Éthiopie, du Mozambique, d'Ouganda et du Zimbabwe se sentaient lésés par le fait que ces opportunités étaient canalisées vers les partisans du régime. Ils ont également une restriction des opportunités pour s'exprimer de manière significative. Les institutions mises en place pour permettre la participation des jeunes ont été cooptées et ont manqué d'indépendance par rapport aux gouvernements. </p>
<p>Certains jeunes expriment leurs griefs par des manifestations en faveur de la démocratie, comme au <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/violent-protests-break-out-mozambique-after-local-elections-2023-10-27/">Mozambique en octobre 2023</a>. Mais dans l'ensemble, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/221141/why-africas-youth-is-not-saving-democracy/">la jeunesse africaine n'est pas en train de sauver la démocratie</a>. </p>
<p>Ils ne sont pas plus en train de contrer la tendance <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2022.2235656">croissante</a> de l'autocratisation sur le continent, où les gouvernements en place de plus en plus <a href="https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/60999">concentrent le pouvoir</a> entre les mains de l'exécutif. Nos recherches l'ont confirmé au Zimbabwe, au Mozambique, en Éthiopie et en Ouganda.</p>
<h2>Études de cas par pays</h2>
<p>Au <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/8797-the-risk-of-authoritarian-renewal-in-zimbabwe-understanding-zanu-pf-youth">Zimbabwe</a>, le Zanu-PF est au pouvoir depuis l'indépendance du pays en 1980. Le parti au pouvoir et bon nombre de ses dirigeants, aujourd'hui vieillissants, se servent de leur passé de vétérans de la guerre de libération des années 1970 <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436590600842472?casa_token=B53EF1Ev0XcAAAAA:7W-Izw-iDMuOCRc8RZiW8UcDpXn7kH5E-siDc2W1ux_L9w1WpyB-2mnTSMzmAXrLM5YmfFCx3Mlo4YA">pour conserver leur emprise sur le pouvoir</a>. </p>
<p>Pour ce faire, ils créent des récits autour de l'histoire de la libération du pays et du patriotisme, et accusent la génération “née libre” (ceux qui sont nés après l'indépendance) d'avoir trahi la guerre de libération. Cela délégitime tout mécontentement que les jeunes pourraient ressentir. Le Zanu-PF cible les jeunes parmi ses <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/14906">larges variétés d'options stratégiques</a> pour se maintenir au pouvoir.</p>
<p>Au <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/8798-poorly-designed-youth-employment-programmes-will-boost-the-insurgency-in-mozambique">Mozambique</a>, le Frelimo, le parti au pouvoir, a remporté toutes les élections depuis 1992. Le parti a concentré le pouvoir et les ressources entre les mains de l'élite politique. Les jeunes continuent d'être sous-représentés et ont de grandes difficultés à accéder aux ressources. Cette situation, qui s'ajoute à d'autres dynamiques de conflit, a contribué à une insurrection dans la région septentrionale de <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2020.1789271">Cabo Delgado à partir de 2017</a>. Elle est dirigée par un groupe religieux radical appelé localement Al-Shabaab, ou parfois “machababo” (les jeunes).</p>
<p>Les manifestations organisées par les jeunes en <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/7829-neglect-control-and-co-optation-major-features-of-ethiopian-youth-policy-since-1991">Éthiopie</a> ont contribué à la chute en 2018 du parti au pouvoir depuis 1991. Elles ont également conduit à <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-change-happened-in-ethiopia-a-review-of-how-abiy-rose-to-power-110737">l'arrivée au pouvoir</a> d'Abiy Ahmed cette année-là. </p>
<p>La mobilisation des jeunes a depuis <a href="https://theconversation.com/abiy-ahmed-gained-power-in-ethiopia-with-the-help-of-young-people-four-years-later-hes-silencing-them-195601">été réduite au silence</a>. Seuls les loyalistes ont accès aux programmes de création d'emplois. On a également assisté à une militarisation des mouvements ethniques dominés par les jeunes. On l'a vu, par exemple, avec le <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/322001/ethiopia-understanding-the-fano-and-the-fate-of-amhara/">groupe Fano Amhara</a> dans la guerre du Tigré en <a href="https://theconversation.com/ethiopia-tigray-war-parties-agree-pause-expert-insights-into-two-years-of-devastating-conflict-193636">2020-2022</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/8801-moving-ugandas-national-development-planning-to-the-grassroots-whats-in-it-for-youth">L'Ouganda</a> a été un pionnier dans l'institutionnalisation de la participation des jeunes à la prise de décision. L'engagement des jeunes dans les structures politiques est considéré comme un outil de contrôle du gouvernement. Nous avons constaté que les jeunes politiciens estimaient que ce système de représentation imparfait offrait des opportunités de mobilisation à la fois contre et en faveur du régime actuel. Les jeunes candidats qui se présentent à l'un des sièges du parlement réservés aux jeunes, par exemple, ne peuvent pas facilement se soustraire à la tutelle du parti au pouvoir.</p>
<h2>La voie à suivre</h2>
<p>La jeunesse africaine est très diversifiée. Cependant, elle a souvent été caractérisée comme étant soit <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2019-march-2020/african-youth-and-growth-violent-extremism">violente</a>, soit comme <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2019/sc13968.doc.htm">des artisans du changement et militants de la paix</a>. Ces caractérisations représentent les extrémités opposées d'un spectre. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/projects/2177-nfr-youth-in-africa">Notre projet de recherche</a> a impliqué une diversité de jeunes dans différentes positions et en mouvement constant entre les différentes parties du spectre. Cela nous a permis de mieux comprendre la façon dont ils se comportent et réagissent face à la manière dont les régimes cherchent à les gérer.</p>
<p>Selon nous, la recherche et les initiatives politiques en faveur des jeunes dans les États autoritaires doivent reconnaître que les interventions bien intentionnées en faveur des jeunes peuvent reproduire les politiques autoritaires lorsqu'elles sont canalisées vers les militants du parti. </p>
<p>Les interventions visant à promouvoir la création d'emplois et l'autonomisation des jeunes devraient exercer un contrôle sur la manière dont les jeunes bénéficiaires sont sélectionnés et les fonds déboursés afin d'éviter toute interférence de la part d'acteurs partisans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lovise Aalen est financée par le programme Norglobal du Conseil norvégien de la recherche (subvention n° 288489).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marjoke Oosterom a reçu un financement du Conseil de la recherche économique et sociale (ESRC).</span></em></p>La jeunesse africaine ne s'oppose pas à l'aggravation de l'autocratie sur le continent.Lovise Aalen, Research Professor, Political Science, Chr. Michelsen InstituteMarjoke Oosterom, Research Fellow and Cluster Leader, Power and Popular Politics research cluster, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2181792024-01-07T07:33:35Z2024-01-07T07:33:35ZYoung Africans could disrupt authoritarian states but they don’t – here’s why<p>Africa has the <a href="https://www.un.org/ohrlls/news/young-people%E2%80%99s-potential-key-africa%E2%80%99s-sustainable-development#:%7E:text=Africa%20has%20the%20youngest%20population,to%20realise%20their%20best%20potential.">world’s largest youth population</a>. By 2030, <a href="https://www.prb.org/resources/africas-future-youth-and-the-data-defining-their-lives/">75%</a> of the African population will be under the age of 35. The number of young Africans aged 15-24 is projected to reach <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2023/06/27/investing-in-youth-transforming-afe-africa">500 million</a> in 2080. </p>
<p>While population dynamics vary across the continent, most sub-Saharan countries have a <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/africas-median-age-about-19-median-age-its-leaders-about-63">median age below 19</a>. Niger is the youngest country in the world with a median age of 14.5, while South Africa, Seychelles, Tunisia and Algeria have median ages above 27. </p>
<p>These demographics are a potential <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/three-myths-about-youth-employment-in-africa-and-strategies-to-realize-the-demographic-dividend/">force for growth</a>. However, the potential of Africa’s demographic dividend has been overshadowed by concerns among governments and international donors about the relationship between large youth populations, unemployment rates and political instability. </p>
<p>Many countries with large youth populations and high rates of youth unemployment and under-employment <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820348858/the-outcast-majority/">remain peaceful</a>. But the dominant policy narrative is that unemployed youth pose a threat to stability.</p>
<p>Further, the role of youth in popular protest – such as in <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/7420-after-the-uprising-including-sudanese-youth">Sudan in 2019</a> – has created high expectations about their role in countering autocratic governments and contributing to democracy. </p>
<p>As political scientists and sociologists, we’re interested in understanding the interaction between youth and autocratic regimes – especially as elected autocracies <a href="https://alinstitute.org/images/Library/RetreatOfAfricanDemocracy.pdf#page=1">are taking hold</a> in Africa. </p>
<p>Electoral autocracies are regimes elected into power using authoritarian strategies. These include manipulation of elections and repression of the opposition, independent media and civil society.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/projects/2177-nfr-youth-in-africa">Our research</a> focuses on the interactions between youth and regimes in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe. All are cases of electoral autocracies.</p>
<p>These regimes are aware of their large youth populations and are sometimes challenged by them. <a href="https://theconversation.com/bobi-wine-has-shaken-up-ugandan-politics-four-things-worth-knowing-about-him-153205">Uganda’s Bobi Wine</a>, a popular musician turned presidential candidate, is one example. </p>
<p>The four countries in our study have also been through civil wars, where the victorious armed groups have taken power and stayed in power since the end of the war. This has created a particular set of dynamics between the ageing rebel governments and the youth majorities.</p>
<p>In autocratic contexts like these ones, efforts to empower youth can easily be manipulated to serve the interests of the regime. Some young people may decide to play the game and take up opportunities offered by regime actors. Others might resist them. Some take up the opportunities, hoping it serves their own and not the regime’s interests. Still, this might reproduce forms of patronage. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abiy-ahmed-gained-power-in-ethiopia-with-the-help-of-young-people-four-years-later-hes-silencing-them-195601">Abiy Ahmed gained power in Ethiopia with the help of young people – four years later he's silencing them</a>
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<p>All of this matters because the future of democracy is at stake, and using state-led opportunities might contribute to authoritarian renewal.</p>
<p>Our research teams in each country <a href="https://www.cmi.no/projects/2177-nfr-youth-in-africa">studied</a> the range of policies that governments put in place to “cater” for the youth. They included loans for young entrepreneurs, and setting up youth councils and youth quotas in political institutions. </p>
<p>We found that youth-targeted strategies – largely aimed at promoting employment and political participation – are part of the authoritarian rule book in all four countries we studied. Employment and entrepreneurship schemes were open to abuse through ruling party patronage networks and channelled to regime supporters.</p>
<h2>Not saving democracy</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/projects/2177-nfr-youth-in-africa">Our research</a> found that young people in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe felt aggrieved about these opportunities being channelled to regime supporters. They also noted the lack of opportunities to have a meaningful voice. Institutions that were established to enable youth participation were co-opted and lacked independence from governments. </p>
<p>Some young people express their grievances through pro-democracy protests – like in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/violent-protests-break-out-mozambique-after-local-elections-2023-10-27/">Mozambique in October 2023</a>. But overall, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/221141/why-africas-youth-is-not-saving-democracy/">Africa’s youth are not saving democracy</a>. </p>
<p>Neither are they countering the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2022.2235656">deepening</a> trend of autocratisation on the continent, where incumbent governments have increasingly <a href="https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/60999">concentrated power</a> in the hands of the executive. Our research has confirmed this in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Uganda.</p>
<h2>Country case studies</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/8797-the-risk-of-authoritarian-renewal-in-zimbabwe-understanding-zanu-pf-youth">Zimbabwe</a>, Zanu-PF has been in power since the country’s independence in 1980. The ruling party and many of its now ageing leaders use their history of having been part of the liberation war in the 1970s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436590600842472?casa_token=B53EF1Ev0XcAAAAA:7W-Izw-iDMuOCRc8RZiW8UcDpXn7kH5E-siDc2W1ux_L9w1WpyB-2mnTSMzmAXrLM5YmfFCx3Mlo4YA">to retain their hold on power</a>. </p>
<p>They do so by creating narratives around the country’s liberation history and patriotism, and accuse the “born-free” generation (those born after independence) of betraying the liberation war. This delegitimises any discontent young people may feel. Zanu-PF targets young people among its <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/14906">wider repertoire of strategies</a> to maintain power.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/8798-poorly-designed-youth-employment-programmes-will-boost-the-insurgency-in-mozambique">Mozambique</a>, the ruling party Frelimo has won every election since 1992. The party has concentrated power and resources in the hands of the political elite. The youth continue to be under-represented and have serious challenges in accessing resources. This, in addition to other conflict dynamics, contributed to an insurgency in the northern region of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2020.1789271">Cabo Delgado from 2017</a>. It’s led by the radical religious group locally called Al-Shabaab, or sometimes “machababo” (the youth).</p>
<p>Youth-dominated protests in <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/7829-neglect-control-and-co-optation-major-features-of-ethiopian-youth-policy-since-1991">Ethiopia</a> contributed to the 2018 fall of the ruling party that had been in power since 1991. They also led to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-change-happened-in-ethiopia-a-review-of-how-abiy-rose-to-power-110737">coming to power</a> of Abiy Ahmed that year. </p>
<p>Mobilisation among the youth has since <a href="https://theconversation.com/abiy-ahmed-gained-power-in-ethiopia-with-the-help-of-young-people-four-years-later-hes-silencing-them-195601">been silenced</a>. Only loyalists get access to job creation schemes. There has also been a militarising of youth-dominated ethnic movements. This was seen, for instance, with the <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/322001/ethiopia-understanding-the-fano-and-the-fate-of-amhara/">Fano Amhara group</a> in the war in Tigray in <a href="https://theconversation.com/ethiopia-tigray-war-parties-agree-pause-expert-insights-into-two-years-of-devastating-conflict-193636">2020-2022</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/8801-moving-ugandas-national-development-planning-to-the-grassroots-whats-in-it-for-youth">Uganda</a> was a pioneer in institutionalising youth participation in decision-making. Youth engagement in political structures is considered to be a tool for government control. We found that young politicians felt that this flawed system of representation provided opportunities for mobilising both against and in favour of the current regime. Young candidates running for one of the youth quota seats in parliament, for instance, can’t easily evade ruling party patronage.</p>
<h2>Way forward</h2>
<p>Young Africans are diverse. However, they have often been characterised as either <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2019-march-2020/african-youth-and-growth-violent-extremism">violent</a> or as <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2019/sc13968.doc.htm">changemakers and peace activists</a>. These characterisations represent opposite ends of a spectrum. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/projects/2177-nfr-youth-in-africa">Our research project</a> engaged a diversity of young people positioned and constantly moving across different parts of the spectrum. This has enhanced our understanding of how they navigate and respond to the ways their regimes seek to handle the youth population.</p>
<p>In our view, research and policy initiatives towards young people in authoritarian states must acknowledge that well-intended youth interventions may reproduce authoritarian politics when they are channelled to party loyalists. </p>
<p>Interventions that aim to promote job creation and youth empowerment should monitor how youth participants are selected and funds disbursed to avoid interference from partisan actors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218179/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lovise Aalen receives funding from the Research Council of Norway's Norglobal programme (grant # 288489). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marjoke Oosterom received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) </span></em></p>Africa’s youth are not countering the deepening of autocratisation across the continent.Lovise Aalen, Research Professor, Political Science, Chr. Michelsen InstituteMarjoke Oosterom, Research Fellow and Cluster Leader, Power and Popular Politics research cluster, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2155542023-11-01T14:36:44Z2023-11-01T14:36:44ZSome African governments are spending millions to spy on their citizens – stifling debate and damaging democracy<p>Governments around the world use surveillance technology to monitor external threats to national security. Some African governments are also spending vast sums on mass surveillance of their own citizens. </p>
<p>They are using mobile phone spyware, internet interception devices, social media monitoring and biometric identity systems. Artificial intelligence for facial recognition and car number plate recognition is another digital surveillance technology in their growing toolkit.</p>
<p>I recently led research which found that governments in Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Malawi and Zambia were collectively spending over US$1 billion a year on these digital surveillance technologies, supplied by companies in the US, the UK, China, the EU and Israel. These are enormous amounts of public expenditure in countries where public services such as education and healthcare are under-funded. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/mapping-the-supply-of-surveillance-technologies-to-africa-case-studies-from-nigeria-ghana-morocco-malawi-and-zambia/">research</a> also uncovered the harms that this digital surveillance causes. </p>
<p>We found that states were using surveillance technology contracts to spy on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/16/team-jorge-and-cambridge-analytica-meddled-in-nigeria-election-emails-reveal">opposition politicians</a>, <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/blog/1394/facing-truth-hacking-team-leak-confirms-moroccan-government-use-spyware">journalists</a> and <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/03/morocco-western-sahara-activist-nso-pegasus/">peaceful activists</a>. They were singling them out for harassment, arrest and even torture. This is in violation of <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16893">countries’ constitutions, international human rights law and domestic laws</a>. All the five countries studied have signed international conventions on the right to privacy and have incorporated privacy rights into domestic constitutions and national laws. </p>
<p>Our findings give cause for concern about the chilling effect of mass surveillance on citizens’ freedom of speech, stifling debate, closing civic space, and damaging democracy. The report documents the use of surveillance to monitor, arrest and threaten journalists and peaceful activists who criticise government policies or ministers.</p>
<h2>The study</h2>
<p>We examined over 2,400 database records of contracts for the supply of surveillance technologies for the five countries. Ten countries were originally selected for this study to represent Africa’s main regions and economies. However, we were forced to discontinue research in Egypt, Ethiopia, Algeria and Tunisia due to security risks for the researchers. The author of the Côte d'Ivoire report had to withdraw for unrelated personal reasons.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/mapping-the-supply-of-surveillance-technologies-to-africa-case-studies-from-nigeria-ghana-morocco-malawi-and-zambia/">This study</a> covers only 10% of the countries in Africa, so the total expenditure on surveillance technologies is certainly much higher. </p>
<p>Despite these limitations, our report provides the most detail to date on the size of the market. It also details companies and countries supplying the surveillance technologies.</p>
<p>According to the evidence available to us, Nigeria has procured more than any other country on the continent. The government is a customer of nearly every major surveillance technology company that we examined. It spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/18120/ADRN_Surveillance_Supply_Chain_Report_Nigeria_Country_Report.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=ypdf#page=14">at least US$2.7 billion</a> on known contracts between 2013 and 2022. This is the equivalent of $12 per Nigerian citizen.</p>
<p>However, this is only a fraction of the true total as the monetary value of many known contracts is not public knowledge and many contracts are not in the public domain at all.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/senegals-internet-shutdowns-are-another-sign-of-a-democracy-in-peril-207443">Senegal's internet shutdowns are another sign of a democracy in peril</a>
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<h2>The findings</h2>
<p>We found that different African countries had distinct surveillance profiles. </p>
<p>Morocco has been an avid consumer of internet and mobile phone interception technologies. It has even conducted <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moroccan-king-mohammed-vi-on-list-of-potential-pegasus-spyware-targets-report-2491035">mobile surveillance of its own king</a>. Ghana focuses on <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/18120/ADRN_Surveillance_Supply_Chain_Report_Ghana_Country_Report.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=ypdf#page=4">mobile phone spyware and on surveillance of public space</a>. It spent over US$250 million between 2018 and 2021 on a “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/specials/connected-world/government.html">safe city</a>” project. This involved over 8,400 CCTV cameras on streets, equipped with facial recognition technology and streaming information to a national surveillance data centre with equipment from Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE.</p>
<p>Zambia has also made a huge <a href="https://www.mediaanddemocracy.com/uploads/1/6/5/7/16577624/zambia_report.pdf">investment in a safe city surveillance system</a>. In Nigeria, <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/18120/ADRN_Surveillance_Supply_Chain_Report_Nigeria_Country_Report.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=ypdf#page=11">facial and car number plate recognition</a> is used across Lagos and Abuja. Malawi’s investment in surveillance systems is comparatively modest; so far it has rejected the safe city surveillance package being rolled out across Africa by Chinese companies.</p>
<h2>Human rights cost</h2>
<p>Beyond the financial cost, the widespread use of digital surveillance products has taken a toll on human rights. It has caused long-term physical and psychological harm to individuals unjustly targeted by surveillance tech and held without trial or even tortured by authorities, as documented in the report by the “surveillance stories” case studies from each country. </p>
<p>Journalists and activists, or <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/18120/ADRN_Surveillance_Supply_Chain_Report_Nigeria_Country_Report.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=ypdf#page=19">regular citizens</a>, have been tracked, arrested and detained just for posting a critical message on social media. Under the pretext of national security, governments have exceeded their legal powers of surveillance. They have done so with impunity. As our reports document, even when courts find that security agencies have exceeded their legal power, nobody has been prosecuted or even demoted.</p>
<p>The few rules of surveillance supply that are in place are not being followed. For instance Frontex, headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, and the European External Action Service, the EU’s diplomatic agency, <a href="https://ifex.org/eu-ombudsman-investigates-frontex-and-eeas-over-their-support-in-developing-surveillance-capabilities-in-non-eu-countries/">are being investigated by the European Ombudsman</a> over failures to conduct human rights assessments of their surveillance technology transfers to non-EU countries. Self-policing of companies has proved inadequate in preventing violation of human rights. </p>
<p>Surveillance is a violation of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/12/where-did-the-principle-of-secrecy-in-correspondence-go">right to privacy of communication and correspondence</a>. <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-privacy#:%7E:text=The%20Special%20Rapporteur%20is%20mandated,on%20privacy%20without%20compelling%20justification">Privacy</a> is important in its own right. It is also important in making possible free trade, freedom of expression and open democracy.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/surveillance-laws-are-failing-to-protect-privacy-rights-what-we-found-in-six-african-countries-170373">Surveillance laws are failing to protect privacy rights: what we found in six African countries</a>
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<h2>What to do about it</h2>
<p>Our study points to an urgent need for international governance in the absence of effective national checks for the use of artificial intelligence in surveillance. Authoritarian governments could misuse it to violate privacy and repress peaceful opposition.</p>
<p>On the supply side there’s a need for robust legal frameworks to abolish the export of surveillance technologies used to violate human rights. Companies supplying these to known human rights abusers should be sanctioned, as is the case with companies that breach legal controls on the export of weapons and munitions.</p>
<p>On the demand side the public needs to be more aware of their privacy rights and of the expansion of mass surveillance. Civil society has a role to play in getting the courts to protect their rights and freedoms. </p>
<p>Public expenditure on surveillance should be defunded and the money redirected to productive social services such as education and health. The goal should be the abolition of all rights-violating surveillance technologies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215554/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Roberts receives funding from the Funders Initiative for Civil Society and from the Open Society Foundation.</span></em></p>At a time of increasing unease about the checks and balances for the use of AI, some African countries are spending more on harmful surveillance of their citizens.Tony Roberts, Digital Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2098932023-08-09T13:08:23Z2023-08-09T13:08:23ZKenya is going digital to boost tax revenue – there are lessons to learn from other African countries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540735/original/file-20230802-15-2g1n8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Billy Mutai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Imagess</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many African tax authorities have weak capacity to raise revenue. From 1990 to 2020, sub-Saharan African countries <a href="https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/brochure-revenue-statistics-africa.pdf#page=3">on average collected</a> only about 12%-15% of GDP as taxes, a much lower share than the 33.5% in <a href="https://www.oecd.org/about/">OECD economies</a>. </p>
<p>For countries that have limited information about taxpayers, constrained resources and informal economies, it can be difficult to collect revenue. What’s more, African tax administrations tend to rely on manual filing and payment of taxes. In-person interactions between taxpayers and tax officials are common, creating opportunities for collusion when paying taxes. African taxpayers also experience <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/ab_r5_policypaperno7.pdf">higher compliance costs</a> than similar regions when navigating opaque tax systems.</p>
<p>Kenya has faced many of these challenges. To streamline processes and make them more transparent, the country has in the last decade begun to digitise public services like tax collection. Digitisation also aims to enhance taxpayer identification and monitoring capacity, and lower the costs of compliance for taxpayers.</p>
<p>In the latest policy reforms, the country plans to <a href="https://citizen.digital/news/govt-to-roll-out-unique-personal-identifiers-in-september-n320243">introduce digital identity documents</a> for all Kenyans by February 2024. A digital ID system, e-ID, uses digital technology across the entire ID lifecycle: capturing, validating, storing and transferring data. </p>
<p>In Kenya, each citizen will receive a unique personal identifier. It will be crucial throughout a child’s journey in school. From the age of 18, the identifier will become an official national identity number for access to the full range of public services. </p>
<p>At the same time, Kenya is on course to eliminate cash transactions for all government services. These services include business registration, passport services, and land and property services in 2023. </p>
<p>Combining mandatory electronic tax payment and e-IDs could greatly improve revenue collection and efficiency, and cut taxpayers’ compliance costs. </p>
<p>Electronic filing of taxes has been mandatory since 2016 to collect taxes on employment, business and rental incomes. The <a href="https://www.kenyanews.go.ke/kra-optimizes-itax-ahead-of-june-30-annual-returns-filing-deadline/">system</a> supports a wide range of tasks, from registrations to refunds. Taxpayers can still pay taxes using cash, however, by visiting authorised banks or Kenya Revenue Authority service centres. Universal e-payment of taxes is expected to change all that.</p>
<p>We have between us years of research in governance, public finance and taxation conducted in African countries. Our view is that a number of challenges and constraints need to be considered to unlock the benefits of a fully digitised tax administration, not just in Kenya but elsewhere.</p>
<h2>Technology and taxation</h2>
<p>Technology can strengthen tax administration in <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/promise-limitations-information-technology-tax-mobilisation/">at least three ways</a>:</p>
<p><strong>1. Identifying the tax base:</strong> using third-party information, technology can create comprehensive databases of taxable subjects, making it easier to determine what tax is payable. Kenya’s digital ID would improve the way government databases work together and the revenue collector’s “view” of taxpayers.</p>
<p><strong>2. Enforcing compliance:</strong> technology can automatically check what a taxpayer reports against other data sources. Efficient e-filing platforms can automatically identify missed or late declarations. The unique identifiers provided by an ID scheme make this work.</p>
<p><strong>3. Facilitating compliance:</strong> tax e-filing and e-payment can help <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/blog/tax-compliance-costs-digitalisation/">reduce compliance costs</a>. They improve record-keeping and eliminate travel, queuing and capricious manual practices from tax officials. And the biographic information in the digital ID database helps with tax registration.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/ict-and-tax-administration-in-sub-saharan-africa-adopting-itas-in-uganda-and-sierra-leone/">evidence</a> suggests that important preconditions must be met for IT-based tax reforms to succeed. </p>
<p>In the case of Kenya, accessibility and taxpayer costs should be policy priorities when mandating e-payment. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/57351106/Digitalising_Tax_The_Kenyan_Way_The_Travels_and_Translations_of_ITax_in_Kenya">A recent study on tax e-filing</a>, for instance, revealed that not everyone had access to devices necessary for e-filing, and there were language barriers. These practical challenges typically pushed taxpayers to use intermediaries: they went back to a manual, in-person experience. </p>
<p>These shortcomings increase the risk of errors, misuse of personal data and bribery. Less tech-savvy taxpayers might be vulnerable. As <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/wrong-african-tax-administration/">filing levels are already poor</a>, e-payment solutions should make it easier, not harder, to comply. </p>
<h2>Lessons from other countries</h2>
<p>E-services help improve filing accuracy and timeliness, but one lesson from <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/mandating-digital-tax-tools-response-covid-evidence-eswatini/">our research</a> is that this does not always translate into higher tax revenue. </p>
<p>Positive impacts can be short-lived, as adoption of <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/digital-merchant-payments-as-a-medium-of-tax-compliance/">digital merchant payments in Rwanda</a> indicates. Here, taxpayers quickly reverted to pre-adoption compliance levels. Similarly, in Ethiopia, the <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/icts-tax-compliance-evidence-taxpayer-responses-technological-innovation-ethiopia/">adoption of point-of-sale electronic tax devices increased revenues</a>, but gains were offset by taxpayers inflating other, less verifiable margins.</p>
<p>Making digital systems compulsory, as in <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/technology-tax-rwanda/">Rwanda</a> and <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/mandating-digital-tax-tools-response-covid-evidence-eswatini/">Eswatini</a>, does not necessarily lead to people using them. Digital divides emerge between adopters and non-adopters. The less equipped, more marginalised and less tech-savvy taxpayers <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/the-vat-in-practice-equity-enforcement-and-complexity/">fail to take up the tools</a>. </p>
<p>Our research also shows that <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/blog/identity-issues-four-challenges-digital-ids-africa-tax-systems/">digital ID schemes must meet several conditions for tax administrations to benefit meaningfully</a>. Digital IDs must be universally adopted. Identification data should be accurate and up to date. Strong cooperation across government entities is necessary to allow data sharing, as we’ve seen in our ongoing work in Uganda and Ghana.</p>
<h2>Which way for Kenya?</h2>
<p>The government and tax administration must be cautious about digital IDs. Poor-quality and outdated data from e-ID could be damaging to the Kenya Revenue Authority’s functions. The institutions involved should promote a culture of information updating in the population. They should encourage citizens to share valid information with the government.</p>
<p>It’s vital to establish a robust data protection framework and digital trust, especially after the <a href="https://fpf.org/blog/how-the-kenyan-high-court-temporarily-struck-down-the-national-digital-id-card-context-and-analysis/">failure</a> of the country’s National Integrated Identity Management System. Citizens need clarity on data usage and how the new project differs from the previous one if they are to trust the digital ID system. </p>
<p>Similarly, the government and revenue authority must support citizens to move towards fully digitised tax payments. They can do this by creating systems that are simple and secure, and by providing assistance and training. </p>
<p>The development of e-government must happen along with a framework for data protection and cyber-security response infrastructure. Besides threatening citizens’ data privacy and security, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66337573/">system failures</a> – like the one that recently disrupted access to multiple services on the e-Citizen portal – have extremely serious repercussions on citizens’ trust in government and technology.</p>
<p><em>Nimmo Elmi (PhD) contributed to some of the research on which this article is based.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209893/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fabrizio Santoro receives funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Celeste Scarpini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Digital tax filing can improve accuracy and timeliness but it doesn’t always translate into higher tax revenue.Celeste Scarpini, Researcher, Institute of Development StudiesFabrizio Santoro, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Centre for Tax and Development, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2077662023-06-28T13:20:19Z2023-06-28T13:20:19ZPastoralists are an asset to the world – and we have a lot to learn from them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533789/original/file-20230623-27-7cuh4q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.tni.org/en/publication/livestock-climate-and-the-politics-of-resources">Pastoralists</a> are livestock keepers who are frequently on the move, sometimes across huge distances. Following mobile lifestyles and living far from centres of power, they are often inaccurately <a href="https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/hoofprints-on-the-land/">dismissed as backward and in need of modernisation</a>. </p>
<p>Many policies are directed at <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2020.1802249">transforming mobile pastoralists</a> into settled agriculturalists or urban dwellers. This aims at recasting them into the dominant image of “civilised” living. And, despite their positive contributions to livelihoods, economies and the environment, the world’s many <a href="https://iyrp.info/">millions of pastoralists</a> have been vilified as contributors to <a href="https://pastres.org/livestock-report/">climate change</a> and destroyers of <a href="https://pastres.org/biodiversity/">the environment</a>. </p>
<p>I am a social scientist with a background in ecology. Over more than <a href="https://pastres.org/about-us/pastres-team/">30 years</a> I have been researching land, livelihoods and agrarian change, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Contrary to the dominant, negative views on pastoralists, <a href="https://pastres.org/">research</a> in six countries across three continents over the past five years has shown how pastoralism is an innovative, flexible and productive system that can handle uncertainty and adapt to change, while contributing to climate change mitigation and improving biodiversity.</p>
<p>Our research is explored in a <a href="https://practicalactionpublishing.com/book/2667/pastoralism-uncertainty-and-development">new open access book</a>, published with my co-researchers from across the world. It highlights how effective pastoralists are at <a href="https://www.fao.org/3/cb5855en/cb5855en.pdf">living with variability</a> and responding to uncertainties. Of course, there are limits to such flexible and adaptive responses. Pastoralists are vulnerable to <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/15458">exclusions due to land grabbing, energy projects and urbanisation</a>. Political decision-making can also marginalise them. </p>
<p>But lessons from the pastoral margins can question assumptions about the best ways to meet today’s challenges. Here I offer five.</p>
<h2>1. Embracing uncertainty and change</h2>
<p>We live in a complex and uncertain world. Whether it’s due to climate change, market volatility or pandemic outbreaks, <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/14470">we don’t know what the future will hold</a>. Old certainties have disappeared, and expectations of stability, order and control are no longer tenable. This requires a very different approach centred on flexibility, improvisation and adaptability. </p>
<p>It means shifting from “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Qe_RDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=seeing+like+a+state+james+scott&ots=Fz9HZKBYap&sig=0NQhlD_BjJI2vyFtcOmWyibffBg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=seeing%20like%20a%20state%20james%20scott&f=false%22">seeing like a state</a>” (or a corporation, bank or development agency) to “<a href="https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/53003">seeing like a pastoralist</a>”. This involves <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/saas/aop/saas.of.04132303/saas.of.04132303.xml">embracing uncertainty, complexity and dynamic change</a>.</p>
<h2>2. Mobile lives</h2>
<p>Mobility is central to pastoralists’ production strategies. With highly variable resources over space and time, moving between grazing patches is essential. This requires <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/ejdr.2010.41">skilled herding, the training of animals and intelligence</a> on where fodder and water can be found. <a href="https://theconversation.com/livestock-are-threatened-by-predators-but-old-fashioned-shepherding-may-be-an-effective-solution-201193">Traditional practices</a> are combined with modern technologies for scouting and gaining information, based on deep knowledge of animals and the environment. Overall, <a href="https://practicalactionpublishing.com/book/1264/living-with-uncertainty">the ability to respond flexibly to changing circumstances</a> is essential. </p>
<p>The result is that pastoralists make use of otherwise unproductive rangelands across more than <a href="https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/114064">half the world’s land surface</a> and they are immensely skilled at living with diverse environmental, market and political uncertainties.</p>
<p>Our work shows that flexible mobility is <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/saas/aop/saas.of.04132303/saas.of.04132303.xml">crucial for everyone, everywhere in today’s uncertain, turbulent world</a>. We argue that learning from mobile pastoralists – from the savanna plains of Africa to the semi-deserts of the Middle East and North Africa, the steppes and high mountains of Asia and the hills and mountain areas of Europe – <a href="https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-022-00277-1">enhances our ability to be mobile</a>.</p>
<h2>3. Global markets and trade</h2>
<p>Pastoral systems are always embedded in markets and trade. Many of the great historical trade routes – across the Asian steppes, through the Sahara desert and from eastern Africa to the Arabian peninsula, for example – have been facilitated by pastoralists. </p>
<p>Pastoralists are no strangers to cross-border trade and globalisation, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2020.1802249">contrary to negative narratives</a> that suggest that they reject markets and commercialisation. However, the markets that are so central to pastoralists’ livelihoods are not the simple ones described in economics textbooks. </p>
<p>Our work in <a href="https://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/109485/">Sardinia in Italy</a> shows how pastoralists engage with informal “<a href="https://zbw.eu/econis-archiv/bitstream/11159/2279/1/III-Revisiting%20Sustainable%20Development.pdf#page=80">real markets</a>” to confront market volatility and uncertainty. Such markets are forged through networks of social relationships, allowing for flexibility when the formal markets for sheep’s milk face price crashes. </p>
<p>Important lessons emerge more generally. In surprising ways, <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/what-bankers-should-learn-from-the-traditions-of-pastoralism">pastoralists’ responses to market volatility echo those of bankers and financiers</a> facing financial crises. Instead of technical risk protocols and regulations, a more social, networked basis for trust-building as the basis for managing economic uncertainty, and so averting financial crises, is required.</p>
<h2>4. Disaster and emergency management</h2>
<p>Pastoral areas face constant shocks and stresses ranging from drought, floods, heavy snowfalls, diseases, conflicts and more. In northern Kenya <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2021.2013469">networks of highly skilled pastoralists</a> mobilise knowledge, technology and finance during times of crisis, helping to prevent disasters. Such people may include local forecasters who give a sense of what weather might be in store. They could be scouts on motorbikes scoping out new grazing areas, checking for conflict and other dangers. </p>
<p>Further <a href="https://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/110472/">work</a> in northern Kenya demonstrates how pastoralists survive, thrive and respond to uncertainties through asset redistribution, comradeship, diversification and collective responses to protect the livelihoods from external threats. All this suggests new ways of going about <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dpr.12613">disaster planning and humanitarian response</a>.</p>
<h2>5. Rethinking land access</h2>
<p>The urge to demarcate, register and control land is strong, as this is the model frequently used in settled agricultural contexts. But this can be disastrous in pastoral areas, restricting movement and so undermining the very basis of pastoral production. </p>
<p>The obsession with private property, individualisation and a market-based approach to land management is anathema to pastoralists, where hybridity, <a href="https://theconversation.com/collective-land-tenure-is-under-threat-in-kenya-why-it-needs-to-be-protected-74393">collective arrangements</a> and continuous negotiation of resource use are central. </p>
<p>As our work in <a href="https://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/106349/">Amdo Tibet in China</a> finds, taking such an approach to land governance seriously disrupts the standard models that dominate policy-making. </p>
<h2>A lifeline to the future</h2>
<p>A world without pastoralists would be a poorer place materially, environmentally and culturally. And we would lose a lifeline to the future, where we can learn how to live with and from uncertainty, just like pastoralists have always done.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207766/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Scoones receives funding from a European Research Council Advanced Grant for PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins, Grant No. 70432). </span></em></p>A world without pastoralists would not only be a poorer place, but we would lose an important lifeline to our collective future.Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014332023-04-30T09:08:16Z2023-04-30T09:08:16ZChild labour on farms in Africa: it’s important to make a distinction between what’s harmful, and what isn’t<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515440/original/file-20230315-18-ui0gow.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many children help out on family farms in Africa</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nana Kofi Acquah/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children across the vast expanse of rural Africa hoe, dig, plant, carry, tend livestock, cook, scrub, care for their siblings, and undertake many other farm and domestic tasks. Most of their work is on the farms of parents or relatives, and in most rural communities, learning to work is a normal part of growing up.</p>
<p>We examined a number of dimensions of children’s work in African agriculture in papers published in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0030727020930330">2020</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1468018121991813">2022</a>. It is certainly the case that some children are harmed by the work they do, and others may be forced to work, exploited or trafficked. </p>
<p>Yet, based on this and other work informed by extensive literature review and initial research, children who are harmed by working represent a minority of working children. And critically, neither their interests, nor those of other rural children, are necessarily served by ongoing efforts to eradicate child labour from African agriculture.</p>
<p>We are researchers in development studies with long-standing interests in the complex intersections of agriculture and social development in rural Africa. Between us we have researched and published extensively on poverty and vulnerability, land, rural youth, social protection, and policy across West and East Africa.</p>
<p>As part of our ongoing academic work we recently <a href="https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/childrens-work-in-african-agriculture">co-edited a book</a>, Children’s Work in African Agriculture: The Harmful and the Harmless. It is the first book that directly and singularly addresses children’s work in African agriculture. It puts the notions of “harm” and “harmful work” at centre stage, and argues that in most cases the work children do on farms does not result in harm. </p>
<p>Through a combination of thematic and case-based chapters the book seeks to re-frame the debate about children’s work and harm in African agriculture. We argue such a re-framing can help rural children in two ways. </p>
<p>First, by disrupting the dominant child labour discourse that pushes all children’s work, whether it be harmful or harmless, into the category of harmful child labour. </p>
<p>Second, by opening new avenues to more effectively address that portion of children’s work that is harmful. For example, by asking how the existing framework of international conventions, instruments and organisational mandates can be made more reflective of, and relevant to, the diversity of circumstances within which rural children and their families live and work. </p>
<p>But more fundamentally, re-framing can be a powerful tool if it more explicitly links the continued existence of children’s harmful work to multiple, interacting forms of power: discursive, economic, political and so on. The point is simple enough: we can expect little from policies, strategies and interventions that do not focus in on, disrupt and realign these power relations. </p>
<h2>Key insights: harm and the school-work dichotomy</h2>
<p>For the purposes of this article we highlight insights from two chapters. </p>
<p>Chapter 2 introduces the concept of “harm” that is foundational to understanding the “rights and wrongs of children’s work”. The authors - <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roy-maconachie-142892">Roy Maconachie</a>, <a href="https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/neil-howard">Neil Howard</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600818.2021.2004393">Rosilin Bock</a> – draw on their many years of research, activism and practice around children’s work in Africa. </p>
<p>They note that harm remains a contested concept, despite being central to efforts to define and eradicate child labour, and having been theorised within various academic disciplines. And harm arising from children’s work is likely to remain difficult to identify, assess and understand. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, progress could be made with an approach to harm which incorporates its subjective dimensions, including children’s lived experience of harm, and is focused on well-being. Such an approach would involve processes that prioritise the perspectives and voices of children themselves, as well as their families and communities.</p>
<p>Chapter 4 on children’s work and schooling is written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mairead-dunne-1194300">Máiréad Dunne</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/sara-humphreys-1194304">Sara Humphreys</a> and <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/people/carolina-szyp/">Carolina Szyp</a>. Máiréad and Sara are international experts on the sociology of education, while Carolina is a young researcher.</p>
<p>The chapter highlights how the relationship between school and work is grossly oversimplified in much of what is written about child labour. For example, it is commonly asserted that a child’s place is in school, and any work that interferes with school harms the child, and must therefore be considered as child labour. </p>
<p>However, when the quality of schooling is low, as in much of rural Africa, children may have better opportunities for learning, skill development and future livelihood enhancement through their work on the family farm.</p>
<p>The simplistic school-work dichotomy is further undermined by the fact that for many children, periods of work are formally scheduled during the school day. They clean, farm, carry water and so on, either for the school or for individual teachers. There is also an assumption that while work is harmful, school is safe. </p>
<p>The reality is that harm is experienced at school, and while travelling between home and school, as bullying, gender violence and physical abuse. Girls and children with disabilities may be particularly vulnerable.</p>
<p>When children are not in school, or when they combine school and work, parents are blamed for not appreciating the value of schooling. But research suggests that they are well aware of the realities – both good and bad – of schooling. The problem is that the school-work dichotomy, and equating children’s work with child labour, leaves no room for the very real and difficult trade-offs and compromises that rural children and their families must navigate daily. </p>
<h2>Don’t cause further harm</h2>
<p>Reframing the debate about child labour in African agriculture, and how best to address it, is particularly timely. There are ongoing initiatives to eradicate child labour from a handful of global agricultural value chains, including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/child-slavery-in-west-africa-understanding-cocoa-farming-is-key-to-ending-the-practice-170315">cocoa chain in West Africa</a>. As long as such initiatives fail to appreciate that much of the children’s work is harmless, and indeed beneficial, they have the potential to cause significant negative consequences – in fact, to harm – rural children and their families.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Sumberg received funding from Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office of the UK government.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Sabates-Wheeler received funding from Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office of the UK government.</span></em></p>Children working on family farms is often mistaken for harmful child labour.James Sumberg, Emeritus Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesRachel Sabates-Wheeler, Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2013032023-03-27T15:47:02Z2023-03-27T15:47:02ZGhana’s e-levy is unfair to the poor and misses its revenue target: a lesson in mobile money tax design<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516007/original/file-20230317-3164-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ghana's e-levy has hit traders in the country's informal sector the hardest.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In May 2022, the government in Ghana introduced a <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-data-on-the-e-levy-in-ghana-unpopular-tax-on-mobile-money-transfers-is-hitting-the-poor-hardest-189671">deeply unpopular tax</a> on mobile money transactions, known as the e-levy. When it was introduced, the levy was structured as a 1.5% charge on all electronic and mobile money transactions over 100 cedis per day. </p>
<p>The e-levy was designed to raise more money for the government by extracting larger tax contributions from Ghana’s informal sector. About <a href="https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/publications/file/WIEGO_Statistical_Brief_N21_0.pdf">90%</a> of total employment in Ghana is informal and politicians have <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/blog/how-e-levy-impact-informal-sector-ghana/">explicitly stated</a> that the e-levy is targeted at the informal sector. </p>
<p>In January 2023, the government <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/blog/ghana-e-levy-rate-reduction-public-acceptance-increase-revenue/#:%7E:text=On%2011%20January%202023%2C%20the,well%20below%20the%20government's%20expectations.">reduced the rate </a> of the tax from 1.5% to 1%. The unique feature of the levy, an exemption threshold for transactions below 100 cedis a day, is expected to be <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202211260200.html">removed</a> but remains in place for now, although it’s real value has been eroded by inflation over the past 12 months. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/event/webinar-ghanas-e-levy-two-months-in-what-do-we-know/">levy’s effects</a> – on Ghana’s public finances, its poor, mobile money usage –have been at the centre of intense and polarising public conversations, much of it without empirical basis. </p>
<p>In September 2022 we presented some <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-data-on-the-e-levy-in-ghana-unpopular-tax-on-mobile-money-transfers-is-hitting-the-poor-hardest-189671">early results</a> from a survey of 2,700 self-employed informal sector operators, carried out just before the introduction of the e-levy, where we showed the likely impact of the tax on Accra’s informal sector. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/mobile-money-tax-informal-workers-evidence-ghana-e-levy/">our recent paper</a> we assess how informal sector operators in the country’s capital Accra use mobile money. We also asked the views of informal workers on what they thought of the e-levy’s pending implementation. </p>
<p>Our findings suggest that the e-levy is highly regressive. In other words, our data show that the lowest earning informal sector operators pay a larger share of their earnings towards the levy than higher earners. We also show that most informal workers disapprove of the e-levy.</p>
<p>Our findings suggest that the government should reconsider the design of the e-levy to ensure that the most vulnerable workers in the informal sector are protected. We suggest further that the exemption threshold for low value transactions is an important tool in this regard and should be retained for the sake of equity. </p>
<h2>Lower rate brings relief</h2>
<p>What does the lowered rate of 1% mean for informal workers? In our recent study, we analysed information on the use of mobile money transactions among informal sector operators in Accra. We divided informal sector operators into five equal groups (quintiles), based on their reported earnings. Before the lower rate of 1% was introduced in January 2023, we calculated that e-levy payments would amount to about 4% of reported monthly earnings for the lowest earning quintile. The tax would amount to less than 1% for the two highest earning quintiles. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515159/original/file-20230314-21-v7tynp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515159/original/file-20230314-21-v7tynp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515159/original/file-20230314-21-v7tynp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515159/original/file-20230314-21-v7tynp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515159/original/file-20230314-21-v7tynp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515159/original/file-20230314-21-v7tynp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515159/original/file-20230314-21-v7tynp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>This shows that the levy takes more from the poorest. And the lowest earners pay a substantial portion of their already meagre earnings towards the levy. </p>
<p>The lower rate brings a small degree of relief for the lowest earners. When the new e-levy rate (1%) is mapped onto our survey data, the lowest earning quintile would pay about 3% (instead of 4%) of their monthly earnings towards this tax, all else remaining equal. </p>
<h2>Threshold an important tool for the poor</h2>
<p>If the protective threshold were to be removed–in line with the <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202211260200.html">recent budget statement</a>–the lowest earning quintile would pay, on average, 7% of their monthly earnings towards the e-levy. In other words, even at the new lower rate, the removal of the exemption threshold would more than double the liability of the poorest informal sector operators. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515164/original/file-20230314-2482-lvhcjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515164/original/file-20230314-2482-lvhcjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515164/original/file-20230314-2482-lvhcjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515164/original/file-20230314-2482-lvhcjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515164/original/file-20230314-2482-lvhcjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515164/original/file-20230314-2482-lvhcjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515164/original/file-20230314-2482-lvhcjw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The transfer threshold therefore appears to be an important instrument for protecting the lowest earning operators, irrespective of the rate at which the levy is set. But due to inflation, the real value of the threshold, as of January 2023, has been eroded by more than 50%. In other words, the threshold is now only half as effective at shielding the poorest as it was to start with. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>As mobile money taxes gain popularity across the continent, their design requires very careful consideration. Currently there are at least <a href="https://restofworld.org/2022/how-mobile-money-became-the-new-cash-cow-for-african-governments-but-at-a-cost/">ten African countries</a> that are either considering, or have implemented, a similar tax. </p>
<p>Our research suggests that efforts to protect the poorest mobile money users (often the unbanked working in the informal sector) should be the priority. We further argue that Ghana’s use of a protective threshold is an important feature of the policy design–more important than, for example, simply lowering the rate–but that it doesn’t go far enough to protect the poor. </p>
<p>More fundamentally, we reflect on the effectiveness of the tax from a revenue perspective. The new tax measure has performed much more poorly in revenue terms than the government had hoped for. In first 8 months of the levy’s introduction, it raised only 11% of its <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/blog/ghana-e-levy-rate-reduction-public-acceptance-increase-revenue/">revenue target</a> of US $1 billion. </p>
<p>It is therefore worth asking what else the government can do to meet its pressing revenue needs. There is <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-governments-arent-taxing-the-rich-why-they-should-57162">substantial evidence</a> that focusing on higher income earners, including high net worth individuals and extractive industries, can be particularly productive. The development of a unit in the Ghana Revenue Authority that focuses on wealthy individuals is a promising step in this direction, though the outcomes of these efforts remain to be seen. </p>
<p>The experience of the e-levy so far offers important lessons to other countries considering similar taxes. Among the most important is that domestic resource mobilisation cannot be achieved by over-taxing the livelihoods of the most vulnerable workers in the informal sector.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Rogan a Research Associate with the Urban Policies Programme in WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing). The research described in this article was made possible by generous support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Max Gallien Max Gallien is a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD). Through the ICTD, the research described in this article has also been supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nana Akua Anyidoho is Associate Professor at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) and Director of the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS), both at the University of Ghana. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.</span></em></p>Domestic resource mobilisation cannot be achieved by over-taxing the livelihoods of the most vulnerable workers in the informal sector.Mike Rogan, Associate Professor, Rhodes UniversityMax Gallien, Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesNana Akua Anyidoho, Associate Professor & Director, Centre for Social Policy Studies, University of GhanaVanessa van den Boogaard, Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2008382023-03-21T13:14:00Z2023-03-21T13:14:00ZKenya drought: Pastoralists suffer despite millions of dollars used to protect them – what went wrong?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515498/original/file-20230315-14-5xjog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A young herder grazes cattle on dwindling pasture in the drylands of Kenya.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/kenya-drought-pastoralists-suffer-despite-millions-of-dollars-used-to-protect-them-what-went-wrong-200838&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>Across the arid landscape of northern Kenya, roadside signs proclaim projects aimed at creating “resilience” among pastoralist communities. This is a region where frequent droughts, animal disease, insecurity and structural exclusion all <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9780203105979/pastoralism-development-africa-andy-catley-ian-scoones-jeremy-lind?_gl=1*rryxrs*_ga*OTMxMDc5ODEyLjE2NTA0NTY0MTk.*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*MTY3ODk0OTk5Mi41LjAuMTY3ODk0OTk5Ni4wLjAuMA">affect pastoral livelihoods</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=B5E0CwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=resilience+brown&ots=uzOyEoJZ0A&sig=akj76PB4sVQoD6mFJ1OkDww89Xk&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=resilience%20brown&f=false">Resilience</a> – the capacity to transform or to recover quickly from challenges – is the idea behind the many externally funded projects and hundreds of millions of dollars spent over the <a href="https://www.resiliencelinks.org/resources/reports/contributions-resilience-reshaping-sustainable-development">past few decades</a>. </p>
<p>Resilience projects across the drylands often encourage pastoralists – usually working together in groups – to “modernise” their production or get out of livestock keeping completely. Projects include livestock breed improvement, reseeding pastures, creating fodder banks, upgrading market facilities or offering livestock insurance. Such projects are combined with investments in water resources and roads, as well as an array of “alternative livelihoods” projects.</p>
<p>The value of this approach is under scrutiny amid one of the most severe droughts of the past century in <a href="https://reliefweb.int/disaster/dr-2014-000131-ken">northern Kenya</a>. Over 2.5 million livestock have already perished for lack of food and water, and human lives are threatened. At least <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/kenya/kenya-2022-drought-response-review?_gl=1*1yhoixr*_ga*MTA0OTM0MTUzMi4xNjc3MzEyOTYy*_ga_E60ZNX2F68*MTY3ODg2NjcwNS4yLjEuMTY3ODg2Njc3Mi42MC4wLjA">4.5 million people</a> are in need of external assistance. Decades of investment in “resilience” clearly hasn’t been working. The question now is whether there are different ways of supporting pastoralists’ ability to prepare for and respond to droughts and other shocks.</p>
<p>Over the <a href="https://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/110472/">past four years</a>, we have been studying how Borana pastoralists in Isiolo county in northern Kenya manage drought, conflict and other uncertainties. In recent years, the area has suffered recurrent droughts, alongside locust and animal disease outbreaks. </p>
<p><a href="https://pastres.org/2018/11/02/pastoralism-under-pressure-in-northern-kenya/">Pastoralist livelihoods</a> are increasingly vulnerable. Land is being encroached from all sides by neighbouring groups and conservation areas expanded. Building resilience has become increasingly essential. </p>
<p>Our research has pointed to the importance of local networks of mutual support, solidarity and redistribution that enable pastoralists to adapt to changing circumstances. These types of <a href="https://pastres.org/2020/05/01/i-exist-because-you-exist-the-moral-economy-of-pastoralists-in-response-to-covid-19/">“moral economy” practices</a> could be the basis for drought preparedness and response.</p>
<p>We have concluded from our research that, instead of the deluge of external interventions, ways must be found to build resilience from below, drawing on local practices and networks.</p>
<h2>Why top-down projects haven’t worked</h2>
<p>Our research has found that there are three main reasons that existing project interventions are failing to protect populations from recurrent drought and other shocks.</p>
<p><strong>Misplaced narratives:</strong> Behind these interventions is the idea that pastoralism is outdated and that alternatives to livestock keeping must be found. Since the colonial era, controlling livestock movements and <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/0-306-48595-8_5">settling pastoralists</a> have been central to policy prescriptions. Calls to encourage pastoralists to change their ways are always <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/53003/9781136255854.pdf?sequence=1#page=218">accentuated during and after major droughts</a>.</p>
<p>Pastoralists, the argument goes, would do better if they settled in one place and farmed. The biases against pastoralism are very evident in education programmes, water investments for irrigated farming and livelihood diversification projects outside the pastoral economy.</p>
<p>Yet, despite the drought and the loss of animals, <a href="https://practicalactionpublishing.com/book/2667/pastoralism-uncertainty-and-development">pastoralism can make the best use of highly variable dryland environments</a>, where alternative ways to make a living are extremely limited. <a href="https://www.tni.org/en/publication/livestock-climate-and-the-politics-of-resources">Supporting rather than abandoning pastoral systems</a> makes much more sense.</p>
<p><strong>Poor project design:</strong> All too often, development projects don’t fit the local context. Fancy new livestock markets promoted by donors are frequently in the wrong place, while <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/15665/APRA%20WP39_Winners_and_Loser_%20in_Livestock_Commercialisation_in_Northern_Kenya.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">dispersed “bush markets” are more accessible and cheaper to use</a>. Many boreholes function for a while, but the cost of repairs is often high and so they fall into disrepair. The roads may go to the wrong places, diverting trade and transport from places that matter. </p>
<p>Not all development efforts are wasted. Take <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2016.1266198">the new A2 highway</a> built by the Chinese from Isiolo to the Ethiopia border town of Moyale and beyond. This has reduced travel times dramatically, allowing hay to be transported for hungry livestock across the region. Also, maintained government boreholes, now often with solar pump facilities, have been essential for keeping animals alive during the drought.</p>
<p>But the idea that resilience can be generated through a technical or financial fix is prevalent. In so many cases the same interventions that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17565529.2022.2160197">failed</a> a few decades before are just being repeated with new branding. </p>
<p><strong>Ignoring the social context:</strong> Since devolution in Kenya in 2010, there has been emphasis on <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420920313340?casa_token=o3Phne7mhIYAAAAA:c36XGZI4qW7yht12Y-QWJtdxwRP6UbGzvBp16kzxUbnY71aXGOAVsaVDFBk8uD5E3ycf2nSp8g">decentralised activities led by county governments</a>. Many groups and committees have been established by a plethora of projects. Too often these are focused on implementing an externally designed activity or feeding information upwards. This creates a lot of confusion. </p>
<p>Such projects seldom engage with the social context, involving local networks or mobilising local expertise and experience. Frequently the projects fold as soon as the funds dry up. </p>
<h2>Towards resilience from below</h2>
<p>In the drylands, drought is part of normal life in a highly variable environment. Climate change is making matters worse, as droughts are more prolonged and the pattern of rainfall changes. And shrinking access to land and water due to encroachment of other land uses make drought impacts harsher.</p>
<p>Yet, as <a href="https://pastres.org/page/2/?s=drought">our research has shown</a>, herders have a long-established repertoire of drought responses. This is not just passive “coping”, but is well planned. </p>
<p>Pastoralists’ practices combine livestock movement, sharing and distribution of animals through loans, splitting herds and flocks, supplementary feeding and watering, careful herding, negotiating access to farmland or conservation areas, shifting species compositions, selective marketing of animals, and diversification to other income sources to support the herd or flock. </p>
<p>Rather than creating new resilience projects, separate from local practices, why not build on these responses? </p>
<p>Pastoralism, as described by researcher Emery Roe, can be seen as a “<a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/download.php?file=wp-content/uploads/2020/01/STEPS-working-paper-113-Roe-FINAL-for-opendocs.pdf">critical infrastructure</a>”, where “<a href="https://pastres.org/2020/04/17/pastoralists-as-reliability-professionals/">high reliability professionals</a>” ensure that the system doesn’t collapse. Such professionals are central to pastoral systems. They connect herders through diverse <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2021.2013469">social networks</a>; for example with motorbike transporters, those who offer credit, and local specialists such as healers and forecasters.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.aciar.gov.au/project/ls-2022-167">Our work</a> in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia is exploring more deeply who these “high reliability professionals” are and what they do to transform very uncertain conditions into a more stable, reliable supply of goods and services, so helping to avert disasters.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tahira Shariff Mohamed receives funding from the European Research Council as part of an Advanced Grant that supports PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins (pastres.org), Grant, 74032). This article was written as part of a scoping study for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (LS/2022/167)
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Scoones receives funding from the European Research Council as part of an Advanced Grant that supports PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins (pastres.org), Grant, 74032). This article was written as part of a scoping study for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (LS/2022/167)</span></em></p>Instead of the deluge of external interventions, ways must be found to build resilience from below, drawing on local practices and networks.Tahira Shariff Mohamed, PhD candidate, Institute of Development StudiesIan Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1986322023-02-03T16:01:00Z2023-02-03T16:01:00ZEnvironment plan for England asks farmers to restore nature – but changes are likely to be superficial<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508085/original/file-20230203-24-rwr5kn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5008%2C3313&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ketrels-yorkshire-england-uk-2185494997">Julie Yates/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UK government’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/environmental-improvement-plan">environment improvement plan</a> pledges to restore 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of wildlife-rich habitat, create or expand 25 national parks, invest in the recovery of hedgehogs and red squirrels, tackle <a href="https://theconversation.com/sewage-pollution-our-research-reveals-the-scale-of-englands-growing-problem-170763">rising sewage pollution</a> and improve <a href="https://theconversation.com/plan-will-put-everyone-in-england-within-15-minutes-of-green-space-but-what-matters-is-justice-not-distance-198938">access to green spaces</a> in England over the next five years. </p>
<p>Since <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/agricultural-land-use-in-england/agricultural-land-use-in-england-at-1-june-2022">69%</a> of land in England is farmed, much of the plan’s success in improving nature will hinge on its reform of the country’s agricultural sector. Farming is implicated in the extinction risk of <a href="https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-global-food-system-primary-driver-biodiversity-loss">86%</a> of threatened species globally, and accounts for roughly <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00225-9">one-third</a> of all greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, not to mention soil erosion and river pollution.</p>
<p>The government has described the plan as an “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ambitious-roadmap-for-a-cleaner-greener-country">ambitious road map</a>” to a cleaner, greener country. Some of the targets certainly are ambitious. For example, the plan aims to bring 40% of farmland soils into sustainable management by 2028. </p>
<p>This would be a monumental shift in how soil is cared for in England. Intensive agriculture has slashed the amount of carbon soils store by 60% and put 6 million hectares across England and Wales at risk of erosion or compaction, costing an estimated <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915003171">£1.2 billion a year</a>.</p>
<p>But the plan doesn’t actually explain how sustainable management will be expanded. The only action proposed is to create a “baseline map” of soil health in England by 2028. </p>
<p>The plan also aims for 65%-80% of landowners and farmers to adopt nature-friendly farming by 2030. “Nature-friendly farming” is not defined, nor is it based on any <a href="http://www.ipes-food.org/pages/smokeandmirrors">internationally recognised principles</a>, making it impossible to assess the government’s progress. </p>
<p>The plan only aims for this to be adopted on 10%-15% of farmers’ land too, which would amount to a mere 6%–12% of England’s farmland overall. <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429028557/nature-matrix-ivette-perfecto-john-vandermeer-angus-wright">Research</a> shows that protecting small pockets of land won’t benefit biodiversity if the majority of farming in the surrounding landscape is ecologically destructive.</p>
<h2>All carrots, no sticks</h2>
<p>The main instrument the government has chosen to shake up agriculture is the <a href="https://defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/2023/01/26/environmental-land-management-schemes-details-of-actions-and-payments/">Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI)</a> scheme. SFIs are payments to farmers based on actions which benefit the environment. For example, a farmer could receive up to £40 a hectare for their efforts to improve soils on arable fields. </p>
<p>An integrated strategy for converting farmland to more sustainable management would mean increasing the diversity of crops grown, helping healthy soils regenerate and eliminating pesticides, all at the same time. Instead, SFI payments reward farmers for making standalone changes. </p>
<p>This might mean <a href="https://defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/provide-supplementary-winter-food-for-birds/">putting out seeds</a> for birds in winter or leaving a grassy strip on an unused section of land to provide <a href="https://defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/create-and-maintain-beetle-banks/">habitat for insects</a>, though it could also mean significantly cutting down on pesticides. This system offers flexibility for landowners, but research shows that farmers are <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9523.2008.00452.x?casa_token=kzS1Kc7-i8oAAAAA%3ApqnahDOPAXUZSzx6nsg_zWpnMR4dIMS76ir3ZOeLY76-jYZyahEDT3TUrOIoOWWo8DrTeJBF1iInpA">more likely to choose</a> environmental improvements which don’t require significant changes to how they farm.</p>
<p>This is the fatal flaw in the government’s flagship farming reform. Farmers can continue doing things which harm soils and wildlife on the (majority) productive parts of their land while receiving benefits for sprinkling pro-environment measures around the edges. </p>
<p>Wildflower margins which are planted around pesticide-soaked crops under the pretence of supporting pollinators offer a common example. Not only is the continued use of pesticide on the crop harmful in itself, the wildflowers actually accumulate the chemical residue, sometimes in higher concentrations than in the crops themselves. This renders the wildflower pollen <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.5b03459">harmful</a>, rather than beneficial, to bees, butterflies and other bugs. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An arable field with a margin full of wildflowers to the right." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508088/original/file-20230203-22-uo8ca2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508088/original/file-20230203-22-uo8ca2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508088/original/file-20230203-22-uo8ca2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508088/original/file-20230203-22-uo8ca2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508088/original/file-20230203-22-uo8ca2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508088/original/file-20230203-22-uo8ca2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508088/original/file-20230203-22-uo8ca2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adding wildflower strips to field margins won’t undo the damage of intensive farming.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wild-flowers-cow-parsley-growing-arable-2196165655">Paul Maguire/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The environment improvement plan heavily relies on voluntary participation in lieu of regulation, not only through SFIs but quality assurance schemes such as Red Tractor. For example, fertilisers and slurries (semi-liquid manures) emit ammonia, a greenhouse gas which is bad for human health. Rather than regulate this, the plan favours an “industry led” approach with Red Tractor certifications. </p>
<p>Red Tractor is yet another voluntary scheme, and has been criticised as ineffectual for encouraging improvements to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/15/red-tractor-failing-to-regulate-pesticide-use-for-uk-supermarket-products#:%7E:text=The%20Red%20Tractor%20scheme%2C%20used,upon%20to%20uphold%20environmental%20standards.">environment</a> and <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chicken-farming-red-tractor-inspectors-failed-to-revisit-farm-after-deaths-c7hrdqh5g">animal welfare</a> on farms. The plan has only suggested that it will consider regulating dairy and intensive beef farms in the same way that it regulates intensive poultry and pig farms.</p>
<p>Even if regulations were to be expanded, environmental regulators visit farms so rarely and superficially that it might not make a difference. On average, it is estimated that English farms can expect an environmental inspection <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/27/liz-truss-allowed-farmers-to-pollute-englands-rivers-after-slashing-red-tape-say-campaigners">once every 263 years</a>. Despite being regulated, intensive poultry and pig operations are a major cause of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/05/river-pollution-leads-to-welsh-demand-for-halt-to-intensive-poultry-units">river pollution</a>. </p>
<h2>Beyond England’s borders</h2>
<p>In post-Brexit policy discussions, some landowners and consumers worried that payments for environmental improvements would outweigh income from food production, meaning less homegrown fare. Government discourse has since emphasised that farmers will receive support to deliver on environmental outcomes “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/therese-coffey-farmers-central-to-food-production-and-environmental-action">alongside</a>” food production. Nothing in the plan ensures this. </p>
<p>Other countries have a food policy which guides farmers to grow produce necessary for healthy diets and determines how much should be imported or exported. Responsibility for food in England is divided between <a href="https://foodresearch.org.uk/publications/who-makes-food-policy-in-england-map-government-actors/">16 different departments</a>, with no overarching framework or body.</p>
<p>SFIs and the new plan do very little to stem the environmental consequences of food produced beyond England’s borders. The aggregate ammonia emissions from crops and livestock imported into England are <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25854-3">significantly higher</a> than those stemming from domestic production. </p>
<p>And despite its favourable growing conditions, the majority of fruit and vegetables eaten in England are imported, contributing to water scarcity and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00254-007-0853-0">pollution</a> in other countries. Preserving the environment at home while polluting and degrading environments abroad is nonsensical, as all ecosystems are interconnected. But it is also shameful to shift the environmental burden of English diets onto other people. </p>
<p>If the government and citizens are serious about improving the environment, then policies must require that ecological principles are integrated into food production. At present, voluntary measures and weak regulation are all that is offered.</p>
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<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elise Wach receives research funding from foundations, research councils and charitable organisations. The author declares no conflict of interest related to this article.</span></em></p>Tinkering around the margins of English farms won’t benefit biodiversity, research suggests.Elise Wach, Research Advisor, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1952742022-12-05T12:26:28Z2022-12-05T12:26:28ZHow pastoral farming can help to avoid a biodiversity crisis<p>The world is losing its biodiversity. An estimated <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/">41,000 animal species</a> are now threatened with extinction. World leaders will convene at the <a href="https://www.unep.org/events/conference/un-biodiversity-conference-cop-15">UN COP15 biodiversity conference</a> in Montreal this month to <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/abb5/591f/2e46096d3f0330b08ce87a45/wg2020-03-03-en.pdf">discuss ways</a> of reversing this decline. </p>
<p>Participants are expected to adopt a <a href="https://www.cbd.int/conferences/post2020">global framework</a> that sets out measures to safeguard biodiversity. One <a href="https://www.iucn.org/our-work/protected-areas-and-land-use">approach</a> is to conserve 30% of the world’s land and sea area through protected areas and other conservation measures in areas of limited human activity. Some campaigners are <a href="https://www.campaignfornature.org/Background">calling</a> for this target to be met by the end of the decade.</p>
<p>But much of the land set aside for protection is occupied by indigenous people who may be excluded or displaced. Mobile pastoral farmers are one such group. <a href="https://www.tni.org/en/publication/livestock-climate-and-the-politics-of-resources">Millions</a> of pastoralists graze livestock across a <a href="https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cb5855en">variety of environments</a> worldwide.</p>
<p>Case studies from around the world indicate that including pastoral communities in <a href="https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(22)00093-8">conservation initiatives</a> can help to address the tensions that emerge around protected areas, while improving biodiversity.</p>
<h2>The importance of pastoralism</h2>
<p>The mobile grazing of livestock can be <a href="https://pastres.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/en-infosheet-3of6.pdf">essential</a> for maintaining the biodiversity of rangelands. Migrating livestock disperse seeds over large distances and fertilise soils with their dung and urine, encouraging plant growth. Light grazing and trampling of soil and grass can also allow areas of the ecosystem to regenerate following periods of intensive use.</p>
<p>Pastoralism can also support the survival of many important animal species. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/indias-missing-wolves/article65421926.ece">Indian wolves</a> are dependent on large spaces to roam. But in recent years their number has declined, leaving just over 3,000 in India’s grasslands. However, the sheep and goats that are grazed by pastoralist communities in these grasslands are prey for the Indian wolf.</p>
<p>Livestock carcasses also provide a food source for endangered <a href="https://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/147055">European vulture species</a>.</p>
<h2>Supporting conservation</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://pastres.org/biodiversity/">Pastres research programme</a>, which I co-lead, explores how livestock herders are able to produce food on lands that some people dismiss as marginal, including savannahs, mountains and deserts. Taking care of the land is an essential part of their livelihoods. Pastres also highlights the intimate knowledge pastoralists have of the ecosystems in which they live. </p>
<p>Research shows how pastoralists can be partners in <a href="https://pastres.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/en-infosheet-6of6.pdf">biodiversity conservation</a> efforts.</p>
<p>For example, wildlife poaching has become a major <a href="https://www.iucn.org/news/species/202103/african-elephant-species-now-endangered-and-critically-endangered-iucn-red-list">challenge for conservation</a> in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The standard response has been to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.01.013">militarise conservation</a> by arming rangers, and excluding people from wildlife areas.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/embracing-uncertainty-what-kenyan-herders-can-teach-us-about-living-in-a-volatile-world-174075">Embracing uncertainty: what Kenyan herders can teach us about living in a volatile world</a>
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<p>Yet pastoralists can reduce the incidence of wildlife poaching by acting as rangers. A <a href="https://pastres.org/2021/08/27/bring-back-the-herder-conservationists/">scheme</a> has been proposed in Kenya where pastoralists alert the authorities to commercialised poaching and protect water sources for joint use by wildlife and livestock. </p>
<p>Mobile pastoralism has long been an important component of ecological health in Spanish grasslands. The movement of livestock along rural routes called <a href="https://tuhat.helsinki.fi/ws/files/134650388/Manzano_Casas_2010_Pastoralism_Practical_Action_.pdf">drove roads</a> allow <a href="https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1890/1540-9295%282006%29004%5B0244%3AELSDVS%5D2.0.CO%3B2">seeds</a> to be dispersed over large distances in the fleeces and hooves of sheep. This enhances biodiversity and the connections between ecologically important areas.</p>
<p>In the same way, <a href="https://www.sadc.int/document/sadc-tfca-brochure">transfrontier parks</a> – which are ecologically protected areas that span across country boundaries – allow for flexible use of grazing landscapes through movement. In southern Africa, the removal of fences allows both livestock and wildlife such as elephants and wildebeest to migrate across large areas and diverse environments.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two wildebeest running through a savannah landscape." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497985/original/file-20221129-24-fpmruo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497985/original/file-20221129-24-fpmruo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497985/original/file-20221129-24-fpmruo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497985/original/file-20221129-24-fpmruo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497985/original/file-20221129-24-fpmruo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497985/original/file-20221129-24-fpmruo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497985/original/file-20221129-24-fpmruo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two wildebeest in Kgalagadi transfrontier park, South Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/two-blue-wildebeest-running-pursuit-kgalagadi-2229055423">PACO COMO/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Poorly managed rangelands where pastoral populations have been declining are also prone to dangerous wildfires. One <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/1/21">study</a> showed how pastoral farming declined in areas of Greece that were subject to wildfires between 1961 and 2017. Less livestock grazing has resulted in more dry biomass to fuel <a href="https://pastres.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/en-infosheet-4of6.pdf">wildfires</a>. In some areas, forest plantations have replaced pastoral grazing, further raising the vulnerability of these areas to fires.</p>
<h2>Exclusionary conservation</h2>
<p>The ecology of pastoral lands has long been <a href="https://pastres.org/2019/04/26/challenging-desertification-myths/">misunderstood</a>. <a href="https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.790">Global assessments</a> of the impact of livestock production often paint all livestock systems as the enemy of nature. The failure to differentiate between these systems has resulted in policymakers accusing pastoralists of contributing to <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/17608/IDS_Working_Paper_577.pdf?sequence=1&amp;isAllowed=y">environmental degradation</a>.</p>
<p>Conservation interventions have been used as an excuse to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/apr/22/tanzania-maasai-appeal-to-west-stop-evictions-due-to-conservation-plans">evict pastoralists</a> from their lands. Rangelands have been <a href="https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/09/07/pastoralism-india-rangeland-not-wasteland">squeezed</a> to make way for other projects as part of a wider pattern of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2012.671770">“green grabbing”</a> in recent years. Pastoral rangelands have been repurposed for environmental investments including forestry projects, carbon offsetting schemes, biofuel production and ecotourism.</p>
<p>But rangelands are often unsuitable for the <a href="https://tokaipark.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Bond-WJ-et-al-2019-%E2%80%93-The-Trouble-with-Trees-Afforestation-Plans-for-Africa.pdf">tree-planting schemes</a> proposed by those who advocate for the <a href="https://pastres.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/en-infosheet-5of6.pdf">rewilding</a> of pastoral areas. Pastoral practices challenge the conservation idea that the best kind of ecosystem is wild and heavily protected. As <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/34991">“open ecosystems”</a>, the natural state of rangelands is not closed canopy forests but a mix of grass and trees maintained by fire and grazing.</p>
<p>Such conservation schemes can also <a href="https://pastres.org/2022/03/18/how-sedentist-approaches-to-land-and-conservation-threaten-pastoralists/">undermine the mobile use</a> of rangelands, an approach that has helped pastoralists preserve these environments for centuries.</p>
<p>Through their flexibility, mobility and adaptability, pastoralists can operate successfully as part of nature. Research has shown how pastoralists can manage resources in ways that will benefit biodiversity conservation. It is these <a href="https://pastres.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/en-infosheet-1of6.pdf">lessons</a> that must be central to the discussion at COP15.</p>
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<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Scoones receives funding from the European Research Council through an Advanced Grant (74032). </span></em></p>Pastoral communities should be included in conservation initiatives – but the ecology of pastoral lands has long been misunderstood.Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1923562022-10-19T16:52:55Z2022-10-19T16:52:55ZFacing the dual threat of climate change and human disturbance, Mumbai – and the world – should listen to its fishing communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489362/original/file-20221012-24-hll9p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Koli community depend on fishing, but fish stocks off Mumbai's coast have been declining.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mumbai-india-september-10-2017-south-1749662051">Akella Srinivas Ramalingaswami/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Coastal cities and settlements are at the forefront of climate disruption. Rising sea levels, warmer seas and changes in rainfall patterns are together creating conditions that mean misery for coastal dwellers.</p>
<p>Disasters triggered by extreme weather often make headlines, but many problems linked to the climate are harder to see. These include the effects of warmer sea temperatures on marine ecosystems, the encroachment of seawater into once-fertile land, and coastal erosion.</p>
<p>Climate risks vary for coastal cities around the world. But according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, people living in coastal settlements with high social inequality <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/">are particularly at risk</a>. This includes cities with a high proportion of informal settlements and those built near river deltas.</p>
<p>The Koli people are one such community. As the original inhabitants of Mumbai, they are spread across a number of historic fishing villages on the city’s coast. But they have steadily been marginalised. Mumbai’s <a href="https://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/go/km/docs/documents/EODB/Construction%20Permit/Related%20Circulars/DCPR-%202034%20and%20Notification.pdf">official development plan</a> ignores the role of the Koli, and the ecosystems they depend on, in reducing the climate risks facing the city. </p>
<p>This has forced the community to take risk mitigation into their own hands. Through our work with the Koli community, we have seen how their response to human threats has the potential to create a city more resilient to environmental change.</p>
<h2>Mumbai’s environmental problem</h2>
<p>In Mumbai, enormous wealth co-exists with poverty. Largely built on reclaimed land, the city has undergone rapid development.</p>
<p>Poor waste management, property development and increasingly frequent extreme weather have reduced mangrove cover and polluted the city’s coastal waters. Mangroves are important breeding grounds for a diverse range of aquatic species. Many of these species, such as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/22/bombay-duck-mumbai-fish">Bombay Duck</a> and <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/the-shrinking-pomfret-of-suburban-mumbai/">Pomfret</a>, are vital sources of income for Koli fishers and are key to mangrove biodiversity.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489364/original/file-20221012-14-2ag90b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="4 rows of bombay duck, a local fish, hanging to dry in front of a calm sea." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489364/original/file-20221012-14-2ag90b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489364/original/file-20221012-14-2ag90b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489364/original/file-20221012-14-2ag90b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489364/original/file-20221012-14-2ag90b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489364/original/file-20221012-14-2ag90b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489364/original/file-20221012-14-2ag90b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489364/original/file-20221012-14-2ag90b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Bombay duck, a vital source of income for the Koli community, drying on a beach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mumbai-india-bombil-bombay-duck-kept-1750309199">Akella Srinivas Ramalingaswami/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>But fish stocks are disappearing fast. Environmental degradation combined with intensive trawling has led to <a href="https://www.cmfri.org.in/uploads/files/Attachment%201.%20Major%20Research%20Achievemnt_Mumbai.pdf">declining catches</a> for traditional fishers. This has affected livelihoods, with Koli women feeling the impact particularly strongly due to their prominent role in processing and selling fish.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1385110121001684">Studies</a> have also shown that mangrove forests protect coastal areas from storm surges and coastal erosion. Reduced mangrove cover means extreme weather events now inflict <a href="https://www.indiaspend.com/climate-change/exposed-at-sea-fishers-need-better-insurance-to-manage-climate-risks-781266">severe damage to fishing infrastructure</a>. <a href="https://moes.gov.in/sites/default/files/RS-in-English-4026-07042022.pdf">Cyclone Tauktae</a> in 2021 inflicted losses of 10 billion rupees (£109,000) to coastal fishers – damage to fishing boats alone was worth 250,000 rupees (£2,700).</p>
<h2>Taking the initiative</h2>
<p>Following <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148325/cyclone-tauktae-strikes-india">Cyclone Tauktae</a>, the Koli produced reports documenting the changing frequency and intensity of cyclones affecting the region. These reports, supplemented by <a href="https://qz.com/india/2030290/mumbais-koli-fishermen-cope-with-climate-change-and-cyclones/">media coverage</a>, have raised awareness of the community’s vulnerability towards climate change.</p>
<p>This has allowed the Koli to collaborate with various groups to reduce their vulnerability. We have been working with the Koli community through our own research project, <a href="https://tapestry-project.org/">Tapestry</a>. Our research has involved creating photographs and maps with the community to build a more comprehensive understanding of the consequences of climate change and environmental degradation for the region. This has highlighted the importance of mangroves for marine biodiversity and flooding protection.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An aerial shot of a mangrove forest in the foreground of a large sprawling city." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489415/original/file-20221012-19-1diumc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489415/original/file-20221012-19-1diumc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489415/original/file-20221012-19-1diumc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489415/original/file-20221012-19-1diumc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489415/original/file-20221012-19-1diumc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489415/original/file-20221012-19-1diumc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489415/original/file-20221012-19-1diumc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mumbai’s mangrove forests are crucial for marine biodiversity and flood prevention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/view-boats-mangroves-gorai-mumbai-india-1008986491">Viren Desai/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The efforts of the <a href="https://cat.org.in/">Conservation Action Trust</a>, a Mumbai-based non-profit organisation that aims to protect forests and wildlife, have also been key in protecting mangroves. They found that mangroves were being cleared to make way for golf courses, residential buildings, rubbish dumps and transport infrastructure. They were instrumental in the development of the <a href="https://mangroves.maharashtra.gov.in/">Mangrove Cell</a>, a government agency that monitors efforts to conserve and enhance mangrove cover in India’s western Maharashtra state.</p>
<p>Addressing water pollution also emerged as a priority through discussions with the Koli community. Our project partner <a href="https://bombay61.blogspot.com/">Bombay61</a> has since implemented measures to <a href="https://tapestry-project.org/2022/08/08/catching-plastic-mumbais-koli-community-uses-fishing-nets-to-tackle-pollution/">improve water quality</a>. Over three days, a pilot trial of net filters collected around 500kg of waste from a single creek. This initiative also challenges the perception of creeks as “drains” or “sewers”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489745/original/file-20221014-23-kcev7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cluster of plastic bottles and litter floating in brown water." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489745/original/file-20221014-23-kcev7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489745/original/file-20221014-23-kcev7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489745/original/file-20221014-23-kcev7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489745/original/file-20221014-23-kcev7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489745/original/file-20221014-23-kcev7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489745/original/file-20221014-23-kcev7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489745/original/file-20221014-23-kcev7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The coastal waters the Koli depend on are heavily polluted.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mumbai-india-november-11-2017-rubbish-759116230">TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Engagement between the Koli community, environmental organisations, government officials and local public events and exhibitions has allowed more equitable solutions to human threats to be explored. These highlight the importance of local communities to resource governance and urban planning, and could help dissuade the government from destructive future development plans.</p>
<p>The lessons from the Koli experience extend beyond just Mumbai. While each coast and city will face different threats, the seeds of responses can be found in the people who know and understand the environments in which they live. Working with grassroots methods and groups can reveal how action can respond to local needs and address more than just physical climate risks.</p>
<p>If local strategies can be scaled up, they could transform urban planning and climate change mitigation. These strategies must address the need to adapt to climate change and minimise human disturbance. Paying attention to local people’s struggles and harnessing their ideas can be an essential part of creating cities that are more resilient to future threats.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192356/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lyla Mehta has based this article on research conducted for the Tapestry project. This project is financially supported by the Belmont Forum and NORFACE Joint Research Programme on Transformations to Sustainability, which is co-funded by ESRC, ISC, JST, RCN and the European Commission through Horizon 2020 under grant agreement No 730211</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>D Parthasarathy receives funding from Belmont Forum and International Science Council Paris. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shibaji Bose receives funding from Belmont-funded Tapestry project</span></em></p>Facing human threats, Mumbai’s Koli community are taking risk reduction into their own hands – other vulnerable coastal settlements should take note.Lyla Mehta, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesD Parthasarathy, Professor of Sociology, Indian Institute of Technology BombayShibaji Bose, PhD Student in Community Voices, National Institute of Technology DurgapurLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1896712022-09-18T08:50:58Z2022-09-18T08:50:58ZNew data on the e-levy in Ghana: unpopular tax on mobile money transfers is hitting the poor hardest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484000/original/file-20220912-18-n7y3vq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A lot of African countries have implemented taxes on electronic transactions</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ghana’s introduction of a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61248366">a 1.5% tax on mobile money transactions</a> in May 2022 has been watched closely by policymakers across Africa. The proponents of the electronic transaction levy (e-levy) argue that taxes on mobile money — commonly referred to in Ghana as MoMo — present an opportunity for cash-strapped governments to raise funds in the complex post-pandemic context. </p>
<p>In Ghana, the “e-levy” has been linked to the current administration’s “<a href="http://osm.gov.gh/assets/downloads/ghana_beyond_aid_charter.pdf">Ghana Beyond Aid</a>” strategy for reducing aid dependence.</p>
<p>Taxes on MoMo, in Ghana and elsewhere, have also been justified as a way to “capture” those working in the informal economy, who are perceived as being untaxed. Critics have pointed out, however, that informal workers (who make up <a href="https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/publications/file/WIEGO_Statistical_Brief_N21_0.pdf">89% of total employment</a> in Ghana) already pay a <a href="https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/publications/file/Rogan_Taxation_Debates_WIEGO_WorkingPaperNo41_2020.pdf">range of fees and taxes</a>. Therefore they may be disproportionately affected by this new tax. </p>
<p>Despite much speculation about the impact of the e-levy, there has been little empirical evidence. In particular, it is important to consider how informal workers actually use mobile money, how the levy affects them and how they perceive it.</p>
<p>Our recent <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/17625">study</a> looked at the likely impact of the levy on high and low earners in the informal economy. It was based on a representative survey of 2,700 informal sector operators – employers and own-account workers – in Accra before the tax was introduced. We found that despite the minimum threshold shielding some users, the tax likely has a negative impact on equity. We also found that informal workers’ scepticism about the tax was rooted in concerns about equity and in mistrust of the government more widely.</p>
<h2>Assumption 1: e-levy will target higher earners</h2>
<p>One of the assumptions prior to the implementation of the e-levy was that it would be an efficient way to target higher earning segments of the informal sector. These segments are perceived as being under-taxed and more likely than lower-income earners to use mobile money.</p>
<p>A key question, therefore, is whether mobile money usage is concentrated among higher income earners. This assumption only partially stands up to the evidence. We found that about half (51%) of the informal sector operators in Accra use mobile money. It is widely used by women and men, by different occupational groups and across the earnings distribution. But the distribution of the actual monthly transaction amounts is revealing (Figure 1). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483043/original/file-20220906-14-79imou.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483043/original/file-20220906-14-79imou.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483043/original/file-20220906-14-79imou.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483043/original/file-20220906-14-79imou.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483043/original/file-20220906-14-79imou.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483043/original/file-20220906-14-79imou.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483043/original/file-20220906-14-79imou.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 1.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As expected, the top-earning group (quintile 5) reported transacting the most on the MoMo platform (about 500 and 700 cedis for female and male workers, respectively). However, lower-income earners will also be affected by the e-levy. This is because informal workers in the lowest earning group transacted more than those in several of the higher earnings categories.</p>
<p>About 41% of MoMo users in the informal sector do not have a bank account. Mobile money transfers may be particularly important for the unbanked, who typically account for the lower earning and more vulnerable segments of the workforce. We found 43% in the lowest earning quintile had bank accounts compared with 54% in the highest earning quintile.</p>
<h2>Assumption 2: excluding small transactions will make the levy fair</h2>
<p>It was anticipated that the exemption for transactions below 100 cedis per day would shield lower-income earners. It was expected to limit the negative impacts of the tax on the poor.</p>
<p>Based on MoMo usage data, we were able to estimate e-levy liability according to whether mobile money transactions in the previous month exceeded the 100 cedis threshold. Sixty-one percent of the users reported that they would be liable for some amount of e-levy payment based on their past MoMo transaction patterns and amounts. Here, our results provide some support for the government’s suggestion that the threshold would protect about <a href="https://citinewsroom.com/2021/11/momo-tax-wont-affect-about-40-of-ghanaians-adu-boahen/">40% of MoMo users</a> from taxation. </p>
<p>However, when the mobile money transaction amounts over the threshold are calculated as a share of earnings, it is clear that the levy is still a highly regressive tax (Figure 2) – meaning the tax burden is highest on the lowest earners. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483044/original/file-20220906-12-1crisw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483044/original/file-20220906-12-1crisw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483044/original/file-20220906-12-1crisw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483044/original/file-20220906-12-1crisw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483044/original/file-20220906-12-1crisw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483044/original/file-20220906-12-1crisw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483044/original/file-20220906-12-1crisw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 2.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lower earners bear a disproportionate share of the levy. The tax would account for just over 8% and 6% of monthly earnings for men and women, respectively, in the lowest earning quintile. Among the top earning quintile, in contrast, the projected tax would be less than 1% of earnings for both women and men. </p>
<h2>Assumption 3: support for the e-levy would vary on political lines</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/articles/majority-of-ghanaians-oppose-e-levy-not-confident-it-will-fund-development-programmes-new-afrobarometer-study-shows/">other surveys</a> have highlighted, the e-levy is highly unpopular in Ghana. We found that 83% of Accra’s informal workers disapproved of it. They worried about how it would affect the poor, that it would be unfair, or raise an already high tax burden.</p>
<p>The levy was the subject of verbal and even physical <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2021/12/21/brawl-in-ghana-s-parliament-over-proposed-e-levy/">fights in parliament</a> between the two main parties. The New Patriotic Party administration blamed public opposition to the levy on alleged propaganda by the minority National Democratic Council. This might suggest that support for the levy would broadly fall along party lines. Our study found that supporters of the New Patriotic Party were indeed more likely to support the levy. But only 32% of them approved. Overall, perceptions of the government and its performance influenced opinions on the levy. </p>
<p>We also found that women were more critical of the e-levy, even when we controlled for a range of demographic and political features. Only 12% of women approved of it, compared with 21% of men. This striking difference highlights the importance of further research in this area, particularly to explore the relative impacts on men and women.</p>
<h2>Implications for policy</h2>
<p>The designers of Ghana’s e-levy argued that it would lead to a better distribution of the tax burden by bringing ostensibly untaxed informal sector workers into the tax net (fairness) while shielding the poorest (equity). While the threshold is successful in shielding some lower income users, we found, the e-levy is still highly regressive.</p>
<p>Our evidence suggests that the threshold should be raised and regularly adjusted for inflation. More generally, revenue authorities should focus on other ways of taxing high income workers in the informal economy, including professionals. At the very least, revenues from the e-levy should be used in a way that offsets its distributional impacts. This could mean targeting new spending on public infrastructure, goods and services that benefit informal workers. Government could also subsidise premiums paid by informal sector workers to join the National Health Insurance Scheme or contributions to the National Pension Scheme.</p>
<p>Our data suggests that key decisions about policy design and implementation were founded on assumptions that are not backed by empirical evidence. Continued research on the impacts of the e-levy in the coming months and years will help ensure that policymaking is evidence-based, with a more complete understanding of how the levy affects citizens and workers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189671/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Rogan a Research Associate with the Urban Policies Programme in WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing). The research described in this article was made possible by generous support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Max Gallien is a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD). Through the ICTD, the research described in this article has also been supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) and the University of Toronto.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nana Akua Anyidoho does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The tax on electronic transactions has not generated as much revenue as the government of Ghana expected.Mike Rogan, Associate Professor, Rhodes UniversityMax Gallien, Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesNana Akua Anyidoho, Associate Professor & Director, Centre for Social Policy Studies, University of GhanaVanessa van den Boogaard, Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849742022-06-15T18:21:12Z2022-06-15T18:21:12ZHigh fossil fuel prices are good for the planet – here’s how to keep them high while avoiding riots or hurting the poor<p>In the UK, it now <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-london-russia-ukraine-boris-johnson-b2097435.html">costs more than £100</a> to fill up a typical family car with petrol, and oil prices <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/99cac5d0-bf6e-45ac-8e18-14267dab85f4">could rise even further</a>. But are such high prices for fossil fuels a bad thing? While attention is focused on measures to tackle the global cost of living crisis, there has been much less focus on a very uncomfortable truth – that solving the climate crisis requires fossil fuel prices for consumers to stay high forever.</p>
<p>Saying such a thing may seem tone deaf. Millions of households in rich countries are facing a choice between heating and eating. In poorer countries, the situation is immeasurably worse. Rising prices for gas have dramatically increased the cost of fertiliser, while the war in Ukraine is hampering the export of its wheat. </p>
<p>Together these are leading to spiralling food prices globally, triggering a surge in inflation and worsening the already <a href="https://www.wfp.org/publications/global-report-food-crises-2022">dire food security situation</a> in places such as Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Madagascar. We are already witnessing <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/surging-food-prices-fuel-protests-across-developing-world-2022-05-18/">widespread foot riots</a> just like those between 2008 and 2011, when citizens around the world protested the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Food-Riots-Food-Rights-and-the-Politics-of-Provisions/Hossain-Scott-Villiers/p/book/9780367352158">failure of their states</a> to deliver their most basic right – the right to eat.</p>
<p>To mitigate the impact of high prices, we have seen a screeching reversal of energy policies around the world. In November 2021, governments at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow pledged to <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2297452-cop26-world-agrees-to-phase-out-fossil-fuel-subsidies-and-reduce-coal/">tax carbon and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies</a>. But faced with dramatic increases in the cost of fuel and electricity, those same governments have scrambled to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/31/as-uk-households-feel-pressure-how-are-other-european-countries-tackling-energy-crisis">slash taxes on energy</a>, put in place price caps and introduce new subsidies.</p>
<p>Yet keeping global warming to under 1.5°C will require a <a href="https://www.woodmac.com/our-expertise/focus/Power--Renewables/the-accelerated-energy-transition-outlook/">dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels</a>, starting now. The unfortunate reality is that one of the most effective ways of getting people to use less fossil fuel is to ensure they are expensive.</p>
<p>Of course, the best way of moving away from fossil fuels is for there to be better (and preferably cheaper) alternatives. But investment in these renewable alternatives will only happen if people are clearly switching to them, and that requires consumer prices for fossil fuels to remain high.</p>
<h2>Fuelling riots</h2>
<p>Of course, high fossil fuel prices are typically unpopular and can even lead to riots. Between 2005 and 2018, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/13/kazahstan-unrest-highlights-tricky-terrain-of-fuel-subsidy-cuts">41 countries</a> had at least one riot directly associated with popular demand for fuel. In 2019 alone, there were major protests related to energy in Sudan, France, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Lebanon, Ecuador, Iraq, Chile and Iran – many of which turned into riots. </p>
<p>Colleagues and I recently published <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22001255">research</a> showing that these riots are caused by price spikes, often after fuel subsidies have been removed. These price spikes triggered fuel riots when citizens felt they had <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/projects/demanding-power-struggles-over-energy-access-in-fragile-settings-a4ea/">no other options</a> for voicing their anger over government policies and actions (or when states attempted to violently suppress them from doing so). </p>
<h2>High prices, happy citizens</h2>
<p>Is it possible to keep fossil fuel prices high without triggering riots? The key is to keep consumer prices high by increasing fuel taxes when international oil and gas prices do eventually fall. Making this politically acceptable requires two things to happen.</p>
<p>First, consumers will not accept high prices if it means high profits for fossil fuel companies. Maintaining high prices for consumers must be complemented by a radical overhaul of the taxation regime facing fossil fuel companies, not just <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/26/sunak-announces-windfall-tax-energy-firms">one-off windfall taxes</a>. Those taxes would maintain high consumer prices even though the fossil fuel companies wouldn’t actually receive very much – enough to cover reasonable costs, but not enough to invest in further fossil fuel production. As the International Energy Agency has pointed out, to achieve <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050">net zero by 2050</a>, the amount of investment needed in new oil and gas production is zero.</p>
<p>Second, consumers will be much more willing to accept higher prices for fossil fuels if the additional tax they pay is returned to citizens as an equal carbon grant. Alaska has done something similar, putting a share of oil revenues into a “<a href="https://apfc.org/">permanent fund</a>” which it then distributes through a cheque to every household each year (though this approach can go wrong – in Alaska politicians ended up <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/5/20849020/alaska-permanent-fund-universal-basic-income">cutting public services</a> to maintain payments from the state fund).</p>
<p>Getting an annual payment, equal to the taxes imposed to keep fossil fuel prices high, would cushion the hurt from higher prices. It would also be progressive, since those who consume the most fossil fuels would pay more in tax, while those who consume little would pay less but receive the same payment from the fund and therefore end up in profit. There might also need to be additional compensation for poor groups with high fossil fuel usage, such as people on lower incomes who have to use their cars for work.</p>
<p>Soaring energy costs are a disaster for poor consumers worldwide. But ironically, they also provide an opportunity to shift the world from its fossil fuel addiction. If we take this chance to make fossil fuel prices permanently high, we can accelerate the transition to cleaner energy in a way that is fair for all, and avert deeper crises in the years ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184974/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil McCulloch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For expensive oil and gas to be politically acceptable, two things must happen.Neil McCulloch, Associate Fellow of Political Economy, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1717492021-11-17T14:00:54Z2021-11-17T14:00:54ZFresh insights on how to create civic spaces in authoritarian settings: small steps matter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432199/original/file-20211116-15-25x82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Bring Back our Girls Movement in Nigeria brought to the fore the power of women in mobilising around sexual harassment.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across the world citizens are grappling with the pressing questions of how to defend and renew democracy in the midst of <a href="https://www.v-dem.net/files/25/DR%202021.pdf">rising authoritarianism</a> globally. They’re also battling with how to protect the civic spaces <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/CivicSpace/UN_Guidance_Note.pdf">“within which people express views, assemble, associate and engage in dialogue with one another and with authorities”</a> in the face of this challenge. </p>
<p>Efforts are underway to mobilise governments to make commitments for <a href="https://www.state.gov/summit-for-democracy/">democratic renewal</a> and reform. The world also expects greater <a href="https://ogpsummit.org/">transparency and accountability</a> from those same governments that made pledges at COP26 in Glasgow to protect the future of the planet.</p>
<p>For the last five years, the <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/programme-and-centre/action-for-empowerment-and-accountability-a4ea/">Action for Empowerment and Accountability Research Programme</a> has been exploring the question of what forms of action strengthen citizen empowerment and democratic accountability in increasingly hostile environments. The project is a collaborative international research programme based at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK.</p>
<p>The project drew on research from 22 countries. <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/programme-and-centre/action-for-empowerment-and-accountability-a4ea/">Our research</a> focused largely on Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan. All have legacies of conflict, military rule and authoritarianism. </p>
<p>Working with partners in each country, we used multiple qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand how relatively marginalised groups perceived authorities and mobilised to express their claims. This included making use of innovative <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/projects/governance-diaries-of-the-poor/">‘governance diaries’</a> to record when and how these groups interacted with authorities and on which issues.</p>
<p>With over 200 publications, the research programme provides a unique citizen-eye view on pressing governance issues. Five key findings are particularly important for policymakers and those working towards protecting democratic space and improving accountability.</p>
<h2>The findings</h2>
<p>First, closing civic space is a critical issue, threatening basic democratic rights. Our work on <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16602">Navigating civic space</a> shows that the trend towards closing civic space has accelerated under COVID-19.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/africans-want-consensual-democracy-why-is-that-reality-so-hard-to-accept-164010">Africans want consensual democracy – why is that reality so hard to accept?</a>
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<p>Commitments to open governance are important. But they don’t go very far if citizens don’t have the basic freedoms to speak truth to power without fear of reprisal. This means also actively protecting democratic space. That includes joining forces with those defending the rights of those speaking out against corruption and abuses of power.</p>
<p>Second, even in increasingly hostile and authoritarian settings, a rich repertoire of citizen actions are taking place. But, not through the normal, established channels which many have come to expect. Sometimes these claims are expressed in cultural forms rather than engaging directly to authorities. One example is the use of <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/shaping-social-change-with-music-in-maputo-mozambique/">political rap lyrics </a> in Mozambique. </p>
<p>Other times, they are made through informal channels, through networks or intermediaries, as our work using <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/mediating-between-the-state-and-its-poor-and-marginalised-during-covid-19/">‘governance diaries’</a> with marginalised groups found. And, sometimes protests may arise from a sense of collective moral outrage of citizens who, no matter how vulnerable, have just had enough. </p>
<p>We found this for example in struggles for <a href="https://closingspaces.org/navigating-civic-space-in-a-time-of-covid-19-reflections-from-nigeria/">security and against violence</a>, or <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/15649">against sexual harassment</a>, or for access to <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16822">energy</a>. </p>
<p>Donors and governments seeking to support movements for democratic reform need to start with looking for where these sources of civic energy are actually emerging. This, instead of the more traditional channels where they are often thought they ought to be.</p>
<p>Third, women are often leading the way. Our work found women were often in the front lines of protecting civic space and demanding reforms. This is despite patriarchal social norms, threats of violence, or biases of authorities and political parties who do not recognise women as legitimate claim makers.</p>
<p>We saw, for instance, the power of women’s leadership in the <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/14559">Bring Back our Girls Movement</a> against the abduction of girls in Nigeria, or in widespread mobilising against <a href="https://bulletin.ids.ac.uk/index.php/idsbo/issue/view/244">sexual harassment</a>. We also saw this in struggles for <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/15890">women’s rights in Pakistan</a>. </p>
<p>Commitments to action for protecting or expanding democratic space must include commitments to support women as leaders and champions of reform. </p>
<p>Fourth, small steps matter. In fragile, closed and authoritarian settings, donors and other actors need to re-calibrate their definitions and measures of success.
Measuring success through examples of full-blown democratic accountability or well-established democratic institutions is perhaps an unrealistic goal when faced with limited civic space, weak institutional channels for engagement and repressive leadership. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sub-saharan-africas-liberty-deficit-can-civil-society-help-fill-the-gap-166948">Sub-Saharan Africa's liberty deficit: can civil society help fill the gap?</a>
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<p>The focus instead should be on more intermediary outcomes, which can serve as building blocks for longer term democratic renewal. In our work, these included:</p>
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<li><p>increased visibility of previously excluded issues and voices; </p></li>
<li><p>improved access to higher levels of authority by local groups;</p></li>
<li><p>a strengthened sense of rights and citizenship among the citizenry; </p></li>
<li><p>greater responsiveness from authorities on certain concrete issues;</p></li>
<li><p>changing norms, including gender norms, increased expectations and cultures of accountability; </p></li>
<li><p>greater trust between people and public authorities, as well strengthened solidarity between groups. </p></li>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-style-of-democracy-has-recently-shown-cracks-heres-how-to-fix-it-164439">Ghana's style of democracy has recently shown cracks. Here's how to fix it</a>
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<p>Outcomes such as these will go a long way to creating the conditions that are possible for larger, more institutionalised democratic reforms.</p>
<p>Finally, our <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16822">research</a> shows that citizens across the world see access to energy as more than a necessity for cooking, transport, communications and livelihoods. They also see it as a fundamental right. This has led to widespread protests to try and get their voices heard when it is denied. </p>
<h2>Linking democratic renewal and climate change</h2>
<p>Yet those who consume the least yet need the most are not being listened to. Little attention is made to how to make <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16916">energy policy more accountable</a> or inclusive, especially in repressive and often resource-rich settings. </p>
<p>Building on our research on civic space and the politics of energy, a <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/projects/making-space-for-dialogue-on-just-transitions-in-africas-oil-and-gas-producing-regions/">new project with African partners</a> will explore the the spaces for inclusive deliberation on what a just transition would look like for the citizens of oil and gas producing regions in sub-Saharan Africa.</p>
<p>So far, our research points to the need to carry the grassroots demands for inclusion on energy policy – which we saw on the streets of Glasgow during the COP26 as well as many countries around the world – into upcoming summits on democracy and open governance. </p>
<p>When the space is created for citizens to truly have a say on their energy futures, especially in often resource-rich but repressive regimes, then perhaps we can perhaps also say that democracy is being renewed. </p>
<p><em>Two global summits will be taking place in December, with important implications for the state of democracies around the world. On December 9-10, US President Joe Biden will host the virtual <a href="https://www.state.gov/summit-for-democracy/">Summit for Democracy</a> for leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector. Then on December 15-17, the government of Korea will host the 10th <a href="https://ogpsummit.org/">Open Government Partnership Summit</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article is based on research funded with UK aid from the UK government (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office – FCDO, formerly DFID). The opinions are the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IDS or the UK government. </span></em></p>The focus on building democracy should be on more intermediary outcomes, which can serve as building blocks for longer term democratic renewal.John Gaventa, Professor, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1715412021-11-14T06:55:43Z2021-11-14T06:55:43ZCitizens of fragile states can fund public services directly – it’s working in Somalia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431647/original/file-20211112-19-pc8ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A person counts Somali shilling notes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AMISOM Public Information/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-25120-8_1">Two billion people</a> live in countries where development outcomes are affected by conflict and violence. By 2030, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/overview#1">up to two-thirds</a> of the world’s extreme poor could live in these fragile regions. Because of the security risks and the weakness of state institutions, it is challenging to provide essential services, such as water and education.</p>
<p>The citizens of volatile regions often play an outsize role in directly financing essential public goods and services. Little is known, however, about how informal revenue generation works in practice and the implications it may have for both development and state building. </p>
<p>To better understand informal public finance in fragile contexts, we conducted two pieces of research in Gedo in southern Somalia, where the state taxation system is <a href="https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/121391596804622057/pdf/Domestic-Resource-Mobilization-in-Somalia.pdf">extremely weak</a>. </p>
<p>We found that most households step in to fund public services through <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/publication/explaining-informal-taxation-revenue-generation-evidence-south-central-somalia/">community-based informal taxes</a>. <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/16824/ICTD_WP126%20%28Updated%29.pdf?sequence=7&isAllowed=y">Our evidence also suggests</a> that external actors can build on this informal financing to improve public goods provision, without necessarily undermining the state’s authority.</p>
<p>Working directly with citizens and community leaders can be an effective way of delivering services in difficult contexts. It can also help to strengthen and build government capacity at the local level. </p>
<p>At the very least, the informal contributions of citizens need to be appreciated. Otherwise, it is easy to underestimate the tax burden faced by households and overestimate the overall fairness of the tax system. </p>
<p>Understanding informal systems of public finance helps us to see the possibilities for service provision and governance in conflict-affected contexts.</p>
<h2>Financing public goods outside the state</h2>
<p>We first undertook qualitative research and conducted surveys with over 2,300 households and 117 community leaders in Gedo region. Gedo borders both Ethiopia and Kenya. Its economy is dependent on livestock and farming. </p>
<p>We found that citizens pay little tax to the state. However, they play a significant role in financing development and service provision outside of the state. Over <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/16466/ICTD_WP118.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">70% of households</a> pay informal taxes and fees. This represents an average of 9.5% of annual household income. </p>
<p>Taxpayers found these informal payments to be fairer than those levied by the state. Overall, informal taxing authorities are more effective tax collectors than the state.</p>
<p>Building on this baseline research, we then undertook a randomised controlled trial <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/16824/ICTD_WP126%20%28Updated%29.pdf?sequence=7&isAllowed=y">to explore</a> the ways in which international organisations, non-governmental organisations and local leaders can build on this strong foundation of informal taxation and local collective action. </p>
<p>Under a recent community-driven development programme, known as the <a href="http://stabilityfund.so/2019/05/22/the-dialogue-project-building-peace-and-increasing-citizen-government-trust/">DIALOGUE project</a>, two NGOs partnered to provide grants to communities. The NGOs – the <a href="https://drc.ngo/">Danish Refugee Council</a> and <a href="http://shaqodoon.org/">Shaqodoon</a> – matched revenues raised by communities through informal taxes.</p>
<p>The programme enabled communities to better finance public goods and improved the quality of those goods. Communities built schools, restored roads, and even constructed a local airport terminal.</p>
<h2>Informal taxes and the ‘legitimacy’ question</h2>
<p>While being able to deliver essential public goods is undoubtedly a positive outcome, it is also important to consider the impacts of bypassing the state and normal channels of taxation. </p>
<p>For one, there is a question of whether citizens who pay directly for public goods will ever view the state as legitimate. This is particularly important in the context of Somalia. The government and its partners are trying to extend the state’s <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2021/01/14/helping-build-the-state-in-somalia-financing-financial-management-and-federalism">reach and authority across the country</a>. </p>
<p>In Gedo region and Jubbaland state, the issue of legitimacy is even more important. Al-Shabaab is present in the area and <a href="https://hiraalinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/A-Losing-Game.pdf">levies its own taxes</a>. The region also has <a href="https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1293921/download">a history</a> of tension with the federal government. </p>
<p>In this context, financing public goods outside the state could further undermine its authority.</p>
<p>Somewhat surprisingly, however, we find a different outcome. The direct financing of public goods through informal taxes actually strengthened citizens’ perceptions of the local state and its legitimacy. </p>
<p>This may in part be because citizens in fragile contexts have relatively low expectations about what the government should do. Instead of expecting government to deliver services directly, citizens may see the role of government as facilitating or lobbying for development. </p>
<h2>Exclusive groups, heavy burden on the poor</h2>
<p>These findings suggest that informal institutions and local governments can complement each other. However, important risks remain when relying upon informal taxes to finance essential goods. For example, the local leadership responsible for raising informal revenues may not be inclusive and accountable to local citizens. </p>
<p>Accordingly, such initiatives risk excluding minorities and sub-populations, including women. This is a particular concern in Gedo region. Minority clan groups are marginalised from political and economic opportunities, while women often lack meaningful political voice. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, informal taxes have been shown in many contexts, including <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/16466/ICTD_WP118.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">southern Somalia</a>, to be inequitable. Informal taxes represent a greater proportional burden on poor households relative to the wealthy. </p>
<p>Of course, where state taxation is weak or nonexistent, formal channels of revenue generation and redistribution may not be more equitable. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, it is important to recognise the uneven burden that informal taxes can have on citizens. They can also reinforce an inequitable distribution of power and encourage a non-universal conception of citizenship and rights. </p>
<h2>Opportunity for donor collaboration</h2>
<p>Despite these persistent risks, the results of this community-driven development programme in Somalia have important implications. The findings boost our understanding of the possibilities for service provision and citizen-state relations in conflict-affected contexts.</p>
<p>Our experience in Gedo region suggests that international donors can support provision of public goods in fragile states. This can be achieved through collaboration with local communities without necessarily undermining state legitimacy.</p>
<p>Working directly with citizens and community leaders may be an effective way of delivering services in difficult contexts. It may also help to strengthen and build government capacity at the local level.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development. This research was funded by the Somalia Stability Fund. </span></em></p>New evidence from Somalia points to effective ways to deliver public services in conflict-affected and fragile contexts.Vanessa van den Boogaard, Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1716172021-11-11T12:24:39Z2021-11-11T12:24:39ZIl ne faut pas confondre les vaches et les voitures dans les débats sur le changement climatique<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431387/original/file-20211110-15-14gbpoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C924%2C600&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">À Nairobi, la capitale du Kenya, le bétail, conduit vers de nouveaux pâturages dans un contexte de grave sécheresse, se faufile dans la circulation urbaine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alors que les dirigeants du monde entier se sont réunis pour le sommet de la COP26 à Glasgow, on parle beaucoup des émissions de <a href="https://pastres.org/2021/10/29/climate-change-we-need-to-talk-about-methane/">méthane</a> et des rots des vaches. Sous l’égide des États-Unis et de l'Union européenne, <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_4785">l'engagement mondial concernant le méthane</a> dont beaucoup de pays sont désormais signataires, vise à réduire les émissions de méthane de 30 % d'ici à 2030. Cet objectif, considéré comme une « mesure à effet rapide » prise pour réduire le réchauffement de la planète, aura des répercussions majeures sur la production des animaux d’élevage.</p>
<p>Le bétail est devenu le méchant du changement climatique. Certains chercheurs affirment que <a href="https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/030a41a8-3e10-57d1-ae0c-86680a69ceea/">14,5 % des émissions d'origine humaine proviennent du bétail </a>, directement ou indirectement. De nombreux appels ont été lancés pour que des changements radicaux soient apportés à la production animale et à leur alimentation à l’échelle mondiale, pour faire face au chaos climatique. Mais de quel bétail s'agit-il et où se trouvent-ils? Comme l'affirme <a href="https://pastres.org/livestock-report/">un nouveau rapport</a> dont je suis le co-auteur, il faut absolument différencier les systèmes de production.</p>
<p>Le lait et la viande ne sont pas tous les mêmes. Les systèmes pastoraux extensifs, souvent mobiles, comme ceux que l'on rencontre fréquemment sur le continent africain, ainsi qu’en Asie, en Amérique latine et en Europe, et la production animale industrielle intensive et confinée n’ont pas du tout les mêmes effets.</p>
<p>Pourtant, dans les discours habituels sur les changements de régime alimentaire et de production, les animaux d’élevage sont tous mis dans le même sac. Les vaches sont faussement assimilées aux <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/22/eu-farm-animals-produce-more-emissions-than-cars-and-vans-combined-greenpeace">voitures polluantes</a> et <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/02/treating-beef-like-coal-would-make-a-big-dent-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions">le bœuf au charbon</a>. Le discours simpliste « tout le bétail est mauvais » est tenu par des organisations de campagne, des célébrités écologistes, de riches philanthropes et des décideurs politiques et, inévitablement, il domine<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study">la couverture médiatique</a>. Il est toutefois nécessaire d’approfondir le débat. </p>
<h2>Analyser les données</h2>
<p><a href="https://pastres.org/livestock-report/">Notre rapport</a>, en analysant les données, souligne les problèmes liés à l'utilisation de statistiques globales dans l’évaluation de l'impact de l'élevage sur le climat mondial.</p>
<p>Certains types de production animale, notamment ceux des systèmes industriels, sont certainement très nuisibles à l'environnement, parce qu’ils génèrent d'importantes émissions de gaz à effet de serre et provoquent une grave pollution des eaux. Ils contribuent également à la déforestation résultant notamment de la demande en aliments pour animaux et en zones de pâturage toujours plus vastes. En outre, il est tout à fait logique de réduire <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person">la quantité d'aliments d'origine animale</a> dans les régimes alimentaires, que ce soit dans le Nord ou dans le Sud sur toute la planète, tant pour l'environnement que pour la santé des personnes.</p>
<p>Les systèmes industriels ne sont cependant qu'un type de production animale, les chiffres globaux des émissions ne permettant pas de saisir les nuances de cette réalité. En examinant l'ensemble des évaluations des cycles de vie – une technique largement utilisée pour évaluer l'impact des différents systèmes agroalimentaires sur le changement climatique – nous avons découvert <a href="https://pastres.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/infosheet-2-flaws-in-assessments.pdf">des lacunes et des hypothèses notables</a>.</p>
<p>L'une d'elles est que les évaluations globales sont très majoritairement basées sur des données provenant de systèmes industriels. Un document fréquemment cité, qui porte sur 38,700 exploitations agricoles et 1,600 transformateurs, ne s’est intéressé qu'aux unités « commercialement viables », principalement en Europe et en Amérique du Nord. Toutefois, les animaux d'élevage ne sont pas tous les mêmes, ce qui signifie que les extrapolations globalisantes ne fonctionnent pas.</p>
<p>Des recherches menées au Kenya, par exemple, montrent à quel point les hypothèses sur les émissions des animaux africains sont inexactes. Ceux-ci sont plus petits, ont un régime alimentaire de meilleure qualité grâce au pâturage sélectif et une physiologie adaptée à leur environnement. Ils ne ressemblent pas à un animal de race placé dans une chambre calorimétrique, d'où proviennent la plupart des données sur les facteurs d'émission. Dans l'ensemble, la quantité de données relatives aux systèmes extensifs est très insuffisante. <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6cd5/meta">Un examen des évaluations du cycle de vie de la production alimentaire</a> a montré, entre autres, que seulement 0,4 % des études de ce type étaient menées en Afrique, où la pratique du pastoralisme extensif s’étend habituellement sur de vastes zones.</p>
<p>Un autre problème posé découle du fait que la plupart de ces évaluations se concentrent sur les impacts des émissions par animal ou par unité de produit, ce qui présente un tableau très déformé étant donné que les coûts et les avantages n'ont pas été pris en compte. Les partisans des systèmes industrialisés montrent du doigt les émissions élevées de méthane par animal provenant de la consommation de fourrage grossier et de mauvaise qualité sur les pâturages ouverts, en les comparant au potentiel des aliments améliorés et réducteurs de méthane dans les systèmes confinés. Ce n’est pas la question : une approche systémique plus intégrée et plus générale doit non seulement englober tous les impacts, mais aussi les avantages. À titre d’exemple, certaines formes de pâturage extensif peuvent éventuellement augmenter les stocks de carbone dans le sol, ce qui vient s’ajouter aux réserves de carbone déjà considérables des pâturages ouverts.</p>
<p>Par ailleurs, le fait est que le méthane et le dioxyde de carbone ont des durées de vie différentes dans l'atmosphère et ne sont donc pas équivalents. Le méthane est un gaz à courte durée de vie mais très puissant. Le dioxyde de carbone reste dans l'atmosphère pour toujours. On peut envisager de réduire le réchauffement à court terme en s'attaquant aux émissions de méthane, mais pour lutter contre le changement climatique sur le long terme, il faut se foacliser sur le dioxyde de carbone. Il y a, par conséquent, une grande différence dans la manière d’évaluer les différents gaz à effet de serre et de déterminer «<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-a-new-way-to-assess-global-warming-potential-of-short-lived-pollutants">le potentiel de réchauffement planétaire </a>» . Autrement dit, <a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0">les vaches et les voitures </a> ne sont pas les mêmes.</p>
<p>La base de référence choisie est tout aussi importante. Les <a href="https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/326549/Intensifying_pastoralism_AAM.pdf;jsessionid=C32DF3C85BE7E4FFAD3D2EC11D7EEDFE?sequence=1">systèmes pastoraux peuvent ne pas entraîner d'émissions supplémentaires par rapport à une base de référence « naturelle »</a>. Dans les systèmes extensifs d’Afrique, par exemple, le bétail domestique remplace les animaux sauvages qui émettent des quantités comparables de gaz à effet de serre. En revanche, il est clair que les systèmes industriels sont la source d’impacts supplémentaires, se traduisant par des coûts environnementaux importants dûs aux émissions de méthane provenant de la production, à l'importation d'aliments pour animaux, à la concentration des déchets d'élevage et à l'utilisation de combustibles fossiles dans les transports et les infrastructures irrécupérables.</p>
<h2>La justice climatique</h2>
<p>Une évaluation plus équilibrée est nécessaire. L'élevage extensif contribue aux émissions, mais il est également vrai qu'il présente de multiples avantages pour l'environnement, potentiellement par la séquestration du carbone, l'amélioration de la biodiversité et la mise en valeur des paysages.</p>
<p>De plus, les aliments d'origine animale sont <a href="https://www.gainhealth.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/gain-briefing-paper-series-4-nutrient-shortfalls-in-young-childrens-diets-and-the-role-of-affordability.pdf">essentiels pour la nutrition</a>, car ils sont riches en protéines et d'autres nutriments, notamment pour les populations à faible revenu et vulnérables, et pour les zones impropres à la culture. Dans le monde entier, les animaux d'élevage – bovins, ovins, caprins, camelins, yaks, lamas et autres - procurent des revenus et des moyens de subsistance à de nombreuses personnes. Les pâturages dans le monde représentent plus de <a href="https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/114064">la moitié de la surface terrestre</a> et abritent des millions de personnes.</p>
<p>À l'heure où les pays s'engagent à réduire les émissions de méthane, il est urgent de mener un débat plus approfondi, afin d'éviter de <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16913">graves injustices</a>.
Au fur et à mesure que des réglementations seront élaborées, des procédures de vérification approuvées et des systèmes de déclaration mis en place, les systèmes d'élevage en Afrique et ailleurs risquent d'être pénalisés, avec des conséquences majeures sur les moyens de subsistance des populations pauvres.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171617/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Scoones reçoit un financement du Conseil européen de la recherche via son projet Advanced Grant pour PASTRES (<a href="http://www.pastres.org">www.pastres.org</a>).</span></em></p>Un discours simpliste tenu par des activistes, des célébrités, des philanthropes, des décideurs politiques voudrait que « tous les animaux d'élevage soient mauvais ». Ce qui est loin de la réalité.Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1714102021-11-09T14:57:39Z2021-11-09T14:57:39ZCOP26: Two worlds talked past each other – or never even met<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431016/original/file-20211109-21-1j44min.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Delegates arrive at the COP26 climate summit on November 4, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the <a href="https://ukcop26.org/">2021 UN climate change conference</a> in Glasgow, moving between the corporate slickness of the official “Blue Zone” (a UN-managed space which hosts the negotiations) and the wider fringe was quite a disconcerting experience for me. These were two different worlds. Everyone was committed to saving the planet, but there were highly diverging views about how to do it.</p>
<p>A welter of announcements on everything from <a href="https://unfccc.int/news/end-of-coal-in-sight-at-cop26">coal</a> to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-59137828">methane</a> to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/01/biden-bolsonaro-and-xi-among-leaders-agreeing-to-end-deforestation-aoe">forests</a> dominated the opening days. Large numbers were discussed and ambitious targets were set. The bottom line was keeping alive the <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement/key-aspects-of-the-paris-agreement">Paris agreement</a> to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C, while assuring a ‘transition’ to a low-carbon future.</p>
<p>The contradictions were all too apparent at this year’s conference, known as COP26. The hired exhibition spaces in the conference centre were hosted by fossil fuel polluting countries and sponsored by large corporations. Corporate spin, also known as greenwash, abounded. There were a few African delegations with their own space and a vanishingly few civil society voices in the main venue.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the discourse was very different in parallel fora. Here the talk was of <a href="https://twitter.com/cop26_coalition/status/1455581844079058944?s=12">inequality, climate justice and reparations</a>. The focus was on radical transformations of systems of production and consumption. Many were critical of business-led and market-based solutions to climate change.</p>
<p>There was passion, commitment and a real sense of anger and frustration about the main conference. Huge suspicion around the corporate takeover of the climate agenda swirled, with much commentary on the <a href="https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/10/28/the-uk-has-40-new-fossil-fuel-projects-in-the-pipeline-what-does-this-mean-for-cop26-credi">double standards</a> of the UK hosts, still proposing a new coalmine and oilfield as part of a so-called ‘transition’.</p>
<p>Unlike a decade ago, there was no climate scepticism on show. But how to address the underlying causes of climate change in capitalism remains the big, unaddressed challenge.</p>
<h2>Pastoralists’ perspectives</h2>
<p>As a researcher working on pastoralism as part of <a href="https://pastres.org">a European Research Council funded project</a>, I was at the COP together with a delegation of pastoralists from different parts of the world, all linked to the <a href="https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/10/28/the-uk-has-40-new-fossil-fuel-projects-in-the-pipeline-what-does-this-mean-for-cop26-credi">World Alliance for Mobile Indigenous Pastoralist Peoples</a>. We were definitely on the fringe of the fringe. </p>
<p>We hosted <a href="https://twitter.com/PASTRES_erc/status/1454091070988558345">a photo exhibition</a> exploring pastoralists’ own perceptions of climate change and uncertainty from across the world. We engaged in a dialogue with <a href="https://www.nourishscotland.org/campaigns/cop26-and-food-systems/recipes-for-resilience-at-cop26/">Scottish farmers and food groups</a>, focusing on the future of livestock production under climate change. And our ‘<a href="https://twitter.com/PASTRES_erc/status/1455988353468338186">sheep for the climate’ action</a> brought a group together to discuss why livestock are not always bad for the planet, together with some fine rare breed sheep.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cows-and-cars-should-not-be-conflated-in-climate-change-debates-171024">Cows and cars should not be conflated in climate change debates</a>
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<p>When I managed to find a few events in the Blue Zone (not an easy task) relating to our research, they were mostly extremely disappointing. There were parallel conversations going on. If climate change is genuinely a shared challenge for all of humanity, dialogue between different viewpoints is vital.</p>
<p>Within the main conference, there was much talk about trees and ‘nature-based solutions’ across multiple sessions, for instance. The mainstream media hailed the agreement on deforestation, but <a href="https://leafcoalition.org/">a significant part</a> of this simply replicates the failed programmes of the past. Under such programmes, forest protection in the global south is used as <a href="https://pastres.org/2021/10/15/why-carbon-offsetting-through-tree-planting-wont-help-solve-the-climate-crisis/">carbon offsets</a> for large polluting companies and rich, consuming publics in the north. </p>
<p>The huge ecosystem restoration efforts being proposed potentially cause <a href="https://pastres.org/2021/09/10/tree-planting-schemes-can-destroy-rangelands-and-damage-pastoral-livelihoods/">real problems for pastoralists</a>. This is because large areas of open rangelands are earmarked for tree planting and biodiversity protection through exclusion. These so-called <a href="https://www.foei.org/news/nature-based-solutions-a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing">nature-based solutions</a> are frequently new forms of colonialism, opening the gates to ‘<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2012.671770">green grabbing’</a>, where land and resources are appropriated in the name of environmental conservation. </p>
<p>Methane was also a hot topic. The huge reductions in emissions proposed under the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_21_5766">Global Methane Pledge</a> have major implications for livestock production. Yet a session I attended was obsessed only with technical solutions -– feed additives, methane-reducing inhibitors and vaccines, seaweed supplements, even face masks for cows. </p>
<p>Once again, livestock systems were lumped together, without differentiating between highly polluting industrial systems and more climate-friendly extensive systems, such as African pastoralism. Indeed, many of the solutions proposed are already being practised in <a href="https://pastres.org/2021/10/29/climate-change-we-need-to-talk-about-methane/">extensive grazing systems</a>. The problem I guess is that these practices could not be patented and sold by agribusinesses.</p>
<h2>Climate and capitalism</h2>
<p>So how do these two worlds intersect? Everyone is keen on nature, no-one wants catastrophic climate change, but why are the solutions so divergent? At root, the two camps (and many in between) have different views on the role of capitalism in climate change. </p>
<p>For those in the Blue Zone, a long-term shift from reliance on fossil fuels is (largely) accepted. But capitalism in its new green guise, many argue, can save the day through technology investment and market mechanisms – and notably through the plethora of offsetting schemes that make up the net-zero plans.</p>
<p>By contrast, critical civil society and youth voices argue that capitalism is the root cause of the problem, together with its handmaiden colonialism. The only solution therefore is to overhaul capitalism and dismantle unequal global power relations. But how, through what alliances? </p>
<p>In a recent paper –- <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2021.1956473">climate change and agrarian struggles</a> – we explored the challenges of ‘<a href="https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/%7Ewright/How%20to%20be%20an%20anticapitalis/How%20to%20be%20an%20Anticapitalist%20(essay)%20-%20v6.0.pdf">eroding capitalism</a>’ to create structural transformation and climate justice. However, in Glasgow I missed these crucial, political debates about ways forward. Are new styles of multilateral negotiation possible? Can genuine inclusion occur, going beyond the performance of participation where an ‘indigenous’ person or ‘community’ leader is co-opted? Can a true dialogue emerge about our common future?</p>
<p>I of course had very limited exposure to the thousands of simultaneous events. But my sense was that there was little meaningful interchange between different positions. Two worlds talked past each other or – because of restricted access, problems with visas and the high costs of attending –- never even met.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Scoones receives funding from the European Research Council through an Advanced Grant.</span></em></p>At COP26 in Glasgow everyone was committed to saving the planet, but there were highly divergent views about how to do it.Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1703252021-11-07T08:45:19Z2021-11-07T08:45:19ZThe World Bank and IMF are using flawed logic in their quest to do away with the informal sector<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429993/original/file-20211103-15-1ta72bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Informal head porter workers Percent Boatemaq (left) and Lusaka Fuseina (right) carrying goods on their heads at Agbogbloshie market in Accra, Ghana. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many low and middle-income countries face a myriad of challenges. But policies that can address them are few and far between. The challenges include high and rising inequality, budget crises and the ongoing pandemic. </p>
<p>In a set of recent outputs, the <a href="https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/37511318c092e6fd4ca3c60f0af0bea3-0350012021/related/Informal-economy-full-report.pdf">World Bank</a> and the <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/books/071/29292-9781513575919-en/29292-9781513575919-en-book.xml?cid=va-cin-compd-ieatw&BookTabs=BookTOC">International Monetary Fund</a> (IMF) presented an approach that they argue can tackle all three crises at the same time: fighting informal economies.</p>
<p>Their arguments are premised on the claim that informality <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/05/11/widespread-informality-likely-to-slow-recovery-from-covid-19-in-developing-economies">undermines</a> efforts to both slow the spread of the pandemic and boost economic growth. They also believe that <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/podcast/2021/05/24/as-covid-19-wreaks-havoc-on-service-workers-is-the-informal-sector-increasing-global-inequality-the-development-podcast">abolishing informality</a> will lead to more tax revenues. </p>
<p>However, based on our organisations’ extensive research into informality and taxation we argue that their analysis is fundamentally flawed in its understanding of both the causes and consequences of informality. This is not a mere academic issue. Their reports endorse policies that will fail to deliver on their promises of higher growth and tax income. Blaming informal workers, rather than the structural conditions that leave them with no option but informal work, effectively blames the victims of global inequality while wondering why they’re not picking themselves up by their bootstraps.</p>
<p>In addition, what’s put forward as pro-poor interventions in the reports in fact risk actively increasing inequality and further disadvantaging vulnerable populations. </p>
<h2>Blame the symptoms or the structures?</h2>
<p>Recent <a href="https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/37511318c092e6fd4ca3c60f0af0bea3-0350012021/related/Informal-economy-full-report.pdf">flagship</a> <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/books/071/29292-9781513575919-en/29292-9781513575919-en-book.xml?cid=va-cin-compd-ieatw&BookTabs=BookTOC">reports</a> and <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/05/11/widespread-informality-likely-to-slow-recovery-from-covid-19-in-developing-economies">accompanying commentary</a> by both the IMF and the World Bank demonstrate a somewhat flippant approach to causality. They do this by framing informality as a cause, rather than a symptom of a weak or faltering economy. </p>
<p>The authors of both reports start off on safe ground. They observe that countries with high levels of income inequality also generally have high rates of informal employment (informality).</p>
<p>They also correctly note that they can’t demonstrate causality and that there is no ‘one size fits all’ policy approach.</p>
<p>But the reports then go on to abandon their own caveats when they get to the analysis or policy recommendations. </p>
<p>Demonstrating a similar logic, one World Bank blog, for instance, insinuates that an increase in <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/jobs/blame-covid-19-blame-informality-too-or-maybe-more">unemployment in Peru</a> is the result of informality, rather than the COVID pandemic.</p>
<p>This is not just a harmless analytical sleight of hand or benign semantic error. The result is that <a href="https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/37511318c092e6fd4ca3c60f0af0bea3-0350012021/related/Informal-economy-Chapter-6.pdf">the bulk of the policy recommendations</a> that stem from this analysis aim to eliminate the informal economy. They suggest that by simply removing informality, inequality would then decrease. </p>
<p>The World Bank’s odd approach to causality allows it to frame any policy that cracks down on informality as also addressing inequality, while largely ignoring <a href="https://www.wiego.org/support-informal-workers-during-after-economic-crises">a wider set of targeted interventions</a> that aim to improve the livelihoods, security, stability and earnings of the most vulnerable workers. </p>
<h2>Informality and taxes</h2>
<p>The second fundamental flaw in the reports’ analysis relates to the <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/books/071/29292-9781513575919-en/ch010.xml">assumption</a> that eliminating informality will automatically increase tax revenues. This relies on the idea that tax evasion is “at the core of informality”. This is then baked into key concepts and measurements. </p>
<p>However, this simply does not match the reality of either <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/16869/ICTD_WP127.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">informality</a> or <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/15661/ICTD_WP111.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">taxation</a> in much of the Global South. </p>
<p>Tax evasion does indeed exist, including in a subset of the informal economy. But the analysis still mischaracterises the majority of the sector. Critically, it conflates deliberate evasion with the non-payment of taxes by workers who would typically be far below any tax thresholds.</p>
<p>Indeed, much employment in the informal sector is comprised of survivalist own-account operators. These are likely to be earning too little to be ‘evading’ tax in any substantial way. </p>
<p>In emerging and developing countries, <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_626831.pdf">direct measures</a> of informal employment show that 78.1% of all economic units are own-account workers in the informal sector. This is even higher in African countries at 87.3%. By contrast, only 4.4% are informal sector employers. </p>
<p>As a further indication of limited tax liability, the share of the working poor in informal employment ranges from 50.4% to about 98% in developing and emerging countries (at US$3.10 PPP per capita per day).</p>
<p>Informal workers do pay taxes – notwithstanding these low levels of earnings. The regressive way in which the informal sector is already (over) taxed is <a href="https://actionaid.org/sites/default/files/publications/informal_sector_taxes.pdf">well documented</a>. For instance, a <a href="https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=CSAE2012&paper_id=500">2013 World Bank study</a> of informal micro-enterprises in Uganda found that 70% were below the national business tax but still paid a substantial share of their profits to local authorities. The poorest payed the highest share of profits.</p>
<h2>Carrot and stick</h2>
<p>Based on their flawed premises, these analyses further assume that the informal economy can be eliminated by lowering taxes for formal enterprises (the carrot) while increasing taxes for unregistered or informal businesses (the stick). </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/05/11/widespread-informality-likely-to-slow-recovery-from-covid-19-in-developing-economies">the World Bank argues</a> that it is necessary to </p>
<blockquote>
<p>streamline tax regulation to lower the cost of operating formally and increase the cost of operating informally. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But this understanding of the root causes of informality and the benefits of formalisation is ungrounded. It also leads to policies that don’t raise much tax revenue, while actively distracting from <a href="https://www.wiego.org/informal-worker-demands-during-covid-19-crisis">policies that can help those in informal employment</a>. </p>
<p>This often happens in two ways. First, policy interventions to better ‘include informal economies in the tax net’ – or formalise them – are often sold with bold promises about the potential public revenue that they can generate. This suggests that informality is hiding a ‘<a href="https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report-international/taxing-the-informal-sector-nigerias-missing-goldmine">gold mine</a>’ for public coffers. </p>
<p>But many informal workers aren’t eligible for national taxation due to very low incomes. The risk, therefore is, <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/16574/ICTD_SummaryBrief%2024_Online.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">that not a lot of revenue is actually brought in</a> – all while adding further financial burdens on the poorest groups in society. </p>
<p>Critically, they may serve as <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/15661/ICTD_WP111.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">distractions</a> from taxing economic actors that could bring in significant revenue. These include politically connected businesses or <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/15181/ATAP17.pdf?sequence=1">unregistered independent professionals</a> such as lawyers and dentists.</p>
<p>Second, focusing on taxation risks crowding out meaningful support that people in informal work require. There are real and complex challenges faced by people in informal economies: they range from harassment by authorities to unsafe working spaces to low incomes and a lack of access to finance or social safety nets. </p>
<p>Focusing primarily on eliminating informality risks creating an impression that formalisation can happen simply by getting people on tax registers or lowering the ‘costs of formality’. This ignores the question of what the benefits of formality are and how accessible they are. And it risks drawing attention away from the wide and complex set of reforms that are needed to support people both in informal work, and vulnerable work more widely.</p>
<h2>A more productive way forward</h2>
<p>The policy recommendations that follow from this reasoning won’t be helpful in addressing inequality. In fact, they may actually increase it by not addressing the underlying issues that lead to informality and informal employment. </p>
<p>Indeed, the suggestion that redistributive policies are bad for the poor in the informal economy, but that heavier taxation is good for them is a puzzling, at best, and deeply cynical, at worst, conclusion of the reports. </p>
<p>Rather than focusing on eliminating the informal economy, influential international actors like the World Bank and the IMF and domestic policymakers would have a greater impact on inequality by focusing on <a href="https://www.ictd.ac/blog/how-tax-after-pandemic-covid/">progressive taxation</a> and the <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/110525/1/275_Article_Text_448_1_10_20210413.pdf">expansion of social protection</a> for the poor, regardless of employment status.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170325/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Rogan is a Research Associate with the global-research-advocacy network WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Max Gallien is a Research Fellow with the Institute of Development Studies and the International Centre for Tax and Development.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development. </span></em></p>Influential international actors like the World Bank and the IMF should focus on expanding social protection rather than focusing on eliminating the informal economy.Mike Rogan, Associate professor, Rhodes UniversityMax Gallien, Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesVanessa van den Boogaard, Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1710242021-11-02T14:57:33Z2021-11-02T14:57:33ZCows and cars should not be conflated in climate change debates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429754/original/file-20211102-51261-1pd114c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cattle driven into the Kenyan capital Nairobi for new pasture amid a severe drought navigate through city traffic.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With world leaders gathered for the COP26 summit in Glasgow, there is much talk of <a href="https://pastres.org/2021/10/29/climate-change-we-need-to-talk-about-methane/">methane</a> emissions and belching cows. The <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_4785">Global Methane Pledge</a>, led by the US and EU and now with many country signatories, aims to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030. This is seen as a “quick win” to reduce global warming and will have major implications for livestock production.</p>
<p>Livestock have become the villain of climate change. Some researchers claim that <a href="https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/030a41a8-3e10-57d1-ae0c-86680a69ceea/">14.5% of all human-derived emissions come from livestock</a>, either directly or indirectly. There have been widespread calls for radical shifts in livestock production and diet globally to address climate chaos. But which livestock, where? As <a href="https://pastres.org/livestock-report/">a new report</a> I co-authored argues, it is vitally important to differentiate between production systems.</p>
<p>Not all milk and meat is the same. Extensive, often mobile, pastoral systems – of the sort commonly seen across the African continent, as well as in Asia, Latin America and Europe – have hugely different effects to contained, intensive industrial livestock production.</p>
<p>Yet, in standard narratives about diet and production shifts, all livestock are lumped in together. Cows are misleadingly equated with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/22/eu-farm-animals-produce-more-emissions-than-cars-and-vans-combined-greenpeace">polluting cars</a> and <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/02/treating-beef-like-coal-would-make-a-big-dent-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions">beef with coal</a>. The simplistic “all livestock are bad” narrative is promoted by campaign organisations, environmental celebrities, rich philanthropists and policymakers alike. Inevitably, it dominates <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study">media coverage</a>. However, a much more sophisticated debate is needed.</p>
<h2>Delving into data</h2>
<p><a href="https://pastres.org/livestock-report/">Our report</a> delves into the data and highlights the problems with using aggregate statistics in assessing the impacts of livestock on the global climate. </p>
<p>Some types of livestock production, especially those using industrial systems, are certainly highly damaging to the environment. They generate significant greenhouse gas emissions and cause serious water pollution. They also add to deforestation through demand for feed and expanding grazing areas, for example. And, reducing the amount of <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person">animal-source foods in diets</a>, whether in the global north or south, makes much sense, both for the environment and for people’s health.</p>
<p>But industrial systems are only one type of livestock production. And aggregate emission figures do not pick up the nuances of this reality. Looking across life-cycle assessments – a technique widely used to assess the impacts on climate change from different agri-food systems – we found some important <a href="https://pastres.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/infosheet-2-flaws-in-assessments.pdf">gaps and assumptions</a>. </p>
<p>One is that global assessments are overwhelmingly based on data from industrial systems. A <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">frequently quoted paper</a> looking at 38,700 farms and 1,600 processors only focused on “commercially viable” units, mostly from Europe and North America. However, not all livestock are the same, meaning that global extrapolations don’t work. </p>
<p>Research in Kenya, for example, shows how <a href="https://www.ilri.org/outcomes/science-helps-tailor-livestock-related-climate-change-mitigation-strategies-africa">assumptions about emissions</a> from African animals are inaccurate. Such livestock are smaller, have higher quality diets due to selective grazing and have physiologies adapted to their settings. They are not the same as a highly bred animal in a respiration chamber, which is where much of the data on emission factors comes from. Overall, data from extensive systems are massively under-represented. For instance, <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6cd5/meta">a review of food production life cycle assessments</a> showed that only 0.4% of such studies were from Africa, where extensive pastoralism is common across large areas.</p>
<p>Another issue is that most such assessments focus on emissions impacts per animal or per unit of product. This creates a distorted picture; the wider costs and benefits are not taken into account. Those in favour of industrialised systems point to the high per animal methane emission from animals eating rough, low-quality forage on open rangelands compared to the potential for improved, methane-reducing feeds in contained systems. This misses the point: a wider, more <a href="https://www.cirad.fr/en/cirad-news/news/2019/ca-vient-de-sortir/perspective-52-pastoral-landscapes-climate-change-sahel">integrated systems approach</a> must encompass all impacts, but also benefits. For instance, some forms of extensive grazing can potentially increase soil carbon stocks, adding to the already significant store of carbon in open rangelands. </p>
<p>Then there’s the fact that methane and carbon dioxide have different lifetimes in the atmosphere and are not equivalent. Methane is a short-lived but highly potent gas. Carbon dioxide sticks around in the atmosphere effectively forever. Reducing warming can be addressed in the short term by tackling methane emissions, but long term climate change needs to focus on carbon dioxide. It therefore makes a big difference how different greenhouse gases are assessed and how any “<a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-a-new-way-to-assess-global-warming-potential-of-short-lived-pollutants">global warming potential</a>” is estimated. Simply put, <a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0">cows and cars are not the same</a>.</p>
<p>It also matters what baseline is used. <a href="https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/326549/Intensifying_pastoralism_AAM.pdf;jsessionid=C32DF3C85BE7E4FFAD3D2EC11D7EEDFE?sequence=1">Pastoral systems may not result in additional emissions from a “natural” baseline</a>. For example, in extensive systems in Africa domestic livestock replace wildlife that emit comparable amounts of greenhouse gases. By contrast, industrial systems clearly generate additional impacts, adding significant environmental costs through methane emissions from production, the importation of feed, the concentration of livestock waste and fossil fuel use in transport and sunk infrastructure.</p>
<h2>Climate justice</h2>
<p>A more rounded assessment is necessary. Extensive livestock contribute to emissions, but it’s simultaneously true that they produce multiple environmental benefits – including potentially through carbon sequestration, improving biodiversity and enhancing landscapes.</p>
<p>Animal-source foods are also <a href="https://www.gainhealth.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/gain-briefing-paper-series-4-nutrient-shortfalls-in-young-childrens-diets-and-the-role-of-affordability.pdf">vital for nutrition</a>, providing high density protein and other nutrients, especially for low-income and vulnerable populations and in places where crops cannot be produced. </p>
<p>Across the world livestock – cattle, sheep, goats, camels, yaks, llamas and more – provide income and livelihoods for many. The world’s rangelands make up over <a href="https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/114064">half the world’s land surface</a> and are home to many millions of people.</p>
<p>As countries commit to reducing methane emissions, a more sophisticated debate is urgently needed, lest <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16913">major injustices</a> result. The danger is that, as regulations are developed, verification procedures approved and reporting systems initiated, livestock systems in Africa and elsewhere will be penalised, with major consequences for poor people’s livelihoods.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Scoones receives funding from the European Research Council through an Advanced Grant for the PASTRES project (<a href="http://www.pastres.org">www.pastres.org</a>).</span></em></p>A simplistic ‘all livestock are bad’ narrative is promoted by campaigners, celebrities, philanthropists and policymakers alike. A much more sophisticated debate is needed.Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1703732021-10-21T13:36:58Z2021-10-21T13:36:58ZSurveillance laws are failing to protect privacy rights: what we found in six African countries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427753/original/file-20211021-19-1iy3wyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On paper, privacy rights for citizens of countries throughout Africa are well protected. Privacy rights are written into constitutions, international human rights conventions and domestic law. </p>
<p>But, in the <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16893">first comparative review</a> of privacy protections across Africa, the evidence is clear: governments are purposefully using laws that lack clarity. Or they ignore laws completely in order to carry out illegal digital surveillance of their citizens.</p>
<p>What’s more, they are doing so with impunity.</p>
<p>This matters because people’s lives are increasingly being lived online, through conversations on social media, online banking and the like.</p>
<p>We’ve just published <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16893">research</a> on privacy protections in six African countries – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan. And the evidence is clear: governments are using laws that lack clarity, or ignoring laws completely, to carry out illegal surveillance of their citizens. </p>
<p>Those targeted include political opponents, business rivals and peaceful activists. In many cases they were conducting mass surveillance of citizens.</p>
<p>Our report finds that existing surveillance law is being eroded by six factors:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the introduction of new laws that expand state surveillance powers</p></li>
<li><p>lack of legal precision and privacy safeguards in existing surveillance legislation</p></li>
<li><p>increased supply of new surveillance technologies that enable illegitimate surveillance</p></li>
<li><p>state agencies regularly conducting surveillance outside of what is permitted in law</p></li>
<li><p>impunity for those committing illegitimate acts of surveillance</p></li>
<li><p>insufficient capacity in civil society to hold the state fully accountable in law.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://www.debatingeurope.eu/focus/arguments-for-and-against-government-surveillance/#.YXFA6RrMI2w">Governments argue</a> that it is occasionally necessary to violate the privacy rights of a citizen in order to prevent a much greater crime. For instance, a person may be a suspected terrorist.</p>
<p>But the covert nature of surveillance, and the large power imbalance between the state and the people being watched, presents a clear opportunity to abuse power. </p>
<p>Robust surveillance laws are key to preventing this. They must define exactly when it is legal to conduct narrowly targeted surveillance of the most serious criminals, while protecting the privacy rights of the rest of the population. </p>
<h2>African Digital Rights Network</h2>
<p>We are a team of researchers from the <a href="http://www.ids.ac.uk">Institute of Development Studies</a> and the <a href="https://www.africandigitalrightsnetwork.org/">African Digital Rights Network</a>. </p>
<p>We assessed surveillance laws in the six countries using principles from globally accepted human rights frameworks. These included <a href="https://www.eff.org/files/necessaryandproportionatefinal.pdf">International Principles</a> on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance, the UN <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Privacy/DraftLegalInstrumentGovernmentLed.pdf">Draft Instrument</a> on Government-led Surveillance and Privacy and the <a href="https://www.achpr.org/legalinstruments/detail?id=69">African Commission’s Declaration</a> of Principles of Freedom of Expression and Access to Information. </p>
<p>Our team of researchers produced six country reports that detailed specific cases. These included rulings from the constitutional courts in South Africa and Kenya. </p>
<p>We found that all six countries had conducted surveillance that violated citizens’ constitutional rights. There were many examples of surveillance violating rights or laws. There were no examples of those responsible being charged, subject to legal sanctions, resigning or being fired.</p>
<h2>Where the problems lie</h2>
<p>To understand whether privacy rights are being violated, it’s necessary to monitor the legality of surveillance. But this is hard to do due to weak legal provisions, and a lack of transparency and oversight.</p>
<p>Monitoring surveillance practice against privacy right protections requires well defined transparency and independent oversight mechanisms. These are entirely missing or deficient in all of the countries studied. With the exception of South Africa, countries studied lacked a single law clearly defining legal surveillance and privacy safeguards. </p>
<p>In addition, piecemeal provisions, spread across multiple pieces of legislation, can conflict with each other. This makes it impossible for citizens to know what law is applicable.</p>
<p>We found a number of barriers to making surveillance more accountable.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Legal provisions enabling surveillance are found in different laws. This makes it difficult to tell which law applies. </p></li>
<li><p>Independent oversight bodies to monitor the activities of law enforcement authorities are absent. </p></li>
<li><p>Investigating authorities do not publicly report on their activities. </p></li>
<li><p>Individuals subject surveillance are not notified about it nor are they afforded the opportunity to appeal. </p></li>
<li><p>There are several surveillance provisions that are not subject to the supervision of a judge. For instance, access to a database of subscribers by security agencies only requires the approval of a government agency (such as the Nigeria Communication Commission) which is granted under the Registration of Telephone Subscribers Regulations.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Beyond the use (or abuse) of law we also found evidence of states investing in new surveillance technologies. These included artificial intelligence-based internet and mobile surveillance, mobile spyware, biometric digital ID systems, CCTV with facial recognition and vehicle licence plate recognition. </p>
<p>In Nigeria, for example, the government <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/blog/1518/nigerian-government-under-fire-expansion-surveillance-programs">increased spending</a> in the last decade on acquiring various surveillance technologies. More <a href="https://punchng.com/nia-gets-n4-87bn-budget-to-track-intercept-calls-messages/">recently</a> it approved a supplementary budget to purchase tools capable of monitoring encrypted WhatsApp communications.</p>
<p>This combination of new technologies and surveillance law breaches points to an urgent need to strengthen existing laws by applying human rights principles. </p>
<h2>How to close the gaps</h2>
<p>We recommend that an independent oversight body should supervise the activities of the investigating authorities. We also recommend the use of strategic litigation to challenge existing laws and actions that violate constitutionally guaranteed rights.</p>
<p>Alongside improving the law must be action to raise public awareness of privacy rights and surveillance practices. A strong civil society, independent media and independent courts are needed to challenge government actions. This is critical for holding governments accountable and upholding the privacy rights of citizens everywhere.</p>
<p><em>Abrar Mohamed Ali, Mohamed Farahat, Ridwan Oloyede and Grace Mutung’u were the researchers on this project. Ridwan Oloyede assisted in the writing of this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Governments are purposefully using laws that lack clarity, or ignore laws completely, to carry out illegal surveillance of their citizens.Tony Roberts, Digital Research Fellow, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.