Ukraine war could bring loss of aid, worsen food scarcity in Lebanon

By Dalal Saoud
MARCH 24, 2022 

A woman searches for food in the garbage in Beirut, Lebanon, in February. The war in Ukraine, which has paused wheat exports to Lebanon, could make food scarcity worse. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 24 (UPI) -- The Russian war in Ukraine has brought fears that food will become more scarce and life-saving humanitarian assistance could disappear from cash-strapped Lebanon, whose population is sinking deeper into poverty.

Lebanon imports 66% of its wheat from Ukraine and 12% from Russia and relies on both countries to import cooking oil.

The disruption in the food supply comes as Lebanon deals with the worst financial crisis in its history, with the Lebanese pound losing more than 90% of its value since October 2019. Unemployment is soaring.

A growing number of Lebanese have been able to survive so far due to international aid and local charity initiatives that started to pour in, especially after an explosion at the Beirut port devastated much of the city and destroyed its grain silos, leaving the country without storage facilities.

Losing international humanitarian assistance as the world's attention shifts to Ukraine would be life-threatening to a large segment of the Lebanese population.

"As if the Lebanese didn't have enough problems, now [they are facing the impact of] the war in Ukraine," Bujar Hoxha, country director of CARE International in Lebanon, told UPI. "The situation is much worse and keeps on worsening."

Hoxha said that according to "scary" figures released in November, some 2.2 million Lebanese were facing food shortages, noting that their numbers have undoubtedly increased since then.

About 3.2 million to 3.7 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon are also suffering food shortages, although "they are a bit better than the Lebanese" because they get assistance from the United Nations agencies, respectively the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

What worries him most is a possible "shift in attention to other crises," with most grants to Lebanon -- whose population is moving from below poverty to extreme poverty -- coming to an end in the coming months.

Most of the grants his organization and other NGOs are implementing are short-term, ranging between "six months and one year in the best-case scenarios."

RELATED U.S. to accept 100,000 Ukrainian war refugees, provide $1 billion in aid

"If we stop now the current short-term assistance, the needs will double or triple as the situation will become much worse," Hoxha said. "So the fear is whether international assistance will continue, but if it is short-term, that won't solve the problem."

The need for the international community to keep supporting Lebanon is widely illustrated by heart-breaking stories about increasing food insecurity in the crisis-ridden country.

A mother with three children in Tripoli, Lebanon's poorest city in the north and the most impoverished along the entire Mediterranean coast, has to choose every day who to feed first.

"The one who is hungrier will have breakfast and the less hungry will have to wait for lunch or dinner with the little food the mother is able to put on the table," said Patricia Khodr, communication and media manager at Care International.

For another mother, feeding her infant baby is a painful mission. "Instead of the regular five spoons of baby milk, she only put one in her baby's bottle."

In another family, one of the children works the whole day just to be able to buy 1 kilo of bananas at 10,000 Lebanese pounds (40 cents) that would be wrapped in sandwiches for dinner.

"We haven't seen such poverty before. The people are going poorer by the day, with growing cases of malnutrition, especially among children and women. Many can't even afford one meal per day," Khodr told UPI.

Concerns about malnutrition and cases of anemia among children were also voiced by Etienne Careme, acting representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Lebanon.

"Access to healthy food is really a problem. When you have children who don't have access to healthy food, the next generation will have a problem," Careme told UPI, referring to a survey in December showing that 46% of the Lebanese population were found to be food insecure.

With uncertainty surrounding the Ukraine-Russia war, its duration and impact, shifting to local production, diversifying the Lebanese diet and importing substitutes could be a solution, Careme said.

With a real possibility that 6 million tons of wheat Ukraine was planning to export globally before the end of June 2022 will not materialize, Lebanon, which required between 35,000 and 40,000 tons of wheat per month for domestic milling before the port explosion, will have to rely on alternative suppliers to satisfy its domestic food needs.

"The most critical period to secure imports will likely be between now and the end of June, when trading of fresh supplies from the harvest in the northern hemisphere will start," Careme said.

With only one month's wheat reserves left, Lebanon is doubling efforts to find alternative import sources.

"For sure, we are in a crisis, but we haven't reached the catastrophe," Hani Bohsali, president of the Syndicate of Importers of Foodstuffs in Lebanon, told UPI.

Luckily, food importers have imported enough food supplies for two months ahead of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan that starts April 2.

"But some of the imports from Ukraine were stopped because of the war," said Bohsali, who like other food importers, started to contact other suppliers in China, the United States, South America, Malaysia, Thailand, Poland and Hungary for the post-Ramadan period.

"We are searching for any source to secure food supplies, even at a higher cost. Let's not talk about the worst-case scenario. Let's see how today we can secure the basic commodities: wheat, oil and sugar," he said.

He noted that some of Lebanon's regular suppliers, like Turkey, Egypt and Algeria, have stopped exports for three months because of the Ukraine conflict but asked "would they be able to do that for a year? Their economies could collapse."

However, securing food supplies won't necessarily mean that it could be affordable to many, especially with the country's hyperinflation, skyrocketing food, fuel and fertilizer prices globally and in the absence of international aid and financial assistance.

"We are heading toward another humanitarian catastrophe for sure and the only solution to avoid this is to combine the humanitarian with the development funds," Hoxha said

Fighting over the available resources is another big concern.

"Tension between Syrians and Lebanese is increasing because of humanitarian assistance: who gets what and how much... This is really worrying," he said.

WELL THAT WAS UNEXPECTED
Antarctica's Conger ice shelf collapses in most significant loss since early 2000s

Satellite images show the Conger ice shelf in Antarctica has collapsed, scientists report. Photo courtesy of Stef Lhermitte/Twitter

March 25 (UPI) -- The Conger ice shelf in Antarctica has collapsed, according to satellite data, in what scientists say is the most significant collapse there in nearly 20 years.

While the ice shelf is relatively small -- it is roughly the size of Rome -- Dr. Catherine Colello Walker said the event, which came in a week with unusually high temperatures, could be a harbinger for more collapses to come.

"It won't have huge effects most likely, but it's a sign of what might be coming," said Walker, an Earth and planetary scientist for NASA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

"It is one of the most significant collapse events anywhere in Antarctica since the early 2000s when the Larson B ice shelf disintegrated," Walker told the Guardian.

RELATEDNOAA's Arctic report card finds 'alarming' trend in climate crisis

Ice shelves permanently float and don't add to rising sea levels. However, if entire ice shelves collapse, glacial ice on land can be released into oceans and that can raise sea levels, according to scientists.

Temperatures increased with an "atmospheric river" event, where a stream of warm air rolls over a region -- in this case, raising the temperature 30 degrees higher than normal for this time of year.

"We need to better understand how the warm period has influenced melt along this whole sector of Antarctica," Andrew Mackintosh, head of the school of Earth, atmosphere and the environment at Monash University, told Cnet.



University of Minnesota geologist Peter Neff says the collapse of even a small ice shelf in Antarctica is surprising.

"We still treat East Antarctica like this massive, high, dry, cold and immovable ice cube," Neff said.

RELATED Ice shelf disintegration accelerating Pine Island Glacier descent toward sea

According to Neff, satellite data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission showed the ice shelf collapse started between March 5 and 7.

"This collapse, especially if tied to the extreme heat brought by the mid-March atmospheric event, will drive additional research into these processes in the region," Neff said.

More than a third of Antarctica's ice shelves will be at risk of collapse if global temperatures reach 4 degrees celsius above preindustrial levels, according scientists.

Massive iceberg 4 times the size of NYC breaks off in Antarctica

In December, scientists warned that an ice shelf holding back a crucial Antarctic glacier could break up within five years. If that happens it could greatly increase the rate of sea level rise.

Ice shelf collapses in previously stable East Antarctica

This satellite image provided by NASA, Aqua MODIS 12 on March 2022 shows the main piece of C-37 close to Bowman Island. Scientists are concerned because an ice shelf the size of New York City collapsed in East Antarctica, an area that had long been thought to be stable. The collapse last week was the first time scientists have ever seen an ice shelf collapse in this cold area of Antarctica.
(NASA via AP)

An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday.

The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer than normal in some spots of East Antarctica. Satellite photos show the area had been shrinking rapidly the last couple of years, and now scientists wonder if they have been overestimating East Antarctica’s stability and resistance to global warming that has been melting ice rapidly on the smaller western side and the vulnerable peninsula.

The ice shelf, about 460 square miles wide (1200 square kilometers) holding in the Conger and Glenzer glaciers from the warmer water, collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She said scientists have never seen this happen in this part of the continent, making it worrisome.

“The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years and it’s not ever going to be there again,” said University of Minnesota ice scientist Peter Neff.

The issue isn’t the amount of ice lost in this collapse, Neff and Walker said. That is negligible. It’s more about the where it happened.

Neff said he worries that previous assumptions about East Antarctica’s stability may not be correct. And that’s important because if the water frozen in East Antarctica melted — and that’s a millennia-long process if not longer — it would raise seas across the globe more than 160 feet (50 meters). It’s more than five times the ice in the more vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where scientists have concentrated much of their research.

Helen Amanda Fricker, co-director of the Scripps Polar Center at the University of California San Diego, said researchers have to spend more time looking at that part of the continent.

“East Antarctica is starting to change. There is mass loss starting to happen,” Fricker said. “We need to know how stable each one of the ice shelves are because once one disappears” it means glaciers melt into the warming water and “some of that water will come to San Diego and elsewhere.”

Scientists had been seeing this particular ice shelf — closest to Australia — shrink a bit since the 1970s, Neff said. Then in 2020, the shelf’s ice loss sped up to losing about half of itself every month or so, Walker said.

“We probably are seeing the result of a lot of long time increased ocean warming there,” Walker said. “it’s just been melting and melting.”

Still, one expert thinks that only part of East Antarctica is a concern.

“Most of East Antarctica is relatively secure, relatively invulnerable and there are sectors in it that are vulnerable,” said British Antarctic Survey geophysicist Rob Larter. “The overall effect of climate change around East Antarctica is it’s chipping away at the edges of the ice sheets in some places, but it’s actually adding more snow to the middle.”

Last week, what’s called an atmospheric river dumped a lot of warm air — and even rain instead of snow — on parts of East Antarctica, getting temperatures so far above normal that scientists have spent the last week discussing it. The closest station to the collapsed ice shelf is Australia’s Casey station, about 180 miles (300 kilometers) away and it hit 42 degrees (5.6 degrees Celsius), which was about 18 degrees (10 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal.

And that, Walker said, “probably is something like, you know, the last straw on the camel’s back.”

Fricker, who has explored a different more stable East Antarctic ice shelf, said an ice shelf there “is the quietest most serene place you can imagine.”

This satellite image provided by NASA, Terra MODIS 22 on February 2022 shows The Conger/Glenzer (Bowman Island) ice shelf and associated fast ice pre-collapse.

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Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

How did Chennai become India's chess hub?

Indian chess players are hailing a decision to move the 44th Chess Olympiad from Moscow to Chennai as an opportunity to bring more new players into the fold. The city has long played host to the country's top players.

Chennai is home to most of India's top chess masters, including Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa,

 the world's  second youngest chess grandmaster.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the International Chess Federation has moved the venue for the 44th Chess Olympiad from Moscow to Chennai.

Chennai, which is widely known as India's "mecca of chess," quickly pounced on the chance to host the prestigious event.

With a promise of 1 billion rupees (€11.9 million, $13.1 million) budget, the Tamil Nadu state government announced that the event will be held in the historic town of Mahabalipuram on the outskirts of the state capital Chennai.

Over 2,000 players from about 150 countries, including icons like Magnus Carlsen, will participate in the event from July 28 to August 10, 2022.

The state's Chief Minister, M K Stalin tweeted, "A proud moment for Tamil Nadu! Chennai warmly welcomes all the Kings and Queens from around the world!"

 

Tamil Nadu leads way with grandmasters

Tamil Nadu has given rise to at least two dozen grandmasters, including the five-time world chess champion Viswanathan 'Vishy' Anand and the 16-year-old Rameshbabu "Pragg" Praggnanandhaa, who recently made international headlines.

The country's first international master, Manuel Aaron, grew up in Tamil Nadu. The country's first female grandmaster, Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi, is also from the state.

The All India Chess Federation (AICF)'s secretary, Bharat Singh Chauhan, told DW nearly a third of all emerging young chess talents in the country hail from Tamil Nadu. With such a high density of chess players, the state's capital Chennai has become a hotspot for chess events over the past decades.

"When I was playing, tournaments would happen only in Tamil Nadu, and most of them in Chennai," Chauhan said.

Even as other cities, including New Delhi, were considered for the 2022 Chess Olympiad, Chauhan said that the AICF chose Chennai as the event would gain better visibility in a city that had a "wider chess culture."

Irrespective of the political party in power, the Tamil Nadu government has supported the sport consistently, says Srinath Narayanan, a 27-year-old grandmaster from Chennai. He was also the non-playing vice-captain of the Indian team for the first online Chess Olympiad.

"For example, when the Indian team won the Olympiad in 2021, the Tamil Nadu government was the only one in the country to confer a state-level reward for the winners," he said.

Narayanan added that the state's efforts to set clear eligibility for different awards motivates youth to win the different titles. "Players from the state clearly have an edge as administratively it is easier to be a chess player in Chennai," he said, adding that the 2022 Chess Olympiad will attract even more young people from across India to participate in chess.

Decades of tradition

The popularity of chess in Chennai stretches back to the 1950s, according to well-known grandmaster and five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand.

"The culture of playing international chess existed in Chennai even before I became a grandmaster. This is because Chennai always had a wonderful group of volunteers who used to run chess clubs," he said.

One of the first well-known clubs in Chennai was started in 1972 by Manuel Aaron, who dominated chess in India from the 1960s to 1980s. The monthly membership fee was just 20 rupees (€0.24)($0.26) at the time. Similarly, many other chess clubs were formed in Chennai and the rest of Tamil Nadu. Today, the players from these clubs offer tough competition to their Russian contemporaries.

Anand said that these clubs generated many grandmasters from the state, who in turn inspired more youth to pursue chess full-time. He remarked that grand sporting events like the Olympiad would leave a deep impact in young people's minds, as many of them will get to know what an event looks like and get to see their favorite chess stars in person, he added.

"All chess players have fond memories of events like these. It leaves an impact. This Chess Olympiad will do that for many youngsters from Chennai and the rest of India," he said. 

How Paul Gauguin contributed to the colonial myth

A new Berlin show explores how the French artist's world-famous paintings from the South Sea islands contributed to the myth of an exotic paradise.



Even though he was disappointed by the impact of colonization in French Polynesia, he didn't transmit that in his works

At the end of the 19th century, French artist Paul Gauguin was tired of the Parisian arts scene. He felt European civilization was "artificial and conventional" and aimed to reconnect with a sense of purity, which he believed could be found in "untouched" civilizations.

He therefore left France and his family behind in 1891, setting sail for Tahiti, and later the Marquesas island of Hiva Oa (French Polynesia), where spent most of the rest of his life, until his death in 1903 at the age of 54.

Inspired by the simple everyday life of the Tahitians, his South Seas paintings with pure, strong colors, conveyed the island's tropical atmosphere.

'Amusements in the spirit of the devil,' a Gauguin painting from 1894

During that period, he created a large number of important works that are still famous today — portraits of women on the beach, harvesting, sitting under a tree, half-naked, eating fruit.
The myth of the untouched natural paradise

The myth of the islands' exoticism appealed to him. He positioned himself against colonialism, but he also had questionable relations with 13-year-old girls.

With his South Seas paintings, Paul Gauguin, born in Paris in 1848, contributed to shaping a myth that was already circulating in Europe: In the 18th century, several travelogues by European seafarers stylized islands like Tahiti as utopian natural paradises, where free and public love was practiced like a religion.

However, the painter did not find an untouched South Seas paradise on the colonized island. In his travel diary "Noa Noa," he complained about being "disgusted by the whole European triviality" and "disappointed by things that were so far from what I had wished for and, above all, imagined."

But he didn't portray his disappointment or the traces of colonization in his paintings. Were his depictions more wishful thinking than reality?


IMPOVERISHED OUTSIDER: PAUL GAUGUIN
Sailor, bank clerk and amateur painter
Before Paul Gauguin decided to become a painter, he spent his time cruising on the world's oceans and working as an investment banker at the Paris Bourse. He earned quite a lot of money and founded a family with five children. The impressionists, holding his amateur paintings in great esteem, encouraged him to present them in their exhibititions - and that's when his social decline began.
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'Why are you angry?'

The exhibition "Paul Gauguin — Why Are You Angry?" examines the relationship between Gauguin's South Sea myth and the history of colonization. It explores Gauguin's contribution to colonial ideas, attempting to determine how his perspective depicted or even shaped the narrative of the time.

First shown at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, the touring exhibition now opens in Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie museum.

The exhibition is named after a painting by Gauguin, which in the Tahitian original is called "No te aha oe riri." Created in 1896 during the artist's second stay in Tahiti, it depicts scantily clad women looking away from the viewer, with a few chicken running among them.

The enigmatic title defies clear interpretation. The exhibition similarly offers different interpretations on Gauguin's artistic work.

The show "looks at Gauguin's oeuvre — which was also shaped by Western, colonial ideas of 'the exotic' and 'the erotic' —, juxtaposing the works with historical material from both Gauguin's past and his present, and with international contemporary art," says the Alte Nationalgalerie in its press presentation of the exhibition.

Gauguin's works from Tahiti are set in contrast with works by contemporary artists Angela Tiatia, Yuki Kihara, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. Some of the artists are from the South Pacific. Their works break with the traditional Western views on the South Seas — and especially with the cliché of the exotic, available woman.

"Paul Gauguin - Why Are You Angry?" is on show from March 25 to July 10 at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

This article was originally written in German.

WWW LINKS

Exhibition 'Paul Gauguin — Why Are You Angry?'

Do octopuses have emotions?

They look so "alien" but octopuses feel and remember pain like we do. We can track their emotional reactions. But their deeper feelings are a mystery.

Octopuses have three hearts and taste with their suckers

Octavia, an octopus at the New England Aquarium in Boston, was old and dying. She had been moved from her display tank to a quieter, dark place that resembled an octopus' den. That's where the animals go to in the wild when they are nearing the end of their lives.

Her friend, Sy Montgomery, wanted to say goodbye.  

The author and naturalist had known Octavia for several years. Montgomery had fed Octavia fish and played with her countless times. It was part of Montgomery's research for her 2015 book The Soul of an Octopus. Montgomery describes the animal's remarkable intelligence. She had befriended four octopuses (yes, that's the correct plural) with very different personalities.

Montgomery with an octopus (not Octavia) at the New England Aquarium

When DW spoke to Montgomery, she recalled the last time she saw Octavia.

"She was sick, she was old and she was clearly dying," Montgomery said. "I opened the tank and she floated to the top to see me. And she was not hungry ― I handed her a fish and she just took it and put it aside. She made the effort to come up from the bottom of that tank to see me and to touch me. She extended her suckers to me and looked me in the face and held me for minutes."

That was after a period of 10 months during which Octavia had been down in her den, all on her own. She hadn't seen Montgomery or other people. For an animal that only lives three to five years, "10 months is decades," Montgomery said.

Soon after that Octavia passed away.

Emotions — not just reflex reactions

Their last goodbye was one of many interactions that Montgomery has had with octopuses that make her certain they have emotions. Her take is based on personal experiences, anecdotal evidence. But Montgomery isn't alone in her assessment.

There is a consensus in the field of animal sentience that octopuses are conscious beings — that they can feel pain and actively try to avoid it.

Kristin Andrews and Frans de Waal posit in a new report published in the journal Science that many animals, including cephalopods such as octopuses, feel pain . But they don't just react reflexively, like a child pulling away their hand from a hot stove. That type of reaction is known as nociception.

Octopuses display reactions that go far beyond that, say Andrews and de Waal, citing research from the past 20 years.

Octopuses can change their color and blend in with the environment

"Nociception does not necessarily reach the central nervous system and consciousness," they write in the Science article — that means the animal may want to avoid pain, but that this pain doesn't come with any associated feeling.

Octopuses, however, have shown that they avoid places where they previously experienced negative stimuli, even if they are free of pain in that very moment.

That, Andrews and de Waal write, is because they remember the pain they felt there, processed it and noted it as something they want to avoid. They feel a memory of pain.

The difference between emotions and feelings

When researchers look at the inner lives of animals, they distinguish between emotions and feelings.

Emotions, write Andrews and de Waal, are "measurable physiological and/or neural states that are often reflected in behavior."

That includes increased body temperature, increased neurotransmitter and hormone activity or an animal's avoiding a place where a scientist poked it with a stick the other day.

Feelings, on the other hand, happen at a deeper level than emotions.

Human animals often share their feelings verbally. We say things like "I'm so happy!" or "That makes me really angry."

People can't communicate with other animals on that level. So, it's impossible for us to know exactly what non-human animals feel. But that doesn't mean they don't feel anything.

Speaking to DW, Andrews said "scientists should accept the feelings-side of emotions for animals, just like we do for humans. The 'yay!' of joy, the crushing, heavy despair of sadness. Feelings of pain, feelings of pleasure or of sun on your skin."

"We can't measure that in animals. But we can't measure it in humans either," said Andrews, the Research Chair in Animal Minds at York University in Toronto, Canada.  

Scuba divers like filmmaker Craig Foster say octopuses are highly curious creatures

Montgomery makes the same point. Sure, she doesn't know what feelings are at play when an octopus comes up to the water's surface to touch her gently. But do we ever have that knowledge about another living creature, she asks.

"I don't know what octopuses feel in their hearts," Montgomery said. "But I also don't know what my husband truly feels or whether happiness for him feels the same as happiness feels for me."

Important step for animal welfare

The UK has taken a step towards recognizing octopuses and their relatives as sentient — as their being conscious, with feelings and memories of pain.

Cephalopod molluscs, like octopuses, and decapod crustaceans, like crabs, lobsters and crayfish, are included in a new animal welfare law that is going through the UK parliament right now.

Jonathan Birch, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, led a team that looked at more than 300 studies before advising the UK government on the law.

If the UK's new animal welfare law is passed, crayfish, octopuses and their relatives will 

enjoy higher levels of protection

"The evidence tilted towards the animals being sentient," Birch said. "We recommended the inclusion of all of these animals in the scope of the animal welfare law. But the evidence was particularly strong for octopuses."

Birch says it's human to find it hard to empathize with animals like crayfish or octopuses, "because they look so different from us and they seem so alien."

"But that doesn't mean there's nothing there to empathize with, it doesn't mean they don't have feelings," he said. "We've got to be led by the evidence on this."

Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany

Germany looks set to cut development aid

While Germany is dramatically boosting its defense budget in the face of the Ukraine war, it is planning a reduction of development aid by 12% in its draft budget. The decrease has critics up in arms.

BMZ (Germany's Development Aid Ministry) runs a plethora of projects around the world

Germany's new Finance Minister Christian Lindner, from the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), has presented his draft budget for his first year in office. It foresees spending to the tune of €457.6 billion ($503.5 bn). Not all of the government ministers are happy with the plans.

The budget of Germany's Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, is to shrink to €10.8 billion – while the defense budget is set to increase to over €50 billion. The boost to the defense budget is due to the war in Europe.

But Ukraine and Russia are also major grain exporters – and those exports will now all but dry up as the war continues.

"The war in the world's breadbasket is having a dramatic impact on global nutrition," warned Development Minister Svenja Schulze, from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

Meanwhile, Germany is set to cut its contribution to the World Food Programme by 50% to €28 million. "This amount will not be enough to compensate for crop failures and prevent famine," Schulze warned.

Even before the war broke out, she said, the COVID pandemic affected the poorest countries, adding to the burden on their health systems and economies. And all this was on top of the climate crisis, which is hitting the world's poorest countries the hardest, with droughts, storms, floods, and crop failures.

Germany will uphold its commitment to spend 0.7% of economic output, amounting to €23 billion, towards official development assistance (ODA). But government spending towards refugees in Germany and humanitarian assistance organized by the Foreign Office count as part of ODA as well and make up more than half of development assistance spending.

The actual German development aid budget is an investment in specific programs to alleviate poverty in the long term, rather than the short-term response of humanitarian aid. Germany supports economic, environmental, social, and political programs in developing countries, which contribute to the fight against hunger and poverty, the protection of the climate and biodiversity, health and education, gender equality, fair supply chains, and technology transfer. Germany is one of the largest donor countries worldwide.

Development Aid Minister Svenja Schulze has so far been unable to prevent her budget from being cut

But the smallest partner in the new coalition government,the business-focussed Free Democrats (FDP) have a skeptical view of development aid. In its party platform, the FDP states that substantial savings are possible in this area — by placing the focus on "quality rather than quantity," according to party publications. It is the party's chairman, Finance Minister Lindner, who has now presented the draft budget slashing the development aid by €1.6 billion.

"The way forward can not be to have more and more projects. We need to be more efficient. Everything needs to be put to the test, whether it's small or large organizations, bilateral or multilateral projects," argued FDP lawmaker Claudia Raffelhüschen in this week's debate in the federal parliament, the Bundestag.

But many parliamentarians are critical of the planned increase in military spending. They find the cuts to development aid particularly upsetting: "Millions more are likely to be driven into hunger by the war," argued Andrej Hunko of the socialist Left Party. In this situation, he said, investing €100 billion in a special fund for the Bundeswehr meant "a completely wrong setting of priorities."

Finance Minister Christian Lindner believes development aid could be organized more efficiently

And many in the environmentalist Green Party agree. "Security, after all, does not just mean military security," said Green lawmaker Deborah Düring. "We are responsible to ensure a balance between spending on defense, civil crisis prevention, and human rights-based development cooperation." 

In the coalition agreement for the new government that was hammered out by the SPD, Greens, and FDP before they formed the government in December 2021, there is the commitment that development aid and defense spending should both increase at the same pace.

"If the regular defense budget is now to increase by €3.4 billion and the defense budget is actually decreased by €1.6 billion at the same time, this is a violation of our coalition agreement which lawmakers from all three parties find hard to comprehend," said the SPD's development policy spokeswoman, Sanae Abdi.

The sentiment is echoed by German NGOs. Even before the Ukraine-Russia war began one month ago, the development organizations' association Venro had calculated that the budget should be raised to €31.2 billion for development cooperation and humanitarian aid to meet the targets in combating the climate crisis, achieving food security, and improving international health care.

The draft budget will now be debated and an increase in the development aid budget is could still be negotiated. The final budget will be presented and voted on at the end of June.

This article has been adapted from German.

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How Ukrainian cultural heritage is being preserved online

The organization Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online is on a mission to secure Ukraine's cultural treasures digitally, creating copies of at-risk sites.

Archives, collections and digital servers of cultural institutions need shelter from war, too

Russian bombs are falling on Ukraine for the fourth week running. Houses and hospitals have been destroyed, and many people have been killed.

The cultural heritage of the country has not been spared by Russian's army either. Important cultural institutions have been destroyed; among others, the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol was completely destroyed by bombs, while the Sviatohirsk Cave Monastery — dating back to 1526 — was badly damaged by Russian shelling.

Though people in Ukraine are trying to save their cultural heritage, storing works behind sandbags or putting them away in bunkers, the voluntary organization Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) is trying to save the country's heritage from afar. One of its initiators is the Vienna-based digital historian Sebastian Majstorovic.
Loss of centuries-old art

"Apparently I am conscious about this fragility of culture," Majstorovic told DW. "Through my background you could say that I've developed antennae for that."

As a student in Cologne in 2009, Majstorovic witnessed the collapse of the city's archives. Innumerable documents were destroyed, including valuable records, writings from the Middle Ages and historical photographs.

"Our school bordered the backyard of the city archive and, coincidentally, I was in the classroom that overlooked the archive building. Because I was already programming apps at the time, I had an iPhone to record a video of the incident. The archive collapsed in front of my eyes. We saw how people were rescued from the debris of the neighboring residential areas. It had a huge impact," Majstorovic said.

On March 3, 2009, the city archive in Cologne collapsed, killing two people

Destruction of the National Library of Bosnia

The collapse of Cologne's city archives was not the only incident that made Majstorovic realize the fragility of cultural treasures.

Majstorovic's father, who comes from Bosnia-Herzegovina, escaped to Germany before the war, but has often told his son about the tragic losses of national heritage that occurred through the conflict.

In 1992, the Vijecnica building, which houses the National Library in Sarajevo, became the target of shelling by Bosnian Serbs — even though the grand building in Sarajevo's center was not used for military purposes.

More than 80% of the library's contents were destroyed; about 3 million books and numerous old documents tracing the history of the country went up in flames.

"The National Library was a treasure: It had documents about the multiethnic, cosmopolitan Bosnia, with its rich culture," Majstorovic said. "It is now difficult for historians to find, for example, documents about the Jewish community in Sarajevo. These are all things that got lost there."

Even though he did not experience the Siege of Sarajevo personally, Majstorovic said his father's accounts had deeply marked him.

"If the intention at the time was to destroy Bosnian identity by removing cultural institutions, then we see a similar pattern in Ukraine today," he said.

In Odesa a monument to city founder Duke de Richelieu was covered with sandbags
Digitally saving Ukrainian heritage

Today, Majstorovic works at the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage in Vienna.

Three weeks ago, he founded SUCHO with two like-minded people.

"In the beginning, we focused on securing everything that was publicly available on the internet," he said. They use a program that searches websites of cultural institutions and archives for links and downloads information such as documents, photographs of artworks, virtual tours of reconstructed historical monuments, films, folk music productions amd traditional dress patterns.

The fully program does not function on its own all the time, which is why Majstorovic has enlisted the help of volunteers who help download the data manually. In some cases, programmers write special applications to save information.

For the past three weeks, SUCHO has already secured 10 terabytes of data.

At the beginning, Majstorovic took over the costs himself, but expenses grew fast; SUCHO now has support from tech organizations and internet providers who are making their servers available for free.
Digitization of cultural goods

Majstorovic said the problem was not digitizing cultural heritage. "Cultural institutions, also in poor countries are doing a good job of digitizing their heritage. However, no one has thought much about securing the data and that is something that worries me," he said.

One needs to work together internationally to create a digital infrastructure in which even small regional museums can secure their data with little effort and at no expense, he added.

SUCHO is working with the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the University of Alberta to create exactly this infrastructure in order to protect cultural heritage from war or natural calamities.

Majstorovic knows only too well how destroyed materials can make the work of historians more difficult.

For his doctoral thesis on revolutionary apprentices in the 19th century, many valuable documents are no longer available. "The main archives for my research are in Vienna and Milan. But the archive in Milan was destroyed by the Germans during WWII and the documents in Vienna were in the Palace of Justice, which was set on fire during the riots in the 1920s," Majstorovic said.

Many historians have been confronted with similar problems. "That is why digitally secured copies are so important," he says.
Securing cultural goods

In fact, every cultural object is a public object and protected by the general rules of warfare. Additionally, the international community, including Russia, signed the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 1954. But Moscow does not seem to be adhering to the agreement in the current war.

Politicians are also trying to contribute to the protection of cultural property. The German government's commissioner for culture and media, Claudia Roth, for example, has created the Netzwerk Kulturgutschutz Ukraine with the Foreign Ministry.

Emphasizing that stopping Russia's invasion of Ukraine by the Kremlin and humanitarian help need to be at the forefront of international efforts, Roth said her office would additionally work "for Ukraine's cultural treasures, which are acutely threatened by destruction, and together with them, the cultural heritage of Europe." She added: "There are already a number of contacts and activities on all levels to protect endangered cultural objects in Ukraine."

Katja Keul, the minister of state in the Foreign Ministry, said Russia's invasion was deliberately targeting identity, heritage and artistic treasures: "We will help people in Ukraine with all our strength to protect and defend their culture."

The Culture Ministry is collecting proof from eyewitnesses on destroyed institutions. So far, 80 attacks have been made on cultural institutions, and the number is rising every day.

This article was originally written in German.

Superyachts symbolize climate breakdown

Their Russian oligarch owners have put superyachts in the spotlight since the invasion of Ukraine. But what makes these billionaires' toys the ultimate climate killers?

Ambramovich's 'spare' superyacht, 'Solaris,' moved from Barcelona to Montenegro this month after he was sanctioned

In the wake of heavy sanctions on Russian oligarchs spurred by the war in Ukraine, some of the world's biggest and most lavish superyachts are being moved out of EU waters, while others have already been compounded.

Billionaire and Putin ally Roman Abramovich, who made his fortune selling oil and gas, has moved two of his megayachts — including arguably the biggest and most expensive on the planet — into sanction-free waters, including in the port of Bodrum in Turkey. 

But as this cat-and-mouse game becomes a glitzy side-story to Russia's invasion of Ukraine — Putin himself is rumored to own a luxury yacht — less is known about the outsized carbon footprint of these lavish hulks that resemble cruise liners.

Luxury mega-yachts can burn up to 7,020 tons of CO2 a year, according to research by

Richard Wilk,  a professor of anthropology at Indiana University, and his colleague Beatriz Barros, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology. They have been documenting the emissions of the super-rich.

They describe such vessels, which are variously equipped with helicopters, submarines, swimming pools and accommodation for up to 100 crew members, as "by far the worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint."

Superyachts are responsible for two-thirds of billionaire carbon emissions

The top 20 billionaires analyzed by Wilk and Barros emitted around 8,000 metric tons of CO2 annually in 2018, while average citizens worldwide had a carbon footprint of around 4 tons— and 15 tons in the United States.

An astounding two-thirds of these super-rich emissions are created by their superyachts. 

Roman Abromovich's superyacht eclipses all others

The biggest polluting billionaire also has two of the largest yachts. Abramovich's "Eclipse," currently moored in Turkey, is said to be the most expensive megayacht in the world. It is also responsible for around two-thirds of the Russian oil and gas mogul's annual carbon footprint, which was estimated at 33,859 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2018  — more than one-sixth of the whole island nation of Tonga. The Eclipse alone costs around $60 million (€55 million) annually to operate. 

Bill Gates has around 10 times the wealth of Ambramovich with around $124 billion (versus $14 million) yet he emits around a fifth of the pollution because, the authors say, "he does not own a giant yacht" — yet Gates partly makes up for it with private jets.

The 142.81 metre sail-assisted motor yacht Sailing Yacht A, owned by Russian tycoon Andrey Melnichenko

These figures are "the tip of the iceberg," write Wilk and Barros since they don't include "embedded" carbon, which is to say all the CO2 burnt to produce the vessels. Another form of embedded carbon might be the fossil fuel money used to pay for these luxury yachts like the one above. "Sailing Yacht A," which has been seized by Italy, belongs to Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko — who owns the coal company SUEK.

140-meter megayacht ''Scheherazade'' anchors in Turkey in 2020: Is it Vladimir Putin's?

Privacy laws and data protection help shield much super-rich consumption. "Nevertheless," say the authors, "we think our calculations are illustrative and reflect on fundamental issues of climate justice by contributing to ongoing debates over who is responsible for climate change." Indeed, no one even seems to know who owns the 140-meter-long "Scheherazade" superyacht above. Some claims have linked it to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Earth 300 is a green-tech superyacht devoted to science, not luxury

Not all megayachts are climate killers. The Earth 300 will be the world's biggest superyacht, yet it will have zero emissions and aims to unite science and exploration to confront the planet's greatest challenge: climate change. The 300-meter long vessel will accommodate up to 400 people when launched in 2025. Though its carbon footprint will be relatively small, it will controversially be nuclear-powered.

OLIGARCHS' YACHTS: SEIZED OR UNDER SPECULATION — IN PICTURES
Sailing Yacht A
This 143-meter (470-foot) Sailing Yacht A, also referred to as "SY A," is valued at around €530 million ($578 million). Italian authorities seized it after identifying the owner as Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko. He owns major fertilizer producer EuroChem Group and coal company SUEK. Both companies announced recently that Melnichenko had resigned as a board member.
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Edited by: Tamsin Walker