POLYCRISIS

IPBES: Tackle together five interlinked global crises in biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change

>70 response options assessed for maximum co-benefits across cascading or compounding crises; Unaccounted-for costs of current approaches estimated to be at least US$10-25 trillion per year

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

 

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The IPBES Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report - offers decision-makers around the world the most ambitious scientific assessment ever undertaken of these complex interconnections and explores more than five dozen specific response options to maximize co-benefits across five ‘nexus elements’: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.

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Credit: IPBES

Environmental, social and economic crises – such as biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change – are all interconnected. They interact, cascade and compound each other in ways that make separate efforts to address them ineffective and counterproductive. 

A landmark new report was launched today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report - offers decision-makers around the world the most ambitious scientific assessment ever undertaken of these complex interconnections and explores more than five dozen specific response options to maximize co-benefits across five ‘nexus elements’: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.

Approved on Monday by the 11th session of the IPBES Plenary, composed of representatives of the 147 Governments that are members of IPBES, the report is the product of three years of work by 165 leading international experts from 57 countries from all regions of the world. It finds that existing actions to address these challenges fail to tackle the complexity of interlinked problems and result in inconsistent governance. 

“We have to move decisions and actions beyond single issue silos to better manage, govern and improve the impact of actions in one nexus element on other elements,” said Prof. Paula Harrison (United Kingdom), co-chair of the Assessment with Prof. Pamela McElwee (USA). “Take for example the health challenge of schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia) – a parasitic disease that can cause life-long ill health and which affects more than 200 million people worldwide – especially in Africa. Treated only as a health challenge – usually through medication – the problem often recurs as people are reinfected. An innovative project in rural Senegal took a different approach – reducing water pollution and removing invasive water plants to reduce the habitat for the snails that host the parasitic worms that carry the disease – resulting in a 32% reduction in infections in children, improved access to freshwater and new revenue for the local communities.” 

“The best way to bridge single issue silos is through integrated and adaptive decision-making. ‘Nexus approaches’ offer policies and actions that are more coherent and coordinated – moving us towards the transformative change needed to meet our development and sustainability goals,” said Prof. McElwee.

Past and Current Challenges

The report states that biodiversity – the richness and variety of all life on Earth – is declining at every level from global to local, and across every region. These ongoing declines in nature, largely as a result of human activity, including climate change, have direct and dire impacts on food security and nutrition, water quality and availability, health and wellbeing outcomes, resilience to climate change and almost all of nature’s other contributions to people.

Building on previous IPBES reports, in particular the 2022 Values Assessment Report and the 2019 Global Assessment Report, which identified the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss, including land- and sea-use change, unsustainable exploitation, invasive alien species and pollution, the Nexus Report further underscores how indirect socioeconomic drivers, such as increasing waste, overconsumption and population growth, intensify the direct drivers – worsening impacts on all parts of the nexus. The majority of 12 assessed indicators across these indirect drivers – such as GDP, population levels and overall food supply, have all increased or accelerated since 2001. 

“Efforts of Governments and other stakeholders have often failed to take into account indirect drivers and their impact on interactions between nexus elements because they remain fragmented, with many institutions working in isolation – often resulting in conflicting objectives, inefficiencies and negative incentives, leading to unintended consequences,” said Prof. Harrison.

The report highlights that more than half of global gross domestic product – more than $50 trillion of annual economic activity around the world – is moderately to highly dependent on nature. “But current decision making has prioritized short-term financial returns while ignoring costs to nature, and failed to hold actors to account for negative economic pressures on the natural world. It is estimated that the unaccounted-for costs of current approaches to economic activity – reflecting impacts on biodiversity, water, health and climate change, including from food production – are at least $10-25 trillion per year,” said Prof. McElwee.

The existence of such unaccounted-for costs, alongside direct public subsidies to economic activities that have negative impacts on biodiversity (approximately $1.7 trillion per year), enhances private financial incentives to invest in economic activities that cause direct damage to nature (approximately $5.3 trillion per year), in spite of growing evidence of biophysical risks to economic progress and financial stability.

Delaying the action needed to meet policy goals will also increase the costs of delivering it. Delayed action on biodiversity goals, for example, could as much as double costs – also increasing the probability of irreplaceable losses such as species extinctions. Delayed action on climate change adds at least $500 billion per year in additional costs for meeting policy targets. 

Unequal Impacts and Need for Inclusive Decision-Making

“Another key message from the report is that the increasingly negative effects of intertwined global crises have very unequal impacts, disproportionately affecting some more than others,” said Prof. Harrison. 

More than half of the world’s population is living in areas experiencing the highest impacts from declines in biodiversity, water availability and quality and food security, and increases in health risks and negative effects of climate change. These burdens especially affect developing countries, including small island developing states, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as those in vulnerable situations in higher-income countries. 41% of people live in areas that saw extremely strong declines in biodiversity between 2000 and 2010, 9% in areas that have experienced very high health burdens and 5% in areas with high levels of malnutrition.

Some efforts – such as research and innovation, education and environmental regulations – have been partially successful in improving trends across nexus elements, but the report finds these are unlikely to succeed without addressing interlinkages more fully and tackling indirect drivers like trade and consumption. Decision-making that is more inclusive, with a particular focus on equity, can help ensure those most affected are included in solutions, in addition to larger economic and financial reforms.

Future Scenarios

The report also examines future challenges – assessing 186 different scenarios from 52 separate studies, which project interactions between three or more of the nexus elements, mostly covering the periods up to 2050 and 2100.

A key message from this analysis is that if current “business as usual” trends in direct and indirect drivers of change continue, the outcomes will be extremely poor for biodiversity, water quality and human health – with worsening climate change and increasing challenges to meet global policy goals. 

Similarly, a focus on trying to maximize the outcomes for only one part of the nexus in isolation will likely result in negative outcomes for the other nexus elements. For example, a ‘food first’ approach prioritizes food production with positive benefits on nutritional health, arising from unsustainable intensification of production and increased per capita consumption. This has negative impacts on biodiversity, water and climate change. An exclusive focus on climate change can result in negative outcomes for biodiversity and food, reflecting competition for land. Weak environmental regulation, made worse by delays, results in worsening impacts for biodiversity, food, human health and climate change. 

“Future scenarios do exist that have positive outcomes for people and nature by providing co-benefits across the nexus elements,” said Prof Harrison. “The future scenarios with the widest nexus benefits are those with actions that focus on sustainable production and consumption in combination with conserving and restoring ecosystems, reducing pollution, and mitigating and adapting to climate change.”

An important aim of IPBES work is to provide the science and evidence needed to support achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement on climate change. The Nexus Report shows that scenarios focusing on synergies among biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change have the best likely outcomes for the SDGs – and that focusing on addressing the challenges in just one sector – such as food, biodiversity or climate change in isolation – seriously limits the chances of meeting other goals.

Response Options

The report shows that there are a significant number of responses – on a policy, political and community level – currently available to sustainably manage across biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change, some of which are also low cost. 

The authors present more than 70 of these ‘response options’ to help manage the nexus elements synergistically, representing 10 broad categories of action. Examples of these response options that have broadly positive impacts across nexus elements are: restoring carbon-rich ecosystems such as forests, soils, mangroves; managing biodiversity to reduce risk of diseases spreading from animals to humans; improving integrated landscape and seascape management; urban nature-based solutions; sustainable healthy diets; and supporting Indigenous food systems.

Other response options are important, but may not have as many synergistic benefits for all nexus elements. Some, such as offshore wind power and dams, may have negative impacts on other nexus elements if not carefully implemented.

The more than 70 response options presented in the report, taken together, support the achievement of all 17 SDGs, all 23 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the long-term goals for climate change mitigation and adaptation of the Paris Agreement. Twenty four of the response options advance more than five SDGs and more than five of the Global Biodiversity Framework targets. 

Implementing response options together or in sequence can further improve their positive impacts and achieve cost savings. Ensuring inclusive participation, such as including Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the co-design, governance and implementation of response options, can also increase the benefits and equity of these measures. 

“Some good examples include marine protected areas that have included communities in management and decision-making,” said Prof. McElwee. “These have led to increases in biodiversity, greater abundance of fish to feed people and improved incomes for local communities and often increased tourism revenues as well.”

Nexus Governance Approaches & Action

Speaking about what will be needed to advance effective responses, policies and actions, Prof. McElwee said: “Our current governance structures and approaches are not responsive enough to meet the interconnected challenges that result from the accelerated speed and scale of environmental change and rising inequalities. Fragmented and siloed institutions, as well as short-term, contradictory and non-inclusive policies have significant potential to put achievement of the global development and sustainability targets at risk. This can be addressed by moving towards ‘nexus governance approaches’: more integrated, inclusive, equitable, coordinated and adaptive approaches.”

The report offers a series of eight specific and deliberative steps to help policymakers, communities, civil society and other stakeholders identify problems and shared values in order to work together towards solutions for just and sustainable futures – presented as a graphical road map for nexus action.

Speaking about the immediate relevance and value of the report, Dr. David Obura, Chair of IPBES said: “The past two months have seen three separate major global negotiations – COP16 of both the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification, as well as COP29 of the climate Convention. Together with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDGs, it is clear that the Governments of the world are working harder than ever before to address the global challenges – grounded in the environmental crises – that confront us all. The Nexus Report helps to better inform all of these actions, policies and decisions, particularly in addressing their interlinkages, and the greater benefits achieved by devising integrated solutions at all scales. I would like to thank and congratulate the co-chairs, authors and everyone who has contributed to this tremendously complex and important assessment process.”

* * * * *

By the Numbers – Key Statistics and Thematic Findings from the Report

• 2-6%: Biodiversity decline per decade across all assessed indicators for the last 30-50 years
• >50%: Global population living in areas experiencing highest impacts from declines in biodiversity, water availability and quality and food security, and increases in health risks and negative effects of climate change
• ~$58 trillion: Value in 2023 of global annual economic activity generated in sectors moderately to highly dependent on nature (i.e. more than 50% of global GDP)
• Up to $25 trillion: Annual ‘external’ costs (not considered as part of decision-making) across the fossil fuel, agriculture and fisheries sectors, reflecting the negative impacts of production and consumption in these sectors on biodiversity, climate change, water, and health
• $5.3 trillion: Annual private-sector financial flows directly damaging to biodiversity
• $1.7 trillion: Annual public subsidies incentivizing damage to biodiversity, distorting trade and increasing pressure on natural resources
• $100 billion-$300 billion: Annual value of illegal resource extraction activities including in the wildlife, timber and fish trades
• Up to $200 billion: Annual expenditure aimed at improving the status of biodiversity
• Up to $1 trillion: Estimated annual financing gap to meet global resource needs for biodiversity
• At least $4 trillion: Estimated annual financing gap to meet the SDGs in addition to the biodiversity funding gap
• Economic impacts of biodiversity loss are expected to affect developing countries, where there are also higher barriers to mobilizing sustainable financial flows (exacerbated in some cases by burdens of high debt)
• 43%: Proportion of total biodiversity-financing flows that also directly include benefits for another nexus element
• 81%: Proportion of funding for biodiversity that comes from public institutions
• $42 billion: Current funding for payments for ecosystem services, which often fund activities for both biodiversity and another nexus element like water
• €47 million: Investment by the city of Paris to help farmers transition to ecological intensification, resulting in reduced pollution and cleaner water
• 30%: Proportion of world’s land, waters and seas to be protected by 2030 under target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – supported by the scenario analysis of the assessment and can provide nexus-wide benefits if effectively managed for nature and people
• Reduction of plastics has led to increased water quality and wildlife protection, fewer floods and reductions in incidence of associated water-borne diseases
• Urban nature-based solutions that increase urban green and blue space help to manage heat island effects, improve water quality and availability and reduce air pollution, as well as reducing allergens and zoonotic disease risk
• Response options that are implemented in more equitable ways also provide greater potential benefits across the nexus elements, indicating that effectiveness and equity often are not trade-offs but go hand-in-hand
• Knowledge and practices of Indigenous Peoples and local communities can help successfully conserve biodiversity and sustainably manage other nexus elements. For example, strong reductions in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon were achieved after formalizing and enforcing tenure rights to territories of Indigenous Peoples and local communities

Water

• Freshwater biodiversity is being lost faster than terrestrial biodiversity. Unsustainable freshwater withdrawal, wetland degradation and forest loss have decreased water quality and climate change resilience in many areas of the world, impacting biodiversity, water and food availability with consequences for human, plant and animal
• Many marine systems globally have been overharvested and degraded through human activities
• The water cycle is regulated by ecosystem and geophysical processes – supporting biodiversity and providing many contributions that are essential to human health and well-being
• Forest cover loss decreases water regulation, quality and availability, resulting in increasing water treatment costs and negative health outcomes
• ~80%: Proportion of humanity’s demand for freshwater used to meet food production needs
• 75%: Proportion of global population in 2005 dependent on forests for accessible freshwater
• At least 50: Diseases attributable to poor water supply, water quality and sanitation
• ~33%: Reef-building coral species at high risk of extinction
• Nearly 1 billion: people living within 100km of a coral reef and who benefit from them in terms of food, medicine, protection from coastal storms and erosion, tourism and recreation and livelihoods
• Transboundary water cooperation facilitates the sustainable management of resources at the basin scale, and better collaboration between sectors and stakeholders. Improving groundwater governance through cooperation across scales, including support for community water management, increases benefits across the nexus elements, while integrated water infrastructure and water-sensitive urban infrastructure take advantage of natural systems to reduce risks from floods and other hazards, deliver benefits for food production and contribute to climate change mitigation

Food

• Increases in food production have improved health through greater caloric intake, but unsustainable agricultural practices have also resulted in loss of biodiversity, unsustainable water usage, reduced food diversity and quality, and increased pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
• Negative impacts on the nexus elements from food systems have decreased biodiversity and consequently many of nature’s contributions to people, especially through diminished regulating contributions (e.g., regulation of water quality and climate); increased non-communicable disease risks; emerging infectious diseases; and global temperatures and other climatic changes
• Global agrobiodiversity is declining, including genetic resources for food and agriculture, with impacts on ecosystem functioning, food system resilience, food security and nutrition, as well as on social (employment and health) and economic (income and productivity) systems
• Global malnutrition and inequalities in food security persist despite a decline in the total number of undernourished people –the cost of healthy diets can be high, particularly in developing countries, and consequently inaccessible to many
• Unsustainable exploitation and pollution of freshwater and marine ecosystems impact millions of people, including those highly dependent on protein-rich food obtained from these ecosystems, such as Indigenous Peoples and local communities
• 42%: Proportion of global population in 2021 unable to afford healthy diets, 86% for low-income and 70% for lower-middle income countries
• 80%: Proportion of total undernourished people who live in developing countries, primarily living in rural areas
• >800 million: People affected by food insecurity in Asia and Africa
• Nearly 3 million: Deaths in 2017 associated with diets low in whole grains
• Adopting sustainable agricultural practices (such as improving nitrogen use efficiency, integrated pest management, agroecology, agroforestry and sustainable intensification, reductions in food losses and waste, adoption of novel food/feed sources and sustainable healthy diets would enable the current agricultural land area to meet the calorific and nutritional needs of future generations in the medium to long term
• 30%: Increase in cereal yields, as well as enhancing soil health and biodiversity in some parts of south-central Niger through farmer-managed natural regeneration of 5 million hectares with native trees and agroforestry systems
• Indigenous food systems, grounded in reciprocal worldviews and values regarding people and nature in balance and in the sustainable use of biodiversity are supplying sustainable and healthy foods while also contributing to biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation

Health

• Greater life expectancy and childhood survival are partly a result of increased production and access to food. Worsening outcomes from several communicable and non-communicable diseases are linked to biodiversity loss, unhealthy diets, lack of clean water, pollution and climate change among other causes
• Unsustainable farming systems contribute to biodiversity loss, excessive water use, pollution and climate change
• 20: Years of average life expectancy difference between regions
• 10x: Extent to which child mortality rates are higher in least-developed-countries compared to high-income countries
• 11 million: Adult deaths in 2017 (and 255 million disability-adjusted life years among adults) accounted for by unhealthy diets
• 9 million: Premature deaths in 2019 (16% of all deaths) estimated to have been caused by increased air and water pollution
• 50%: Proportion of emerging and reemerging infectious disease events driven by changes in land use, agricultural practices and activities that encroach on natural habitats and lead to increased contact between wildlife, domestic animals and humans - highlighting the interconnections between ecosystem, animal and human health
• The One Health approach supports integrating food system and biodiversity management with local health services to reduce risks from zoonotic pathogen emergence and spillover at source, malnutrition and other risks such as to wildlife health, food production and ecosystems. For example, Brazil’s successful Unified Health System joins human health professionals, veterinarians and environmental health practitioners working together with farmers and policymakers to jointly design holistic practices aimed at addressing social and environmental determinants of health and contributing to preventing pathogen emergence and disease outbreaks for both people and animals

Climate Change

• Climate change affects biodiversity, water, food and health through changes in average climatic conditions and the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events
• Climate change impacts terrestrial food production with consequences for human health and well-being including exacerbating food insecurity for vulnerable populations 
• Intensifying climate change will stress water resources and undermine agricultural productivity and food productivity in food production systems, cause increased mortality from heat waves and expand the epidemic belt for vector-borne diseases towards higher latitudes and altitudes
• Extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, flooding, droughts and wildfires result in direct health impacts and increased dispersal of pathogens and pollutants (e.g., untreated wastewater, fertilizers, pesticides, sediments and air pollutants) 
• Under current trends, climate change leads to irreversible loss of marine biodiversity, such as coral reefs, and negative effects on coastal fisheries; both provide diets that prevent malnutrition, stunted child growth and other conditions
• Exposure to risks from climate change is projected to double between the 1.5°C and 2°C global warming levels and double again between a 2°C and 3°C world, across multiple sectors 
• 21-37%: Proportion of total greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the global food system
• 58%: Proportion of known human infectious diseases likely to worsen due to climate change
• 12,000-19,000: Heat-related child deaths in Africa between 2011 and 2020 to which climate change directly contributed
• 62,000: Heat-related deaths in Europe in 2022
• 1,500: Heat-related deaths in the United States in 2023
• 12,000: Disasters caused in the last 50 years by extreme weather-, climate and water-related events, leading to 2 million human deaths (90% in low- and lower-middle-income countries) and $4.3 trillion in total costs
• >50%: Proportion of carbon sequestration in the ocean attributable to coastal ecosystems
• >$500 billion: Minimum additional annual costs for delivering adaptation and mitigation to meet climate change goals for each year of additional delay
• Restoration contributes to climate change adaptation and socio-ecological resilience and can also contribute to climate change mitigation when it targets carbon storage in forests, peatlands, seagrass beds, salt marshes and marine and coastal ecosystems that contribute to carbon sequestration

IPBES Partner Comments

"Biodiversity loss, water scarcity, food security, human health, and climate change are not isolated issues. They are indivisible, interrelated and interdependent. As they are intricately linked when one falters, the others follow. 

Despite these challenges being interconnected, our responses are far too often siloed, fixing one problem while creating another. 

The IPBES Nexus Assessment is the first comprehensive global assessment that looks at the interlinkages between these crises and identifies solutions. 

As governments continue work toward achieving commitments made in the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Biodiversity Framework, and the Paris Agreement, this report comes at a critical moment to support countries achieve our global goals."

• Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

"Biodiversity is vital to the efforts to meet humanity’s growing need for food, feed, fibre and fuel, while protecting the planet for future generations. We need to produce more with less, through the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life – leaving no one behind. 

The IPBES assessments help us to understand the interlinkages between biodiversity, food, and livelihoods, as well as the urgent need to address biodiversity loss with solutions that enhance sustainability and resilience. These assessments clearly highlight the essential role of agrifood system solutions in meeting the Paris Agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - especially SDG 2 to end hunger. 

FAO’s mandate aligns closely with the 2050 vision for biodiversity, promoting sustainable agrifood systems that ensure food security – by ensuring food availability, food accessibility and food affordability - with safe, sufficient and nutritious food for all, while conserving biodiversity and addressing the impacts of the climate crisis. 

With decades of experience in technical and policy support and guided by its Strategy on Mainstreaming Biodiversity Across Agricultural Sectors, FAO is well-positioned to lead the transition towards more sustainable agrifood systems. By leveraging our expertise, resources, and global network, we can help implement the assessments’ recommendations, ensuring agrifood systems contribute positively to biodiversity conservation, sustainable use, and climate action. 

Together, we can build a future where agrifood systems support sustainability and resilience, benefiting both people and the planet. Let us seize this opportunity to create a lasting impact."

• QU Dongyu, Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

"Our ecological and planetary systems are deeply interconnected with all life on Earth, including humanity. Yet, decisions to address threats to biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate, are too often made in isolation, leading to misalignment, unplanned trade-offs, or unintended consequences at best -- and negative outcomes at worst.   

By illuminating the intersections between environmental, social, and economic crises, the IPBES Nexus Assessment exposes both the limitations of isolated action -- and the opportunities and acceleration possible from better aligning our global efforts. 

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) welcomes the insights of this assessment as we work with the United Nations (UN) family and our many partners to drive systemic, rather than linear shifts. This is essential to enabling the scale and urgency of action needed to protect and restore our planet’s irreplaceable ecosystems and biodiversity."

• Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

"The environmental and social crises our planet is facing are interconnected and cannot be addressed in isolation. It is therefore essential to fully understand the interlinkages that exist between biodiversity, water and food systems, health and well-being, climate disruption and global energy systems. 

As an institutional partner of IPBES, UNESCO is proud to have supported this new assessment report, which demonstrates that we can – and must – move beyond a siloed approach. We must design holistic strategies to manage environmental and social challenges while accounting for trade-offs and enhancing mutual benefits in our global system. 

The report underscores the need for diverse knowledge systems, values and governance approaches to effectively tackle today's interconnected global challenges. UNESCO takes pride in having supported the work on indigenous and local knowledge in this assessment, which illustrates the importance of these knowledge systems in conceptualizing, understanding and managing the complex relationships between people and nature. 

By recognizing and integrating diverse perspectives, the assessment report will be invaluable for policymakers and decision makers at all levels. UNESCO stands ready to support efforts towards holistic approaches to governance and action." 

• Audrey Azoulay, Director-General, United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)

"One of the most challenging aspects of policymaking is to navigate complexity while avoiding unintended negative consequences. Actions to address global challenges affecting biodiversity, water, food, health and the climate system are often taken without sufficient regard to the interlinkages between them. Such actions inevitably result in shortcomings, if not adverse impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. 

By shedding light on the interactions, trade-offs and opportunities inherent to addressing these intertwined challenges, the IPBES Nexus Report lays a strong foundation for evidence-based decisions that enhance biodiversity conservation and restoration, while also supporting food and water security, public health and climate resilience.

The IPBES Nexus Assessment Report makes an invaluable contribution to efforts by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in achieving the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) by 2030. 

I thank and congratulate the IPBES experts and members for the tremendous amount of work, expertise and innovation that went into the preparation of the Nexus Report. I look forward to seeing this asset being widely used by Parties to the CBD, Stakeholders and Partners supporting the implementation of the KMGBF."

• Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

TIME OF THE POLYCRISIS

World on fire’: UN seeks $47 bn for aid in 2025


By AFP
December 4, 2024

Tom Fletcher presented the UN's 2025 Global Humanitarian Overview in Geneva - Copyright Cheshire Constabulary/AFP -

Nina LARSON

The UN on Wednesday appealed for more than $47 billion to deliver vital aid next year in a world ravaged by surging conflicts and the climate crisis, but warned many in need would not be reached.

“The world is on fire,” the United Nations’ new humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told reporters in Geneva, acknowledging he was looking ahead to 2025 with “dread”.

With brutal conflicts spiralling in places like Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, and as climate change and extreme weather take an ever-heavier toll, the UN estimated that 305 million people globally will need some form of emergency assistance next year.

“We are dealing with a poly-crisis right now globally, and it is the most vulnerable people in the world who are paying the price,” Fletcher said, warning that swelling inequality combined with the convergence of conflict and climate change had created a “perfect storm” of needs.

Launching the Global Humanitarian Overview, Fletcher acknowledged that the UN and its partners would not be able to reach all of those in need.

The annual appeal by UN agencies and partner humanitarian organisations is seeking $47.4 billion for 2025 — slightly less than the appeal for this year — which it said was enough to provide assistance to the 189.5 million most vulnerable people.

“There’s 115 million that we won’t be able to reach” with this plan, Fletcher acknowledged.

– ‘Ruthless’ –

Pointing to significant “donor fatigue” hitting humanitarian operations, he stressed the need for a “realistic” plan, which required prioritisation and making “really tough, tough choices”.

“We’ve got to be absolutely focused on reaching those in the most dire need, and really ruthless.”

As of last month, only 43 percent of the $50 billion appeal for this year had been met.

Underfunding this year has seen an 80-percent reduction in food assistance in Syria, cuts to protection services in Myanmar, and diminished water and sanitation aid in cholera-prone Yemen, the UN said.

Camilla Waszink of the Norwegian Refugee Council described the appeal’s acknowledgement that millions would not be reached as “devastating”.

“When the richest people on Earth can go to space as a tourist and trillions of US dollars are used annually on global military expenditure, it is incomprehensible that we as an international community are unable to find the necessary funding to provide displaced families with shelter and prevent children from dying of hunger,” she said.



– ‘Under attack’ –



Even more than funding woes, Fletcher said the biggest barrier to assisting and protecting people in armed conflict was the widespread violation of international law.

This year has already been the deadliest for humanitarian workers, surpassing the 2023 toll of 280 killed.

The global humanitarian system “is overstretched, it’s underfunded and it’s literally under attack”, he said.

Meanwhille, fears abound that Donald Trump’s looming return to the presidency in the United States — the world’s largest humanitarian donor — could see aid agency budgets cut further.

Fletcher said he planned to spend “a lot of time in Washington” in the coming months to engage with the new administration.

But the “much tougher global climate (is) not just about America”, Fletcher said.


– ‘Unconscionable’ –


A record 123 million people were living displaced from their homes due to conflict by mid-2024, while one in every five children globally is currently living in or fleeing conflict zones, according to UN figures.

“The suffering behind the numbers is all the more unconscionable for being man-made,” Fletcher said.

“Wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine are marked by the ferocity and intensity of the killing, the complete disregard for international law, and the deliberate obstruction of our humanitarian movement’s effort to save lives.”

Numerous old crises remain unresolved, with average humanitarian operations now spanning a decade, the UN said.

“The longer they last, the bleaker the prospects,” Fletcher warned.

Even more worryingly, he said, was how conflicts were increasingly converging with theclimate-induced disasters that are ravaging communities, devastating food systems and driving mass displacement.

SEE

Trump, Trumpism, and the Polycrisis

Trump, Trumpism, and the Polycrisis

By Jeremy Brecher

November 22, 2024

Source: Strike!


Image via Strike!/Jeremy Brecher


“Polycrisis” is a word that has recently come into use to characterize the way crises in many different spheres – ranging from geopolitics and economics to climate and pandemic – are aggravating each other and even converging. Trump and Trumpism, like similar leaders and movements around the world, took off in the era of polycrisis and reflect many of its themes. They are also likely to severely aggravate the dynamics of the polycrisis.

Although Trump and Trumpism are deeply rooted in American history, they are also an aspect of the emerging era now widely referred to as the global polycrisis. The polycrisis shaped many of the conditions that promoted the rise of Trumpism. Trumpism, in turn, echoes many of the themes of the polycrisis. Trump’s actions will go out not into a peaceful world order, but into a world order in polycrisis, where the effects of almost any actions are difficult to predict. And his actions are likely to significantly aggravate the polycrisis, in particular making it more violent, unpredictable, and folly-ridden.

Trump and Trumpism must be understood in the context of the polycrisis. In his address to the 2024 Republican National Convention, Donald Trump said,


We have an inflation crisis that is making life unaffordable, ravaging the incomes of working and low-income families, and crushing, just simply crushing our people like never before. They’ve never seen anything like it.

We also have an illegal immigration crisis, and it’s taking place right now, as we sit here in this beautiful arena. It’s a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction to communities all across our land. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.

Then there is an international crisis, the likes of which the world has seldom been part of. Nobody can believe what’s happening. War is now raging in Europe and the Middle East, a growing specter of conflict hangs over Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, and all of Asia, and our planet is teetering on the edge of World War III, and this will be a war like no other war because of weaponry. The weapons are no longer army tanks going back and forth, shooting at each other. These weapons are obliteration.[1]

Trump’s description of the world is like a distorting funhouse mirror reflection of reality – the reality of the polycrisis. However fallacious his interpretations and proposals, terrifying threats are a reality in the era of polycrisis.

In reality, inflation has ravaged the incomes of working and low-income families, and the recent inflation is only one manifestation of an out-of-control global economy that has been crushing people since the Great Recession of 2007. In reality, millions of people have been driven from their homes around the world by war, globalization, and climate change. In reality, misery, poverty, disease, and destruction to communities has in fact been occurring, not as a result of immigration, but of the dismantling of public programs that reduce poverty, disease, and destruction. War is indeed raging in Europe and the Middle East, and a growing specter of conflict does hang over Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, and all of Asia. Our planet is indeed teetering on the edge of World War III, and that would indeed mean “obliteration.” That is the reality of the polycrisis.

Trump’s claims that he and he alone can fix the problems he describes would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous. But the real reality is as scary as the one he portrays. It is little wonder that millions of ordinary people are suffering from anger, fear, and pain. They are reacting to reality.

The era that preceded the polycrisis, roughly from the fall of the Soviet Union to the Great Recession, was marked by unilateral global hegemony by the United States. It was marked by a neoliberal globalization which imposed unregulated corporate power on every country and institution. It saw political power determined by elections in most countries, however unequal those elections may have been. And it saw governments and corporations at least shadowboxing against the threat of climate change.

This relatively stable if unjust world order has been transformed into the polycrisis. Unipolar US hegemony has been replaced by multiplying wars, the rise of Great Power conflict, and the decline of international cooperation inside and outside the UN. It has also been marked by fragmentation of the global economy and Great Power struggle to dominate what are still global economic networks. International climate protection has become a transparent sham, and major political forces, including the soon-to-be leader of the world’s most powerful country, deny the reality of climate change. The remaining institutions of democratic rule have been shredded by a transition to transparent plutocracy on the one hand and the rise of movements, parties, and national leaders who resemble the classic fascists who rose a century ago – similarly the product of burgeoning global disorder.

The past dozen years have witnessed the rise of movements in dozens of countries that resemble the classic fascism of 1920-1945. They manifest smashing of democratic institutions, contempt for constitutions and laws, utilization of violence for political purposes, scapegoating of racial, ethnic, gender, political, and other minorities, hostility to transnational cooperation, authoritarian dictatorship, and a variety of related characteristics. To include the many manifestations of this phenomenon, rather than exclusively those who proclaim themselves fascists, I refer to it as the new “para-fascism.”

Donald Trump is a paragon of this new para-fascism. His rise to power has coincided with that of para-fascists around the world. In Europe these include Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy; the Law and Justice Party in Poland; Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary; ruling coalitions in Sweden and Finland; Marine Le Pen’s National Rally; Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party; and Alternative Fur Deutschland, among others. In South America similar parties control or share governmental power in Uruguay, Argentina, and until recently in Brazil. In Asia, India’s government under Modi and the Philippines under Duterte and Marcos, Russia under Putin, Turkey under Erdogan, and Israel under Netanyahu have become increasingly para-fascist. China has moved to an expanded nationalism and an authoritarian recentralization of power, though it differs in many ways from other para-fascisms.

Para-fascism – and notably Trumpism — is a child of the polycrisis. The Great Recession, while not the cause of the polycrisis, can serve as a convenient marker for its emergence; as Philippine scholar and activist Waldon Bello noted, the “buildup of fascist movements and parties didn’t start till 2011, i.e. post-Great Recession.” The polycrisis helped make possible the rise of Trump and other para-fascist leaders. They in turn reflected, echoed, and even incorporated many features of the polycrisis:The polycrisis embodies the breakdown of international cooperation and the rise of national conflict. Trumpism is characterized by hatred of globalism and celebration of ethno-nationalism.
The polycrisis is a period of declining US hegemony, Great Power conflict, and war. Trump’s overriding theme, “Make America Great Again,” is a direct response to this reality.
The polycrisis is marked by the emerging conflict between the rising power of China and the relatively declining power of the US – sometimes referred to as an example of the “Thucydides trap.” The demonization of China and the attack against Chinese development has been a central theme of Trump’s approach to international affairs – one echoed by President Joe Biden during the Trump “interregnum.”
The polycrisis represents a transition from globalization’s global economic integration to Great Power battles to control global economic networks. Trump’s pugilistic economic nationalism represents both a reflection and an intensification of this trend.
The polycrisis has seen the decline of democracy and the breakdown of limits on plutocracy. Trump puts this tendency on steroids with his outright attacks on democratic institutions and his transformation of plutocracy into kleptocracy – aka politics by theft.
The polycrisis has seen a near total failure to restrain the climate destruction that is no longer just a threat but an everyday reality. Trump not only denies the reality of climate change but aims to do everything in his power to aggravate it through expanded fossil fuel extraction and burning.

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Notwithstanding his claims to fix the threats people are facing, Trump in power will only aggravate the polycrisis. The rubbishing of safeguards provided by democratic governance will amplify irrational policymaking and exacerbate popular feelings of powerlessness and alienation. Outlandish increases in military spending, designed to implement the fantasy of renewed US global domination, will lead instead to ruinous nuclear and conventional arms races. Trump’s style of provocation, deliberate unpredictability, and unrestrained folly will lead to intensified conflict, strange shifts in alliances, deliberately aggravated chaos, and wars. His energy policies will put climate catastrophe on steroids. This exacerbated polycrisis will produce a self-amplifying feedback loop that will increase the fear and anger that are prime sources – and prime resources — of Trumpism.

[1] “Read the transcript of Donald J. Trump’s Convention Speech,” New York Times, July 19, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/19/us/politics/trump-rnc-speech-transcript.html

Jeremy Brecher is a historian, author, and co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability. He has been active in peace, labor, environmental, and other social movements for more than half a century. Brecher is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements, including Strike! and Global Village or Global Pillage and the winner of five regional Emmy awards for his documentary movie work.

Life With and After Trump

By Michael Albert

November 21, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.





How does one take seriously having a vaccine denier in charge of public health? How about having the world’s richest corporate owner in charge of cutting regulatory agencies? Or having the other foxes in the henhouse, much less Oval office-ing the degenerate ringmaster himself? I would guess all who read this article feel outrage and horror, but also more than a little scared.

Do you go to bed at night or get up in the morning with thoughts, fears, and dread that you want to jettison? Turn off the news. Turn it off. Turn it off. Enough already. Set aside the articles. Stop the flow. Netflix calls. A novel beckons for attention. Go for a walk, get some fresh air. Maybe have a drink or ten. Perhaps throw a fit, or maybe just snarl a lot.

I get all that. And I am not going to tell you that going to meetings or attending them online, reading or writing calls to action, thinking about what to do and how to do it, and urging friends, neighbors, workmates, and family to join you in it will banish the nightmares and bring on only joyous dreams. To fight the power can certainly have inspiring, energizing, and joyous moments, but it will also have plenty of frustrations, strains, drains, and flat out boring moments. It is, however, the only thing that can lead to better days.

In that context, as dreadful as things may now feel, as immobilizing as Trump’s barbarity may feel, the current humane, radical, and/or revolutionary task is to block near-term Trumpian successes while preparing to pursue longer term positive campaigns and agendas. Why? Five reasons. To prevent continued and new Trump-inspired damage at home and abroad.To show that Trump is beatable. He is not someone to start supporting or to double down in support of. Don’t do it. He is someone to usher into ignominy.To prevent structural changes we would have to later roll back.To develop vision we truly desire and means to win it, not just to survive.To contribute to and, yes, to enjoy emergent hope and community.

Trump’s appointments aim to establish a police state. Please read that again. That is our immediate setting. It is not rhetoric. It is not hyperbole. His appointments will seek to trash democracy and participation and increase corporate control. They will try to normalize my-way-or-the-highway rule. Trump’s appointments are not only unqualified and even anti-qualified, they are also shock and awe provocations. They are bludgeons to rob our initiative, but despite their weirdness, each is also smartly attuned to Trump’s perverse, homicIdal aims.

Trump himself is simultaneously a nightmare and a sick joke. As a wannabe dictator, he seeks dominance. As a degenerate clown, he caterwauls toward history’s garbage bin. Which persona will predominate?

As Trump tries to dramatically change society from its horrendously flawed present into a drastically worse future, I believe more than enough people will extricate from his lies, see through his false promises, and overcome their understandable fear and depression to resist both Trump and his appointees. Enough people will resist his border, deportation, spying, coercing, impoverishing, repressing, sickness-inducing, militaristic, misogynistic, racist, and corporatist agendas to scuttle his aims.

Indeed, resistance is already surfacing. But resistance doesn’t automatically succeed. To win, resistance must become a persistent, continuous and unified force. It must attract and retain steadily more public participation. It must manifest increasingly more mutual aid and solidarity. It must raise social costs that elites do not wish to meet. Is that possible? And is it possible before Trump solidifies his support and transforms institutions to his specifications?

Most of Trump’s voters mainly supported what they thought was a positive possibility that he would shake things up so that they might benefit. They wanted change and rightly thought he would cause change. He successfully deflected their realizing it would be change for the worse.

Trump’s voters also secondarily supported prospects of his overcoming problems that don’t exist or fears that are greatly exaggerated but which he will only make worse. And finally, some of Trump’s voters thought he would protect old ways of living against new disorienting trends.

So how do we raise social costs for Trump and more for elites that support or simply put up with his aims?

If we uncompromisingly reach out to many of Trump’s voters while we (and Trump’s own actions) reveal Trump’s true aims and do so while Trump is restrained by fierce resistance, many and we should hope even most of his voters will reject what they come to see as Trump’s negative effects.

On the other hand, if we do not reach out to Trump’s voters and if we do not block Trump in coming months then even his weakly supportive voters will see Trump pull off one programmatic step after another, each of which he will celebrate as serving their interests, as freeing them, and as punishing their enemies, and in that case their tenuous support for him may become deeper and more intense. People who voted for him but voted down ballot for the likes of AOC or for reproductive rights or for a higher minimum wage, or who voted for Trump but would have preferred to vote for the likes of Bernie Sanders, may fall deeper and more intensely in thrall to him. To prevent that is essential.

Activism to block Trump’s agenda needs to welcome and to provide supportive opportunities for participation and leadership to voters for Harris as well as to non voters and indeed to anyone who is already horrified by the specter of a Trump-defined future but who lacks prior experience of active dissent and is thus not already plugged in. Activism should welcome all, but offer suitably different strokes for different folks.

We can’t stop Trump much less move on to win positive change without greater numbers. True enough, you might agree, but you may nonetheless have doubts about succeeding. And I get that things look grim, but does anyone need that point repeated over and over again? To say it will be hard to block Trump and to reverse MAGA and to finally fully rebut fascism’s morbidity is true. But to say that it won’t happen, or at any rate that it won’t happen for years and years, is self-fulfilling unwarranted defeatism. We have to face facts, yes, but not spin them into worse than they are. Defeatism feeds fascism.

Okay, you may feel, but why is defeatism unwarranted? Trump won a big battle. True, but we won many progressive referendums for increased minimum wages, reproductive rights, labor gains, and other progressive results, including in red states. Still, Trump will forever claim a mandate, and will certainly try to parlay his actually narrow electoral victory of between 1% and 2% into some immediate Trumpist gains.

He will try to bludgeon or shock passive acceptance. He will point to whatever early reactionary Trumpian gains he manages to enact to try to galvanize support for more reactionary steps. If in response we move quietly aside or we even jeer in righteous anger while we predict our own coming defeat, we will indeed be defeated.

To resist Trump’s every effort, to start to reverse them and to tirelessly tatter his aura of invulnerability, to reduce rather than ratify people’s fear of him, and to interrupt and then hack away at his level of support and build sufficient active unified resistance to finally replace him is all mandatory. And it will happen. But how fast it will happen, which includes with how little human and social loss along the way, will depend mainly on two things.

First, Trump’s overreach and rate of personal unravelling, and second the pace with which resistance spreads, becomes wholistic rather than atomistic, and reaches out to inspire ever wider activist rejection of Trump’s agenda.

That sounds nice, you might think, but is it real? What about the people who voted Democrat? And beyond them, what about the Democratic Party itself? Won’t they be a dead weight of passive resignation? Or won’t they, however well meaning, drag growing opposition to Trump into Democratic Party let’s get back to business as usual-ism? Will we prevent full blown fascism but return to from where fascism emerged?

Just as Trump’s voters are not peas in a pod, so too for Harris’s voters. Some Harris voters will abstain from resisting Trump, perhaps too comfortable, too scared, too convinced it is futile, or sometimes maybe even donning a red hat. Some will resist Trump but with the express intention of returning to fondly remembered business as usual. Some will begin to resist, including people at higher and higher levels of income and influence, but only the more they feel that Trump’s actions are generating resistance that may come for them next. Not praiseworthy, but relevant. And already happening.

Some will want to return to pre-Trump stability but also to enact some serious and meaningful gains for various constituencies and even regarding sustainability for all of humanity. That is also already happening. It’s praiseworthy but not fundamental. And some will want to move past all of that to prepare the way to win fundamentally new economic, political, and social relations. That is praiseworthy and fundamental, but very far from predominant.

How many people will move toward which new posture will not depend exclusively on peoples’ genes or even their personalities. Nor will it depend only on their incomes or their social identities. It will depend somewhat on all of that but also, and crucially, more on what they encounter in coming weeks and months, including on our words and the scope and effectivity of our resistance, and how welcoming our efforts are to new participants.

The Democratic Party will of course reject fundamental change, and for the most part it will even reject meaningful gains whenever it feels they might expand beyond meaningful to fundamental. The avalanche of essays, interviews, and talks that have recently railed at today’s Democratic Party as an agent of oppressive hierarchy and injustice are correct. It is.

Then again, such observations have been correct even in just my own experience, ever since the mid 1960s. And have been correct from still earlier, way earlier, for people even older. I tend to wonder, therefore, when I read such observations, especially in progressive and seriously leftist venues, who are they written for? Once or twice, as a kind of gentle here’s what we all know reminder, I might understand. But over and over in such venues, as if only the author knows? As if it is some kind of newly discovered wisdom? It seems to me that the people who read those essays in progressive outlets already know what they are being told. So what is the editorial point?

The real world truth is that a very large component of resistance to Trump is going to come from organizations and also spontaneous projects with considerable history and even deep roots in Democratic Party activities. If this is not the case, our prospects for preventing full-on fascism will be insufficient. So rather than disparaging such efforts, it seems to me that to try to discern, describe, and debate what to do next along with but not literally melting into such efforts will be more helpful.

When some left writers seem to carelessly dismiss every elected or appointed Democrat much less every voter for Harris as abettors of genocide, misogyny, racism, and corporate domination, they are wrong in the same way as when some left writers seem to carelessly write off all of Trump’s voters as lunatic fascists. These narratives not only ridicule and reject people who are needed for resistance to win, but even people who are already hell bent on resisting.

So, yes, the Democratic Party is part of the repressive, oppressive society that has spawned Trump, produced Trump’s voters’ warranted alienation and anger, and also manipulated and distorted some of the perceptions of Trump’s and indeed of all voters. So of course we don’t want to swear allegiance to the Democratic Party. We even want to keep it in our minds and not forget that it is, as a whole, very much not our ally, but the opposite. But, at the same time, to prevent Trump implementing gain after gain and increasing his support by himself touting his every gain will depend in large part on how many Harris voters resist and, indeed, on how many Democratic Party affiliated actors and organizations resist.

But in that case, a question arises. As we fight to reveal and reject Trump, what do we who aren’t about returning to business as usual seek instead? What do we desire for life after Trump? Is it premature to even ask? After all, we know we have to remove Trump before we can construct better than what we had before Trump.

Indeed, this was one of the costs of a Trump victory. If Harris had won we would now be able to fight for positive and even fundamental change toward a much better future. With Trump having won, we have to first fight against vicious negative fundamental changes that would impose a much worse future. It is also true that on the road to life after Trump Republican majorities in the Senate and House will need to be erased. And then Republican ownership of the White House will need to be erased as well. That is another price of Harris losing. But that isn’t our final goal. Of course not.

It is true, however, that to work to remove Trump can tend toward, can welcome, and can even celebrate and enforce business, government, culture, and households as they were before Trump—or it can begin to inspire desires for and even develop means to win gains toward implementing gains that go fundamentally beyond yesterday’s normal. For that matter, the wherewithal to resist fascism will thrive better if it is fueled and oriented by positive desires for more than restoring the conditions and circumstances that earlier led us toward fascism. We all know that, don’t we? We all know that getting back to everything being broken for us but working fine to serve power and wealth is not our ultimate aim, don’t we?

But if the whole goal isn’t only for the Democrats to win midterm elections in two years so the House and Senate become Democrat dominated, and only for Democrats to win the Presidency in four years so a Democratic Administration replaces Trump (or Vance), then what do we want? If those interim steps are important but not defining, then what do we want for life after Trump?

My answer is, I want Life After Capitalism, After Misogyny, After Racism, After War, After Ecological Denial. What’s your answer? But I am not delusional. We are not going to do all that in four years. What we can do, however, while we stop Trump, is to also think through our aims and methods and begin to implement new approaches able to keep going forward after Trump, even as they are also essential to defeating Trump.

Sanders, AOC, Michael Reich, maybe even Gavin Newsom, and plenty of others whose work I don’t know are saying something halfway similar. They are saying that they in the Democratic Party need to jettison the practices and commitments that their Party has been emphasizing for decades. Those folks are not revolutionaries the way I, for example, prefer. But the odd thing is that they do appear to be self critical of their team. They are saying they have failed. But they are not saying they give up, Trump wins. They are not saying to Trump, go ahead and trample everything. They are not saying they will just try to survive until Trumpism runs out of energy.

No, they are saying that they are not only going to fight, they are going to change their ways, or at least try to. They are going to try to reach out more widely and more aggressively to people who work and not to people who own workplaces, or in some cases, those who boss those who obey. Okay, I won’t belabor that some of them, yes, some of them in the Democratic Party, even if saddled by not yet fully rejecting such basics as private ownership and patriarchy, are sincerely taking stock and seeking to change their ways. But I will merely say that we need that and should welcome that, and not ridicule it and them, and call it mere manipulation.

And I will add, can’t we do as much regarding our team? Our movements? Our organizations? To blame Harris, Democrats, mainstream media, social media, widespread ignorance, rampant apathy, malignant cynicism, all past American history, and even in some degree the whole population is all true enough. It may even be an important part of usefully understanding our emerging context. But what about our own faults? What about the problems we have, within our team.

There is going to be resistance. A whole lot of resistance. What are some things we might want to consider about how our resistance unfolds? Maybe that growing in size and scope and not in verbosity or outrage is the primary measure of success. Maybe that each perspective welcomed as part of the whole needs to respect and welcome and even support and nurture and certainly not rail at and reject every other perspective welcomed as part of the whole. Maybe that to tell ourselves things we already know is not near as important as to find ways to constructively communicate with those who we don’t know and don’t yet agree with. Maybe that to raise social costs for elites is our only road to success and for that it needs to be all willing hands on deck, in turn reaching for unwilling hands too.


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Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of GO. Albert is the author of 21 books which include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; Remembering Tomorrow; Realizing Hope; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael is currently host of the podcast Revolution Z and is a Friend of ZNetwork.

 

The logic of imperialism’s ‘Maritime Great Game’ in the Southeast Asian Sea

By Rasti Delizo

Published 21 November, 2024

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First published at Amandla!.

The states with a coastline adjoining the Southeast Asian Sea are all facing a sharply rising regional quagmire. They are witnessing a soaring economic-diplomatic-security confrontation between the world’s top two imperialist powers. The United States of America and the People’s Republic of China are destabilising Southeast Asia by forcefully projecting their respective geostrategic objectives throughout the area. And by doing so, the region’s social majority — its working-class masses — are now becoming dangerously embroiled in this escalating great power collision.

A strategic competition

This imperialist rivalry is defined by the intensifying strategic competition between the US and China. They are both aiming to secure increased regional hegemony. So, they have unleashed parallel initiatives to thwart each other’s sweeping geopolitical designs for the immense Afro-Eurasia-Indo-Pacific as a whole — the Eastern Hemisphere.

In fact, these imperialist states are in relative decline. Only through international rivalry can they negate their weakened domestic conditions. Their reactions aim to protect their bourgeois socioeconomic formations from the fallouts of the chronically ruptured global capitalist system of production.

What is SEAS?

The Southeast Asian Sea is the vast expanse of salt water that lies within the southeastern region of Asia. Given its location, using the name ‘Southeast Asian Sea’, or ‘SEAS’, is more precise than the traditional name, the ‘South China Sea’. Another reason to use the name is to counter lingering inter-state frictions, which are encouraged by the use of nationalist-oriented place names for this marine realm. This readily breeds the reactionary phenomenon of national chauvinism and its destructive behaviours.

The Southeast Asian Sea remains one of planet Earth’s most diverse biospheres. It is a colossal aquatic ecosystem, covering approximately three and a half million square kilometres. It has over two hundred coral islets, an abundance of hydrocarbon deposits, and huge amounts of marine life. This organic wealth of natural resources is enough to sustain these states’ economies.

The Southeast Asian Sea is also a historically strategic marine domain that connects the Indian and Pacific oceans. As the region’s preeminent maritime corridor, its natural sea lanes provide crucial passage daily to enormous volumes of the world’s seaborne trade. It has key chokepoints in the straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok, and therefore acts as a vital channel for the trade between the economies of Europe, Africa and West Asia, and those of East Asia. And as a strategic sea spanning a zone of the Eastern Hemisphere, there is also a massive amount of shipping trade originating from the Western Hemisphere (i.e., North/Central/South America and the Caribbean).

Maritime Southeast Asia has consequently become a focus area for the competing interests of the world’s imperialist powers. Its regional security environment is now a turbulent arena of contestation for the major powers. They essentially seek to carve out additional space for capital accumulation through military means. This has turned the SEAS into an acute, perilous, global flashpoint.

A struggle between two imperialisms

The imperialist competition between the US and China is a particular manifestation of a generalised systemic crisis materially rooted in the inherent contradictions of the prevailing imperialist world system. Southeast Asia is being impacted by a strategic shift underpinning the bourgeois international order.

This great power engagement is unlike the last century’s Cold War. It is clearly not an international struggle between opposing ideological poles, supporting the strategic visions of contending socioeconomic systems. The first Cold War (1946-1991) was a clash of starkly counterposed systems — the capitalist camp (led by American imperialism) versus the communist camp (led by the former Soviet Union).

In contrast, the contemporary inter-imperialist conflict is being waged through a singular ‘capitalist unipolar order’. The contesting imperialist powers belong to the same capitalist pole. Together, they principally direct the monopoly capitalist agenda of the global core — albeit in an adversarial way.

Neither of them challenges the fundamentals of the capitalist system of production and distribution. Neither of them opposes globalised finance-monopoly capitalism’s exploitative norms of extracting surplus value through unequal exchange mechanisms to guarantee incessant capital accumulation for the imperialist core. Nor do they even attempt, in any serious way, to break imperialism’s circuits of global capital that oppressively control the periphery. Both American and Chinese imperialisms openly support the capitalist logic of guaranteeing the net flow of value (wealth) from the dominated countries to the centres of world capital.

Imperialist competition is mainly driven by the slow global pace of capitalist development due to stagnant growth with falling rates of profit. These negatives are made worse by other disruptive factors of the capitalist world economy, especially its generalised crisis of overproduction, along with overaccumulation, chronic underutilisation of capacity linked to constant mass unemployment, and global conditions of uneven and combined development. Thus, the central dynamics fueling this neo-Cold War moment stem from the contradictions intrinsic to the imperialist world system itself.

This system principally functions through the logic of super profits based on the eternal accumulation of capital. Its structure is built on exploitative and oppressive systems based on a global core-periphery model. In plain terms, this comprehensive socioeconomic formation supports and reinforces the capitalist, unipolar order.

The imperialist struggle for domination

Inside the global core lies a very small group of advanced capitalist economies. They are arranged into contending blocs led by the leading imperialist powers. These imperialist blocs directly compete with each other for economic control and political dominance over most of the world’s dependent semi-colonial states, which lie at the periphery. The power struggle between the US and China represents the current phase of the international system.

The imperialist blocs continually seek to increase the scope of their power through constantly expanding their respective spheres of influence and domination. In advancing their schemes for predominance, the imperialists try to reshape the international division of labour to favour their own geostrategic goals and interests. As a result, worldwide disputes, strife and wars inevitably erupt between them as they fight for global ascendancy.

These imperialist powers are always prepared to wage relentless acts of aggression beyond their frontiers. They do so to achieve a competitive advantage for their ruling classes. They engage in harmful and destructive economic competition, political schemes, and aggressive wars worldwide, regardless of the social cost. This is a general characteristic of monopoly capital. And during crisis moments, the imperialist states readily strike at each other in attempts to attain economic-political-security superiority for their own financial-oligarchic national regimes.

Unquestionably, the world suffers from the consequences of global polycrisis, which results from this in terms of the economy, politics, security, health, and climate emergency.

Following the ‘global capitalist crisis-depression’ that flared in September 2008, the US worked to regain and stabilise its international strategic position. It pursued this by strengthening its regional spheres of influence via attempts at reshaping the global economic and political order to align with its interests.

US strategy

US imperialism’s main goal remains the rejuvenation of American capital, chiefly through a revitalised global network of ever-expanding national markets in pivotal regions of the world. Combined with this, US imperialism robustly restimulates and weaponises monopoly capitalism for higher growth. It does so by producing enormous amounts of war materiel and using it in wars overseas. After the conflicts end, American capital then rebuilds the devastated countries. Through this coercive cycle, Washington aims to continually reshape the capitalist world order to maintain its global dominance. 

In functional terms, American imperialism currently advances a redesigned, long-range, foreign-security policy framework. Driven by the Biden regime’s central mantra, “We are in a competition with China to win the 21st Century”, the US’s geostrategy is based on building strong regional economic and military alliances to counter China in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region. Guided by its dual 2022 geostrategic blueprints — the ‘National Security Strategy’ and the ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’ — Washington’s main goal is to secure ‘free and open’ access to the region’s air and maritime arenas while limiting China’s opportunities for expansion.

By now, US imperialism has effectively extended the ambit of NATO into the Asia-Indo-Pacific. In also promoting market access initiatives, the ‘globalised NATO’ project aligns American monopoly capital’s economic and military priorities. To implement this strategy, Washington integrates the neoliberal Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), along with alliances like the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS), Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), and the Japan-Philippines-US political-military partnerships. Together, these coordinated efforts jointly form American imperialism’s battering ram to oppose Chinese imperialism in the region.

China’s strategy

To foil this, China has built up its own network. These include the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Maritime Silk Road (MSR), the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the BRICS (Brazil/Russia/India/China/South Africa) grouping.

China’s comprehensive national power is not just a counterbalance to that of the US; it is also aimed at maintaining the global bourgeois system along imperialist lines.

Despite this, the US is succeeding in enticing other East Asian states to join its imperialist project to deny/degrade/damage the Chinese imperialist bloc’s regional strategic agenda. Integral to this, Washington regularly affirms its diplomatic narrative of “upholding the rules-based international order” (a code phrase for globally propping up US imperialist interests). So, it enlists blatantly pro-American states — like the Philippines — to openly provoke China. This is exemplified by the deployment of American troops and weaponry inside US-controlled military bases on Philippine territory.

The Philippines as a puppet in the struggle

Washington has a clear strategic plan, but Manila’s foreign policy planners fail to consider how China’s leadership thinks. Filipino leaders assume China will see their actions as harmless, even when the Philippines cooperates with the US. However, what really matters is how China (as a great power) views its external security environment — not what Manila claims. This allows Washington to strongly take advantage of Manila’s blind loyalty to the US to provoke China.

China’s social-chauvinist militarism in the Southeast Asian Sea should be condemned. Equally, the international communist movement must also denounce the joint US-Philippines military manoeuvres. Clearly, all imperialist wars of aggression must be opposed.

At present, US imperialism is already preparing for a possible limited war with China, using the Philippines as a trigger point to reshape Southeast Asia’s geopolitical landscape. Washington aims to strengthen its influence in the region to boost American economic growth and power. This will lead to a risky and significant shift in the ongoing imperialist competition within the area. And so, today, this is now Southeast Asia’s ‘Maritime Great Game’.

Rasti Delizo is a global affairs analyst. He is a member of the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP/Solidarity of Filipino Workers); BMP is a revolutionary socialist political centre of the Filipino working-class movement.