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Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi, Russia, on Sept. 4, 2023.
No pain, no grain
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s weekend meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has failed to revive the Black Sea grain deal. The UN-brokered agreement, which guaranteed safe passage for Ukrainian grain shipments to markets in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, had been on hold since July. Russia refused to extend the deal, citing a failure to honor a parallel agreement to remove obstacles to its food and fertilizer exports.
On Monday, Putin reiterated this demand. "We will be ready to consider the possibility of reviving the grain deal … we will do this as soon as all the agreements on lifting restrictions on the export of Russian agricultural products are fully implemented.” Moscow is also demanding that the Russian Agricultural Bank be reconnected to the SWIFT international payments system, from which it was cut off as part of EU sanctions for its invasion. The UN had offered to reinstate this relationship in July to keep the grain deal alive.
Erdogan offered his own prescription for reviving the deal: “Ukraine needs to especially soften its approaches in order for it to be possible for joint steps to be taken with Russia" and export more grain to Africa rather than Europe. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba “took note” of Erdogan’s position, but added, "We should not continue to be hostages to Russian blackmail, where Russia creates problems and then invites everyone to solve them.”
To deflect criticism that Russia is starving developing nations of much-needed food, Russia is set to supply up to one million tons of grain to Turkey at reduced prices for processing at Turkish plants and shipping to countries “most in need.” Putin is also brokering a deal to send free grain to six African countries: Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Eritrea, and Central African Republic.
But Russia’s moves aren’t all bread and roses: They will also conveniently purchase political capital for Russia’s war in Ukraine and expand its influence over the African continent, an arena where Russia has been increasingly active in recent years.
Smoke rises next to sunbeams and umbrellas as a wildfire burns, at the beach of the village of Dikella in the region of Evros, Greece.
Hard Numbers: Greece’s wildfire tragedy, Pakistan’s cable car nightmare, Japan’s radioactive water, Sudan’s hungry children
18: The Greek fire service said Tuesday that 18 bodies, possibly of migrants, were found in an area of the Dadia forest along the Turkish border that’s been hit by wildfires. Local media have reported the findings of eight additional bodies – if confirmed, this would bring the total to 26. Large swaths of southern Europe are fighting wildfires and on alert due to extreme heat and high winds.
900: Their nightmare has ended. Eight people – two teachers and six schoolchildren – have been saved after being trapped in a cable car stuck 900 feet in the air amid the mountains of Pakistan’s Battagram region. A military helicopter and zip line were used in the rescues after a cable snapped, leaving the car dangling over a ravine. Many Pakistani children living in remote areas rely on dilapidated cable cars to get to school.
1.34 million: Japan is set to unleash radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant that has accumulated since the facility was hit by a tsunami in 2011, causing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The move will see the 1.34 million tons of water filtered, diluted, and then released into the Pacific over 30 years. Tokyo insists this is important for decommissioning the plant, where the radioactive water has been stored in tanks for more than a decade, but the plan has caused uproar in neighboring countries worried about contamination.
500: Hunger has claimed the lives of 500 Sudanese children since fighting erupted in April, according to Save the Children. Clashes between warring military factions have forced the human rights group to shutter many of its nutrition centers in the country. While a million people have fled to neighboring countries, 31,000 children in Sudan are stuck without access to aid or medical care.
Untangling the global water crisis
Access to clean and drinkable water is a significant challenge all over the world. UN-Water Chair Gilbert Houngbo joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to shed light on the complexity of the issue, which he says is “a combination of bad governance and lack of resources.”
He stresses that water needs to become "everyone's business," and investment in water-related infrastructure is key. Houngbo points out that agriculture is responsible for “75% of water use,” so making it “climate-friendly” is a necessary step.
The situation in Yemen, where there is virtually no water access, highlights the challenges faced in addressing the problem. Houngbo notes that a multi-pronged approach that involves investment in infrastructure and technology is key – especially in areas like desalination. He acknowledges that desalination is expensive, and official development cooperation can play a role in addressing the issue.
Watch the GZERO World episode: The uncomfortable truth about water scarcity
With a little Kelp from our friends!
Kelp! It's slimy, it's tangly, it's ... delicious! And experts say this nearly magical sea plant can help tackle two big global challenges: climate change and hunger. To learn more, GZERO Reports headed out to an oyster farm in Long Island to meet Michael Doall, associate director of shellfish research at Stony Brook University. Doall, dubbed the "Johnny Appleseed of Sugar Kelp," explains how the bounty of the sea can help address some of the problems we are creating on land.
This clip is part of an upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. Check local US television listings to watch, or find the episode on GZERO's YouTube channel.
Food emergency: what to do when people are hungry now
On global issues, the international community must walk and chew gum at the same time. It needs to learn to deal with simultaneous crises that play off each other, says UN Foundation President Elizabeth Cousens.
That's why we dropped the ball on hunger.
Now the needs are huge and growing. We haven't seen a lot of images of starvation yet, but they are coming, Cousens tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
"We have to be able to rise to this challenge, and see it as something that's in both our interest," she says, adding that “we have done heroic things before on the humanitarian front — it's not like we're not collectively capable."
Watch the GZERO World episode: Inequality isn't inevitable - if global communities cooperate
"We're in this together" — UN Foundation chief
Global development has been going backwards since even before the pandemic, and there's no end in sight.
Extreme poverty is now rising again, and fraught politics at every level is making it harder to fight inequality around the world.
But it's not an irreversible trend, UN Foundation President Elizabeth Cousens tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
“The challenge of our times," she says, is "to re-galvanize that spirit of 'we're in it together' — [that] we have more in common than we have that divides us.“
Watch the GZERO World episode: Inequality isn't inevitable - if global communities cooperate
Our unsustainably unequal world
The past is still very much with us.
It's almost the first anniversary of Russia's war in Ukraine. On March 11, it'll be three years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And 2022 was the sixth warmest year on record since ... 1880.
We are still dealing with the fallout from all three events. But not equally.
Since 2020, the richest 1% of people has accumulated nearly two-thirds of all the new wealth created in the world. Just 10% of the population owns three-quarters of global wealth — and account for nearly half of carbon emissions.
What can we do to turn this around?
Watch the GZERO World episode: Inequality isn't inevitable - if global communities cooperate
Inequality isn't inevitable - if global communities cooperate
Almost three years after COVID, we're still grappling with the geopolitical convulsions that the pandemic unleashed or worsened. They're all wiping out decades of progress on fighting global inequality.
What's more, the world has become more unequal at a time when global cooperation is often an afterthought. So, what can we do about it?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to UN Foundation President and CEO Elizabeth Cousens, who thinks it's the perfect time for institutions backed by the 1 percent to step up even more.
Foundations have traditionally resisted going big on fixing the world's problems because they're in it for the long run. But now the stakes are so high and the crises so urgent that Cousens sees a "window" of opportunity for philanthropy to play a bigger role in global development.
The are real problems, she says, that money can solve immediately.
- The perils of depending on food imports: UN Foundation chief ›
- Podcast: Salvaging the world we leave our kids with innovative philanthropy ›
- In a food crisis, export controls are "worst possible" thing to do, says UN Foundation chief ›
- How a war-distracted world staves off irreversible damage ›
- How converging crises lowered education levels & intensified poverty ›
- Podcast: Fix the global debt crisis before it's too late, warns World Bank's David Malpass - GZERO Media ›