Monday, March 31, 2014

Social inequity vs. the environment is a false choice

Annie Leonard, Earth Island Journal

As he begins his last few years in office, President Obama is finally addressing the worsening inequality in this country. In his State of the Union speech, he declared: “Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by – let alone get ahead.” I’m thrilled the president is shining a light on inequality. But for environmentalists, the debate over inequality – not only here in the US, but also the chasm between wealthy and poor countries – raises serious tensions and forces us to look beyond the mainstream conversations for solutions.

On the one hand, inequality is a huge problem, with many people prevented from accessing the resources they need for dignified lives. Inequality is inherently unjust, and is the root of an array of environmental, health, and social ills. In Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, public health scientists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett show that high levels of inequality correlate with a stunning array of ills that reduce quality of life for all of society.

And inequality undermines the workings of our democracy, which is a problem since we need a functioning democracy to solve big problems – like climate change and even inequality itself. Under the post-Citizens United system of campaign finance in the US, inequality is a near-absolute barrier to significant political participation by all but the super rich, making it hard to advance goals on the environment, education, and workers’ rights. Reducing inequality is not a cause environmentalists can afford to watch from the sidelines.

On the other hand, it’s undeniable that worldwide, and especially in the US, we’re already using too many resources. We have only one planet, but globally humanity is using raw materials and generating waste at a rate that would take 1.5 Earths to sustain.

The leading solutions put forward to address inequality are “growing the pie” and “raising the floor.” In other words, increasing economic growth so there’s more stuff to go around and raising low end wages to make it possible for poor people to access the stuff they need. Wages are raised so that people buy more goods; businesses expand to meet the increased demand by hiring more workers; more workers equals more people buying more stuff; and the wheel keeps turning.
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Here’s the tension: Yes, many people need more resources to meet basic levels of health and security. At the same time, humanity is consuming too much. If our strategy to address inequality focuses only on increasing access to consumption without seeking bigger changes in the way we consume resources, we’ll end up hastening our ride over the ecological cliff.

But are these our only options? Accepting vast inequities in the name of curtailing consumption, or expanding the take-make-waste system so that we can all trash the planet equitably?

Not only is this a false choice, but I’d argue that solutions to the ecological and inequality problems are inseparable. If we address inequality without considering environmental issues, we speed up ecosystem decline. If we focus on environmental limits without addressing inequality, we end up with resource apartheid. Neither is okay. So let’s ask a different question: How do we transform today’s growth-at-all-costs economy into one that sustains the planet and all its people, including those who are currently left out?

It’s a big question, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do have some ideas of steps to get started.

First, we have to scrap the idea that GDP growth equals societal progress. New Economy thinkers and activists are working hard to develop a different economic model that serves people and the planet so that we’re increasing equity and living within the planet’s limits simultaneously.

Second, we need to get way more ambitious about using resources efficiently so we can meet more human need out of each unit of resource consumed. Our buildings, our cars, and our energy systems are all vastly inefficient and engineers tell us it’s possible to improve current efficiency tenfold. Instead of growing the pie, we need to ensure that none of the pie is wasted, freeing up resources that then could be divided more equally.

Third, we need to raise one of the most politically unpopular terms of the day: redistribution. If that word doesn’t fly in your circles, how about a more palatable version: share. Those of us who have more than enough can add more to our well-being by embracing sharing than by continuing on the treadmill of more, more, more.

Solving both inequality and environmental decline is possible, but only if we see the two struggles as one.

Social inequity vs. the environment is a false choice

Friday, March 28, 2014

Video Interview with Janani Vivekananda: Climate Change, Governance and ...

Vulnerability to climate change is in part determined by exposure to specific changes – proximity to low lying coastal areas or areas of likely drought – but state capacity also plays a major role. And interventions targeting either must reflect the complex links that bind the two, says International Alert’s Janani Vivekananda in an interview with adelphi’s Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation platform.

Vivekananda describes climate vulnerability as the combination of a country’s exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. While the first two “are in the hands of luck,” adaptive capacity is closely tied to governance and stability. Both can be in short supply in weak or fragile countries, creating an “inexorable link between climate change and security,” she says. “If we’re trying to understand how to address the issue we need to understand these linkages.”

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

China seeks ways to turn green into gold - People's Daily Online

By Gao Yinan (People's Daily Online)

Smog, contaminated water, poisoned foods and ecological deterioration are not the price China has to pay for economic development.

Liu Shijin, deputy head of the Development Research Center (DRC) of the State Council addressed Chinese and international audience on China’s efforts on green growth, at the seminar on March 21, which aims to send the message that green development can be a new source of national wealth and economic development can be achieved without sacrificing the valuable environment.

"China should reassess the costs of economic growth and let the market play a decisive role in protecting the environment and promote greener growth," he said.

Liu focused on the need for creating incentives to facilitate industrial innovation and greener economic growth to deal with environmental challenges in China, saying: "China is undergoing a transition of economic growth. As China's economic growth is decelerating, its economic structure is approaching a turning point."

"Behind green growth is the notion that there is a way to push growth while still maintaining the fundamental pathways to sustainable development," said Howard Bamsey, Director-General of the Seoul-based Global Green Growth Institute.

Bamsey stressed that green wealth cannot be fully understood in the thinking of traditional industrialization mode. Instead, in the new model for growth, economics that underpins growth plans takes into account all of the issues that until now economics has regarded as external and to be ignored.

"China's energy intensity is much higher than that of developed countries, and the world's second largest economy has great potential to tap in reducing its energy intensity. The government can provide tax and financial incentives to help companies develop a circular economy," said Wang Xuejun of Peking University.

Although introducing the circular economy approach initially imposes increased costs and often requires substantial investments from both government and private entities, many of the circular economy solutions also turn out to be economically advantageous when the costs of environmental externalities that are avoided are fully taken into account.

The legislation, policies, and pilot programs already in place demonstrate the potential of circular economy to make a real difference.

China seeks ways to turn green into gold - People's Daily Online

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Time to convert to climate justice

Dr Guillermo Kerber, Churchtimes

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will present its latest report next week on the impact that climate change is having on the planet, and what is expected to happen in the future. For Christians, now in the middle of Lent, it comes as a timely reminder - both to think about our brothers and sisters around the world who suffer because of climate change, and to reflect on what part the Church can play.

"For us, climate change is a life or death issue," said the General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), some years ago. Communities in the Pacific islands have since been resettled because of the rise of sea level and the salinisation of fresh water. This is the case, among others, with the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea, whose inhabitants have been moved to Bougainville, and coastal villages in Fiji, which have moved uphill.

It is not strange, then, that at last year's PCC General Assembly in the Solomon Islands, church leaders backed the continuation of research into climate-induced resettlement, focusing on human rights, as one of the its priorities for the next five years.

RESETTLEMENT is one of the effects of climate change that will be further analysed in the new IPCC report. Its first part of the report, published last year, stated that the scientific community had increased its conviction that climate change is being driven by humans to a near-certainty of 95 per cent (Comment, 27 September; News, 4 October).

The latest report will present examples to show how climate change is affecting different regions. In an early draft, for example, a section on Mali states that nearly six million people there may experience under-nutrition because of changes in climate, livelihood, and demography: somewhere between three-quarters to one million of this number will be children under five. Also, severe child stunting (which leads to a higher mortality risk) is projected to increase by at least 31 per cent across sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, because of climate change.

Although climate change is a global phenomenon, it is not affecting all countries in the same way. Some communities and nations are more vulnerable than others. Low-lying islands, arid parts of Africa and Asia, and particular communities of indigenous people, among others, are especially at risk.

THE ecological crisis has challenged theology, and pushed for a renewed understanding of creation, where the human being should be seen not so much as the master, but as a creature among others, with a special responsibility: to take care of the garden of Eden, as set out inthe second creation story (Genesis 2.15).

A theology of climate change has also emphasised that God is not only transcendent, but present in creation through the Spirit. Furthermore, given the human-induced character of climate change, human behaviour is critical to reverse the trend, and is thus the responsibility of human beings.

From such an ethical perspective, the idea of climate justice is increasingly at the core of ecumenical campaigning. For Christians, God is a God of justice, and asks his people to act justly in taking care of the orphan, the widow, the stranger (Deuteronomy 10.18, Isaiah 1.17). Among the modern-day equivalents of these are the victims of climate change. It is a an issue of justice because those who suffer now, and will suffer the most in future, are those who have contributed least to its causes.

THIS is not only a matter of theology, advocacy, or ethics. Churches are making it a part of everyday Christian living, or of particular seasons, such as Lent. This is a time for Christians to reflect and to rediscover the meaning of praying, sharing, and fasting.

This Lent, for instance, the Anglican Communion Environmental Network is proposing a carbon fast, and suggesting concrete actions each day. The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance is calling for a "Fast for Life", and encouraging people to join the "zero-waste daily challenge", as a way of illustrating the links between food waste and climate change.

In Switzerland, Christian development agencies are focusing on intergenerational justice for their Lent campaign, linking environment and climate with future generations. Taking a longer-term perspective, the youth wing of the Lutheran World Federation has joined other organisations in a call to fast on the first of each month and to urge governments to be more ambitious in climate negotiations.

Lent calls for conversion, a changing of mind and attitudes, and a change of paradigm. As the World Council of Churches' statement to the UN climate summit in Doha in 2012 put it: "A change in paradigm appears as mandatory in the prevailing economic strategy of promoting endless growth and a seemingly insatiable level of consumption among the high-consuming sectors of our societies."

Climate change is affecting different countries and people in different ways, but our Christian faith calls us to be responsible for our actions - those everyday actions which are contributing to carbon emissions, waste of water, food, and energy. May this Lent be an opportunity for us to convert to a more ecological and just way of life.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Geoengineering is Not the Answer to Climate Change | EcoWatch

By Dr David Suzuki, EcoWatch

Because nature doesn’t always behave the same in a lab, test tube or computer program as it does in the real world, scientists and engineers have come up with ideas that didn’t turn out as expected.

DDT was considered a panacea for a range of insect pest issues, from controlling disease to helping farmers. But we didn’t understand bioaccumulation back then—toxins concentrating up the food chain, risking the health and survival of animals from birds to humans. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, seemed so terrific we put them in everything from aerosol cans to refrigerators. Then we learned they damage the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful solar radiation.

These unintended consequences come partly from our tendency to view things in isolation, without understanding how all nature is interconnected. We’re now facing the most serious unintended consequence ever: climate change from burning fossil fuels. Some proposed solutions may also result in unforeseen outcomes.

Oil, gas and coal are miraculous substances—energy absorbed from the sun by plants and animals hundreds of millions of years ago, retained after they died and concentrated as the decaying life became buried deeper into the Earth. Burning them to harness and release this energy opened up possibilities unimaginable to our ancestors. We could create machines and technologies to reduce our toil, heat and light our homes, build modern cities for growing populations and provide accessible transport for greater mobility and freedom. And because the stuff seemed so plentiful and easy to obtain, we could build vehicles and roads for everyone—big cars that used lots of gas—so that enormous profits would fuel prosperous, consumer-driven societies.

We knew fairly early that pollution affected human health, but that didn’t seem insurmountable. We just needed to improve fuel efficiency and create better pollution-control standards. That reduced rather than eliminated the problem and only partly addressed an issue that appears to have caught us off-guard: the limited availability of these fuels. But the trade-offs seemed worthwhile.

Then, for the past few decades, a catastrophic consequence of our profligate use of fossil fuels has loomed. Burning them has released excessive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating a thick, heat-trapping blanket. Along with our destruction of natural carbon-storing environments, such as forests and wetlands, this has steadily increased global average temperatures, causing climate change.

We’re now faced with ever-increasing extreme weather-related events and phenomena such as ocean acidification, which affects myriad marine life, from shellfish to corals to plankton. The latter produce oxygen and are at the very foundation of the food chain.

Had we addressed the problem from the outset, we could have solutions in place. We could have found ways to burn less fossil fuel without massively disrupting our economies and ways of life. But we’ve become addicted to the lavish benefits that fossil fuels have offered, and the wealth and power they’ve provided to industrialists and governments. And so there’s been a concerted effort to stall or avoid corrective action, with industry paying front groups, “experts” and governments to deny or downplay the problem.

Now that climate change has become undeniable, with consequences getting worse daily, many experts are eyeing solutions. Some are touting massive technological fixes, such as dumping large amounts of iron filings into the seas to facilitate carbon absorption, pumping nutrient-rich cold waters from the ocean depths to the surface, building giant reflectors to bounce sunlight back into space and irrigating vast deserts.

But we’re still running up against those pesky unintended consequences. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, studied five geoengineering schemes and concluded they’re “either relatively ineffective with limited warming reductions, or they have potentially severe side effects and cannot be stopped without causing rapid climate change.” That’s partly because we don’t fully understand climate and weather systems and their interactions.

That doesn’t mean we should rule out geoengineering. Climate change is so serious that we’ll need to marshal everything we have to confront it, and some methods appear to be more benign than others. But geoengineering isn’t the solution. And it’s no excuse to go on wastefully burning fossil fuels. We must conserve energy and find ways to quickly shift to cleaner sources.

Geoengineering is Not the Answer to Climate Change | EcoWatch

Friday, March 21, 2014

Latin America applies the weight of the law to confront climate change

Source: World Bank

Several Latin American countries lead the list of nations in the world that have most actively legislated to protect the environment

In some Latin American countries, attacking nature is a crime whereas others promote the buying and selling of gases that destroy the atmosphere. They are different means to the same end: to address inevitable climate change, which is already being felt throughout the region, whether in the form of extreme weather, such as twin storms, or less perceptibly, such as rising sea levels.

Fortunately, Latin America, along with Africa, is the region in the world that has most actively passed laws to prevent or mitigate atmospheric change, according to a global report on legislative advances.

Of particular note is Bolivia, which adopted the Framework Law on Mother Earth, and Costa Rica, which recently gave the green light to one of the world’s most ambitious climate laws and has promoted carbon emissions trading as a strategy for becoming carbon neutral by the next decade.

For their part, Mexico, El Salvador and Ecuador adopted strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to promote the sustainable development of their populations.

“In Latin America, climate change plans are beginning to transform into concrete legislation,” according to the report by GLOBE International, which brings together legislators from over 80 countries committed to enacting laws for the rational use of the planet’s resources.

Legislative advances in Latin America include:

· Mexico: The government announced the adoption of a national climate change strategy, which focuses on reducing emissions and promoting multi-sectoral public policies on climate.

· Costa Rica: Congress adopted the Framework Law on Climate Change, which mandates the teaching of the subject in schools. A ministerial decree creates voluntary carbon emissions trading.

· Ecuador: The legislature established the national inter-sectoral strategy on climate change. The National Good Living Plan promotes sustainable development.

· Bolivia: The government has enacted the Mother Earth Law, which broadly redefines national management of natural resources, climate and the ecosystem.

· El Salvador: The country adopted a national climate change strategy to reduce the social and economic impact of global warming.

In the rest of the world, the legislative drive to mitigate the effects of climate change is also gaining ground. The report states that 61 of the 66 countries studied – which are responsible for 90% of CO2 emissions – have passed laws to promote clean sources of energy whereas 54 nations have legislated to increase energy efficiency. All of this reduces reliance on fossil fuels and improves the environment, according to the study.

Even so, legislatures of the world must do much more. “We should be clear that the legislative response thus far is not yet sufficient to limit emissions at a level that would cause only a 2 degree Celsius rise in global average temperature, the agreed goal of the international community,” said John Gummer, member of the House of Lords and GLOBE International president.

However, experts warn that at our current pace, global temperatures will rise an average of 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, which will threaten the survival of future generations and the social advances made to date.

In a warmer world, one of the biggest losses for Latin America would include parts of the Amazon Basin, whose eastern and southern areas would slowly dry up. This would also have an impact on food production since the Amazon rainforest generates part of the rains that irrigate crops in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and southern Brazil.

“Feeding the world would be difficult in a more extreme global warming scenario. In addition, it would test the capacity of Latin America to be the breadbasket of the world,” warns World Bank climate change expert Erick Fernandes.

Latin America applies the weight of the law to confront climate change

Thursday, March 20, 2014

'Deglobalisation' is the way to reduce inequality


The race of globalisation is leaving the majority of the world’s population far behind. According to Unicef, the richest 20% of the population gets 83% of global income, while the poorest quintile has just 1%. This trend is getting worse. A new UNDP report called “Humanity Divided: estimates that 75% of the population lives in societies where income distribution is less equal now than it was in the 1990s, although global GDP ballooned from US$22 trillion to US$72 trillion.

For developing economies in Asia, the Gini coefficient — which measures income inequality on a scale from zero to one where one is worst — rose from 0.33 in 1990 to 0.46 in 2010.

Inequality corresponds with greater economic uncertainty, lower investment, and high social tensions and political instability — with the potential for violence and conflicts between groups. It demolishes human rights for the vast majority, especially for vulnerable groups like women, children, and the elderly.

What causes inequality? The UNDP states: “Specific aspects of globalisation, such as inadequately regulated financial integration and trade liberalisation processes, whose benefits have been distributed very unequally across and within countries, have played a significant role in determining the upward trend observed over the last decades.”

Globalisation causes inequality for various reasons. One is that trade and financial globalisation have weakened the bargaining position of relatively immobile labour in relation to fully mobile capital, driving down wages. The chief economist of the Asian Development Bank, in an article that argues that inequality jeopardises economic growth, notes that between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, labour income as a percentage of manufacturing output fell from 48% to 42% in China and from 37% to 22% in India.

The UNDP also says dependence on capital flows made countries more vulnerable to economic and financial shocks, causing lower growth and employment, which both disproportionately affect the poor.

If globalisation drives inequality, what are the remedies? The usual list of cures from UN agencies, the World Bank and IMF include measures to stop tax evasion, more progressive income tax policies, incentives for foreign investment, conditional cash transfers, subsidies and credits for small businesses and agriculture, limited expansion of public investment and social safety nets.

Two key things are apparent in these “remedies”. First, they talk about redistributing income but don’t address unequal access to sources of wealth, such as land or assets. They also avoid mentioning examples of nationalisations that have reduced extreme inequality in some countries.

Second, they don’t deal with the process of globalisation. The most ambitious among them suggest some kind of regulation of speculative financial markets to minimise volatility. The World Bank clearly states that measures to reduce inequality should not affect “free trade”.

The measures to combat inequality touted by international financial institutions ignore the structural causes of inequality. Don’t be fooled by their fashionable new name: “inclusive growth”. This idea repeats old remedies and is more concerned with profit than inequality.

If we care about reducing inequality, we must seek new solutions to the problem. One approach is “deglobalisation”, a proposal developed by Walden Bello and Focus on the Global South in response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

Focus on the Global South wrote: “Deglobalisation is not a synonym for withdrawing from the world economy. It means a process of restructuring the world economic and political system so that the latter builds the capacity of local and national economies instead of degrading it. Deglobalisation means the transformation of a global economy from one integrated around the needs of transnational corporations to one integrated around the needs of peoples, nations, and communities.”

For deglobalisation, there is no “one size fits all” model like neoliberalism or centralized bureaucratic socialism. Instead, according to this scheme, diversity is expected and encouraged, as it is in nature.

Some key proposals of deglobalisation to really address the relationship between globalisation and inequality are:

Reorient national economies away from export production and toward production for the local market to fulfill basic human needs, relying primarily on domestic resources and employing technologies that enhance rather than destroy the community, the environment, and life itself.

Implement policies that redistribute the sources of income and wealth such as land, ensuring domestic control over key sectors of the economy and promoting communal access to basic services like water, health care, and education.

Provide more resources to rural areas to halt the migrations that increase inequality and rob local communities through resource grabbing.

This means expanding public services in rural areas and implementing tools to boost food sovereignty that have been developed by peasants and indigenous communities.

De-emphasise economic growth based on the recognition that this growth has limits.

Instead, we should maximise equity and redistribute what is available and possible without breaking the vital cycles of nature and overshooting the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Make strategic economic decisions subject to democratic choice, rather than leaving them to the market. In other words, bring participatory democracy to the sphere of the economy.

The approach of deglobalisation is still under construction. It needs to be debated and joined with other ideas if we are to build viable alternatives to the flawed system we have today, the one that has caused explosive inequality. But it certainly holds more promise than the empty claims of “inclusive growth”.
 
The race of globalisation is leaving the majority of the world’s population far behind. According to Unicef, the richest 20% of the population gets 83% of global income, while the poorest quintile has just 1%. This trend is getting worse. A new UNDP report called “Humanity Divided: estimates that 75% of the population lives in societies where income distribution is less equal now than it was in the 1990s, although global GDP ballooned from US$22 trillion to US$72 trillion.

For developing economies in Asia, the Gini coefficient — which measures income inequality on a scale from zero to one where one is worst — rose from 0.33 in 1990 to 0.46 in 2010.

Inequality corresponds with greater economic uncertainty, lower investment, and high social tensions and political instability — with the potential for violence and conflicts between groups. It demolishes human rights for the vast majority, especially for vulnerable groups like women, children, and the elderly.

What causes inequality? The UNDP states: “Specific aspects of globalisation, such as inadequately regulated financial integration and trade liberalisation processes, whose benefits have been distributed very unequally across and within countries, have played a significant role in determining the upward trend observed over the last decades.”

Globalisation causes inequality for various reasons. One is that trade and financial globalisation have weakened the bargaining position of relatively immobile labour in relation to fully mobile capital, driving down wages. The chief economist of the Asian Development Bank, in an article that argues that inequality jeopardises economic growth, notes that between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, labour income as a percentage of manufacturing output fell from 48% to 42% in China and from 37% to 22% in India.

The UNDP also says dependence on capital flows made countries more vulnerable to economic and financial shocks, causing lower growth and employment, which both disproportionately affect the poor.

If globalisation drives inequality, what are the remedies? The usual list of cures from UN agencies, the World Bank and IMF include measures to stop tax evasion, more progressive income tax policies, incentives for foreign investment, conditional cash transfers, subsidies and credits for small businesses and agriculture, limited expansion of public investment and social safety nets.

Two key things are apparent in these “remedies”. First, they talk about redistributing income but don’t address unequal access to sources of wealth, such as land or assets. They also avoid mentioning examples of nationalisations that have reduced extreme inequality in some countries.

Second, they don’t deal with the process of globalisation. The most ambitious among them suggest some kind of regulation of speculative financial markets to minimise volatility. The World Bank clearly states that measures to reduce inequality should not affect “free trade”.

The measures to combat inequality touted by international financial institutions ignore the structural causes of inequality. Don’t be fooled by their fashionable new name: “inclusive growth”. This idea repeats old remedies and is more concerned with profit than inequality.

If we care about reducing inequality, we must seek new solutions to the problem. One approach is “deglobalisation”, a proposal developed by Walden Bello and Focus on the Global South in response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

Focus on the Global South wrote: “Deglobalisation is not a synonym for withdrawing from the world economy. It means a process of restructuring the world economic and political system so that the latter builds the capacity of local and national economies instead of degrading it. Deglobalisation means the transformation of a global economy from one integrated around the needs of transnational corporations to one integrated around the needs of peoples, nations, and communities.”

For deglobalisation, there is no “one size fits all” model like neoliberalism or centralized bureaucratic socialism. Instead, according to this scheme, diversity is expected and encouraged, as it is in nature.

Some key proposals of deglobalisation to really address the relationship between globalisation and inequality are:

Reorient national economies away from export production and toward production for the local market to fulfill basic human needs, relying primarily on domestic resources and employing technologies that enhance rather than destroy the community, the environment, and life itself.

Implement policies that redistribute the sources of income and wealth such as land, ensuring domestic control over key sectors of the economy and promoting communal access to basic services like water, health care, and education.

Provide more resources to rural areas to halt the migrations that increase inequality and rob local communities through resource grabbing.

This means expanding public services in rural areas and implementing tools to boost food sovereignty that have been developed by peasants and indigenous communities.

De-emphasise economic growth based on the recognition that this growth has limits.

Instead, we should maximise equity and redistribute what is available and possible without breaking the vital cycles of nature and overshooting the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Make strategic economic decisions subject to democratic choice, rather than leaving them to the market. In other words, bring participatory democracy to the sphere of the economy.

The approach of deglobalisation is still under construction. It needs to be debated and joined with other ideas if we are to build viable alternatives to the flawed system we have today, the one that has caused explosive inequality. But it certainly holds more promise than the empty claims of “inclusive growth”.

'Deglobalisation' is the way to reduce inequality

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Europe should lead on climate change

By Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu, The Guardian (UK)

We must leave a clean climate legacy – the fate of the world today and its future hinges on the leadership we show now

From recent flash floods in Britain and France to summer wildfires across southern Europe, the impacts of climate change are here, on Europe's doorstep.

Europeans are worried. In recent weeks, devastating winds and floods throughout western Europe raised further concern about extreme weather events, but it's the big picture that alarms the population at large: in a future defined by our success or failure to tackle climate change, are today's leaders ready to act?

Nine in 10 European citizens now consider climate change a "serious problem", a Eurobarometer poll revealed this month.

This week, European heads of state have an opportunity to address their concerns when they meet to discuss a package of new climate-related measures and targets for 2030. It is one of the first in a delicate sequence of international events and summits over the next two years, concluding with a major conference in Paris, in December 2015.

What happens in Brussels this week could have life-or-death repercussions for millions of people now and billions more in the future. Climate change is a slow, grinding crisis but urgent action is needed to defuse it.

The EU has often been the driver of the world's ambition – morally, politically, economically – in tackling climate change. There have been setbacks, but its overall record is a model to others on the world stage. Its leadership has created the space for other blocs, such as the world's least developed countries, to make themselves heard. And this week, Europe cannot falter. The targets decided now will set the terms for further negotiations. Europe must seize the opportunity to act now and create momentum towards a robust, universal, fair and legally binding agreement in Paris in next year.

The implications of climate change are vast and complex, but two things are clear.

If the EU agrees a package this week, it will have a chance to lead discussions at a major summit convened by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon in New York this September. And if Europe does not lead, who will? The signals are that the other great powers may not be ready to speak out. This risks leaving many of the more vulnerable – and more outspoken – small islands, least developed and Latin American countries without an ally.

And the target itself should be ambitious enough to be meaningful. The European commission's current proposal of a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 on 1990 levels is not enough to guarantee Europe's status as a leader in climate negotiations – or to meet its own objective of reducing its carbon emissions by 95% in 2050.

With clear, strong policy signals and targets, European businesses can boost their competitiveness. The United States and China are also making progress in adapting their economies to meet climate targets, and Europe is losing ground. Those two countries now lead the world in wind power capacity, and are catching up with Germany and Italy, the world leaders in solar energy. European businesses must be given the conditions to compete or may lose their edge completely.

We aren't naïve. We know it is complicated to negotiate an agreement among 28 countries. But as Elders, we believe leaders' decisions must be accountable to moral imperatives. Addressing climate change is also a matter of justice. If we are to be true to our commitment to human rights, then rich nations owe a fair and honest deal to the world's most vulnerable regions. The people on the frontline of climate change have often done the least to cause it.

This means reducing the suffering of those worst affected and acting now to avoid further suffering in the future. It also means sharing technology, funds and solutions to help vulnerable countries and communities to engage fully in the transition to a low-carbon world. As the cradle of the industrial revolution, Europe created our carbon-heavy world and must lead the world into its next, low-carbon, safer and more caring chapter.

As Elders, representing different parts of the world and a shared moral compass, we would like to encourage and support leaders in the EU to act in the interests of their own citizens and the citizens of the world. Strong action on climate change in Europe will help EU members to maintain their competitive edge and be ahead of the curve in the transition to low-carbon development. It will also help the countries and communities least responsible for the causes of climate change to make their voices heard in partnership with a strong ally; an ally that acknowledges and acts on their responsibility for carbon emissions.

Current and future generations, our grandchildren and great grandchildren, need the world to act decisively now to avoid dangerous climate change. The EU is well-placed to create the positive momentum needed to enable others to act.

Tackling climate change is in Europe's economic interest. It is also a chance to display leadership at its finest.
 

Monday, March 17, 2014

Brazilian indigenous leader slams Amazon mega-dams in Paris protest

By Survival International

Brazilian Indian Sonia Guajajara led a protest in Paris March 14 – the International Day of Action for Rivers – calling for a halt to the construction of mega-dams in the Amazon.

Sonia led over a hundred protestors to the offices of French companies GDF Suez, EDF and Alstom, which are involved in the construction of several destructive dams.

She led the group in forming ‘human waves’ which crashed into the office buildings to represent the destruction of large Amazonian dams by the global anti-dam movement. The group then carried its messages to the River Seine. Survival supporters carried placards reading ‘STOP AMAZON DAMS’.

Sonia, of the Guajajara tribe in the north-eastern Amazon, is the national coordinator of the Association of Indigenous Peoples (APIB), a network of indigenous organizations in Brazil.

She said, ’Brazil’s reputation is at stake… We are here to bring visibility to the unacceptable prejudice and discrimination suffered by indigenous peoples and to demand that it stops’.

Despite fierce opposition, Brazil is forging ahead with its construction of the massive Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River, and the Madeira and Tapajós river dams, all in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

Thousands of Indians have been protesting against these projects, warning that they are devastating the forest and putting at risk the lives of the thousands of Indians who live there.

Indian leader Megaron Kayapó said, ‘Which rivers will we have for fishing? The Xingu is our river, our supermarket… We live by hunting, fishing, and planting… We have always been against it (Belo Monte), and we will always be against it’.

The uncontacted Indians living near the dam construction sites could be completely wiped out by outside diseases brought in by the thousands of migrants being drawn to the areas.

On Tuesday, Sonia denounced Brazil’s abuse of indigenous rights at the United Nations in Geneva, including the government and landowners’ aims to weaken indigenous rights and open up indigenous territories for massive industrial projects.

Director of Survival France, Jean-Patrick Razon, said today, ’Sonia’s demands in Paris today, just three months before the World Cup kicks off, act as another wake-up call to the human rights scandal inflicted on the Indians by these French companies, and by the Brazilian state. When will they listen and put a stop to this once and for all?’

Sonia’s visit to Europe was coordinated by Amazon Watch, France Libertés and Planète Amazone.

Read Survival’s report highlighting the hugely negative impacts of large dams on indigenous peoples worldwide.

Brazilian indigenous leader slams Amazon mega-dams in Paris protest

Thursday, March 13, 2014

WaSH and Wellbeing November 2013

Lack of access to safe water and adequate sanitation coupled with poor hygiene are important threats to human well-being, especially within the context of global environmental change. Changes in
temperature and precipitation patterns are altering the distribution of water-related pathogens and vectors. Increasing water scarcity reduces effective hygiene practices, contributing to skin and eye infections as well as gastrointestinal illnesses. A lack of, poor management of, or failing water infrastructure compound these issues, exposing rural populations in particular, to adverse health impacts. There is a critical need, both in Canada and globally, to address the problem of inadequate supplies of clean, safe drinking water in rural, remote communities in order to improve health. This invitational working symposium brought together international experts from a variety of sectors to engage in a dialogue concerning WaSH and related health issues faced by rural, remote and indigenous communities.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Food system that fails poor countries needs urgent reform, says UN expert

By Mark Tran, The Guardian - UK

The existing food system has failed and needs urgent reform, according to a UN expert who argues there should be a greater emphasis on local food production and an overhaul of trade policies that have led to overproduction in rich countries while obliging poor countries – which are often dependent on agriculture – to import food.

In his final report (pdf), Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, offers a detailed critique of an industrial system of agriculture that has boosted food production over the past 50 years, yet still leaves 842 million – 12% of the world's population – hungry.

"Measured against the requirement that they should contribute to the realisation of the right to food, the food systems we have inherited from the 20th century have failed," he told the UN human rights council. "Of course, significant progress has been achieved in boosting agricultural production. But this has hardly reduced the number of hungry people."

The right to food is defined as the right of every individual to have physical and economic access at all times to sufficient, adequate and culturally acceptable food that is produced and consumed sustainably, preserving access to food for future generations.

De Schutter, professor of law at the University of Louvain, Belgium, was appointed rapporteur in 2008, during a sharp rise in global food prices, and has had plenty of time to diagnose what ails food systems. A major culprit, he says, is the "green revolution", which boosted agricultural production through the use of high-yielding plant varieties, irrigation, mechanisation and subsidised fertilisers and pesticides. The flipside, however, was an extension of monocultures (wheat, maize, soybean), a loss of agrobiodiversity, accelerated soil erosion and pollution of fresh water from the overuse of chemical fertilisers.

A potentially devastating effect of industrial-scale agriculture has been the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, which represent 15% of total manmade emissions. Climate change will affect future agricultural productivity, he warns.

"Under a business as usual scenario, we can anticipate an average of 2% productivity decline over each of the coming decades, with yield changes in developing countries ranging from -27% to +9% for the key staple crops," says the report.

The increasing demand for meat is another area of concern. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that annual meat production would have to reach 470m tons to meet projected demand in 2050, an increase of about 200m tons from 2005-07.

"This is entirely unsustainable … Demand for meat diverts food away from poor people who are unable to afford anything but cereals … Continuing to feed cereals to growing numbers of livestock will aggravate poverty and environmental degradation," says De Schutter, who urges governments to discourage meat consumption where it has already reached levels that are more than enough to satisfy dietary needs. He is optimistic that public attitudes towards meat will change in rich countries, but less so about attitudes in emerging economies such as China, where eating meat is akin to a status symbol.

As an alternative to existing systems, De Schutter champions agroecology, a range of techniques including intercropping, the use of manure and food scraps as fertiliser and agroforestry (planting trees). This approach would not only be more environmentally friendly, but would contribute to more diverse diets and improve nutrition. Although easier to implement on smaller-sized farms, agroecology is also applicable to large farms.

Other measures to improve the system would be to abandon mandates for biofuels and cut down food waste in rich countries and post-harvest losses in poor countries.

Changes to support small-scale farmers in poor countries – access to land, support for local seed banks, storage connection to makers – must be accompanied by reform in rich countries, where the farming sector has become highly dependent on subsidies – $259bn in 2012. This has encouraged the expansion of the food processing industry thanks to cheap inputs and facilities such as silos and processing plants.

"Large agribusiness corporations have come to dominate increasingly globalised markets thanks to their ability to achieve economies of scale and because of various network effects … the dominant position of larger agribusiness corporations is such that these actors have acquired, in effect, a veto power in the political system."

De Schutter says he is not completely opposed to agribusiness as it is incredibly efficient in connecting consumers and producers far away from each other.

"It is not desirable to get rid of agribusiness," he says. "It is incredibly efficient, connecting far away consumers and producers, and many needs can only be satisfied by agribusiness. But we need alternative systems to serve different needs. There is an imbalance, as there has been a priority on large-scale farming and underinvestment in local food markets. It is more realistic to have different systems co-exist. Brazil shows you can have huge, efficient farms along exemplary family farms, but you do need high-level political commitment to small farms and a participatory tradition."

De Schutter sees possibilities for change. Rebuilding local food systems, for instance, would decentralise food systems, making them more flexible and creating links between cities and rural hinterlands. He cites urban agricultural initiatives in Montreal and Toronto, Canada, Durban, South Africa and Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where "family farmers" are encouraged to feed urban populations.

At the national level, governments should encourage investment in local food packaging and processing industries. Social protection schemes should be established, says De Schutter, offering a social safety net to protect vulnerable families from falling into poverty. Globally, meanwhile, states should limit excessive reliance on international trade and build capacity to produce the food needed to meet consumption needs, with an emphasis on small-scale farmers.

"The expansion of trade has resulted in the luxury tastes of the richest parts of the world being allowed to compete against the satisfaction of the basic needs of the poor," says De Schutter.

As for the power of agribusiness corporations, states should use competition law to check the abuse of power. "This requires having in place competition regimes sensitive to excessive buying power in the agrifood sector, and devising competition authorities with mechanisms that allow for affected suppliers to bring complaints without fear or reprisal by dominant buyers."

Food system that fails poor countries needs urgent reform, says UN expert

Monday, March 10, 2014

Celebrating forests for sustainable development

On 21 March, communities worldwide will celebrate forests and their vital role for sustainable development.Take a look at our video, be inspired and join in the celebration on 21 March! ‪#‎IntlForestDay‬

Thursday, March 6, 2014

UAE will host conference on green economy

By The Gulf Today

To show its commitment to facilitating a global transformation to a green economy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will host the first global conference on the UN Partnership for Action on Green Economy (Page) from March 4-5.

PAGE is a joint initiative by Unep, ILO, Unido and Unitar to provide comprehensive assistance to countries seeking to develop and implement inclusive green economy strategies.

“I would like to thank the UAE for offering to host this important event,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Unep Executive Director.

He said, “The conference provides an opportunity for more nations to consider how joining the PAGE initiative can assist in their transition towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient, employment-generating economy.”

The inaugural Page conference, under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, demonstrates the UAE’s commitment to support and promote the adoption of the Green Economy at the international level,” said Dr Rashid Ahmed Bin Fahad, Minister of Environment and Water.

At the national level, he added, the UAE Government is also advancing its green economy plans through Ministry of Environment and Water, which is developing a road map and policy recommendations for the UAE Green Growth Strategy announced on January 2012 under the slogan “Green Economy for Sustainable Development.”

In addition, the UAE, in close collaboration with the Page partners, has invited high-level government representatives and policymakers to take part in the meeting.

More than 50 ministers and 300 participants representing governments, the private sector, civil society and development agencies are expected to attend.

The conference will be an opportunity to review the progress on implementing the Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication following Rio+20, and also a chance to consider how greener economies can contribute to the emerging post-2015 development agenda and new global architecture for sustainability. Moreover, the conference will explore the context of the social benefits of transitioning to inclusive, environmentally friendly and resource-efficient green economies.

The Page partnership was launched earlier this year in response to country-led demand for support and training on how to implement green economy policies and best practices. The Rio+20 declaration, “The Future We Want”, also asked UN entities to support countries interested in making this transition by providing them with the tools and resources.

Drawing on the expertise of its various members, Page assists participating states to build enabling conditions by shifting investment and policies towards the creation of a new generation of assets, such as clean technologies, resource-efficient infrastructure, well-functioning ecosystems, green skilled labour and good governance.

Source