tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-194590662024-03-14T11:32:20.204+07:00boilingspotUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-51313213188976733932012-05-17T17:18:00.001+07:002012-05-17T17:18:41.086+07:00'If We Leave the Euro, Everything Will Be Worse'<h4><strong><em>Greece is on the verge of economic collapse and yet the country's left wants to jettison austerity measures. Would this leave any alternative other than exiting the euro? SPIEGEL ONLINE invited the leader of Greece's pro-business Drasi party and an anti-austerity Syriza parliamentarian to debate the issues</em></strong></h4> <h5><strong><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-politicians-debate-the-debt-crisis-and-election-issues-a-833577.html" target="_blank">Spiegel Online International | 05/16/2012</a></strong></h5> <h5><img title="A Greek euro coin. Are the country's days as a member of the euro zone numbered?" border="0" alt="A Greek euro coin. Are the country's days as a member of the euro zone numbered?" align="center" src="http://cdn4.spiegel.de/images/image-320643-panoV9free-goxi.jpg" width="407" height="208" /><em>A Greek euro coin. Are the country's days as a member of the euro zone numbered? (dapd)</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>Just imagine: A country finds itself mired in an existential crisis and diametrically opposed political parties are tasked with putting together a government.</p> <p>This is exactly the challenge Greece currently faces. The conservative Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy) and the socialist PASOK parties have tried in vain to convince the radical left-wing Syriza to join in forming a viable government. Every attempt at negotiation with the country's second-strongest party has failed, and Greece now faces a <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greece-to-hold-new-election-in-june-after-coalition-talks-collapse-a-833373.html">new election in June.</a></p> <p>The biggest issue in the vote will be the question of whether the people of Greece want their country to continue implementing the strict <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/austerity_measures/">austerity measures</a> they agreed to in exchange for European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout money, or if they want to simply leave the euro zone.</p> <p>SPIEGEL ONLINE invited representatives from two political camps in Greece that are the polar opposite of each other to debate the issue. Stefanos Manos, who leads the pro-business Drasi (Action) party, and Despoina Charalambidou, a member of parliament with the radical left-wing Syriza party, met over Skype to express their views.</p> <p>Dressed in business attire, Manos logged in from his elegant Athens apartment, while Charalambidou connected from her office in one of Thessolaniki's working-class districts. The politicians argued bitterly, but were surprisingly united on several points.</p> <p><b>SPIEGEL ONLINE:</b> Ms. Charalambidou, Mr. Manos, some 80 percent of Greeks want to keep the euro. At the same time, there is a majority against the EU-imposed austerity measures. Would it be possible for Greece to remain in the euro zone if it reneged on its contracts with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).</p> <p><b>Manos:</b> If tomorrow we were to say, "Hello, we want to take back our agreement," then we'd be out of the euro. We could of course try to change the austerity package and its conditions. But for that we need at least a primary surplus -- that is, a budgetary surplus after interest on loans has been deducted. To achieve this, we must first implement drastic reforms.</p> <p><b>Charalambidou:</b> In Syriza we say that the agreements with the so-called troika (of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) must be immediately dissolved. The bailout plan damns the Greek people to poverty, unemployment, and drives them to emigrate. The debts weren't created by simple workers and thus shouldn't be paid by them either. Not a single euro of the aid money will be used for salaries, pensions, the health system or education. The money is being used to stop up debt drains and pay loan sharks. The warning "austerity measures or the drachma" only serves to frighten the Greeks.</p> <p><b>Manos:</b> Ms. Charalambidou proves just how far apart wishes and reality are in Greece. The illegal mountain of debt of which Syriza speaks came about almost exclusively because Greeks have lived beyond their means. Only when we admit this can we begin to slowly rebuild our economy. If we denounce our obligations to our European helpers, then we are both deceiving and damaging ourselves. And then we'll be out of the euro and the European Union.</p> <p><b>Charalambidou: </b>But why should we always rely on the same creditors? We live in a globalized world and could get loans with better conditions from other partners. What about Russia and China, for example?</p> <p><b>Manos:</b> This is yet another case of wishful thinking. You wouldn't get a single ruble or yuan from either country before Greece implements reforms. Furthermore, with European help we're getting money at conditions the market would never grant. If we don't fulfill our austerity obligations, then not even Hugo Chavez will give us money ...</p> <p><b>SPIEGEL ONLINE:</b> ... the president of Venezuela. Still, the troika's tough savings strategy doesn't seem to be taking hold. Should it be altered?</p> <p><b>Manos:</b> Apart from interest payments, we must manage to bring in more than we spend. Then we can cut taxes, revoke agreements -- and do everything that Syriza head Alexis Tsipras and Ms. Charalambidou dream of. And how can we do this? By cutting back on everything that we don't need and doesn't do anything for us.</p> <p><b>Charalambidou:</b> I agree with you that we must first achieve order. But that doesn't change the fact that right now Greece has more than 1 million unemployed. I am one of them. In the last year I lost my job in the clothing industry. For one year I received unemployment benefits of €460 ($586) per month. Recently that was slashed to €360. I have desperately searched for work -- and there simply isn't any. My son <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/young-greek-professionals-struggle-to-find-work-in-germany-a-827813.html">moved to Germany</a> after two years of looking for work without success. My daughter works part time -- 12 hours a week -- despite having a higher education and foreign language competency. You, Mr. Manos, along with the other backers of the austerity measures, are supporting the destruction of the lives of workers and pensioners, along with Greeks leaving the country and firms and shipping companies paying far too little in taxes.</p> <p><b>Manos:</b> I am aware that these are issues, but I also believe that I can better represent the interests of workers than Syriza leader Tsipras. Many of these problems have come about because the socialists didn't want to make cuts in the public sector. And Mr. Tsipras beats the same drum. The public sector is a monster that is devouring tax money. Meanwhile, small firms are being forced to shut down because they are paying too many taxes.</p> <p><b>SPIEGEL ONLINE:</b> Many people are now saying it makes no difference if Greece has the euro or the drachma if they are still poor and unemployed either way. They are citing economists who say Greece could improve its exports and get on its feet more quickly with the weaker drachma. What is your opinion?</p> <p><b>Manos:</b> If we leave the euro, everything will get worse. <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/greece/">Greece</a> would hardly be able to get more credit. Everything would get more expensive with the devaluation of the drachma. Think about it: Almost everything we consume is imported. And what do we have to export? We have always been weak in exports. We have lost our competitiveness, and that is the bitter truth. It is not enough -- as the troika urges -- for us to cut wages. Why are the Germans and Swiss doing so well? Because they produce desirable products. We have no top products. We need a change of culture, and these changes are the good things about the austerity policies.</p> <p><b>Charalambidou:</b> This is not about the euro for us. We are interested in making a dignified life possible for the people. We don't want Greece to revert back to the way it was in the 1960s, when people emigrated to Germany for a chance at a better future.</p> <p><b>Manos:</b> I agree with you 100 percent on this point. How do you plan to achieve this?</p> <p><b>Charalambidou:</b> We need tax equity -- especially when it comes to the taxing of shipping companies and rich businesspeople.</p> <p><b>Manos:</b> With Syriza, you have a realistic chance of getting into government. You should adjust your wishful thinking to reality.</p> <p><b>SPIEGEL ONLINE:</b> Would you bet that Greece will still be in the euro zone a year from now? </p> <p><b>Manos:</b> If Greece's people continue further down this path of denying reality, ruled by wishful thinking, then we'll be out of the euro within a year.</p> <p><b>Charalambidou: </b>I don't dare make a prediction here. We want a different Europe in which the people play the main role -- not the political and economic elites.</p> <p><i>Discussion moderated by Georgios Christidis</i></p> <h6><strong>© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012 </strong>All Rights Reserved</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-61752423709292250252012-05-17T17:14:00.001+07:002012-05-17T17:14:38.511+07:00Looks Matter More Than Reputation When It Comes to Trusting People With Our Money<h4><em>Our decisions to trust people with our money are based more on how they look then how they behave, according to new research from the University of Warwick</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515094134.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fhealth_medicine+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Health+%26+Medicine+News%29" target="_blank">ScienceDaily May 15, 2012</a></h5> <h5><a href="http://images.sciencedaily.com/2012/05/120515094134-large.jpg"><img border="0" alt="" src="http://images.sciencedaily.com/2012/05/120515094134.jpg" width="397" height="253" /></a><em>Face identities of the same computer character varied on the trustworthiness scale. For each character, we selected the faces found at 3 and +3 SD on the trustworthiness scale (indicated here with arrows). In Study 3, we altered some of the selected faces to ensure direct gaze for all stimuli. (Credit: Rezlescu et al; doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0034293.g002)</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>In a paper recently published in the<em>PLoS One </em>journal, researchers from Warwick Business School, the University College London and Dartmouth College, USA, carried out a series of experiments to see if people made decisions to trust others based on their faces.</p> <p>They found people are more likely to invest money in someone whose face is generally perceived as trustworthy, even when they are given negative information about this person's reputation.</p> <p>The team used a computer algorithm to create a set of 20 pairs of faces at opposing ends of the trustworthiness scale. This computer software modifies the apparent trustworthiness of faces by altering their features. The researchers were able to experimentally manipulate the unfakeable features (those related to shape of the face) that make a face look trustworthy or untrustworthy. These 40 faces were then used in a series of trust games with human participants.</p> <p>Each volunteer was given a sum of money and told they could invest any part of the amount in a trustee whose face appeared on the screen. Any amount they invested would be tripled and volunteers were told it was then up to the trustee to decide how much to send back to them. Thus participants had an incentive to invest only in trustees who could be expected to return more than the invested amount.</p> <p>The researchers found that 13 out of 15 participants invested more, on average, in the trustworthy identities. In a second experiment, the researchers gave the volunteers information about whether the trustees had good or bad histories. Even with this inside information, the average amount invested in those who looked 'trustworthy' was 6% higher.</p> <p>Dr Chris Olivola from the University of Warwick's Warwick Business School said: "Trustees with good and bad histories benefitted equally from trustworthy-looking facial features. The temptation to judge strangers by their faces is hard to resist. Trustworthiness is one of the most important traits for social and economic interactions and our study examines whether people take potentially costly actions in line with their face-based trustworthiness judgments.</p> <p>"It seems we are still willing to go with our own instincts about whether we think someone looks like we can trust them."</p> <h6><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/copyright.htm">Copyright</a> © 1995-2011 ScienceDaily LLC  —  All rights reserved</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-13277432658236344542012-05-17T17:11:00.001+07:002012-05-17T17:11:21.672+07:00This Is Your Brain On Sugar: Study in Rats Shows High-Fructose Diet Sabotages Learning, Memory<h4><em>Attention, college students cramming between midterms and finals: Binging on soda and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515150938.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fhealth_medicine+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Health+%26+Medicine+News%29" target="_blank">ScienceDaily | May 15, 2012</a></h5> <h5><a href="http://images.sciencedaily.com/2012/05/120515150938-large.jpg"><img border="0" alt="" src="http://images.sciencedaily.com/2012/05/120515150938.jpg" width="397" height="268" /></a><em>New research suggests that binging on soda and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid. (Credit: © RTimages / Fotolia)</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>A new UCLA rat study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning -- and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption. The peer-reviewed<em>Journal of Physiology</em> publishes the findings in its May 15 edition.</p> <p>"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of integrative biology and physiology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."</p> <p>While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.</p> <p>The UCLA team zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, applesauce and baby food. The average American consumes more than 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "We're not talking about naturally occurring fructose in fruits, which also contain important antioxidants," explained Gomez-Pinilla, who is also a member of UCLA's Brain Research Institute and Brain Injury Research Center. "We're concerned about high-fructose corn syrup that is added to manufactured food products as a sweetener and preservative."</p> <p>Gomez-Pinilla and study co-author Rahul Agrawal, a UCLA visiting postdoctoral fellow from India, studied two groups of rats that each consumed a fructose solution as drinking water for six weeks. The second group also received omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which protects against damage to the synapses -- the chemical connections between brain cells that enable memory and learning.</p> <p>"DHA is essential for synaptic function -- brain cells' ability to transmit signals to one another," Gomez-Pinilla said. "This is the mechanism that makes learning and memory possible. Our bodies can't produce enough DHA, so it must be supplemented through our diet."</p> <p>The animals were fed standard rat chow and trained on a maze twice daily for five days before starting the experimental diet. The UCLA team tested how well the rats were able to navigate the maze, which contained numerous holes but only one exit. The scientists placed visual landmarks in the maze to help the rats learn and remember the way.</p> <p>Six weeks later, the researchers tested the rats' ability to recall the route and escape the maze. What they saw surprised them.</p> <p>"The second group of rats navigated the maze much faster than the rats that did not receive omega-3 fatty acids," Gomez-Pinilla said. "The DHA-deprived animals were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity. Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats' ability to think clearly and recall the route they'd learned six weeks earlier."</p> <p>The DHA-deprived rats also developed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates synaptic function in the brain. A closer look at the rats' brain tissue suggested that insulin had lost much of its power to influence the brain cells.</p> <p>"Because insulin can penetrate the blood-brain barrier, the hormone may signal neurons to trigger reactions that disrupt learning and cause memory loss," Gomez-Pinilla said.</p> <p>He suspects that fructose is the culprit behind the DHA-deficient rats' brain dysfunction. Eating too much fructose could block insulin's ability to regulate how cells use and store sugar for the energy required for processing thoughts and emotions.</p> <p>"Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning," he said. "Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new."</p> <p>Gomez-Pinilla, a native of Chile and an exercise enthusiast who practices what he preaches, advises people to keep fructose intake to a minimum and swap sugary desserts for fresh berries and Greek yogurt, which he keeps within arm's reach in a small refrigerator in his office. An occasional bar of dark chocolate that hasn't been processed with a lot of extra sweetener is fine too, he said.</p> <p>Still planning to throw caution to the wind and indulge in a hot-fudge sundae? Then also eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, walnuts and flaxseeds, or take a daily DHA capsule. Gomez-Pinilla recommends one gram of DHA per day.</p> <p>"Our findings suggest that consuming DHA regularly protects the brain against fructose's harmful effects," said Gomez-Pinilla. "It's like saving money in the bank. You want to build a reserve for your brain to tap when it requires extra fuel to fight off future diseases."</p> <p>The UCLA study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Gomez-Pinilla's lab will next examine the role of diet in recovery from brain trauma.</p> <h6><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/copyright.htm">Copyright</a> © 1995-2011 ScienceDaily LLC  —  All rights reserved</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-10680454406112133202012-05-07T07:18:00.001+07:002012-05-07T07:18:32.436+07:00The Health of Nations: Towards a New Political Economy<h4><em>Why, despite vast resources being expended on health and health care, is there still so much ill health and premature death? Why do massive inequalities in health - both within and between countries - remain? In this devastating critique, internationally renowned health economist Gavin Mooney places the responsibility for these problems firmly at the door of neoliberalism</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/paperback/the-health-of-nations?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=260041-Campaign+-+24%2F04%2F2012" target="_blank">Zed Books | 25 April 2012</a></h5> <p><img style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; float: left" align="left" src="http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/sites/default/files/covers/thumbs/9781780320595.png" width="205" height="313" /></p> <p><em><strong>The Health of Nations: Towards a New Political Economy by Gavin Mooney</strong></em></p> <p><em><strong>Paperback <br />ISBN: 9781780320595 <br />224 pages</strong></em></p> <p><strong><em></em></strong></p> <p><strong><em></em></strong></p> <p><strong><em></em></strong></p> <p><strong><em></em></strong></p> <a name='more'></a> <p>'The Health of Nations' analyses how power is exercised both in health-care systems and in society more generally. In doing so, it reveals how too many vested interests hinder efficient and equitable policies to promote healthy populations, while too little is done to address the social determinants of health. Instead, Mooney argues, health services and health policy more generally should be returned to the communities they serve.</p> <p>Taking in a broad range of international case studies - from the UK to the US, South Africa to Cuba - this provocative book places issues of power and politics in health care systems centre stage, making a compelling case for the need to re-evaluate how we approach health care globally.</p> <h4>Reviews</h4> <p>'Inequality, whether of wealth or power, undermines our best efforts to provide effective support to communities in their quest for better health. Mooney challenges neoliberal assumptions and through elegant case studies demonstrates how we can improve what we do through real community involvement in making decisions about health according to the values that matter.'</p> <p>Prof. Stephen Leeder, Director, The Menzies Centre for Health Policy, Director, Research Network, Western Sydney LHD, The University of Sydney</p> <p>'In this most original and highly readable book, Gavin Mooney makes a compelling case that we can do far more to improve people's health in both developed and developing countries. He ably documents current shortcomings, concluding that most of the problems lie in 'neoliberal' policies - that is, those that sacrifice public decision-making to that of the marketplace, which in turn is controlled by corporate interests. Rather than just posing the problem, he comes up with thought-provoking solutions, showing, for example, that local citizenry are fully capable of coming up with sophisticated organizational and distributional policy aimed at improving the health of the community. This book aims high and achieves.' Thomas Rice, Distinguished Professor, UCLA School of Public Health</p> <p>'This is a biting and insightful book on what is wrong with the political economy of the world today that so much goes wrong with our health systems. Sharply written and informative in the best Zed tradition!' Prof. Gita Sen, Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management</p> <p>'This is Mooney at his 'no-holds-barred' best, laying bare the power relationships affecting health. Unless health economists start paying attention to the political economy of health, progress in solving the health challenges facing us will be painfully slow. This book is setting us on that path.' Prof. Di McIntyre, Health Economics Unit, University of Cape Town</p> <h4>Table of Contents</h4> <ol> <ol> <li>Introduction</li> <li>Why has the economics of health care policy gone wrong?</li> <li>Why have broader policies affecting health been inadequate ?</li> <li>The malaise of neoliberalism in health, health care and health economics</li> <li>Neoliberalism, the global institutions and health</li> <li>The US: the fear of ‘socialised’ health care</li> <li>The UK NHS and the market</li> <li>South Africa, neoliberalism and HIV/AIDS</li> <li>Australia and victim blaming</li> <li>A local community versus a corporation</li> <li>The pharmaceutical industry</li> <li>Neoliberalism and global warming</li> <li>The solutions in theory: communitarian claims</li> <li>The solutions in health care</li> <li>The solutions on society more generally</li> <li>Kerala: community participation</li> <li>Cuba: health care and social determinants of</li> <li>Venezuela: power to the community</li> <li>Conclusion</li> </ol> </ol> <h4>About the Author</h4> <p>Gavin Mooney is based in Perth in Western Australia. He has worked as a health economist for 40 years and held academic positions in Scotland, Scandinavia, South Africa and Australia. In 2009 he was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Cape Town as 'one of the founding fathers of health economics'. He has published widely with over 20 books to his name. Gavin has also acted as a consultant to WHO and to the OECD. Equity is a key research focus. In recent years he has become particularly interested in the impact of poverty and inequality on health and in turn of neo liberalism on power structures in society and in healthcare systems. Much of this is reflected in his Challenging Health Economics for OUP in 2009. He is also an advocate for using community values through citizens' juries in health care (see www.gavinmooney.com).</p><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-6100879480752106002012-05-07T07:09:00.001+07:002012-05-07T07:09:33.111+07:00Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa<h4><em>Chocolate - the very word conjures up a hint of the forbidden and a taste of the decadent. Yet the story behind the chocolate bar is rarely one of luxury...</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/paperback/chocolate-nations?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=260041-Campaign+-+24%2F04%2F2012" target="_blank">Zed Books | 25 April 2012</a></h5> <p><img style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; float: left" align="left" src="http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/sites/default/files/covers/thumbs/9781848130050.png" width="178" height="272" /></p> <h5><em>Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa by Orla Ryan</em></h5> <h5><em>20 January 2011- Paperback - ISBN: 9781848130050 - 192 pages</em></h5> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <a name='more'></a> <p>From the thousands of children who work on plantations to the smallholders who harvest the beans, Chocolate Nations reveals the hard economic realities of our favourite sweet. This vivid and gripping exploration of the reasons behind farmer poverty includes the human stories of the producers and traders at the heart of the West African industry. Orla Ryan shows that only a tiny fraction of the cash we pay for a chocolate bar actually makes it back to the farmers, and sheds light on what Fairtrade really means on the ground.</p> <p>Provocative and eye-opening, Chocolate Nations exposes the true story of how the treat we love makes it on to our supermarket shelves.</p> <h4>Reviews</h4> <p>'Orla's Chocolate Nations is a captivating read, painting a lively picture of the West African cocoa trade from a variety of perspectives. It casts a critical eye over the role played by governments and multinationals, while also putting fair trade and child slavery campaigns in perspective. It gives us all a good deal more to think about when we eat 'the food of the gods'.' - Daniel Balint Kurti at Global Witness</p> <p>'I gave up eating chocolate years ago after seeing at first hand the exploitation that surrounds its production in Africa. Since then, endless panaceas and fair trading schemes have failed to improve the lot of the farmers. It was about time a book like this was written.' - Stephen Chan OBE, author of The End of Certainty</p> <p>'That Mmmmoment when our lips meet the meltilicious chocolate bar we've been waiting for all day ... well, it could be the last bite we take of it that tastes right after reading this exposé of the cocoa industry. 'Fair trade' is a great feelgood advertising line, but it is often a contradiction in terms. Not much profit trickles down from the shelves of our shops to the farmers and child labour (in reality, trafficked or slave labour, Ryan says) of Ghana and Ivory Coast whose poverty is covered up by weasel words from trade associations and financial interests glibly defending exploitation and profiteering.' - Iain Finlayson, Times</p> <p>'Chocolate Nations is a fascinating account of the stuggles of cocoa producers in West Africa, almost all of them smallholders, and what it takes to turn a crop of cocoa into a warehouse full of Ferrero Rocher.' - Jeremy Harding, The Guardian</p> <p>'Paints a disturbing and subtle picture of an industry few chocolate consumers think about.' - Sydney Morning Herald</p> <p>'Arresting and provocative. The author’s interviews with labourers movingly illuminate the struggles that lie behind an icon of western indulgence.' - Financial Times</p> <p>'Presents the tragic and shocking detail behind the world's favourite confectionery.' - New Agriculturist</p> <p>'A courageous and thoughtful account of a murky industry.' - Times Literary Supplement</p> <h4>Table of Contents</h4> <blockquote> <p>Prologue</p> <p>1. Ghana is Cocoa <br />On the shoulders of peasant farmers - Fight for independence - A lifeline under revolutionary rule - No simple success story</p> <p>2. Cocoa Wars <br />A missing man - Miracle state - After Boigny - a crisis of identity - Battle for land - In the graveyard - Land and identity</p> <p>3. Child Labour <br />The crusading Senator - Industry cynicism - Defining the problem - In search of riches - School and the farm - Heart of the industry</p> <p>4. Follow the money <br />The man who couldn't keep a secret - The new president - An avenging journalist - A reporter in danger - Abduction - Business as usual</p> <p>5. From bean to bar <br />Recipe for success - Millers and grinders - Pricing the bar - On the shelf</p> <p>6. Fairtrade myths and reality <br />More to this than meets the eye - A global movement - Not the only fair buyer - A competitive marketplace - Airbrushing reality</p> <p>7. Trading games <br />Privileged childhood - Fundamental rules - A concentrated market - Power games - Battle for control</p> <p>8. Building a sustainable future <br />Cocoa under attack - Chocolate fears - Owning land and sharing cocoa - Need for science - On the ground training - Lure of the city</p> <p>Epilogue</p> <p>Notes</p> <p>Index</p> </blockquote> <h4>About the Author</h4> <p>Orla Ryan works for the Financial Times in London. She lived in Africa for more than four years, first in Uganda, and then in Ghana, where she worked for Reuters.</p><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-12879016256509722402012-05-07T00:57:00.001+07:002012-05-07T00:57:58.032+07:00Too many still struggling to meet food and nutrition goals<h4><em>The developing world is lagging badly in the bid to reach global targets related to food and nutrition, and rates of child and maternal mortality are still unacceptably high, says a recently released report by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)</em></h4> <h5>by <a href="http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/too-many-still-struggling-to-meet-food-and-nutrition-goals/#authordata">Carol Smith</a> | <a href="http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/too-many-still-struggling-to-meet-food-and-nutrition-goals/" target="_blank">OurWorld 2.0 | May 2, 2012</a></h5> <p><img src="http://owe.unu-mc.org/4619/nutrition-goals-banner.jpg" width="378" height="156" /></p> <a name='more'></a> <p>A yearly assessment to gauge progress across the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the <a href="http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469372&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000386194_20120420035221">Global Monitoring Report</a> (GMR) 2012 explains how spikes in international food prices have stalled progress across several of the MDGs. And discouragingly, the Bank’s latest <a href="http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23180612~menuPK:34463~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html">Food Price Watch report</a> that was released last week shows that food prices are on the rise again, reversing a brief decline that had begun in October 2011. Pushed by costlier oil, Asia’s strong demand for food imports, and bad weather in key producing parts of the world, overall global food prices increased by 8 percent from December 2011 to March 2012.</p> <p>In that period, prices rose for all key staples, except rice, which benefited from abundant supply and strong competition among exporters. Maize prices climbed by 9 percent, soybean oil by 7 percent, wheat by 6 percent, and sugar by 5 percent. And during that time, crude oil prices rose by 13 percent. If food production does not increase, as is currently forecast, the World Bank warns, then global food prices could reach higher levels.</p> <p>Not to ignore the good news, GMR 2012 does report good progress across some MDGs. Targets related to reducing extreme poverty and providing access to safe drinking water are already achieved, several years ahead of the 2015 deadline.</p> <p>The proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water is now half the rate of 24 percent it was in 1990. Targets on education and ratio of girls to boys in schools are also apparently within reach. The report estimates that the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day has decreased by at least 50 percent since 1990, when global poverty was estimated at 43.1 percent.</p> <p>East Asia and Pacific have had the quickest drops in poverty, with extreme poverty in China falling from 60 percent in 1990 to 13 percent. In the developing world overall, the poverty rate dropped from 37 percent to 25 percent. Poverty is still widespread in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but progress there has been substantial nonetheless. In South Asia the poverty rate fell from 54 to 36 percent and in sub-Saharan Africa the rate fell by 4.8 points to less than 50 percent between 2005 and 2008, the largest drop in Sub-Saharan Africa since international poverty rates have been tracked.</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://owe.unu-mc.org/4619/nutrition-graph02.gif"><img title="nutrition-graph02" alt="" src="http://owe.unu-mc.org/4619/nutrition-graph02.gif" width="359" height="211" /></a></p> </blockquote> <p>Since 1990 the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen in all regions except sub-Saharan Africa. There population growth has exceeded the rate of poverty reduction, so the number of extremely poor has gone from 290 million in 1990 to 356 million in 2008. The largest number of poor people are in South Asia, where 571 million people live on less than $1.25 a day, though this is down from a peak of 641 million in 2002.</p> <p>So, regional progress is varied, with upper middle-income countries on track to achieve most targets, but low-income or fragile countries are far behind, with only two goals achieved or on-track.</p> <p>However, when it comes to health, the world is significantly off-track on the MDGs to reduce mortality rates of children under five and mothers. As a result, these goals won’t be reached in any developing region by the 2015 objective. Progress is slowest on maternal mortality, with only one-third of the targeted reduction achieved to date. Progress on reducing infant and child mortality is similarly bleak, with only 50 percent of the targeted decrease achieved.</p> <p>Though the report says more progress is expected and even likely by 2015, it warns that “hundreds of millions of people will remain mired in poverty, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and wherever poor health and lack of education deprive people of productive employment; where environmental resources have been depleted or spoiled; and where corruption, conflict, and misgovernance wastes public resources and discourages private investment.” <br /><strong> <br /></strong></p> <h4><strong>Food is key</strong></h4> <p>Undernutrition is a consequence of consuming too few essential nutrients or using or excreting them quicker than they can be replaced. The MDGs call for cutting the percentage of undernourished people in half, but few countries can get there by 2015. To date, agricultural production rates have risen faster that population growth, but climbing food prices and the diversion of food crops for fuel production have reversed the decrease that was underway in the rate of undernourishment. The FAO estimates that in 2008 there were 739 million people who did not have sufficient daily food intake.</p> <p>Rates of malnutrition have dropped much since 1990, but according to GMR 2012,  there are still over 100 million children under age 5 who are malnourished. Only 40 countries (out of 90 with enough data) are on track to reach the MDG target. Malnutrition in children often starts in the womb, when mothers with poor nutrition give birth to underweight babies. Malnourished kids develop more slowly, start school later, and generally don’t perform as well. Programs to encourage breastfeeding and improve the diets of mothers and children can help.</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://owe.unu-mc.org/4619/nutrition-graph01.gif"><img title="nutrition-graph01" alt="" src="http://owe.unu-mc.org/4619/nutrition-graph01.gif" width="359" height="211" /></a></p> </blockquote> <p>“High and volatile food prices do not bode well for attainment of many MDGs, as they erode consumer purchasing power and prevent millions of people from escaping poverty and hunger, besides having long-term adverse impacts on health and education,” said Justin Yifu Lin, the World Bank’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.</p> <p>“Dealing with food price volatility must be a high priority, especially as nutrition has been one of the forgotten MDGs,” he added.</p> <h4><strong>No easy answer</strong></h4> <p>GMR 2012 sets out a number of solutions for making countries and communities more resilient in the face of food price spikes. Countries should set up agricultural policies that encourage farmers to increase production; make use of social safety nets to improve resiliency; strengthen nutritional policies that boost early childhood development; and design trade policies that improve access to food markets, reduce food price volatility and induce productivity gains.</p> <p>However, the global recession has exacerbated the challenges that countries face in responding to high food prices.</p> <p>“The fragile global economy could very well slow developing countries’ progress on human development goals, since the fiscal, debt, and current account positions, particularly of low income countries, have been weakened by the global financial crisis,” said Hugh Bredenkamp, Deputy Director of the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department.</p> <p>“To help deal with volatility, more developing countries are complementing their fiscal and monetary policy responses with insurance or hedging operations, such as selling crops in forward markets. This can be part of a broader strategy for managing risks like natural disasters and swings in commodity prices,” said Lynge Nielsen, Senior Economist at the IMF.</p> <p>Jos Verbeek, Lead Economist at the World Bank and lead author of GMR 2012, cautioned that a “perfect storm” of factors make the food issue worrisome. What with declining development assistance budgets, continued population growth and climbing food prices mean that focusing on nutrition programs for the poor will become more and more challenging.</p> <p>“According to our projections, an estimated 1.02 billion people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2015. Clearly, assistance must be leveraged in new ways if we are to improve food security and nutrition, particularly for the poor and vulnerable,” said Verbeek.</p> <p>This knowledge perhaps helped aid the World Bank in winning support from member countries for a <a href="http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23178430~menuPK:34457~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html">plan to boost its work on “efficient and fiscally sound” social safety nets</a>, at the recent World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings.</p> <p>“At international meetings, we talk a lot about the global financial safety nets. We need to focus equal attention on the human safety nets,” said outgoing World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick on 21 March 2011.</p> <p>“As we know, there are dangers when institutions are too big to fail. But let’s remember that beyond the talk of financial systems, of regulations, or of firewalls, it is people who are too important to fail.”</p> <p>So yes, indeed, it is obvious there is need for action beyond the talk.</p><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-24623804165554567022012-05-07T00:49:00.001+07:002012-05-07T00:49:46.386+07:00End of business as we know it<h4><em>When it comes to creating a sustainable, green economy, failure cannot be an option — not least for future generations. That provocative statement was made in the opening remarks at a recent conference here in Tokyo organized by the European Business Council</em></h4> <h5>by <a href="http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/end-of-business-as-we-know-it/#authordata">Brendan Barrett</a> | <a href="http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/end-of-business-as-we-know-it/" target="_blank">OurWorld 2.0 | May 4, 2012</a></h5> <p><img src="http://owe.unu-mc.org/4626/business-end-banner.jpg" width="399" height="174" /></p> <a name='more'></a> <p>The keynote speaker at the event was Paul Roberts, author of the 2005 book <em><a href="http://www.the-end-of-oil.com/">The End of Oil</a>,</em> a tome that was inspirational in the launch of Our World 2.0 together with <a href="http://richardheinberg.com/">Richard Heinberg’s</a> two ground breaking books <em>The Party’s Over</em> and <em>Powerdown</em>.</p> <p>Roberts went on to write a follow-up best-selling book in 2008, entitled <em><a href="http://www.theendoffood.com/">The End of Food</a>,</em> that explores the “stark economic realities beneath modern food”. He kicked-off his talk by explaining that his children think he should write books with happier titles and that he might sell more books as a result.</p> <p>For Roberts, sustainability is all about green jobs, green technology and very importantly “guilt-free” products.</p> <p>“We want, as businesses, as individuals,” he explained, “to feel confident that we can have economic growth, that we can have higher returns on our investments without driving our enterprise, our country, our planet off the cliff.”</p> <p>But it is difficult for many to get behind sustainability when everything seems to be going just fine. The economy is said to be recovering (with the exception of parts of southern Europe), technologies are ever-advancing, we have empowered consumers, we have more access to resources, we feel that history is on our side and that we have been, and always will be, able to overcome obstacles.</p> <p>“Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,” he continued, “we have gone from success to success.” As a result, we expect this to continue.</p> <h4><strong>But the future won’t be like the past</strong></h4> <p>We cannot, however, he argued, be complacent and when making forecasts about the future we cannot just use the past as evidence, although in my view it may well be a useful guide. Reflecting on Roberts’ words, I am concerned that we seem to conveniently ignore lessons of previous failed civilizations and we are apparently still unable to fully comprehend the consequences of the advancements we make at breakneck speed, while the precautionary principle often falls forgotten under the wheels of progress.</p> <p>Indeed we should be very worried, Roberts continued, as we struggle to cope with a series of new risks that pose a fantastic challenge for the future of humanity and the planet.</p> <p>Climate change, he argued, is game changing in every sector. But even if you were to ignore climate change and, for academic purposes, assume it is a hoax, the scale of the other challenges we face today will keep us very busy.</p> <p>Another issue that should concern us is the price of inputs to our industrial and economic system. Roberts shared data on the price of crude oil over time and showed that we find ourselves in a period of high volatility and high prices. From an historical perspective, he explained, looking back over the past 150 years “we are paying more for our oil now than we were before the oil industry was industrialized”. This is in spite of the fact that today’s oil industry is super-efficient, has more technology and operates on a huge scale.</p> <p>Yet, it was during the decades of comparatively low oil prices that it was possible to build our global economy and we did so on the assumption that oil would remain cheap and stable in the foreseeable future. But we now have to come to terms with a new reality of ever increasing oil prices.</p> <blockquote> <h5><img src="http://owe.unu-mc.org/4626/Untitled1.jpg" width="354" height="287" /><em><strong>We want, as businesses, as individuals, to feel confident that we can have economic growth, that we can have higher returns on our investments without driving our enterprise, our country, our planet off the cliff.</strong>—Paul Roberts</em></h5> </blockquote> <p>Today’s high prices are explained by a number of factors. For instance, the number of new oil field discoveries is going down (the peak was in 1960) and the fields we do find today are getting smaller. The oil that remains underground is also much more expensive to extract.</p> <p>“We are having to drill far deeper,” says Roberts. “We are having to work in hostile environments — the Arctic, Siberia — and the costs are significantly higher.”</p> <p>Another issue driving prices is political instability with most oil reserves in some of the least stable countries in the world, mainly in the Middle East. Taking this into consideration, he continued, “you can recognize that we have an economy based on a commodity that is basically held hostage to all these different factors”.</p> <p>Now, under normal market economics, we would expect that as the price for oil increases, people would simply move to alternatives. This would suggest a shift to renewable energy, biofuels, bioplastics, hybrid and electric cars, and so on. While this has happened to a very limited degree, we are so thoroughly invested in the petroleum based economy and its infrastructure, that it is going to take a gigantic effort to make the shift to the alternatives, and the oil prices just never seems high enough to spur this transition. Especially since high oil prices work to push our economy into recession which subsequently results in prices falling as demand slackens. It is a classic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_%28logic%29">Catch 22</a>.</p> <p>But there are also other risks that we need to consider such as food prices that are intimately connected with oil prices. According to <a href="http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/">FAO data</a>, we are now in a period of high and volatile food prices. The cost of food is influenced by population growth, changes in earning power and dietary patterns.  We are seeing the spread of the Western diet — more dairy and meat, more processed food, more convenience food and more luxury food.</p> <p>When food prices go up, particularly in developing countries, we see social and political unrest along the lines of the Arab Spring, <a href="http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/from-jasmine-revolution-to-oil-shockwave/">which in turn leads to higher oil prices</a>because markets are terrified that the unrest could have a direct impact on oil supplies. This is a kind of event chain or problem loop.</p> <p><strong>So, should we just give up hope?</strong></p> <p>No, not at all. While the picture is fairly bleak, what we really need to do is move away from the idea that problems can be solved in isolation.</p> <p>Roberts assures us that “[o]nce we acknowledge complexity, once we acknowledge the existence of these loops (problem>solution>new problem>), a new situation arises and it becomes possible to leverage complexity, and to interrupt this chain of events. But it requires an acute awareness of how that chain operates”.</p> <p>We all know this, he argues. But when it comes to making investments, we don’t like to think about this level of complexity. We want a much simpler paradigm. In Roberts’ view we really have to embrace complexity moving forward from now on and as we try to tackle these new risks. Businesses have to be constantly adaptive.</p> <p>He then gave two examples — polyculture farming in Japan and food miles/urban farms in the United States — of how embracing complexity can create new opportunities. Polyculture farming (i.e., using multiple crops in the same space) is an example of how it is possible to work the land more productively and feed a larger number of people. At the same time, the introduction of food miles and urban farming works to increase local food security and resilience while at the same time reducing the carbon footprint of our food. They both provide an opportunity to re-sort our food mix to increase the local component.</p> <p>He concluded by stating that “The future is complex and you can either fight it, or profit from it”.</p> <p><strong>Not the end of business as usual, but a new beginning</strong></p> <p>Roberts’ presentation was very well received by the audience of international business leaders and members of <a href="http://www.ebc-jp.com/">European Business Council of Japan</a>.</p> <p>The remainder of the conference was composed of presentations by various businesses — Total Oil, Unilever and Sompo Japan Insurance talked about their corporate social responsibility activities. In addition, there was a fascinating presentation by Senator Taro Kono, member of the Japan House of Representatives with the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, on why Japan should abandon nuclear power and on the future of Japan as a nation. From 1997, he has continually expressed his concerns about Japan’s over reliance on the nuclear energy sector and opposes the construction of any new nuclear power plants. He <a href="http://www.ebc-jp.com/SDC/08%20-%20Taro%20Kono.pdf">presented</a> a future energy scenario for Japan (based on the work of the <a href="http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/can-japan-go-100-renewable-by-2050/">Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies</a>) that would see the country go 100% renewable by 2050.</p> <p>There was also an insightful presentation from Luke Eginton, Managing Director of Vesta Wind Technology, on the myths about wind technology in Japan and how they have worked to hinder the rapid expansion of this power generation technology.  These myths are that:</p> <ul> <li>Japan is a mountainous country unsuitable for wind. </li> <li>Japan’s low wind speeds are unsuitable for wind power generation. </li> <li>Wind is unpredictable and poses a threat to grids. </li> <li>Japanese wind turbine generator makers understand Japanese wind best. </li> <li>Increasing renewables will increase electricity prices to unsustainable levels.</li> </ul> <p>Eginton went on to convincingly challenge each of the above assumptions that continue to be believed by many influential people. He argued that the introduction of the <a href="http://cleantechnica.com/2012/04/26/japan-solar-wind-geothermal-feed-in-tariffs/">new feed in tariff system for Japan</a> on 1 July 2012 could mark the beginning of a new phase of renewables investment.</p> <p>While Eginton’s presentation was very interesting, what we really need, in my view, is a comprehensive and objective assessment of the scale of investment required to take Japan to the 100% renewable energy future. There have been <a href="http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/bye-bye-nukes-in-japan-by-2012/">some studies</a> by Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, Greenpeace, WWF, the Ministry of Environment, and others, but their results are all over the place.</p> <p>Rather we may need something along the lines of the work done by David MacKay for the UK and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5bVbfWuq-Q">presented at TEDxWarwick</a>. He presents all the energy options, describes the implications of each and then suggests that each one of us decides what would work best. Its a sustainable energy strategy without the hot air!</p> <p>Other <a href="http://www.ebc-jp.com/index.php/component/content/article/1198">presentations</a> at the Tokyo event were also very insightful and covered urban design, sustainable transport, smart and strong grid technology and the compact city.</p> <p>Overall, it appeared that the presenters and members of the audience were still somewhat wedded to “business as usual” while recognizing that we collectively face unprecedented challenges. The focus was very much on “moving forward incrementally” and it was suggested by Hans Dietmar Schwiesgut, EU Ambassador to Japan, that talking about the “end of business as usual” was perhaps not helpful and could give the wrong impression.</p> <p>At the end of the conference, I had two thoughts running through my head. First, I felt like I had traveled back in time and that I had been observing a meeting taking place towards the end of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Shogunate">Edo Bakufu period</a> of feudal Japan, in the 1860s. In front of me were all the Daimyo’s (contemporary business leaders representing the past powerful <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimyo">territorial lords</a>) and they were discussing what Japan should do — modernize or not. The “end of business as they knew it” in 1860s Japan was the end of feudalism, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration">Meiji Restoration</a>, and the beginning of industrial Japan. But sitting in the feudal world, it must have been difficult to imagine what the industrial world would mean.</p> <p>Second, it is hard to imagine someone in 1860s Japan who might have believed that the country should modernize, or even someone in England at the start of the Industrial Revolution who believed that the feudal age was over, suggesting that we move forward with “incremental, small steps” as presented as the most practical way forward by one speaker. Indeed, a member of the audience did question whether “incremental change” was enough. To which the response from the speaker concerned was “we will see lots of small steps, and then some giant leaps”.</p> <p>So what is the next giant leap then? And will humanity make it in time?</p> <p><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-lY41n7r-VL0/T6a5rbT97TI/AAAAAAAABbg/v0JYixKPqPs/s1600-h/OurWorldCopyright%25255B3%25255D.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="OurWorldCopyright" border="0" alt="OurWorldCopyright" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-oOzylnczevQ/T6a5tod5hXI/AAAAAAAABbo/MLnAR0m-2Lc/OurWorldCopyright_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="380" height="34" /></a></p><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-44069559989250948302012-05-04T07:03:00.001+07:002012-05-04T07:04:19.015+07:00Green Resources’ carbon plantations in Tanzania. Curse or cure?<h4><em>A recent report gives a critical view of the Clean Development Mechanism in Africa. The report, “</em><a href="http://cdmscannotdeliver.wordpress.com/"><em>The CDM in Africa: Can’t Deliver the Money</em></a><em>”, draws together a dozen researchers under the guidance of Patrick Bond of the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.redd-monitor.org/2012/05/02/green-resources-carbon-plantations-in-tanzania-curse-or-cure/?utm_source=feedburner" target="_blank">By Chris Lang | REDD-Monitor | 2nd May 2012</a></h5> <p><img src="http://www.redd-monitor.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2012-05-02-143110_489x313_scrot-e1335944046538-150x150.png" width="192" height="192" /></p> <a name='more'></a> <p>One of the chapters in the report, co-authored by Adrian Nel and Kadija Sharife, looks at a Norwegian company called Green Resources AS and its plantation operations in Tanzania.</p> <p>Green Resources was founded by Norwegian forestry analyst Mads Asprem in 1995. According to the company <a href="http://www.greenresources.no/">website</a>, it employed 5,300 people at the end of 2010 and has invested US$100 million in its operations in Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Southern Sudan.</p> <p>The company claims to be “Africa’s leading forestation company”, and has a total area of 22,000 hectares of plantations. The company “holds more than 300,000 ha of land for future planting and conservation”. Three of Green Resources’ <a href="http://info.fsc.org/PublicCertificateDetails?id=a0240000005sUDGAA2">plantations</a> of eucalyptus and pine trees in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania are certified under the Forest Stewardship Council system as well managed.</p> <p>The company has also applied for CDM certification for its three plantations. Two were not approved because the plantations were established before 2000. These are now registered under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and are selling carbon credits on the voluntary market. The third plantation is still waiting for CDM <a href="http://cdm.unfccc.int/Projects/projsearch.html">approval</a>.</p> <p>Jorn Stave of NorWatch <a href="http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/CCC/trouble6.html">wrote</a> about the early history of the company’s operations in Tanzania in a 2000 report titled “Tree Trouble”, produced by Friends of the Earth International, World Rainforest Movement and FERN. His report questions whether Green Resources’ plantations are additional and critiques the concept of carbon trading. It also notes that workers on the plantations are paid below below the Tanzanian Government’s minimum wage. Those that were being paid, that is. He found that some workers had not been paid for 8 months and others complained of irregular and unpredictable payments.</p> <p>In February 2011, TimberWatch produced a report based on field trips to Tanzania in January and May 2010. The report, titled “<a href="http://timberwatch.org/uploads/TW%20Tanzania%20CDM%20plantations%20report%20low%20res%20(1).pdf">CDM Carbon Sink Tree Plantations: A case study in Tanzania</a>”, reported the following impacts (among others):</p> <blockquote> <p>“[L]and being lost by displaced communities, poor working conditions, the destruction of biodiversity on which communities rely for food, fuel and medicines; reduced water availability, as well as many other direct and indirect effects that impact negatively on the livelihoods of the affected communities.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Blessing Karumbidza, co-author of the TimberWatch report, <a href="http://www.bt.no/nyheter/lokalt/Beskylder-norsk-skogselskap-for-landroveri-2680885.html#.T6CcjkjWmXm">describes</a> the Green Resources project as “Land-grabbing, a form of neo-colonialism supported by the Norwegian authorities”. He told the Norwegian news publication BT that, “This area has been grassland as long as people in the area can remember. Now we have a plantation that is not forest, but a monoculture without biodiversity.”</p> <p>Tonje Refseth of the Department of International Environment and Development (Noragric) wrote her 2010 <a href="http://brage.bibsys.no/umb/handle/URN:NBN:no-bibsys_brage_15397">Masters Thesis</a> on Green Resources’ plantations in Tanzania. She found that some villages in the Green Resources project areas have lost more than 33% of their land – the limit under the 1999 Village Land Act. One village, Uchindile, lost 60% of its land to Green Resources.</p> <p>Villagers have in effect lost the land. The company has acquired renewable land leases for 99 years. In return villagers receive employment and community projects (such as schools). But workers told Refseth that salaries were not adequate. She found that the majority were being paid less than the minimum wage set by the Government.</p> <p>The company has promised to give 10% from the sale of carbon credits to villagers. Refseth explains that the money will not be given as cash, but will be used for community projects. “I find this a bit troubling,” Refseth writes, “because this money will be used to fulfil promises that were made a long time ago and should have been fulfilled already.”</p> <p>She adds that,</p> <blockquote> <p>“[N]o transparent plan is made on how much each village can expect to receive and what it should be spent on including the costs. This has created confusion and some conflicts as the villagers were told about this a couple of years ago without seeing anything of it.”</p> </blockquote> <p>In 2011, the <em>Daily News</em> reported that four of the villages <a href="http://www.greenresources.no/Portals/0/Articles/125%20M-%20Daily%20News%2023.02.2011.pdf">received</a> their first share of the money from the sale of carbon credits.</p> <p>Green Resources shrugs off TimberWatch’s criticism. “This is not a serious organisation,” Mads Asprem, the company’s Managing Director, told BT. “TimberWatch is opposed to plantations. These are people who are against development and who want Africans to continue to live in straw huts.”</p> <p>Asprem argues that Green Resources’ plantation projects should be eligible for REDD financing. In a 2010 article in <em>Development Today</em>, he <a href="http://www.development-today.com/magazine/2010/DT_2/Opinion/5267">argues</a> that “REDD can only be successful with reforestation.”</p> <blockquote> <p>“[T]here is a need for large-scale plantations to provide the wood and charcoal to supply Africa’s subsistence demand requirements, and to supply the charcoal market if REDD is to be successful. Reforestation has huge benefits at the inception of projects because it creates plenty of new employment.”</p> </blockquote> <p>But as Anders Haug Larsen of Friends of the Earth Norway <a href="http://www.bt.no/nyheter/lokalt/Beskylder-norsk-skogselskap-for-landroveri-2680885.html#.T6CcjkjWmXm">points out</a>, “There is a fundamental problem that Norway can increase its greenhouse gas emissions by buying credits from projects like this.” Or as Blessing Karumbidza puts it, “It is Norway – one of the world’s leading oil producing nations – rather than Tanzania that stands to benefit.”</p> <h6><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><img style="margin: 0px 6px 0px 0px; display: inline; float: left" alt="Creative Commons License" align="left" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a>Content written by <a href="http://redd-monitor.org/">Chris Lang / REDD-Monitor</a> is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License</a></h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-27686450864170034022012-05-03T06:57:00.001+07:002012-05-03T06:57:58.121+07:00Empire of Capital<h4><em>Colonialism never ended, it continues by different means</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2012/04/30/empire-of-capital/" target="_blank">By George Monbiot | The Guardian 1st May 2012 in monbiot.com | 30 April 2012</a></h5> <a name='more'></a> <p>The conviction of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, is said to have sent an unequivocal message to current leaders: that great office confers no immunity. In fact it sent two messages: if you run a small, weak nation, you may be subject to the full force of international law. If you run a powerful nation, you have nothing to fear.</p> <p>While anyone with an interest in human rights should welcome the verdict, it reminds us that no one has faced legal consequences for launching the illegal war against Iraq. This fits the Nuremberg Tribunal’s definition of a “crime of aggression”, which it called “the supreme international crime”(1). The charges on which, in an impartial system, George Bush, Tony Blair and their associates should have been investigated are far graver than those for which Taylor was found guilty.</p> <p>The foreign secretary, William Hague, claims that Taylor’s conviction “demonstrates that those who have committed the most serious of crimes can and will be held to account for their actions.”(2) But the International Criminal Court, though it was established ten years ago, and though the crime of aggression has been recognised in international law since 1945, still has no jurisdiction over “the most serious of crimes”(3). This is because the powerful nations, for obvious reasons, are procrastinating. Nor have the United Kingdom, the United States and other western nations incorporated the crime of aggression into their own legislation. International law remains an imperial project, in which only the crimes committed by vassal states are punished.</p> <p>In this respect it corresponds to other global powers. Despite its trumpeted reforms, the International Monetary Fund remains under the control of the United States and the former colonial powers. All constitutional matters still require an 85% share of the vote(4). By an inexplicable oversight, the United States retains 16.7%, ensuring that it possesses a veto over subsequent reforms(5). Belgium still has eight times the votes of Bangladesh(6), Italy a bigger share than India and the United Kingdom and France between them more voting power than the 49 African members(7). The managing director remains, as imperial tradition insists, a European, her deputy an American.</p> <p>The IMF, as a result, is still the means by which western financial markets project their power into the rest of the world. At the end of last year, for example, it published a paper pressing emerging economies to increase their “financial depth”, which it defines as “the total financial claims and counterclaims of an economy”(8). This, it claimed, would insulate them from crisis.</p> <p>As the Bretton Woods Project points out, emerging nations with large real economies and small financial sectors were the countries which best weathered the economic crisis, which was caused by advanced economies with large financial sectors(9). Like the modern opium war it waged in the 1980s and 1990s – when it forced Asian countries to liberalise their currencies, permitting western financial speculators to attack them(10) – the IMF’s prescriptions are incomprehensible until they are understood as instruments of financial power.</p> <p>Decolonisation did not take place until the former colonial powers and the empires of capital on whose behalf they operated had established other means of retaining control. Some, like the IMF and World Bank, have remained almost unchanged. Others, like the programme of extraordinary rendition, evolved in response to new challenges to global hegemony.</p> <p>As the kidnapping of Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his wife suggests, the UK’s foreign and intelligence services see themselves as a global police force, minding the affairs of other nations. In 2004, after Tony Blair, with one eye on possible contracts for British oil companies, decided that Gaddafi was a useful asset, the alliance was sealed with the capture, packaging and delivery of the regime’s dissenters(11).</p> <p>Like the colonial crimes the British government committed in Kenya and elsewhere(12), whose concealment was sustained by the Foreign Office until its secret archives were revealed last month(13), the rendition programme was hidden from public view. Just as the colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to parliament about the detention and torture of the Kikuyu(14), in 2005 Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, told parliament that “there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition.”(15)</p> <p>Reading the emails passed between the offices of James Murdoch and Jeremy Hunt, it struck me that here too is a government which sees itself as an agent of empire – Murdoch’s in this case – and which sees the electorate as ornamental. Working, against the public interest, for News Corporation, the financial sector and the billionaire donors to the Conservative party, its ministers act as capital’s district commissioners, governing Britain as their forebears governed the colonies.</p> <p>The bid for power, oil and spheres of influence that Bush and Blair launched in Mesopotamia, using the traditional camouflage of the civilising mission; the colonial war still being fought in Afghanistan, 199 years after the Great Game began; the global policing functions the great powers have arrogated to themselves; the one-sided justice dispensed by international law: all these suggest that imperialism never ended, but merely mutated into new forms. The virtual empire knows no boundaries. Until we begin to recognise and confront it, all of us, black and white, will remain its subjects.</p> <h4>References:</h4> <blockquote> <p>1. http://www.arrestblair.org/what-are-crimes-against-peace</p> <p>2. http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=758449982</p> <p>3. http://www.arrestblair.org/legal-status</p> <p>4. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/aa/index.htm</p> <p>5. http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/eds.aspx</p> <p>6. http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.aspx</p> <p>7. France the UK, between them, have 8.58% of the vote. The African nations have 6.79%.</p> <p>8. IMF, 19th October 2011. Financial Deepening and International Monetary Stability. Staff discussion note. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2011/sdn1116.pdf</p> <p>9. Bretton Woods Project, March/April 2012. Bretton Woods Update No.80.</p> <p>10. Joseph Stiglitz, 2002. Globalization and its Discontents. Allen Lane, London.</p> <p>11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/18/straw-mi6-libyan-renditions-belhaj</p> <p>12. http://www.monbiot.com/2012/04/23/dark-hearts/</p> <p>13. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes</p> <p>14. Caroline Elkins, 2005. Britain’s Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Random House, London.</p> <p>15. Here is the quote in full: “Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop, because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea.” http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmfaff/768/5121304.htm</p> </blockquote> <h6>© 2012 GEORGE MONBIOT</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-31619409249124912782012-05-03T06:53:00.001+07:002012-05-03T06:53:45.576+07:00Dark Hearts<h4><em>We British have a peculiar ability to blot out our colonial history</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2012/04/23/dark-hearts/" target="_blank">By George Monbiot | The Guardian 24th April 2012 in monbiot.com | 23 April 2012</a></h5> <a name='more'></a> <p>There is one thing you can say for the Holocaust deniers: at least they know what they are denying. In order to sustain the lies they tell, they must engage in strenuous falsification. To dismiss Britain’s colonial atrocities, no such effort is required. Most people appear to be unaware that anything needs to be denied.</p> <p>The story of benign imperialism, whose overriding purpose was not to seize land, labour and commodities but to teach the natives English, table manners and double-entry book-keeping, is a myth that has been carefully propagated by the right-wing press. But it draws its power from a remarkable national ability to airbrush and disregard our past.</p> <p>Last week’s revelations, that the British government systematically destroyed the documents detailing mistreatment of its colonial subjects(<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes">1</a>), and that the Foreign Office then lied about a secret cache of files containing lesser revelations(<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/sins-colonialists-concealed-secret-archive">2</a>), is by any standards a big story. But it was either ignored or consigned to a footnote by most of the British press. I was unable to find any mention of the secret archive on the Telegraph’s website. The Mail’s only coverage, as far as I can determine, was an opinion piece by a historian called Lawrence James, who used the occasion to insist that any deficiencies in the management of the colonies were the work of “a sprinkling of misfits, incompetents and bullies” while everyone else was “dedicated, loyal and disciplined”(<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2131801/Yes-mistakes-stop-proud-Empire.html">3</a>).</p> <p>The British government’s suppression of evidence was scarcely necessary. Even when the documentation of great crimes is abundant, it is not denied but simply ignored. In an article for the Daily Mail in 2010, for example, the historian Dominic Sandbrook announced that “Britain’s empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law. … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria.”(<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1299111/Stop-saying-sorry-history-For-long-leaders-crippled-post-imperial-cringe.html">4</a>) Could he really have been unaware of the history he is disavowing?</p> <p>Caroline Elkins, a professor at Harvard, spent nearly ten years compiling the evidence contained in her book Britain’s Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya(5). She started her research with the belief that the British account of the suppression of the Kikuyu’s Mau Mau revolt in the 1950s was largely accurate. Then she discovered that most of the documentation had been destroyed. She worked through the remaining archives, then conducted 600 hours of interviews with Kikuyu survivors – both rebels and loyalists – and British guards, settlers and officials. Her book is fully and thoroughly documented. It won the Pulitzer prize. But as far as Sandbrook, James and the other imperial apologists are concerned, it might as well never have been written.</p> <p>Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintained, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died(6).</p> <p>The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as “Labour and freedom” and “He who helps himself will also be helped”. Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.</p> <p>Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women’s breasts. They cut off inmates’ ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound(7).</p> <p>Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons(8). This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.</p> <p>No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, “1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process.”(<a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100083096/in-all-the-coverage-of-the-atrocities-in-kenya-two-words-are-missing">9</a>)</p> <p>The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan’s is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.</p> <p>Without explaining what this means, Lawrence James concedes that “harsh measures” were sometimes used, but he maintains that “while the Mau Mau were terrorising the Kikuyu, veterinary surgeons in the Colonial Service were teaching tribesmen how to deal with cattle plagues.”(<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2131801/Yes-mistakes-stop-proud-Empire.html">10</a>) The theft of the Kikuyu’s land and livestock, the starvation and killings, the widespread support among the Kikuyu for the Mau Mau’s attempt to reclaim their land and freedom: all vanish into thin air. Both men maintain that the British government acted to stop any abuses as soon as they were revealed.</p> <p>What I find remarkable is not that they write such things, but that these distortions go almost unchallenged. The myths of empire are so well-established that we appear to blot out countervailing stories even as they are told. As evidence from the manufactured Indian famines of the 1870s(11) and from the treatment of other colonies accumulates(12,13), British imperialism emerges as no better and in some cases even worse than the imperialism practised by other nations. Yet the myth of the civilising mission remains untroubled by the evidence.</p> <h4>References:</h4> <blockquote> <p>1. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes</a></p> <p>2. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/sins-colonialists-concealed-secret-archive">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/sins-colonialists-concealed-secret-archive</a></p> <p>3. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2131801/Yes-mistakes-stop-proud-Empire.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2131801/Yes-mistakes-stop-proud-Empire.html</a></p> <p>4. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1299111/Stop-saying-sorry-history-For-long-leaders-crippled-post-imperial-cringe.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1299111/Stop-saying-sorry-history-For-long-leaders-crippled-post-imperial-cringe.html</a></p> <p>5. Caroline Elkins, 2005. Britain’s Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Random House, London.</p> <p>6. Caroline Elkins, as above.</p> <p>7. Caroline Elkins, as above.</p> <p>8. Caroline Elkins, as above.</p> <p>9. <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100083096/in-all-the-coverage-of-the-atrocities-in-kenya-two-words-are-missing">http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100083096/in-all-the-coverage-of-the-atrocities-in-kenya-two-words-are-missing</a></p> <p>10. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2131801/Yes-mistakes-stop-proud-Empire.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2131801/Yes-mistakes-stop-proud-Empire.html</a></p> <p>11. Mike Davis, 2001. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World. Verso, London.</p> <p>12. See for example John Newsinger, 2006. The Blood Never Dried: a people’s history of the British empire. Bookmarks, London.</p> <p>13. Mark Curtis, 2007. Unpeople: Britain’s secret human rights abuses. Vintage, London</p> </blockquote> <h6>© 2012 GEORGE MONBIOT</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-22385075170684930922012-05-03T06:49:00.001+07:002012-05-03T06:49:44.848+07:00France’s choice: naughty child or colourless adult?<h4><em>I cannot vote in the French presidential election. While as an EU citizen with residence in France I have the right to vote for the mayor, I discovered that exercising that right requires extended negotiation with French municipal bureaucracy, an exercise on which no sane person would voluntarily embark. But the choice of president is a matter for the French alone</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.johnkay.com/2012/05/02/france%E2%80%99s-choice-naughty-child-or-colourless-adult" target="_blank">John Kay | johnkay.com | 02 May 2012</a></h5> <a name='more'></a> <p>I am glad not to have to choose. The candidates remind me of characters from my childhood. The incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy is the small boy at the back of the class who endlessly drew attention to himself; his rival François Hollande has the views, personality and gifts of inspirational leadership I recall observing in the assistant secretary of the Edinburgh South constituency Labour party 50 years ago.</p> <p>Still, if you have to choose between the naughty schoolboy and the decent, colourless adult for your president, your choice is likely to fall on the grown-up. Polls suggest this is what French voters will do. The presidency of the French Republic is a job description written for one man – Charles de Gaulle – and no one else has since filled the post with much distinction.</p> <p>Perception of managerial competence is therefore key to this election, as it is in most western democracies. The likely defeat of Mr Sarkozy is both the tail-end of the process in which voters reject the leaders who led them into the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the process in which they reject the politicians who let the continent drift into the eurozone muddle. Mr Sarkozy is in one sense central to that confusion and, in another, irrelevant. He is not interested in detail and Angela Merkel is interested in nothing else. This fundamental difference has permitted a convenient alliance in which the French president can declare his country’s determination to do whatever it takes and the German chancellor can implement her intention that her country should do as little as possible. Such an accommodation is unlikely to survive under a president with a longer attention span.</p> <p>Otherwise, the differences between the French contenders are more rhetorical than real. Although Mr Sarkozy is the candidate of the right and Mr Hollande is from the left, the views and policies of competing political candidates in each western democracy are in many respects closer to each other than they are to those of parties of the left or right in other countries. While Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, David Cameron and Ed Miliband, Ms Merkel and – like everyone, I have forgotten who is leader of Germany’s SPD – may sound different to their supporters, if you sat down with leading politicians of the same nationality in private you would hear similar descriptions of issues, problems and plans.</p> <p>The two candidates are, first and foremost, French, as evidenced by the main domestic controversy. Mr Sarkozy supports retirement at 62: Mr Hollande thinks 60 appropriate. Mr Sarkozy was elected on a programme of reform, and retirement at 62 proved its most controversial – indeed almost its only – measure.</p> <p>France’s social democracy is not really participative and its government is not really contested. Whoever is elected, economic management and control of public services remain in the hands of a homogenous cadre. In the postwar era, senior politicians (regardless of party), civil servants and the top management of most large French businesses have been drawn from a single elite class, selected through a rigorous meritocratic process, mostly implemented through France’s grandes écoles. Mr Sarkozy was in these terms an outsider, but Mr Hollande represents reversion to type. The political class administers the most centralised of large western states, with an extensive public sector; it is technically efficient though not user-friendly and French people are mostly proud of it as they grumble about their experience of it.</p> <p>In 1848, the French overthrew Louis Philippe and ended the Orléans monarchy. A republic was declared and Napoleon’s nephew was elected president. Three years later, Louis Napoleon declared himself emperor. But even before then, the critic Alphonse Karr coined the aphorism “<em>plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose</em>”. And so it is today.</p> <h6>(c) 2009 John Kay, All rights reserved</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-88719029379482142322012-04-19T23:20:00.001+07:002012-04-19T23:20:57.852+07:00BP settles $7.8bn Gulf of Mexico oil spill claims<h4><em>BP has reached definitive agreements with more than 100,000 private plaintiffs to resolve claims for economic, property and medical damages resulting from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/9212567/BP-settles-7.8bn-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-claims.html">The Telegraph | 18 Apr 2012</a></h5> <h5><img alt="BP chief Bob Dudley faces a grilling at this week's shareholder meeting" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01723/BP2_1723549b.jpg" width="398" height="251" /><em>Friday marks the two-year anniversary of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo: Reuters</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>The oil major said it still believes the cost of the settlement will be $7.8bn (£4.9bn), to be paid from a $20bn trust it had previously set aside.</p> <p>BP also asked a US judge for a lengthy delay before holding a trial over remaining claims which have not been settled.</p> <p>The oil company is seeking the delay because BP and the plaintiffs' lawyers have "markedly different opinions" regarding the strength of their cases, and neither confidently expects "a complete victory".</p> <p>Llitigation could easily last 10 years, they said in papers filed on Wednesday with the federal court in New Orleans.</p> <p>Friday marks the two-year anniversary of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and triggered the largest-ever US offshore oil spill, after BP's Macondo well ruptured.</p> <p>The $7.8bn payout from BP would be one of the biggest class-action settlements in US history.</p> <p>"BP made a commitment to help economic and environmental restoration efforts in the Gulf Coast," BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said today.</p> <p>"This settlement provides the framework for us to continue delivering on that promise, offering those affected full and fair compensation, without waiting for the outcome of a lengthy trial process."</p> <h6>© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2012</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-32782224083084798122012-04-19T23:18:00.001+07:002012-04-19T23:18:24.758+07:00Branching Out<h4><em>Farmers in Tree Bank programme harvest long-term profits and win over sceptical neighbours</em></h4> <h5>Bangkok Post | <a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/search/news-and-article?xDate=19-04-2012&xAdvanceSearch=true">19/04/2012</a></h5> <h5><img src="http://www.bangkokpost.com/media/content/20120419/380058.jpg" width="399" height="488" /><em>“Are you in your right mind? What are you going to get from planting trees? What will you eat? You must be crazy"</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>These were among the comments Sangwan Pimolrat heard from her neighbours when she decided to plant trees instead of cash crops on some of her land.</p> <p>The 56-year-old farmer from Chumphon province was one of the first participants in the Tree Bank project initiated in 2009 by the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC).</p> <p>"When I started a Tree Bank, most villagers didn't believe that growing trees could generate income. They didn't see the importance of trees even in their own backyards," Mrs Sangwan said.</p> <p>"But seeing what I was able to do, many have changed their minds," she said, explaining that she was able to send her daughter to university because of the money gained from planting trees.</p> <p>A financial innovation of the BAAC, Tree Banks encourage villagers in rural areas to plant trees that can be used as collateral to secure loans from the bank, similar to conventional assets such as land or property.</p> <p>Sawai Sangsawang, the manager and pioneer of the Tree Bank project, said it was a common misconception that trees had value only when they were cut down. However, he points out that their value increases as they grow each day and as some species become more scarce.</p> <p>The BAAC requires villagers to plant local species ranging from edible plants and fast-growing softwoods, to hardwood, slow-growing timber and rare forest species. It is modelled on His Majesty the King's sufficiency economy philosophy, which encourages self-reliance.</p> <p>Setting up a Tree Bank with the BAAC requires collaboration from a team of at least nine villagers, who need to set up a committee and elect its head.</p> <p>The committee head and the BAAC's local officer will appraise the value of all the trees and register them with the bank. Registration involves creating biodata for all the trees, including the species, type of wood, date of planting, number of tree rings, and other details.</p> <p>Once that is done, villagers can use the trees as collateral to secure loans from the BAAC of up to 50% of the trees' worth, at low interest rates of the minimum retail rate (MRR) minus 1.75%.</p> <p>Appraisal is done in a systematic manner and recorded in a bank book, so that villagers will be able to see the value increase over time. The economic value of a tree is dependent on its age and the type of wood, with hardwood or timber generally being the most costly. Younger trees take longer to grow, but after 10 years they grow twice as fast.</p> <p>"Trees are long-term assets that cannot be impaired and do not have depreciation costs," said Mr Sawai. "Their value growth can outpace the inflation rate by several-fold. And at certain stages their commercial value can even increase by 100% in just one year.</p> <p>"Villagers will never face problems of low prices, lack of demand or unfair prices in the market experienced by rice, tapioca, sugarcane growers. And at the end of the day, even if they decide to cut down those trees, they will still own the land."</p> <p>Mrs Sangwan's village in Chumphon now has more than 13,000 registered trees, worth a total of 30 million baht. Last year, the total value was only 14 million baht.</p> <p>Apart from being used as collateral, each registered tree will also earn interest of 50 satang per year, similar to savings deposits.</p> <p>"This year, we hope that the interest can be increased to one baht per tree, although the aim is to reach 10 baht per tree at least in the near future," Mr Sawai said.</p> <p>However, to increase the interest to 10 baht, the BAAC would need help from sponsors, he said.</p> <p>This year, the BAAC will set up a Tree Bank fund, seeking financial support from wealthy individuals and corporations as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes.</p> <p>"Businesses should realise that they have established plants in low-lying areas, so in order to prevent future devastation such as floods, they could give up some of their profits to help regrow the country's forests," he said.</p> <p>The idea behind the fund is for donors to deposit money at the BAAC, with part of their interest earnings going toward funding the Tree Banks.</p> <p>"So far, many wealthy individuals in large cities, insurance companies, and corporations such as Siam Cement and PTT have expressed their interest in joining," said Mr Sawai.</p> <p>He said that although the proportion of interest for CSR was being finalised, deposits of around 5-10 million baht would yield 30,000 to 50,000 baht worth of CSR interest.</p> <p>Companies that have large deposit bases will be put in charge of a particular community so employees can visit and interact with the villagers.</p> <p>"It should not be just a matter of throwing away money for the sake of publicity," Mr Sawai said. "In the past, CSR has been more about putting up placards and taking pictures without any consistency in evaluation or whether the work has created any impact, or whether it can be sustained at all."</p> <p>More tree planting, particularly at the sources of rivers will be emphasised this year.</p> <p>The BAAC, in cooperation with the Royal Forestry Department, has already located 600 communities with total land area of 51,000 rai to begin planting trees, Mr Sawai said.</p> <p>This year, the bank hopes to expand its tree-planting schemes to 3,500 communities and plant at least 8.5 million new trees with a budget of 75 million baht. So far, 33 billion baht has already been obtained to work in the first phase.</p> <p>Initiated in 2009 in 60 villages, the programme now has 597 communities involved. Among the communities, 260 have been registered as Tree Banks.</p> <p>Mr Sawai said that as carbon sinks, the trees grown in the programme can also be used to offset the country's carbon footprint or sold in the market to developed countries. This year global positioning and geographic information systems (GPS and GIS) will be established in 30 communities to enable carbon storage measurement from the trees.</p> <p>"One of the biggest challenges is to make people realise the unquantifiable value of trees," he said. "Money deemed so valuable today, in itself has no value since it is man who has given it the value, but trees have an inherent value. Their role in the ecosystem and for our sustainable development is absolutely indispensable."</p><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-12695352432113832642012-04-19T09:51:00.001+07:002012-04-19T09:51:33.190+07:00Rio+20 should make sustainable land use a top priority<h4><strong><em>World leaders must promote effective land use methods to mitigate drought, says Luc Gnacadja of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification</em></strong></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/climate-change-and-energy/opinions/rio-20-should-make-sustainable-land-use-a-top-priority-1.html?utm_source=link&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=en_climatechangeandenergy">Luc Gnacadja | SciDev.Net | 18 April 2012</a></h5> <h5><img style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; float: left" title="Tree nursery, Niger" alt="Tree nursery, Niger" align="left" src="http://c96267.r67.cf3.rackcdn.com/Re-greening_in_Niger_Flickr-vodkamax_140x140.jpg" width="177" height="177" /><em>Regreening is being monitored by village committees in Niger. Flickr/vodkamax</em></h5> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <a name='more'></a> <p><a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/natural-disasters/">Severe droughts</a> in Africa are a stark reminder of global unfairness. About 13 million people still struggle to have <a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/food-security/">enough food</a> in the Horn of Africa, and about the same number, most of them children, suffer from hunger in the Sahel region, which stretches across Africa below the Sahara.</p> <p>Droughts now hit these parts of <a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/sub-suharan-africa/">Sub-Saharan Africa</a> more frequently than the usual ten-year cycle, and more severely. And people living there are the least responsible for this climatic change.</p> <p>Last year, the response of the international community to the <a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/news/forecasters-warned-of-horn-of-africa-drought-last-year.html">Horn of Africa crisis was catastrophically late and slow</a>. Tens of thousands of people may have been rescued if we had not waited for the food crisis across East Africa to escalate into famine in Somalia.</p> <p>To make things worse, humanitarian relief eventually leaves communities that depend on <a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/">agriculture</a> even more vulnerable to the next drought. Food aid disrupts local markets — farmers lose income and a major incentive to grow crops when local people can get food for free.</p> <p>Now, the latest reports from early warning systems predict a crisis in both the Horn of Africa and Sahel again this year, when they have not yet recovered from the 2010 and 2011 droughts. [1] The question is, what are we going to do about it?</p> <h4><strong>Protect and thrive</strong></h4> <p>Farmers in the Maradi and Zinder regions of Niger know what to do. During the past 20 years they have protected <a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/forestry/">trees</a>on some five million hectares of farmland. Where they had no trees or only a few per hectare, they now have up to 120. These trees not only improve soil fertility but also provide about a million households with fodder, fruit and firewood.</p> <p>A recent survey shows that the farmers who preserve trees are able to cope better with drought than other farmers in the same area. [2] Some of them even produced a modest cereal surplus in 2011.</p> <p>This is just one example of highly successful sustainable land management on a grassroots level. Another is Yacouba Sawadogo, a farmer in Burkina Faso who featured in the documentary film, <em>The Man Who Stopped the Desert</em>. He has combined tree and crop planting techniques to turn the barren land in his village into a 15 hectare cultivated forest within three decades. [3]  </p> <p>We should not wait until the next food crisis emerges — we need to disseminate this experience and scale it up to national and regional levels.</p> <p>Drought is predictable. The tools and knowledge farmers need to cope with it are already there. What is missing is the political will and the lack of awareness about existing, sustainable land-use practices.</p> <h4><strong>First steps are local</strong></h4> <p>The first step is to empower local communities and foster farmer-to-farmer communication.</p> <p>In 2004, the International Fund for Agricultural Development helped to create the first village committee in the Aguie district of the Maradi region in Niger to monitor regreening activities. The initiative is recognised at a national level, prompting the establishment of similar committees in neighbouring villages.</p> <p>Today, these committees regularly meet to share experience in land management and protect trees from theft.  </p> <p>Then in 2008, several farmers from Senegal visited re-greened areas in Niger. On their return, they used what they learned to protect young trees on their farmland on about 40,000 hectares. Local authorities should encourage such experience sharing.</p> <p>These successes should be communicated by local, national and international media — especially radio, which is the most accessible medium for farmers across Africa.</p> <h4><strong>National and international strategy</strong></h4> <p>But strategies that work on the level of individual farmers are not enough. We need to make sure that each drought-prone country has a national drought policy, based on the principles of early warning, preparedness, risk management and response. This effort is led by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the World Meteorological Organization.</p> <p>Such policies would embrace insurance schemes, for example, allowing farmers and herders affected by drought to receive state subsidies.</p> <p>Most importantly, we should empower smallholder farmers to become 'champions' in the race against the disastrous effects of <a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/climate-change-and-energy/climate-change-in-africa/">climate change</a>. In most African countries, the land that local people have been cultivating for generations is legally owned by the government. But farmers will preserve their trees if they have clearly defined rights to them. So governments in Africa need to recognise these rights in forestry and agriculture laws.  </p> <p>We know from numerous studies that building long-term resilience is much more cost-effective than ad-hoc crisis response. Still, it seems easier for donors to justify spending money to feed a starving child rather than supporting his or her father to grow enough crops.</p> <p>With the global community discussing the green economy and sustainable development in the <a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/science-at-rio-20/">UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)</a>, it is unthinkable that we would continue standing by and allow tens of thousands of people to die of hunger.</p> <p>We should act at local, national and global levels to give farmers the lead, and promote sustainable land use and re-greening initiatives.</p> <p>The Rio+20 summit should make this a top priority. It is essential to averting the next food crisis in Africa, and meeting the global challenge of feeding nine billion people by 2050.</p> <h5><em>Luc Gnacadja is executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which promotes a global response to desertification, land degradation and drought.</em></h5> <h5><em>This article is part of our coverage on <a href="http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/science-at-rio-20/">Science at Rio+20</a>.</em></h5> <h6>© 2012 SciDev.Net</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-40214897785408409362012-04-16T23:16:00.001+07:002012-04-16T23:16:44.490+07:00Pure-play carbon credit companies in crisis<h4><em>The crash in carbon credit prices globally has served a crushing blow to companies operating in this space in India. Firms, whose business models were based purely on profit from sale of carbon credits, have either closed down or substantially downsized their operations</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toireporter/author-Namrata-Singh.cms">Namrata Singh</a> | <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Pure-play-carbon-credit-companies-in-crisis/articleshow/12683152.cms">The Times of India | Apr 16, 201</a></h5> <a name='more'></a> <p>A carbon credit is a type of a tradable greenhouse gas emission reduction unit issued to projects under the <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Kyoto-Protocol">Kyoto Protocol</a>. One carbon credit is equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) mitigated. A consultant or a trader usually earns a profit from the sale of carbon credits by a manufacturer. With prices falling from around 10-12 euros per unit six-eight months ago to 3-4 euros today, the consultants' profits have slumped by one-fourth. This has forced some of these companies to down shutters.</p> <p>Sources said companies which have been impacted by this include Noble India, whose India carbon credit desk was closed down, and Gensol Consultants which has restructured and downsized its operations. "The entire team had to go through a lot of pain during these turbulent times. We have downsized and restructured our operations. But, thankfully, our venture capital partner has supported us through this," said Anmol Singh Jaggi, director, Gensol Consultants, which is now in the process of raising further money for its solar and power trading business.</p> <p>However, consultancies which had a more diverse portfolio in sustainability have managed to survive. Sudipta Das, partner (climate change and sustainability), E&Y, said the impact of the price crash on the firm was not large enough because carbon credits form a small part of the firm's sustainability division.</p> <p>"There was an initial <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Rush">rush</a> for registering projects under the CDM (clean development mechanism) executive board to get carbon credits, but it was only when a number of applications from India were turned down that firms started facing the heat. Many have either folded up or substantially downsized their operations," said Arvind Sharma, head (climate change and sustainability services practice), <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/KPMG">KPMG</a> India.</p> <p>According to <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Krish-Krishnan">Krish Krishnan</a>, <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/CEO">CEO</a>, <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Green-Ventures-International">Green Ventures International</a>, one of the trends that have emerged is that a lot of consultants that were operating in the pure-play CDM space have diversified into allied segments like renewable energy and energy efficiency.</p> <p>Many small and medium players are even looking at business opportunities outside India in least developed countries. <br />However, the sentiment is unlikely to improve with worst-case scenarios being presented by certain industry reports that state carbon credits could be tending towards an unthinkable "zero" level. "The mindset of Indian companies has changed dramatically. Earlier, they were not even prepared to sell their carbon credit at 15 euros, and now they have given open mandates to sell whenever the price comes to 4 euros," said P Ram Babu, CEO, General Carbon Advisory Services.</p> <p>Only a few years ago, a rosy picture was being painted around the carbon credit market. As against the forecast that the business of advisory and consultancy could <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Touch">touch</a> Rs 500 crore in ten years on the back of a strong carbon credit pipeline, the industry today is not even talking about reaching the halfway mark yet.</p> <h6>Copyright © 2012 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All rights reserved</h6><div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.</a></div> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-22695040826407973362012-04-16T22:46:00.000+07:002012-04-16T22:47:01.527+07:00Indigenous Peoples Can Show the Path to Low-Carbon Living If Their Land Rights Are Recognized<h4><em>Many indigenous peoples are living examples of societies thriving with sustainable, low-carbon lifestyles. Successfully meeting the global climate change challenge requires that much of the world shift from high carbon-living to low</em></h4> <h5>by <a href="http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/author/sleahy/">Stephen Leahy</a> | <a href="http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/blog/climate-change-and-indigenous-peoples/">Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples</a> | <abbr>April 4, 2012</abbr></h5> <h5><a href="http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/04/indigenous-peoples-can-show-the-path-to-low-carbon-living-if-their-land-rights-are-recognized/youba/"><img alt="" src="http://5601-newswatch.voxcdn.com/files/2012/04/Youba.jpg" width="396" height="222" /></a><em>Youba Sokona of Mali is co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III. Photo: Citt Williams, OurWorld2.0</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>This shift is daunting. Current emissions for Australia and the United States average about 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person. In the coming decades that needs to fall to two tonnes per person as it is currently in Brazil or the Dominican Republic.</p> <p>Emissions from most indigenous peoples are even lower and are amongst the lowest in the world.</p> <p>All options for making the shift from high- to low-carbon living need to be explored and that’s why the <a href="http://www.unutki.org/">United Nations University Traditional Knowledge Initiative</a> (UNU) and  <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change </a>(IPCC) invited indigenous peoples to a special three-day workshop in Cairns, Australia last week.</p> <p>“Climate change is the result of our behaviour,” said Youba Sokona, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III that will report to governments in 2014 on ways carbon emissions can be reduced.</p> <p>The IPCC is the world authority on climate, assessing the state of knowledge on the issue every five to six years. Traditional knowledge of local and indigenous peoples have been left out until now.</p> <p>“One of the critical solutions is to change our behavior, to change our production and consumption systems,” said Sokona, a climate expert from the African nation of Mali.</p> <p>The <a href="http://www.unutki.org/default.php?doc_id=220">Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous peoples</a> workshop offered a number of “examples of local peoples in Siberia, in Australia, northern Canada and in some African countries demonstrating that it is possible to change our behavior,” he said.</p> <blockquote> <h5><a href="http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/04/indigenous-peoples-can-show-the-path-to-low-carbon-living-if-their-land-rights-are-recognized/marilyn-wallace/"><img alt="" src="http://5601-newswatch.voxcdn.com/files/2012/04/marilyn-wallace.jpg" width="356" height="199" /></a><em>Marilyn Wallace, a Kuku Nyungkal Aboriginal woman. Photo: Citt Williams, OneWorld 2.0</em></h5> </blockquote> <p>“I live in a shack but I love being on my ‘bubu’, my traditional land,” said Marilyn Wallace of the Kuku Nyungka ‘mob’ (tribe) in northern Queensland, Australia.</p> <p>Wallace has lived in towns but fought for years to “return to country” and live in her tropical forest homeland 60 kilometers from Cooktown.</p> <p>At the workshop Wallace and every other indigenous delegate focused on land rights. The simple truth is that if they can’t live on and manage their lands with time-tested traditional methods, they can’t be part of the solution to climate change.</p> <p>“It is clear that rights, equity and ownership of land are crucial issues for indigenous peoples,” agreed Sokona.</p> <p>While Sokona thought the workshop went well he was surprised at the laser-like focus on land rights issues.</p> <p>“The IPCC has to talk about rights and culture. You cannot separate it from climate change,” said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, Executive Director, <a href="http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/28/the-new-beast-in-the-forest-brings-hope-and-threats-to-indigenous-peoples/www.tebtebba.org/">Tebtebba</a>(Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education).</p> <blockquote> <h5><a href="http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/04/indigenous-peoples-can-show-the-path-to-low-carbon-living-if-their-land-rights-are-recognized/vicky-iisd-crop-sml/"><img alt="" src="http://5601-newswatch.voxcdn.com/files/2012/04/vicky-iisd-crop-sml.jpg" width="359" height="360" /></a><em>Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, Executive Director, Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education and member of the indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot community in the Philippines. Photo: IISD</em></h5> </blockquote> <p>“The IPCC has been issuing major reports for 20 years now and things have only gotten worse. What does that say? It says it is not changing the way people behave or the systems that reinforce this,” said Tauli-Corpuz, a member of the indigenous Kankana-ey Igorot community in the Philippines.</p> <p>Dealing with climate change means changing the current economic system that was created to dominate and extract resources from nature, she said.</p> <p>“Modern education and knowledge is mainly about how to better dominate nature. It is never about how to live harmoniously with nature.”</p> <p>“Living well is all about keeping good relations with Mother Earth and not living by domination or extraction.”</p> <p>That kind of talk confused some participants looking for case studies, techniques and data on how to reduce carbon emissions. In the hallways one scientist complained that indigenous presentations lacked hard data and therefore nothing could be done with what they were presenting.</p> <p>Even the physical workshop set up demonstrated the difference in worldviews. Held in the meeting rooms of a very nice Hilton Hotel, the speakers sat on a raised dais, looking down on participants sitting in rows classroom style. For many this echoed school systems that suppressed and continue to suppress traditional knowledge. When indigenous people discuss things everyone sits or stands in a circle. And people talk, especially elders, until they have said what they wish to convey no matter the time or schedule.</p> <p>“The workshop was not structured to reflect the indigenous peoples’ way of sharing their knowledge,” said Tero Mustonen, Head of the Village of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland.</p> <p>“If this is supposed to be an intercultural change, it did not work very well,” said Mustonen, who has a doctorate and has written scientific papers.</p> <p>The IPCC’s structure is rigid, with an emphasis on technical information, he said. “Indigenous peoples’ worldview and traditional knowledge can’t be conveyed by numbers and charts.”</p> <p>However, if the oral history of traditional people can be recognized as valid as science that would be a major breakthrough, said Mustonen.</p> <p>“No one has all the answers,” said Jean Pierre Laurent, Ethnobotanist at TRAMIL (Traditional Medicines of the Islands) in the Caribbean nation of St Lucia.</p> <p>Translating traditional knowledge into academic language is possible. “My role in St Lucia has been to bridge science and traditional knowledge,” said Laurent, who was raised on a farm there.</p> <p>This UNU-sponsored workshop sends an important message to indigenous people to hold on to their traditional knowledge, he said.</p> <p>And one indigenous person has a climate change message for those who are most responsible.</p> <p>“Are the Europeans (industrialized nations) delivering climate mitigation from their heart? Are they ready to do that?” Wallace, an Aboriginal woman, asked.</p> <p>“It was a hard journey for us to get back on our land. Now we say: “come and learn from us.”</p> <h6>© 1996-2012 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved</h6> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-144924939909466032012-04-15T20:50:00.000+07:002012-04-15T20:51:05.184+07:00In the eyes of Nature, warming can't be natural<h4><em>Since the fading belief that the world is in the grip of runaway man-made global warming still threatens us with the biggest bill in history, it is rather important to know how far we can trust the science which is said to support that belief</em></h4> <h5>By <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/">Christopher Booker</a> | <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/9204223/In-the-eyes-of-Nature-warming-cant-be-natural.html">The Telegraph | 14 Apr 2012</a></h5> <h5><img alt="Scientist with Ice Core Langjokull Ice cap, Iceland, ice core sample" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02193/AN9KMK_2193477b.jpg" width="393" height="247" /><em>A scientist examines an ice core sample in Iceland. Photo: ALAMY</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <p>One of the most vociferous cheerleaders in the cause has been the Nature, which calls itself “the world’s most prestigious weekly journal of science”.</p> <p>Whenever some landmark event in the story is approaching – such as a world climate conference or a new report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – Nature can be relied on to come up with a new paper purporting to refute one of the more embarrassing objections to the orthodox theory. However thoroughly such a paper is then dismantled by expert critics, it will remain established as a pillar of the orthodoxy.</p> <p>In 1996, as the Kyoto treaty approached, it was a paper claiming to show how the “fingerprint” of warming – the part of the atmosphere where it was most obvious – confirmed that it must be due to human activity. Two scientists promptly explained how the data showed precisely the opposite – warming that was man-made should be greatest in the upper troposphere and not, as it actually is, on the earth’s surface. The chief author of that bid to defend the orthodoxy was Ben Santer. It was his last-minute rewriting of a key passage in the IPCC’s second report – contradicting the text agreed by all the scientists responsible – that provoked the IPCC’s first real scandal. Frederick Seitz, the eminent US physicist who exposed this flagrant breach of the rules, described it as the most “disturbing corruption of the peer-review process” he had come across in all his 60 years as a scientist.</p> <p>In 1998, Nature published the first of the two iconic “hockey stick” graphs by an obscure young physicist, Michael Mann, which rewrote climate science by appearing to show that temperatures had suddenly shot up in the late 20th century to easily their highest level in history. Mann became the blue-eyed boy of the IPCC, which made his graph the centrepiece of its 2001 report. Only then was it exposed, by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, as a meaningless piece of artifice, created by a skewed computer model.</p> <p>In 2009, months before the Copenhagen conference was planned to produce the most expensive treaty in history, Nature came up with a much-publicised cover story by Eric Steig and a team which included Michael Mann as its adviser on computer modelling. This claimed to show that, against all previous evidence, Antarctica had for 50 years been warming, not cooling. It took McIntyre and Anthony Watts’s science blog Watts Up With That (WUWT) only days to expose this as being, again, no more than the product of a tricksy computer model.</p> <p>Now, a year ahead of the IPCC’s next major report, Nature has again provoked controversy with an article, by Jeremy Shakun et al, claiming to disprove what has long been seen as one of the most awkward facts for warmist theory. This is the evidence of ice cores which shows that, for millennia, rising levels of carbon dioxide have not preceded rising temperatures but have followed them, as warming releases more CO2 from the mighty carbon sink of the oceans.</p> <p>As can be seen in full on WUWT, one of its expert contributors, Willis Eschenbach, has now carefully plotted all Shakun’s data, to show how it does not confirm his headline thesis at all. Even the Nature article admits that, when the earth was emerging from the last ice age some 15,000 years ago, it was temperatures that rose first, later followed by rises in CO2. But when Eschenbach downloaded all the CO2 data he could find, he came up with a startling discovery. Shakun had only used one CO2 data source – and he had mysteriously cut off his graph about 6,000 years ago.</p> <p>When the additional data was fed in, it clearly showed CO2 continuing to rise after this point, for thousands of years, at the same time as temperatures went into a long decline. So once more the theory that a rising level of CO2 automatically leads to a warmer world – the central assumption on which the orthodoxy rests – has been demonstrated to be seriously awry.</p> <p>As the respected US scientist Judith Curry put it last week, talking about another seemingly flawed paper published by the same journal: “Nature seems to be looking for headlines rather than promoting good science.” It could serve as an epitaph for the way that journal has been promoting this cause for 20 years. Whether, on the basis of so many curious manipulations of data, we should be happy to pay the biggest bill in history is another matter.</p> <h6>© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2012</h6> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-41099560858861812592012-04-13T21:03:00.001+07:002012-04-13T21:03:22.346+07:00Interview with Frances Seymour, CIFOR: “The Letter of Intent prompted a tectonic shift in the dialogue about forests”<h4><em>Interview with Frances Seymour, CIFOR, at CIFOR’s office, Bogor, March 2012. (The response to one question from Lou Verchot was by email.)</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.redd-monitor.org/2012/04/13/interview-with-frances-seymour-cifor-the-letter-of-intent-prompted-a-tectonic-shift-in-the-dialogue-about-forests/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Redd-monitor+%28REDD-Monitor%29">Chris Lang | REDD-Monitor | 13th April 2012</a></h5> <a name='more'></a> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>Could you provide a bit of background about CIFOR and the role that the organisation plays in the REDD discussion in Indonesia.</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> <a href="http://www.cifor.org/">CIFOR</a> is an international organisation and we have our international headquarters here in Indonesia. If I’m not mistaken we are the only global scale international organisation with its headquarters in Indonesia. So it’s a unique position. As such, pretty much anything we do globally, we also do here in Indonesia, because we have a special <a href="http://www.cifor.org/nc/online-library/browse/view-publication/publication/3728.html">relationship</a> with our host country. And since REDD is one of our big research agendas globally, it’s also a big research agenda here in Indonesia.</p> <p>CIFOR’s agenda for REDD research, outreach and engagement started in late 2006, when the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review">Stern Review</a> and Ken Chomitz’s <a href="http://go.worldbank.org/TKGHE4IA30">report</a> came out. There were a number of things that built momentum towards REDD and we began developing our own research agenda. 2007 was the year of the preparations for the Bali UNFCCC COP which Indonesia hosted. CIFOR scientists participated in the IFCA [Indonesia Forest Climate Alliance] process that led up to that. We hosted the <a href="http://www.forestsclimatechange.org/index.php?id=554">first Forest Day</a> in Bali. So from the very beginning the development of CIFOR’s REDD research agenda was intertwined with Indonesia.</p> <p>Globally as well as in Indonesia, CIFOR was well positioned to have something to say about REDD, because we had done a ten year research project on the underlying causes of deforestation. One of the first things we did was to pull together a <a href="http://www.cifor.org/nc/online-library/browse/view-publication/publication/2347.html">summary</a> of that research and what we thought would be the implications for REDD. Given what we know about the causes of deforestation, then what would you do about it in order to reduce deforestation? We built on that platform from the Bali COP to develop a research programme here.</p> <p>As part of our research agenda, we developed a <a href="http://www.forestsclimatechange.org/global-comparative-study-on-redd.html">global comparative research programme</a> on the first generation of REDD initiatives. It has four components. The first component looks at<a href="http://www.forestsclimatechange.org/global-comparative-study-on-redd/national-redd-processes-and-policies.html">national REDD policies and strategies</a>. It’s mostly a political economy analysis. To try to understand who’s at the table, how are they connected to each other and who gets a voice. To what degree do the policies and strategies match what we know about the underlying causes of deforestation? What are the roadblocks? Are there patterns across countries that we can learn from about what works better or worse?</p> <p>The second component of the project looks particularly at <a href="http://www.forestsclimatechange.org/global-comparative-study-on-redd/redd-project-sites.html">project-level initiatives</a>. We have a population of 22 REDD projects around the world, of which six are in Indonesia, that we are following. They are not CIFOR projects. We are doing some quite rigorous before-after, control-treatment data collection, with a particular focus on impacts on livelihoods. So we will be able to say whether this REDD intervention has an impact on household income. But we are also looking at the impact on deforestation and degradation and the impact on governance and other issues.</p> <p>The third research component is on some of the <a href="http://www.forestsclimatechange.org/global-comparative-study-on-redd/monitoring-and-reference-levels.html">technical, biophysical issues</a>, looking especially to fill in some of the data gaps on emissions from land-use change and how to measure them. So we have teams of people out in the peatswamps collecting the leaf litter in bags and doing core samples in the soil to measure what is the carbon content, so that you have better equations for estimating what happens when you convert a peatswamp to something else. As well as some research on how to set a reference emission level, some modelling scenarios and what are the different implications and the different ways to do that.</p> <p>And then there’s a fourth component, dedicated specifically to <a href="http://www.forestsclimatechange.org/global-comparative-study-on-redd/knowledge-sharing.html">knowledge sharing</a>. We are trying to build a community of knowledge and getting the word out about what’s going on.</p> <p>The framing of it is trying to understand in REDD initiatives what is effective, what is efficient and what is equitable. The 3Es. We’re trying to assess the first generation of REDD activities with a hope of influencing the second generation. And of course as we go along, we keep learning and finding out what we left out in our first research design. So, for example, we are just now initiating a new strand of work on benefit-sharing that complements what we had already started. This includes a research focus on the so-called jurisdictional level, the sub-national scale above the project scale, which we had left out before. We’re constantly trying to learn and update our own approach.</p> <p>Everything I’ve mentioned has its incarnation in Indonesia. We are doing a Component 1 study on the politcal economy of national REDD policies and strategies in Indonesia. As I mentioned, six of the Component 2 project sites are here in Indonesia. Quite a bit of the Component 3 biophysical work, especially on the wetland forest land-use change is in Indonesia. A lot of the Component 4 outreach work, I’d say we have a particular concentration in Indonesia, that has enabled us to do more popular education than we have done in other places. For example, we have a joint website with the Ministry of Forestry, the<a href="http://www.redd-indonesia.org/">REDD Indonesia website</a>, to get all this information out in Bahasa Indonesia.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>When will all the information from the global comparative research programme be published? Will it be a series of separate reports, or one big report?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> It’s coming out in multiple ways. Some pieces of it have already appeared in peer-reviewed journals. Other pieces have come out as CIFOR working papers. And we are in the process of producing the next edited volume. That will be a summary of findings of the first two years into the project and compiled between two covers. So it’s coming out in various forms, as quickly as we can. In the meantime, people are going to conferences, making powerpoint presentations with preliminary findings. We’re trying to optimise, calibrate, get as much out that we feel comfortable putting out, given the stage of data analysis.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>How many people does CIFOR have specifically working on REDD in Indonesia?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> It depends on how you count, but according to the scientist who leads the work, it’s about 35, including PhD students, who are working directly with CIFOR. If you count all of our partners and consultants it gets up over 100.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>And how many people in total in CIFOR?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> Our current on-staff head count is 193 and growing quickly. We will break 200 this year. That’s global, not just here in Indonesia.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>What is CIFOR’s position on REDD?</em></p> <p><img style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; float: left" title="2012-03-24-204704_221x241_scrot" alt="" align="left" src="http://www.redd-monitor.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2012-03-24-204704_221x241_scrot-150x150.png" width="135" height="135" /></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> That’s easy, because CIFOR doesn’t take positions on anything. One of the reasons that we can play the role that we do is that we are able to be an independent source of information and analysis. We attempt to be relevant in the sense of answering “if, then” questions. If you’re trying to maximize this objective, then the analysis shows you ought to be approaching it in this way. But we are not taking the next step and saying and therefore it needs to be done in this way. We’re really putting options on the table. That’s our approach.</p> <p>Having said that, when we think about REDD, we think about REDD as an objective that has been acceded to by the international community. Nobody really disagrees with reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation. We feel that pretty much everything that CIFOR does is towards that objective, because we’re in the business of improving forest management with a special focus on livelihoods and good process.</p> <p>From the point of view of the objective, we’re in favour of it. Do we take a position on a particular programme, or incarnation of REDD by various proponents, global, national, local? No. That’s what we’re doing research on. Our question is, which of these different approaches meets the 3E test of effectiveness, efficiency, equity?</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>Last year, CIFOR organised a <a href="http://blog.cifor.org/forests-indonesia-feature/#.T2hjl9DWmXk">Forest Indonesia conference</a> and CIFOR has organised a series of <a href="http://www.forestsclimatechange.org/events/forest-day">Forest Days</a>, five so far and another one this year. Isn’t this quite an unusual thing for a research institution to do? What’s your justification or explanation for why CIFOR puts so much energy into these events?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> There’s a three-part answer to the question. The first is that we want our research to get out there. The knowledge sharing component is about making people aware of what we’ve done. Publishing in peer-reviewed journals only gets a tiny slice of the stakeholders, so we have invested quite a lot in a <a href="http://www.cifor.org/about-us/message-from-the-director-general.html">family of communications vehicles</a> that reach different kinds of audiences in different ways. Our communications programme I would say is at the cutting edge of what research institutions do, getting us on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cifor">facebook</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/CIFOR_forests">twitter</a>,<a href="http://blog.cifor.org/">blogging</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/CIFORVideo">videos</a>.</p> <p>We have a pretty elaborate communications model. We have a strategy that is a web-based model that tries to take advantage of all the new ways of reaching people but it doesn’t abandon traditional outreach vehicles like publications and events. What we’ve found is that events, which is your specific question, can be synergistic with other ways of getting the word out so that when we’re publicising these events it brings people to our web-site and they click on to see the President’s speech and they stick around to download some publications, that kind of thing. So it’s a way to draw attention to our research.</p> <p>The flip side is that it’s also a way for us to learn, to bring people together to debate the issues and get ideas about what questions policy makers are asking that our research might be able to answer. So it’s a way for us, for example with the Forests Indonesia conference, to get a bunch of speakers, stakeholders in the room and get a sense of where the knowledge frontier is and where independent research might be able to craft a way forward. So it provides input into our research agenda as well as just a platform to get it out there.</p> <p>The third part of the answer is that precisely because we don’t take positions on an issue like REDD, we can be an honest broker and convene that kind of event, bringing in people from international organisations, governments, advocacy oriented NGOs and the business community. All of them feel comfortable enough to be on a stage that has our logo on it because they don’t feel like they’re going to be attacked, or something else. So it’s a role, I won’t say that we can uniquely play, but we’ve developed a reputation for being able to set those kind of stages in a way that maybe other players in the REDD debate in particular might have trouble doing.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>The carbon trading question. I know that CIFOR doesn’t take positions, but what is CIFOR’s position on carbon trading?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> Well, as I said before, we don’t take positions, so we don’t have a position one way or the other on this. What I can say is that we have published analysis including in this book ["<a href="http://www.cifor.org/nc/online-library/browse/view-publication/publication/2601.html">Moving ahead with REDD</a>"], that was published several years ago, that suggests, depending on your assumptions about what the global regime is, you can have deeper emissions reductions for the same price if you allow carbon trading. Again, it’s one of those “if, then” answers. But of course reasonable people can disagree about the likelihood of getting a political regime that allows that economic instrument to function as it should. But we don’t take a position on that.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>I’ll try to phrase this as an “if, then” question. Indonesia’s President has said that he wants to achieve 26% or 41% reductions in emissions, most of which will come from forest and land-use. If Indonesia goes down the carbon trading route, then Indonesia won’t be able to count that against its own emission reductions, because they’ll sell the carbon credits and whichever country buys those credits will count those emissions reductions. Which would put Indonesia in a very difficult situation, it seems to me.</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> I’m not aware that the government of Indonesia has made that distinction in the context of the President’s commitment. I may be under-informed.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>The danger is that there’s a double counting going on. Whoever buys the carbon credits will say that these are our reductions and Indonesia will say the same thing.</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> Sure, but that’s just a specific case of the generalised problem that people have with offsets, right? Then it gets back to my first answer. Depending on the nature of the global regime and the caps that it includes, in theory it allows deeper overall cuts. But I am not aware of SBY [President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] having specified that it would be 26% or 41% above and beyond any emissions reductions that are sold on the carbon market. But that’s not a live question now, anyway, since we don’t have an international REDD offset market.</p> <p>But I’ve not heard anyone debate that so I’m not aware that the government has clarified that nuance to the commitment.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>How does CIFOR think that REDD should be funded?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> Again, we don’t take a particular position. But in our research and things that we’ve published, we accept the idea that the needs of countries and communities for REDD finance will vary over time. The generalised three phase approach of readiness, getting ready for performance, policy change and then performance based payments makes sense as a progression. As well, the different needs even through that time-frame, some kinds of needs are more appropriately funded by the private sector and some more appropriately funded by the public sector. The private sector’s not going to fund things like capacity building so the public sector’s got to step in to do that. You’ve got that kind of trade-off. And you also have different capacities and risk profiles across geographies, both in terms of REDD projects in lower carbon, lower capacity governance countries in certain regions, as compared to regions with higher carbon, higher capacity of governance. You would look at a different funding profile for those two extreme situations. In any given case you’re going to have a mix of funding sources that are specific to that particular place, but also the time and the progression through the strategy. So it’s always going to be a mix, public, private, domestic, international, appropriate to the need.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>What is CIFOR’s view of the US$1 billion deal between Indonesia and Norway?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> Again, CIFOR doesn’t take a position. But I think it’s fair to say that the deal has created an opportunity for CIFOR and everybody else to get more political attention to the work that we do in support of improved forest management in Indonesia. Both governments have approached CIFOR for advice and support. What can I say other than it’s a welcome discussion that has been precipitated by the Letter of Intent.</p> <p>If I may, I’ll give a personal answer to that question. I started working in Indonesia in 1986-87, so we’re talking about a 25 year horizon. I’m willing to say that the Letter of Intent was the single most significant game changer in that 25 years of observing the Indonesian forestry sector.</p> <p>My own personal perspective, looking over that horizon, I would say that the Letter of Intent prompted a tectonic shift in the dialogue about forests, who participates in it, realignment of domestic constituencies among themselves and <em>vis-à-vis</em> international constituencies in a way that I haven’t seen in 25 years. It creates an opportunity for a variety of issues to be on the table at the highest levels, I mean head of state level, to talk about what is the future of Indonesia’s forests. What we experienced at the Forests Indonesia conference last September, which was an open discussion among all the different stakeholders about fundamental questions about which way forward, might not have been possible in the absence of the Letter of Intent. So that’s a very good thing.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>CIFOR put out a <a href="http://www.redd-monitor.org/2011/11/01/new-cifor-report-points-out-the-flaws-in-indonesias-forest-moratorium/">report</a> last year that was quite critical of the moratorium. The report wasn’t only critical, however, it also put forward a series of recommendations for improving the situation. Do you think that these recommendations are likely to be implemented? Do you think that things are moving in the right direction?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> I think we were clear in the <a href="http://www.cifor.org/nc/online-library/browse/view-publication/publication/3561.html">working paper</a> on the moratorium that it needed to be evaluated not as an instrument for immediate carbon reductions but rather an instrument for shifting to a better governance framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The working paper talked about lost opportunities in terms of the relatively narrow scope of the area covered by the moratorium – such as the omission of secondary forests – and the many exclusions that, depending on how they are operationalised, could further reduce its scope. Unfortunately the omission of secondary forests makes it harder to “swap” planned conversion between lower and higher carbon density forest land, especially in the interest of conserving peatland forests.</p> <p><a href="http://www.redd-monitor.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2012-03-24-201404_717x877_scrot.png"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; float: left" title="Click for larger image" alt="Click for larger image" align="left" src="http://www.redd-monitor.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2012-03-24-201404_717x877_scrot-150x150.png" width="135" height="135" /></a></p> <p>But at the same time, we pointed out that it provided some traction in terms of openness, transparency and public participation, good governance principles in terms of having as a commitment, having the consolidated moratorium map with a revision process every six months. Again, this is the first time in the 25 years that I’ve been watching, everybody will have the opportunity to comment; having this posted on the web is revolutionary. To have access to the data and be able to sit around a table together and discuss what’s going on is new. That then provides a platform to start plucking some of that low-hanging fruit and higher-hanging fruit that was depicted in the cartoon in the report.</p> <p>The good news is that that process of opening up the decision making is happening. That is a good thing. We all need to be realistic about how quickly the harder parts of it can go forward, because of the constraints that are political in nature. Some of these are really tough because there are entrenched vested interests that will take some serious political will to deal with. As we know, there’s a lot else going on here, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/22/business/indonesia-fuel-price-protests/">fuel price subsidies</a> and everything else in the broader political context. There are also data constraints and capacity constraints and all those things that we have to be realistic about how long things take.</p> <p>I think that there is good will in important places, the President is serious about his commitment. We need to be realistic about how long these things take, but at least it is forward progress in having that platform of common data to work together to achieve change.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>There was a Reuters <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/16/us-indonesia-carbon-idUSTRE77F0IK20110816">report</a> last year about the Rimba Raya project in Kalimantan, that described the project as a “casuality of labyrinthine Indonesian bureaucracy”. In the end the Ministry of Forestry cut the project in half and handed over half of it to an oil palm concession. Do you think that that’s typical of the problems that REDD developers are facing in Indonesia, or do you think that that’s a one-off situation?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> I can’t comment on the particular issue because CIFOR hasn’t done research on that particular aspect of the project – that is the controversy surrounding the licensing process and legal status of the land – so it’s just what I read in the newspaper. Before I could render a judgment on what is typical, we would want to look at the whole population of REDD projects and right now we’re looking at six that are facing various kinds of challenges, and the results of that research are not in yet.</p> <p>The only comment I would make is that Indonesia’s land status, allocation to different uses and process for changing that status is unclear and contested. Part of that is a legacy of having done the <a href="http://www.dephut.go.id/index.php?q=id/node/1315">TGHK</a> [<em>Peta Tata Guna Hutan Kesepakatan</em> - Map of Agreement of Forest Land Use] process almost 30 years ago, which was done at very broad scales with 1:500,000 scale indicative maps. In the meantime we’ve had pretty radical decentralisation with functions down to the Kabupaten [District] level and then partial re-centralisation. We’ve had permits being issued by different agencies at different levels. So it’s confused, it’s confusing. Nobody should be surprised that when a whole new instrument like REDD comes into that context, and where the REDD regulatory framework is still being developed, there are going to be problems.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>Indonesia recently signed an illegal logging agreement with the EU. What do you think are the lessons learned from the illegal logging debate in Indonesia for the debate on REDD that’s currently taking place?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> Well, it just so happens that we have an entire working paper commissioned by UNODC [UN Office on Drugs and Crime] <a href="http://www.cifor.org/publications/pdf_files/WPapers/WP74Obidzinski.pdf">on exactly that question</a>, specifically for Indonesia. It came out late last year.</p> <p>At the end of the report, there is an articulation of lessons learned from the FLEGT [Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade] process in Indonesia. It is basically that the good governance principles that have been necessary for a successful SVLK [<em>Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu</em> - Timber Legality Verification System] process will also be necessary for REDD. Things like, the strength of the agreement depends of the strength of the multi-stakeholder process that produced it. These things take time, so we’ve got to invest in an inclusive process to come up with the rules of the game. Another lesson is that the credibility of the whole enterprise is going to depend on transparency of data so that we all know what we’re talking about <em>à propos</em> our moratorium discussion just now. As well as the independence of those who validate data and performance, the institutional relationships of who does the MRV [measuring, reporting and verification] type roles in REDD. There is a key challenge of capacity. If you don’t have the capacity to deliver, it doesn’t matter how good your policy framework is, and making sure that the gap between those two things doesn’t get too far out of whack.</p> <p>It’s the basic good environmental governance processes that were in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration. This is not new: Public access to information, participation in decision making, accountability issues, capacity building, it’s those lessons.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>When the idea of REDD came up five or six years ago, it was often<a href="http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2009/12/16/saving-forests-the-low-hanging-fruit/">described</a> as a simple thing of putting a price on the carbon stored in forests and then there was going to be a complete change and deforestation was going to stop. Clearly, five years down the line that’s not happening and I’m not sure anyone thinks it’s going to work like that any more. On illegal logging this agreement was the result of at least a ten year process. And it’s only, at this stage, an agreement.</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> Well, let me make a couple of comments. First of all, only those who had no previous experience in the forestry sector believed that REDD was going to be quick and easy and a silver bullet. The fact that discussions started in the climate policy arena where there might be people with backgrounds in energy, who thought that maybe this was going to be more like CDM finance for rural energy projects, might have led some to believe that we just need to create the market mechanism and we’re done. I don’t think anybody who’s working in forestry thought it was going to be easy. So this is not surprising to those who have been working on this agenda for a long time.</p> <p>But the fact that finance for REDD came with political will for climate change and on a pay-for-performance basis led one to believe that actually it could be different this time. The REDD finance for change in the forestry sector might in fact be transformational in a way that might be different from other generations of the TFAP [Tropical Forestry Action Plan] or the ICDPs [Integrated Conservation and Development Projects] or other initiatives that have come along.</p> <p>I would never say that REDD is easy. Compared to the illegal logging agenda, you’re right that ten years is the right time frame, because it was September 11th, 2001, when there was another historic event, there was the first FLEG [Forest Law Enforcement and Governance] Ministerial, also hosted in Bali. So all these things were born in Bali. It was at that event, that for the first time, forestry minister-types, not only from Indonesia but from around the world, made public speeches about illegal logging. It’s hard for people who weren’t around then to realise, but you couldn’t talk about it then. It was a taboo subject; to even have senior government officials admitting that there was corruption involved or that this phenomenon was happening was a brand new thing.</p> <p>To get over that taboo and the fact that with illegal logging it was starting almost from a base of zero open discussion and analysis makes it harder than REDD, where you start out from the get go with pretty much consensus that the objective is a good thing and it’s a positive step forward. We might be able to move a little faster with REDD than was the case in the illegal logging agenda.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>What is CIFOR’s position on safeguards and REDD? Indonesia has signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and at the same time, the Forest Law states that “Customary forest is state forest.” Does CIFOR believe that principles such as free, prior and informed consent can be implemented given this context?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> CIFOR is not going to take a position on how exactly safeguards should be incarnated in the UNFCCC agreement. But our research is very much premised on hypotheses about the importance of protecting livelihoods, rights and for REDD to meet the effectiveness, efficiency, equity test. So it’s embedded in our research agenda.</p> <p>Our preliminary findings from these pilot project data collection exercises in Indonesia and elsewhere indicate that there is reason to be concerned. For example, data collected in 2010 shows that in some project sites, villagers interviewed had not yet heard about REDD or had not yet been consulted about the REDD intervention in their communities.</p> <p>Very interestingly, sometimes that was an intentional decision on the part of REDD proponents because the whole REDD thing is so uncertain in terms of whether or not there’s going to be an agreement or whether or not there’s going to be finance. They didn’t want to raise “cargo cult” type expectations. There is an ethical dilemma that project proponents are facing between FPIC and raising unrealistic expectations.</p> <p>There is also a specific concern about the tenure insecurity of these communities. Interviews with villagers of their perceptions and a review of the status of the land that’s being covered by the project reveal a degree of insecurity. The concern is that if there’s a new revenue stream somebody else is going to come in to claim it. There’s clearly a need for safeguards to protect from those outcomes.</p> <p>Our research is also definitely relevant to the safeguards agenda. There’s a sense that in Indonesia and elsewhere there’s a need for more pro-active attention to make sure that vulnerable peoples’ rights are not violated or their livelihoods made worse off.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>Lou Verchot was <a href="http://bit.ly/wu9o1w">critical</a> about the outcome on safeguards in Durban and<a href="http://bit.ly/yTBfUK">not particularly happy</a> about what came out on financing REDD. Could you please comment on the outcome of the UNFCCC negotiations in Cancun and Durban?</em></p> <p><strong>Lou Verchot:</strong> The recent decisions in the UNFCCC have been rather weak about how the safeguards are to be implemented. In some ways it is understandable. Governments are making decisions about the standards to which they will hold themselves accountable.</p> <p>The decisions in Cancun and Durban only require that countries to provide information on how the safeguards are being addressed and respected. Countries do not have to collect and report information on performance or outcomes and they do not have to report on trends over time.</p> <p>This is why I commented that the decision was weak. There are no performance goals or objectives, no standards of performance and no reporting on performance trends over time. If we are serious about the safeguards, it is the outcomes that matter, not the effort. In the current policy formulation, failed efforts will be counted as well as successful ones.</p> <p>As Frances outlined above, the safeguards are necessary to protect against the loss of resource access by poor and vulnerable communities. The lack of teeth in the decision means that other mechanisms are going to have to be put in place to ensure this protection.</p> <p>This means a greater role for civil society organizations in some cases. However, in many developing countries, civil society organizations are notably weak and will not be able to play this role adequately. So it is disappointing that while many recognize the nature of the problem, we have done little through these decisions to really solve it.</p> <p><strong>REDD-Monitor:</strong> <em>There’s been a lot of discussion on REDD in Indonesia, and there are something like 40 REDD projects in the country. At the same time, there remains a very high rate of deforestation, there is still expansion of oil palm concessions, pulpwood concessions, mining concessions, oil exploration concessions. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about REDD in Indonesia?</em></p> <p><strong>Frances Seymour:</strong> There are two opposing sets of forces. One set is what you just described, where we have many interests in expanding the area planted to oil palm, to fast-growing timber species, to other agricultural crops, developing infrastructure corridors, exploiting mineral resources and all of those are leading to continued deforestation, possibly accelerating in some places, but at least continued pressure. We can characterise that as business as usual with the understanding that depending on commodity prices, business as usual could get worse for the forest or better for the forest.</p> <p>You also have a set of constituencies driving things in the other direction. Those include the ones narrowly associated with REDD that are promoting this REDD scheme narrowly defined, payment for performance in avoiding deforestation and forest degradation. But there is also the broader climate change debate that includes a lower emissions development strategy that people are starting to talk about. And there is the wildly under-appreciated issue – but we hope to do our part to increase the appreciation – of the importance of forest in adaptation to climate change. I think once people responsible for economic development in Indonesia understand that the viability of sustainable agricultural production and food security, water security, the need to invest in infrastructure, that forests are part of a solution to all of those problems, then the incentives will start to change.</p> <p>You also have whole constituencies with other interests, such as those aligned around tenure reform, which has its own momentum. People have been talking about this for 20-odd years, but there’s an alignment of interests that includes those who are worried about REDD as a threat to tenure security, and those who understand that instrumentally we’ve got to clarify these tenure questions for REDD to work, because in a payments for performance system you’ve got to know who to pay and how to ensure that the benefits go to the right people. There’s been a lot of investment over the years from civil society groups on how to solve this problem, now there seem to be serious high-level discussions about how you reform forest tenure in Indonesia.</p> <p>For all of those reasons there is progress on this countervailing agenda that would serve to reverse some of the trends that you started the question with. I think the question whether you’re optimistic or pessimistic depends on your sense of time-scale. At what point are the forces that might drive change toward a more climate-friendly, longer term sustainable development model, compared to business as usual? There are so many variables that have to do with externalities like commodity prices, but also internal variables like a President who has publicly said that he’s committed to these emissions reduction targets, that he’s dedicating the next three years of his Presidency to this agenda. We’ll see what happens.</p> <p>But I think that there are reasons that supporting this whole process with the best information and analysis, which is our business and as well as some convening and capacity building, is a “no regrets” approach. We can be optimistic that our inputs are leading to progress and we’ll see what happens.</p> <p>A lot of your questions have to do with what are reasonable expectations for the pace at which change can take place. My first five years in Indonesia took place before CIFOR even existed. When you’re climbing a mountain, you don’t know how far you’ve climbed until you look back down. When I get together with colleagues that I worked with 20-25 years ago on the first generation of social forestry projects, we’re amazed at the progress. 25 years ago the State Forest Corporation [Perum Perhutani] would not think about sharing timber revenues with local communities in Java. Now they do. 25 years ago there wouldn’t be an open discussion about recognising indigenous peoples’ claims to forest lands. Now that discussion is wide-open. 25 years ago there would never have been a public discussion about how to deal with illegal logging and corruption within the forestry sector. Now that’s common. So, from a 25 year perspective, look at all the progress. Look at what’s happened.</p> <p>I think it’s important to keep that time-scale in mind and keep that as a source of optimism that change can happen and to temper perhaps unrealistic expectations that now that we have a Letter of Intent, within six months all these problems are going to be solved.</p> <hr /><em> <h5><em>This interview is the seventh in a series of interviews with key REDD actors in Indonesia. REDD-Monitor gratefully acknowledges funding from <a href="http://www.icco.nl/">ICCO</a> for this project.</em></h5> <h5>PHOTO Credit: Photo of Frances Seymour by Dita Alangkara for <a href="http://blog.cifor.org/3408/cifor-director-general-gives-overview-of-redd-research/#.T23QTNDWmXk">CIFOR</a>.</h5> </em> <h6><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; float: left" alt="Creative Commons License" align="left" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a>Content written by <a href="http://redd-monitor.org/">Chris Lang / REDD-Monitor</a> is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License</a>.</h6> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-83375451824204368412012-04-13T07:30:00.001+07:002012-04-13T07:30:43.249+07:00Millions Against Monsanto: The Food Fight of Our Lives<h4><em>Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry's contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We're fighting back</em></h4> <h5>By <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/5079/">Ronnie Cummins</a> | <a href="http://www.alternet.org/food/154951/millions_against_monsanto:_the_food_fight_of_our_lives?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet">AlterNet | April 11, 2012</a></h5> <p><img src="http://images.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1334171356_shutterstock61818016.jpg_640x428_310x220" /></p> <p><i><small>Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Zvonimir Atletic</small></i></p> <a name='more'></a> <p><i><small></small></i></p> <blockquote> <p><em>"If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it." </em>-- Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the <em>Kansas City Star</em>, March 7, 1994</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p><em>"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job</em>." -- Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications, quoted in the <em>New York Times</em>, October 25, 1998</p> </blockquote> <p>For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture, aided and abetted by indentured politicians and regulatory agencies, supermarket chains, giant food processors, and the so-called “natural” products industry.</p> <p>Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We’re fighting back.</p> <p>This November, in a food fight that will largely determine the future of what we eat and what we grow, Monsanto will face its greatest challenge to date: a statewide citizens’ ballot initiative that will give Californians the opportunity to vote for their right to know whether the food they buy is contaminated with GMOs.</p> <p>A growing corps of food, health, and environmental activists - supported by the Millions against Monsanto and Occupy Monsanto Movements, and consumers and farmers across the nation - are boldly moving to implement mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods in California through a grassroots-powered citizens ballot initiative process that will bypass the agribusiness-dominated state legislature.  If passed, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act will require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods and food ingredients, and outlaw the routine industry practice of labeling GMO-tainted foods as “natural.”</p> <p>Passage of this initiative on November 6 will radically alter the balance of power in the marketplace, enabling millions of consumers to identify - and boycott - genetically engineered foods for the first time since 1994, when Monsanto’s first unlabeled, genetically-engineered dairy drug, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), was forced on the market.</p> <p>As Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director for the Organic Consumers Association, pointed out at an Occupy Wall Street teach-in in Washington DC in early April: “The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act ballot initiative is a perfect example of how the grassroots 99% can mobilize to take back American democracy from the corporate bullies, the 1%. By aggressively utilizing one of the last remaining tools of direct democracy, the initiative process (available to voters not only in California and 23 other states, but in thousands of cities and counties across the nation), we can bypass corrupt politicians, make our own laws, and force corporations like Monsanto to bend to the will of the people, in this case granting us our fundamental right to know what’s in our food.”</p> <h4><strong>Moving the Battleground</strong></h4> <p>This is not the first time Monsanto has been challenged by citizens’ initiatives or state and local legislative efforts. But this time, the momentum is in our favor.</p> <p>In the past, GMO “right-to-know” activists have been outmaneuvered and outgunned by Monsanto and its minions in every state, except Vermont and Connecticut, where passing a labeling bill is still, at least theoretically, a long-shot.  (Monsanto recently <a href="http://www.alternet.org/food/154855/monsanto_threatens_to_sue_vermont_if_legislators_pass_a_bill_requiring_gmo_food_to_be_labeled">threatened to sue</a> the state of Vermont if legislators there pass a GMO labeling bill).</p> <p>Efforts to pass GMO labeling laws at the federal level have gone nowhere, despite the fact that more than one million consumers have emailed “Just Label It” petitions to the FDA, demanding mandatory labeling. (The FDA <a href="http://grist.org/food/fda-to-gmo-labeling-campaign-what-millon-signatures/">counted only 394 of the signatures</a>, claiming that the main petition was submitted as a single document, or docket, and therefore counted as only one signature.)</p> <p>Dennis Kucinich of Ohio has introduced his perennial GMO labeling bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, though everyone knows it will never make it out of committee and come to a full House vote on the floor. Similar symbolic bills have been introduced in 18 state legislatures.</p> <p>The battle has been raging for decades. But this time, it’s different. </p> <p>Behind this historic California initiative is a broad, growing and powerful health, environmental, and consumer coalition, which includes the Organic Consumers Association, Organic Consumers Fund, Food Democracy Now!, <a href="http://mercola.com/">Mercola.com</a>, Nature’s Path, Lundberg Family Farms, <a href="http://labelgmos.org/">LabelGMOs.org</a>, Eden Foods, Alliance for Natural Health, Dr. Bronner’s, United Farm Workers Union, American Public Health Association, Cornucopia Institute, Institute for Responsible Technology, Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, California Certified Organic Farmers, and scores of others.</p> <p>This time,  the industry faces informed – and alarmed - consumers who understand the danger of allowing out-of-control chemical and biotech companies like Monsanto, Dow, or Dupont - the very same corporations that have assaulted us with toxic pesticides and industrial chemicals, Agent Orange, carcinogenic food additives, PCBs, and now global warming – to dictate their food choices.</p> <h4><strong>Keeping Consumers in the Dark, Keeping Farmers and Scientists Intimidated </strong></h4> <p>Why has it taken so long to get this far? How have Monsanto and its cohorts been able to grow and maintain market supremacy while force-feeding unlabeled “Frankenfoods” to the public for decades?</p> <p>By buying off politicians, bullying farmers and scientists, and keeping consumers in the dark.</p> <p>Monsanto has <a href="http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/CFSMOnsantovsFarmerReport1.13.05.pdf">sued more than 150 farmers</a> across the US and Canada, and threatened thousands of others, for refusing to pay for “intellectual property theft” after their fields were contaminated by Monsanto’s patented genetically engineered crops.</p> <p>The company has harassed and used the media to bully scientists who have exposed the public health and environmental hazards of genetically engineered foods and crops in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe. The renowned scientist Dr. Arpad Pusztai from the UK, was pressured and discredited for reporting on the dangers of genetic engineering until he was eventually <a href="http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/Pusztai062502.cfm">fired from his job</a>. The same thing happened to the UK’s Environmental Minister, Michael Meacher.</p> <p>In a number of other cases, scientists such as Ignacio Chapela, have received<a href="http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/ignacio121604.cfm">death threats</a>. Chapela also said he received death threats to his children from “a high government official” in Mexico after he showed contamination of native corn with Monsanto’s GMOs. Other scientists, most notably Andres Carrasco from Argentina, have been <a href="http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18944.cfm">assaulted by thugs</a>. Monsanto has even hired the notorious <a href="http://www.negotiationisover.net/2012/01/21/monsanto-contracts-intel-services-from-blackwater-to-infiltrate-activist-groups/">mercenary gang, Blackwater</a>, to spy on its opponents worldwide. </p> <p>Why has Monsanto gone to such great lengths to thwart GMO labeling laws and initiatives? Because it understands the threat that truth-in-labeling poses for GMOs – and biotech industry profits. As soon as genetically engineered foods are labeled in the U.S., millions of consumers will read these labels and react. They’ll complain to grocery store managers and companies, they’ll talk to their family and friends. They’ll switch to foods that are organic or at least GMO-free. Once enough consumers complain about GE foods and food ingredients, stores will eventually stop selling them.  Farmers will stop planting them.</p> <h4><strong>Europe Shows Labels Can Drive GMOs off the Market</strong></h4> <p>In Europe, there almost no genetically engineered crops, while here in the US, nearly 75% of all supermarket foods - including many so-called “natural” foods - are GE-tainted.  Why?  Because Europe requires labeling of genetically engineered foods – and the US does not.</p> <p>This is exactly why activists have launched the California Ballot Initiative. Passing mandatory GMO food labeling in just one large state, California, the eighth largest economy in the world, where there is tremendous opposition to GE foods as well as a multi-billion dollar organic food industry, will ultimately have the same impact as a national labeling law.</p> <p>If California voters pass the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, the biotech and food industry will face an intractable dilemma. Will they dare put labels on their branded food products in just one state, California, admitting these products contain genetically engineered ingredients, while withholding this ingredient label information in the other states? Will they allow their organic and non-GMO competitors to drive down their GMO-tainted brand market share?</p> <p>The answer to both of these questions is likely no. What most of them will do is start to shift to organic and non-GMO ingredients, so as to avoid what the Monsanto executive 16 years ago aptly described as the “skull and crossbones” label.</p> <p>Can you imagine Kellogg’s selling its Corn Flakes breakfast cereal in California with a label that admits it contains or may contain genetically engineered corn? This would be the kiss of death for their iconic brand. How about Kraft Boca Burgers admitting that their soybean ingredients are genetically modified? How about the entire non-organic food industry (including many so-called “natural” brands sold in Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s) admitting that a large proportion of their products are GE-tainted? </p> <p>Once food manufacturers and supermarkets are forced to come clean and label genetically engineered products, they will likely remove all GE ingredients, to avoid the “skull and crossbones” effect, just like the food industry in the EU has done. In the wake of this development American farmers will convert millions of acres of GE crops to non-GMO or organic varieties.</p> <h4><strong>What Now? The Campaign Needs Volunteers and Money</strong></h4> <p>Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association – under the guise of its front group, the so-called Coalition Against the Costly Food Law - are building up a massive war chest up to defeat the California Ballot Initiative. They will literally spend millions to spread lies and disinformation that GMO foods and crops are perfectly safe - and that we need more, not less GMO food and biofuel crops in this era of climate change and growing population.</p> <p>They will lie and say that GMO labels will be costly to the food industry and raise food prices. They will say that it is the job of the FDA to decide whether GMOs are labeled, not the states. Yet we already know that this battle will never be won in Washington DC, where Monsanto and Food Inc. lobbyists have politicians in their back pockets. It will only be won in places like California (or Vermont), vital centers of organic food and farming and anti-GMO sentiment, where 90% of the body politic, according to recent polls, support mandatory labeling.</p> <p>This citizens initiative in California is a battle all of us. Please <a href="http://www.organicconsumersfund.org/label/">contact the campaign</a> if you are willing to volunteer to join a national phone bank to contact California voters this fall or provide other support.</p> <p>It’s time to take back control over our food and farming system. It’s time to stand up to Monsanto and the Biotech Bullies. </p> <h5><em>Ronnie Cummins is founder and director of the </em><a href="http://www.organicconsumers.org/"><em>Organic Consumers Association</em></a><em>. Cummins is author of numerous articles and books, including "Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers" (Second Revised Edition Marlowe & Company 2004).</em></h5> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-18403209208303082542012-04-13T07:20:00.000+07:002012-04-13T07:21:10.805+07:00Marx and Engels and “Small Is Beautiful”<h4><em>Environmentalism and socialism have not always been on the best of terms. In the 60s and 70s, for example, there were fierce polemics between the two</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2012/02/01/marx-and-engels-and-small-is-beautiful">by Samar Bagchi, John Bellamy Foster, and Fred Magdoff</a> | <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2012/02/01/marx-and-engels-and-small-is-beautiful">Monthly Review | Feb 1 2012</a></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h4><b>Samar Bagchi</b></h4> <p>I am a regular reader of <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/"><em>Monthly Review</em></a>. I read with interest the recent articles on ecology and Marxism (Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2010/03/01/what-every-environmentalist-needs-to-know-about-capitalism">“What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism</a>,” <em>MR, </em>March 2010, and Fred Magdoff, <a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2011/01/01/ecological-civilization">“Ecological Civilization,”</a> <em>MR</em>, January 2011). It is true that Marx and Engels conceive that capitalism engenders a “metabolic rift” in nature and society. But both of them emphasize that the industrial growth that socialism would produce is beyond imagination under capitalism. Engels writes in <em>Principles of Communism</em>: “Once liberated from the pressure of private ownership, large-scale industry will develop on a scale that will make its present level of development seem as paltry as seems the manufacturing system compared with the large-scale industry of our time. This development of industry will provide society with a sufficient quantity of products to satisfy the needs of all.”</p> <p>In <em>The Communist Manifesto</em> Marx and Engels note: “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” Soviet leadership took these words literally and wanted to outrace the United States in per capita production and collapsed.</p> <p>In the middle of the nineteenth century, it was impossible for Marx and Engels to envisage the ecological catastrophe that a constantly expanding industrial society can ensue.</p> <p>India’s Gandhi understood this. He writes in the beginning of the twentieth century: “God forbid India should ever take to industrialization after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” We can understand this today. If India and China, with a population of more than 2.5 billion, develops an ecological footprint of ten hectares per person as in the United States, which the rich and middle class of India are trying to emulate, the whole world will be stripped bare like locusts within a few decades. We have to redefine what is “development” or “civilization.” The creative outpourings of Mediterranean civilization, the ancient Indians, the Islamic civilization, and the renaissance in Europe are highly valued even today, compared to which, “We are hollow men / We are stuffed men / Our headpiece filled with straw,” as T.S Eliot said. But they did not have Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Internet, and rockets. The only advantage that <em>Homo sapiens</em> has over other species is its immense capacity to create literature, music, arts, science, etc. which other species do not possess. A civilized society will foster creative potential and not the gluttonous consumerism of the industrial society.</p> <p>I think it is only a classless, egalitarian society with equity and justice, a simple-living society with decentralization of economy and polity, and gender equality that can bring an ecological civilization. More than 80 percent of the population in third world countries like India lead a very simple life. We have to remember Gandhi’s saying: “Nature has given man enough to satisfy his need but not enough to satisfy his greed.” It is perhaps very simple for a country like India to start an ecological society. But it is difficult for the Western society whose enchanting glamour is based on the sucking of blood and sweat of the periphery for more than 150 years. The dispossessed of the world have to engage in struggle and a process of construction to bring into existence an ecological society.</p> <p>I would very much like my views to be printed in <em>MR</em> and a debate generated. Best wishes and regards from a 79-year-oldie!</p> <h4><b>A Response</b></h4> <h4><b>John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff</b></h4> <p>Thank you for your letter. Your argument with regard to Marx and Engels is one that we have frequently heard, but with which we cannot agree in entirety. You begin by acknowledging the importance of the concept of “metabolic rift” as presented by the 49-year-old Marx of <em>Capital</em>, and then you suggest that this outlook was contradicted by the views of the 29-year-old Marx and the 27-year-old Engels of <em>The Communist Manifesto</em>. But do not their later, more mature assessments take precedence over their earlier ones?</p> <p>Marx and Engels’s thinking was not frozen in place in 1848. They continued to expand their knowledge as they progressed in their study of capitalism (as indicated by the concept of the metabolic rift). Theirs was an age of growing environmental awareness, and to their credit, they learned extensively from this, developing their own ecological assessment and building it into their overall critique of capitalism. In this, Marx’s <em>Capital </em>went considerably beyond the <em>Communist Manifesto</em>—which was written well before Marx carried out his full critique of political economy. Where <em>Capital </em>and the <em>Manifesto </em>conflict, then, it is <em>Capital</em> that we should see as representing Marx’s developed view.</p> <p>Marx and Engels were acutely aware of the waste and environmental destruction that capitalism brought, as they indicated in numerous passages, though, as you say, they could not “envisage the [full] ecological catastrophe that a constantly expanding industrial society can ensue.” Marx found Tyndall’s experiments on the sun’s rays fascinating, sometimes attended the latter’s lectures in London in the early 1860s, and may even have been there when Tyndall first demonstrated his discovery that carbon dioxide, along with other gases, generated a greenhouse effect. Yet no one at that time could have foreseen the kind of planetary climate change that we are facing today as a result of this same greenhouse effect and climate forcing by human beings. But what of that? Marx’s real importance to the ecological discussion lies elsewhere, in his recognition of the deep, systematic, and enormously destructive conflict between capitalism and the environment. Marx, after Liebig, depicted industrial capitalism as a robbery-system (<em>Raubbau</em>) in its relation to nature. On that he left no doubt.</p> <p>What appears at first glance to be your strongest piece of evidence that Marx and Engels were uncritical proponents of industrialization is the quote from Engels’s <em>Principles of Communism—</em>a work that was written as a preliminary draft for what later became <em>The Communist Manifesto</em>. But it is significant that Marx, who at this point had more critical reservations about the ecological underside of industrialization than Engels did, chose <em>not </em>to incorporate that statement into the <em>Manifesto </em>itself.</p> <p>To be sure, the <em>Manifesto </em>declared that in the context of a revolution against capitalism the proletariat would have “to increase the total productive forces of society as rapidly as possible.” Marx and Engels were no enemies of industrialization per se, and by today’s standards these were still quite undeveloped economies. But the founders of historical materialism never saw this expansion of productive forces as the ultimate end of society. Rather,<em>socialism/communism as an end goal</em>, as Marx was later to explain in <em>Capital</em>, had to do with the rational regulation by the associated producers of the metabolic relations between nature and humanity, and therefore of the productive relations of human beings themselves. The object was to change the social relations—not in order to expand production, but in order to create a more human and sustainable community that fulfilled genuine needs. (Even in Engels’ quote from <em>Principles of Communism </em>he does not advocate perpetual growth, but industrialization to the point at which it would be possible “to satisfy the needs of all.”) There is no evidence of an empty worship of productivism in Marx’s thought. To the contrary, Paul Burkett has provided a fascinating description of “Marx’s Vision of Sustainable Human Development” (<em>MR</em>, October 2005).</p> <p>It is commonplace for critics of Marx and Engels on ecology to point their finger—as you do here—at the tragedy of the Soviet Union and the damage it inflicted on its environment (in which the Soviet Union, unfortunately, was hardly unique). But the Soviet Union in the 1920s had the most developed ecological science in the world and was extremely advanced in introducing ecological practices. All of this, however, was obliterated in the subsequent purge under Stalin. This was a tragedy of Marxism no doubt, but not one that could be easily laid at the feet of its classical founders. Some of the key victims of the purges, such as Bukharin, Vavilov, Hessen, and Uranovsky, were leading ecological thinkers as well as Marxists.</p> <p>As for the rest of your letter, we are in broad agreement. Gandhi’s eloquent statement was one of the earliest expressions of what is today called “the impossibility theorem” of ecology. As we observed in the opening sentences of our book, <em>What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism </em>(Monthly Review Press, 2011—expanded from our earlier article):</p> <blockquote> <p>Ecological economist Herman Daly is well known for emphasizing what he called the “Impossibility Theorem” of unlimited economic growth in a limited environment. Put, concretely, an extension of a U.S.-style high consumption economy to the entire world of 7 billion people—much less the 9 billion-plus world population projected for the middle of the present century—is a flat impossibility. In this book we are concerned with extending Daly’s Impossibility Theorem by introducing what we regard to be its most important corollary: the continuation for any length of time of capitalism, as a grow-or-die system dedicated to unlimited capital accumulation, is itself a flat impossibility.</p> </blockquote> <p>Like you we believe that the ecological and social revolution that is necessary to change this situation has its basis first and foremost in the global periphery and what we have called in our book the “environmental proletariat.” But all peoples of the world will need to join in struggle to this same end—if we are to succeed. And to accomplish this they will need a developed critique of capitalism, and a strong commitment to socialism, i.e., a society of substantive equality and sustainable human development.</p> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-12721183846771832932012-04-13T07:15:00.001+07:002012-04-13T07:15:26.353+07:00Fuel to Burn: Now What?<h4><em>The reversal of fortune in America’s energy supplies in recent years holds the promise of abundant and cheaper fuel, and it could have profound effects on what people drive, domestic manufacturing and America’s foreign policy</em></h4> <h5>By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/jad_mouawad/index.html?inline=nyt-per">JAD MOUAWAD</a> | <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/business/energy-environment/energy-boom-in-us-upends-expectations.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=climate+change&st=nyt">The New York Times | April 10, 2012</a></h5> <h5><img alt="" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/11/business/DOMESTIC/DOMESTIC-popup.jpg" width="398" height="466" /><em>Jesse Lenz</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>Cheaper fuel produced domestically could reduce the cost of shipping and manufacturing, trim heating and cooling bills, improve the auto market and provide tens of thousands of new jobs.</p> <p>It might also pose new environmental challenges, both predictable and unforeseen, by damping enthusiasm for clean forms of energy and derailing efforts to wean the nation from its wasteful energy habits.</p> <p>But for Americans battered by rising <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/oil-petroleum-and-gasoline/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">gasoline</a> prices, frustrated by the dependence on foreign oil, skeptical of the benefits or practicality of renewable fuels and afraid of nuclear power, the appeal of plentiful domestic oil and gas could far outweigh the costs.</p> <p>Just a few years ago, the dominant theme in discussions about energy was of declining production and the fear of running out of oil. Even today, political tensions in the Middle East, particularly in the Persian Gulf, have fanned fears of supply disruptions that are keeping prices high.</p> <p>But a new boom in energy production in recent years has upended these expectations in record time. High energy prices led to a wave of successful oil and gas exploration in North America, including in fields that were deemed uneconomical only a few years ago. Using techniques like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, oil companies are tapping into deeply buried reserves in shale rocks and in the ocean’s depths.</p> <p>The surge in energy prices, along with a <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/recession_and_depression/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">recession</a> and new government rules that tightened fuel-economy standards, led to a sharp cutback in gasoline consumption. This decline in demand in the last five years reversed decades of almost uninterrupted growth that made the United States the world’s top energy consumer, accounting for one in every four barrels of oil burned around the globe.</p> <p>The North American energy revival is primarily the result of so-called unconventional sources of energy — like shale oil and shale gas across the United States, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/o/oil_petroleum_and_gasoline/oil_sands/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">oil sands</a> in Canada and deepwater production in the Gulf of Mexico. In the last five years, the United States and Canada combined have become the fastest-growing sources of new oil supplies around the world, overtaking producers like Russia and Saudi Arabia.</p> <p>“The transformation unfolding in North America represents a potentially decisive shift in the history of energy,” Rex W. Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, who is not usually given to hyperbole, said in a speech in Houston last month.</p> <p>Ed Morse, head of global commodity research at Citigroup and a longtime energy analyst, says North America has the potential to become a “new Middle East.”</p> <p>“The reduced vulnerability of North America — and the world market — to oil price spikes also has deep consequences geopolitically, including the reduced strategic importance to the U.S. of changes in oil- and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/natural-gas/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">natural gas</a>-producing countries worldwide,” Mr. Morse said in a recent 92-page report called Energy 2020. ”Pressures towards isolationism in the U.S. will likely grow, with consequences for global stability that can only just begin to become understood.”</p> <p>“The only thing that could stop this is politics — environmentalists getting the upper hand over supply in the U.S., for instance,” the report said.</p> <p>The new supplies ensure that the United States will remain well entrenched in oil, but the continuing reliance on fossil fuels also carries significant environmental concerns — whether from the risk of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/o/offshore_drilling_and_exploration/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">offshore drilling</a>, or the hazards, many still unknown, of hydraulic fracturing. It also means that greenhouse gas emissions will most likely increase, at least until carbon emissions are capped or new technology to store carbon dioxide underground is developed.</p> <p>The glut of natural gas supplies cuts two ways on emissions. It has effectively put an end in the United States to any new investment in <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/coal/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">coal</a> plants, which produce much more emissions. But it also makes the economics of alternative, noncarbon energy sources like wind power or <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/solar_energy/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">solar power</a> difficult to justify without public support and subsidies.</p> <p>Regardless of the environmental impact, there is no guarantee that new supplies will inevitably lead to lower gasoline prices, as proponents of unfettered domestic drilling argue. Oil is a global commodity with a price set on the global market. With rising demand around the world, particularly in emerging economies, and instability in many oil-producing countries, many analysts predict global oil prices will remain volatile — and high — for many years to come.</p> <p>And with gasoline prices above $4 a gallon, the nation’s energy resources remain a polarizing topic, pitting Republicans against Democrats, environmentalists against oil companies, and conservationists against advocates of unfettered drilling.</p> <p>“It is remarkable how quickly perceptions have changed,” says Guy Caruso, the administrator of the United States Energy Information Administration from 2002 to 2008, who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We may be in the early stage of this transformation, and clearly things could still go wrong.”</p> <blockquote> <h5><img alt="" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/11/business/JP-DOMESTIC2/JP-DOMESTIC2-popup.jpg" width="356" height="238" /><em>A terminal in Maryland may export natural gas. Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times</em></h5> </blockquote> <p>Energy production is an inherently risky business, but recent history suggests that when resources are available they end up being developed.</p> <p>After the explosion of BP’s deepwater well two years ago in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the biggest <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/o/oil_spills/gulf_of_mexico_2010/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">oil spill</a> in American history, the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on offshore drilling. But it took only about a year for exploration and production to resume offshore.</p> <p>Cheaper energy costs — particularly for natural gas — would benefit a variety of domestic industries, like chemicals, pharmaceuticals and fertilizers. The rise in natural gas production has already led many utility companies to shift their electrical production away from coal; it also calls into question talk of a nuclear revival in the United States.</p> <p>Economists say that ample gas supplies might also provide the basis for a resurgence of American manufacturing, which has been battered by high energy costs for much of the last decade.</p> <p>Natural gas prices have fluctuated wildly in recent years, rising to $14 for a thousand cubic feet from $2 within a few years. The current glut, however, has driven prices back down again, to near $2 for a thousand cubic feet.</p> <p>With America becoming one of the top natural gas producers, some domestic companies might rethink moving parts of their business to countries with cheaper energy costs. (At current consumption rates, American gas reserves would last at least 75 years, an estimate some experts say is conservative.)</p> <p>Lower natural gas costs would also have cascading benefits to other commercial sectors, like retailing. Shipping costs may be lower, particularly if transportation companies shift their fleets to natural gas-powered or <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/electric_vehicles/index.html?&inline=nyt-classifier">electric vehicles</a>. FedEx, for instance, has already been adding clean energy trucks to its fleet, including hybrid and all-electric delivery trucks in cities like Chicago.</p> <p>Citigroup estimates that as many as 3.6 million new jobs might be created by 2020 thanks to the energy boom. The current trade deficit might fall by 60 percent by the end of the decade from today’s level, according to the bank’s estimates, and the dollar could appreciate by as much as 5.4 percent as imports shrink.</p> <p>“In a world of high energy prices, the potential economic activity generated by this wave of new hydrocarbon production is extraordinary and should strongly boost national output, increase incomes, create wealth, stimulate consumption and create jobs,” according to Citigroup.</p> <p>Given how swiftly expectations have shifted to describe America’s energy prospects, however, some caution may be warranted.</p> <p>Opposition from environmental groups and concerns about <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">climate change</a> — which is caused by increased carbon emissions from fossil fuels — could lead to tighter regulation of petroleum products or derail infrastructure projects like pipelines.</p> <p>That is what has happened to the extension of the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/k/keystone_pipeline/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">Keystone XL</a> Pipeline, which its supporters say is needed to increase the import of oil from Canada’s oil sands into the United States. That project has faced stiff opposition from environmental groups because oil sands are more energy-intensive and emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than traditional oil sources.</p> <p>The increased reliance on these unconventional oil sources, including oil sands and shale oil, has led some energy experts to talk about a “re-carbonization” of energy supplies if that reliance distracts from the need to develop renewable fuels.</p> <p>“As we run out of conventional fossil fuels, we face some fundamental choices,” said Dan Lashof, the climate program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Are we going to switch to cleaner energy sources, or are we going to switch to dirtier energy sources? That’s why the Keystone pipeline was so hard fought. It’s because we face a real fork in the road. And depending which way we go, solving our environmental problems might become impossible.”</p> <p>Environmental groups are also concerned about the effects on underground aquifers of hydraulic fracturing — in which water under high pressure is used to break apart shale rocks to release natural gas.</p> <p>While natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal when burned for electrical production, which has led producers to try to brand it as a “clean” energy source, it remains a fossil fuel that emits carbon into the atmosphere when burned. Because it is suddenly plentiful, and relatively cheap, doubts have been raised about future investments in renewable power sources that had been favored to replace coal.</p> <p>“Cheap natural gas has delivered significant near-term environmental benefits, but it clouds the outlook for renewable energy,” said Trevor Houser, a partner at the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm. “Without an extension of current tax credits or adoption of new pro-renewables policy, wind power and other renewable energy sources will have a tough time competing with natural gas in the years ahead.”</p> <p>Geologists have long known that shale basins across the country, like the Bakken field in North Dakota, Eagle Ford and Barnett in Texas, and the Marcellus in the Northeast, held tremendous oil and gas reserves. But energy companies had no economic way to collect them until new technology recently changed that.</p> <p>Production from the Bakken region alone has gone from negligible quantities to 500,000 barrels of oil a day in just a few years. Production at Eagle Ford produced just 787 barrels in 2004. Last year, its production reached 30.5 million barrels, according to state regulators, and it is still growing. <a href="http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/eagleford/index.php">Natural gas production there</a>went from nothing to 243 billion cubic feet in just three years.</p> <p>The <a href="http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/eagleford/index.php">National Petroleum Council</a>, an industry-led group that provides advice to the secretary of energy, recently outlined its view of how the nation’s larger-than-expected resource might be developed.</p> <p>In a major study released last year, the group forecast that North American oil production might exceed 20 million barrels a day by 2035 under a “high potential” situation of unfettered access.</p> <p>However, under a “limited” situation where production was constrained for a variety of environmental or political reasons, domestic supplies might fall to less than 10 million barrels a day.</p> <p>Some experts are more bullish. Mr. Morse of Citigroup forecast that North American oil production could reach an astounding 27 million barrels a day by 2020, almost twice the rate of production of 15 million barrels a day at the end of 2011. Production from the United States could grow to 15.6 million barrels a day by 2020, up from nine million barrels a day in 2011.</p> <p>If that trend continues, the growth in oil and natural gas supplies in the next decades could turn the United States into a top energy exporter, rivaling some members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Natural gas could be sold to Mexico and Canada (because exploiting oil sands is so energy-intensive, Canada might have to import natural gas to produce its oil). Refined petroleum products, and even crude oil, could find customers in Europe and Latin America. Coal could be exported to China.</p> <p>With less gasoline demand, the nation’s surplus refining capacity means the United States is already exporting petroleum products — like gasoline and diesel. The United States is now the top exporter of refined products, just ahead of Russia.</p> <p>The United States has been a net oil importer since the middle of the last century. America’s dependence on imports grew as the country’s consumption rose and domestic production dropped, and reached a peak in 2005. That year, domestic consumption of oil was about 21 million barrels of oil a day — a quarter of global oil demand. More than two-thirds of that was imported.</p> <p>But this was most likely the high-water mark for oil imports, at least in the foreseeable future. The nation’s oil consumption has since fallen by about three million barrels a day as consumers cut back on their gasoline use.</p> <p>Analysts say this trend is actually deep-seated, and is likely to continue. Americans are buying fewer cars, and they are driving shorter distances. The average distance traveled peaked at 12,500 miles a year in 2003, according to Citigroup, and could fall to 11,600 miles a year by 2020.</p> <p>At the same time, federal fuel-efficiency standards are being tightened. The Obama administration and automakers last year agreed to new fuel-efficiency targets, aiming to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency, or CAFE, standard to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, with the goal of saving 12 billion barrels of oil over the life of the program.</p> <p>Political attitudes, once hard and fast, are undergoing a transformation.</p> <p>“For 20 years, Democrats opposed opening public lands to oil production and Republicans opposed increases in fuel economy standards, but the run-up in oil prices shattered all that,” said Paul W. Bledsoe, a senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a research group in Washington. “The shift in politics was amazingly swift. As was the change in psychology, where the United States was viewed as an energy-depleted nation, to the view now of an energy-rich superpower.”</p> <p>The rise in <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/fuel_efficiency/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">fuel efficiency</a> in conventional vehicles, along with the growing popularity of hybrids, could also mean all-electric cars will struggle to gain much market share, according to a report released last year by the Boston Consulting Group.  In fact, the report found that by 2020, electric cars in the United States would account for a lower share of the market than in either China or the European Union, where they are likely to benefit from government support.</p> <p>Assessing falling American dependence on foreign oil, analysts with the financial firm Raymond James said imports fell from 65 percent of demand, or 13.5 million barrels a day, their peak in 2005, to 9.8 million barrels a day in 2011, or 52 percent of demand. They predicted that imports would keep falling, reaching 4.5 million barrels a day — or just a quarter of domestic oil demand — by 2015. By 2020, they forecast, the United States would not need to import foreign oil anymore.</p> <p>“The resulting savings from the standpoint of the trade deficit are highly meaningful,” the analysts said, “especially when the benefits of cheaper energy for domestic manufacturing are taken into account. Maybe the real question is, When will Washington apply to join <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/organization_of_petroleum_exporting_countries/index.html?inline=nyt-org">OPEC</a>?”</p> <p>While the question is provocative, the change in outlook for domestic supplies, along with the changed role of the United States in global energy markets, carries important economic and geopolitical lessons.</p> <p>Nationalism over natural resources in countries like Venezuela, Russia and much of the Middle East has increasingly forced Western oil companies to look for oil and gas closer to home. And exports are already shrinking for many OPEC producers as their own domestic demand soars — a result of energy subsidies that keep prices artificially low.</p> <p>It is still too early to get a clear sense of the political implications of this reduced reliance on oil from places like the Middle East. Four of the top five sources of foreign oil to the United States are already outside the Middle East — Canada, Nigeria, Venezuela and Mexico. The fifth is Saudi Arabia.</p> <p>James Brick, an energy analyst with Wood Mackenzie, a research firm, said in a recent report that by 2030 the United States could end up exporting 500 million tons of coal a year, 3.2 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas and 2.5 million barrels a day of oil products.</p> <p>“The United States will be playing a very different role on the energy markets, a much more international role and a much more complicated and sophisticated one,” said Mr. Brick. “As with any forecast there are uncertainties but no matter how you cut it, the United States has the resources in the ground.”</p> <h6><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html">© 2012</a> <a href="http://www.nytco.com/">The New York Times Company</a></h6> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-61462217528648393682012-04-13T07:05:00.001+07:002012-04-13T07:05:56.225+07:00Out of Africa (and Elsewhere): More Fossil Fuels<h4><em>The world’s largest energy companies have big plans for Mozambique</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/business/energy-environment/quest-for-new-fossil-fuels-goes-to-africa-and-beyond.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=climate+change&st=nyt">By MARK SCOTT | The New York Times | April 10, 2012</a></h5> <h5><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/11/business/WORLD/WORLD-popup.jpg" width="393" height="469" /><em>A rig near the village of Lesniowice in Poland, where Chevron has been exploring for shale gas. Kacper Pempel/Reuters</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>Until recently, the East African country was better known for its long civil war, and had few energy resources compared with regional heavy-hitters like Nigeria and Angola.</p> <p>But in the last 10 years, companies like Exxon Mobil, the BG Group of Britain and Eni of Italy have used the latest technologies, including advances in deep-sea drilling, to find new <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/natural-gas/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">natural gas</a> resources that are turning Mozambique into the center of an energy boom.</p> <p>Up and down the country’s shoreline, Western energy companies, as well as a number of Asian competitors, are drilling wells thousands of feet below the Indian Ocean in hopes of striking it rich. The rewards could be huge. Mozambique may have more deposits of natural gas — used in everything from manufacturing to electricity generation — than the European energy giant Norway.</p> <p>The East African country is not alone in its newfound energy wealth. Countries like Tanzania and Kenya also are attracting billions of dollars in investment from the world’s largest energy companies as they search for new <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/oil-petroleum-and-gasoline/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">oil</a> and gas reserves.</p> <p>“Africa will be the backbone of our production and growth in the next 10 years,” Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Italian energy giant Eni, told investors last month in London.</p> <p>In total, the Italian company expects to spend $50 billion to develop natural gas projects off the coast of Mozambique. While production may not start until the end of the decade, the energy firm has designated the new reserves for customers in fast-growing Asian markets like India and China.</p> <p>Other companies, including <a href="http://www.anadarko.com/Operations/Pages/LNGproject.aspx">Anadarko Petroleum</a> of Texas, also have multibillion-dollar plans for such new African oil and gas finds. Most, too, expect to sell the energy to emerging economies hungry to drive domestic growth.</p> <p>The quickening pace of exploration in East Africa is part of a wider shake-up in the global energy industry as it scrambles to adapt to a series of major changes. Those range from the nuclear disaster in Japan last year, to slashed subsidies for alternative energy amid Europe’s economic crisis, to a boom in unconventional fossil fuels like shale gas that has spread across continents.</p> <p>The changes have been particularly drastic in fast-growing China, now the world’s largest energy user and emitter of carbon dioxide. Since opening its economy over three decades ago, the Asian giant has become an insatiable consumer of natural resources. The country still relies predominantly on dirty <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/coal/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">coal</a> for its electricity, but has fast-tracked oil production, as well as newer technologies like shale gas, and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hydroelectric_power/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">hydroelectric</a> and wind power, to maintain its high levels of domestic growth.</p> <p>With demand from emerging economies continuing apace, the quest for new fossil fuels is opening up unexplored territories for production. That may help to offset the effect of rising oil prices, which have reached almost record highs.</p> <p>“The demand from billions of people worldwide to consume energy isn’t slowing down,” said Adi Karev, the global head of the oil and gas practice at the consultancy Deloitte in Hong Kong. “Companies’ ability to find new energy reserves, especially in remote locations, is altering the global market.”</p> <p>The opportunities are welcome in more ways than one. The new discoveries, including the so-called tar sands of Canada, are allowing Western companies like Royal Dutch Shell and BP to diversify and safeguard future production. State-owned firms like Sinopec of China and Gazprom of Russia have slowly taken over production of their domestic reserves, leaving them in control of roughly 85 percent of the world’s oil resources, according to the Energy Information Administration.</p> <p>The discoveries also are helping countries from the United States to Romania to decrease their dependence on foreign energy imports as well as generate tax revenue and employment.</p> <p>Poland presents a case in point. Since 2009, <a href="http://www.chevron.com/countries/poland/">Chevron and other Western energy giants have been exploring there for shale gas</a>, using many of the techniques pioneered in the United States. The new energy resources could have a major effect on Poland, which currently imports more than 80 percent of its natural gas from Russia, its once dominant neighbor. The potential reserves may provide Poland with enough gas for more than 50 years, according to the country’s national geological institute.</p> <p>“There’s a real desire in Poland to build their own natural gas supplies,” said Ian MacDonald, Chevron’s general manager for business development and transportation. “They recognize that there’s a national interest.”</p> <p>So far, the American energy company has been drilling test wells to figure out how much shale gas can be extracted. Chevron has permits to explore more than one million acres in the southeast of Poland. It expects to have a clear picture of the potential size of the region’s energy reserves by the end of next year.</p> <p>All may not go smoothly. Europe’s shale gas industry is not as developed as that of the United States, so finding the right drilling equipment and qualified work force could limit production.</p> <p>Public perception may prove a problem, too. This year, Bulgaria canceled drilling permits for Chevron, and banned the controversial drilling technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which some environmental advocates have linked to the contamination of drinking water. France also prohibited the technique last year.</p> <p>“We’re working with governments and communities to explain what we’re doing,” Mr. MacDonald said. “Shale gas has the potential to be an enormous economic benefit.”</p> <p>The emerging fossil fuel renaissance, however, has not been good news for every energy company. In the alternative sector, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/wind_power/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">wind farms</a> and solar panels now find it that much harder to compete against fossil fuels, given the new oil and gas discoveries. Analysts say electricity from wind farms located off the coasts of Britain and Germany, for example, may cost six times as much compared with power plants that burn coal or natural gas.</p> <p>Cutbacks in government subsidies for renewable energy, particularly in European countries struggling from the Continent’s <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/european_sovereign_debt_crisis/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">sovereign debt crisis</a>, also are taking a toll. Western companies, including Vestas of Denmark and Q.Cells of Germany, already face tough competition from Asian rivals. Now, cash-poor countries are paring back price guarantees and canceling tax credits for green energy projects.</p> <p>“The financial crisis has turned off the government tap for renewables investment,” said Ronan O’Regan, director of renewables and clean technology at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London.</p> <p>The changing economics are forcing green energy companies to adapt. Faced with falling global prices for wind turbines and solar panels, analysts expect the industry’s largest manufacturers to buy, or merge with, rivals, as they look to strengthen their market positions. Deals are already taking place. Last year, takeovers in the world’s renewables industry totaled $53.5 billion, a 40 percent increase over 2010, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.</p> <p>Others are looking for cash-rich investors. In a bizarre twist, traditional oil and gas companies may come to the rescue of many green energy projects. With decades of experience developing resources out at sea, traditional energy companies are focusing their attention on multibillion-dollar plans to build wind farms off the coast of Europe and North America. Over the last 18 months, for example, the Spanish oil company Repsol and its Norwegian rival Statoil have announced investments in offshore wind projects across Northern Europe.</p> <p>Interest in nuclear power also has waned after last year’s disaster involving the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Before the accident, there were 440 reactors in operation worldwide, with a further 558 plants either under construction or on the drawing board, according to the consultant Capgemini.</p> <p>Now Japan has shut almost all of its nuclear reactors, and countries like Germany and Italy have either announced plans to close their remaining plants or canceled efforts to build new facilities. Asian countries are building the largest number of new nuclear power plants, though analysts say the pace of construction has slowed by almost a quarter in the last 12 months.</p> <p>“The development of new plants has slowed down, but India and China remain committed to building new nuclear capacity,” said Colette Lewiner, Capgemini’s global head of utilities, energy and chemicals in Paris.</p> <p>With the outlook dimming for low-carbon energy sources like nuclear power and renewables, there are growing concerns that efforts to curb global greenhouse gas emissions will fail as countries look to exploit new sources of fossil fuels.</p> <p>Levels of carbon dioxide, for example, rose 5.9 percent in 2010, the latest figures available, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists that tracks the numbers. The increase came despite a slowdown in global manufacturing, as many of the world’s largest economies struggled because of the financial crisis.</p> <p>With many countries expected to return to growth, the use of fossil fuels — and the resulting emissions — are expected to rise.</p> <p>“Finding new deposits doesn’t change the climate constraints facing the world,” said Dan Lashof, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. “We can’t continue to indefinitely burn fossil fuels.”</p> <h6><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html">© 2012</a> <a href="http://www.nytco.com/">The New York Times Company</a></h6> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-62617048600086324412012-04-11T07:40:00.001+07:002012-04-11T07:40:46.083+07:00Capital, Debt, and Alchemy<h4><em>“Capital,” said Nobel chemist and pioneer ecological economist Frederick Soddy,”merely means unearned income divided by the rate of interest and multiplied by 100.” (Cartesian Economics, p. 27)</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://steadystate.org/capital-debt-and-alchemy/">by Herman Daly | CASSE | Apr 9 2012</a></h5> <a name='more'></a> <p>He further explained that, “Although it may comfort the lender to think that his wealth still exists somewhere in the form of “capital,” it has been or is being used up by the borrower either in consumption or investment, and no more than food or fuel can it be used again later. Rather it has become debt, an indent on future revenues…”</p> <p>In other words capital in the financial sense is the <em>perennial</em> net revenue stream <em>expected</em> from the project financed, divided by the <em>assumed</em> rate of interest and multiplied by 100. Rather than magic growth-producing real stuff, it is a hypothetical calculation of the present value of a permanent lien on the future real production of the economy. The fact that the lien can be traded among individuals for real wealth in the present does not change the fact that it is still a lien against the future revenue of society — in a word it is a debt that the future must pay, no matter who owns it or how often it is traded as an asset in the present.</p> <p>Soddy believed that the ruling passion of our age is to convert wealth into debt in order to derive a permanent future income from it — to convert wealth that perishes into debt that endures, debt that does not rot or rust, costs nothing to maintain, and brings in perennial “unearned income,” as both IRS accountants and Marxists accurately call it. No individual could amass the physical requirements sufficient for maintenance during old age, for like manna it would spoil if accumulated much beyond current need. Therefore one must convert one’s non-storable current surplus into a lien on future revenue by letting others consume and invest one’s surplus now in exchange for the right to share in the expected future revenue. But future real physical revenue simply cannot grow as fast as symbolic monetary debt! In Soddy’s words:</p> <blockquote> <p>You cannot permanently pit an absurd human convention, such as the spontaneous increment of debt [compound interest], against the natural law of the spontaneous decrement of wealth [entropy]. (<em>Cartesian Economics</em>, p. 30)</p> </blockquote> <p>In case that is a too abstract statement of a too general principle, Soddy gave a simple example. Minus two pigs (debt) is a mathematical quantity having no physical existence, and the population of negative pigs can grow without limit. Plus two pigs (wealth) is a physical quantity, and their population growth is limited by the need to feed the pigs, dispose of their waste, find space for them, etc. Both may grow at a given x% for a while, but before long the population of negative pigs will greatly outnumber that of the positive pigs, because the population of positive pigs is limited by the physical constraints of a finite and entropic world. The value of a negative pig will fall to a small fraction of the value of a positive pig. Owners of negative pigs will be greatly disappointed and angered when they try to exchange them for positive pigs. In today’s terms, instead of negative pigs, think “unfunded pension liabilities” or “sub-prime mortgages.”</p> <p>Soddy went on to speculate about how historically we came to confuse wealth with debt:</p> <blockquote> <p>Because formerly ownership of land — which, with the sunshine that falls on it, provides a revenue of wealth — secured, in the form of rent, a share in the annual harvest without labor or service, upon which a cultured and leisured class could permanently establish itself, the age seems to have conceived the preposterous notion that money, which can buy land, must therefore itself have the same revenue-producing power.</p> </blockquote> <p>The ancient alchemists wanted to transmute corrosion-prone base metals into permanent, non-corruptible, time-resistant gold. Modern economic alchemists want to convert spoiling, rusting, and depleting wealth into a magic substance better than gold — not only does it resist corrosion, but it grows — by some mysterious principle the alchemists referred to as the “vegetative property of metals.” The modern alchemical philosopher’s stone, known as “capital” or “debt,” is not only free from the ravages of time and entropy, but embodies the alchemists’ long-sought-for principle of vegetative growth of metals. But once we replace alchemy with chemistry we find that the idea that future people can live off the interest of their mutual indebtedness is just another perpetual motion delusion.</p> <p>The exponentially growing indent of debt on future real revenue will, in a finite and entropic world, become greater than future producers are either willing or able to transfer to owners of the debt. Debt will be repudiated either by inflation, bankruptcy, or confiscation, likely leading to serious violence. This prospect of violence especially bothered Soddy because, as the discoverer of the existence of isotopes, he had contributed substantially to the theory of atomic structure that made atomic energy feasible. He predicted in 1926 that the first fruit of this discovery would be a bomb of unprecedented power. He lived to see his prediction come true. Removing the economic causes of conflict therefore became for him a kind of redeeming priority.</p> <p>Economists have ignored Soddy for eighty years — after all, he only got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, not the more alchemical “Swedish Riksbank Memorial Prize for Economics in Honor of Alfred Nobel.”</p> <p><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; display: inline; float: left" alt="Creative Commons License" align="left" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a></p> <h6>CASSE Web Materials by <a href="http://www.steadystate.org/">CASSE</a> are licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License</a></h6> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-84590564535632368172012-04-11T07:32:00.001+07:002012-04-11T07:32:42.783+07:00Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere Absent A Carbon Price AND Strong Standards To Reduce Methane Leakage<h4><em>A new journal article finds that methane leakage greatly undercuts or eliminates entirely the climate benefit of a switch to natural gas. The authors of “</em><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/04/02/1202407109.full.pdf+html"><em>Greater Focus Needed on Methane Leakage from Natural Gas Infrastructure</em></a><em>“ conclude that “it appears that current leakage rates are higher than previously thought” and “<strong>Reductions in CH4 Leakage Are Needed to Maximize the Climate Benefits of Natural Gas</strong>”</em></h4> <h5>By <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/author/joe/">Joe Romm</a> | <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/09/460384/natural-gas-is-a-bridge-to-nowhere-absent-a-carbon-price-and-strong-standards-to-reduce-methane-leakage/?mobile=nc">Climate Progress | Apr 9, 2012</a></h5> <h5><img title="bridge-to-nowhere-flickr-walter-disney" alt="" src="http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/bridge-to-nowhere-flickr-walter-disney.jpg?w=236&h=315" width="393" height="514" /><em>Photo by Walter Disney</em></h5> <a name='more'></a> <h5><em></em></h5> <p>Natural gas is <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/04/13/207884/natural-gas-is-mostly-methane/">mostly methane</a> – a very potent greenhouse gas, though with a much shorter lifetime in the atmosphere than CO2, which is emitted by burning fossil fuels like natural gas. Recent studies suggest a very high global warming potential (GWP) for CH4 vs CO2, particularly over a 20-year time frame.</p> <p>The new <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em> study introduces the idea of “technology warming potentials” (TWPs) to reveal “reveal time-dependent tradeoffs inherent in a choice between alternative technologies.” In this new approach the potent warming effect of methane emissions undercuts the value of fuel switching in the next few decades, exactly the timeframe we need to reverse the warming trend if we are to have any chance at <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/01/379675/nature-climate-experts-thawing-permafrost-warming-of-deforestation/">triggering amplifying feedbacks</a> and <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/28/330109/science-of-global-warming-impacts/">preventing multiple catastrophes</a>.</p> <p>For instance, the new study finds that a big switch from coal to gas would only reduce TWP by about 25% over the first three decades — far different than the typical statement that you get a 50% drop in CO2 emissions from the switch.</p> <p>Note that the conclusion above is based on “EPA’s latest estimate of the amount of CH4 released because of leaks and venting in the natural gas network between production wells and the local distribution network” of 2.4%.</p> <p>Many experts believe the leakage rate is higher than 2.4%, particularly for the fastest growing new source of gas — hydraulic fracturing. Also, recent <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/08/421588/high-methane-emissions-measured-over-gas-field-offset-climate-benefits-of-natural-gasquot/">air sampling by NOAA over Colorado</a>found 4% methane leakage, more than double industry claims.  The study notes:</p> <blockquote> <p>We emphasize that our calculations assume an average leakage rate for the entire U.S. natural gas supply (as well for coal mining). Much work needs to be done to determine actual emis- sions with certainty and to accurately characterize the site-to-site variability in emissions. However, given limited current evidence, <strong>it is likely that leakage at individual natural gas well sites is high enough, when combined with leakage from downstream operations, to make the total leakage exceed the 3.2% threshold beyond which gas becomes worse for the climate than coal for at least some period of time.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>In short until we have far more actual data showing low leakage rates — or regulations to ensure low leakage rates — it is hard to claim that switching from coal to gas plants has a substantial warming benefit in the near-term (that is especially true for reasons I’ll touch on below).  It’s even harder to claim that simply shoving massive amounts of natural gas into the energy supply system is a good idea at all, given that some of it would inevitably replace new renewables — and  if even a small fraction of new gas plants replace renewables, that eliminates any warming benefit that  switching from coal to gas might have.</p> <p>I had previously argued that you need a rising carbon price to ensure that any new natural gas plants replace coal and not renewables (see <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/24/407765/natural-gas-is-a-bridge-to-nowhere-price-for-global-warming-pollution/">here</a>). Indeed, I first made that argument three years ago — see “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/06/10/204220/game-changer-part-2-why-unconventional-natural-gas-makes-the-2020-waxman-markey-target-so-damn-easy-and-cheap-to-meet/">Why unconventional natural gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet</a>.”</p> <p>But now it’s increasingly clear that a carbon price alone doesn’t address the full problem. You are going to need enforceable national standards to bring the leakage rate way down. Such standards could in fact be a very quick way to reduce the rate of global warming.</p> <p>Indeed, the other shocker in this study is how bad natural gas vehicles (NGVs) are for the climate. In particular, many are trying to pass legislation for switching heavy duty diesel vehicles to natural gas. The study concludes that such a switch sharply <em>increases</em> Technology Warming Potential for many decades, and no one alive today would ever see a climate benefit from that switch.</p> <p>This new research, coauthored by two EDF scientists as well as other leading scientists, appears to have led EDF to strongly oppose NGVs. As the <em>National Journal</em> <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/energy-week-2012/push-for-natural-gas-vehicles-opposed-by-both-environmentalists-deficit-hawks-20120308?mrefid=freehplead_2">reported</a> last month:</p> <blockquote> <p>“The president has proposed we switch trucks to natural gas, and <strong>I’m here to tell you today that every truck we switch to natural gas damages the atmosphere</strong>,” Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said at the IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates annual conference here. Krupp said the little data available about how much methane — a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide — escapes during the production of shale natural gas compels him to refuse to support a shift toward more natural-gas vehicles.</p> <p>“<strong>We’re against what the president called for in the State of the Union until they [the natural-gas industry] can demonstrate they can get the leak rate down below 1 percent</strong>,” Krupp added. The Environmental Defense Fund’s opposition to the proposal is notable; it is one of the only environmental groups willing to work with industry on the concerns surrounding shale natural gas, which has been discovered in vast amounts all over the country in the past few years.</p> </blockquote> <p>The problem for NGVs, as study coauthor and EDF chief scientist Steven Hamburg explained to me, is that the extra steps involved in using natural gas as a transport fuel — including fueling and onboard storage, <em>increases</em> the system leakage rate significantly. And these leaks are probably much harder to address. So the possibility that, say, the entire leakage rate for the heavy-duty vehicle infrastructure, from fracking to fueling, could ever be brought down to below 1% is pretty darn small.</p> <h4>BRIDGE TO NOWHERE</h4> <p>The concept of natural gas as a “bridge fuel” was pushed by the American Gas Association as <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/24/407765/natural-gas-is-a-bridge-to-nowhere-price-for-global-warming-pollution/">far back as 1981</a>. It’s the longest bridge in history!  Heck, the Golden Gate Bridge only took 4 years to build!</p> <p>But the window where gas can be a major bridge fuel to a world with a livable climate appears to be almost completely closed, now. Had we acted back in the 1980s or even 1990s as climate scientists and world leaders had been urging, then, yes, an expansion of gas use might have made sense.</p> <p>The fact that natural gas is now a bridge fuel to nowhere was first shown by the International Energy Agency in its big June report on gas — see <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/07/238578/iea-golden-age-of-natural-gas-scenario-warming-climate-change/">I</a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/07/238578/iea-golden-age-of-natural-gas-scenario-warming-climate-change/">EA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change</a>. The IEA’s well-named GAG scenario assumes that not only does oil  production peak in 2020 — <strong>but so does coal!</strong></p> <p>Remember, warming beyond 6°F (3.5°C) is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e.  4°C [7F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level),” according to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain (see <a href="http://137.205.102.156/Ms%20S%20J%20Pain/20111124/Kevin_Anderson_-_Flash_%28Medium%29_-_20111124_05.26.31PM.html">here</a>). We would be self-destructively irrational to risk even 5°F warming.</p> <p>If your goal is a livable climate, we need to transition off of <strong>all</strong> fossil fuels ASAP.</p> <p>September saw the publication of a remarkable <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/09/315845/natural-gas-switching-from-coal-to-gas-increases-warming-for-decades/">study</a> by Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which concluded:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>In summary, our results show that the substitution of gas for coal as an energy source results in <em>increased</em> rather than decreased global warming for many decades</strong>.</p> </blockquote> <p>What NCAR’s new study added was more detailed modeling of all contributors to climate change from fossil fuel combustion — positive and negative.  Reducing coal use reduces sulfate aerosols that have a short-term cooling effect.</p> <p>The new study does not consider the potential drop in sulfate aerosols from switching off coal. It discusses Wigley’s work and argues that he overestimated the impact. But it seems likely that a significant impact remains and further undercuts the benefit of a major switch from coal to gas.</p> <p>Analyzing the switch from coal to gas is certainly complicated. I’ve discussed it at length with coauthor Steven Hamburg. And I’ve run this new study by climatologist Ken Caldeira, who stands by his approach that finds basically no benefit in the switch whatsoever — see <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/01/428764/ddrop-in-warming-requires-rapid-massive-deployment039-of-zero-carbon-power-not-gas/">You Can’t Slow Projected Warming With Gas, You Need ‘Rapid and Massive Deployment’ of Zero-Carbon Power</a>.  Caldeira certainly supports efforts to reduce methane leakage, but as he has said before, “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/12/442484/ken-caldeira-natural-gas-is-bridge-to-a-world-with-high-co2-levels-deployment-is-to-rampd-as-elephant-to-mouse/">Natural Gas Is ‘A Bridge To A World With High CO2 Levels’</a>.” I cannot do justice to his comments on this study by excerpting them, so I’ll post them in full tomorrow.</p> <p>Doing in situ studies of actual methane leakage under different conditions is valuable. It’s great that groups like EDF are working with industry to get a better grip on this.</p> <p>Cutting methane leakage sharply makes a lot of sense, but, realistically, it is all but certain to require federal standards that the industry will oppose. And who precisely is going to achieve such standards globally as the technology for fracking is exported around the world?</p> <p>Building lots of new gas plants simply doesn’t make much sense since we need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the rate of growth of warming in the next few decades if we’re to have any chance to avoid catastrophic global warming.  We only want an outcome, which doesn’t exist yet, where natural gas only replaces coal. We don’t want new gas plants to displace new renewables, like solar and wind — since that would negate what little benefit switching from coal to gas might bring. <strong>That requires a carbon price.</strong></p> <p>So the only scenario I can see in which more gas makes sense is the one I laid out <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/06/10/204220/game-changer-part-2-why-unconventional-natural-gas-makes-the-2020-waxman-markey-target-so-damn-easy-and-cheap-to-meet/">3 years ago</a>.  We have a rising price for carbon. We have a short-term transition — lasting to about 2020 — to fill the existing underutilized gas-fired capacity and replace coal cheaply.</p> <p>In this scenario, very few new natural gas plants are built. And, of course, during this time we still push hard on efficiency and all forms of renewables to keep bringing them rapidly down the cost curve. Post-2020 it needs to be pretty much all carbon-free power.</p> <p>What this new study adds is that even this approach doesn’t make much sense without an additional effort to cut methane leaks sharply.</p> <p><strong>BOTTOM LINE</strong>:  If you want to have a serious chance at averting catastrophic global warming, then we need to start phasing out all fossil fuels as soon as possible.  Natural gas isn’t a true bridge fuel from a climate perspective. Carbon-free power is the bridge fuel until we can figure out how to go carbon negative on a large scale by the end of the century.</p> <h6>© 2005-2011 Center for American Progress Action Fund</h6> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19459066.post-23856175627987618842012-04-11T07:26:00.000+07:002012-04-11T07:27:00.802+07:00The inconvenient truth of carbon offsets<h4><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/the-inconvenient-truth-of-carbon-offsets-1.10373#auth-1"><em>Kevin Anderson</em></a><em> explains why he refused to purchase a carbon offset, and why you should steer clear of them too</em></h4> <h5><a href="http://www.nature.com/news/the-inconvenient-truth-of-carbon-offsets-1.10373">Nature | 04 April 2012</a></h5> <a name='more'></a> <p>Planet Under Pressure was a major conference on the environment held in London last week. As a climate-change scientist, I was invited to organize a session at it and to present my group's research. I declined the offer, and here is why.</p> <p>The organizers of the conference said that the event would be “as close to carbon neutral as possible”. There are good ways to achieve this noble goal: virtual engagement such as video conferencing, advice on lower-carbon travel options, and innovative registration tariffs to reward lower-carbon involvement. But, instead, the organizers chose a series of carbon-offset projects financed through a compulsory £35 (US$56) fee levied on all delegates.</p> <p>This was unacceptable to me. Offsetting is worse than doing nothing. It is without scientific legitimacy, is dangerously misleading and almost certainly contributes to a net increase in the absolute rate of global emissions growth.</p> <p>It is true that the projects funded through these and other offsets can help development. And a rise in emissions from industrializing nations is, in the short term, a good indicator of rising prosperity and should be welcomed.</p> <p>My objection to offsetting and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) — the state-sanctioned version that operates under the Kyoto Protocol — is directed at the claims that they reduce emissions to levels at or below those that would have transpired had the activity being offset not occurred. That spurious argument neglects the various possible impacts of an offset and the repercussions of these for emissions in the longer term.</p> <p>The science underpinning climate change makes clear that the temperature rise by around the end of this century will relate to the total emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases between 2000 and 2100. Consequently, when considering our impact, we have to look at the total sum of our emissions released in that time; offset projects must be measured over that period. There is no point in reducing emissions by 1 tonne in the short run if the knock-on impact is 2 tonnes emitted in 2020 or even 1.5 tonnes in, say, 2050. The implications of this for the concept of offsetting and the CDM are profound.</p> <p>“Carbon offsetting is without scientific legitimacy and is dangerously misleading.”</p> <p>For example, if I fly to a climate conference, any claim to offset my emissions must, with a reasonable level of certainty and for a 100-year period, show that the flight emissions plus any emission consequences of the offset projects ultimately sum to zero. It is the immutable impossibility of making such long-term assurances that fundamentally challenges the value of such a claim. Worse still, in a world with rising economic prosperity (fuelled mainly by coal, oil and gas), there is a high probability that offsetting projects contributing to prosperity will increase emissions over and above those arising solely from the activity being offset.</p> <p>The promise of offsetting triggers a rebound away from meaningful mitigation and towards the development of further high-carbon infrastructures. The UK government's purchase of offsets through the CDM and its simultaneous drive towards both additional airport capacity and the exploitation of UK shale-gas reserves are just two such examples. If offsetting is deemed to have equivalence with mitigation, the incentive to move to lower-carbon technologies, behaviours and practices is reduced accordingly.</p> <p>Offsetting, on all scales, weakens present-day drivers for change and reduces innovation towards a lower-carbon future. It militates against market signals to improve low-carbon travel and video-conference technologies, while encouraging investment in capital-intensive airports and new aircraft, along with roads, ports and fossil-fuel power stations.</p> <p>For an offset project to be genuinely low-carbon, it must guarantee that it does not stimulate further emissions over the subsequent century. Although standards and legislation around offsetting and the CDM sometimes consider 'carbon leakage' in the projects' early years, it is impossible to quantify with any meaningful level of certainty over the timeframes that matter. To do so would presume powers of prediction that could have foreseen the Internet and low-cost airlines following from Marconi's 1901 telegraph and the Wright brothers' 1903 maiden flight.</p> <p>Assume I broke my (self-imposed) seven-year refusal to fly, paid my £35 offset and boarded a plane from Manchester to London for the conference. In doing so, I add to the already severe congestion at airports, causing delays and allowing politicians to argue for greater airport capacity, arguments only reinforced by the rise in passengers turning to offsets. To meet increasing demand, airlines are encouraged to order new aircraft, which they promise will be more efficient. Feeling pressure, a future government approves new runways, but the extra flights and emissions swamp efficiency gains from the cleaner engines.</p> <p>Meanwhile, in an Indian village where my offset money has helped to fund a wind turbine, the villagers now have the (low-carbon) electricity to watch television, which provides advertisers of a petrol-fuelled moped with more viewers, and customers. A fuel depot follows, to meet the new demand, and encourages others to invest in old trucks to transport goods between villages. Within 30 years, the village and surroundings have new roads and many more petrol-fuelled mopeds, cars and trucks. Meanwhile, the emissions from my original flight are still having a warming impact, and will do for another 100 years or so.</p> <p>Where is the offset in that?</p> <h6><a href="http://www.nature.com/info/copyright_statement.html">© 2012 Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved</a></h6> <div class="blogger-post-footer">Boiling Spot is a news & thoughts aggregator on world's catastrophes</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0