COUNTRIES DISCUSS POSSIBLE UN-BACKED INTERGOVERNMENTAL BODY TO TACKLE BIODIVERSITY.

The possibility of establishing a United Nations-supported scientific intergovernmental body to address biodiversity loss and protect ecosystems is being discussed at a global conference which kicked off in Putraya,Malaysia, today.

Representatives from governments worldwide are in Putrajaya, near the capital Kuala Lumpur, for three days to discuss creating a body similar to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was set up in 1988 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The IPCC has validated the science of climate change and has impelled an international response to global warming, UNEP notes in a press release.  A similar impetus may help to reverse the decline of the Earth’s natural assets and spur political action.

The proposed Intergovernmental Platform or Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)  - could trigger debate, encourage the formation of appropriate policies and elevate the issue in the global consciousness.

“Global GDP has more than doubled in the past quarter century. In contrast, 60 per cent of the world’s ecosystems have been degraded or are being used in an unsustainable manner,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director.

Treaties including the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on Migratory Species have tried to address these challenges, but have not been able to match the pace of degradation and decline.

“There is clearly a mismatch between the reality in terms of the science and the economics and the actual global international response, which is plainly failing to make a sustained and transformational difference,” Mr. Steiner said.

IOM Press Briefing Notes
Friday 5 September 2008

INDONESIA – Religious Teachers Carry Ramadan Message of Community Policing to Aceh - IOM is working with the Ar-Raniry State Islamic Institute and the Aceh Provincial Police (Polda NAD) through the Holy month of Ramadhan to promote community policing in the Indonesia’s northernmost province through the use of Islamic cultural values unique to the area.

The 15-day Safari Kemitraan Ramadhan (Ramadhan Partnership Road show), which kicks off today, is funded by the European Commission and the Royal Netherlands Embassy, and aims to inform villagers about the value of community policing using religious messages.

IOM is providing logistical support, transport and printed materials for the team of religious teachers from the Institute and police officers implementing the scheme.

“Communities in Aceh will benefit from all the positive values embodied in community policing. The roadshow will help to endorse the program and will be an effective tool to build partnerships with Acehnese across the province,” says Dr. Abdul Rani, Msi, a professor of Ar-Raniry.

Located at the northernmost tip of the island of Sumatra, Aceh is also known colloquially as Mecca’s Veranda. For hundreds of years it served as the final port of call for pilgrims making the long sea voyage from Indonesia, the most populous Moslem nation on earth, to Mecca. It is the most devout area in Indonesia, and proud of its Islamic heritage.

Aceh Senior Police Commissioner Setyanto says he supports the use of a culturally sensitive approach to informing a public that is deeply suspicious of the police. Aceh was the scene of a violent, decades-long separatist conflict that drew to a close in 2005, with the signing of a peace agreement between rebels and the central government.

{As it happens, Aceh is also home of large oil fields with international oil companies having had involvement here. Aceh once was sponsored from the outside in its attempt of becoming independent from Indonesia - thus the announcement and the backing are quite interesting.}

IOM is in the midst of a two year programme to training more than 7,200 of the roughly 9,200 police officers in Aceh in community policing and human rights. The trainings aim to reduce conflict and underpin a return to peace and security in the province.

For further information, please contact Jihan Labetubun at IOM Jakarta. Tel. +62 8111907028. Email:  jlabetubun at iom.int

D8 summit calls for halt to biofuels.
By John Aglionby in Kuala Lumpur for The Financial Times,  July 8 2008.

The world should halt the development of biofuel crops on arable land and instead boost agricultural production to solve the global food crisis and prevent “disaster”, the Malaysian and Indonesian leaders warned on Tuesday at the opening of a developing countries summit.

Abdullah Badawi, the Malaysian prime minister, said the use of arable land for biofuels “should be stopped because such action will deepen the global food scarcity and further drive up food prices”. “We must not allow the zeal for energy security to come into direct conflict with the basic need for food production,” he told the Developing Eight summit in Kuala Lumpur.

The D8 comprises Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey. All are prominent members of the Organisaton of the Islamic Conference.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president, blamed “some developed countries” for exacerbating the food crisis by allowing biofuel development on arable land.

“The idea is to reduce greenhouse gases and to wean themselves away from dependence on fossil fuels,” he said in his speech. “It is not a good idea: it has only worsened the global food crisis.”

The leaders’ statements join a growing consensus that biofuel production has contributed more to soaring food prices than was thought to be the case until a few months ago.

On Monday Britain hinted it might reassess its biofuel targets after a review by a former Environment Agency chief indicated that while there is probably enough land to meet agricultural needs until 2020, biofuels had contributed to rising food prices. The World Bank has expressed similar sentiments to the British report.

Mr Yudhoyono predicted there would be “no quick fix” to the crisis.

“But we must act on it at once and in concert,” he said. “To delay concerted action on this great challenge of our time is to court disaster.”

The president is now en route to Japan to meet with the G8 leaders on Wednesday. Indonesian officials said he would urge the G8 members to “share the burden” endured by developing countries in the face of soaring oil and food prices.

Both Mr Badawi and Mr Yudhoyono stressed the need to find ways to boost agricultural production. Neither, however, mentioned whether they would halt, let alone reverse, their planned expansions of oil palm plantations.

Indonesia and Malaysia are, respectively, the world’s largest and second largest producers of palm oil, which is becoming increasingly popular as a biofuel.

Much of the development, particularly in Indonesia, has come at the expense of vast swathes of rainforest, which is widely considered to exacerbate climate change.

Mr Badawi also took aim at the oil futures market, suggesting the international community “examine how [it] might be organised to assist in stabilising [oil] prices.”

He said the summit should send a united message on how to confront the oil and food price crises. Analysts believe the D8 will struggle to reach consensus on what to do about high oil prices because it comprises both significant oil producers and consumers.

The summit is also expected to approve a roadmap to strengthen cooperation between D8 members, particularly on intra-member trade. The aim is to boost this from the current figure of $60bn to $517.5bn within a decade.

World Economic Forum: “Dire Situations Call for Bold Measures.”

The World Economic Forum on East Asia wrapped up this week with Ahn Ho-Young, South Korea’s Deput  Minister for Trade, saying it was dominated by “the three F’s”: food, fuel and finance.

A forum survey of the 55 business leaders who attended the two-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, showed that an overwhelming 81% voted for “addressing growing global concern over environmental challenges such as climate change and water” as the top issue facing Asia.

Also of concern were “preventing political and economic instability linked to rising food and energy prices” and “managing the social, environmental and infrastructural implications of rapid urbanization.”
The survey also revealed that the price of rice had more than tripled in Thailand since January. During the same time, diesel prices have risen over 26% in Vietnam.
Water is another issue rising to the fore, with Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of the Board, Nestle, Switzerland, repeating his dire warning: “We will be running out of water long before we run out of oil.”

He lamented that more of the world’s GDP was not being allocated to water: “One out of every five children is dying every 20 seconds because we haven’t been able to solve the problem of clean water today.”

Mr. Ho-Young (South Korea)  urged Asia to do three things: “First, it is important for Asian countries to maintain their open market policies which will enable us to maintain the momentum of economic growth,” he said. Second, he urged Asian countries to pay more attention to the economic and social impacts imposed by the global economic uncertainties. Third, “Asian countries should and must play a more active role in solving global issues,” he said (Xinhua).
In his opening remarks, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah bin Ahmad Badawi referred to fundamental questions, primary assumptions, and revered assumptions, that had to be reviewed and re-evaluated. “Unless we are prepared to address these questions sincerely and take necessary remedial measures,” he said, “our economies and the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people will continue to be vulnerable. Dire situations call for bold measures” (The Toronto Star).

East Asia (generally consisting of Japan, North and South Korea, China, Taiwan, with Vietnam and Singapore) has come to the realization that it is now in a position to react positively, with the best interests of the region in mind, to the world’s economic challenges.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Testing times for Malaysia.

By J. PRAKASH, For the The Japan Times.
SINGAPORE — The man who once gave lectures to the West and its leaders is back again regaling his captive Malaysian audience with his trademark rhetoric.

Those who have crossed swords with former Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohammad and are familiar with his unconventional combative style can attest that those confrontations, as unpleasant as they may have been, also had the unintended consequence of canonizing the man within his nation.

No better understanding of Mahathir and his methods is better enunciated than the insights he gives in a critique he wrote for TIME magazine in 1999 where he extolled the virtues of unorthodoxy.

As interesting and refreshing as the article was, its defense of his globally unpopular decision to impose capital controls to staunch the flow of funds out of Malaysia at the height of the Asian financial crisis in 1998 revealed within its subtext a man unafraid to defy conventions and willing to chart independent courses, even at the expense of being sneered at.

If truth has to first endure ridicule before it is opposed just so that it can become self-evident, Mahathir has clearly passed all of those three hurdles. {writes Prakash} Just like in 1970 when he wrote “The Malay Dilemma,” which documented the backwardness of the Malays over their habit of diluting their gene pool by intra-kinship marriages, a persona of unorthodoxy has always characterized the one-time Malay nationalist turned politician who exhibits an unusual display of courage in the face of adversity. {now mind you - Mahattir is Dr. Mahattir who studied medecine in Scottland, but economics is something else.}

For someone who thrives doing the very kind of things politicians seldom commit for fear of being labeled politically incorrect, his recent resignation from the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) — the political party he headed for 22 years as president — is turning out to be a tipping point in Malaysian politics.

In urging the rest of the party faithful to break ranks and resign en masse, the move is calculated not only to force the ouster of the government but also to block the return from the political wilderness of another political foe, former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar, who was jailed in 1999 for corruption, is now perceived to be gunning for justice over his imprisonment, which he called a conspiracy at the highest levels of government.

Or, it could also be, as some have alleged, yet another “Mahathir way” of trying to deflect attention from a Royal Commission convoked to probe his involvement in a judge-fixing scandal during his stewardship of the country more than 20 years ago.

With most of Malaysia and Singapore, and to a lesser degree Indonesia, transfixed on what is rapidly turning into a political soap opera, there is no musing that all love is conceivably lost between the former premier, his anointed successor and the former deputy premier.

At the heart of Mahathir’s grievance is a suspicion of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s plans to erase Mahathir’s reputation by scrapping many of his economic projects. Should such an episode come to pass, Mahathir would almost certainly be left without a legacy.

The triumvirate and Caesarean-like court intrigues have no doubt seized imaginations.

Though it has not happened yet, the breakdown in party hierarchy spawned by the elder statesman’s resignation and his success at getting some party hacks to heed his call have nevertheless reverberated with eerie echoes of the 1969 Sino-Malay race riots that were triggered a similar election debacle and left scores of people dead in the streets.

“You know the UMNO is in trouble when its party members start abandoning ship,” a political scientist who chose to remain anonymous told Asia Times Online.

Acknowledging that he did not keep his promises in an election postmortem has also made Abdullah politically weaker. And those broken promises have included a failure to combat corruption, crime, rising racial tension and cronyism; a failure that the country’s unified political opposition capitalized on to such tantalizing effect in the March 8 general elections.

The ruling Barisan Nasional, an omnibus grouping that lumps together the nation’s ethnic Chinese and Indians under their respective political banners, not only lost 5 out of 13 states but was returned to office with the slenderest of parliamentary majorities at only 51 percent. For Abdullah such an outcome was a sobering moment because he and his team secured an unprecedented 90 percent of the popular vote in the previous election held in 2004.

Yet nothing could have been worse than in the non-consultative manner in which Abdullah raised fuel prices last week.
A 40-percent hike in oil-producing Malaysia was perceived as “too high” and “too soon.” The widespread street protests that gathered storm in the wake of the increases have every possibility of playing into the hands of the regime’s political opponents. They will almost certainly weaken Abdullah’s position.

Between the political brinkmanship of Mahathir, the chicanery of Anwar and the naivete of Abdullah, all eyes will likely turn to the UMNO party caucus in December when party hacks decide the political fate of Abdullah as their party president and leader.

As developments unfold with breakneck speed, the self-effacing emergence of Anwar and the Pakatan Rakyat Party’s sterling success in securing 82 seats in the 140 seat Assembly in the March elections has no doubt left the country’s chattering classes abuzz.

In 2005, Anwar told Singapore’s TODAY paper of a 5-year time frame to becoming Malaysia’s next prime minister. And true to form and design, he has assiduously been seeking defections from elected backbenchers to trigger an eventual collapse of the newly-elected government. A collapse that results in calls for fresh elections would be just what Anwar needs. Because he is immensely popular, and he knows it, he can handily translate the disaffection in his country into votes and assume the premiership he is seeking much sooner than the 5-year time frame.

With no one who can match him in charisma, oratory and perhaps in chicanery, there appears to be nothing that can stop Anwar, at least for now.

These are indeed testing times for Malaysia. As the country heads for headier days; political sclerosis of a kind never before seen before will feature prominently as Malaysia turns another page in its history.

J. Prakash is a freelance journalist in Singapore. He can be reached at  prakruby at hotmail.com

Melaka’s modern history began in 1403 with the arrival of Parameswara, an exiled Hindu Prince from the Kingdom of Sri Vijaya on Sumatra Island.
He embraced Islam under the title Raja Iskandar and started the Sultanate of Melaka that evolved into a vibrant maritime trading center.

The Portuguese, led by Alfonso d’Albuquerque conquered Melaka in 1511 and held it for 130 years until it was taken over by the Dutch in 1641 who ruled
for 154 years until 1824 when it was taken over by the British.  Malaysia’s independence in was 1957. The Japanese ruled during the 1942 - 1945 years.

In addition to the obvious Portuguese, Dutch, and British influences, actually the main influence was that of the Chinese and Indians who ran the economy of Melaka.

Here we will deal with the so called “Straits Chinese” or “Pernakan.”  They are the “Baba-Nyonyas.” There are no Babas and Nyonyas, though a myth is being created
that made outsiders believe that the babas are the males and the nyonyas the females, while others think it the other way. In short - we were surprised to find that even
part of the publicity for the UN Delegates’ Dining Room special two weeks, included this inaccuracy.

The straits of Melaka, between the Malay Peninsula and the long Sumatra Island is one of the busiest sea lanes through which today pass oil tankers, but even now, the straights are infested by pirates.
The Melaka city was thus an important fort in the colonial days, and still an important commercial center run in major part by the Nyonyas of today. Part of the Nyonyas and the Indians left Malaysia at a
time the Mahatir government took highly Malay ethnic nationalistic stand and tried to displace the Chinese and Indians from their positions. A Pernakan community exists now in New York and some
from that community came to eat at the UN. Three ladies sat at a neighboring table.

As the event was basically a really high caliber culinary event, I enjoyed immensely Chef Ismail Muhammad, who is something of a celebrity chef in Kuala Lumpur, run me through the ethnic background
of the food. I am thus happy to report that I ate spicy Malay meet, Portuguese inspired fish and Indian inspired curry-chicken, also a Chinese excellent vegetarian dish. There were terrific noodle dishes
and a desert  table that had sweets and not-so sweet works of art.

Now, what did I celebrate there personally - this is simple. I was in Melaka twice, in two separate visits to Malaysia. The fist time it was in 1987 when I went to investigate the smoke that was supposed
to have been caused by the Indonesian fires on Borneo island. I went then to see by myself the situation in Melaka and was convinced, that though highly polluted from the motor vehicular transportation,
Melaka suffered much less then Kuala Lumpur - this because the winds from the sea were able to dissipate some of the pollution - so I knew that the haze was not of Sumatra origin. In effect, probably,
Sumatra was getting Malaysian pollution and not the other way around.

The Face of a Prophet. Corrected twice by the NYT)

By LOUISE STORY, Published: April 11, 2008.

George Soros will not go quietly. George Soros wants to make a lasting contribution to economic understanding.

Robert Soros, right, never shared the enthusiasm of his father George, for following the markets. Robert is one of five Soros children

At the age of 77, Mr. Soros, one the world’s most successful investors and richest men, leapt out of retirement last summer to safeguard his fortune and legacy. Alarmed by the unfolding crisis in the financial markets, he once again began trading for his giant hedge fund — and won big while so many others lost.

Mr. Soros has always been a controversial figure. But he is becoming more so with a new, dire forecast for the world economy. Last week he rushed out a book, his 10th, warning that the financial pain has only just begun. { There is no book out yet but the electronic version is available and www.SustainabiliTank.info wrote about this as reseived from George Soros see under April 4, 2008 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2008/04…}

(this just shows that non conventional media gets the news out - sometimes - well ahead of the need-your-agreement-first old style media}
“I consider this the biggest financial crisis of my lifetime,” Mr. Soros said during an interview Monday in his office overlooking Central Park. A “superbubble” that has been swelling for a quarter of a century is finally bursting, he said.

{and above we had already from his first “coming out” this year -     http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2008/01….

Soros, whose daring, controversial trades came to symbolize global capitalism in the 1990s, is now busy promoting his book, “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets,” which goes on sale mid-May. An electronic version is already available online.

And yet this is not the first time that Mr. Soros has prophesied doom. In 1998, he published a book predicting a global economic collapse that never came.

Mr. Soros thinks that this time he is right. Now in his eighth decade, he yearns to be remembered not only as a great trader but also as a great thinker. The market theory he has promoted for two decades and espoused most of his life — something he calls “reflexivity” — is still dismissed by many economists. The idea is that people’s biases and actions can affect the direction of the underlying economy, undermining the conventional theory that markets tend toward some sort of equilibrium.

Mr. Soros said all aspects of his life — finance, philanthropy, even politics — are driven by reflexivity, which has to do with the feedback loop between people’s understanding of reality and their own actions. Society as a whole could learn from his theory, he said. “To make a contribution to our understanding of reality would be my greatest accomplishment,” he said.

Mr. Soros has been worrying about the fragile state of the markets for years. But last summer, at a luncheon at his home in Southampton with 20 prominent financiers, he struck an unusually bearish note.

“The mood of the group was generally gloomy, but George said we were going into a serious recession,” said Byron Wien, the chief investment strategist of Pequot Capital, a hedge fund.

Mr. Soros hopes his theories will finally win the respect he craves. But, ever the trader, he hedges his bets. “I may well be proven wrong,” he said. “I would say that I’m the boy who cried wolf three times.”

Many of the people Mr. Soros wants to influence may view him with skepticism, in part because of how he made his fortune. In 1992, his fund famously bet against the British pound and helped force the British government to devalue the currency. Five years later, he bet — correctly — that Thailand would be forced to devalue its currency, the baht. The resulting bitterness toward him among Thais was such that Mr. Soros canceled a trip to the country in 2001, fearing for his safety.

Asked if those people are right to blame him, he says, “Well no, not entirely.”

No single investor can move a currency, he said. “Markets move currencies, so what happened with the British pound would have happened whether I was born or not, so therefore I take no responsibility.”

Mr. Soros, came of age in Nazi-occupied Hungary and has for decades longed to write a masterpiece that might put him among thinkers like Hegel or Keynes, said Michael T. Kaufman, who wrote a book about Mr. Soros. “He spent years writing papers and letters to people, but everyone ignored him,” Mr. Kaufman said.

He continues to be one of the top givers to charities around the world, and has given more than $5 billion away through his foundations.

Yet even Mr. Soros acknowledges that many economists still slight his theories.

Several outside investors also left, and Mr. Soros overhauled the company as more of a wealth management tool for his own family and related charities. Mr. Soros said in 2000 that he no longer desired returns like the 30.5 percent his fund returned on average, after management fees, from 1969 to 2000.

In 2004, Mr. Soros tapped his oldest son, Robert, to become the chief investment officer, despite Robert’s reluctance.

At that time, Mr. Soros, was busy trying to turn public opinion against President Bush. He donated $27 million to anti-Bush organizations and traveled the country speaking out against the president. This time around, he is less involved. He endorsed Senator Barack Obama but kept his distance from the campaign trail.

Robert Soros, 44, who once claimed his father based his trades not on grand theories like reflexivity but rather on his back pain, never shared his father’s enthusiasm for the markets. “When you’re a billionaire’s son, you’re less hungry than when you’re a Hungarian immigrant,” one former Soros Fund Management executive said.
Even so, the Soros fund performed well under the younger Soros, and as recently as last June, it was up 10 percent for the year, according to a letter to investors. At the end of July, Robert stepped down from his head investment role, just before his father returned to trading. Robert and his brother Jonathan remain deputy co-chairmen, under their father, the chairman of the fund.

This week, Mr. Wien illustrated the knack of Mr. Soros for timing with an old story. In 1995, Mr. Soros asked Mr. Wien why he bothered going to work every day. Why not go to work only on days when there is something to do?

“I said, ‘George, one of the differences between you and me is you know when those days are, and I don’t,’” Mr. Wien said.

Sunday, April 6, 2008, The Japan Times Online: G8, emerging donors start development talks in Tokyo.
By KAHO SHIMIZU, Staff writer.

Ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries dealing with development issues kicked off a discussion Saturday in Tokyo to seek cooperation from emerging donors such as China, India and Brazil at a time when conventional donor countries are struggling to boost their aid.

The two-day conference opened a day after the 22-nation Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said the total amount of official development assistance provided by the member countries in 2007 fell 8.4 percent in real terms to $103.7 billion.

Japan, the world’s most generous donor before 2000, slipped to fifth last year among the 22 donors as the country saw its ODA spending drop by 30 percent from 2006 amid tightening spending limits.

This has sent shock waves through the Foreign Ministry as the government seeks to take a leadership role in African development ahead of the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in May in Yokohama and the G8 summit in July in Hokkaido, which also plans to highlight Africa as a key agenda item.

“This will be a crucial year for the world’s development assistance activities,” Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said in his opening speech at the Tokyo meeting, referring to the upcoming TICAD IV and the G8 summit.

“I would like to address the challenges (of poverty reduction and climate change) and show that the G8 countries are committed to strengthening their aid efforts.”

Komura said he is determined to reverse Japan’s dropoff in overseas aid.

The two-day meeting is the first of the several G8 ministerial gatherings in the leadup to the July summit, which will be attended by the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the U.S.

During Saturday’s session, the participants agreed on the importance of cooperation and dialogue between advanced economies and the emerging donors, according to a Foreign Ministry official.

They also shared the view that industrialized nations and the new donors should respect diversity and improve the outcome of the development projects by complementing the efforts of one another, the official said.

Japan has hoped to use the gathering to urge the emerging donors to be more transparent in their aid policies. Some Western nations have criticized China for giving massive financial aid to resource-rich African nations and other developing countries without taking into account the recipients’ poor governance or records of human rights abuses.

Global economic uncertainty has alarmed some observers that the industrialized nations may tighten their purse strings despite pledges at the 2005 G8 summit and other occasions to increase aid by a combined $50 billion by 2010 from the 2004 level.

Foreign Ministry officials said Japan wants to have the new donors share their own development experiences with countries, especially in Africa, that remain poor.