We need a conservation ethic, because we must become a light burden on our host, the planet earth. To have a sustainable economy the old work-ethic must share space with a new conservation-ethic.

Basing the economy on Job creation and thus a push to growth is being questioned in the following articles. The first article we received directly from David Brooks and we thought it very timely considering the ongoing US Presidential campaigns.   Is it possible that these campaigns are blind to the needs for a higher degree of Sustainability in the 21st century? Do we need a quantum jump in our thinking about the world and ourselves?

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The Last Resort in Economics.

Kurt Vonnigut’s novel, “Player Piano,” is about a robot economy in which machines have replaced most human labor. In a robot-run economy income would go to people who own robots, and to people who own resources, but with very little need for human labor there would be very little wage income. Without a share in ownership the most workers would be left without any income. Without economic growth machines would have caused unacceptable levels of unemployment long ago. The consumption growth that stops automation from causing unemployment became  unacceptable once the scale of the human resource consumption reached levels high enough to upset the delicate natural systems we depend on. We need a conservation ethic, because we must become a light burden on our host, the planet earth. To have a sustainable economy the old work-ethic must share importance with a new conservation-ethic. We could use durability to conserve,  which combined with population stability would allow vast wealth to be inherited with very little production or consumption. Our use of increased durability to cut the consumption needed to provide wealth will prove to be a very important innovation. Vast wealth without high consumption requires a foundation of durability. We only have what we haven’t consumed yet. We lost our perspective when we replaced the proper economic goal of providing goods and services with the foolish goal of providing jobs. Jobs should return to being a just a means to provide goods and services. We should do all the needed work and not do any busy-work, any unneeded jobs, or any jobs can could be avoided by doing them right the first time. Why must we expect all income to be derived from work? Isn’t unearned income from inherited wealth respectable? What about the income from robot labor? If we dislike unearned income maybe we don’t really believe in capitalism. The last resort in economic imagination is unearned income, except for those who would imagine anything to keep it all for themselves. Entitlement might be seen in all ownership. Holding a title to any asset that yields an unearned income stream, like owning a robot, a factory, a forest, a house, a toll road, or a mine, is an entitlement. Getting welfare is also an entitlement that has a moral standing at least as high as the ownership titles that were derived from stealing all the land from the natives and the proud ownership based on using virtural slaves to harvest the free wealth of nature. Getting wages for work should never end anyone’s right to a basic unearned income… why demotivate work by cutting the unearned income of those who work? The amount of minimum income could be varied to stabilize wages, and allow us to do only the work that is needed instead of producing too much to stay busy. If we finally end wage-dependence instead of consuming as much as possible to create jobs, then wasting resources to stay busy would be unnecessary. If we care for our futures or for our descendants we must all become conservatives instead of consumers, turn away from high-consumption economics, and accept inheritance, conservation, and the unearned income of capitalism. Barry Brooks  home.earthlink.net/~durable/ ================================================ Durable Economics Barry Brooks Originally published in Durable Economics, November 2009, then on The PelikaWeb’s Journal of Sustainable Development Website on January 1, 2010. www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv06n01page3barrybrooks.html ABOUT THE AUTHOR Barry Brooks is a retired electronic engineer who has had a lifetime interest in understanding economics. He was a physics major at the University of Texas in Austin before taking a high paying job as chief engineer at a Los Angeles TV station. He also worked at Hewlett Packard and Collins Radio. he f We need to find what kind of economy can provide people’s needs without making too much pollution and without running out of resources rapidly. Our present consumer economy has many nice features, yet it is basically at odds with resource stewardship. The consumer economy is popular, but many people are worried about the wisdom of consuming so much. There is a way to maintain our security and comfort without the high consumption required by our present consumer economy. Our plans already include partial answers for how to build a sustainable economy. We have come to recognize the need to use increased efficiency and recycling as parts of any sustainable economy.  But, efficiency and recycling are not enough to make the cuts in consumption we need to become sustainable. The more difficult and more important change we need will require us to stop running our consumer economy, because it needs waste to function. War, throw away goods, and planned obsolescence are good for the consumer economy, but they have no place in a sustainable economy. The missing element in our plan for a sustainable society is what to do about conserving items that can be reused.  Items that are not consumed when they are used the first time are durable, and could be made to last longer.  When we increase the lifetime of durable goods we cut the cost and consumption of manufacturing them.The use of increased durability will allow us to enjoy wealth with low resource consumption. It will be easy to learn to love a sustainable economy based on durability. A sustainable economy should do the opposite of the consumer economy; it should try to make things last longer. Products that are designed to be long-lasting will naturally accumulate. Those who have a stock of truly durable goods rarely need to replace them.  Our concept of wealth as a flow is wrong.  Wealth is a stock, including the stock of durable tools that make and recycle food items that can’t be made durable and the durable homes that are energy efficient. Our use of durability to conserve will allow consumption  to drop to sustainable levels after people have acquired what they need. We don’t really need a high flow of goods to have a big stock of goods. The multiplier effect, so important to increasing consumption in the consumer economy, also works to cut consumption more than might be expected when we conserve.  When we cut consumption of one item all the many support activities previously needed to produce that item can also be cut back and will consume less.  Production and consumption can then be reduced to the low levels needed to introduce innovations and provide infrequent replacements. But, cutting the need for consumption will also cut paid jobs. These cuts will not be such big problems as we might expect because when we used durability to conserve the resulting fall in incomes will be preceded by a fall in our needs, and there is no reason for us to be totally dependent on wages. The main function of the consumer economy is to provide the demand stimulation needed create full employment. This growing demand has prevented machines from causing unemployment, and it has provided vast consumer wealth, but it has placed heavy demands on natural resources. Thus, we have been squandering our, really scarce, natural resources to keep all of our, assumed scarce, workers busy. Wage labor has been surplus relative to local natural resources for a long time. In today’s crowded world migration can no longer provide an escape from depleted local resources, and imported resources are no longer abundant and cheap. Even though we face a growing shortage of resources we still pretend that labor shortage is limiting production. Our fear of labor shortage is obsolete. Since the dawn of the industrial age it has been necessary to constantly find ways to increase consumption in order maintain full employment. Most people agree that jobs are the only acceptable way to dole out money to the masses. Yet, when we create nearly full employment our powerful technology and out large supply of workers will always consume far too many resources for such hyper-activity to be sustainable. Only in our dreams is there no conflict between expanding the economy to make jobs and contracting the economy to conserve resources. Our labor is surplus only relative to resources and the production of physical goods. Most people need a job that pays, and have little time left for the work of nurturing, caring and stewardship. There is plenty of important unpaid work to do, but we can’t start doing it if we are all working full time to produce and consume as much as possible. Today we can do the work that makes a short-term dollar profit, while unpaid work is mostly neglected. Our present views rarely include any awareness that wealth comes from nature and inheritance more than from any work we do. To make our system work under present conditions we must admit that human labor is no longer scarce because machines with computer control can already replace most paid labor, even in services. Our claim on the resources which provide the base of both durable and perishable wealth can not be based on labor when paid jobs are rare. We should expect to shift our dependence from wages toward unearned income as automation replaces more human labor. Our system already has unearned income, but for now it is only for a few. Ending our dependence on wages is one key to the locked doors of becoming sustainable. Unearned income can end our dependence on jobs. The resource base of our income has always been unearned, because nature can not be paid for the resources we take. Thus, prices and wages are mostly about the division of labor among humans. That’s why the labor theory of value is true. Yet, the relation between prices and labor costs would be hard to measure if machines replaced most human labor. More computer automation will make wage costs fall along with the prices of manufactured goods. If all paid human labor could be replaced, then wage income would fall to zero leaving only income from profit. We will need to notice this old trend of the industrial age now that is has been accelerated by computers. Because the consumer economy can’t continue, we must rethink our assumptions about our pretense that everyone should be busy in a paid job just to be a good person. Yet reaction is taking the opposite tack. They would deny the value of unpaid work. We hear that staying home to care for children doesn’t have the dignity of a job. High taxes on fuel aren’t the best way to encourage conservation. High taxes on fuel will cause suffering and poverty, and people who can hardly afford to heat their houses can’t afford to replace them with an efficient house either. Instead of taxing consumption, we need to support the low cost replacement of wasteful houses and cars with efficient models, and to make laws against the production of wasteful goods. Whether our goal is to preserve the present pecking order or to help improve the lives of the poor, we must have a sustainable system to have hope for our families. The need to make jobs and the resulting excess growth are the causes of our high consumption, and high consumption is the reason our economic system is not sustainable. Growth is the common problem of all classes! True conservation cuts consumption and that cuts production and that cuts real paying jobs and profits. It’s not surprising that almost no one supports a sustainable economy. Without true conservation we can continue to squander scarce resources to exercise all our surplus labor. Without conservation we can have our giant SUVs. It is our plan to avoid change. But, more growth is really no plan at all in the face of looming changes. Four basic ways to conserve resources are: increased efficiency, increased durability, recycling and by doing less. Conservation of perishables using recycling and efficiency are already our goals, but the use of durability to conserve has had little notice. Durability allows doing less without having less. Because durability has been neglected we have a lot to gain when we starting using durability to conserve. We can make deep cuts in consumption without sacrifice by designing new products to maximize their lifetime, efficiency and reparability. We wouldn’t need to encourage growth to make jobs if everyone got some small share of unearned income. If we don’t shrink real earned income, we aren’t really conserving resources. A small income could provide a life of luxury in a system that doesn’t need to be wasteful. A stable population using durability to conserve will have most wealth coming from inheritance, but a growing population can’t be supported for long before it overruns the gains of any kind of conservation.  If we are to become sustainable population must be controlled, and we need to act now because once resources are depleted and population is higher we won’t have the capacity to build an economy based on durability and efficiency. Who really believes that our wasteful consumer economy will get us very far? Although we know it will lead to trouble we don’t even talk about hyper-consumption. On top of too much consumption and vast waste we plan to consume at even higher rates. But, so long as people are dependent on paid jobs it seems impossible to stop wasting our wealth and spoiling natural systems. Without a need for hyper-activity and waste just to make paid jobs, real conservation could be allowed to shrink the economy and real incomes without any loss of living standards. One form of conservation is doing less, not working, or not consuming. Staying home will cut energy consumption more than any kind of improved transportation ever could. When we begin to supply unearned income as a supplement to wages we will suddenly be able to cut consumption. Unpaid work, which has been neglected while we pursue only paid jobs, will get done. Downsizing and the elimination of as many paid jobs as possible will be seen as a contribution to conservation. Of course the drive to cut labor costs is a long established trend, but no alternate income or provision for low consumption living has been discussed for the displaced workers. If everyone received unearned income we could adjust the amount of unearned income to stabilize wages. Wages would remain as a motivation and reward for those who choose to work. Our acceptance of unearned income could provide a mechanism allowing us to match the labor force to the real need for labor, instead of making jobs to match the labor force. It’s too common to hear the weird claim that our economy needs growth. It’s like saying we need cancer. We don’t need growth; we need sustainability, and growth is the reason why we aren’t sustainable. Since we haven’t learned to control our economy, our population, or our waste, each of these failures has been accepted as a fact of life and each provides another “need” for growth. A sustainable economy needs limited greed, limited population, minimum waste. If we had democratic unearned income we would no longer need growth to make jobs. If we had a stable population we would no longer need growth to provide for more people. If we used durability to conserve we would no longer need growth to raise our living standards. If earnings could regain the role lost to speculation we would no longer need growth to please the investor. Barry Brooks – Further Links: Sustainable Economics, Barry Brooks, 2008. The National Debt Equals the Taxes Ducked by the Rich, Barry Brooks, 2008. We Have What We Don’t Throw Away, Barry Brooks, 2008. Works of Andre Gorz, Barry Brooks, 2008. Money-ism and Physical Economics, Barry Brooks, 2008. The Inheritance Economy, Barry Brooks, 2002.

This article makes no mention of the change of direction that occurred in Rio – the fact that Sustainable Development today has to be understood in terms of the Brundtland Commission Sustainability which is the bridge to Future Generations.

The above was the clear outcome of Rio 2012 and it must be taken into account that in the future funds will be available only if there is the understanding that Development must be SUSTAINABLE and the process is rather one of DEVELOPING SUSTAINABILITY.

We look forward to see clear statements on this from our friend Martin Khor who we are sure realizes the difference between this and the call for funds for growth in countries of underdevelopment. The sins of the Developed World are clear – but the sins of the underdeveloped States must be recognized as well.

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SOUTHNEWS No. 13, 2 October 2012 SOUTHNEWS is a service of the South Centre to provide information and news on topical issues from a   South perspective. Visit the South Centre’s website: www.southcentre.org.

South Centre holds Forum on Rio+20 and the Future of the Sustainable Development Agenda. By Anna Bernardo A South Centre forum on Results of Rio Plus 20 and the Future Sustainable Development Agenda was held on the morning of 6 July 2012 at the United Nations building in Geneva in conjunction with the 29th meeting of the Board of the South Centre. Speakers on the panel included Board Members of the Centre, Executive Director Martin Khor, and was also honoured by the presence of His Excellency Mr. Roberto Azevêdo, Ambassador of Brazil to the WTO. The forum was attended by diplomats from Geneva who have shown great interest on the outcomes of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) 2012, which took place in Rio de Janeiro on 20-22 June. The Chair of the Board, H.E. Mr. Benjamin W. Mkapa, former President of the United Republic of Tanzania, welcomed and thanked the participants. He hoped that the forum would throw light on the results of Rio Plus 20 and on the tasks ahead in the follow up after Rio. Ambassador Azevêdo addressed Brazil’s role in steering the negotiations as host country and President of the summit. He said it was a privilege, and it took courage. With the help of its leadership, a 53-page document, “The Future We Want”, was adopted. Rio+20, although criticized by most of the media and environmental NGOs as a failure, was not completely one, and was able to produce an outcome that is fair and accepted by the developing countries. Thus, the ambassador also stressed the importance of multilateral negotiations. Emerging countries are being perceived by industrialised countries as a threat. Every single negotiation is an opportunity to renege on commitments. Signs of shift are all over the place. There is the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The big players see the DDA as a means to remove developing countries’ policy space. The degree of commitments is so large that the developing countries will have commitments deeper than the industrialised countries. And there was also UNCTAD XIII in Qatar where the game was about going back to the Accra mandate. The ambassador said that this is a very dangerous frame of mind and scenario. He called on exposing this in every negotiation, what game is being played. The developing countries need to be courageous once again, in the follow up to Rio, and that it is no longer enough to talk about the environment, but that it has to be coupled with economic growth. Martin Khor analysed the outcomes of the summit and emphasised the importance of its mandated follow up. Commitments from the Rio Principles and Agenda 21 of the Rio summit in 1992 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation from Johannesburg in 2002 were reaffirmed, although it was not the same case for technology and finance. While there were no breakthroughs, it directed for talks to continue to find solutions for important issues in the UN in New York within one to two years, including on sustainable development goals, finance and technology, and a new political forum on sustainable development. Khor added that coordination should be present between diplomats in New York and Geneva, especially in instances such as when, for example, something being negotiated on will affect trade and intellectual property and the knowledge and expertise of diplomats dealing with the WTO or WIPO will come in handy. He also reiterated the significance of multilateral negotiations. Rubens Ricupero, former UNCTAD Secretary-General, mentioned that a big disadvantage of Rio+20 was that it had around only a few official days for the preparatory process, while Rio 1992 had around about 113 days. He brought up the People’s Summit during Rio+20 and how it raised the consciousness of people. He said that we should be precise on what we propose for the three pillars of sustainable development. Environment should be a precondition for the other two pillars and science should be the guide. It should not just be any kind of economic growth (with social inclusion) but one that takes into account the environment. He pointed out three issues that needed to be addressed: injustice, unemployment and the environment. Mr. Chen ChuanDong of the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the UN in Geneva spoke on behalf of H.E. Mr. Li Zhaoxing, former foreign minister of China and present Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress. His message was that Rio Plus 20 captured the cooperative spirit of the international community. He also called on developing countries to continue to work in solidarity and be proactive in the negotiations. He mentioned China’s efforts in the international sustainable development process, and China’s Premier Wen Jiabao at the conference announced initiatives to facilitate developing countries’ pursuit of sustainable development. He said that China will work with all parties to ensure the success of the sustainable development process. Youba Sokona, Director of the African Climate Policy Centre, UNECA, talked about the implications of Climate Change and Rio+20 for Africa. An interesting part of his presentation was regarding reasons for concern, which showed that as the years pass by, there are more and more reasons for concern at each level of temperature rise. He also said that initial cost for combatting climate change is beyond the capacity of the poor, but that each sector has an opportunity. There are 6 prerequisites for an African Climate Resilient Low Carbon Development: African ownership is fundamental; institutional innovation is critical; adequate investment will be crucial; prioritizing investment is essential; policy innovation is vital; and endogenous technology development is important. Charles Soludo, formerly the Central Bank Governor of Nigeria made a presentation on the EPAs  (economic partnership agreements) and described it as a second scramble for Africa. He made a very comprehensive presentation on what are the EPAs, the EU case, elaborated seven reasons to oppose EPAs, the real reason behind them and the road ahead. He called for the rejection of the EPAs: that Africa and its friends should speak now and they should also adopt the AU concept and proposal on an alternative to the EPAs. He also believed in the African common market and he proposed an African Partnership and Development Summit with the US, EU and the BRIC countries. Professor Deepak Nayyar who teaches Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India first discussed what could be improved with the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) beyond 2015. The MDGs’ limitations are in its design and conception. There is  need for another framework for development post-2015. There are three imperatives: (1) there should be structural flexibility at the national level; (2) there should be a cognition of inequality in any assessment of outcomes; and (3) the new framework must have means not just ends. Strategies to meet development are absent from the MDGs. There is a need to think about it at the national and international level. The global focus of the MDGs on economic growth is too narrow, with a donor-centric world view. There is a need to look at the MDG plus scenario – human rights, climate change, gender, etc but to hasten slowly, and create North-South and South-South partnerships. Affirmative action should be given to poor countries, especially LDCs. He later commented on the parallel relationship between MDGs and SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). The Chair then presented conclusions of the forum, saying that as the North renege on their commitments, the South must maintain to have the principles reaffirmed. He also underlined that others should be informed about the implications of the EPAs and the plight of Africa, and he reiterated that the real work post Rio Plus 20 starts now. The Ambassadors and Officials present made  many remarks. They   especially supported the idea of coordination between New York and Geneva for full implementation of the outcomes of the Conference. The South Centre could help with this coordination and mobilizing developing countries. It provided a lot of assistance to the G77 countries during the process leading to the Rio Plus 20, and can continue to take forward the cause of sustainable development.

To view other articles in SouthNews, please click here. For more information, please contact Vicente Paolo Yu of the South Centre: Email yu@southcentre.org, or telephone +41 22 791 80 50.

from: Prof. Walter Leal  lealfilho at yahoo.com

Sustainable Development at Universities: New Horizons
Edited by Walter Leal Filho
Series: Environmental Education, Communication and Sustainability
Peter Lang Scientific Publishers: Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, New York, Oxford, Vienna
2012. 994 pp., 24 fig., 99 tables, 101 graphs, ISBN 978-3-631-62560-6  (Hard Cover)

This book, prepared in the context of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio+20, contains the papers submitted to the World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities (WSSD-U-2012),  which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 5 and 6 June 2012.

It pursues the following main aims: to document and  disseminate experiences from universities all round the world regarding education for sustainable development;
to foster the exchange of information, ideas and experiences acquired in the execution of projects; and to  introduce methodological approaches and projects which aim to integrate the topic of sustainable development in the curriculum of universities. Last but not least, a further aim is to document and disseminate the wealth of experiences available today, providing a truly global coverage. With over 70 chapters and a truly global coverage, Sustainable Development at Universities: New Horizons is among the most comprehensive  publications on sustainability in higher education ever produced. It is meant to go beyond a description of the current state of knowledge, and shall open the way for new thinking and new horizons in what is a rapidly expanding field, of central interest to  both industrialised and developing countries.  Details on the book can be seen at:
www.peterlang.de/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=70839&concordeid=262560

See the video from WSSD-U-2012 at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT8byPic8jQ

The Rio Conventions Pavilion (RCP) is a platform for raising awareness and sharing information about the latest practices and scientific findings on the co-benefits that can be realized through integrated approaches in implementation of the three Rio conventions – on Biodiversity, on Desertification and Arid lands, on Climate Change.

The RCP is a collaborative effort between the Secretariats of the three Rio conventions and the Global Environment Facility, involving a growing list of other global and national partners.

Moving forward from Rio+20 to Hyderabad, a full daily programme of events will be hosted in the RCP for the duration of CBD COP11, addressing themes relevant to the objectives of the three Rio conventions. The programme is attached, and available at www.riopavilion.org/india/.

Themes include:

9 Oct: Towards Integrated Science, Assessments and Monitoring for the Rio Conventions (DIVERSITAS, IAI, CI)
10 Oct: Protected Areas as Natural Solutions to Biodiversity Targets and Global Environmental Challenges (LifeWeb, IUCN-WCPA)
11 Oct: Tree Diversity Day (ICRAF, CIFOR, Biodiversity International, CIAT)
12 Oct: Livelihoods Day (IUCN, Livelihoods Fund, FFEM, Ramsar Convention, CBD, Livelihoods Venture, WEDO)
13 Oct: 20/20 Talks: 20 Presentations on 20 Targets at COP11 (Venue: HICC)
15 Oct: Land Day 6: Land Degradation Neutrality – A Response to the Aichi Targets (UNCCD, Governments of India, Germany, South Africa, IFOAM, CBD)
16 Oct: REDD+ Day (UN-REDD (FAO, UNDP, UNEP), CBD)
17 Oct: Ecosystem Restoration Day (Governments of India, Republic of Korea, and South Africa, Ramsar Convention, CBD, UNCCD, UNDP, SER, IUCN, UNFF, GEF)
18 Oct: Towards Integrated Implementation of the Rio Conventions (Go4BioDiv, GEF, EC, IUCN, Rio Conventions, South Africa DEA)

We invite you to join in the discussions, contribute your ideas and knowledge, and learn about the latest science and best practices related to the implementation of the conventions. The Rio Conventions Pavilion is located in the Novotel Hotel ballroom, connected via a walkway to the CBD COP11 venue in the Hyderabad International Conference Centre. Coverage of events will also be available through ENB and Climate Change TV – please check back on the RCP website www.riopavilion.org for programme updates and media coverage.

With best regards,

Veronica

Ms. Veronica Lo

Science, Technical and Technological Matters

Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity

Tel: +1 514 764 6366 Fax: +1 514 288 6588

veronica.lo@cbd.int

President Clinton Opened 2012 Annual Meeting, Emphasizing Action.

New York City, Sunday, September 23, 2012

President Clinton Opened 2012 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting Emphasizing Action through Social Investment, Empowering Girls and Women, and Designing for Impact

Featured speakers included Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, IDEO Chief Executive Officer Tim Brown, and Walmart President and CEO Michael T. Duke

New commitments focusing on environmental protection, women’s empowerment, sustainable energy and global health and progress reports on previous commitments announced.

{On Fareed Zakaria’s CNN/GPS show this morning, President Clinton announced that Walmart is a major producer, and user in its operations of Photovoltaic solar power and wind-mill power  – globally.}

New York, NY – Today, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and Walmart President and CEO Michael T. Duke joined President Bill Clinton and other global leaders in New York City at the opening of the eighth Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. Over the course of the three-day meeting, pioneers and innovators from business, government, and civil society will examine the most effective ways to design a more prosperous and sustainable world and confront the most urgent global challenges.

“As CGI’s eighth Annual Meeting begins, I am deeply grateful that such a diverse group of esteemed leaders are here with us to motivate global action and change lives worldwide,” said President Clinton. “Their dedication reminds us that the international demand for solutions must take priority over the differences that divide us. It’s the same dedication to humanity that has helped CGI members make nearly 2,300 commitments that have impacted the lives of more than 400 million people since 2005. In the next three days, I look forward to seeing how the world’s leading thinkers will propose creative and inclusive solutions to the obstacles facing our planet.”

This year’s theme, “Designing for Impact,” focuses on the capacity of global citizens to cultivate an environment where their lives and the systems they utilize can serve as an effective vehicle for change. Through this theme, participants will convey how innovation and creativity can transform into platforms for global action. Each day of the Annual Meeting, CGI members will use a different lens to approach designing their work for impact from the empowerment of women and girls to social investment.

President Clinton moderated the opening panel featuring Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and Walmart President and CEO Michael T. Duke, who discussed how we can better design our world to cultivate greater opportunity and equality. The conversation followed opening remarks from IDEO CEO Tim Brown, whose cutting-edge ideas on design have influenced the meeting’s creative focus this year.

In addition to moderating the discussion in the plenary session, President Clinton announced new commitments for 2012 and reports on progress of commitments made at past CGI Annual Meetings.

The 2012 CGI Annual Meeting is sponsored by Abraaj Capital, American Federation of Teachers, Ambassador Gianna Angelopoulos, APCO Worldwide, Barclays, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cisco, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, Delos Living, Deutsche Bank, Diageo PLC, The Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy Corporation, ExxonMobil, The Ford Foundation, Varkey GEMS Foundation, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, Hewlett Packard Company, Inter-American Development Bank, InterEnergy, Jive Software, Knoll Inc, Laureate International Universities, Microsoft Corporation, NRG Energy Inc, Procter & Gamble, The Rockefeller Foundation, Shangri-La Industries, Standard Chartered Bank, Starkey Hearing Foundation, Swiss Reinsurance Company, Tom Golisano, Toyota Motors Corporation, United Postcode Lotteries, The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, and Western Union Financial Services Inc.

The full program, webcast schedule, and list of all CGI Annual Meeting commitments are available here: clintonglobalinitiative.org/2012.

The following new commitments were announced today in plenary sessions:

GIVE: Lights and Power for Panzi Hospital
Commitment by: GlobalECHO Foundation
In 2012, the GlobalECHO Foundation committed to providing $150,000 over a two-year period that will help the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo transition from a reliance on diesel fuel and an undependable grid to clean, sustainable, and renewable energy. Specifically, the Foundation will fund the installation of solar panels donated by another CGI member, Suntech Power Holdings Company Limited.

Health Justice for People with Intellectual Disabilities
Commitment by: Paychex Corporation and Special Olympics International
In 2012, Tom Golisano committed $12 million to fund 12 Special Olympics (SOI) International Healthy Communities Demonstration Projects worldwide. Through this contribution, SOI will identify communities where they will deliver a sustained set of health interventions and supports for individuals with intellectual disabilities in a comprehensive, community-based year round model. This commitment will enable SOI to expand its data collection and ability to document the global health status of people with intellectual disabilities, raising awareness and generating collaborative solutions to the issue of health disparities facing people with intellectual disabilities.

Empowering Palestinian Women In and Through Media
Commitment by: NISAA Broadcast Radio Company
In 2012, 96 NISAA FM, a woman-owned radio station in the West Bank, committed to train and eventually hire community reporters and students in radio reporting and broadcasting. In order to work against gender stereotypes in media by increasing both women’s roles in media leadership as well as positive representations of women in media, every trainee will learn essential reporting skills, such as gathering news from the field, producing audio reports, reporting live, and working inside the NISAA studio.

Bridging the Gap: Empowering Women Through Education
Commitment by: Georges Malaika Foundation
In 2012, the Georges Malaika Foundation (GMF) committed to expand educational access and quality learning opportunities to 340 young girls in the Katanga Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Through the use of a holistic approach to education, the GMF School will provide tuition-free education that also offers two meals a day, clean drinking water, sanitary latrines, internet access, and highly-trained teachers.

Man Up Congo: Youth Ending Violence Against Girls in Schools
Commitment by: Man Up Campaign
In 2012, the Man Up Campaign committed to support its two youth delegations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who create community-based programs to combat gender violence, specifically the normalization of sexual violence against girls in school. Through Man Up’s support, the two youth delegations will be able to implement awareness raising activities (theater and workshops) to directly engage over 300 students around issues of gender-based violence.

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The following progress reports were announced today in plenary sessions:

P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water: Save a Life an Hour
Commitment by: Procter & Gamble
In 2010, Procter and Gamble (P&G) committed to increase its scope of providing clean drinking water to developing countries by aiming to save a life every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by 2020. The PUR packet program has provided 1 billion liters of clean drinking water in the last 10 months and hopes to scale up with the PUR packet providing 2 billion liters a year by 2020.

Avon Foundation Global Breast Cancer Clinical Scholars
Commitment by: The Avon Foundation
In 2011, the Avon Foundation committed to create the Women Global Breast Cancer Clinical Scholars Program (Avon Global Scholars) to provide clinically-focused scholarship opportunities to breast cancer specialists outside the United States. The goal of the program is to give advanced training at leading U.S. breast cancer centers affiliated with the Avon Foundation to improve treatment and care of women facing breast cancer around the world.

Addressing Sexual Violence Against Girls
Commitment by: Becton, Dickinson & Co. (BD)
In 2009, Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) and many other partners committed, via Together for Girls (TfG), to develop and implement sexual violence prevention and response programs at the country level. Together for Girls, the first global initiative to address human injustice and public health impact of sexual violence against girls, uses information from national surveys to mobilize government leaders, civil society, and donors.

Dream Builder: The Women’s Business Creator
Commitment by: Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Foundation
In 2011, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, along with the Thunderbird School of Global Management, committed to develop and pilot an online Women’s Business Academy with the goal of providing business skills training to an estimated 3,400 women who plan to start or grow small businesses. The official program name has since been changed to “DreamBuilder: The Women’s Business Creator.” With curriculum and technological design well under way, DreamBuilder is on track to fulfill the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to train 3,400 women over the next 5 years.

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September 25, 2012 - THE CLOSING DAY.
We tried to fit in the CGI – in between meetings at the UN – but found out fast that if you do not have business credentials the CGI young ladies at the desk do not think that you are of value to them – so be it – we stil think that the former President glides on water and attempts wonders, but we have some doubts about company he keeps.

We post material as we obtained from his public relations’ office. and had to forget about an attempt at direct interviews at this time. We had better success in past years but are yet to be able to authenticate success on the ground of projects we posted.

On this last day, likted in New York by the onset of the Jewish Yom Kippur – President Clinton Hosts President Barack Obama, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, and Governor Mitt Romney on Closing Day of 2012 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting.

Eighth CGI Annual Meeting Closes with over 150 new commitments made valued at more than $2 billion, expected to impact nearly 22 million people. Members have now made nearly 2,300 commitments, which will improve the lives of over 400 million people in more than 180 countries

First CGI Latin America established. CGI University, CGI America dates announced.

New York, NY – Today, President Barack Obama, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney joined President Clinton and other international leaders on the final day of the eighth Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. Over three days, an array of heads of state, CEOs, non-profit leaders, and other global luminaries made over 150 new commitments, expected to impact nearly 22 million lives. To close the meeting, President Clinton and Chelsea Clinton announced plans for CGI University, CGI America, and the first CGI Latin America Meeting in 2013.

“I am convinced that cooperation, not conflict, will define this century,” said President Clinton. “From the capitols of the world to the most remote villages, people everywhere understand that there are universal challenges which face us all and are beyond the power of any individual to solve alone. As the eighth CGI Annual Meeting draws to a close, I celebrate our members who have committed to working together to meet these challenges head on. Their creative and focused actions will help to bring about a stable, sustainable world in which all people have a chance to thrive.”

The day’s theme, “Designing Our Systems,” emphasized that our interconnected world requires intentional systems of governance, community welfare, and commerce in order to create economic growth and provide for the social good. In the day’s sessions, CGI members examined tools and approaches used to design systems that enable sustainable prosperity and opportunity for all. Clinton Foundation and CGI board member Chelsea Clinton moderated a session called “The Case for Optimism in the 21^st Century.”

Following President Clinton’s conversation with President Morsi, Chelsea joined President Clinton to announce details for CGI University 2013. Washington University in St. Louis will serve as next year’s site for the gathering that brings students, youth organizations, topic experts, and celebrities together to explore innovative solutions to pressing global challenges. The meeting will take place April 5-7, 2013 and convene more than 1,000 students representing approximately 300 colleges and universities around the world.

President Clinton revealed that CGI will hold CGI Latin America in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil next year in December. It marks the Clinton Global Initiative’s first overseas meeting since convening CGI Asia in Hong Kong in 2008. President Clinton also announced that CGI America, a meeting focused on collaborative solutions to economic recovery in the United States, will return to Chicago in June 2013.

Last night, President Clinton also honored this year’s recipients of the Clinton Global Citizen Award:
Carlos Slim Helú, founder of Fundación Carlos Slim;
Luis A. Moreno, president of Inter-American Development Bank;
Denis O’Brien, chairman and founder of Digicel Group;
Pepe Julian Onziema, programme director and advocacy officer of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG);
The Right Reverend Christopher Senyonjo, executive director of St. Paul’s Reconciliation and Equality Centre;
and Katie Stagliano, founder and chief executive gardener of Katie’s Krops.

Featured speakers on the closing day of the Annual Meeting included
Barack Obama, 44^th President of the United States of America,
Bill Clinton, 42^nd President of the United States of America and founding chairman of the Clinton Global Initiative,
Felipe Calderón, President of Mexico,
Mohamed Morsi, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt,
Tony Blair, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,
Mitt Romney, former Governor of Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
Akinwumi Adesina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Her Highness Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel, Vice Chairwoman and Secretary General, Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundations,
Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Department of the Treasury,
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister, Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, Founder and Chairperson of BRAC,
Walter A. Bell, Chairman of the Board, Swiss Re America Holding Corporation,
Deepak Chopra, Founder, The Chopra Foundation and Founder and Chairman of the Board of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing,
Wesley Clark, Chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates,
Chelsea Clinton, Board Member of the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative,
Piers Morgan, host of CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight,
Art Naqvi, Founder and Group Chief Executive of Abraaj Holdings,
Clarence Otis, Jr., Chairman and CEO of Darden Restaurants, Inc.,
Bill Parish, President of Mosaic,
Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation,
Charlie Rose, Executive Editor and Anchor of Charlie Rose,
Irene B. Rosenfeld, Chairman and CEO, Kraft Foods Incorporated,
Richard Stengel, Managing Editor of TIME Magazine,
Luis A. Ubiñaa, President, The Ford Foundation, and will.i.am, Founder, i.am.angel Foundation.

The 2012 CGI Annual Meeting is sponsored by Abraaj Capital, American Federation of Teachers, Ambassador Gianna Angelopoulos, APCO Worldwide, Barclays, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Booz Allen Hamilton, Cisco, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, Delos Living, Deutsche Bank, Diageo PLC, The Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy Corporation, ExxonMobil, The Ford Foundation, Varkey GEMS Foundation, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, Hewlett Packard Company, Inter-American Development Bank, InterEnergy, Jive Software, Knoll Inc, Laureate International Universities, Microsoft Corporation, NRG Energy Inc, Procter & Gamble, The Rockefeller Foundation, Shangri-La Industries, Standard Chartered Bank, Starkey Hearing Foundation, Swiss Reinsurance Company, Tom Golisano, Toyota Motors Corporation, United Postcode Lotteries, The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, and Western Union Financial Services Inc.

The full program, webcast schedule, and list of all CGI Annual Meeting commitments are available here: clintonglobalinitiative.org/2012.

The following new commitments were announced in Plenary Sessions today:

NGO 2.0 Shaping the Next Generation of Social Entrepreneurs
Commitment by: Hult International Business School
In 2012, the Hult Prize committed to help launch a new wave of student social entrepreneurs in response to a challenge made by President Clinton and building on the successes of past Hult competitions. This will be achieved by creating a start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship designed to fund, mentor, advise and launch new social businesses. Through the continuation of its established global competition, Hult will bring together more than one thousand college and university students from over 130 countries, totaling more than 300 different colleges and universities. Working in five-person teams this spring, these students will compete at one of five global locations and online for the opportunity to spend the summer at the Hult Accelerator — a world-class center for innovation in Boston — and secure US$1 million in seed funding to start their businesses. Out of the hundreds of teams who will attend the regional stage of the competition, the best six teams will be selected to work at the Accelerator. Each of the six winning teams will then pitch their idea at CGI’s Annual Meeting in September 2013, where President Clinton, along with CGI Meeting attendees will select and award the winning team with a $1 million prize.

Rwanda Human Resources for Health Program
Commitment by: Rwanda Ministry of Health
In 2012, the Government of Rwanda, partnering with the US government, the Global Fund, and leading health sciences universities committed $152,000,000 to create the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Program to build the health education infrastructure and workforce necessary for a high quality, sustainable healthcare system. Partnering with 7 leading medical schools, 5 nursing and midwifery schools, and 1 health management school, the program will send more than 100 faculty members to Rwanda annually to assist medical, nursing, and public health schools and teaching hospitals and to mentor educators and students.

20 x 20: To Serve 20 Million People by 2020
Commitment by: STARS Foundation
In 2012, STARS Foundation committed $70,000,000 to impact the lives of 20 million people by 2020. This commitment will expand the Impact Awards program, which provides $100,000 grants in unrestricted funding to local NGOs, into 100 countries. A new awards category for NGOs improving access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) will be added, with grants to be awarded to organizations that together serve 10 million people. STARS will also launch “STARS Projects,” a new operational unit that will deliver new products and solutions for ‘base of the pyramid’ markets serving an additional 10 million people.

Post Harvest Project: Reducing Waste for Food Security
Commitment by: nanoICE
In 2012, nanoICE committed $8,945,000 to launch the Post Harvest Project (PHP). This commitment will install new cold chain systems at the Port of Tema and Lake Volta that will dramatically reduce fish waste and fish shrinkage, providing more protein for Ghanaians and more income for fishers. The commitment will also install a manufacturing plant at the Port of Tema with a transportation station at Lake Volta to make organic fertilizer from fish waste to provide an environmentally safe, locally made fertilizer for 134,000 hectares.

mHealth From the Ground Up in Rural Liberia
Commitment by: Tiyatien Health
In 2012, Tiyatien Health and Medic Mobile committed $1,000,000 to build a model for community-based, mobile-enabled maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) services in the Konobo district of Grand Gedeh, which has no mobile network and only one health facility. Through this commitment, Tiyatien Health will equip a pilot cadre of frontline health workers to deliver primary health care to all villages in the district for the first time.

Agri-Fin Mobile: Increasing Small-holder Income Through Mobile
Commitment by: Mercy Corps and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
In 2012, Mercy Corps and SDC committed $3,800,000 to develop new business models that offer mobile agricultural and financial services to small-holder farmers in Indonesia, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The Agri-Fin Mobile program will offer farmers access to mobile-based agricultural and financial services, including farm and crop management tools, financing, micro-insurance, and access to markets for their products, to increase their income.

In Women’s Hands: Empowering the Next Generation of African Female Leaders
Commitment by: the MPULE Institute
In 2012, The MPULE Institute committed $280,000 to develop the Network of Women Investing in Africa (NEW Africa) Leadership Program. By training and empowering women to excel in leadership roles in Ethiopia, Ghana and South Africa, NEW Africa will increase young African women’s representation and participation in the global development agenda, increase investment in social services and labor-saving technologies that are most beneficial to women, and unlock new opportunities in sectors proven to lift women and their families from poverty.

Brighter Futures: Ending Child Marriage in Turkey and Abroad
Commitment by: Sabanci Foundation
In 2012 and 2013, the Sabanci Foundation committed $400,000 to financially support, and help design, a meeting to take place in Istanbul in February 2013 and organized by Girls not Brides, where participants will design advocacy and communication strategies to end child marriage. Using these strategies, the Turkish National Platform to End Child Marriage will educate 200 parliamentarians and policy makers and 500 families, religious leaders, teachers, and officials in Turkey about the negative impacts of child marriage.

Next Generation Technology for Frontline Health Workers
Commitment by: IntraHealth International
IntraHealth commits $500,000 to design a scalable e/mLearning Program in Kenya, building on initial success in its partnership with the Kenyan Medical Training College network. IntraHealth will design a scalable eLearning model that will first be applied in two training institutions, where more than 80 frontline health workers will be equipped with new a/mLearning skills. Once the model is designed and tested, IntraHealth will make it available to frontline health workers across Kenya.

A Budding Interest: Organic Farming
Commitment by: The PRASAD Project
In 2012, the PRASAD Project committed to addressing regional issues of environmental degradation, economic disempowerment, illiteracy, and food insecurity in the Tansa Valley of India by supporting local farmers and their families address these issues through the establishment and expansion of several programs, including the adoption of organic farming techniques.  To address land degradation and soil erosion problems, the PRASAD Project will provide training in organic farming and horticulture to local farmers.  They will aid in the implementation of an integrated watershed program for better, more sustainable water resource use and will implement soil conservation and tree planting programs.  To address regional economic issues, the PRASAD Project will help farmers and their families access markets for their food and other agricultural outputs. The PRASAD Project, in conjunction with these activities, commits to providing a series of trainings to community residents which include literacy, vocational, environmental education, social health awareness, and sanitation and solid waste management programs. To support the long term impact and sustainability of these programs and initiatives, the PRASAD Project will conduct these trainings with the support of a number of Self-Help Groups (SHGs). Adopting a multifaceted approach recognizes that these issues are interrelated and inextricably linked.

Essential Capital Fund
Commitment by: Deutsche Bank Americas
In 2012, Deutsche Bank committed to structuring an innovative seven-year investment fund – the “Essential Capital Fund” – that provides crucial catalytic funds to socially responsible investment funds and enterprises that support the microfinance and social enterprise sectors. The Fund represents a pioneering effort in the impact investing field because it provides risk mitigation mechanisms for others investors. Specifically, by deferring a portion of its management fee, generating a savings reserve via a step coupon mechanism for investor returns and offering a 10 percent guarantee, the Fund promises to unlock significant capital currently reluctant to engage in unproven sectors. Slated to reach $50 million in portfolio size by 2015 and designed in collaboration with leading social impact stakeholders, the Essential Capital Fund will invest in 1) “first loss” positions of debt funds, 2) guarantees on loan syndications, 3) loans to impact investments and 4) other innovative opportunities.

United Water ‘Solution’: Investing in America’s Water
Commitment by: United Water
In 2012, United Water committed to partner with institutional investors to form entities that will provide Nassau County, New York and the City of Bayonne, New Jersey with private capital to pay down accumulated debt and initiate capital investment in their municipal water systems. Through this five year commitment, United Water will take over operations and repairs of these water systems in exchange for resident-paid water usage fees. The municipalities, while clearing millions of dollars of accumulated debt, will maintain ownership and regulatory oversight of these systems. This unique partnership and innovative financial solution will promote job creation, create a cleaner environment, and ensure that ownership and stewardship of the water system never leaves public hands.

Establishment of the Shared Value Initiative
Commitment by: FSG Advisors
In 2012, FSG committed to establish the Shared Value Initiative (SVI), a multi-stakeholder organization that will serve as a global knowledge and learning hub for companies and other stakeholders on the shared value concept, with key corporate co-founders. The SVI will capitalize on the current momentum around shared value by driving adoption amongst companies and by improving implementation at companies that have already engaged in shared value strategies. The SVI will engage in four major activities – deepen and document knowledge, create toolkits for implementation, build communities of practice via physical and virtual engagement opportunities, and steward the concept of shared value. Within the first two years, the founding partners aim to establish the SVI by developing an interactive communications platform, developing shared value content and events, and conducting outreach to a wide-range of stakeholders by identifying and developing outreach plans for stakeholders critical to shared value adoption and implementation.

Building a Global Movement to Redefine Success in Business
Commitment By: B Lab
In 2012, B Lab committed to extend the B Corp movement globally and grow the community of B Corps by 250 businesses, with a goal of reaching 20 countries on 6 continents by December 2013. Organizations that register as B Corps are purpose-driven to create a more inclusive and sustainable economy, with legal underpinnings that allow them to produce value for society as well as shareholders. B Lab will build on the momentum of the B Corp movement in the US and begin its global campaign first in South America, partnering with its first international partner Sistema B to build a founding class of 100 B Corps in the region by the end of 2013. This global initiative will include policy work to create a new corporate form and policy incentives, extensive use of B Lab’s standards and technology platform, and partnerships with organizations that have regional presence and expertise.

The following progress reports were announced in Plenary Sessions today:

General Mills/PEPFAR/USAID Partnership for Food Security
Commitment by: General Mills, Inc.
In 2009, General Mills, in partnership with the Office of United States Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), committed to link its technical and business expertise with small and medium-sized (SME) mills and food processors in sub-Saharan Africa, with the goal of improving those companies’ ability to produce high-quality, nutritious, and safe food at affordable prices. This partnership will utilize the expertise of 1,200 experts in General Mills’ research and development arm to investigate the challenges to locally sourcing supplemental and therapeutic foods for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Ultimately, General Mills, in close partnership with the USAID Agriculture Bureau, aims to engage multiple Fortune 500 food companies in the provision of technical assistance to up to 200 SMEs in 15 countries.

Pollinator Habitat Improvement
Commitment by: Grief, Inc.
In 2009, Grief, Inc. committed to improving pollinator habitats using various silvicultural activities. Grief expects these treatments to increase pollinator populations and, ultimately, improve wildlife habitat for game and non-game species, songbirds and migratory birds. By improving wildlife habitat, timberland owners will justify increases in hunting lease revenues. Increasing pollinator populations will allow for greater yield on agricultural lands.

Girls Not Brides: Partnership to End Child Marriage
Commitment by: The Elders, The Ford Foundation, NoVo Foundation, and Nike Foundation
In 2011, the Elders, the Ford Foundation, the Nike Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation committed to jointly establish ‘Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage’ (Girls not Brides). Girls not Brides is a member-driven partnership with a global focus. They also committed to raise $3 million to ensure the functioning of the partnership, the creation of a secretariat, and to seed activities to end child marriage in priority countries. In addition, they committed to establish a network of donors to support programs to end child marriage worldwide.

Developing MFI Social Performance Scorecard & Ratings
Commitment by: The Moody’s Foundation
In 2010, Moody’s, one of the world’s leading sources for credit ratings, research, and risk analysis, committed to develop a scorecard and standardized rating for assessing the social performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The social performance rating will consider items such as client protection principles, client service, social impact measurement, and governance. As part of this process, Moody’s will work with investors and MFIs to develop an understanding how social performance is assessed, create customized social performance tools, and publish research on how the industry assesses social performance. Moody’s will work with a consortium of partners including The Social Performance Task Force, Grameen Bank, Women’s World Banking, Blue Orchard, The MIX Market, Deutsche Bank, and ImpAct to design and develop the scorecards.

Western Union’s Our World, Our Family Program
Commitment By: Western Union Foundation
In 2008, Western Union Foundation made a commitment to initiate the Western Union’s Our World, Our Family® program, a five-year, $50 million initiative designed to equip migrants and the communities they leave behind with the skills, knowledge, and resources essential to alleviating poverty. Worldwide, there are an estimated 500 million migrants working outside of their home countries, who sent home an estimated $369 billion in remittances in 2007. Western Union and its partners seek to leverage the talents, experience, and resources of migrants and other stakeholders to build capacity and extend access to capital and financial services to communities outside the financial mainstream. Since its inception, this program has achieved key milestones including developing a global partnership with Mercy Corps, launching an employee volunteerism program, introducing Western Union Global Giving Circles to support educational initiatives in India, and collaborating with the Economic Intelligence Unit to develop research and convene leading experts around the issue of migration.

Medical Supply Chain Transformation Project
Commitment By: The Coca-Cola Company
In 2010, the Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) committed to share its route-to-market expertise to support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (The Global Fund)’s ability to get vital drugs, medicines, and medical supplies to the people who need them most. It will do this initially through a pilot project wherein 10 months of direct support will be provided to the Medical Stores Department in Tanzania. There is potential for additional phases of work. The objective will be to test this innovation in public private partnering to build a model that encourages others to add their expertise. The company hopes to create a scalable, sustainable and replicable model that can be rolled out to other countries facing similar challenges related to the supply chains of critical medicines. It is envisaged that partnerships with multiple organizations from the public sector, private sector and civil society could be encouraged in future replications of this work.

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About the Clinton Global Initiative
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date CGI members have made nearly 2,300 commitments, which have already improved the lives of more than 400 million people in more than 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at $73.1 billion.

CGI also convenes CGI America, a meeting focused on collaborative solutions to economic recovery in the United States, and CGI University (CGI U), which brings together undergraduate and graduate students to address pressing challenges in their community or around the world. For more information, visit clintonglobalinitiative.org and follow us on Twitter @ClintonGlobal and Facebook at facebook.com/clintonglobalinitiative.

From Brazil and Peru, Disparate Internet Bills Under Consideration.

Rachel Glickhouse, for Americas Society

 www.as-coa.org/articles/brazil-an…

The explosion of Internet use in Latin America means a new set of threats for consumers and the need to address their online safety and rights. In both Brazil and Peru, Internet use increased roughly 30 percent over the past five years. With two bills making their way through national legislatures, Brazil and Peru’s lawmakers could take diametrically opposed steps on Internet freedoms. Brazil’s Congress will soon vote on a bill to protect Internet consumers while Peru evaluates legislation that would change the penal code to include online crimes.

In Brazil, what some dubbed the “world’s first Internet bill of rights” is slowly winding its way through Congress. Called the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, the bill was due for a vote on September 19, but after a postponement a new vote will take place following the October 7 municipal elections. Using research done through public hearings and online consultations with the public, the bill outlines rights for Internet users, thus providing a legal framework for future laws on Internet-based crimes and copyright infringement. Guilherme Varella, a lawyer from the Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection, praised the bill, saying: “[Users will know] that their personal data will be protected, their privacy will not be violated, what they will be free to browse and that they will not see their connection degraded (with a slow speed) without justification.” The law originated in 2009, when the Ministry of Justice’s Secretariat for Legislation and the Getulio Vargas Foundation conducted a study exploring a legal framework for the Internet, asking for input from citizens online.

The bill enjoys support from three of Brazil’s most popular websites, as well as dozens of Brazilian and international civil rights organizations. While Dilma Rousseff’s administration supports the bill, the government wants to ensure new language on net neutrality won’t change. This means the law would ensure Internet service providers and governments cannot restrict users’ access to content, websites, or Internet-based services, nor can they interfere with how consumers use the Internet. If the bill passes, Brazil will become the first South American country to guarantee net neutrality. The bill also protects website owners, saying they are not responsible for user-generated content. However, Brazil’s attorney general wants to change text to ensure the bill fully protects “consumers, children, and teens.”

Peru’s Congress may follow quite a different path—one some say could lead to privacy violations. Last year, it began work on legislation to combat cybercrime, targeting offenses like bank fraud and child pornography. The Computer Crimes Bill, which would alter the country’s penal code, would “essentially eliminate anonymity online, force companies to comply with government requests for user data, and put average Internet users at risk of imprisonment for their online activities,” writes Access Now, a digital watchdog site. One of the bill’s authors, Congressman Juan Carlos Eguren, defended the legislation, saying: “It’s everything that’s opposite to taking away privacy. It’s to protect and punish those who use electronic ways to violate rights, to gain information.”

One of the most controversial parts of the law, Article 23, allows the police to demand personal data—including name, home address, phone number, and IP address—from Internet service providers within a 48-hour period and without a warrant. Unlike Brazil’s Internet bill, legislators created the Peruvian bill without consulting the public. Some critics also say that the crimes listed are vague, such as “informational fraud,” and that jail times seem arbitrary. As a result, the bill was protested in Peru. Over 5,000 people sent letters to Congress. An open letter to legislators from 15 Peruvian and international organizations denounced the bill, saying “the creation of new crimes that are not sufficiently clear and narrowly applied can affect citizens’ constitutional rights to legal due process, privacy, and freedom of expression, among others.”

On this website we had several postings from Rio and we followed closely the preparations for the Conference, but the following was posted in the Society for International Development (SID) e-book. ebookbrowse.com/pincas-jawetz-pdf…

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THE POST RIO+20 NEW ERA AT THE UNITED NATIONS starts with a RIO+20 new attempt to develop a practice of sustainability. The next climate and development game will be played September 2012 on the UN General Assembly court.

This article by Pincas Jawetz, based on a posting on www.SustainabiliTank.info, analyzes the preparations to the Conference, Rio at the time of the June 2012 Conference, and further meetings in Vienna held as part of the 54 International Congress of Americanists (ICA) that involved meetings we were not able to attend in Rio.

Vienna, Austria: July 28, 2012

We picked up at Rio a button that said – “STEP UP AGENDA 21 – RIO+21″ (??) and we wondered if those that issued this button were listening to what was being said in the Conference at large. The honest truth was that AGENDA 21 was not in sight. The reality is that a RIO+21 must indeed be the launching pad of what the UN 67th General Assembly opening Statements of September 18th to October 1st 2012 must be ready to divine – and this might be something different from the outcome of the Rio Conference of 1992. It is therefore of real importance for the Heads of Delegations to prepare for the potential offered at the upcoming UN General Assembly. The “FUTURE WE WANT” MANDATES THE UN SECRETARY GENERAL to start the process at UNGA 67 in order to have proposals ready in place for UNGA 68. Interesting, material that reached us from the UN, does not mention the Commission on Sustainable Development, to be closed and lessons from the CSD to be passed to a new element to result from the deliberations of a Universal Membership High Level Political Forum. The fact that it is passed over in silence means to us that forces at the UN may still hope to undo above Rio decision.

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1992 was specially a good year – the break?up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, surely to different degrees, and on the other hand, Europe started out on an experiment of unification that emerged from a century of internal warfare, two World Wars, and the Marshall Plan revitalizing its Nation States. UNCED in 1992 seized on the 1987 Brundtland Commission’s Sustainable Development concept, and Maurice Strong, present everywhere, since the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment, was able to maneuver the topic of Sustainability – the concept that bridges between our deeds now, and the needs of future generations, to the point that developing countries
were able to see in their acceptance of the concept a way of obtaining funding for ongoing activities.

All countries never measured up to the responsibility to future generations.

In the US, 1992 was the year of the emergence of strong Democratic leadership in Congress – to the point that Rio saw two separate US delegations – The official delegation, and the Senate delegation with Al Gore and Timothy Wirth holding the reins.

Europe had two delegations ? the one anchored in the freshly signed Maastricht agreement for those countries that will be the first batch of EU member States, and the other group made up of Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Both of these groups were ready to link to the Al Gore US group, and the visions of conference leader Maurice Strong and Minister Klaus Toepfer, working for Germany, in order to shape up at Rio 1992 a UN position on the run.

The BRICS were not yet strongly positioned on the map, and he G77 where ready to accept the idea that money might come their way.

But now in RIO of 2012, Mr. Maurice Strong said that what we need to talk about is DEVELOPING SUSTAINABILITY meaning the understanding that Sustainability is about the future generations rather then development for profit in our times.

There was no RIO+20 Outcome Document. What helped the UN in 2012 was the emergence of UN “TEAM B” – the States of Bhutan and Brazil – to  lead it out of the TOHU VAVOHU in New York and at Rio. The Prime Minister of Bhutan and his aids introduced notions of substance – “Well?Being and Happiness,” while the whole Administration of Brazil, President, Foreign Minister, the Diplomatic frontman and his large staff, taught us the potential of  “Olympic Diplomacy” – a kind of Kissingerian diplomacy to provide something to every participant – so when an agreement is reached pro-forma there was not even a single loser – everyone claimed he had something he won – nobody got in full what he was bargaining for.

The Brazilian “COMMON VISION” when accepted by all UN Member States, was unchanged from the Brazilian paper, then renamed by the UN “The Future We Want” in line of previous releases from the UN. This was not in backing of the “Vision,” but rather in attempt to forget the Vision – and stress from the document the points close to official UN positions. In due time, nevertheless, some Member State will ask the UNSG to act according to the Brazil sponsored Vision, so we do not worry about mailings that we receive and that deviate from above.

In our opinion – it was paragraphs 84-86 of the Brazilian “Our Common Vision” – that became the UN’s “Our Common Future” – that include the essence of the potential of progress starting with the UN General Assembly – September 2012. But it seems that those paragraphs, the reference to Future Generations, and the reevaluation at the UN General Assembly of Sustainable Development, are missing in reporting to home base, in the major Press, and in evaluations by NGOs, as if rewritten from official UN Press releases.

I was at five debriefings held in Vienna – one was “Rio+20: Conference with meaning for Development and Environment?”  The panel included Mr. Werner Raza, Head of the Austrian Research Foundation for International Development OEFSE, Mr. Alexander Egitt, Director of Greenpeace Austria, and Daniel Bacher, Spokesman for the Advocacy for Africa at the DKA – all members of the official Austrian Government delegation to the Rio Conference.

At another debriefing called by Professor Otmar Hoell of the Austrian Institute for International Policy OIIP, Mr. Schoffman, Vienna representative of the Global Compact, and from the floor Dr. Leo Gabriel, an anthropologist and Journalist, added that there was more to Rio then the official meeting. There were agreements in the side events – in the business area and also in the Peoples Sustainability Treaties. Mr. Gabriel spoke of the “La Cupula dos Povos” – the Alternate Meeting at Rio that was apart from the official meeting and involved indigenous people. Then at the other end of the strip, green entrepreneurs displayed sustainable business ideas.

On July 14th there was the last debriefing of this series ? “How do we go on from Rio+20?”? about the campaign against the “Green Economy.”
They pointed at the power of language, and said it needs to be explained  – THE FUTURE WE DO NOT WANT.

These speakers believe that much has happened at RIO+20, but this happened not at the official meeting but at the meetings of the business people. Some of these meetings were neither advertised nor open to non-invited guests.

They believe that a Green Economy is a business concept to give quantified value to nature so it can be monetized and sold as if it were a commodity. They reject the notion that it is supposed to improve human life while achieving an economic shift by resource efficiency and decoupling growth & resource use.

Their argument is that clean air and snow on a mountain are there and must be preserved – period – not because they have a financial value.

They saw in Rio future Commodification of Nature, while on the other hand there were people that came to protest the above. Iara was a coordinator of THE PEOPLE’s SUMMIT – and she told us that the Brazilian government provided some $5 million to help organize their meeting– albeit far away (35 km. away) from the official site of the RioCentro.

Iara Pitricovsky, co-director, the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies in Brazilia, participated in meetings with the UN Secretary-General and told him that it was frustrating to see the limping process. Twenty years ago we were at the top of neo-liberalism and Agenda 21 – we tried to build it and failed. Part of the ideas from the Peoples’ Meeting reached Vienna July 15-20, 2012, with the 54th International Congress of Americanists (ICA) and made it clear – it is more complicated then we are thinking with our old search for development.

At the July 14th debriefing, obviously already part of ICA, Edgardo Lander, Universidad Central de Venezuela and Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, who at the ICA meeting co-chaired with the University of Vienna Ulrich Brand, on Thursday, July 19th the Symposium on Democratization and Transformation Perspectives, spoke on the language issue – new things start with new language. Critical economics started with things that did not take into account externalities, now the issue is this new commodification of nature. We need a defense of the Commons, of Mother Earth ? different from the valorization of everything. Our actions have consequences – the planet has limits – the corporations have concluded that they have to take this into account, translated – green sector will produce greater profits then the brown sector. The World Bank thinks of the value of bees in fertilization of plants to be turned into bonds and sold on the market.

Jutta Kill of Fern UK, picked up at the business meeting she attended the phrase – “WE WILL TREASURE WHAT WE MEASURE” and says that this will be the new mantra of business in the effort to commodify nature. We see also a potential similarity between the Buddhist Bhutan stand and the indigenous people of Latin America. The Prime Minister of Bhutan, Jigmi Yoezer Thinley , with a large entourage of Ministers and Officials held a special meeting with the UNGA, on April 2nd, 2012, on Well Being and Happiness as targets of intent when talking about Sustainability and Sustainable Development.

—–

New alliances are possible – such as between countries, mainly in the poor South, that are already suffering from effects of climate change, and more visionary countries of the North, that have a civil society ready to switch gears in the economy and move to new industries that are less polluting, resources saving and create jobs – a win?win?win situation for all!  But the structure of the UN is itself fossilized, and the RIO+20 Prepcom was frozen.

Led by Foreign Minister Antonio de Aguilar Patriota, a Former Brazil Ambassador to the United States (2007-2009), and chief operational Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, the Undersecretary for Environment, Energy, Science and Technology of the Ministry of External Relations of Brazil – Figueredo Machado with 30 other Ambassadors and Ministers – made sure to speak to everybody who volunteered an opinion, and note the minimums of acceptance in a secret draft.

Brazil, to play it safe, prepared also a second defence-line around the Rio+20 negotiations. I enjoyed in New York the resistance of Ambassador Figueiredo Machado to accept the idea that the meeting should actually be called RIO-20 because of the need, at the end, to come up with a new paradigm to replace the Agenda 21 that nobody was talking about.

BrazilDialogues was the second line of defense organized by Mr. Machado. We have much more on this in our full text. Please read it there. Eventually, a set of recommendations resulted from this second process and they will be attached to the outcome document.

—-

Repeating what we see as the main point – please follow us to paragraphs 84-86 of the Rio Outcome Document, which have the secondary heading: “HIGH LEVEL POLITICAL FORUM.” We pick only a few most telling points:

# 84. We decide to establish a universal intergovernmental high level political forum, building on the strengths, experiences, resources and inclusive participation modalities of the Commission on Sustainable Development, and subsequently replacing the Commission. The high level political forum shall follow up on the implementation of sustainable development and should avoid overlap with existing structures, bodies and entities in a cost?effective manner.

# 86. We decide to launch an intergovernmental and open, transparent and inclusive negotiation process under the General Assembly to define the high level forum’s format and organizational aspects with the aim of convening the first high level forum at the beginning of the 68th session of the General Assembly. We will also consider the need for promoting intergenerational solidarity for the achievement of sustainable development, taking into account the needs of future generations, including by inviting the Secretary General to present a report on this issue.

–

What above means is that the UN Secretary Generals is mandated to establish under  UN General Assembly rules, that call for full UN Membership:

(1) a universal inter governmental high level political forum to replace the existing non-functioning Commission on Sustainable Development.

(2) though leaving the term Sustainable Development in place, the above looks at Developing Sustainability instead – this by mandating the UN Secretary General to look at taking into account the needs of future generations — “including by inviting the Secretary General to present a report on this issue.”

–
The Brazilian Diplomats have accepted the need to consider Sustainability as the bridge to future generations when developing economies for the short sighted benefit of the current generation. Introducing the needs of FUTURE GENERATIONS gives for the first time the UN the sense of ethics required in full understanding of the term SUSTAINABILITY. A “Small Office” of a HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS that could be modeled after the example of the US General Accounting Office (GAO) could answer questions of impact on future generations by any ongoing activity or negotiations at the UN. Other working examples ? Commissioners for future generations were tried by Parliaments of Israel and Hungary.

–

To summarize – RIO+20 as handled by Brazil – is a door to a new future that is going to rewrite the 1992 decisions that were not followed anyway. As said – it will be rather DEVELOPING SUSTAINABILITY then SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, and in this respect the platform is only being developed, and the eventual funding will be forthcoming with South?South cooperation. We will have to be patient and see the changes taking effect. But this will happen only if governments remind the UN Secretary General of the outcome document’s specific language and ask for his acting accordingly — on he rights of the un-conceived yet — THE FUTURE GENERATIONS.

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Pincas Jawetz is retired from having been an International Consultant on Energy Policy handling Alternate Energy and the NegaWatt. His main residence is now in Vienna Austria. His training was in Chemistry and Physics, International Management, and Business Administration. His experience started from new fossil fuel like oil-shales retorting in Spain (1959) to biofuels in Latin America, the US, and elsewhere as part of agri-policy, later on; then on from solar energy, and efficiency, to issues of Sustainable Development and Climate Change. On those latter topics he was directly involved in the UN International Conferences wearing various hats. As media he reported for Auto Free Times, Culture Change, and at present for www.SustainabiliTank.info

At Rio+20 he headed the delegation of WAFUNIF – The World Association of Former UN Interns and Fellows.

For the Vienna Chapter of the Society for International Development he co?chaired a session on Biomass and Outer Space at the UN Vienna Outer Space Conference UNISPACE-82 ? (a) growth experiments under no gravity conditions and (b) remote sensing for biomass inventory taking. He was also treasurer at the New York section of SID and NGO representative to the UN.

To learn more about SID Vienna activities, how to participate or how to become member of the chapter, please visit the SID Vienna Chapter website at: www.sidvienna.org

IBS 2012 – The 15-th International Biotechnology Symposium and Exhibition – Sunday, 16 September 2012 - Friday, 21 September 2012.  http://www.ibs2012.org/

IBS 2012 aims at gathering actors of diverse fields of biotechnology around the theme  ”Innovative Biotechnology for Green World and Beyond” –   in the 21st century.
The IBS2012 meeting will take place in Daegu (Korea) in September 2012, bringing together actors in sciences, engineering, business and government.

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www.http://ibs2014.org/

Brazil’s Minister of Health Alexandre Padilha

September 19, 2012 Washington, DC

WHEN
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

WHERE
1615 L Street, NW, Suite 250
Washington, DC  20036
Map of location

The Council of the Americas for a public discussion with the Brazilian Minister of Health, Alexandre Padilha.

The wealth effect, raised expectations of a growing middle class, changing demographics, and the poverty alleviation focus of the Rousseff administration have all converged within Brazil’s health sector to amplify existing challenges while also creating new opportunities.

Minister Padilha will discuss the state of health care in Brazil with an emphasis on the goals and objectives of the Rousseff administration’s efforts over the short and medium terms.

This conversation will be on the record.

SouthViews

No.30, 14 August 2012

SOUTHVIEWS is a service of the South Centre to provide opinions and analysis of topical issues from a South perspective.

Visit the South Centre’s website: www.southcentre.org

What Explains the South’s Recent High Growth — And Can It Continue?

Recently there emerged a view that developing countries had “de-coupled” their economies from the developed countries and had taken off to a path of high growth. But this is an overly-optimistic view. This article by the South Centre’s Chief Economist examines the growth record of developing countries and analyses how the good performance was based mainly on external factors that no longer exist.

The next issue of SouthViews will have a follow-up article on the need for a new development strategy in the South.

………………………………………………………………

By Yilmaz Akyüz, Chief Economist, South Centre

The Growth Record of Developing Countries, 1990-2011

At the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, many economies in the developing world were in disarray.  East Asia was still recovering from the 1997 crisis while a host of other emerging economies were falling into payments and financial crises one after another; Brazil and Russia in 1998, Turkey 2000-01 and Argentina 2001-2002.  The prospects for the global economy were dimmed by the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the US at the beginning of the decade, coming on top of prolonged deflation in Japan and uneven growth in the EU.

For the entire period from 1990 to 2002, the average growth in DEEs (developing and emerging economies) exceeded the average growth in AEs (advanced economies) by just over 1 percentage point and in per capita terms there was hardly any income convergence.  The picture was even worse in the 1980s when a large number of DEEs were suffering from severe payments difficulties caused by a debt overhang and sharp declines in commodity prices.  Until the new millennium the only major economy in the South that was able to close the income gap with AEs by leaps and bounds was China, with an average growth rate close to 10 per cent during 1990-2002 compared to less than 4 per cent in the rest of the developing world.

All these changed in the new millennium.  From 2002 until the outbreak of the subprime crisis, the growth difference between the DEEs and AEs shot up to 5 percentage points.  This was not because of deceleration in AEs, but an unprecedented acceleration in DEEs where the average growth rate almost doubled from the 1990s.  The global crisis led to a loss of momentum in DEEs during 2008-09, but their growth difference with AEs widened further because of a severe recession in the latter countries.  Despite subsequent recovery in AEs, growth in DEEs has continued to be faster by about 4 percentage points in 2010-2011 – a margin still considerably larger than those during the 1980s and 1990s.  Taking the whole decade from 2002 until 2012, the average growth in DEEs exceeds the average growth in AEs by more than 5 per cent per annum.  This is unprecedented.  As noted, during the post-war golden age DEEs also grew at a very fast pace, by some 6 per cent per annum, but growth in AEs was also high, with the gap being no more than a couple of percentage points.

However, there has been considerable diversity in the pace of acceleration of growth among DEEs.  During pre-crisis years acceleration was faster in Africa than the two other main regions even though African growth rate remained below that of Asia.  By contrast, the Western Hemisphere saw only a modest rise in average growth compared to the 1990s.  Among analytical groups, fuel exporters saw faster acceleration than either the exporters of non-fuel commodities or manufactures – from just over 1 per cent in the 1990s to 7.5 per cent between 2003 and 2008.  Among the major emerging economies, Russia, Argentina, Turkey, India and South Africa enjoyed much faster acceleration than the others.  In the first three countries this was due to rapid recoveries from severe crises which had caused large output losses at the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s.

The acceleration of growth in DEEs since the beginning of the new millennium is not due to China.  Indeed, growth in China during the 1990s was almost as fast as that in the 2000s. However, it is notable that in the 1990s China was not widely perceived as an emerging economic power capable of challenging the US dominance until it had started running growing trade surpluses with the US and accumulating large dollar reserves.

International trade and investment

The new millennium witnessed a rapid growth in world trade which increased, in nominal dollars, by 2.5 times by 2008, with the average annual growth in total exports reaching twice the rate of growth of world output.  This period also saw a significant increase in the share of DEEs in world trade, rapid expansion of South-South trade and growing global imbalances.  The current accounts of AEs as a whole, which had already turned into red at the end of the 1990s, constantly deteriorated until the outbreak of the crisis.  This was entirely due to mounting deficits of the US and to a lesser extent the UK, as the eurozone was broadly in balance, and Japan and the remaining AEs were running surpluses.  This was reflected in growing surpluses of DEEs, which came to exceed $600 billion in 2007 of which two-thirds belonged to China and smaller East Asian DEEs and the rest to Fuel Exporters (FEs).  This, together with large inflows of capital, resulted in an unprecedented rise in the international reserves of DEEs, which reached $5 trillion in 2007 despite substantially increased capital outflows.

The rapid expansion of exports and growing current account surpluses of DEEs owe a great deal to US spending extravaganza.  The US private savings had already began to fall and current account deficits to rise in the mid-1990s largely because of a strong wealth effect of the dot-com equity market bubble on private consumption and a boom in the property market.  The spending spree continued with greater force in the 2000s when the Fed responded to the bursting of the dot-com bubble by bringing down policy rates to historical lows for fear of asset deflation and recession, and new legislation introduced in the late 1990s allowed greater room for banks to expand high-risk lending for property.  Capital gains from rising house prices in the 2000s sustained the spending boom as homeowners increasingly extracted equity to finance consumption.  As a result, household savings, which was some 6 per cent of GDP in the early 1990s, started to fall rapidly and disappeared altogether on the eve of the 2008 crisis.  This was mirrored by growing external deficits ? the US current account was broadly balanced in the early 1990s, but it registered a deficit of over 6 per cent in 2007.  Indeed the evidence provided by research in New York Fed shows a strikingly strong positive correlation between house price appreciations and current account deficits not only in the US but also in other countries that have subsequently experienced the highest degree of financial turmoil (Ferrero 2012).

In Europe, the UK went through a similar property bubble, but was running a relatively small current account deficit.  In the eurozone, deficits in peripheral countries were rising not only vis-à-vis the core economies, notably Germany, but also the rest of the world, reaching on average 7 per cent of GDP in Spain and 9 per cent in Portugal and Greece.  These deficits resulted from loss of competitiveness due to wage settlements in excess of productivity increases in conditions of rising private consumption and property spending.  The participation of these countries in the European Monetary Union facilitated the financing of these deficits by significantly lowering the risk premium.  Banks in Germany, France and elsewhere in Europe were more than willing to pump in funds to finance these deficits – a process which culminated in the eurozone crisis, in much the same way as the boom-bust cycles in lending to several emerging economies in the past.  Germany pursued a policy of wage deflation – competitive disinflation – running surpluses against most other eurozone members and the rest of the world, including the US.  Japan was in a similar situation, relying for growth on exports and generating current account surpluses which reached 5 per cent of GDP in 2007.  Thus, the US was acting as a locomotive not only to export-led East Asian DEEs but also to Japan and Germany (Akyüz 2011b).

The increased outsourcing to the Sino-centric production network by transnational corporations from AEs has made a significant contribution to growing exports from East Asia.  FDI to China doubled the levels of the late 1990s to reach $80 billion in 2007.  Thus, China and other East Asian DEEs participating in the Sino-centric production network benefited not only from growing exports to AEs, but also from investment and technology brought in by transnational corporations to expand exportables. Until the global crisis, Chinese exports to AEs and FDI inflows reinforced each other.  After 2008, when exports slowed down considerably, FDI inflows to Chinese manufacturing remained sluggish, even though China was able to restore growth on the basis of expansion of domestic demand.

Capital flows and remittances

The new millennium witnessed the beginning of the third post-war boom in capital flows to DEEs, mainly as a result of exceptionally low interest rates and rapid expansion of liquidity in AEs, including the US, the EU and Japan.  Both net flows and net inflows to DEEs peaked in 2007 before the outbreak of the subprime debacle. The surge in capital inflows was accompanied by rapidly narrowing spreads on emerging-market debt, brought about by significantly improved risk appetite.  This, together with low interest rates in AEs, resulted in a sharp decline in the cost of external financing for DEEs.  Most DEEs enjoyed the increased risk appetite and shared in the boom in capital inflows irrespective of their underlying fundamentals.

Although capital flows among DEEs have also been increasing rapidly and China has become a major investor in some resource-rich DEEs, a very large proportion of capital came to DEEs from lenders and investors in AEs.  However, China contributed to the expansion of capital inflows to DEEs by investing its twin surpluses in current and capital accounts in reserves, mostly in dollars.  Large acquisitions of US Treasuries by China and FEs helped to keep long-term rates relatively low even as the US Fed started to raise short-term rates.  Thus, while growing US external deficits were being financed “officially” there was plenty of highly-leveraged private money searching for yield in DEEs.  A mutually reinforcing process emerged between private flows to DEEs and official flows to the US – the former were translated into reserves of DEEs and constituted an important part of official flows to the US, and supported lower rates there and private flows to DEEs.

Private capital inflows to DEEs held up initially during the subprime debacle despite growing strains in credit and asset markets in the US and Europe.  However, with the collapse of a number of leading financial institutions in the US, notably the Lehman Brothers, the boom came to a halt in the second half of 2008.  The rapidly growing volatility in financial markets led to an extreme and generalized risk aversion, pushing up spreads on emerging-market debt and triggering a flight to safety into US Treasuries and appreciation of the dollar vis-à-vis other major currencies, even though the US was the epicentre of the crisis.

However, the contraction of private capital inflows to DEEs was short-lived.  They started to recover in the first half of 2009, driven by historically low interest rates and rapid expansion of liquidity in major AEs brought about by monetary policy response to the crisis as well as better growth performance in DEEs and a shift in risk perceptions against AEs.  In the second half of 2011, a generalized increase in risk aversion led to exit of capital from several DEEs (IMF WEO 2012 January update), but according to the latest available projections by the IMF (WEO September 2011), both net private inflows and net flows will continue to remain strong in 2012, though still below the 2007 peaks.

DEEs also enjoyed a rapid growth of workers remittances, at an average annual rate of some 20 per cent between 2002 and 2008, rising from less than $100 billion at the beginning of the decade to more than $320 billion in 2008, exceeding all categories of capital inflows except FDI.  Much of these also came from AEs, with Europe accounting for almost half of total inflows followed by the US.  Some major emerging economies were among the top receivers, including India, China, Mexico and Indonesia.  In 2007 remittances amounted to 1–1.5 per cent of GDP in China and Indonesia, around 3 per cent in India and Mexico, over 4 per cent in Pakistan and 11 per cent in the Philippines.  In many of these countries they led to a significant improvement in the current account, reducing deficits and even generating surpluses despite large trade deficits.

With the outbreak of the crisis remittances registered a moderate decline in 2009.  However, the subsequent recovery has been weak; during 2010-11 they are estimated to have grown by less than half of the rate observed during pre-crisis years.  According to recent projections by the World Bank (Mohapatra et al. 2011) they would grow by 7-8 per cent per annum in the coming years, subject to serious downside risks associated with persistent unemployment in Europe and the US and hardening political attitudes toward new migration.

Commodity prices

With rapid liquidity expansion and acceleration of growth in the global economy, commodity prices started to rise in 2003, gaining further momentum in 2006.  The factors driving the boom included a strong pace of activity in DEEs, notably in China, where commodity-intensity of growth is high, low initial stocks, weak supply response and relatively weak dollar.  These markets also became increasingly financialized after the beginning of the decade as financial investors sought to diversify into commodity-linked assets and low interest rates led to a search for yield in commodity markets (UNCTAD TDR 2011).  In the case of food, diversion to bio-fuels and rising cost of fertilizers and transport due to high oil prices also played a role.

Despite growing financial strains in the US, commodity prices continued to increase before they made a sharp downturn in August 2008.  This boom-bust cycle in commodity prices in the middle of the subprime crisis was largely due to shifts in market sentiments regarding the future course of prices.  Initially, the subprime crisis was seen as a hiccup and the downturn in economic activity was expected to be short-lived, including by the IMF (WEO, July 2008), followed by a rapid and robust recovery.  However, with mounting financial difficulties in the US and the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, sentiments turned sour and growth prospects were dampened.  Investors pulled out large amounts of money from oil and non-oil futures, more or less at the same time as capital flows to DEEs were reversed and the dollar started to strengthen.  By the end of October 2008, food was 27 per cent and oil 45 per cent below their peaks.

Again the downturn in commodity prices was short-lived and the upturn in 2009 coincided with the recovery of capital flows to DEEs and the decline of the dollar.  After falling in late 2008 and early 2009, index trading also started to gain momentum as commodity prices turned up in spring 2009 as a result of increased demand from DEEs, notably China, in conditions of continued expansion of international liquidity and historically low interest rates.  Investment in commodities recovered rapidly while the number of exchange traded options and futures rose to unprecedented levels (BIS 2010).  Despite recent weakening of markets for metals and minerals and several agricultural commodities, prices remain significantly above the levels of the early 2000s.

Improved domestic economic indicators — but significantly due to external factors

The past ten years have witnessed considerable improvements in macroeconomic conditions in DEEs.  Alongside the acceleration of growth, fiscal and payments deficits have declined considerably and inflation has been brought under control in a large majority of countries.  Improvements in economic management and institutions, following a number of policy errors resulting from adherence to the Washington Consensus, have no doubt played an important role in bringing these about.   However, extremely favourable global conditions have also made a major contribution and indeed played a more crucial part in many countries.

DEEs have generally manifested greater fiscal discipline in recent years.  Average central government deficits were hovering around 3.5 per cent of GDP at the beginning of the 2000s (IMF WEO October 2007).  By 2006-07 they came down to around 0.5 per cent.  During the same period, the average external debt of DEEs declined from around 40 per cent of GDP to 25 per cent.  Total public debt as a proportion of GDP also declined considerably in many highly-indebted emerging economies, particularly on account of rapidly falling external debt.

Considerable progress has also been made in bringing inflation under control since the beginning of the decade.  Average consumer inflation in DEEs was close to 30 per cent per annum throughout the 1990s.  It came down to single-digit levels, just over 6 per cent during 2003-07.  This is largely because of sharp declines in inflation in Latin America towards the levels of more stable Asian economies.

Drawing on the lessons from past crises, DEEs have generally been more successful in managing exchange rates, capital flows and balance of payments, even though there are notable exceptions, including many countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey and South Africa – those more seriously affected by the 2008-09 crisis.  The resilience of domestic financial institutions and markets to shocks has also been improved through tighter prudential regulations and supervision, and significantly increased capitalization.  All these have been reflected in significantly improved credit ratings of major emerging economies.

However, improvements in macroeconomic balances in DEEs have not been independent of the favourable international economic environment.  In Latin America, an important part of the decline in budget deficits after 2002 was due to rising commodity prices, with revenues from commodity taxes, profits and loyalties accounting for as much as 50 per cent of the total increase in the fiscal revenue ratio in some countries (Cornia et al. 2011). An ECLAC report (Jiménez and Gómez-Sabaini 2009) argued that much of the improvement in the fiscal situation after 2002 was the result of the steady increase in commodity prices and warned that a sharp decline in these prices could seriously jeopardize the fiscal achievements.  Indeed, the fiscal space gained during the subprime expansion was largely lost with the reversal of commodity prices in 2008-09 when budgets went into deficits in the region by some 3 per cent of GDP (ECLAC 2010).

The situation is much the same for current account balances in commodity exporters in Latin America and Africa.  At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s current accounts in these regions registered deficits in the order of 3-4 per cent of GDP.  By 2007, both regions had moved to a surplus, at a rate of some 1 per cent of GDP in Latin America and over 3 per cent in Africa.   Again, an important reason was the increase in oil and non-oil commodity prices, which resulted in a 50 per cent improvement in the terms-of-trade in Latin America between 2002 and 2006.  It is estimated that without terms-of-trade gains from commodity price increases, the current account of the region would have shown a deficit of about 4 per cent of GDP.  Indeed, external deficits started to grow after 2008 with the decline in commodity prices and increased reliance on domestic demand for growth.

In several cases, success in bringing inflation under control also owes a greater deal to favourable international financial conditions and the generalized surge in capital flows. The exchange rate operated as an anchor for inflationary expectations, as net capital flows exceeded current account deficits and led to nominal appreciations.

Finally and more importantly, not all DEEs enjoying acceleration of growth in the 2000s have seen commensurate improvements in domestic savings, capital accumulation or productivity – a factor which raises considerable doubt about sustainability of strong growth.  The average savings rate in middle-income countries during 2000-08 was lower than the rate in the 1990s while the record on investment and productivity was mixed (World Bank 2011).

Again there is considerable diversity in the pace of capital accumulation among the DEEs which enjoyed a significant acceleration of growth in the 2000s.  In Latin America private investment rose as a share of GDP, but remained well below the levels in other regions (IMF REO October 2008). Low rates of investment in Brazil, as well as some other DEEs in the region, is a major reason why Latin America continues to have a poor record in productivity compared to East Asia (Palma 2011).

In several economies in East Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan (China) and Indonesia, investment rates have been hovering around 20 per cent of GDP in recent years, less than half the rate in China.  Large current account surpluses in some of these economies reflect low rates of domestic investment rather than exceptionally high domestic savings rates. In none of these East Asian economies have investment rates recovered the levels attained before the 1997 crisis. Recent investment rates have been too low to produce rapid and sustained growth of the kind many of these economies had enjoyed during the earlier phases of their industrialization, creating concerns that some of them run the risk of getting caught in a middle-income trap (Radhi and Zeufack 2009).

Conclusion: What then accounts for the South’s Growth?

The exceptionally favourable global economic conditions prevailing before the outbreak of the crisis not only improved internal and external balances and stability in DEEs, but also contributed to the expansion of economic activity, directly or indirectly.  China and other export-oriented East Asian DEEs benefited significantly from credit, consumption and property bubbles created by speculative lending and investment in the US and Europe, growing rapidly based on exports to these markets, running increasing current account surpluses and accumulating large amounts of reserves.   In most DEEs in Latin America and Africa, the combination of increasing commodity prices and declining cost of external financing significantly reduced the payments deficits and allowed to expand domestic demand and accelerate growth.  In oil-importing emerging economies such as India and Turkey, capital inflows were more than sufficient to meet the deficits created by oil price shocks, again allowing rapid growth based primarily on domestic demand.  India additionally enjoyed a rapid growth in workers’ remittances which reached 3.3 per cent of GDP in 2007.

Low interest rates in AEs and the surge in capital inflows also allowed most emerging economies to pursue expansionary monetary policies and maintain historically low interest rates, stimulating domestic demand.  Large inflows of capital in excess of current account needs in deficit countries or coming on top of current account surpluses in surplus countries, contributed to expansion by creating asset bubbles.   Equity prices rose sharply between 2002 and 2007 both in dollar and local currency terms.  The increase was particularly strong in Brazil, China, India and Turkey, and many of these also experienced credit and property booms both due to increased entry of non-residents to domestic asset markets and the impact of capital inflows on domestic monetary conditions (Akyüz 2010). In several countries growing workers’ remittances from abroad were also translated into domestic consumption, thereby adding to demand, output and employment.

It is not always easy to identify precisely the relative contributions of global conditions and domestic policies to growth in DEEs.  However, evidence strongly suggests that extremely favourable global conditions played a much more predominant role in the acceleration of growth in DEEs in the new millennium than is typically appreciated in the popular debate on the rise of the South.  This is particularly true for commodity-rich economies of Latin America and Africa which, together with India and Turkey, account for much of the recent acceleration of growth in the South.

Empirical research in the Inter-American Development Bank on the role of external factors in boom-bust cycles in Latin America over 1990-2006 has come to the conclusion that an important part of growth in the period after 2002 could be explained by improved global conditions (Izquierdo et al. 2008; IDB 2008). It is found that growth in Latin America after 2002 would have been lower by 2 per cent had these variables remained at the levels predicted in the late 1990s.  Growth would have been lower even by a greater margin if the unfavourable global economic conditions (high risk spreads and interest rates, low commodity prices and severely depressed capital inflows) that were prevailing in the aftermath of the Russian crisis had persisted.

Until the outbreak of the crisis, growth in East Asian DEEs relied heavily on exports.  In China during 2002-08 exports grew on average by 25 per cent per annum while domestic consumption lagged income growth.  During this period, about one-third of GDP growth in China was due to exports, taking into account their direct and indirect import contents.  If the multiplier effect of exports on domestic consumption and knock-on effect on domestic investment are added, this proportion goes up to almost 50 per cent.  Much of these exports went to AEs.

Exports of East Asian DEEs closely linked to the Sino-centric production network, including Korea and Taiwan (China) and the major ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) also grew rapidly during this period, but except Vietnam, not as rapidly as China’s.  The share of exports in GDP is higher in the majority of these countries than in China, both in gross-value and value-added terms.  This, together with relatively rapid growth of exports, meant that pre-crisis growth in ASEAN+2 depended even more on exports than in China.  Indeed estimates suggest that during 2003-07 about 60 per cent of growth in Korea, Taiwan (China) and Thailand and even a greater proportion of growth in Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam came from exports, taking into account their import contents.  Most of the exports went to AEs, directly, or through China by providing the latter country parts and components for its exports to AEs.

Author: Yilmaz Akyuz is the Chief Economist of the South Centre. Contact: south@southcentre.org.

This article was published in the South Bulletin (2 August 2012). The full South Centre Research Paper No.44 on The Staggering Rise of the South? can be obtained from www.southcentre.org.

To view other articles in SouthViews, please click here.

For more information, please contact Vicente Paolo Yu of the South Centre: Email yu@southcentre.org, or telephone +41 22 791 80 50.

————————————–

Think back to 1967. The job you have today may not even have existed. The Internet, and all the jobs that have come with it, were decades away. The Detroit automakers were dominant. Quality of life was different, too: The median household income was an inflation-adjusted $40,261, compared with $50,303 in 2008. There were also a hundred million fewer of us; 1967 was the year the U.S. population hit 200 million. We passed the 300 million mark in 2006, and by 2050, there will very likely be more than 400 million Americans. The lifestyle of the average American may change just as much from 2010 to 2050 as it did from 1967 to 2006. The economy will especially undergo change.

10. India

GDP: $1.676 trillion

Population: 1,210,193,422

India recorded the highest growth rates in the mid-2000s, and is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. The growth was led primarily due to a huge increase in the size of the middle class consumer, a large labor force and considerable foreign investments. India is the nineteenth largest exporter and tenth largest importer in the world. Economic growth rates are projected at around 7% for the 2011-12 fiscal year. India adopted free market principles and liberalized its economy to international trade under the guidance of Manmohan Singh, who then was the Finance Minister of India under the leadership of P.V.Narasimha Rao the then Prime Minister. Following these strong economic reforms, the country’s economic growth progressed at a rapid pace with very high rates of growth and large increases in the incomes of people.

9. Russia

GDP: $1.850 trillion

Population: 143,030,106

In 2011 Russia’s gross domestic product grew by 4.2 percent, the world’s third highest growth rate among leading economies. The government expects it to grow 3.7 percent in 2012. “Following 4.2 percent growth in 2011, we think the slowdown will lead to GDP growth of about 3.5 percent for the full year,” S&P Chief Economist for Europe Jean-Michel Six said in a statement. Russia has an abundance of natural gas, oil, coal, and precious metals. Russia has undergone significant changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union, moving from a centrally planned economy to a more market-based and globally integrated economy.

8. Italy

GDP: $2.198 trillion

Population: 60,681,514

Italy has a diversified industrial economy with high gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and developed infrastructure. According to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the CIA World Factbook, in 2010 Italy was the seventh-largest economy in the world and the fourth-largest in Europe in terms of nominal GDP, and the tenth-largest economy in the world and fifth-largest in Europe in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) GDP. Italy is member of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations, the European Union and the OECD.

7. United Kingdom

GDP: $2.417 trillion

Population: 62,262,000

The UK is one of the world’s most globalised countries. London is the world’s largest financial centre alongside New York and has the largest city GDP in Europe. As of December 2010 the UK had the third-largest stock of both inward and outward foreign direct investment (in each case after the United States and France). The aerospace industry of the UK is the second- or third-largest national aerospace industry, depending upon the method of measurement. The pharmaceutical industry plays an important role in the UK economy and the country has the third-highest share of global pharmaceutical R&D expenditures (after the United States and Japan). The British economy is boosted by North Sea oil and gas reserves, valued at an estimated £250 billion in 2007. The UK is currently ranked seventh in the world (and third in Europe) in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index.

6. Brazil

GDP: $2.493 trillion

Population: 192,376,496

The economy of Brazil is the world’s sixth largest by nominal GDP and is expected to become fifth by the end of 2012. Brazil has moderately free markets and an inward-oriented economy. Its economy is the largest in Latin American nations and the second largest in the western hemisphere. Brazil is one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world with an average annual GDP growth rate of over 5 percent. In Brazilian reals, its GDP was estimated at R$ 3.143 trillion in 2009. The Brazilian economy has been predicted to become one of the five largest economies in the world in the decades to come. Brazil is a member of diverse economic organizations, such as Mercosul, Unasul, G8+5, G20, WTO, and the Cairns Group. Its trade partners number in the hundreds, with 60 percent of exports mostly of manufactured or semimanufactured goods.

5. France

GDP: $2.776 trillion

Population: 65,350,000

France has the world’s fifth largest economy by nominal figures and the ninth largest economy by PPP figures. It has the second largest economy in Europe (behind its main economic partner Germany) in nominal figures and third largest economy in Europe in PPP figures (behind Germany and the United Kingdom). France’s economy entered the recession of the late 2000s later and left it earlier than most comparable economies, only enduring four quarters of contraction.^[7] Between January and March 2011, France’s GDP growth had been stronger than expected at 0.9%, one of the best figures in Europe but shrunk between April and June 2011 decreasing by -0.1%. Between July and September the French economy returned to growth of 0.3%; below the growth rates of its neighbours: Germany grew by 0.5% and the UK grew by 0.6% in the same period.

4. Germany

GDP: $3.577 trillion

Population: 81,799,600

Since the age of industrialisation, Germany has been a driver, innovator, and beneficiary of an ever more globalised economy. Germany is the world’s second largest exporter with $1.474 trillion, €1.06 trillion exported in 2011 (Eurozone countries are included). Exports account for more than one-third of national output.

Germany is relatively poor in raw materials. Only lignite and potash salt are available in economically significant quantities. Power plants burning lignite are one of the main sources of electricity in Germany. Oil, natural gas and other resources are, for the most part, imported from other countries. Germany imports about two thirds of its energy. The service sector contributes around 70% of the total GDP, industry 29.1%, and agriculture 0.9%. Most of the country’s products are in engineering, especially in automobiles, machinery, metals, and chemical goods.

3. Japan

GDP: $5.869 trillion

Population: 127,799,000

The economy of Japan is the third largest in the world  after the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Japan is the world’s 2nd largest automobile manufacturing country, has the largest electronics goods industry, and is often ranked among the world’s most innovative countries leading several measures of global patent filings. Facing increasing competition from China and South Korea, manufacturing in Japan today now focuses primarily on high-tech and precision goods, such as optical equipment, hybrid cars, and robotics.

Japan is the world’s largest creditor nation, generally running an annual trade surplus and having a considerable net international investment surplus. As of 2010, Japan possesses 13.7% of the world’s private financial assets (the 2nd largest in the world) at an estimated $14.6 trillion. As of 2011, 68 of the Fortune 500 companies are based in Japan. The economy of Tokyo is the largest metropolitan economy in the world.

2. China

GDP: $7.298 trillion

Population: 1,339,724,852

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s second largest economy after the United States. It is the world’s fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 10% over the past 30 years. China is also the largest exporter and second largest importer of goods in the world. The country’s per capita GDP (PPP) was $8,394 (International Monetary Fund, 90th in the world) in 2011. The provinces in the coastal regions of China^[12] tend to be more industrialized, while regions in the hinterland are less developed. As China’s economic importance has grown, so has attention to the structure and health of that economy.

1. United States

GDP: $15.094 trillion

Population: 313,576,000

The economy of the United States is the world’s largest national economy. Its nominal GDP was estimated to be over $15 trillion in 2011, approximately a quarter of nominal global GDP. Its GDP at purchasing power parity is the largest in the world, approximately a fifth of global GDP at purchasing power parity. The U.S. economy also maintains a very high level of output. In 2011, it was estimated to have a per capita GDP (PPP) of $48,387, the 6th highest in the world, thus making U.S. one of the world’s wealthiest nations. The U.S. is the largest trading nation in the world. Its three largest trading partners as of 2010 are Canada, China and Mexico. About 60% of the global currency reserves have been invested in the United States dollar, while 24% have been invested in the euro. The country is one of the world’s largest and most influential financial markets. Foreign investments made in the United States total almost $2.4 trillion, which is more than twice that of any other country. American investments in foreign countries total over $3.3 trillion, which is almost twice that of any other country.

The Dark Side of Globalization Laura-Anca Parepa* “The Dark Side of Globalization” , by Jorge Heine and Ramesh Thakur, editors Abstract This is an excellent collection of fourteen articles, written by specialists coming from different countries, various fields and having very diverse backgrounds: professors, diplomats, journalists, researchers, and UN officers. With a preface by Saskia Sassen, suggestively called “In the penumbra of globalization”, introduction and conclusion by Jorge Heine (CIGI-Center for International Governance Innovation – distinguished fellow and chair of global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs) and Ramesh Thakur (Professor of International Relations in the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National University and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Ethics, Governance and Law at Griffith University), the book is divided into three parts, entitled “Domination and fragmentation”, “Challenges” and “Responses”, each comprising the different articles as follows: Part I: “Globalization, imperialism and violence” (William D. Coleman); “New state structures in South America” (Edgardo Lander); “The African connection” (Garth le Pere and Brendan Vickers); Part II: “Arms trafficking in West Africa” (Dorcas Ettang); “Organized crime in Southern Africa” (Charles Goredema); “Maoism in a globalizing India” (Ajay K. Mehra); “Globalization and South Asian insurgencies” (S. D. Muni); “Terrorism and political movement in Kashmir” (Rekha Chowdhary); “Jihad in the age of globalization” (Nasra Hassan); “Security challenges in a unipolar globalized world” (M. J. Akbar); Part III: “Regional integration as a response to globalization” (Luk Van Langenhove and Tiziana Scaramagli); “Civil society and trade protests in the Americas” (Marisa von Bülow); “Global production, local protest and the Uruguay River pulp mills project” (Ricardo A. Gutiérrez and Gustavo Almeira); “Actors and activities in the anti-human trafficking movement” (Kirsten Foot); “Conclusions: A bumpy ride to globalization, Google and jihad” (Jorge Heine and Ramesh Thakur). The aim of this book is to focus attention on the so-called dark side of globalization represented by undesirable consequences caused by the globalization process. Considered as an inevitable and absolutely necessary process by some, or destructive and better to be avoided by others, globalization continues to create controversy and heated debate, as well as to attract the attention of scholars working in various fields. Early in the 1980s, globalization was seen as a process that would create opportunities and lead to progress in numerous fields, as it could contribute to the spread and assimilation of new technologies and communication systems, as well as to internationalize business and to speed up the integration of capital and financial markets, favoring the rapid movement of goods and people, the growth of income and employment. Unfortunately, these last years have shown the various unexpected and undesirable faces of globalization, such as higher risks, decline of income, rising unemployment rates, financial and economic crises. The strong integration of capital markets and business, the highly interdependent economies, all create a vicious circle in which the decline of one player may lead to another’s slowing-down or stopping – the recent Greek crisis is perhaps the most eloquent example in this respect. Bringing to the fore the negative effects of globalization has been avoided for a long period of time, or even if they were identified they were ignored (deliberately or not). They are less visible, but extremely dangerous for the security and stability of the entire world through their diversity and ingenuity in exploiting the opportunities and benefits of globalization for their own purposes. In an article published in Foreign Policy (2003: 29), Moisés Naím called “the illegal trade in drugs, arms, intellectual property, people and money” as “the five wars of globalization”. Together with terrorism, he added, these types of war will continue to represent a huge challenge to governments. The present book, edited by Jorge Heine and Ramesh Thakur, comes as a demonstration of this statement, showing that even if these challenges are not entirely new phenomena in the world, the novelty is represented by the fast rate of their spread, the extent of their support networks and the sophisticated communication and technology that they use in their actions. Described as ‘deviant globalization’ by Nils Gilman or as an ‘uncivil society’ by Kofi Annan all these negative outcomes of the globalization process can be very harmful and can affect, in the long term, the desirable consequences of globalization. The book sheds light on all these dangers, trying to understand how they manifest, evolve and use the benefits of globalization in their own interest, as well as how they exploit the weaknesses of governments and international organizations. Various examples of global flows of illicit trafficking of goods, people, drugs, weapons, mineral resources, counterfeit products are given in the second part of the book. Arms trafficking in West Africa, organized crime in Southern Africa, insurgencies in South Asian countries, terrorism and political movement in Kashmir, militant Islamism, Jihad or Al Qaida, Iran nuclear activities, all are presented and analyzed exhaustively. The book shows how all these transnational non-state actors are adopting the new technology and communications systems, using them to spread their network across the world and to achieve their objectives at the expense of states and their citizens. As shown, the beginning of the twenty-first century brought various changes to society and our world. Communication and technology have grown rapidly leading to an active movement of goods, people and capital across national borders. This movement reshaped social and economic relations both at the national and international level. Unfortunately, transnational criminal groups have made better use of these changes. As Moisés Naím remarked, crime becomes a global phenomenon “transforming the international system, upending the rules, creating new players, and reconfiguring power in international politics and economics.” (Naím 2005: 5) How should humanity deal with these challenges? The book attempts to answer this question in the last part, in which the various responses to these new problems are examined. Regional integration, regional governance, the necessity of cooperation between civil society organizations (CSO) and national governments, the variety and importance of the roles of CSO in supporting and shaping “the conduct of all actors engaged” in global governance are just some of the possible answers to the problems that the international community is facing. This is an extremely useful book for those who wish to understand globalization as a complex, double-faced process with desirable effects, but also with unexpected negative consequences that bring new challenges to humanity. *Member of the Global Negotiation Program, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan.

________________________________________________________________ This and all “other news” issues can be found at www.other-net.info/index.php

From: Miroslav Polzer, Secretary General, International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges IAAI

Facilitator of Rio+20 Issues Cluster “Innovation”

International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches (IAAI), a Civil Society Organization based in Klagenfurt/Austria has invited young people from around the world to participate in Rio+20 conference (United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development www.uncsd2012.org) by submitting music videos in the context of Rio+20 Global Youth Music Contest (GYMC) www.global-rockstar.net.

The response has been overwhelming! More than 300 songs have been submitted from more than 40 countries, more than200.000 unique site visitors participated in online voting.

The Rio+20 GYMC winners of both categories (children: up to 15 years and youth: 15 – 30 years) won a trip to Rio and participated in several events and activities at Rio+20 thus energizing the official negotiations and contributing heartpower and hope to everybody who had a chance to meet them either in Rio or virtually through the many social mediaactivities of Rio+20 GYMC (e.g. 6.000 likes on on facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Rio20-Global-Youth-Music-Contest/275439455817158 & www.facebook.com/GlobalRockstar.net).

THE POST-RIO SCENE:

During the  past weeks since Rio+20 conference, GYMC team has put together a Rio+20 GYMC photo documentary to provide an overview over the many activities carried out around the world and in Rio in the context of GYMC and to give some insights into the conceptual backgrounds of youth empowerment, sharing of resources and global governance innovation of the initiative (like e.g. the “Rio+20 15/15/15 UN Civil Society Partnership Voluntary Commitment”which has been presented and adopted at a Rio+20 IAAI side event).

The Rio+20 GYMC Photo Documentary “The Rio+20 Global Youth Music Contest Journey Towards The Future We Want” is being presented on International Day of  Youth 2012 to remind the world that we – the present generation – have aresponsibility to deliver on the promises of Rio+20

It is not clear yet whether Rio+20 has been a failure or a success. Avenues for civil society participation have been very laudable at Rio+20 but in general the systemic change towards effective global governance, real commitment of UN member states to act towards fixing existing market failures and governance failures in order to safeguard the future of humanity on planet earth is there in the Rio+20 outcome document only as a “potential”.

There is the threat that the world will forget about Rio+20 and continue with business as usual.

Those who will lose most by our inaction are young people and future generations.

Therefore young people are the most trustworthy messengers and advocates for a better world – for The Future We Want.

The messages of global youth expressed in the songs that have been received in Rio+20 GYMC (everybody is encouraged – especially on International day of Youth – to listen to them again and again on www.global-rockstar-net), their heartpower and their global community building power shall inspire and energize the implementation of Rio+20 outcomes in different UN bodies (like e.g. UN General Assembly) and processes (e.g. UN Climate Change conferences, World Urban Campaign of UN Habitat etc.) over the coming months.

To take a slogan from the “Future We Want Rally” which took place in the context of 2^nd Rio+20 Intersessional 16 December 2011 in New York (see page 36 of Rio+20 GYMC photo documentary for details)

“A Better World is Possible! – We are Unstoppable!”

GYMC / 151515 Outlook

IAAI is going to work over coming weeks on bringing the GYMC winners to the Opening of the UN General Assembly in New York end of September as they are a symbol of hope and a symbolic bridge for Rio+20 outcome implementation from Rio to New York and beyond (get inspired by watching them sing “Imagine”  at “Concert for a New Earth”vimeo.com/45515681).

Next rounds of Global Youth Music Contest – which will have also a strong action orientation and include concrete promotion of low-carbon lifestyles and civic engagement – will be prepared in the context of

-        UN Climate Change conference UNFCCC COP 18 end of 2012 in Doha/Qatar (to be confirmed)

-        as part of IAAI “Global Challenges Urban Games” in the context of World Urban Campaign of UN Habitat (first exploratory meetings will be held at World Urban Forum in Naples/Italy www.unhabitat.org/wuf

Resources Issues and Potentials for Partnerships/Sponsorships

Rio+20 GYMC has been an extraordinary success despite the fact that there has been no external funding available. IAAI and its members have invested about 100.000 US$ into implementation of this first round of GYMC in the context of Rio+20.

Now that GYMC initiative has demonstrated its potentials, IAAI hopes to find long-term strategic partners like foundations, Official Development Assistance agencies etc. who will be able and willing to invest in GYMC related institution building (network of national and regional coordinators and institutionalization of links with partner organizations) and related youth empowerment and capacity building (programs on GYMC as informal education for sustainable development).

In the long run IAAI expects to be very well equipped with financial, intellectual and volunteers resources through15/15/15 initiative which states that global civil society commits to mobilize 15 billion Euros and 15 million volunteers by the year 2015 to support global sustainable development efforts and asks for new forms of participation in global sustainable development governance in exchange (see pages 5 and 6 of the Rio+20 GYMC photo documentary and the Issues brief “Innovation for Sustainable Development uncsd.iisd.org/news/rio20-issues-cluster-on-innovation-produces-brief-on-innovation-for-sustainable-development/ for details).

But for the time being there could occur significant delays in implementation of GYMC/151515 initiatives if there will not be progress in fundraising efforts soon.

So – partners and supporters welcome – contact us at office@glocha.info

Let us work together for The Future We Want!

Miroslav Polzer Secretary General, International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges IAAI Facilitator of Rio+20 Issues Cluster “Innovation” - Tel.: +43 (0) 664 4203648 (mob/Austria) & +1 646 831 1085 (mob/US only active part time) www.glocha.info;  polzer@glocha.info; skype: miropolzer; twitter: @glocha_mp;  www.facebook.com/mpolzer Address: Dunajska 104, SI-1000 Ljubljana/Slovenia & Neuer Platz 10, At 9020 Klagenfurt/Austria ======================================================================= If by some reason you still believe in Fairy Tales and in the Major Group system that the industry interests devised for the UN – here you have also the Major Group of UN youth and children: Something to Believe In: MGCY Rio+20 Declaration VideoCelebrating International Youth Day, 12 August 2012 Today we celebrate International Youth Day. Today we celebrate our generation. Today we celebrate you and me. The Major Group for Children and Youth (MGCY) is the voice of young people in the UN sustainability negotiations, active participants in the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. Through negotiating, demonstrating, and participating in local initiatives, we shared our vision of the future and the actions needed to achieve this. Despite our disappointment in the outcome of Rio+20, we remain committed to the process of achieving a sustainable future, for our generation and for those to come. We need you to help make this a reality. This is our declaration. We believe that youth can move the world. Our time is now. Today let us inspire our generation. Share this message and celebrate with us as we create the world. If you would like to read more about the MGCY’s involvement in Rio+20, visit our website at www.uncsdchildrenyouth.org or download our Youth Blast Report. Our MGCY Rio+20 Report is coming soon! Organising Partners for the Major Group for Children and YouthUnited Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and Rio+20 www.uncsdchildrenyouth.org email: kiara.youth@gmail.com

Tancredo de Almeida Neves, Commonly called Tancredo Neves (March 4, 1910 – April 21, 1985) – was  born in São João del Rey, in the state of Minas Gerais, of mostly Portuguese, but also Austrian descent. ^[1]

Neves was the opposition candidate to replace President João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo – the last general-President of Brazil.

The campaign for direct elections failed. There was no popular public vote.^[5] Neves was elected President by a majority of the Electoral College on January 15, 1985, where he received 480 votes.^[6]

USING WIKIPEDIA LANGUAGE THE FOLLOWING IS THE OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION OF A CHAIN OF EVENTS:

On March 14, on the last day of his predecessor’s term, and on the eve of his own inauguration, Neves became severely ill, requiring immediate surgery. He thus was not able to attend his own inauguration on March 15.

The Constitution required the President and Vice-President elect to take oaths of office before the assembled National Congress.

The inauguration was accordingly held for the Vice-President only, the Vice-President immediately assumed the powers of the presidency as Acting President. At that time, there was still hope that Neves would recover and appear before Congress to take the oath of office.

However, Neves suffered from abdominal complications and developed generalized infections. After seven operations, Neves died on April 21, more than one month after the beginning of his term of office, without ever having taken the oath of office as President.^[7] He was succeeded by José Sarney who was the Vice President. Neves’s ordeal was intensively covered by the Brazilian media and followed with anxiety by the whole nation, who had seen in him the way out of the authoritarian regime into what he had called a “New Republic” (Nova República).

His death caused an outpouring of national grief.

Tancredo Neves is counted among the official list of presidents of Brazil as a matter of homage and honour, since, not having taken the oath of office, he technically never became President. An Act of Congress was thus necessary to make this homage official. Accordingly on the first anniversary of his death, a statute was signed into law declaring that he should be counted among the Presidents of Brazil.

BUT NOBODY I TALKED TO IN BRAZIL BELIEVED THAT TANCREDO NEVES DIED OF NATURAL CAUSES. THE BELIEF IS RATHER THAT THE GENERALS WERE NOT READY YET TO TRANSFER POWER TO AN ELECTED PRESIDENT AND THIS INCLUDED NEVES, EVEN THOUGH HIS OWN ELECTION WAS NOT YET THE STATE OF THE ART OF PURE DEMOCRACY.

During the period that he was President Elect I had the great honor to be invited to Hotel Pierre in New York to a Presentation he made as guest of the Americas Society and Mr. David Rockefeller. Shortly after that the Organization of American States was involved in a conference on ethanol fuels that was held in Bello Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Neves was the opening speaker and Aureliano Chaves, who later became the Energy Minister, and at that time was Governor of Minas Gerais, was the opening presenter. Here was a Brazil in motion that was talking independence of oil imports and local production of fuels. Was this something that ruffled feathers?

Above is my addition to the following article that does not mention Tancredo Neves. Nevertheless, if Brazil is ready to look under the rugs of dictatorship, even that an amnesty for the sake of internal peace has been declared, the Tancredo Neves case will eventually be touched upon as well. All what we can say nevertheless, the search for the truth of past dictatorships in the Southern Latin Cone, has in it the makings of unravelling as well US business involvement and CIA operatives that taught methodology  of torture in the region.

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Leader’s Torture in the ’70s Stirs Ghosts in Brazil.

By SIMON ROMERO

Published by the New York Times: August 4, 2012

We all know the story of the “Little Engine that Could” – you remember – it huffed and puffed and did what it was expected to do.

Now listen – I just got back home from having seen the” Little House that Could” – it could help anyone who lives in a house in the suburbs to become energy independent. The Little House can get us near the ideal of energy autarky – clear independence – country wide as well.

The house, located at Hungereckstrasse 23, 1230 Vienna (that is Vienna 23rd District (Liesing) belongs to Gerhard Kaindl who is the Coordinator of the EuroSolar Club of Friends (Solarstammtisch) in Vienna.

He is active in the Hietzing (13th District) Club – that is also the district where his work-place is and is a neighboring district to where his home is. He is an employee of  the Department of Conservation of significant historic buildings owned by the Federal Government of Austria. This is part of the Ministry of Economics, Family, and Youth.

His enthusiasm for energy autarky was picked up also by his son who helps run the home.

The house looks like any other house in his street – though it is newly built. The only thing that gives away that it is a special house is the fact that the 55m2 surface of the roof is covered photo-voltaic plates. The house is white – the roof looks black. That is all.

The house has four energy elements: (1) Tight Construction.  (2) A Heat Pump and heat & cooling collection from the ground with air circulation.  (3) Rain Water  collection from the roof into an underground cistern.  (4) The Photo-Voltaic sun collector.

The rain-water is used for flushing the toilets and in the garden. The heat pump covers most heat needs and the PV collectors provide excess electricity that at this time is sold to the grid.

The basement of the house has a command room with two closets – one for the heat-pump, the other for the electric current electronic gages. and then there is a stand with shelves for instruments. Nothing more.

A common house this size requires 3,600 KWh electricity – but this house needs only 1,800 KWh. The PV covered roof can provide 9,000 KWh – so about 7,000 KWh can be turned to the grid if the electricity is used just to run the house. But this will change as the simple electric car that will become part of the house needs 15 KWh for a 100km/day use – this will mean a reduction of the surplus by 1,500 KWh per car. Assume two cars and an electric bicycle and you end up with an energy independent family that also turns back to the electricity grid nearly the full amount of electricity that a similar house in size needs if it is not fitted with the four elements we noted above.

IS IT NOT AMAZING THAT THE GOVERNMENT – IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST – DOES NOT OBLIGATE NEW HOME BUILDERS TO USE ALL THE METHODS OF REDUCING THE NATIONAL DEPENDENCE ON POLLUTING AND NOT-SECURE ENERGY SUPPLIES?

The suburban homes are thus really some of the lowest hanging fruits on the energy independence and low CO2 emissions tree!  It surely beats even the buying of CO2 credits overseas by reducing the need to build fossil fuels burning power plants. Further, it will decrease the expense for building power plants of all sorts – even hydro-power plants – and thus reduce environment impacts.

GOING TO THE UN 67th UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY – THIS SEPTEMBER – 2012 PLEASE NOTE:

Building on Rio is vitally important, we must not let the momentum end nor the plethora of good ideas wither. But there is also a need to push the boundaries of sustainability into new frontiers to make it the holistic, integrated approach it needs to be if we are to see the real results and benefits it can deliver.

THE MAIN ACHIEVEMENT OF RIO+20 OR “THE FUTURE WE WANT” WAS THE COMING ON BOARD OF THE MANDATE TO THE UN SECRETARY-GENERAL TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION the “PROMOTING INTERGENERATIONAL SOLIDARITY FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE NEEDS OF FUTURE GENERATIONS, INCLUDING BY INVITING THE SECRETARY GENERAL TO PRESENT A REPORT ON THIS ISSUE.” (paragraph 86 of OUR COMMON VISION.

We learned today that the UN Secretariat has started on a path that does not yet take into account the above mandate – so we are compelled to point out that without attention to above, there is no gain from RIO+20.

The original ends with the conventional – Copyright © United Nations 2012, All rights reserved.

WHAT?  NOW THAT IS A STRANGE APPLICATION A COPYRIGHT ATTEMPT!

WE THINK THE UN IS PAID TO PROVIDE THE INFORMATION WE RE-POST HERE, AND NOTHING LIKE A COPYRIGHT COULD APPLY TO THE SERVICE YOU ARE COMPELLED TO PROVIDE  THE WORLD AT LARGE AS MANDATED BY THE MEMBER STATES..

WE HOPE SOMEONE AT THE UN READS WHAT WE SAY HERE. WE ARE QUITE UPSET WITH UN OFFICIALS THAT DO NOT REALIZE THAT THEIR APPOINTMENT IS – TO JUST ANSWER A MANDATE THEY GET FROM THE UN MEMBER STATES.

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Further, looking at what was decided at Rio de Janeiro – and mandated to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for his preparation for the UN 67 General Assembly September 2012 – Paragraphs #84-86 0f the text – “THE FUTURE WE WANT” – it is not just about the MDG’s and Development – but rather about SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT in context of  ”PROMOTING INTERGENERATIONAL SOLIDARITY” and we do not find reference to this in the material released now by the UN Secretariat.

The following material talks of two parallel routes – the Millennium Development Goals that stem from poverty, and a Sustainable Development route that is part of Development targets – albeit creating perhaps a route of future Sustainable Development Goals.   It is imperative for the two to meet so that SDGs come in place after the MDG time has expired. But this is not all – the process as mandated, in our opinion, comes under the larger umbrella of SUSTAINABILITY THAT  VIEWS FUTURE GENERATIONS AS A MAIN PARTICIPANT TO BE CONSIDERED IN WHAT THIS GENERATION DOES.

SIMPLY SAID – WE FIND THAT THE UN SECRETARY-GENERAL’S ANNOUNCEMENT, AS PREPARED BY HIS SECRETARIAT, DOES NOT REFLECT IN FULL WHAT WAS DECIDED BY RIO+20 AND WE HOPE THAT AT LEAST SOME GOVERNMENTS WILL POINT THIS OUT. WE IN EFFECT FIND THIS ANNOUNCEMENT MISLEADING WHEN COMPARED TO THE MANDATE.

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UNITED NATIONS PRESS RELEASE Embargoed until 4.30pm EST, 31 July 2012 UN SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS HIGH-LEVEL PANEL ON POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA Civil society, Private sector and Government leaders named to 26-member advisory Panel United Nations, New York, 31 July 2012 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced the members of a High-level Panel to advise on the global development agenda beyond 2015, the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Secretary-General has appointed three co-chairs: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia; President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia; and Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom. The full list of Panel members is available below. “I have asked my High-level Panel to prepare a bold yet practical development vision to present to Member States next year,” said the UN chief. “I look forward to the Panel’s recommendations on a global post-2015 agenda with shared responsibilities for all countries and with the fight against poverty and sustainable development at its core.” The Panel will hold its first meeting at the end of September (2012 we assume - ST.info editor) in the margins of the annual high-level debate of the UN General Assembly.  It is expected to submit a report to the Secretary-General in the first half of 2013. The Panel is part of the Secretary-General’s post-2015 initiative mandated by the 2010 MDG Summit. Member States have called for open, inclusive consultations involving civil society, the private sector, academia and research institutions from all regions, in addition to the UN system, to advance the development agenda beyond 2015. The work of the Panel will reflect new development challenges while also drawing on experience gained in implementing the MDGs, both in terms of results achieved and areas for improvement. The Panel’s work will be closely coordinated with that of the intergovernmental working group tasked to design Sustainable Development Goals, as agreed at the Rio +20 conference. The reports of both groups will be submitted to Member States for their further deliberations. The Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post 2015 Development Agenda H.E. Mr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of Indonesia Co-Chair H.E. Ms. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia Co-Chair H.E. Mr. David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Co-Chair Fulbert Gero Amoussouga (Benin) Mr. Gero Amoussouga heads the Economic Analysis Unit of the President of the Republic of Benin, current chair of the African Union. He is also the Director of the Graduate School of the Faculty of Economics and Management at the University of Abomey, where he specialises in research on African economic development. Vanessa Petrelli Corrêa (Brazil) Ms. Petrelli Corrêa is President of Brazil’s Institute for Applied Economic Research, a public federal foundation linked to the Secretariat for Strategic Studies of the Presidency of Brazil. The Institute conducts research to support the design and implementation of governmental policies and development programs in Brazil, and is responsible for technical coordination of Brazil’s follow-up process for the MDGs. Yingfan Wang (China) Mr. Yingfan is a current member of the Secretary-General’s MDG Advocacy Group, a group of eminent personalities who have shown outstanding leadership in promoting the implementation of the MDGs. He is a career diplomat. In 1995, he served as Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs until the year 2000, when he became the Permanent Representative of China to the UN in New York. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese National People’s Congress. Maria Angela Holguin (Colombia) Ms. Holguín is the current Foreign Minister of Colombia. Her career spans two decades of activity in the private and public sectors, including senior positions in the Office of the President of the Republic, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the Inspector General of the Nation. She previously served as Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations. Gisela Alonso (Cuba) Ms. Alonso is the current President of the Cuban Agency of Environment. Ms. Alonso has been an active advocate for the sustainable development of Small Island Developing States. Jean-Michel Severino (France) Mr. Severino was the Director General of the French Development Agency. He worked for the French Ministry of Finance and Economy in several capacities, including adviser of the Minister for Development, leader of the Development Ministry’s geographical coordination, and Director of the Ministry’s Development Programs. In the period 1996 – 2000 he was at the World Bank, first as Director for Central Europe, and then Vice-President for Asia. Horst Kohler (Germany) Mr. Kohler is a former President of the Federal Republic of Germany (2004-2010). He previously served as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Naoto Kan (Japan) Mr. Kan is a former Prime Minister of Japan, Minister of Health and Welfare, and Chairman of Japan’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He is currently an advisor on renewable energy for Japan’s Technical Committee on Renewable Energy. As Prime Minister, Mr. Kan lead Japan’s emergency response to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. H.M. Queen Rania of Jordan (Jordan) Queen Rania Al Abdullah is the wife of H.M. King Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. An advocate and a humanitarian, Queen Rania serves as an Eminent Advocate for UNICEF and Honorary Chairperson for the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI). The Jordan River Foundation (JRF) is Queen Rania’s NGO that focuses on the disadvantaged in Jordan. Betty Maina (Kenya) Ms. Maina is the Chief Executive of Kenya’s Association of Manufacturers, one of the country’s leading business associations with some 700 members. Ms. Maina was previously at the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Center for International Private Enterprise, and the Kenya Leadership Institute, among others. She served on Denmark’s Africa Commission and currently sits on various boards in the public sector. Abhijit Banerjee (India) Mr. Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2003, he co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Mr. Banerjee is a past president of the Bureau for the Research in the Economic Analysis of Development. His areas of research are development economics and economic theory. Andris Piebalgs (Latvia) Mr. Piebalgs is the current Commissioner for Development for the European Commission. He was previously European Commissioner for Energy (2004-2009), Deputy Secretary of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia (2003-2004), Minister of Finance of Latvia (1994-1995) and Minister of Education of Latvia (1990-1993). Patricia Espinosa (Mexico) Ms. Espinosa is the current Secretary of Foreign Affairs for Mexico. From June 2001 to 2006, she served as Ambassador to Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Germany, and as Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna. Previously, she was Director General of Regional Organizations of the Americas at the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. Paul Polman (Netherlands) Mr. Polman is the Chief Executive Officer of Unilever. Prior to joining Unilever, Mr. Polman was Chief Financial Officer of Nestlé S.A.. He serves as President of the Kilimanjaro Blind trust and Chairman of Perkins International Advisory Board. He is also a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Nigeria) Ms. Okonjo-Iweala is the Minister of Finance for the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Prior to this appointment, she was the Managing Director of World Bank and Foreign Minister of Nigeria. Prior to her ministerial career, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala was Vice-President and Corporate Secretary of the World Bank Group. Elvira Nabiullina (Russian Federation) Ms. Nabiullina is currently the Economic Adviser to Russian President, Vladimir Putin. She is a former Minister of Economic Development and Trade and Deputy Minister of Economy. Graça Machel (South Africa) Ms. Machel is a current member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights which she co-founded with her husband, former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. She is also a UN independent expert on the impact of armed conflict on children, international advocate for women’s and children’s rights, former freedom fighter and Education and Culture Minister of Mozambique. Sung-Hwan Kim (Republic of Korea) Mr. Kim is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the Republic of Korea. He has held a number of ministerial posts including and senior diplomatic posts representing the Republic of Korea to international organizations, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, Uzbekistan and India. Gunilla Carlsson (Sweden) Ms. Carlsson is the current Minister for International Development Cooperation of Sweden. She has held a number of senior posts in the Swedish Government in the areas of foreign affairs, EU affairs and education and is a former member of the European Parliament. Emilia Pires (Timor-Leste) Ms. Pires is the Minister of Finance of Timor-Leste. Ms. Pires has a background in development, and senior experience in planning, public finance management, development and aid policies. Kadir Topbas (Turkey) Mr. Topbas is the current Mayor of Istanbul and President of United Cities and Local Governments, and an expert in urban rehabilitation, social transformation and the management of the urban challenges faced by fast-growing cities. John Podesta (United States of America) Mr. Podesta is Chair of the Center for American Progress. He previously served as Co-Chair of the Obama-Biden Transition and as White House Chief of Staff to President William J. Clinton. He served in the president’s cabinet and as a principal on the National Security Council. Tawakel Karman (Yemen) Ms. Karman is a young Yemini journalist, human rights activist and politician who was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for her role in promoting the “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work” during the 2011 Yemeni uprising. Amina J. Mohammed (ex officio) Ms. Mohammed is the Special Advisor of the Secretary-General on Post-2015 Development Planning. Terms of Reference for the High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda 1. The High-level Panel of Eminent Persons will be convened by the UN Secretary-General to advise him on a bold and at the same time practical development agenda beyond 2015. 2. The High-level Panel will consist of 26 Eminent Persons, including representatives of governments, the private sector, academia, civil society and youth, with the appropriate geographical and gender balance. Panelists are members in their personal capacity. 3. The panel should conduct its work on the basis of a rigorous analysis of credible shared evidence. The panel should engage and consult widely with relevant constituencies at national, regional and global levels. 4. The Special Advisor of the Secretary-General for Post-2015 will be an ex-officio member of the HLP and serve as link to the UN system. 5. The output of the Panel will be a report to the Secretary-General which will include: a) Recommendations regarding the vision and shape of a Post-2015 development agenda that will help respond to the global challenges of the 21st century, building on the MDGs and with a view to ending poverty. b) Key principles for reshaping the global partnership for development and strengthened accountability mechanisms; c) Recommendations on how to build and sustain broad political consensus on an ambitious yet achievable Post-2015 development agenda around the three dimensions of economic growth, social equality and environmental sustainability; taking into account the particular challenges of countries in conflict and post-conflict situations. 6. To this end, it would be essential for the work of the HLP and of the intergovernmental Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to inform each other in order to ensure both processes are mutually reinforcing. The HLP should advise the Secretary-General on how the SDGs relate to the broader Post-2015 development agenda. 7. To prepare the report, the Panel will take into consideration: a) The Millennium Declaration, The Outcome Document of Rio+20; b) The findings of the Report of the Secretary-General’s UN Task Team for the preparation of the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda; as well as lessons learned and best practices from the MDGs. c) The findings of the various national and thematic consultations at regional and national levels which are coordinated by the UNDG  as part of the preparations for the Post-2015 Development Agenda; d) The need to build momentum for a constructive dialogue on the parameters of the Post-2015  Development Agenda, and propose innovative ways for governments, parliaments, civil society organizations, the business sector, academia, local communities to engage continuously in such a dialogue; e) The ongoing work of the UN Task Team, the Special Advisor to the SG on Post-2015, the report of the Global Sustainability Panel of the Secretary-General and the findings of the Global Sustainable Development Network Initiative; as well as f) Any other relevant inputs it may deem appropriate. 8. The HLP will be supported by a dedicated and independent secretariat headed by a senior official (Lead Author of the HLP report). The secretariat will also be able to draw from the wealth of knowledge and expertise made available to it by the UN system. 9. The Deputy Secretary-General will oversee, on behalf of the Secretary-General, the Post-2015 process. 10. The Panel will present its report to the Secretary-General in the second quarter of 2013. The report will serve as a key input to the Secretary-General’s report to the special event to follow up on efforts made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals and to discuss the possible contours of the Post-2015 Development Agenda to be organized by the President of the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly in September 2013. *** For more information on the post-2015 process visit: www.un.org/millenniumgoals/beyond2015.shtml

AFTER THE OUTCOME FROM RIO+20 EVERYBODY SHOULD RECOGNIZE BY NOW THAT OUR FIRST ORDER OF ECOLOGICAL RESPONSIBILITY IS TOWARDS THE FUTURE GENERATIONS – AND IF REASONED RIGHT, THIS LEADS US TO BEST ECONOMY-POLICY RESULTS AS WELL. That is our platform in the run-up to Rio 2012.

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Why climate change doesn’t spark moral outrage, and how it could.

By David Roberts

Perhaps the single biggest barrier to action on climate change is the fact that it doesn’t hit us in the gut. We can identify it as a great moral wrong, through a chain of evidence and reasoning, but we do not instinctively feel it as one. It does not trigger our primal moral intuitions or generate spontaneous outrage, anger, and passion. It’s got no emotional heat. (Ironic!)

I (and countless others) have tried to explain, address, and overcome this aspect of climate change many times, in many different ways. But the single best thing I’ve read on it is a new paper in Nature Climate Change called “Climate change and moral judgment,” by Ezra Markowitz and Azim Shariff, of the University of Oregon Psychology and Environmental Studies departments respectively. In it, they “review six reasons why climate change poses significant challenges to our moral judgment system and describe six strategies that communicators might use to confront these challenges.”

This is one of the most valuable things I’ve read on climate in ages, so it’s a damn shame it’s behind a pay wall. (I mean, it’s great, but I can’t in good conscience tell you to pay $32 for it.) To compensate for this unfortunate state of affairs, I’m going to quote from it liberally.

Here’s the basic thesis:

[C]limate change poses significant challenges to our perceptual, cognitive and affective information-processing systems, making it and its threats difficult to engage with and appreciate. For example, the non-linear nature of the climate system leads even highly educated individuals to incorrectly predict the trajectory of future atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations, and the abstract, probabilistic and intangible nature of climate change dampens emotional reactions to information about the issue. Moreover, when individuals do respond emotionally, their reactions are often defensive and counterproductive.

They go on to identify six reasons why, “unlike financial fraud or terrorist attacks, climate change does not register, emotionally, as a wrong that demands to be righted.” Here’s a handy table:

These are pretty self-explanatory, but here’s a bit more on each one:

1. Abstractness and cognitive complexity: Climate change is tough to understand. It “requires cold, cognitively demanding and ultimately relatively less motivating, moral reasoning.” People underestimate this. Very little that arrives in our worldview through a purely intellectual route ends up stirring the viscera.

2. The blamelessness of unintentional action: Nobody is heating the atmosphere on purpose. It is seen as an unintended side effect of other activities. And people treat intentional harms much more severely than they do unintentional harms. So “understanding climate change as an unintentional phenomenon with no single villain may decrease motivation to right past wrongs.”

3. Guilty bias: We’re all somewhat to blame for climate change. To avoid feeling guilt, shame, and regret over that, “individuals often engage in biased cognitive processes to minimize perceptions of their own complicity,” especially when “individuals and communities feel incapable of meaningfully responding behaviourally.”

4. Uncertainty breeds wishful thinking: It’s not clear exactly how climate change will play out, and “uncertainty about future outcomes generally increases self-oriented behaviour and … promotes optimistic biases.” When scientists communicate the probabilistic nature of climate impacts (for instance, through analogies like“loading the climate dice”), “recent research shows that individuals often misinterpret the intended messages … and tend to do so over-optimistically.”

5. Moral tribalism: Messaging about climate has tended to focus on liberal values (harms and unfairness) and disregard conservative values (loyalty, respect for authority, and purity/sanctity). As a result, many conservatives “have been left not just uninvolved in action on climate change, but morally hostile to it.”

6. Long time horizons and far away places: Victims of climate change are viewed as far away in space or time. “The consequence of this spatial and temporal distance is that victims of climate change are likely to be seen, at best, as relatively less similar to oneself than are nearby contemporaries, and at worst, as out-group members.” Climate victims are seen as Other, and you know how we tend to treat the Other.

As a diagnosis of the difficulties climate change poses to our moral machinery, this all seems dead on to me. I’ve seen each one of these play out in miniature many times over the years.

The authors then move on to their recommendations. As always in these sorts of discussions, I find the prescriptions somewhat less convincing than the diagnosis, but these are better than most. Some of them challenge assumptions cherished by me and other climate hawks. Here’s the handy table:

Here’s a bit more on these, with some commentary:

1. Use existing moral values: This one is pretty familiar by now: “self-reinforcing, politically polarized discourse on climate change … might be overcome by highlighting consequences in which political conservatives are invested,” like corruption of the “sanctity of the natural world.”

Over the years, I’ve heard many people try to pitch climate change to conservatives as a threat to national security (i.e., to order and authority) or the sanctity of God’s green earth. It never seems to get much traction or change anything. I myself harbor a dark suspicion that climate change simply isn’t a problem that submits to formulation in terms of conservative values. I remain to be convinced otherwise.

2. Burdens versus benefits: This one was interesting and counterintuitive to me: “Recent findings suggest that individuals are significantly more concerned over the ethical implications of saddling future generations with burdens than they are about providing benefits.” It turns out people are less motivated by a possible reduction in good things provided others than they are by a potential increase in bad things imposed on others. So the authors recommend “focusing messaging on the burdens that unmitigated climate change will leave on future generations (for example, higher adaptation costs, greater human suffering from disease) rather than on potential benefits (for example, a viable, vibrant planet).”

I’m not sure I know exactly how to explain this, but it may just be that imposing something bad on people feels more intentional, more culpable, than leaving them with less of something good. Either way, it cuts against the cheery “future that makes sense” stuff I’ve been going on about, not to mention the general turn in the climate community toward promising great benefits from climate mitigation. Maybe Joe Romm’s “hell and high water” is what activates people after all.

3. Emotional carrots, not sticks: This seems somewhat in tension with No. 2. How exactly do you convince people that they are imposing burdens on others without making them feel guilty? But I’m definitely sold on the superior motivating power of positive emotions (the authors single out pride in particular). This gets at something I talk about a lot, which is how the climate movement might do a better job celebrating victories, scoffing at opponents, and putting on a little swagger. Fellow-feeling and pride will do more to keep people going than endless reinforcement of the hopelessness of the problem.

4. Be wary of extrinsic motivators: This one cuts directly against the most popular trend in climate messaging, which is emphasizing the economic growth and jobs that can come from climate mitigation. The authors acknowledge that sometimes engaging in climate mitigation for other reasons could “potentially lead to further pro-environmental attitude and behaviour change in an effort to avoid cognitive dissonance.” (This is known as the commitment effect — once we do something we’re inclined to act in ways consistent with that commitment in the future.)

However, they say, “recent research demonstrates that promoting extrinsic values can actively inhibit individuals from developing intrinsic, non-materialist motives” and “consistent reliance on extrinsic incentives for a behaviour can crowd out pre-existing intrinsic attachments to that behaviour.” The lesson seems to be that economic (and other extrinsic) motivators might help some in the short term, but they are not a sufficient foundation for a long-term effort.

I don’t know if I entirely buy this. What is the intrinsic motivation supposed to be? “Love of Mother Earth”? That’s not why I’m a climate hawk. I’m a humanist — I care about the welfare of people! I care about people, so I don’t want climate change to harm them. But for the very same reason, I’d like to see economic benefits and jobs come from climate mitigation. That motivation is not extrinsic to me. If only “love of planet” counts as intrinsic motivation for the climate fight, we’re in trouble.

5. Expand group identity: This one seems both obvious and difficult. It is certainly true that “framing the victims of climate change in ways that underscore shared goals and identities should similarly increase their moral standing, and with it, motivation to help them.” But how do you do that exactly? How do you increase fellow-feeling toward those who are spatially and temporally distant? I mean, I’d love it if Americans saw Bangladeshis as part of the human family. I’d love it if they saw the citizens of 2100, or 2300, as part of “us.” But they don’t seem to. Efforts in the past to grow fellow-feeling into a catholic, all-encompassing sentiment — Jesus’s efforts, for example — don’t seem to have succeeded very well. I’d like to hear a lot more about this one.

6. Highlight positive social norms: This is, to me, the Big Kahuna. As I was reading about all the psychological barriers to climate action, I kept thinking, “one thing can overcome all these: peer pressure!” If people see others that they view as peers or leaders doing something, they will tend to do it too, and retrofit reasons for it after the fact. This is the essence of humans as social creatures.

The recommendation is twofold, though: not just to “highlight pro-environmental, prosocial injunctive norms such as prohibitions against being wasteful,” but also to “be careful not to inadvertently highlight negative, but existent, descriptive norms, which can actually encourage individuals to follow suit in the wrong direction.”

In other words, you want to emphasize that climate hawkery is good, socially desirable, admirable, and that all the cool kids are doing it. You don’t want to give people the impression that “everyone’s doing it” if it is bad. Even if you state clearly that it’s bad, the fact that others are doing it is, in and of itself, a powerful incentive to do it too. It’s the herd instinct. This is good reason not to whine on and on about how everyone drives too much or everyone wastes electricity. The subtext is, “it’s the social norm.”

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Aaaanyway, this is a lot of food for thought. But it’s the kind of stuff — not about science but about people — that far too many climate hawks ignore or disregard. Climate change is not only the economic and ecological crisis of our time, it’s also a moral crisis. What we are doing to our descendants is a moral crime. Finding ways to help people get that, feel it in their guts the way they would if someone threatened their own families, is a precondition for serious, sustained action.

CULTURAL SURVIVAL