we posted about the event at http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2009/06…

now we get further details at  http://www.economist.com/daily/news/disp…

——–

Greenland - Feeling free
Jul 1st 2009
From Economist.com

Celebrating semi-independence with a feast of whale

Day one
GIVEN the choice of subsisting on seal or whale I would plump for the former, without enthusiasm. A mouthful of seal flesh has little to recommend it, unless you are drawn to a slippery, dark, lamb-like meat that tastes as if it had been left to stew in a dirty aquarium. But neither is whale tempting: chewing its skin is like gnawing a strip of leather soaked in cod-liver oil. In either case, at least on the first encounter, a diner is likely to experience a faint sense of nausea. If you must have whale, cetacean biltong (whale jerky) is more palatable than the fresh stuff.

AFP

Hooray for two tonnes of flesh
Most Greenlanders, however, relish both meats when the chance arises. A recent weekend in Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital, saw a triple excuse to indulge. The summer solstice, which serves as the national day, coincided both with the replacement after 30 years of a much-disliked government and with celebrations for throwing off (sort of) three centuries of Denmark’s colonial yoke. As a result, Nuuk was in festive mood. The pretty red-and-white Greenlandic flag fluttered from every bus, official building and school-child’s hand. The town was criss-crossed by processions of men in white anoraks and jovial women in coloured beads and embroidered seal-skin outfits. Visiting dignitaries enthusiastically ripped veils from new pieces of public art: in one square revealing a statue of seals at play, while above the town beach appeared three slabs of concrete holding aloft a ball of stone.

Over a breakfast of herring and salmon in the town’s main hotel one could bump into a visiting bishop from Copenhagen bedecked in medallions; Iceland’s affable president; or one of a wide array of Danish royals. We outsiders then took turns trooping through the town’s fish market, gawping at mounds of halibut and at the bloody work of a sealmonger who obligingly butchered a carcass. On the streets the mood was restrained and good-natured, only rising to a murmur of excitement when the official distribution of whale-meat began.

The local government had claimed special dispensation to harpoon two rare Greenlandic whales. One of the pair, it was widely said, had turned out to be 200 years old, although I do not understand just how one determines such a fact: perhaps it is like counting the rings of a felled tree. Officials then handed out two tonnes of the flesh to the 56,000 or so residents of this massive territory. In Nuuk that was a simple matter: whale munchers crowded a sports hall for lunch, then strolled home with meat in bulging plastic bags. But the rest of Greenland is sparsely populated. There are tiny settlements (the smallest has a single inhabitant, a middle-aged man who refuses to move to the nearest town) and small towns spread far north of the Arctic circle and along Greenland’s remote and icy eastern coast. Delivering whale, on time, to the scattered masses looked like an immense bureaucratic task. Local television news reported it was only possible thanks to the many small, red propeller-planes of Air Greenland.

The survival of so many small settlements across the vast country is made possible by the largesse of the Greenland state, which in turn relies on billions of kroner doled out by distant Denmark. That Denmark spends the equivalent of more than $11,000 per Greenlander, each year, might explain why the locals, though delighted to be claiming more powers of self-government, are not yet rushing for complete independence. One afternoon in Nuuk, at a kaffemik, a sort of family party that involves drinking coffee, wine and beer—in this case to celebrate the school graduation of a daughter—guests said that they were thrilled by their new government. But they were also adamant that Greenland could not yet afford full independence. “Not now, it’s good as it is for now,” explained one woman. A visiting Danish journalist said wryly, while sipping a bâja pilluarit (celebration beer), “psychologically, the state is my father, you know?”

And yet people feel great pride at Greenland’s taking on more control: over police and the courts, over local government and the schools and dozens more things. Greenlandic is to become an official language, and the nation feels it is making itself noticed on the world stage. “It’s our land, our language. We have to do it ourselves, not rely on others doing it,” explains a woman in national dress wearing white seal boots and trousers. Despite their love of traditions, Greenlanders are under no illusion that they will return to a past of surviving on what they hunt. The celebrations and the food of old will come and go, but nobody will be asked to subsist on seal or whale.

Day two
YOUNG voters, especially left-leaning ones, are keen on Greenland’s new prime minister, Kuupik Kleist: they swept him to power in June. The folk of Nuuk explain how happy they are to see the new government (and to see the back of the old one), by saying that “Kuupik is our Obama”. At a rock concert in a sports hall on mid-summer eve, as sleet and snowfall and the midnight sky hangs grey, his appearances draws cheers from the crowd. He gives a short speech from the stage and the audience pauses, expectant. Will he burst into song? Rumours have spread that he will belt out something, perhaps an independence anthem. Instead he waves and is gone.

Adam Roberts

A traditional singer, banging on in the traditional way
For older Greenlanders, at least, it is a disappointing moment. Fifteen years ago Mr Kleist was best known as the lead singer of a local band, whose album “Samma Samma” proved a hit in part because he sang in Greenlandic, not Danish. “He has a voice like Leonard Cohen,” claims my Greenlandic guide, and others too. Having since listened to the album, I can report that his voice is far less miserable than Mr Cohen’s.

So Greenland has a singing prime minister. Mr Kleist is not the only musical politician: one could pull together a decent band with Bill Clinton on sax, Tony Blair on guitar, Madagascar’s young DJ-turned-coup-plotter-turned-president mixing the music backstage and Kim Jong Il on the tambourine. But Mr Kleist is distinct in this way: he leads a tiny country obsessed with producing music, in which music and politics are now swirling together in a heady mix.

At the weekend I spend a couple of hours at Greenland’s main recording studio, Atlantic Music, with its owner, Ejvind Elsner, a large and jovial man who has been producing local bands for two decades. He believes that young musicians are now changing the politics of his country. Before the recent election, opposition parties helped to fund a controversial new album by a band, Liima Inui, which provoked the ire of the old government. “Republik” helped to express public anger with politicians who had been caught fiddling their expenses, and to whip up calls for self-rule.

Mr Elsner claims that he had calls from officials who threatened to close his business, or at least to block access to radio and television, unless the album was scrapped. “You’ll be finished,” warned a leading figure of the old ruling party. Most offensive, apparently, was the idea of promoting “Republik” while the Danish queen visited. Instead the album has become a theme for the celebrations of self-governance Liima Inui, an impressively large group, headlined the main rock concert on the night of the self-governance celebrations.

Perhaps because of those long, dark winters, with so little else to do, Greenlanders have developed a wide variety of music, relative to their small population. The Danes introduced oompah bands, much intoning of hymns and a rural Nordic folk habit of singing jolly stories to each other. But Greenlandic customs are more entertaining. Traditions such as throat warbling (when two young women, typically, stand nose-to-nose and produce a disconcerting wail) and singing along as a seal-skin drum is tapped with a stick, are merging with new forms of Greenlandic pop, rock and hip-hop.

Mr Elsner sees a distinct a Greenlandic sound growing up, perhaps to rival successful recent Nordic musical exports from Iceland (Bjork, for example) and Norway (Røyksopp). More important, the musicians could play a powerful social role at home. “In future the music will mean a lot more for the people. We used to sing about love; now it is about politics, nature, social problems. People are not great at talking to each other, but they can have a say with music. We have to use the music to overcome our problems.”

Local rappers are most explicit in taking on Greenland’s social difficulties, singing about suicide, sexual abuse and corrupt politicians. There are other serious problems to address: alcoholism has long plagued much of northern Europe, so the governments of Nordic countries have used high taxes and restricted sales to limit binge drinking. The indigenous people of Greenland, the Inuit, are particularly vulnerable to alcohol, but many of the local Danes are equally heavy drinkers. In a society where many rely on funds doled out from Denmark, alcohol is one way to pass the time. But this weekend is not a notably drunken affair. Visiting a couple of Nuuk’s smoky bars nothing more rowdy or aggressive is on show than one might find in London on a Friday evening.

 http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/06/20/david-frum-more-than-just-terrorism-and-pistachio-nuts.aspx

Economics Behind Iranian Unrest - David Frum (National Post-Canada)
Why after 30 years of clerical repression have the people of Iran suddenly rebelled? It’s the economy.
Iran collected $272 billion in oil and gas revenues in the past four years, yet economic conditions have sharply deteriorated under Ahmadinejad.
Iran’s central bank reports an inflation rate of 25%. The unemployment rate has reached 17%.
Endowed with vast resources of oil and gas, Iran ought to be a wealthy country. Yet, adjusted for inflation, the income of the average Iranian today is no higher than it was in 1975.
Almost three-quarters of the economy is owned by the state or by religious foundations, creating ample opportunities for corruption.

—————

David Frum: More than just terrorism and pistachio nuts
Posted: June 20, 2009, 11:05 by NP Editor
David Frum, Full Comment
Why now? Why after 30 years of clerical repression have the people of Iran suddenly rebelled? The short answer: In Iran as in the West, it’s the economy, stupid.

Iran’s central bank reports an inflation rate of 25%. The unemployment rate — already 10.5% when Mahmoud Ahmedinejad came to power — has reached 17%.

Endowed with vast resources of oil and gas, Iran ought to be a wealthy country. Yet, adjusted for inflation, the income of the average Iranian today is no higher than it was in 1975. Under the shah, the average Iranian was significantly richer than the average South Korean. Today, the average South Korean is three times richer.

Iran’s top three exports other than oil and gas? Pistachio nuts, saffron and carpets. Iran imports 40% of its gasoline, because its own dilapidated refineries cannot keep pace with demand.

Almost three-quarters of the economy is owned by the state or by religious foundations. That creates ample opportunities for Iran’s notorious corruption. Religious leaders and their families have helped themselves to farmlands that once belonged to the shah and other leaders of the previous regime. They take kickbacks on arms sales and steal oil money. Ayatalloh Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has become the country’s richest — and most despised –man.
Economic stagnation and corruption helped bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. In 2005, Rafsanjani sought election as president. (He had previously held the office from 1989 to 1997.) Iran’s supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, shrewdly recognized that a third Rafsanjani presidency would kill whatever little confidence Iranians still felt in the Islamic regime.

So Khameini sought an alternative: a person without much education, of simple tastes, conspicuously unwealthy. The buffoonish Ahmadinejad nicely fitted the bill.

One problem: Ahmadinejad quickly proved himself even more economically incompetent than his crooked predecessors. Iran has collected $272-billion in oil and gas revenues in the past four years — $100-billion more than it collected during the previous presidential administration of Mohammad Khatami.

Yet despite that windfall from record oil prices, economic conditions have sharply deteriorated under Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad used the windfall in part to fund new free-spending social welfare programs. On his cross-Iran tours, he would personally distribute cash to newly married couples. This lavish spending accelerated Iran’s inflationary problems. Ahmadinejad’s nuclear bravado provoked international economic sanctions that cut into Iran’s already scanty foreign investment.

The collapsing economy has exacerbated Iran’s already horrific social problems. Iran is home to some two million narcotics users. Despite (or perhaps because of ) the regime’s repressive sexual attitudes, prostitution flourishes: An estimated 85,000 prostitutes work in Tehran alone. Last year the head of Iran’s anti-vice police force was arrested cavorting with six naked prostitutes in a Tehran brothel. It’s generally estimated that Iran is home to 80,000 cases of HIV/AIDS — three-quarters of these cases traceable to intravenous drug use.

As Iranians grumbled, Ahmadinejad fought back on the only issue he had: corruption. Presenting himself as the one honest man in the Iranian elite, he revealed ever more shocking details of clerical corruption: This ayatollah’s son-in-law had enriched himself out of the state-controlled sugar industry, the son of the former speaker of the parliament had become a billionaire out of kickbacks.

Such stories, once secretly gossiped about, were now being broadcast on national Iran is home to some two million narcotics users and prostitution flourishes television. But instead of calming the economically hard-pressed public, the revelations only enraged the voters more. Trying to save himself, Ahmadinejad discredited the whole regime.

Since the death of the ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian regime has allowed limited competition within the system — always on the understanding that all the competitors would respect the rules of the game. Now very suddenly the regime has lost control of the competition. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has broken all the system’s rules in order to keep the presidency; Hossein Moussavi is breaking the rules in order to gain it. As old taboos are smashed, the way has been opened for ordinary Iranians to break into the game — confronting the regime with a choice of surrendering to its people or using violence against them.

A great and ancient culture and civilization with an increasingly urbanized and sophisticated population, Iran has so much more to offer the world than terrorism and pistachio nuts. Whatever its outcome, this dramatic week has shown the world what Iran could be, if ever liberated from its corrupt, hypocritical and ravenously greedy Islamic theocracy.

For background, see article

1. EUROPE: Decolonising the Arctic
2. Nearly independent day 
3. Greenland gives Denmark the cold shoulder. But would it ever be viable as a country?
4. Jun 20th 2009 Web only
6. BRITAIN: Tax havens under pressure
7. Whiter than white 
8. Britain’s offshore financial centres race for respectability
9. Jun 18th 2009

Environment -Renewable energy

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/09/china-green-energy-solar-wind

China launches green power revolution to catch up on west.
• Plan to hit 20% renewable target by 2020
• $30bn for low-carbon projects

Julian Borger and Jonathan Watts in Beijing
The Guardian,     Wednesday 10 June 2009

China’s ambitious wind and solar plans represent a direct challenge to Europe’s claims of world leadership on cutting carbon emissions.
The following correction was printed in the Guardian’s Corrections and clarification column, Thursday 11 June 2009.

{Below we confused the absolute with the incremental in reporting yesterday that a rise in temperature of 2.7C corresponds to an increase of 36.9F. It is 4.9F.}

China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China’s national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.

In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.

“Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW],” Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.

“We are now formulating a plan for development of renewable energy. We can be sure we will exceed the 15% target. We will at least reach 18%. Personally I think we could reach the target of having renewables provide 20% of total energy consumption.”

That matches the European goal, and would represent a direct challenge to Europe’s claims to world leadership in the field, despite China’s relative poverty. Some experts have cast doubt on whether Britain will be able to reach 20%. On another front, China has the ambitious plan of installing 100m energy-efficient lightbulbs this year alone.

Beijing seeks to achieve these goals by directing a significant share of China’s $590bn economic stimulus package to low-carbon investment. Of that total, more than $30bn will be spent directly on environmental projects and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

But the indirect green share in the stimulus, in the form of investment in carbon-efficient transport and electricity transmission systems, would be far larger.

HSBC Global Research estimated the total green share could be over a third of the total package.

China also believes the price reforms that will take place in its economic recovery programme will lead to more efficient use of resources and an increased demand for renewable energy.

“Due to the impact of global financial crisis, people are all talking about green and sustainable development,” Zhang added. “Enterprises and government at all levels are showing more enthusiasm for the development of solar for power generation, and the Chinese government is now considering rolling out more stimulus policies for the development of solar power.”

He said the government would also plough money into the expansion of solar heating systems. He said the country was already a world leader, with 130m square metres of solar heating arrays already installed, and was planning to invest more. The US goal for solar heating by 2020 is 200m square metres.

Zhang was speaking in London on a day China came under increased pressure from Washington to do more cut its emissions.

David Sandalow, the US assistant secretary of energy, said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in temperatures even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.

“China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change,” said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a senior negotiating team aiming to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year.

“No effective deal will be possible without the US and China, which together account for almost half of the planet’s carbon emissions.”

Zhang said China was pursuing “a constructive and a positive role” in negotiations aimed at agreeing a deal in Copenhagen. As part of that agreement, he said developing countries would have to pursue “a sustainable development path”, and said Beijing was open to the idea of limits on the carbon intensity of its economy (the emissions per unit of output).

“We have taken note of some expert suggestions on carbon intensity with a view to have some quantified targets in this regard. We are carrying out a serious study of those suggestions,” Zhang said.

Zhang told the all-party parliamentary China group in Westminster yesterday that Beijing’s stimulus package was already showing signs of re-energising the Chinese economy. He said it grew by 6.1% in the first quarter of this year, and growth in the second quarter would be stronger than the first. He predicted that China would meet its target of 8% growth this year.

Bigger isn’t Better        

by Peter A. Victor
Culture Change, 12 June 2009

There’s nothing like a good crisis to make us rethink old ideas. The depression of the 1930s led to the rejection of the prevailing idea that unemployment would right itself if only people would work for lower wages.

Governments could do very little to help. These ideas were overthrown by experience… and by the invention of modern macro economics by British economist, John Maynard Keynes. By the end of World War II, most Western governments had adopted Keynesian economic policies designed to ensure that total expenditures were sufficient to maintain full employment.
Keynesian economists soon discovered that full employment today meant a bigger economy tomorrow because some of the investment expenditures required to keep unemployment down: on infrastructure, buildings and equipment, also expanded the productive capacity of the economy. So does an expanding population and labour force. Initially, governments pursued economic growth to meet the more pressing concern of maintaining full employment, but this soon changed. In the 1950s, economic growth became the number one economic policy objective of governments and all others, such as productivity, innovation, free trade, competitiveness, immigration, even education, became a means to that end.

Until a year or so ago all seemed to be going reasonably well. Then came the breakdown in the financial sector followed quickly by a recession that through globalization, spread further and faster than swine flu. Now governments are congratulating themselves for acting together to stimulate spending to get the economies back on course, much as Keynes might have recommended. But times have changed since his day. World population has increased almost three times, world economic output has increased ten times and with this massive expansion of the human presence on earth, we are confronting limits to the availability of cheap energy, to fresh water, and to the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. At the same time we are destroying the habitat of numerous species of flora and fauna and the security of our own food supplies is threatened.

It is time to rethink the old idea that the solution to all our problems lies in the incessant expansion of the economy. Rich countries like Canada should explore alternatives, especially if poorer countries are to benefit from economic growth for a while in a world increasingly constrained by biophysical limits. Some deny or simply ignore these limits and argue that economic growth in rich countries is necessary to stimulate growth in poorer ones. Others say that with ‘green’ growth we can expand economic output as we reduce the demands we place on nature through more efficient production, better designed products, fewer goods and more services, compact urban forms, and organic agriculture. While these measures may well help in a transition they are an unlikely prescription for the long term. What is required is a radical rethinking of our economies and their relation to the natural world.

Although no 21st century Keynes has emerged to prepare the intellectual ground for such a change in thinking, we do have a body of knowledge built up over many decades and now thriving under the name of ‘ecological economics’. Ecological economists understand economies to be subsystems of the earth ecosystem, sustained by a flow of materials and energy from and back to the larger system in which they are embedded. It is understandable that when these flows were small relative to the earth they could be ignored, as they have been in much of mainstream economics. Economists are not alone in treating the economy as a self-contained, free standing system largely independent of its environmental setting. It is a widely held view that environmental protection is just one among multiple competing interests to be traded off against the economy. And anyway, this mainstream perspective teaches that if resource and environmental constraints are encountered, scarcities will be signaled by increases in prices that will induce a variety of beneficial changes in behaviour and technology. Should this system of scarcity, price, response fail then economists can estimate ’shadow’ prices which can be imposed directly through taxes or used indirectly through policies based on cost-benefit analysis to fix the problem.

To ecological economists, this is an inadequate response to the myriad problems of resource depletion, environmental contamination and habitat destruction confronting humanity in the 21st century. They question the pursuit of endless economic growth and contemplate a very different kind of future.

In my own work, I have examined whether and under what conditions a country like Canada could have full employment, no poverty, much reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and maintain fiscal balance, without relying on economic growth. Using a comparatively simple model of the Canadian economy I have explored scenarios in which these objectives are met. The ingredients for success include a shorter work year to reduce unemployment yet retain the advantages of technological progress, a carbon price to discourage greenhouse gas emissions, and more generous anti-poverty programs.

In such an economy, success would not be judged by the rate of economic growth but by more meaningful measures of personal and community well-being. We would adjust to strict limits on our use of materials, energy, land and waste, guided by prices that provide more accurate information about real rather than contrived scarcities. We would enjoy more services and fewer but more durable and repairable products, and we would value use over status when deciding what to buy. Rampant consumerism would be history, advertising would be more informative and less persuasive, and new technologies would be better screened to avoid problems to be fixed later, if at all. Infrastructure, buildings and equipment would be more efficient in their use of energy and we would think and act more locally and less globally. With more free time at our disposal we would educate ourselves and our children for life not just work.

Is all this simply wishful thinking of a sort that flourishes in troubled times? I think not. The undercurrent of discontent with modern life is rich with ideas for a better future, one that is not dependent on economic growth. For example, in March of this year the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission delivered its report “Prosperity without Growth?” to the British Government endorsing and amplifying many of the ideas expressed here. The Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy based in the USA has obtained over 3000 signatures on its position statement designed to help change the goal of the economy from growth to sustainability. At the local level, Transition Towns has spread in less than four years from the UK to many countries including Canada, to raise awareness of sustainable living and to build local resilience in response to the combined threats of peak oil and climate change. Even mainstream economists are moving with the tide. Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow said last year: “It is possible that the US and Europe will find that either continued growth will be too destructive to the environment and they are too dependent on scarce natural resources, or that they would rather use increasing productivity in the form of leisure.” Let’s add Canada to the list and go from there.

* * *

Economist Peter A. Victor is Professor in Environmental Studies at York University and author of Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, not Disaster, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008. “Bigger isn’t Better” first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen  www.ottawacitizen.com).

 From: Mirjam Harmelink of Harmelink Consulting -   post at harmelinkconsulting.com

IEPEC 2010 “Counting on Energy Efficiency-It’s Why Evaluation Matters!”
Paris, France - June 8-10, 2010.

European Call for Abstracts open to anyone working in the evaluation fields including scholars, practioners, policymakers, and students. To submit your abstract please visit: http://tinyurl.com/IEPECParis

The call for abstracts is open.  Please visit our website at http://www.iepec.org and follow the links in the left hand navigation bar for IEPEC Paris.

Examples of Topics:
•   Evaluation design, implementation and results
•   Evaluating programme performance
•   Evaluating behavioural change programmes, including
1. Advertising campaigns
2. Advice provision
3. Websites
•   Evaluating energy supplier obligations and certification schemes
•   Linkages between performance management (outputs) and evaluation (outcomes) to develop effective programmes
•   Using evaluation to develop more effective policy and strategies
•   Using evaluation to inform national savings estimates

BACKGROUND
Energy efficiency and climate change are an increasingly important focus of policy for national, regional and local governments throughout Europe. Everyone recognises that effective evaluation is crucial; however, approaches differ between nations and programmes. The first IEPEC Europe-based Conference will be held in 2010. The conference will bring policymakers and evaluators from Europe and North America together to share best practice and to establish a strong and vibrant evaluation community.  EPEC Europe will be modelled on the successful non-profit North American IEPEC conference which has been a central feature of evaluation in North America since 1984.

THE PLANNING TEAM
The conference chairs will be Nigel Jollands (International Energy Agency) and Paolo Bertoldi (European Commission) and the organising committee includes policymakers and evaluators from throughout Europe.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND
The conference will be held in Paris between June 8 2010 and June 10 2010. It is particularly suitable for:

1. Policymakers with programmes to improve energy efficiency and address climate change who will be able to:
•   Meet and share experience with other policymakers who are interested in evaluation
•   Meet experienced evaluators
•   Learn about effective evaluation approaches taken in Europe and North America
•   Share experience with others regarding the use of evaluation to inform policy and deliver improved outcomes

2. Evaluation professionals involved in energy efficiency and climate change who will be able to:
•   Meet and share experience with other evaluation professionals
•   Meet policymakers with an interest in evaluation
•   Learn about the developing European energy policy environment and the implications for evaluation

WHAT IS IEPEC
The International Energy Program Evaluation Conference (IEPEC) is a biennial professional conference for energy program implementers, evaluators of those programs. The purpose of the conference is to provide a forum for the presentation, critique and discussion of objective evaluations of energy programs. The Conference advances the goals of conserving natural resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by helping to overcome one of the key barriers to implementing energy programs - the lack of confidence in the reported results.

The core product of this conference is the documentation of unbiased, peer-reviewed evaluations that establish the basis for accurate information and provide credible evidence of program success or failure.  Researchers will find the IEPEC website to be an outstanding resource as almost all past proceedings are posted there and are available for searching at no cost.  IEPEC is a non-profit organization and has been run almost entirely by dedicated, volunteer,  evaluation professionals since 1984.

We are delighted to be able to come to Europe and applaud the efforts of many including Nigel Jollands of IEA.  For a complete list of our current planning members, please see below.

SEARCH OVER 600 PAPERS…
IEPEC is pleased to offer, at no charge, a new service for energy evaluation professionals.  We have posted the complete set of papers from our 1984, 1985,  1989, 1991, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007 conferences on our website.  Feel free to search these files and use the information to improve or add efficiency to your work. This service is made possible by the support of our sponsors.
Step One:  Go to www.IEPEC.org
Step Two:  Bookmark this site as a Favorite (Ctrl D)
Step Three:  Navigate to “Past Program Papers”
Step Four:  Select the year you want to search
Step Five:  Dig in…

CONFERENCE TIMELINE
Call For Abstracts:  June 2009–closes November 2, 2009 Posting of Selections:  February 2010 Registration Opens:  February 2010

Conference Schedule (2010)
Workshops/Networking Social:  June 8
Opening Session:  June 9
Poster Reception:  June 9
Final Session: Late Afternoon June 10.

JOIN OUR SPONSORS
We are currently recruiting sponsors for the 2010 European version of IEPEC’s North American based program.  If interested, please contact Ed Vine at  Ed.Vine at UCOP.edu or Nigel Jollands at  Nigel.Jollands at IEA.org

CURRENT SPONSORS
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy Alliance to Save Energy Databuild Dethman and Associates Energy Markets Innovation Inc.
European Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy International Energy Agency International Energy Program Evaluation Conference Research Into Action Summit Blue Consulting, LLC Tecmarket Works

PLANNING TEAM  2010
Paolo Bertoldi, European Commission
Didier Bosseboeuf, ADEME
Ben Bronfman, Quantec
Kirsten Dyhr-Mikkelsen. Ea Energy Analyses Mirjam  Harmelink, Harmelink Consulting Ken Double, Energy Saving Trust Pierre Landry, Southern California Edison Kevin Lane, Environmental Change Institute Guido Mattei, European Consutling, Brussels Charles Michaelis, Databuild Jennifer Otoadese, Oxford University Centre for the Environment Marcel Paven, Autorità Energia Federica Stabile, ENEA Iris Sulyma, BC Hydro Bobbi Tannenbaum, KEMA Ed Vine, California Institute for Energy and Environment Harry Vreuls, Senter Novem

We said so a long time ago - desertification, water shortage, and plain unhappiness with the way westernization changed life styles of the oil enriched elites, did it. Now the IISD is publicizing these facts. We would like to add here that one more thing we could do is that we - right here - decide for real to be less addicted to oil and thus buy less oil from the region. With less money flowing to the leadership - the peoples of the Middle East would be more inclined to look for peaceful ways to help themselves.

From: Nona Pelletier <npelletier@iisd.ca>
Date: Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 4:39 PM
Subject: IISD Report: Climate change poses threat to peace and security in Middle East
A new report developed by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), commissioned by The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, being launched this week in the Middle East, has found that climate change may hold serious implications for peace and security in the Levant.

Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions: Climate change and the risk of violent conflict in the Middle East is the latest report on the links between climate change, peace and conflict by IISD, an independent Canadian policy think tank. Drawn from extensive consultations and workshops throughout the region, augmented by desk research, the report makes three key points:

1. The legacy of conflict in the countries of the Levant undermines the ability of countries and communities in the region to adapt to climate change. The history of hostility and mistrust in the region greatly complicates efforts to collaborate over shared resources, to invest in more efficient water and energy use, to share new ways to adapt to climate change and to pursue truly multilateral action on climate change. Ultimately, climate change presents an even more serious challenge than it would otherwise.

2. The report shows that climate change itself poses real security concerns to the region. It may increase competition for scarce water resources, complicating peace agreements. It may intensify food insecurity, thereby raising the stakes for the return or retention of occupied land. It may hinder economic growth, worsening poverty and social instability. It could lead to destabilizing forced migration, increased tensions over refugee populations, the increased militarization of strategic natural resources and growing resentment and distrust of the West.

3. Nevertheless, the report points out there is much that national governments and authorities, civil society and the international community can do to address the challenge of climate change, and in so doing, address some of the threats it may pose to regional peace and security. They can promote a culture of conservation in the region, help communities and countries adapt to the impacts of climate change, work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and foster greater cooperation on their shared resources. –link to the media release-

To view the report: http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2009/rising_temp…

For more information:

Nona Pelletier, IISD Winnipeg
Phone: +1 (204) 958-7740
Cell: +1 (204) 962-1303
E-mail:  npelletier at iisd.ca

Damon Vis-Dunbar, IISD Geneva
Phone: +41 (22) 917-8748
Cell: +41 (78) 818-0501
E-mail:  dvis-dunbar at iisd.org

Biggest Polluters Closer To Climate Deal: Canada
A Very Sorry Article - Brought to us via World Environment News from Thomson-Reuters’ Planet Ark.
Date: 29-May-09
Author: Peter Griffiths

The Protagonist here is Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice who reports to the journalist after the first two rounds of the new US Administration’s initiative - OK, he just mentions the first round - the Washington DC round - only. He speaks as if form could make up for content. As we really know very little from the meeting of the 16 (+ the EU), we thought at first that finally we will get here some inside information - but really, it is just as news-poor as the previous postings that we were able to glean out from some speakers that were also just tooting they own horns.

—————–

LONDON - The world’s biggest greenhouse gas producers have edged closer to agreement on a deal to fight global warming at crucial climate change talks in December, Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice said on Thursday.

Talks between the biggest economies, hosted last month by President Barack Obama in Washington, had helped to bridge gaps between countries ahead of the U.N. meeting in Copenhagen to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, he added.

“I am quite hopeful, optimistic about the prospects of reaching an agreement,” Prentice told Reuters. “My sense is there is a consensus amongst the G8 countries that we need to have specific targets in place.

“I was not always so optimistic, but the convenement of the Major Economies Forum (on Energy and Climate) by President Obama causes me to have considerable confidence.”

However, he warned there was “much work to be done” before any agreement can be reached on a pact to replace Kyoto, which limits climate-warming greenhouse emissions and expires in 2012.

Although G8 member Canada signed up to Kyoto, Prime Minister Stephen Harper abandoned it soon after he came to power in 2006. He said the country’s emissions had risen since it signed the treaty and the cuts now required would hurt the economy.

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions were 25.3 percent above the 1990 level in 2005, far above its Kyoto target of a 6 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Setting binding targets in Copenhagen would not be the most important goal of the talks, Prentice added.

“What is essential about reaching an agreement in Copenhagen is to have the United States as a full partner in the battle against climate change,” he said. “The question of target levels is important, but I think it is less important than having the United States as a fulsome partner.”

As well as a shared border, Canada and the United States have close energy links. Canada is the largest single supplier of energy to the United States, accounting for about 9 percent of U.S. oil consumption and 15 percent of its natural gas.

Extracting the heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands produces huge amounts of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Measures to help the environment must be balanced with steps to help the economy during the global recession, Prentice added.

“I have never seen that as a zero sum game where to advance your environmental objectives you do so at the detriment of your economy,” he said. “You have to have a certain amount of prosperity to drive environmental progress.”

Canada aims to boost its economy by investing in “green” technology, such as carbon capture and storage, which traps carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal-fired power stations and buries them underground, he added. “This is really a technology where Canada has led the way,” he said.

This article is intended as a first in a series of articles, and let me say right here that it will not be the most important article in the series - it will actually be an introductory “puzzlement.”

The series is being born from participation on May 5th, 2009 at a full-day Conference on “THE GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE.”

That conference was organized by  The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) which is the world’s leading authority on political-military conflict.

The IISS, based in London, is both a limited company in UK law and a registered charity. It has offices in the US and in Singapore with charitable status in each jurisdiction.

The IISS was founded in 1958 in the UK by a number of individuals interested in how to maintain civilised international relations in the nuclear age. Much of the Institute’s early work focused on nuclear deterrence and arms control and was hugely influential in setting the intellectual structures for managing the Cold War.

The Institute grew dramatically during the 1980s and 1990s, expanding both because of the nature of its work and its geographical scope. Its mandate became to look at the problems of conflict, however caused, that might have an important military content. This gave fresh impetus to the Institute as it began to cover more comprehensively political and military issues in all continents. As this mandate developed, the Institute worked hard both to provide the best information and analysis on strategic trends, and to facilitate contacts between government leaders, business people and analysts that would lead to the development of better public policy in the fields of international relations and international security. 

When I got the information about the May 5th Conference I decided to post it as an upcoming event as I felt from the program that it will be very relevant to readers of our site. Indeed, I even found our article as a posting when I googled now for IISS.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (US) (IISS): Conference on the Global Security Implications of Climate Change, May 5, 2009, Washington DC.
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on April 24th, 2009
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

Having said above, now, for the purpose of this article I move to something very different. It is about a 48 page volume that my neighbor had in his possession. This was the volume on the “Transatlantic Cooperation for Sustainable Energy Security” that originated with the Center For Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) that is the Washington DC Institution connected to Georgetown University, with which I was connected some 25 years ago. The further co-sponsors of that volume where The Atlantic Council of the US, and the British host of a September 15, 2008 Conference in London’s Chatham House. The project director was Simon Serfaty of CSIS and the authors and group leaders were Franklin Kramer and John Lyman of the Atlantic Council and Robin Niblett of Chatham House. I made it my business to walk over to CSIS at the end of the May 5th meeting, and picked up a copy. Reading it I found out that actually the soul of this project was Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski in his capacity as Chair in Global Security and Geopolitics at CSIS, who back in 2008 launched a Dialogue between the European Union and the United States on issues including “THE RISK OF ENERGY SCARCITY AND STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SECURITY” and as a separate item “THE DILEMMAS OF CLIMATE CHANGE, INCLUDING MITIGATION OF ITS CAUSES AND ADAPTATION TO ITS IMPACTS.”

Other topics mentioned were:

- Issues of Stabilization and Reconstruction, and The Problem of Failing States,

- Challenges in the World Economy and the Modalities of Global Economic Governance,

- The Need For Strategic Convergence and the Formation of a Euro-American Security Strategy.

Above topics were first the base for a meeting in Washington DC on July 8, 2008, and then a second meeting at Chatham House on September 15, 2008, and the final result was release in his booklet of February 2009. 35 people were involved in the preparation of this document and it is mentioned that not all of them agreed to all what was said.

So, for a fast answer to the questions in my title - the security mentioned here is the security of energy supplies to the members of the North-Atlantic Region, with the rest of the world, including topics of climate change, a bothersome group of outsiders who at best should be relegated to the poor house of those in need of stabilization or reconstruction because THEY are Failed States - and that is clearly not what I understand under the term of SUSTAINABILITY.

To be sure, a footnote tells us that while talking of the US and the EU as the Transatlantic Community - Canada, even though never mentioned, is also part of this structure.

I may be extremely prejudiced, but I believe that SUSTAINABLE ENERGY is what will bring Security, and when one looks for narrow Energy Security he will not achieve sustainability and not even security - all this even before we start to try to address the impact from climate change that makes also the mightiest economies unsustainable.

Actually - the first line in the text already guarantees the downfall of this publication. It says: ” The world is energy short and carbon long.” Whatever that means - this clearly has no meaning in sciences - any of them! From that statement one is called to take at face value the second sentence that says: “This report focuses on that juxtaposition and the means to achieve energy security in a world concerned over climate change and maintaining economic growth.”

The goal of the booklet seems to convince the world that “A Transatlantic Forum on Energy Cooperation (TFEC) should be formed that includes the US, the EU, NATO, and the nations of both the EU and NATO.” That forum will then find the way out from the problems as perceived in this booklet. This report promises that a second report will be provided later that “will discuss the need for carbon pricing and other mechanisms to complement efforts in energy efficiency and energy production.” So, there is hope - the meat of this work is yet to show up on the table.

The TFEC will develop programs that would assist other major economies, such as China and India, to develop more efficient and effective transportation systems. This I am sure is going to be viewed as great news by China and India who clearly think that the transportation systems in the US are ideal, or perhapse the intent is here to teach them how to save our transportation systems by selling us better cars. Clearly, one or the other were the reason why this document was readied in such haste so the incoming US Administration will have it on its desk.

The document includes a good section on traditional industry evaluation of the energy markets, and the view of developments in the US and in the EU. It also advocates “the expansion of the IEA into a global organization of petroleum and natural gas consumer nations that includes major economies such as China and India,” even though it mentions here and there the introduction of non-petroleum energy.

The document was supported from funds of the European Commission and I would assume that the funds came from the remnants of Marshall funds.

Monday - Tuesday, April 27-28, 2009, the 16 States with major impact on global climate had their first session, out of a projected total of three sessions, on behalf of a US started effort to supplement and enhance the talks THAT BEGIN IN COPENHAGEN in December this year.

Obviously, the US is now ready to take the lead, but also do not miss the point that the UN led negotiations will only start in Copenhagen, and as we said all the time, all that run-up to Copenhagen was just so much UN hot air. Yes, remember our words - Copenhagen will be Poznan II and Mr. Rassmunsen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, by that time will not be in the picture anymore - as he will have moved on to chair NATO in Brussels.

Now, with Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia also on board, not just the US and the group of developed economies as the UN had it in Kyoto, attention must be given to the statement by the Indian delegate this week - “We want assurances that the developed countries will not renege on their commitments - the United States cannot solve the world’s problems, but the problems cannot be solved without the United States.”

After the eight lost years of the Cheney/Bush Administration, and the lack of stimulae of the Clinton/Gore Administration, this coming out of the US Secretary of State, with the backing of the Obama Administration, is indeed a repositioning of the US in its natural global leadership place.

Mrs. Clinton said there was no longer any question that growing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other gases were causing a warming of the planet, with potentially catastrophic results: she said global climate change posed environmental, economic, health, and security challenges that must be addressed by individual countries and by the community of nations.

We say AMEN! Nevertheless I must point out that dinosauri are still around in America’s public life and I write these lines after having listened yesterday, April 30, 2009, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, at the CATO Institute’s “Policy Perspectives 2009″ day, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, Freeman Dyson, expressing his opinion that CO2 impact on the climate, and climate change itself, including the catastrophic predictions, are all a hoax. Now - that was the opinion of the oil, coal, and motor vehicle folks that sat in the White House just recently - and don’t forget - US internal policy cannot easily shake them off. Will it all turn back to talk like “Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You To Know” as another speaker at CATO had it - Mr. Pat Michaels who is the Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the CATO Institute?

With all this in mind, I am glad that the State Department meeting did not release any statements - let them work it all out in private and bring it to Copenhagen as a network of bilateral and multi-party agreements between these 16 countries that represent 75% of the emissions. Nobody needs indeed agreement of all 192 members of the UN - it is these major economies when it comes to these emissions that count, and an agreement that covers them can suffice - this provided that each one of these 16 does not have a serious internal opposition fed with incomplete scientific thought or the lack of adherence to “The Precautionary Principle” But then the recognition that bubbles and pyramid schemes cannot
be the base on which a country is built will also get people to see that disregarding the future when gobbling up the present is not sustainable either.

Arctic Council rejects EU’s observer application.

 writes LEIGH PHILLIPS, The EUobserver, April 30, 2009, from BRUSSELS:  The Arctic Council on Wednesday (29 April) put on hold the European Union’s application to gain permanent observer status with the council as a result of Brussels’ expected approval of a ban on seal products. “Canada, the world’s largest sealing nation, convinced the council to push back consideration of the EU’s application, furious that Brussels is moving ahead with the ban despite its insistence that the seal hunt is sustainable and not cruel to the animals.”

Gaining permanent observer status with the council had been a key element of the EU’s new Arctic strategy, announced last November.

The Arctic Council ministerial meeting’s final declaration from Tromso, Norway, said that it had “decided to continue discussing the role of observers in the Arctic Council.”

But as the next full ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council is not due until 2011, the council has in effect turned the EU’s application down for the time being.

“Canada doesn’t feel that the European Union, at this stage, has the required sensitivity to be able to acknowledge the Arctic Council, as well as its membership, and so therefore I’m opposed to it,” Canadian foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after the meeting.

“I see no reason why they should be … a permanent observer on the Arctic Council.”

Ottawa maintains that seals are not endangered and that the domestic legal requirements for sealing are stricter than those covering European slaughterhouses.

Canadian indigenous groups say that the EU ban would hurt their livelihoods. Despite an exception for traditional indigenous sealing in the ban, which is due to be voted on by the European Parliament in early May, the Inuit say that the ban would still result in a collapse in markets for seal products.

Ahead of the meeting, Eva Aariak, the premier of Nunavut, Canada’s majority Inuit territory, said: “The Arctic Council… was formed to promote co-operation and co-ordination and interaction in regards to member states in the Arctic. What [the] European Union is trying to do is not those.”

Denmark, one of the Arctic Council’s eight member states, is strongly opposed to the EU’s plans and has excused itself from its common position on the matter. Sealing continues as a traditional activity in Greenland, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark but not of the EU.

Norway and Canada are both considering taking the EU to the World Trade Organisation over its seal product ban should it be passed.

Nevertheless, the decision to exclude the EU from the council remains awkward for Oslo, which favoured EU accession as a permanent observer, and frustrating for Brussels.

“Norway shares that view [on the seal ban] with Canada. But for Norway, that’s yet another reason to invite the observers in,” said Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, reports AFP.

————-

Norway, which is not a member of the EU bloc, has territorial access to Arctic oil and gas whereas the EU does not and thus the Nordic country is viewed by the bloc as key to its energy security. It is estimated that a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas lies under the Arctic seabed and Europe’s other traditional sources of fossil fuel energy, Russia and the Middle East, remain highly politically unreliable.

————

Beyond Norway, Denmark and Canada, the Arctic Council also included Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Russia as full members.

Six indigenous groups from around the Arctic, including the Inuit, the Gwich’in, the Aleut and the Saami, sit as permanent observers.

———-

China, Italy, the EU and South Korea had also applied as permanent observers and were also turned down for now, alongside the EU.

———-

The EU may yet get another chance, however. Due to the increased activity and interest in the Arctic, the Tromso meeting decided that the Arctic Council from now on will meet at political level once a year.

———-

Separately, the council agreed to negotiate an international instrument on cooperation on search and rescue. As maritime activities in the Arctic increase, there will be increasing need for Arctic search and rescue services.

The council also urged the International Maritime Organisation to urgently develop new guidelines for ships operating in Arctic waters, as well as mandatory regulations on safety and environmental protection.

———

Guidelines on oil and gas exploration and a taskforce on how to reduce non-CO2 drivers of climate change such as methane, which play a prominent role in Arctic climate change, were also established.

Indigenous Wisdom Against Climate Change

By Stephen Leahy*
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Apr 28 (Tierramérica) - While industrialised countries like Canada continue to emit ever-higher levels of greenhouse-effect gases, indigenous peoples around the world are working to survive and adapt to an increasingly dangerous climate.

Over millennia, indigenous peoples have developed a large arsenal of practices that are of potential benefit today for coping with climate change, including some holistic and refreshingly practical ideas.

“Why not give automobiles and planes a day of rest? And then later on, two days of rest. That would cut down on pollution,” suggested Carrie Dann, an elder from the Western Shoshone Nation, whose ancestral lands extend across the western United States.

Dann, winner of the 1993 Right Livelihood Award - known as the Alternative Nobel Prize - for her efforts to protect ancestral lands, made her proposal before the 400 delegates gathered in Anchorage, Alaska, Apr. 20-24 for the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change.

Dann warned that Mother Nature is getting warmer and the “fever” needed to be cured. “We see many range (grassland) fires in my territory, it is getting so hot,” she said.

To prevent similar uncontrolled wildfires that have burned up large portions of Australia and killed hundreds of people in recent years, the Aborigines of Western Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, are using traditional fire practices to reduce such wildfires.

Preventing these fires also reduces greenhouse gas emissions and, for the first time in the world, these Aborigines have sold 17 million dollars’ worth of carbon credits to industry, generating significant new income for the local community, according to a report presented in Anchorage.

Australia’s Aborigines have traditionally used controlled burning following the rainy season to create barriers to stop the intense wildfires later during the dry season.

Wildfires account for a substantial portion of Australia’s carbon emissions and have been very destructive. However, in recent years few Aborigines live on the land any more so there have been fewer controlled burns. But now there is a new role to play in the fight against global warming.

According to Sam Johnston, of the Tokyo-based United Nations University, a summit co-sponsor, it is in the world’s best interest to take into account indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge.

In Asia, indigenous people are developing diverse crop varieties and utilising different cropping patterns, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Filipina leader and chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told the delegates.

They are also involved in sustainable agro-forestry and energy production based on small-scale biomass and micro-dam projects.

On the Indonesian island of Bali, indigenous peoples are doing reef rehabilitation work and protecting mangroves. In the Philippines, they are mapping ancestral waters and developing an integrated management plan.

“Many are doing these things on their own, with no support,” said Tauli-Corpuz.

In Honduras, faced with increasing hurricane strikes and drastic weather changes, the Quezungal people have developed a farming method that involves planting crops under trees so the roots anchor the soil and reduce the loss of harvests during natural disasters.

Indigenous peoples in Guyana have adopted a nomadic lifestyle, moving to more forested zones during the dry season, and are now planting manioc, their main staple, in alluvial plains where it was previously too moist to grow crops.

Farmers in Belize are returning to traditional agricultural practices and moving up to higher ground, other delegates reported.

In Africa, the Baka Pygmies of southeast Cameroon and the Bambendzele of Congo have developed new fishing and hunting methods to adapt to a decrease in precipitation and an increase in forest fires.

Although indigenous peoples have great capacity to adapt, many treaties and international laws guarantee their rights to food and traditional livelihoods, but climate change threatens all of this, according to Andrea Carmen, a member of the Yaqui Indian Nation, of the U.S. southwest.

When the chiefs of the tribes in the western Canadian province of Alberta declared that there should be no more oil production from tar sands, they were ignored, said Carmen who is also executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council.

Alberta’s tar sands oil projects are the major reason why Canada’s latest greenhouse gas inventory increased four percent from 2006 to 2007. That increase puts the country 33.8 percent over its commitments established in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, in force since 2005.

But indigenous peoples are also wary of recent actions by governments and industries undertaken in response to climate change, such as building wind farms and biofuel plants, because these are often located on or directly affect their lands and livelihoods, says Gunn-Britt Retter, of Finland’s Saami Council.

“We have the knowledge of how to live through these climate changes. We need to use traditional knowledge to help all our cultures live through these changes,” Retter said.

“Our message to the world is that we need full and effective participation at the national and international levels in order for our cultures to survive these changes,” he added.

It has been 17 years since the first U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings were held to solve the climate crisis, said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the former head of the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

“We must act quickly… This is the last chance to take control,” she told the delegates by videoconference from her home in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. “The world needs the wisdom of our cultures.”

(*Correspondent Stephen Leahy’s travel to Alaska was financed by the United Nations University and Project Word, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation for media diversity. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

From: Marc Pallemaerts <MPallemaerts@ieep.eu>
Date: Tue, Apr 14, 2009

The Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) recently carried out an analysis of the extent to which the EU (and its then 15 Member States) fulfilled the solemn promises made to developing countries in the so-called ‘Bonn Declaration’ of 23 July 2001. Eight years ago, at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP6bis) which paved the way for the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the EU-15 together with five other OECD donor countries (Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland) collectively made a ’strong political commitment’ to raise US$410 million a year from 2005 to help developing countries tackle climate change and to review this pledge in 2008. These Annex II Parties to the UNFCCC agreed to provide additional funds in a number of ways: through contributions to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), through other multilateral and bilateral aid channels (additional to 2001 ODA levels), and through three new climate change funds established under the Bonn/Marrakech agreements to provide financial assistance to developing countries: the Special Climate Change Fund, the Least Developing Countries Fund and the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund.

IEEP undertook a detailed analysis of the levels of aid channelled through these different options for each of the EU signatories to the Bonn Declaration (EU-15). Results show that whilst the EU-15 may, overall, have fulfilled their commitments under that declaration, the data published by Member States is far from conclusive and the quality of reporting does not allow full independent verification of the amount of aid provided. Funds made available by the EU-15 through the GEF and dedicated multilateral climate change funds alone (approximately US$160 million/year) amount to less than half of the funds needed to meet the EU’s share of the Bonn commitment (US$369 million/year). Apparently, funding through bilateral channels accounts for most of the aid provided, but such assistance is a lot harder to monitor and verify at the international level. The lack of clarity and transparency in official reporting to the UNFCCC makes it impossible to affirm that much of the ‘additional’ aid actually provided since 2001 did not merely consist of ‘re-branded’ aid money.

To download the IEEP study, presented at a conference in Brussels on 28 January 2009, click http://www.ieep.eu/publications/pdfs/200…

For further information contact:

Dr Marc Pallemaerts
Senior Fellow &
Head of the Environmental Governance Programme
Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP)
Quai au Foin 55
Hooikaai 55
1000 Brussels
BELGIUM
Direct Tel.: 32-(0)2-7387471
Fax: 32-(0)2-7324004
Email:  mpallemaerts at ieep.eu
___________________________________________________________
IEEP is an independent not for profit institute dedicated to advancing an environmentally sustainable Europe through policy analysis, development and dissemination. IEEP undertakes work for external sponsors in a range of policy areas. We also have our own research programmes and produce the Manual of Environmental Policy: The EU and Britain www.mep-online.com. For further information about IEEP, see our website at http://www.ieep.eu or contact any staff member.

From: Other News - Roberto Savio <soros@other-net.info>
Date: Tue, Apr 7, 2009

Democratising Finance

By Hazel Henderson (*)
ST.AUGUSTINE, Apr (IPS) The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the “too big to fail” culture of global money-centre banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralise and democratise finance.

While national safety-nets are unravelling because of budget cuts, local leadership is rising, offering many creative alternatives for communities to nurture healthier home-grown economies:

-Local barter-clubs, like Freecycle.com, Craigslist and LETS, and scrip currencies are proliferating, as they always do when central bankers and the International Monetary Fund fail or make matters worse. Some of the most successful complementary currencies are Switzerland’s WIR and in the US, Berkshares, with equivalent to USD 2 million in circulation and accepted by banks and businesses in Massachusetts. Similar complementary currencies are working well in Britain, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and other countries.

-People-to-people lending and microfinance projects are booming in many countries: Women’s World Banking, Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, now emulated in many countries, FINCA and ACCION in Latin America, as well as the newer online versions. Credit unions, operated in Europe and North America for a century, are now filling new local needs, reaching out to poorer people and adding microfinance and lending to small businesses.

-Associations of small local banks and businesses are wielding more political clout, as are credit unions. In the US, they are demanding equal treatment in the government’s bailout funds currently showered on the big banks whose reckless lending triggered the financial  mess. Venture capital and venture philanthropy firms, including the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, Acumen, and the foundations of Ebay founders Pierre Omidyar and Jeffrey Skoll, are investing in social enterprises that meet social needs while making modest profits. Such social capital is now creating a new hybrid sector in many economies.

-Britain’s New Economics Foundation (NEF) has been generating both local initiatives, such as the Transition Towns movement, and its Green New Deal and alternative indicators to correct GDP, measuring well-being and ecological sustainability. NEF’s proposal to save Britain’s 11,500 postal offices by adding local banking functions is backed by trade unions, small businesses, public interest groups, and pensioners.

-Time banking, a brainchild of Edgar Cahn in the US, is now helping local people connect and share services in Japan, Europe, and other countries. Neighbours contact each other via a local “time banker” to provide meals and help for shut-ins, babysit each other’s children, watch over property, mow lawns, and share appliances. And car-sharing has now spawned many new companies.

-China is host to many such local initiatives, linking small businesses on networks, including Baidu.com, Alibaba.com, as well as Qifang.com which provides affordable loans to China’s 25 million students. Circle Pleasure, a private company selling prepaid consumer cards, has formed a joint venture with Qifang for people-to-people banking, the first private company to receive a banking license from China’s Central Bank. In many countries in Africa, cell phone banking has taken off. Cell phones are the basis
for the “phone ladies” in Indian and Bangladeshi villages, who rent their cell phones to other villages so rural farmers and fishermen can consult prices in nearby towns and markets to optimise sales.

How far can people-to-people finance go in bypassing big, greedy banks and ethically-challenged Wall Street financiers and their political allies? A long way, thanks to all the communications tools now widely available. Using these new information-sharing tools is helping people realise again what money is: just one form of information. Today it is possible to trade using pure information exchange. For example, in rural Florida, there are call-in radio programmes where, for example, a farmer may offer to trade tractor use for a quantity of seed. Similarly, the growth of farmers’ markets and contract-supported agriculture allows local consumers to buy fresh produce directly from nearby farms.

So how did we allow big banks and centralised finance to grow so large that they became predators on the real living economies which produce the world’s real wealth? Local people around the world are realising that they can simply bypass big banks and stock exchanges and create these services locally. The old, bloated financial sectors must downsize, cut their bonuses and take the losses from their reckless bets in their global casino. A truly efficient financial services sector should be less than 10 percent of a country’s GDP. Those in Britain and the US grew to 25 percent of GDP, metastasising with their “financial engineers” preying on the real economy. Now students are looking for jobs as real engineers, teachers, doctors, and entrepreneurs.

In a very real sense, we humans don’t have a financial crisis but a crisis of perception. We are beginning to see our world differently from the way the mainstream media portrays it. We see our choices with new eyes. As we watch central bankers printing money on TV, we learn that money is not real wealth. Real wealth is generated by productive people using the Earth’s resources wisely. Money is a useful medium of exchange when managed properly, locally, nationally, globally, or electronically. Hoarding money is no longer a reliable store of value. We are all rediscovering the many stores of value in our own communities. We find wealth beyond money. We can change our values for the new times we live in and restore the love economies to their central role in our lives. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006), is president of Ethical Markets Media ( www.ethicalmarkets.com). She co-created the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, updated regularly at www.calvert-henderson.com.

Othernews | Via Panisperna, 207 | Rome | Italy | 00184 | Italy

Tuesday, March 10, 2009, The Japan Times online.

EDITORIAL - Durban II in danger.

On paper the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is an eminently laudable project — if you believe that the United Nations should promote grand statements that promote norms of good behavior. But the preparations for this meeting, and its predecessor, suggest that good intentions are not enough. Instead of fighting racism, the conference looks set to enshrine it as policy by singling out Israel for criticism and equating Zionism with racism.

Meetings like this undermine the U.N. and empower its critics. Acquiescing to this agenda is a mistake. The more countries protest against this meeting, the more hope there is for getting the U.N. back on track.

The first such conference was held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. That meeting was dominated by discussions over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery. The United States and Israel walked out halfway through after it became apparent that attendees were going to spend most of their time condemning Israel, and ignoring virtually the rest of the world. The conference focus undermined respect for the U.N. in the mind of the U.S. administration, reinforcing a mind-set that saw the world body as discriminatory, misguided and unprepared to work on real problems.

There were hopes the next U.N. conference on racism, dubbed Durban II after its predecessor and scheduled for next month, would change its approach to restore legitimacy in both the institution and its work. The new administration of U.S. President Barack Obama had indicated that it was prepared to rejoin deliberations if they were fair and unbiased.

But after dispatching representatives to preparatory meetings last month, the U.S. announced that it will boycott the conference unless the final declaration is changed to drop all references to Israel and the defamation of religion. In joining Canada and Israel in shunning the meeting, the U.S. noted that the document under negotiation “had gone from bad to worse” and declared that it was “not salvageable.” Other European governments are expected to do the same if the document is not changed.

Western complaints focus on three areas: First is the unrestrained support for the Palestinian cause and the blind criticism of Israel. Attempts to equate Zionism with racism repeat the divisive and corrosive debates of the 1970s. The U.N. is seen as anything but fair in these discussions, and the institution is discredited and marginalized as a result. The second complaint is the call for reparations for slavery.

Many Western governments have acknowledged their role in enslaving and relocating millions of Africans. The demand that they make compensation payments may be cathartic but it is unrealistic. Moreover, it ignores the role of other players, some African and Arab, in the slave trade. The third area of concern is language that calls for restrictions on defamation of religion. Western governments say these provisions undermine freedom of speech. They also note that while the protections are sweeping in their scope, the only religion identified by name is Islam.

It is tempting to blame the Libyan chair for the turn the conference has taken, or the Cuban special rapporteur. Both countries have been at the forefront of the movement to isolate Israel and use the U.N., along with other world bodies, as blunt instruments to cudgel the West and the U.S., in particular. But, sadly, they are not the only countries that desire to single out Israel for international censure.

Reportedly, members of the Muslim world are also using the frictions generated by the war against terrorism to privilege their religion at the conference. The identification of Islamic extremists with terrorism is equated with persecution of that faith in their mind and, therefore, must be prevented at all costs. At the same time, protections for Jews are being blocked. An effort to protect against discrimination and intolerance looks like anything but.

Racism and discrimination are too often evident. Much more must be done to fight these evils and banish them, at least from the realm of government policy. The U.N. should be helping to establish and enforce such norms. But norms such as these are intended to protect minorities, not enshrine the prejudices of the majority. Numbers, like military might, do not make right.

***

The fate of the Palestinians is a tragedy and Israel has been complicit in that ugly history. But Israel alone is not to blame.

The charitable explanation for the mentality behind the Durban meetings is the mistaken belief that the best way to remedy the sufferings of one group is to victimize another.

Less charitably, one could argue that Durban is an attempt to punish Israel and the Jews, regardless of what they have done.

By either explanation, Durban is flawed and should not proceed.

The Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) is holding a press briefing this morning 4 March 2009 at 10:00 a.m. promptly in Room 226 at the United Nations Secretariat in New York in response to the upcoming International Criminal Court Pre-Trial Chamber I’s decision concerning the Prosecutor’s 14 July 2008 application for the issuance of an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir. 

The Coalition’s briefing will be streamed live and archived via the UN Webcast website at http://www.un.org/webcast/

The Coalition’s briefing will follow the Court’s press conference scheduled earlier today, 4 March, at 2 p.m. in The Hague (or 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time) at the seat of the Court during which the Chamber’s decision with regard to the issuance of a warrant of arrest against President Al-Bashir will be announced.

Coalition briefing panelists include Richard Dicker, the director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, Niemat Ahmadi, the Darfuri Liaison Officer at the Save Darfur Coalition and Tanya Karanasios, the director of programs at the Coalition who will act as moderator. Brief remarks will be followed by Q&A.

Please note that later today, the Coalition will distribute to this list its press release on the Chamber’s decision as well as a list of experts from international and Sudanese human rights organizations for comment and background on the decision. Our website, www.iccnow.org , will be continually updated with member statements, Question and Answer documents, etc. as they are made available on or around 4 March.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact directly   tenenbaum at iccnow.org copying my colleague in The Hague,  maillet at iccnow.org

——————-

Sasha Tenenbaum
Communications Officer
Coalition for the International Criminal Court
708 Third Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Tel.:    +1 (646) 465-8524
Fax:    +1 (212) 599-1332
 tenenbaum at iccnow.org

—————-
Together for Justice: Civil society in 150 countries advocating for a fair, effective and independent ICC.

For more information, visit the new website at www.iccnow.org or www.togetherforjustice.org and participate in their blog, In Situ: See Justice through the Eyes of Civil Society, at www.iccnow.org

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

LIBYAN PRESIDENCY OF UN COUNCIL TO FOCUS ON PEACEKEEPING POLICY, SUDAN .

(THIS AS PER THE OFFICIAL UN NEWS RELEASE)

Peacekeeping policy and the repercussions of a possible indictment of the Sudanese President by the International Criminal Court (ICC) are among top concerns of the Security Council this month, according to the Charge d’affaires of Libya, the body’s March president.

There is nothing scheduled by the Council as an immediate reaction to tomorrow’s expected decision on an indictment of President Omar Al-Bashir for war crimes in violence-torn Darfur, Ibrahim Dabbashi said. (The Libyan President of the UNSG - for March 2009)
However, he added, there were ongoing consultations with Council Members on a possible decision under article 16 of the Rome Statute that set up the ICC, which could defer investigations connected with an indictment for 12 months.

“We hope the situation will not deteriorate in Sudan. We feel it is very important that the Security Council look into this matter in light of the decisions taken by the Regional Organizations, especially the African Union and the League of Arab States,” he said.

There was as yet no consensus on the matter, he said, and the Council would continue its consultations and closely watch the situation on the ground in the meantime, he added.

An estimated 300,000 people have died, either through direct combat or because of disease, malnutrition or reduced life expectancy over the past five years in Darfur, where rebels have been fighting Government forces and allied Arab militias.

Yesterday, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Alan Le Roy, said that the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) would continue to perform its duties to protect civilians no matter what decision the ICC takes.

Also unrelated to the decision, a briefing by the Council Committee that oversees an arms embargo and related sanctions in Sudan is scheduled for 10 March.

In regard to peacekeeping policy, Mr. Dabbashi said that on 18 March an open debate is planned on the report of the AU-UN Panel on joint peacekeeping operations, chaired by Libya’s Minister for African Affairs.

A retreat on peacekeeping for Council Members will take place from the 20th to the 23rd of the month, and a Council mission to Haiti is planned for 11-14 March.

A debate is also scheduled on piracy and the peace process in Somalia on 20 March as a follow-up to the two resolutions on the subject that were adopted by the Council in December 2008.

In addition to the regular monthly briefing on the Middle East, discussions and actions are also slotted on the UN missions in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT), Kosovo (UNMIK), Afghanistan (UNAMA) and elsewhere, Mr. Dabbashi said.

———–===========————

See also from this UN News Press Release:

SECURITY SITUATION CALM IN DARFUR, UN-AFRICAN UNION BLUE HELMETS REPORT

The United Nations-Africa Union (AU) hybrid peacekeeping operation in Darfur known as UNAMID today reported that the security situation in war-ravaged Sudanese region is calm.

Forces with the mission are operating as normal, conducting patrols and closely monitoring the state of affairs throughout the area.

The pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will announce tomorrow whether it will issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir on charges of war crimes.

Alain Le Roy, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, said yesterday that regardless of what the ICC decides, UNAMID will continue to protect the local Darfurian population.

“The Government would assume its full duty of protecting UN missions in Sudan against any negative impact that may result from ICC possible decision against the Sudanese political leadership,” he told reporters in New York yesterday.

UNAMID was set up by the Security Council to protect civilians in Darfur, where an estimated 300,000 people have been killed and another 2.7 million have been forced from their homes since fighting erupted in 2003, pitting rebels against Government forces and allied Janjaweed militiamen.

One year from the transfer of responsibility to UNAMID from the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS), over 60 per cent of the 19,555 military personnel authorized by the Security Council are now in place.

Meanwhile, regarding a shooting incident in a market in El Fasher where one person was killed and six others injured, UNAMID received information that armed militiamen were attempting to loot shops, allegedly due to their anger over not having received salaries.

* * *

BAN, FORMER US PRESIDENT CLINTON TO JOIN FORCES TO HELP HAITI

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has invited former United States President Bill Clinton to join him on an upcoming trip to Haiti to raise awareness of efforts to help the Caribbean nation’s people and government bolster their economic security.

According to a statement issued by his spokesperson, Mr. Ban’s decision was spurred by the former American leader’s attention to Haiti while in office, his work as a United Nations Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and his September 2008 call to help Haiti as part of his Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).

Next week’s visit builds on Mr. Ban’s continuing work with Haitian President René Préval to find a way to create jobs and improve food security, reforestation and the provision of basic services, including health care.

“The presence of the Secretary-General and President Clinton will bring a strong message of hope that Haiti is still ‘winnable,’” the statement noted.

“The trip will help to focus attention on the importance for new partnerships and new efforts to assist the people and government of Haiti as they continue to ‘build back better’ from recent storm damage and create a more stable and prosperous future for the children of Haiti.”

Yesterday, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Alain Le Roy – who visited the country in January – told reporters of the “allure of hope” in the impoverished country.

* * *

GAZA: AFTER DONOR CONFERENCE, AID INFLOW STILL RESTRICTED, UN SAYS

Despite calls at yesterday’s donor conference for the unfettered import of aid and reconstruction supplies to the combat-battered Gaza strip, Israeli authorities continue to block crucial supplies, the United Nations said today.

Key crossings remain closed or partially closed, reconstruction materials are still prohibited, and restrictions on food types, clothing and schoolbooks have been maintained, the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update on the situation in Gaza today.

“More than 80 percent of all goods currently allowed into Gaza are basic foods,” OCHA said, adding that materials for home rebuilding and repair of water, sanitation and power infrastructure were urgently needed.

As of 2 March, the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), Gaza’s water utility, reported that 50,000 people still do not have access to piped water and an additional 100,000 receive water approximately every 7-10 days.

According to GEDCO, Gaza’s power utility, the power deficit throughout the Gaza Strip as of yesterday remained at 19 per cent, with 90 per cent of the Gaza population receiving intermittent electricity and 10 per cent completely off the grid.

Those conditions will not improve until the necessary pipes, generators and other basic supplies are allowed into Gaza, OCHA said.

At yesterday’s donor conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the situation at border crossings “intolerable,” stressing that opening them was the first priority for aid and reconstruction efforts.

Israel launched a three-week offensive in Gaza on 27 December 2008 with the stated aim of ending rocket attacks by Hamas and other groups. At least 1,300 Palestinians were killed and some 5,300 were injured in the heavy bombardment and fighting in densely populated areas, which reduced homes, schools, hospitals and marketplaces to rubble.

In its update today, OCHA said that violent incidents in and around Gaza have continued in the period since 24 February, with seven rockets fired toward Israel and missiles fired by Israeli aircraft at tunnels at the Gaza-Egypt border, causing three Palestinian casualties.

(The above just makes no notice of the fact that money by the donors will not be fothcoming as long as Hamas does not change its skin - so what sense to just complain that money is not forthcoming?)

++++++++++++=============================+++++++++++++

ICC: Bashir Warrant Is Warning to Abusive Leaders
Move to Seek Arrest of Sudanese President a Victory for Darfur’s Victims.

(New York, March 4, 2009) – The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) issuance of an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan signals that even those at the top may be held to account for mass murder, rape and torture, Human Rights Watch said today. ICC judges granted the warrant for Bashir, its first for a sitting head of state, on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role in orchestrating Sudan’s abusive counterinsurgency campaign in Darfur.

“With this arrest warrant, the International Criminal Court has made Omar al-Bashir a wanted man,” said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. “Not even presidents are guaranteed a free pass for horrific crimes. By ruling there is a case for President al-Bashir to answer for the horrors of Darfur, the warrant breaks through Khartoum’s repeated denials of his responsibility.”

The court did not confirm the three counts of genocide that were requested by the ICC prosecutor. Genocide requires evidence that the crimes were committed specifically “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part,” a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group solely on the basis of its identity.

“Proving genocide charges is always extremely difficult,” said Dicker. “President Bashir is hardly off the hook, as he is sought for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including widespread rape, murder, and torture committed as part of a government plan.”

Under the ICC Statute, the prosecutor is able to request an amendment of the warrant to include genocide if he obtains additional evidence to support the charge.

The ICC prosecutor requested an arrest warrant for Bashir on July 14, 2008  http://www.hrw.org/node/74138 ). Following the prosecutor’s announcement, Sudanese government officials made implicit and explicit threats of retaliation against international peacekeepers and humanitarian workers. On July 25, a Sudanese presidential advisor, Bona Malwal, stated in regard to peacekeeping forces that, “We are telling the world that with the indictment of our President al-Bashir we can’t be responsible for the well-being of foreign forces in Darfur.” President Bashir has also threatened to expel international peacekeeping forces if a warrant is issued.

The Security Council, its individual members, the UN Secretariat, the European Union, and the African Union have a critical role in promptly responding to any government-supported retaliation in Darfur following news of the warrant.

“The Sudanese government is obliged to maintain security in the country and the Security Council should act decisively to hold them to it,” said Dicker. “Khartoum should not be allowed to use the arrest warrant as a pretext for stepping up its obstructionist policies that have hobbled peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts in Darfur.”

The government of Sudan is required by a Security Council resolution to facilitate the deployment of the African Union/UN Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and to cooperate with the ICC. Under international law, Sudan remains obligated to protect its own civilians and to provide full, safe, and unhindered access by relief personnel to those in need in Darfur. The arrest warrant does not change these obligations, nor does it have any impact on Khartoum’s obligations to carry out the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the government of Southern Sudan.

“The Security Council and concerned governments should impose targeted sanctions against Sudanese officials responsible for any retaliatory violence, and consider other measures such as further banking restrictions or a widening of the arms embargo,” said Dicker.

The ICC is an independent judicial institution. Sudan, though not a party to the Rome Statute creating the court, is subject to ICC jurisdiction through Security Council resolution. Having an official position as head of state does not provide immunity from criminal responsibility before the ICC.

Apart from the warrant against President Bashir, the ICC has issued two other warrants in relation to Darfur. On April 27, 2007, the court issued arrest warrants for State Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun and a “Janjaweed” militia leader, Ali Kosheib. The prosecutor has also requested arrest warrants for three rebel leaders in connection with attacks on international peacekeepers at Haskanita in October 2007. That request is currently under consideration by the court.

Sudan has so far refused to cooperate with the ICC. All the arrest warrants remain outstanding. Haroun continues in his official position as state minister of humanitarian affairs. On November 24, the Sudanese government arrested and tortured three human rights defenders in Khartoum for allegedly giving information to the ICC.

“Khartoum is required to cooperate with the court,” said Dicker. “Because the ICC has no police force of its own, it needs strong support from governments to ensure that all those charged with crimes are arrested.”

Background

In a March 31, 2005 resolution, the Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC prosecutor for investigation and prosecution. The decision was based on the recommendation of an international commission of inquiry, which found that violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law were continuing in Darfur and that the Sudanese justice system was unwilling and unable to address the crimes. Darfur is the first situation referred by the Security Council to the ICC.

For a Q&A on the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue a warrant for al-Bashir, please visit:
 http://www.hrw.org/node/81223

Human Rights Watch has available a clip reel of footage, including:

·       Interviews with Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, and Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, on the warrant for the arrest of al-Bashir;

·       B-roll from Darfur in 2005, showing Sudanese refugees; burned villages and victims; dead bodies; Human Rights Watch investigators speaking with witnesses and survivors of Janjaweed attacks; groups of militia members; and children and women gathering water.

To download the above-mentioned clip reel of footage, please contact:
In New York, Brian Griffey or Conor Fortune: +1-212-216-1832; or  hrwpress at hrw.org

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on the crisis in Darfur, please visit:
 http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/f…

For more of Human Rights Watch’s work on the International Criminal Court, please visit:
 http://www.hrw.org/en/category/topic/int…

For more information, please contact:
In New York, Richard Dicker (English): +1-212-216-1248; or +1-917-747-6731 (mobile)
In New York, Georgette Gagnon (English): +1-212-216-1223; or +1-917-535-0375 (mobile)
In New York, Sara Darehshori (English): +1-212-216-1262; or +1-646-342-1749 (mobile)
In London, Selena Brewer (English): +44-20-7713-2778; or +44-79-2973-1851 (mobile)
In London, Tom Porteous (English): +44-20-7713-2766; or +44-79-8398-4982 (mobile)
In Johannesburg, Tiseke Kasambala (English): +27-11-484-2640; or +27-79-220-5254 (mobile)
In Brussels, Elizabeth Evenson (English): +32-2-737-1486; or +32-498-298504 (mobile)
In Brussels, Reed Brody (English, French, Portuguese, Spanish): +32-2-737-1482; or +32-475-681708 (mobile)
In Paris, Jean-Marie Fardeau (French, Portuguese): +33-143-59-55-31; or +33-6-45-85-24-87 (mobile)
In Berlin, Marianne Heuwagen (German): +49-30-259-30612; or +49-173-354-8202 (mobile)
In Washington, DC, Abderrahim Sabir (Arabic): +1-202-612-4342; +1-202-701-7654 (mobile)

From Terra Viva at the UN, March 3, 2009.

 http://ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.as…
Q and A: “Time Has Come for a New U.N. Women’s Agency”
Nergui Manalsuren interviews STEPHEN LEWIS, AIDS and gender expert.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 (IPS) - After being blind for years to the needs and rights of women, the United Nations is finally well on its way to create a “fully-resourced” women’s agency, says Stephen Lewis, the former U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

A long-time vocal advocate for women’s rights, Lewis helped promote the proposed billion-dollar gender institution, saying it is reasonable to ask for such an amount considering that the agency will deal with issues affecting half of the world’s population, and that the funding is just a third of that given to the U.N.’s children’s agency UNICEF and a quarter of the U.N.’s Development Fund’s (UNDP) budget.

“We have an agency for children, we have an agency for health, we have an agency for sexual and reproductive rights, we’ve got agencies for all kinds of things, but not for women who need one, and I think the time has come,” he told IPS correspondent Nergui Manalsuren. The proposal calls for a new “gender architecture”, including the consolidation of three existing U.N. entities - the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women - under a single new U.N. agency.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: You talked about the creation of a women’s agency. Where does it stand right now?

SL: The creation of a new international agency for women is well on its way in the next couple of days. I am hoping that a resolution creating the agency will occur before the end of this year, if not, then early 2010.

In the next week or two, the governments will have a proposal from the Secretariat, they will wrestle with the proposed proposal. The president of the General Assembly is very strongly in favour of the need for women’s agency. He hopes that it will happen before he leaves office, which is Sep. 14. That may be too soon, it may be later in the fall or in the early winter, but it’s coming, it’s coming.

What should happen now is actually to get the architecture in place. But there is no question that there is greater and greater momentum to create the agency as people realise how desperately it is needed.

IPS: What is the estimated budget?

SL: It is unknown. My agency is suggesting a billion dollars a year to start, which is only one-third of UNICEF, one-quarter of UNDP, so we are not asking for an inappropriate amount considering it’s half the world’s population and it has a lot of time to make up.

I don’t doubt that once it’s created there will be several countries that come on board, some of the major donor countries of course. Even though there is financial difficulty in the world there seems to be some commitment to find the funding.

IPS: Do you think the G-77  developing countries may block it?

SL: No, I don’t. I have great respect for the G-77’s concerns because at first they worried that this might be a kind of western imposition. And they wanted to feel that they would control it, that it’s a serious intervention and that there was nothing about it that would be a threat to the independence of developing country nation states. There would be no hidden conditionality. And I think that this way that there won’t be, that this is an honest effort to intervene on behalf of the women of the world. And a number of the leading G-77 nations have indicated their support - [in] Latin America, Asia, Africa - so I am very hopeful.

IPS: What is the best strategy for bringing men on board?

SL: I think the best strategy is to empower women at the country level to assert their rights, to give them the capacity to fight for their rights and change legislation and gradually over time men will understand that there is a shift in the culture and the power relationships in society and they will come onboard. Men are difficult to deal with but over time they understand what is happening. But what we have to do is empower women at the country level. We can’t fight this battle in the abstract.

IPS: What’s the problem with gender mainstreaming at the U.N., especially at the decision-making level?

SL: Gender mainstreaming has failed in every respect. What happens with gender mainstreaming is you say we’ll mainstream gender into that and then no one ever thinks of it again. They say it’s taken care of - it’s “mainstream”. And the truth is the gender mainstreaming simply sustains women’s inequality - that’s what gender mainstreaming is. It’s a recipe for inequality because unless you deal with women in a serious way, giving it special consideration, until you have equality then women will always be struggling.

IPS: What is your opinion on the Security Council resolutions?

SL: There’s a great pity about the Security Council resolutions, you tend to get good language without implementation. So, the famous Resolution 1325 which passed in October 2000 saying that women must be involved in peacekeeping and peacemaking operations has never been implemented. Women never were at the peace table. It’s like the resolution doesn’t exist, but we talk about it all the time.

It’s pretty ugly in terms of what it means around women. And now we have a resolution of last year about sexual violence, and you get a sense that once you’ve got something on paper then they don’t feel the obligation to implement it. They have endorsed the responsibility to protect. They have principle, which will allow them to implement it, so you have to ask yourself: will they be doing this if it was men? And, the answer is no, they can afford not to care because they’re women.

IPS: What made you become such a strong advocate of women?

SL: Because I’m a social democrat who believes in social justice, and there’s no justice in this world for the women, so you fight for it.

 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067767.html

Jewish World / Can U.S. Muslims and Jews work together to change the world?

By Haaretz Service and Leadel.NET, March 1, 2009.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, a leading figure in interfaith dialogue, is optimistic that the U.S. Jewish community will one day share a bond with Muslims as strong as its historical relationship with African Americans.

In this exclusive interview with Leadel.NET, Schneier characterizes black-Jewish relationship as “clearly one of cooperation.”

Schneier has spearheaded cooperation between the two minority groups, alongside Russell Simmons, his good friend and partner in the African American community.

While Jews were prominent in the civil rights movement, their ties with the black community soured following the assassination of Reverand Martin Luther King, Jr. Nevertheless, Schneier says, the bond has strengthened again over the last decade and a half.

“We understood our responsibility to speak out against the injustices of racism and discrimination,” Schneier says in reference to the major role played by Jews in the civil right movement.

The fact that 78 percent of Jews voted for President Barack Obama demonstrates that the American Jewish community finds it important to maintain a strong relantionship with African Americans, Schneier said.

He adds that such a relationship is “deeply rooted in social consciousness of American Jewish community because of the role played in the civil rights movement,” noting that now, an African American and a Jews are “the most important people in the White House.”

Rabbi Marc Schneier speaks about the twinning relationship he and a series of Imams developed in the US and in Canada.

He also sees in activities by the King of Saudi Arabia the understanding for the need to come together.

He speaks about the successes from the activity that his Foundation started last year - and that has by now 50 Mosques participate in the US and Canada - he has created the start of a new paradigm and hopes for real change in hearing them speak up in iterfaith initiatives.