Austrian far right scores big win.
VALENTINA POP, The EUobserver, September 29, 2008.

With the Social Democrats and centrist People’s Party hitting their most historic lows since 1945, Austrian elections on Sunday saw two far-right parties doubling and almost tripling their seats in parliament. The result could lead to a new coalition involving the right-wing extremists, despite EU sanctions having been applied to a similar government in 2000.

Hard bargaining lies ahead in attempts to form a governing coalition, as no party has scored over 30 percent, and a minority government would be a first in Austria.

The Social Democrats, who won the most votes - 29.7 percent, down from 35 percent in 2006 - are ruling out any alliance with the anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPO) - up seven points to 18 percent - or the Alliance for Austria’s Future (BZO), led by Nazi-fan Jorg Haider, which jumped from four to 11 percent.

According to Social Democratic leader Werner Faymann, the centrist People’s Party (OVP) remains their preferred coalition partner, despite the fact that the same such coalition formula led to the current early elections. But the OVP, which also hit a historic low on Sunday - plummenting from 34 to 25.6 percent - has not ruled out talks with the far-right groups.

Although together they account for the second largest block in the Parliament, FPO and BZO remain divided. FPO chairperson Heinz-Christian Strache said there will be no alliance with his former party boss Jorg Haider, and has called for the SPO or OVP to enter a two-coalition government with him as chancellor.

Meanwhile, Mr Haider has left all options open and is enjoying his comeback after years spent on the sidelines following a 2000 scandal when the EU imposed symbolic sanctions on Austria after his party at the time, the FPO, joined a government coalition with the People’s Party.

Back then, 14 EU member states suspended bilateral relations with Austria, putting the alpine country in a “diplomatic freeze.”

“The phoenix of Carinthia spreads his wings over all Austria,” writes Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about Mr Haider’s political resurrection.

***

EU sanctions unlikely!

In the event that the far right ends up in a government coalition, the EU however may be reluctant to repeat the 2000 sanctions move, which proved counter-productive and increased the popularity of such movements.

On 12 September 2000, the EU decided to lift the sanctions, following a report by three “wise men” appointed by the European Court of Human Rights to examine the post-FPO government situation in Austria.

Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, ex-Spanish foreign minister Marcelino Oreja and the German expert in international law Jochen Frowein warned in their report that “nationalist sentiments” in Austria had been unleashed by the EU sanctions because these were “falsely understood as being directed against the Austrian people.” The effect of the sanctions “would be counter-productive if they were maintained, which is why they should be ended,” read the report.

However, according to Article 7 of the Nice Treaty, which still applies today, the EU should react when “a clear danger exists of a member state committing a serious breach of fundamental rights.” If this occurs, the qualified majority of the EU’s heads of state may suspend certain EU council voting rights of the country concerned.

Arson attack on publisher of book on Prophet’s wife.
By Andy McSmith, The Independent, Monday, 29 September 2008.

Police are holding three suspected terrorists after a weekend arson attack at the London home of the publisher of a novel about the Prophet Mohamed’s child bride.

Two men were arrested by armed police outside the house in Islington, north London, and a third was detained outside a nearby Underground station. The fire was quickly put out after the fire brigade smashed the front door. The publisher, Martin Rynja, 44, was unhurt.

Scotland Yard described the operation as being “intelligence-led”, implying that the gang were being followed by undercover police.

***

Mr Rynja is director of Gibson Square, an independent publishing house which earlier this month announced it planned to release The Jewel of the Medina in Britain. He could not be contacted yesterday, and is thought to be under police protection.

The novel, by the American author Sherry Jones, was pulled by publishers in the US over fears it would anger Muslims, while a publisher in Serbia withdrew it from the shelves after protests from Islamic leaders, who said it insulted Mohamed and his family.

Neighbours of Mr Rynja said armed police, assisted by fire-fighters, broke into his home at around 2.30 am. Kevin Austin, 44, said he was woken up by police banging on his front door. “All we heard was someone outside shouting ‘Get on the ground. Get on the ground,’ loudly and forcefully,” he said.

“Then they shouted ‘Stop struggling,’ and we heard a van door closing and several cars speeding off. Then we were told to get out of the house. We only got as far as the front door when the police told us to get back inside.”

Another resident said he saw the two arrested men being put into forensic suits to protect evidence, before being bundled into a black van.

The three men, aged 22, 30 and 40, were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, and are being questioned at a London police station. Officers also searched four properties in north-east London – two in Walthamstow, one in Ilford and one in Forest Gate.

***

Announcing the publication of The Jewel of the Medina earlier this month, Mr Rynja said he felt such books were important in a liberal democracy. “If a novel of quality and skill that casts light on a beautiful subject we know too little of in the West, but have a genuine interest in, cannot be published here, it would truly mean that the clock has been turned back to the dark ages. The Jewel of the Medina has become an important barometer of our time,” he said.

In an interview with a German newspaper, the author dismissed the idea that her work – which focuses on the relationship between Mohamed and his wife, Aisha – would provoke a violent response. “To claim that Muslims will answer my book with violence is pure nonsense,” she said.

Her agent, Natasha Kern, said: “There are many misconceptions about this book floating around the internet, including that it is a romance novel or that it focuses on sexual content. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Some of the Jewish American Community will be having a vigil outside the UN building in New York, Monday, September 22, 2008, to protest the fact that the UN will be allowing Iran’s prime Minister Ahmedi-Nejad (Ahmedinejad), a self declared enemy of the Jewish people of Israel, and Holocaust denier, to come again to New York, this for the third time, in order to spew his venom and be feted by some that probably are like-minded, even though less expressive.

By coincidence, September 18th, the Center for Jewish History in New York City and the Yeshiva University Museum (YUM), had the unveiling reception of several exhibits that tie into one larger scope that deals with the resilience of the Jewish people.

Though having had to move around, persecuted in many places, the Jews enriched every place where they landed. In effect they graced every host, and Germany and Austria of today are not afraid to recognize the fact that the Jews were a very strong component of their culture, and are trying to make amends for what their country-people did to the Jews during the Holocaust years, and well ahead in historic times.

One of the exhibits deals with the German town Erfurt. In 1349, because of the Plague - The Black Death - the ignorant locals, that had no inkling about needs of hygiene, accused the Jews living among them as the cause for the Plague - this is clearly not much different from Ahmedi-Nejad’s hammering on the Jews of Israel as a reason for the backwardness of Muslim populations in the Middle East - that got stuck in a Medieval frame of mind and made not much real progress since. One of the local rich Jews hid a treasure that was found recently and these unique objects of art have been brought for display in New York before getting a permanent home in a new Museum in Erfurt.

Such museums exist in many old towns in Germany, and I was privileged visiting the city of Emden where the city library displays an important collection of works by Jewish philosopher Rabbi Jacob Ben-Zwi (Emden) - who originated the Jawetz family name, and brought fame to the city of Embden. It is the Germans of today in Emden, who care for that collection and are proud of that heritage, similarly with the Erfurt of today.

The opening of the shows on September 18th had many speakers. Considering the mix of artists and the Medieval artifacts from Erfurt, the speakers also represented Germany, Austria, Israel, and the New York museum. Obviously, there were cultural representatives from the various nationalities. But most interesting, and to the point, I found Dr. Andreas Stadler, the new Director of the Austrian Cultural Institute in New York, who said that what makes him feel most at home in New York is the Jewish culture that he was familiar with back in his home in Vienna. Mind you, Andreas, to the best of my knowledge is not of Jewish heritage, but he was brought up seemingly with the understanding that it is hard to see Viennese culture without its Jewish elements. So Hitler did not succeed after all.

Andreas Stadler came because of the painter Soshana and explained her life as a struggle of her position of a woman painter. 50 years of painting she fought for this recognition, and her son, Amos Schueller pointed out that she does this still, even though she cannot travel anymore. Sylvia Herschkowitz, the Director of the Museum said about Soshana that she wandered the World searching for her Jewish soul.

———–

———-

Another exhibit Was “The Suitcase Man” - Sculptures by Uri Dushi. He lives in Israel and his family are Holocaust survivors. He is now a very interesting exponent of creative Israel, and having looked over his career - I was glad seeing that among the many places he exhibited also in Graz - Austria, Bad Kissingen - Germany, Lodz - Poland,  Hag - The Netherlands. and at my favorite place in Moscow - at the Helicon Opera.

Uri Dushi’s initial entrance into the world of plastic art was with his photomontage works. About 15 years ago Dushy, who was up until then engaged in the field of music, began creating sizable, brightly colored paintings into which he incorporated dozens of personal photographs’ fragments. The works were overwhelming in their direct, forceful and dynamic execution, as well as the straightforward naivete that seemed to burst from the heart of the artist.

Dushy was imbued with the artistic courage to combine photographs of industrial sites that remained vacant and mute prior to their demolition, which he decided to document in his drawings, with dozens of apocalyptic industrial landscapes photographed by him. He then sank the photos in reservoirs of oil paint, combining and assimilating the one into the other, finally forming one artistic entity, amazing in its visual effect. His work has somewhat baffled the viewers, leading to more than one vague response from professionals in the field, who could not precisely categorize this new art.

The first exhibit was displayed in a commercial industrial space in southern Tel Aviv. Mobile bulbs positioned on lighting poles illuminated the works. The event itself, this ‘other’ and different gallery marked a breakthrough in a career that was predefined by ‘other’ criteria, directed towards the attention of the widest range of audiences possible, seeking to bedisplayed to all people, not solely for those who are ‘professionally qualified’ to understand art. Hanna Arendt, in Herbert Reed’s ‘The History of Modern Painting’ comments on this matter in the above mentioned book: ‘The artist’s substantial worldliness might not change even if “objectless art” replaces the description of things. The artist, be he a painter, a poet or a musician, creates worldly objects and this realization has nothing in common with the expressionistic activity, which is dubious and at any rate certainly isn’t art. The term “expressionist art” consists of two contradicting words, which can not be said regarding the term “abstract art”.’ This may be the place to note the liberty that Uri Dushy has taken upon himself to individually represent the meaning of his art, to invent the genres in which he desires to create, and through his creative eyeglasses to project outwards to us the viewers his impression, created anew in the process of building his works.

Curator Doron Polak writes: “Few are the practicing artists possessing the broad and varied talents, ranging over manifold fields both different and complementary, such as Uri Dushy. It is difficult to find artists having such a command of painting and photography, music and composition, video art and massive industrial sculpturing. His unreserved mastery of these art forms, and moreover, his original capability of integrating them into a complete unit – result in a creative path that is both different and unique.

Uri Dushy’s work does not confine itself to the limits of his private studio, but rather exits into the public realm – into open sites frequented by bypassers, and members of the community, who are not necessarily familiar with museums and galleries. His art is favorably accepted both in official art institutes such as galleries and art centers in which he is active, as well as in business and industrial sites, through dozens of public locations where his works are permanently displayed. The combination of styles which characterize his works, usually merging and thus naturally constructing his work process, mark his exceptional course in the labyrinth of his highly personal art.”

As we have a particular idea in mind for this article, we will not delve further - but please look up - http://www.du-art.com/about.html

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SOSHANA is the artist’ name of Susanne Schuller-Afroyim. Born August 25, 1927 in Vienna, to a solid middle-class Jewish family, Susanne Schuller had all the traumatic experiences of the Vienna of the 1930s. After the Nazi “Anschluss, her family escaped to London where she started to study painting, then in 1941 the family ended up in new York - a direct and somewhat fortunate example of the Suit-Case People. Eventually she went to study with the Jewish painter Beys Afroim (the name meaning in Jidish “the house of Ephraim) in Chicago and they married in 1945. Her only son, called Amos Shueller, was born in Chicago and he is the one who takes care now of her rich oeuvre.

Amos Schueller was the one to chaperone her collection of paintings to the New York exhibition, and spoke at the opening, as Soshana, who lives now in Vienna, does not travel anymore.

The artists name Soshana is the Hebrew form of Susanne, and it means the flower lily-of-the-valley which from Hebrew is usually transliterated as Shoshana - so her spelling is actually a transliteration from Jidish - the language closer to her native German. Soshana says about her work that “it is suffering that helps you grow and develop, the struggle and conflict in life. Even the plants seem to struggle for light and space …I believe in a greater spirit of nature, from which each person is a part, here to play his role in life.”

Shoshana, rather then Susanne, pushed her personality through life by going many places - and all this reflects in her paintings. After her first major exhibition in 1948 in Havana, she moved to Paris, the avant-garde art center at that time. She and Beys Afroim lived in Israel at the beginning of the 50s, in India and places in Japan and China later 50s -  where she studied abstract art and calligraphy as well as Eastern philosophy and religion.

She then traveled to South America and Africa in 1958-59, where among others she met and painted Dr. Albert Schweitzer. She and Afroim painted many well known personalities including Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, Leon Feuchtwanger, Hans Eisler, Otto Klamperer, Pablo Picasso. Also, she was painted by Picasso and Giacometti - Picasso actually made her the special compliment that she had unusual talent. She used in Paris the old studio where Gauguin used to work. Others in whose company they were in Paris included Brancusi, Chagall, and Sartre - then in 1953 she exhibited in the well known gallery of Max Bollag in Zurich.

When the modern art scene relocated from Paris to New York, they went first to Mexico, back to Israel, and eventually back to New York in 1974. She was called the “Cassandra of the Canvas.” A Melancholic introvert that created a large body of work that reflects her reaction to traumatic events she experienced. Her paintings, among othr things, deal with subjects of war - the 9/11 event in New York, the two wars in Iraq, the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, Gandhi’s death, and the Holocaust.

Soshana returned to Vienna in 1985 and she was honored by the Austrian Government with a Special Postal Stamp.

Workers in a New York Sweatshop (1944), Oil on Canvas, 40 cm X 48 cm, 15.79″ X 16.72″

The Burning Bush.

Mauthausen (1988) - (A Nazi Labor and Extermination Camp in Austria) - Oil on Canvas, 70cm X 90 cm, 27.30″ X 35.10″

————

Stern was born in Essen, in the industrial Ruhr Region, Germany, in 1956 and attended schools in Dortmund and Dusseldorf. He started out as a painter of outdoor signs and advertisements, and when turning to art started to refer to himself as an “action painter” in the legacy of New York School painters Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. When he arrived in New York he was fascinated by the disorientation of the New York streetscape and its skyscrapers. He painted the movement of people in the streets and scenes in subways. After 9/11 he focused his attention on a series he titled “The Gatherings” which reflect on the collective mourning of the city following that tragedy.

His paintings hang in many museums around the world, including the Metropolitan museum of Art in New York. Interestingly - also in the US Embassy in Vienna. He returned many times to Germany to show his work.

In 2010, Essen will be the EU cultural capital, in recognition of the tremendous changes of the region from its original industrial, steel and coal, nature. and David Stern will surely be represented there as well.

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========

The Yeshiva University Museum was started 35 years ago. The Center in its location on West 16th Street in Manhattan, is a later creation.

Further works by Soshana - our selection here deals with horrors of war - New York 9/11, Iraq (the first Gulf War), Kosovo and Vietnam:

———-

Finland and Sweden revive debates on NATO membership.
VALENTINA POP, September 1, 2008, the EUobserver.

Until recently, discussion of possible NATO membership has not been a lively political topic in neutral Finland and Sweden, but Russia’s actions in Georgia have encouraged those who back membership to become more vocal.

“We need to reconsider our security policy,” said the Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb in an interview with Austria’s Die Presse on Saturday, August 30, 2008.

Traditional conflicts are making a comeback in the post-9/11 era - he argued - saying Finland needs to begin to consider NATO membership, that the Georgian conflict has highlighted the UN’s problems and the need for a more active security policy.

***

“The talk about how nothing has changed is inconceivable to me,” said the conservative Mr Stubb, who represents the smaller coalition party in the government.

“It makes sense now to take into consideration a NATO bid. The time for a decision in this regard has not come yet, but we need to be flexible and quickly adapt our security policy. This must not take place in slow motion.”

In Sweden, the liberal People’s Party – a government coalition partner - is also trying to launch a NATO membership debate.

Allan Widman, the party’s foreign policy spokesman, championed his country’s membership to NATO in an interview with the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

The People’s Party has always been in favour of membership, but respected the coalition agreement not to place the topic on the public agenda. This has changed since the Russian invasion of Georgia.

The leader of the Social-Democrat opposition strongly rejects Sweden’s NATO bid, however. The Scandinavian country has had a long tradition of being a neutral country, even though neighbours Denmark and Norway are part of the Western security alliance.

Finnish NATO split: In Finland, Mr Stubb was appointed earlier this year as foreign minister, after being a member of the European Parliament for four years. He is a vocal supporter of his country’s membership in NATO but promised to be reserved on the issue in his new job, due to internal division within the governing coalition.

The Centre Party lead by Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen is split on the issue, as are the Social Democrats.

The current president, Social Democrat Tarja Halonen, is a strong opponent of the NATO bid. Her mandate ends in 2012.

Finland has a 1,200 km long border with Russia, something that caused much consternation for Finnish foreign policy during the Cold War. The country inched closer to NATO in March when it announced its intention to join future operations of the alliance’s rapid reaction force. It has developed technical capacities alongside NATO for several years and would be ready to join quickly if the decision was made.

Climate conference makes progress on key dispute.

By (AP) Published: 2008-08-23, ACCRA, Ghana.
Delegates at a key U.N. climate conference made headway Friday on a plan to encourage developing countries to regulate carbon emissions by focusing on their largest industries.

The emerging plan sidesteps objections from countries like India and China, which refuse to accept national targets for the overall emission of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

How to get developing countries to commit to reducing pollution levels has deeply divided countries seeking to craft a new climate change agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The meeting of 1,600 delegates and environmentalists from 160 countries was the third conference this year working on the accord, due to be adopted in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Accra meeting also was discussing ways to integrate the conservation of the world’s ever-shrinking forests into the Copenhagen agreement, as well as studying ways to raise and distribute the tens of billions of dollars needed annually to help poor countries deal with the consequences of climate change.

Under the Kyoto pact, only 37 industrial countries committed to meet specific targets. Together, they were required to cut emissions by an average 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. The United States refused to participate in the Kyoto regime because it excluded China and other large newly powerful economies from any obligation.

Korea, which is not one of the 37, surprised delegates by announcing that next year it will adopt a target for reducing its carbon emissions by 2020, but declined to give specifics. Earlier this year, South Africa also said it would embrace self-imposed targets, peaking its emissions by 2025.

Under the “sectoral approach” now taking shape, developing countries would set pollution targets for specific industries, like cement, steel or aluminum. Unlike the 37 industrial countries, they likely would not be punished for missing their goals.

“Something quiet but quite dramatic is happening,” said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “People are now talking about the same idea in the same language.”

India voiced reservations, but did not reject the concept. As for China, Doniger said the plan fit neatly with Beijing’s intention to increase the efficiency of its key industries, which produce the bulk of its carbon emissions.

Details of any agreement on the new approach would be complex and difficult to reach, and it is only one of many disputed components of a post-2012 pact.

But consensus appeared to coalesce around the notion that industrial countries will remain legally bound to meet a national cap on their carbon emissions, while developing countries would have flexibility in deciding which industries would be controlled and at what levels.

A critical element calls for advanced countries to provide the technology and funding to help other countries curb emissions in heavily polluting industries.

***

“There is now a basis for discussion,” said Katrin Gutmann, policy coordinator of the WWF Global Climate Initiative. “Before, we worried there would just be more clashes,”

But financing remains unresolved and it was unclear how governments would move forward, she said.

Japan, which advanced the proposal earlier this year to a chorus of criticism, said it was pleased with the response in Accra after it dropped several components that aroused objections.

Developing countries had feared the Japanese proposal was a backdoor device to impose binding targets that would limit their economic development.

“That is a great advancement compared with the beginning of this year,” Japanese delegate Jun Arima told the conference.

——————

From:  sniffenj at un.org
Subject: Cutting Fossil Fuel Subsidies Can Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Says UNEP Report
Date: August 26, 2008 10:21:12 AM EDT

UNEP NEWS RELEASE

Cutting Fossil Fuel Subsidies Can Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Says UN
Environment Programme Report.

Meanwhile, New Assessment of Clean Development Mechanism Shows
Climate-Friendly Energy Projects Achieving Lift-Off in Sub Saharan Africa.

ACCRA/NAIROBI, 26 August 2008 — Scrapping fossil fuel subsidies could play
an important role in cutting greenhouse gases while giving a small but not
insignificant boost to the global economy, a new report by the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) says.

The report challenges the widely held view that such subsidies assist the
poor, arguing that many of these price support systems benefit the
wealthier sections of society rather than those on low incomes.

They are also diverting national funds from more creative forms of pro-poor
polices and initiatives that are likely to have a far greater impact on the
lives and livelihoods of the worse-off sectors of society.

Globally, around $300 billion or 0.7 per cent of global GDP is being spent
on energy subsidies annually.

The lion’s share is being used to artificially lower or reduce the real
price of fuels like oil, coal and gas or electricity generated from such
fossil fuels.

Cancelling these subsidies might reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much
as 6 per cent a year while contributing 0.1 per cent to global GDP.

***

The report acknowledges that some subsidies or mechanisms, whether in the
form of tax breaks, financial incentives or other market instruments, can
generate social, economic and environmental benefits.

A case in point are feed-in tariffs that have kick-started a renewable
energy revolution in countries such as Germany and Spain.

The report also accepts that there may be cases where some subsidies can,
if well- devised and time-limited, meet important social and environmental
goals — for example, ones to encourage a switch from dirty,
health-hazardous or environmentally harmful fuels such a charcoal.

The report also cites the case of Chile where well-devised subsidies have
increased rural electrification from around 50 per cent to over 90 per cent
of the population over 12 years.

But the report argues that many seemingly well-intentioned subsidies rarely
make economic sense and rarely address poverty. The report, therefore,
challenges the widely-held myth that scrapping fossil fuel supports would
hit the poor.

The report cites liquid petroleum gas (LPG) subsidies in India where $1.7
billion was spent in the first half of the current financial year on trying
to get the fuel into poor households. “LPG subsidies are mainly benefiting
higher-income households. … Despite the ineffectiveness of the subsidy the
programme is being extended until 2010”, says the study.

Indeed the report concludes that in many developing countries the real
beneficiaries of such subsidies are neither the poor nor the environment
but well-off households; equipment manufacturers and the producers of the
fuels.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director,
said: “In the final analysis many fossil fuel subsidies are introduced for
political reasons but are simply propping up and perpetuating
inefficiencies in the global economy—they are thus part of the market
failure that is climate change.”

“There are now less than 500 days before the crucial UN Climate Change
Convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009. Governments should urgently
review their energy subsidies and begin phasing out the harmful ones that
contribute to the wasteful use of finite resources and delay the
introduction of renewables or more efficient forms of generation while
creating disincentives and barriers to public transport up to energy saving
appliances”, he added.

***

The new UNEP report– Reforming Energy Subsidies: Opportunities to
Contribute to the Climate Change Agenda—was released today at a meeting in
Accra, Ghana of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Here Governments have gathered to continue negotiations under the Bali Road
Map towards a conclusive and far-reaching new climate deal by Copenhagen
2009.

***

CDM Takes Off in Sub-Saharan Africa:
Today UNEP also presented new findings on the penetration of the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM) in sub-Saharan Africa.

The CDM, part of the Convention’s Kyoto Protocol agreed in 1997, allows
developed nations to offset some of their greenhouse gas emissions by
funding cleaner energy projects in developing countries that generate
carbon credits known as certified emission reductions.

These can range from wind and biomass energy projects to ones that tap
methane from rubbish tips and schemes that encourage the use of less
polluting fuels or power plants.

There has been concern that the benefits of the CDM, a contrasting example
of a policy tool aimed at wider social, economic and environmental benefits
when compared with fossil fuel subsidies, have been by-passing countries in
Africa.

The main countries benefiting to date have been the rapidly developing
economies such as China, Brazil, and India.

The new figures, compiled by the UNEP Risoe Centre on Energy, Climate and
Sustainable Development in Denmark, indicate that this is changing with the
first CDM projects emerging over the past 18 months in six countries– the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique,
Mali and Senegal.

These include an oil well, gas flare reduction project in the DRC and a
river hydroelectric project in Madagascar.

In Kenya new projects include a 35MW extension of geothermal, hot rocks,
generation and a sugar cane waste-into-energy project with Mumias Sugar
Company.

Mr. Steiner added: “Whereas fossil fuel subsidies are an example of a
blunt policy instrument, perpetuating old and inefficient economic models,
the CDM is an example of a more intelligent, market-based mechanism that is
fostering the transition to a modern Green Economy.”

He said the uptake in Africa was due, in part, to the impact of the UN’s
Nairobi Framework initiative launched in 2006.

Here UNEP, along with partners including the UN Development Programme
(UNDP), have been working to build the human and regulatory capacity of
poorer countries to access carbon financing.

Other measures have included awareness-raising among banks and industry
players on the continent to new green finance opportunities.

The UNEP Risoe Centre has been monitoring global trends in CDM investment
and the impacts of these activities for some time.

“Excluding South Africa, there were only six CDM projects in five
sub-Saharan countries in 2006. Now there are 49 projects in 12 countries,
South Africa included”, says Lars Appelquist, a researcher at the Centre.

This still remains low compared to a global tally of close to 3,500 CDM
projects, but does mark a departure from the very low levels of the past.

“As new policy drivers and planned capacity development activities bear
fruit, the market will likely exhibit exponential growth like other
regions”, says Glenn Hodes, CDM Programme Manager at UNEP Risoe. Indeed,
assuming Governments agree on a deep and decisive new climate agreement in
2009, Africa overall could see roughly 230 projects by 2012, according to
Hodes’ and Appelquist’s calculations.

These could cumulatively generate over 65 million certified emission
reductions, worth close to $1 billion at a conservative carbon credit price
of $15.

“Compared to CDM prodigies like India, Africa is poised to be the late
bloomer”, says Hodes.

—————————-

Notes to Editors:

“Reforming Energy Subsidies: Opportunities to Contribute to the Climate
Change Agenda” was commissioned by UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry
and Economics. The principal author is Trevor Morgan of Menecon Consulting
and now with the International Energy Agency (IEA).

It says that Russia has the largest subsidies in dollar terms amounting to
around $40 billion a year and mainly spent on making natural gas cheaper.

Iran comes second with around $37 billion; six countries, spending in
excess of $10 billion on subsidies, come next. These are China, Saudi
Arabia, India, Indonesia, Ukraine and Egypt.

The report can be downloaded at www.unep.org

The new data and estimated take up of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
projects in Africa can also be downloaded at www.unep.org

For more information, please contact: Nick Nuttall, Spokesperson/Head of
Media, UNEP Nairobi, on Tel: +254-20-762-3084, Mobile: +254-733-632755 or
+41-79-596-5737, E-mail:  nick.nuttall at unep.org;
Or Anne-France White, Associate Information Officer, UNEP Nairobi, at Tel:
+254-20-762-3088, Mobile: +254-72-8600-494, or E-mail:
 anne-france.white at unep.org

=========

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