Foreign Drillers Rush at Uganda’s Promising Oil Reserves.

By GUY CHAZAN in London And NICHOLAS BARIYO in Kampala, Uganda
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424…

A skirmish over an oil field on the shores of Africa’s Lake Albert highlights Big Oil’s intense interest in Uganda—a rising star of African energy. Tullow Oil is competing with Eni, Total and Cnooc to secure an oilfield stake owned by partner Heritage.

The battle centers on the Ugandan assets of Heritage Oil PLC, a small U.K.-based explorer, which is selling its stakes in the much-coveted Lake Albert Rift Basin. The area has yielded some of sub-Saharan Africa’s largest onshore oil discoveries of recent years.

Big energy companies like Italy’s Eni SpA, France’s Total SA and China National Offshore Oil Co. all are vying for access to Uganda’s oil wealth. Uganda’s onshore oil is particularly appealing because it is relatively inexpensive to produce. That sets it apart from other frontier provinces, like the deep waters off Brazil’s coast and the Arctic Ocean, where the majors require an oil price of around $60 a barrel just to break even.

Initially, Eni looked to be the likely winner, announcing in November that it was buying Heritage’s stakes for $1.5 billion in cash and assets. But Tullow Oil PLC, Heritage’s partner in the oil field, exercised its contractual right to block the sale and acquire the stakes itself at the same price. Tullow’s purchase, however, is subject to approval by the Ugandan government. The initial reaction was negative, with the country’s energy minister saying the government didn’t want one company to end up with control of the whole oil field and would prevent the sale if necessary. Heritage and Tullow share ownership of two blocks in the oil field, while Tullow owns all of a third. Acquiring Heritage’s stakes would give Tullow full ownership of all three blocks, covering 10,000 square kilometers—about one-third the size of Belgium.

The government’s position appeared to soften after Tullow Chief Executive Aidan Heavey met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala recently. Tullow said that once in full possession of the oil field it would sell half to either Cnooc or Total to help finance the construction of a refinery and a 1,300-kilometer pipeline that would carry Uganda’s oil to world markets.

Such an arrangement would allow Tullow to control who it works with as well as concentrate on its core activities—exploring for and pumping oil, rather than refining and transporting it to market.

Tullow also announced plans last Wednesday to raise around $1.6 billion in a rights issue to help it develop Uganda’s oil.

Tullow now is the favorite to take the Heritage stakes, with Cnooc edging out Total as Tullow’s most-likely partner, a person familiar with the matter said. Mr. Museveni met with Cnooc executives in Kampala last week and is expected to meet them again this week to finalize details, the person said. Cnooc and Total declined to comment.

Eni hasn’t given up, however, and last week sweetened its package. The company’s CEO, Paolo Scaroni, said in a newspaper interview that Eni would not only develop the Lake Albert field and build a refinery and pipeline to the Indian Ocean, but also would construct an electricity plant in Uganda and upgrade a railway line from Kampala to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. He said Eni would invest $13 billion in the “integrated development plan.” Eni declined to comment for this article.

Tullow declined to comment on Eni’s new offer.

What has attracted companies like Eni to Uganda is the one billion barrels of crude already discovered in the Lake Albert Rift Basin, a vast, oil-rich area close to Uganda’s border with Congo to the west, and the huge untapped potential of the region. Tullow estimates that about 1.5 billion barrels, roughly the same amount as Yemen’s oil reserves, remain to be discovered in the basin.

Uganda also is seen as more stable politically than many of its neighbors, though the north of the country is wracked by armed conflict between the army and a rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Some of the most promising prospects are in Lake Albert itself, however, and will require offshore drilling using floating platforms. Industry experts have said there could be large amounts of oil on the Congo side of the lake, which remains largely unexplored.

Uganda plans to produce around 150,000 barrels of oil a day in four to six years, most of which will be exported. For comparison, that is slightly less than the output of Brunei. The steady revenue stream from oil could radically change the fortunes of the east African country, one of the world’s poorest.

“It doesn’t move the needle in terms of global oil supply, but it’s one of the few countries that will see growth in the coming years in a world of shrinking opportunity,” said Bob McKnight, an oil expert at consulting firm PFC Energy.

Tullow and Heritage have had an almost unbroken run of successes since they started drilling for oil in the Lake Albert area five years ago, with most of their wells encountering crude. Tullow’s share price nearly doubled last year on the back of the discoveries.

Write to Guy Chazan at  guy.chazan at wsj.com and Nicholas Bariyoat  nicholas.bariyo at dowjones.com

from: Sandor Szabo

The Renewable Energy Unit of the Joint Research Centre-European Commission based in Ispra (Italy) has open a position to develop and integrate an optimization tool for rural electrification planning in Africa.

The multitask project simultaneously aims to support Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy in Africa.

The main results are expected to be communicated on the project web site managed by JRC and also to be published as peer-reviewed scientific articles.

http://ie.jrc.ec.europa.eu/job s/docs/Cat30/IE-REU-2010%2801% 29-30.1_Publication.pdf

For further details contact:
Sandor Szabo    sandor.szabo at ec.europa.eu
Please, note that the call is OPEN until the 31st January 2010 at 12:00 a.m. Amsterdam time.

Indonesia deports journalists covering Greenpeace.
 http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/breakin…

Nov. 19 2009 – AP
Indonesia has deported two foreign journalists covering a Greenpeace demonstration against forest destruction on the western island of Sumatra  bringing to 15 the number of people kicked out of the country over the protest.

Kumkum Dasgupta, an editor for the Hindustan Times, and Raimondo Bultrini, an Italian reporter from the L’Espresso weekly newspaper, were questioned for hours after visiting a Greenpeace camp near land owned by PT Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, one of Indonesia’s largest paper companies.
The two journalists had received their visas from the central government, but had not sought permission from local officials to travel in the area, said Jumintar Lubis, the head of immigration in Riau Province.

Greenpeace had sought to draw attention to destruction of forests ahead of a key U.N. climate conference in Denmark. Indonesia’s once abundant jungle is being torn down at an alarming rate, threatening endangered tigers, elephants and orangutans.

Thirteen foreign Greenpeace activists have been deported this week over the protest, including 11 over the weekend, the environmental group said. Indonesian police also detained 44 Indonesian activists and charged 21 with allegedly trespassing on private property.

Restricting the media’s movements is out of step with Indonesia’s improved press freedom since late dictator Suharto was swept from power more than a decade ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement.

Italy denounced the expulsion of Bultrini and an Italian Greenpeace activist at the Indonesian Embassy in Rome. The Foreign Ministry requested that their rights be guaranteed by Indonesian authorities.

-Associated Press

————————————

Environmental Media Alliance Worldwide is the Global ej-Forum on
World Environmental Journalists an reaching 4418 EJ professionals
over 174 countries.This EGroup was founded 6th February,2000
and is managed by Dharman Wickremaratne
Secretary /CEO, Asia Pacific forum of Environmental Journalists(APFEJ)
Sri Lanka Environmental Journalists Forum(SLEJF)
PO Box 26, 434/3 Sri Jayawardenapura -SRI LANKA.
 http://www.environmentaljournalists.org

Email<ejournalists@gmail.com>

nbsp;EUobserver.com – 19.09.2009 ******************************
************

THE FUTURE OF THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY IN THE EU.
The Good Word Seems To Be – Transformation Through Crisis – The start of the thinking process.

WHEN: 8th October 2009 from 9:00 -13:00h
WHERE: Committee of the Regions, Brussels? ‘Open Days’ – Rue Belliard 101,
1040 Brussels
WHO: European and American automotive industries, climate change experts,
transport specialists, regional
authorities, city planners, trade unions, consumers, lawmakers and media

Registration is FREE and is required due to limited number of seats.

Please register on: http://conferences.euobserver.com/auto/i…
(the workshop No is: 08A02)

———- Forwarded message ———-

The following are the top 28 finalists in the Official 2009 New 7 Wonders of Nature competition – nominated from among hundreds of sites around the world that have been proposed.

Pope’s dream of heaven on Earth.

By KEVIN RAFFERTY
Special to The Japan Times

HONG KONG, Sunday, July 26, 2009 — Of all the criticisms and critiques of the state of the world since the financial crisis that triggered global recession, the most devastating and yet the most profound and constructive came this month from such an unusual and unlikely source that many media ignored them. Yet the comments deserve a global audience.

The critique denounces the “grave deviations and failures” of capitalism and blames the mentality of making profits at all costs for the global meltdown.

Here are some sample quotes:

• “To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is an urgent need of a true world political authority.”

The author is His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical letter “Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth),” addressed to the bishops and faithful of the Roman Catholic Church and to “all people of good will.”

You have only to read the last quotation above to understand how ambitious and sweeping the pope’s analysis is — as well as how dense and difficult is his prose. Yet it is worth the effort because he presents a new worldview in this age of galloping globalization.

He acknowledges the swirling global changes and tries to offer a holistic solution to the world’s woes that places human beings, not money or power or raw economic efficiency, at its center. The pope essentially finds that existing institutions, including individual national governments, have not kept pace with the scale, force and speed of change.

He sums up the tremendous benefits and the damaging side effects of globalization: “The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase,” he writes. “Corruption and illegality are unfortunately evident in the conduct of the economic and political class in rich countries as well as in poor ones.”

At the heart of the pope’s world is the individual human being, who, he declares must be given the opportunity of living with dignity and access to food, water and employment. “I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded is the human person in his or her integrity: Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life.”

Pope Benedict has little faith in markets and still less in financiers to solve the problems of inequality and oppression, and points to the evils of “badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing, large-scale migration of people and unregulated exploitation of Earth’s resources.”

Since so many changes are occurring beyond the reach of national governments, the pope calls for reform of the United Nations and creation of a “true world political authority” that would have the duty to “manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result.”

The pope delayed publication of his encyclical until the eve of the summit of the Group of Eight rich nations in nearby L’Aquila. Whether this was a masterstroke of political imagination or because the Vatican had problems turning expressions such as “tax haven” and “market value” into Latin of the principal text is not clear.

Too bad that the release was overshadowed by the memorial for Michael Jackson, driving the pope into exile on CNN, to second place on the BBC television business news after an item that Tokyo is again the most expensive place for expatriates to live, and to the inside pages of newspapers. The news choices are themselves a sad commentary on the values of the media.

Who will read the encyclical, and who cares? These are legitimate questions. Reading the 144 pages of the encyclical, I frequently found myself lost in dense prose. A Catholic blogger in the U.S. said the encyclical would be greeted “with a holy yawn from the pew.” If Catholics won’t care, what is the chance that 6 billion non-Catholics will read it?

May I suggest that it would be worthwhile to produce a plain English version of the encyclical’s contents, with the turgid German thought processes cut out and references to previous papal encyclicals placed as footnotes.

The next step would be to persuade Benedict XVI to apply his considerable intellect to answering the glaring questions that remain in his thesis — what kind of world government, and what teeth should it have?

Time after time, I wanted to applaud the pope for his vision, his moral sense of human beings in a world created by a loving God, and his common sense about stewardship of Earth and a need to curb cruel power whether wielded by greedy financiers or politicians. But the real world is not as simple as he paints it.

Economically, just how do you curb the power of transnational corporations or stop them from cutting pay, laying off workers, sending jobs abroad, striking mineral or forest deals with corrupt dictators in developing countries? Their actions may make no sense in terms of the well-being of the whole world, but they may be eminently sensible to ensure corporate profits and satisfy shareholders.

What does the pope say to the public snubbing this month of the U.N. secretary general by Myanmar’s junta, which epitomizes the model of Third World military dictatorship suppressing its own people and greedily making money from big corporations stripping the country’s resources? The pope deserves praise for his vision of heaven on Earth, but he does not say how to banish sin.

Kevin Rafferty was editor of The Universe, then the world’s biggest English Catholic newspaper.

Some hardy souls did not throw up their hands yet. They do not want to see climate change going to the “balloon builders.” With the backing of Dr. James Hansen the members of the Climate Crisis Coalition say that Cap & Trade will only create a trillion dollar market in carbon futures and derivatives – a speculator’s playground on Wall Street that has economic disaster written all over it. Do we never learn from the series of balloons and bubbles that we have allowed so far?

****

Just Out: CCC’s ‘A Conversation with James Hansen’. Produced by CCC, 28 min video, July, 2009. Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is considered by many to be the foremost climatologist in the world. From his New York City office, he spoke with Climate Crisis Coalition Coordinator Tom Stokes, on May 10, 2008, about the science of climate change, the urgency of enacting effective climate legislation and why he is speaking out about it not as a NASA spokesperson but as an individual. Dr. Hansen believes that we should enact a carbon tax with the revenue recycled back to the people, rather than a cap-and-trade system.

Climate Crisis Coalition
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Click the highlighted headlines for links to these stories.

CCC to Co-Host U.S. Senate Briefing. CCC, July 8, 2009. “Effective Climate Policy with Direct Carbon Pricing,” Monday, July 13, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m., Capitol Visitors Center, Room SVC 208-209. The briefing is on enacting meaningful climate legislation in the wake of the narrow plurality for the Waxman-Markey bill in the House and its uncertain prospects in the Senate. It will address the science, economics and politics of getting from the compromised House bill to a simpler architecture with brighter prospects for enactment that can gather broad support and be effective as part of an international carbon pricing system for preventing catastrophic climate change. Speakers: James Hansen, PhD: Director, Goddard Institute of Space Studies, National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Robert Shapiro, PhD: Former U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs; Janet Milne, JD:Professor of Law, Vermont Law School; author of The Reality of Carbon Taxes in the 21st Century. Cecil Corbin-Mark:Policy Director, We Act, New York City; Chair, Environmental Justice Leadership Forum on Climate Change. Brent Blackwelder, PhD: President, Friends of the Earth. Moderator. Online registration: PriceCarbon.org.

The Need to Move on to Plan B – The Carbon Tax – Will Become Increasingly Apparent. Letter to the Editor by Mark Valk, NYTimes, July 3, 2009. “While it’s encouraging to see Congress taking steps to reduce global warming, the approach championed at the moment — cap and trade — is fraught with perils and ineffectiveness. The biggest drawback is the creation of a trillion-dollar market in carbon futures and derivatives, a speculator’s playground that has economic disaster written all over it… The bill that was passed in the House appears dead on arrival. A simpler, more effective and politically viable option is a tax on carbon, with revenues returned to Americans through income and payroll taxes to offset higher energy costs. Such proposals have already been introduced by both Republicans and Democrats in the House, making it a solution both parties appear willing to support. Come late fall, when the Waxman-Markey bill has languished in the Senate, lawmakers will see the need to move on to Plan B — the carbon tax.” Mark Valk is the communications director for Citizens Climate Lobby, a co-host with CCC and the Carbon Tax Center of the Senate briefing (above).

 The UN came into existance in 1945 as a post-World War II organization, as a club of the victors in the war, to guide the world under the supervision of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council: the US, Britain, France, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China.The war-axis states of Germany, Italy and Japan were not members of the UN

It became slowly evident that the above five were not the world economic leaders and in 1975, thirty years later, in Paris, a new club was formed – the G6 that had in it the US, Britain, France the free economy states that won WWII, and the newly successfully reconstructed former losers of the WWII Germany, Italy and Japan. Those were the six largest free market economies and the main democracies that could have been viewed together as the motor of the world economy.

Canada was added to above group two years later – so it was G7 – then for various political reasons – and seemingly as an encouragement for its internal change – in 1997 President Clinton got Russia admitted to what became then known as the G8. Above structure had a small corrrection nevertheless when the other states of the European Union wanted also some sort of recognition, and the representative of the EU was also given a chair next to the above G8.

Another thirty years later that group – the US, Europeans, Japan, and Russia has shown its irrelevance when much of the economy is now decided in a completely new world of Beijing, Delhi, and Brasilia that includes the two billion plus fast growing markets of Asia and another economic potential giant that is becoming the leader of South America.

 So what is happening now is that for particular purposes new groupings are being created for the purpose of attacking ongoing important issues.

The UN itself, with its 192 mix of members is hardly an organization for efficiency. In effect already while still relatively a much smaller body, back in 1945, its General Assembly was planned as a pure debating club. The best use for the UN is to allow its Secretary General to sit also in the smaller room of the more powerful, and let him present the wish list of the dispossessed.

President G.W. Bush, not really with problem solving best intentions, allowed the establishing of a G-20 that covers many more diverse participants – from Argentina to Turkey – and hoped that this smaller debate club will make it clear to the world the extent of what can be agreed upon and what not. This group met November 2008 and created its own cycle of meetings that had in 2009 a Summit in London and has planned another Summit in Pittsburgh for this September. The L’Aquila G8 Summit is thus, time-wise, halfway in between those two meetings, but on a different cycle of meetings.

President Berlusconi wanted to show that he can save the G8 and had sessions to which he invited besides the G8 leaders also the leaders of China, India and Brazil – the first redress of the problem that could have created a G11. If the EU could show that it is capable of getting its act together and have just one seat at the table for a new ideal global economic leadership – the US, the EU, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Russia, Canada – this could have been the most practical reformulated G8, but this sort of solution is still light years ahead of us.

As above G11 looked politically incorrect with no African or Arab on board – Mr. Berlusconi invited to his group also South Africa and Egypt – and this new G13 was host to some of the L’Aquila meetings.

But even the G13 did not seem good enough to many other UN member states, so they knocked on the door and about 40 of them had their head-of-state admitted to L’Aquila to sit in at some of the meetings. Obviously, also the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was there and the Swedish UN Presidency for July-December 2009 was there.

Talking about climate change, President Obama has his own idea of a G16 + EU group. That was the group that witnessed the lack of practical results on the Climate issue. Yes, there is some talk of aspirational goal of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as limit to global warming with some behavioral intent figures as targets for 2050. But with no agreed upon shorter term targets for 202o and nearer, these are just fairy tails – and every level-headed person understands that. What is mistakenly called a G17 and is only a G16+EU, is the Washington created MAJOR ECONOMIES FORUM or MEF – which is the G11+EU+Mexico, South Africa + Australia, Indonesia, Korea. (Are these 16/17 the maximum one could work with?)

A serious problem is – the Europeans understand that the US House of Representatives figure of just 4% CO2 emissions reductions by 2020, based on 1990 figures – but dressed up in Congress language to make it look as 17% – it really does not compare to the EU figure of 20% for 2020 that they even offered to increase to 30% if the rest of the world is ready to go for the 20%.

Even the good meaning Barack Obama does not measure up to the Europeans, even when one looks at the criticism the Europeans get from their own NGOs.

UN’s Ban Ki-moon talks of “missed unique opportunity” at L’Aquila, but he must have been sleep-walking if he ever thought that there will be a result at L’Aquila. This website keeps pointing at the UN as a source of unreal sunshine – it is unreal because it does not exist. Instead of saying what has to be done and speaking truth to power, all we hear are hopes and missed opportunities. Now we hear about next target time – the September Pittsburgh meeting of the G20.

Further, China is busy now with its internal Xinjiang Province internal fights, but on climate change there is no substitute to a direct G2 agreement China-US. What we are saying is that with all the waste of time in the UN sponsored cycle of climate debates – the reality is that if there is no G2 material on the Copenhagen December 2009 table, there will simply be no climate change global agreement. Those that think that above G2 agreement will be just the lowest common denominator have not looked outside their window at what real life looks like.

The most important statement for the L’Aquila meeting was by Celso Amorim the Foteign Minister of Brazil: “THE G8 IS OVER AS A POLITICAL DECISION GROUP.” “IT SIMPLY REPRESENTS NOTHING AT ALL – YOU CAN’T IGNORE EMERGING COUNTRIES SUCH AS BRAZIL, CHINA, INDIA.” He said this a month earlier at a meeting in Paris.

_______————-_________

THE UPDATE

We learned from the Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Weisman that not only “G-8 DELAYS MAKING BIG DECISIONS” but actually that in light of the fiasco with this meeting, President Obama said: “THE ONE THING I WILL BE LOOKING FORWARD TO IS FEWER SUMMIT MEETINGS.” One can easily see that what he meant is meetings with people bound in organizations that have lost their relevance with the times so they cannot come up with decisions for our days and for the future.

The interesting thing is that President Obama clearly thinks that without China, India and Brazil, the G8 has simply lost any power to decide on issues like Climate Change and World Trade and economics. On the other hand he also said that the UN is not the place for series negotiations and we feel that the UN suggested formula is the G16 + the EU.

Mr. Obama also said, as we saw on TV, that the exact number of the new kind of “G” to be involved in joint decision making is a very difficult figure because everybody agrees that the figure must be small “but we must be part of it so they say” – when it was decided that the figure be 20, the country that comes 21 demanded to be included so it becomes G21. We know exactly about what country of the EU he was talking – and we also know what other EU country will then want to be #22. This clearly borders with the ridiculous – and it does not reach yet out to demands from the poorer and more suffering countries that also want to be heard!

* * *

From AQUILA, Italy July 11, 2009 — The Group of Eight leading industrial democracies pushed many priorities of their summit here off to larger groups of countries, placing the next moves in trade negotiations, climate-change talks and containing Iran’s nuclear program in front of the so-called G-20 and the United Nations in September.

In his parting news conference here, President Barack Obama took a swipe at both the G-8 and the United Nations as antiquated, as other leaders also talked of formalizing a new grouping that would add a half-dozen of the biggest developing nations to the current G-8.

“There’s no sense those institutions can adequately capture the enormous changes that have taken place during those intervening decades” since their founding, Mr. Obama said. “The one thing I will be looking forward to is fewer summit meetings.”

Climate-Change Pact Falls Short
G-8 Opens to Emerging Economies
G-8 Voices Concern Over Iran Actions
Leaders Note Economic Risks Remain

$10 new Billion for a total of $20 Billion have been collected forAfrica Agriculture – aid and development with the proding from President obama and new pledges from Canada and the EU.

Senior White House officials said the president has more clearly defined expectations for the September meetings.

The nations gathered in L’Aquila did achieve one parting success, a $20 billion pledge over three years to overhaul food and agricultural assistance to the poorest countries. Only about half that pledge is new money, according to the White House, but it roughly doubles nonemergency agricultural assistance.

On Thursday, it had seemed that the total would be only $12 billion, below the level intended just days before. Instead, last-minute pledges came from Canada and the European Union, among other countries. Mr. Obama, in a Friday morning session, made an emotional, personal appeal, saying richer nations had an obligation to act. But he also said recipient nations had to acknowledge that they were complicit in their poverty, through corruption, a lack of transparency and other barriers to growth.

On Iran, Mr. Obama edged closer to an ultimatum, saying there would be consequences if Tehran continues to pursue nuclear weapons and shuns negotiations by the time the G-20 meets. “We’re not going to just wait indefinitely …. and wake up one day and find ourselves in a much worse situation and unable to act,” he said.

On trade, nations agreed to a series of bilateral meetings at which developing countries will outline for which products and services they intend to maintain protective tariffs and other barriers, and which they will allow to compete globally. The idea, according to a U.S. official, is to achieve clarity to speed up global trade talks that the 17-nation Major Economies Forum pledged to complete by 2010.

The forum also pledged to deliver plans to the G-20 meeting to finance clean technology and reforestation programs to combat climate change, and to help poor countries adapt to an already warming world.

That demand was a surprise move sprung by Mr. Obama behind closed doors Thursday, to come up with something concrete after developing countries unexpectedly balked at accepting firm targets for emissions reductions.

Progress on all of the issues will depend in large part on Mr. Obama’s sway both with the U.S. Congress and balky partners such as Russia. Congress on Thursday cut his aid request to help developing countries respond to climate change.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also struck a discordant tone after a week of wooing by Mr. Obama. He suggested no progress on Washington’s arms control agenda is possible until Mr. Obama scraps the East European missile-defense site. “If there is no positive decision on this particular issue, than all others will also fail,” he said.

Write to Jonathan Weisman at  jonathan.weisman at wsj.com

————————–

Further from the press:
 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/opinio…

 NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL
A Lesson on Warming.

July 10, 2009
President Obama had hoped to emerge from this week’s Group of 8 summit meeting in Italy with a tentative agreement uniting rich and developing nations in a common fight against global warming. Instead he got a lesson on how divided the world remains on the issue — and how hard he will have to work to pull off an agreement.

Mr. Obama was clearly eager to restore America’s leadership role. He convened a special side meeting of 17 nations — the G-8 plus China, India and seven other developing nations — that together emit 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.

Before the leaders gathered, their negotiators had already settled on a draft communiqué, committing to a 50 percent cut in worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The industrial countries would cut theirs by 80 percent, and the developing countries would make “significant” if unquantified cuts. But on Wednesday, things fell apart. The developing nations flatly refused to commit to the 50 percent goal by 2050.

It was not immediately clear why they balked. Some repeated an old demand: that the United States and the other industrialized nations — which bear responsibility for the buildup of greenhouse gases since the beginning of the industrial revolution — should do more and do it faster. Otherwise, the developing nations would be left with an unfair share of the burden while their economies were expanding rapidly.

What is clear is that Mr. Obama and the other leaders of the developed world have yet to come up with the right mixture of pressure and incentives to get the developing countries to commit.

The 17 nations did agree to an “aspirational” goal of preventing global temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But with global climate talks in Copenhagen only five months away, aspirational goals won’t carry things very far.

If there is any chance of pulling this off, the developed countries are going to have to take away all excuses from China, India and other developing nations. The Europeans have already committed to deep cuts in their emissions. The United States is doing a lot better under Mr. Obama, but it is still lagging.

The House’s climate change bill requires emissions reductions of only 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. (The Europeans have pledged themselves to a 20 percent reduction from a much earlier base line, which will require much more aggressive cuts.)

We know that getting the Senate to do as well as the House won’t be easy. But Mr. Obama will have to press them to do even better.

Mr. Obama should also continue to talk to the Chinese, who are now the world’s leading emitters of greenhouse gases. A host of top administration officials, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton included, have made the pilgrimage to Beijing.

The Europeans are concerned that Mr. Obama and the Chinese will cut a less ambitious side deal and undercut a worldwide agreement. There is no evidence to support those suspicions. Mr. Obama, like the Europeans, says he wants a strong deal to bring down emissions. Without China’s participation, the fight against global warming is essentially lost.

—-
 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/world/…

 NEWS ANALYSIS
Group of 8 Is Not Enough, Say Those Wanting In.

By PETER BAKER and RACHEL DONADIO
Published: July 9, 2009
L’AQUILA, Italy — The idea at first was simple power politics. Economic troubles prompted the most powerful democracies to convene a summit meeting to determine the course of the world, or at least as much of it as they could.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, left, greeted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India at the summit meeting.
It worked well enough that they did it again the next year. And the next. More countries joined, and more began banging on the door. Eventually, the so-called Group of 8 started what might be considered auxiliary clubs. And that was how they ended up with a meeting on Thursday that was actually dubbed the G-8 + 5 + 1 + 5. Seriously.

The group’s 35th gathering is such a sprawling event that the leaders of about 40 countries traveled here for it. No longer can just eight powers drive every decision. President Obama headed one meeting with 17 leaders for what he called a Major Economies Forum because there would be no point grappling with climate change without, say, China and India.

So whither the Group of 8 in a Group of 20 world? What relevance does the Group of 8 have when it seemingly cannot take landmark action without enlisting others? Does it make sense for thousands of officials, diplomats, lobbyists, public relations people and journalists to descend on a single overwhelmed town each year when maybe a simple videoconference call might do? Or if it is still meaningful, then does it have the right membership in a changing world?

“Look at the amount of effort, of carbon, of cost that went into this,” said Kumi Naidoo of South Africa, co-chairman of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, an advocacy organization, looking at the large tents set up for the news media, complete with air-conditioning, wireless Internet and land lines.

“The G-8 is an elite cocktail, a self-appointed group,” he added. “I think it’s an anachronism, and consistently undermining the work of other multilateral initiatives.”

These are questions that come up every year, but more so lately as economic and political power shifts. The Group of 20, which includes the eight and an array of nations from Argentina to Indonesia to Turkey, has emerged in recent months as a potent forum addressing the global recession.

President George W. Bush summoned the Group of 20 leaders to Washington in November to figure out how to revive the world economy. Mr. Obama joined the group when it met in London in April and invited it to meet again in September in Pittsburgh.

As a first-time Group of 8 participant, Mr. Obama seems to have a skeptical eye, uncertain about its suitability as a vehicle for solving the world’s problems. This year’s meeting produced statements on the economy, Iran, the Middle East and other topics but made few breakthroughs, and Mr. Obama’s aides cast it as a mere way station between Group of 20 meetings.

“We view this meeting and this discussion as a midpoint between the London G-20 summit and the Pittsburgh G-20 summit,” said Mike Froman, the president’s chief negotiator, or “sherpa.”

Indeed, Mr. Obama concluded that it was pointless to talk about climate change among just the eight powers, so he invited nine others Thursday. Developing countries like China and India agreed to make “meaningful” reductions in greenhouse gases but refused to accept the specific targets for 2050 sought by the United States and Europe.

Mr. Obama cast that as victory enough, until discussions resume at the Group of 20. “We’ve made a good start,” he said, “but I am the first one to acknowledge that progress on this issue will not be easy.”

The developing countries of the Group of 20 say the days of the smaller club are numbered. “The G-8 is over as a political decision group,” Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister, said last month at a conference in Paris. It “represents nothing at all,” he said, adding that “you simply can’t ignore emerging countries such as Brazil, China or India.”

Still, talk of restructuring or scrapping the Group of 8 invariably runs into resistance from current members. At a news conference on opening night, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the host, said the summit meeting was “ideal for building confidence and cordiality, for creating friendships and deepening friendships.” He added, “We call each other by our first names and not our last names” and gather “at the same informal table.”

There is no doubt Italy pulled off a tour de force of last-minute organization, spending $75 million to transform a police training complex in an earthquake zone into an Olympic-style village, complete with high-quality espresso bars and wicker lawn sets. Cooks are preparing 25,000 meals over three days, and 3,700 journalists registered to attend.

It is a far cry from the original meeting outside Paris in 1975, when leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan inaugurated the Group of 6. Canada joined two years later, and it became the Group of 7, an organization without organization — no headquarters, no bylaws, no staff, just a rotating leadership to hold the annual meeting.

President Bill Clinton got Russia admitted in 1997, and others started attending as observers. By this year, there was a regular meeting with China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, now dubbed the Group of 5.

Mr. Berlusconi also invited Egypt, so the secondary meeting became known as the G-8 + 5 + 1. Then there was a working lunch with international organizations called the G-8 + 5 + 1 + 5. Given that China’s president, Hu Jintao, abruptly left to deal with rioting at home, perhaps it should have been called the G-8 + 5 + 1 + 5 — 1.

Then there is breakfast on Friday with African leaders. All told, roughly 40 countries representing 90 percent of the world economy sent leaders to L’Aquila. But that has risks of its own; a president never knows whom he might run into. Mr. Obama found himself shaking hands on Thursday with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya.

Robert C. Fauver, who was Mr. Clinton’s sherpa, agreed that the Group of 8 could be redefined, but noted that has complications too. “If you’re trying to negotiate an exchange rate deal with 20 countries or a bailout of Mexico, as in the early Clinton days, with 20 countries that’s not easy,” he said. “If you get above 10, it just makes it too darn hard to get things done.”

Attending his 21st summit meeting, John Kirton, director of the Group of 8 Research Group at the University of Toronto, said the group would evolve with additional formats involving more countries. But he said the core eight still represented unrivaled political and economic power and had the duty to weigh in on issues of democracy that others could not.

“There’s a lot that the eight can do that the others can’t,” he said. “You’ll always need the G-8.”

———–

The Wall Street Journal has a negative approach to the G8 and to everything that may impact on the US free style.
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12471830…

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12471889…

————

Climate change deal eludes big polluting nations – Climate change talks grind to halt.
By Guy Dinmore in L’Aquila and Fiona Harvey in London

The Financial Times, July 10 2009 03:00

Leaders of the world’s 16 biggest polluting countries last night failed to agree on targets and funding to cut greenhouse gases, setting the stage for recriminations between rich and poor nations.

A sombre Barack Obama, US president, who chaired the meeting of the Major Economies Forum in Italy, said he acknowledged that progress would not be easy and that it would be “no small task” to bridge the differences.

The MEF countries, which produce 80 per cent of global emissions, agreed that the world should not heat up more than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. But India and China resisted a push from the G8 developed nations to set a target of reducing emissions by an overall average of 50 per cent by 2050.

Leaders must “fight the temptation towards cynicism”, Mr Obama said, calling climate change the defining challenge of his generation and acknowledging that the US had a much higher per capita carbon footprint.

“No one nation is responsible. No one nation can address it alone,” he said, noting that he had to “wrestle” politically with the issue in the US and that a global recession made it harder for all countries to get on board.

However, Ed Miliband, UK secretary of state for energy and climate, told the Financial Times that a pledge by developed nations to limit global warming to less than 2 °C “significantly increases the chances of success at Copenhagen”.

NGOs and environmental activists were dismayed at the outcome, calling it a missed opportunity that risked undermining the UN conference in Copenhagen in December, which must set a climate change programme to replace the Kyoto framework expiring in 2012.

“The blame lies squarely with the G8,” said Anantha Guruswamy of Greenpeace. “The blame game will start. The EU and others are blaming India and China and then there will be a harsh pushback.”

While the G8 club of rich nations agreed on Wednesday in what Mr Obama described as a “historic consensus” to cut their emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, they failed to set near-term goals. They also refused to commit themselves to the huge funding required – estimated by experts at some $150bn (€107bn, £92bn) a year – to help developing countries adapt to climate change and cut their own emissions. Mr Obama only said that the MEF had agreed to a “substantial increase” in contributions to poor countries.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, who will chair the Copenhagen meting, was quoted as saying the G8 summit had “missed a unique opportunity”.

China in particular wanted assurances from the G8 that intellectual property rights would be relaxed so it could benefit from new technologies to take a lead in clean energy markets.

Joanne Green, head of policy for the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, said the 2 °C limit agreed by MEF was “forward movement but it is woefully inadequate compared to what is needed”.

Climatico, a network of climate change experts, said that, to limit temperature rises to 2 °C, emissions needed to peak in the next 10-15 years. It said the US Senate was the best hope for breaking the impasse by giving Mr Obama a strong cap-and-trade bill.

Thursday, 9 July 2009, IPS Newsbriefs
India Waiting to Hear Clinton on AfPak, China
Analysis by Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jul 8 (IPS) – It is hard to say whether U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will find herself being quizzed more on Washington’s ‘AfPak’ strategy to contain global terror or her appeasement of a financially muscular China, when she lands in India mid-July.

Already much is being read into the fact that Clinton’s visit comes a full five months after she landed in Beijing where, to the consternation of international rights groups, she refused to allow human rights to “interfere” with talks on more pressing issues such as the financial crisis, climate change and security.

Abandoning the George W. Bush policy of ‘containing’ China through building up strategic ties with India (as well as with Japan and Australia), Clinton has described U.S.-China relations as “the most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century.”

But when she gets to India, Clinton will be expected to spell out the future of the landmark Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement which was seen in China as part of the ‘containment’ strategy. Beijing had therefore opposed the special waiver sought by the U.S. from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to enable India to resume nuclear commerce. Clinton will also be asked to explain the AfPak policy of jointly dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan to contain terrorism with the focus on providing Pakistan more economic and military aid – though there have been complaints that it was being funnelled into militancy in Indian-ruled Kashmir.

“At a time of deep economic crisis and when the spectre of terrorism looms large over the world, India can only be supportive of the U.S. initiatives in engaging China and Pakistan,” says Prof. Sujit Dutta, an expert on India-China relations and currently attached to the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution in New Delhi. “On the other hand,” Dutta told IPS, “engaging with China must not lead to a reversal to the time during the late 1990s when the U.S. was beginning to look favourably at parcelling out hegemony over Asia to Beijing.”

Dutta pointed to the dramatic revelation by the U.S. Pacific Command chief Admiral Timothy J. Keating during his visit to India on May 14 that a top-ranking Chinese naval official had sounded him out on a proposal to split control over the world’s seas between the navies of the two countries.

Keating was reportedly told {by the Chinese}: “You (the U.S.) take Hawaii East and we, (China) will take Hawaii West and the Indian Ocean. Then you need not come to the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean and we will not need to go to the Eastern Pacific.”

———

If there is essence to the above, and looking at what went on in Sri Lanka as a barometer of China’s interest in getting some further warm ports, then when added to the arming of Pakistan, the Indians might have lots of questions to the US.  

THURSDAY, JULY 09, 2009 from the IPS

G8 Summit: The Five Throw a Challenge
Sanjay Suri

L’AQUILA, Italy, Jul 8 (IPS) – “The world needs a new global governance,” the G5 declared Wednesday, “the construction of which must be based on inclusive multilateralism.” As rhetoric goes, this might sound like more of the same. But the time and place of that declaration gave the words a new significance.

The current G8 summit in Italy was billed as an occasion where developed and developing countries would come together to seek common solutions to such global problems as the economic crisis, climate change and food security. And some commonality is certain to emerge.

But on a string of vital issues the major five developing countries – China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa – took a common position that approached confrontation with the G8 on several counts; certainly they outlined their own paths. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva demanded that the G8 take note. “We cannot go on being split into 300 working groups,” he said on the first day of the three-day summit Wednesday.

The G8, he said, must consider first the joint declaration produced by the G5, so that a consensus may emerge. And in consensus-building with the G8, “developing countries must not be treated as second-class citizens.” They need to be up on the “top floor” with the G8, “for the collective welfare of humanity,” said Lula.

All of which might have been just nice words if the G5 had not also taken collective steps in line with this position. This they did most effectively over climate change, that most controversial of international issues this year, strongly taken up by the G8 in a year that is meant to end with a consensus in Copenhagen in December.

A Major Economies Forum is due to come up with a declaration Thursday on climate change. That declaration by a group of countries that includes the G8 and the G5 stops short of specific numerical targets. And the developing countries effectively blocked any move to sign them on to binding targets – while pledging to cut emissions on their own.

So while agreement will be reached in general terms, there will be no individual or group targets for either developing or industrialised countries, according to a senior official close to the negotiations.

The G5 campaigned collectively to ensure that the principles they support are respected – prime among them the recognition that the developed nations are the prime polluters, and therefore carry primary responsibility to cut emissions such as carbon dioxide that are believed to cause global warming, and consequently, damaging climate change.

Through the climate change negotiations, an effective grouping among the developing nations is already fact. A strong message went out following their summit on Wednesday that they can stand together and bargain hard with the G8.

Extraordinary, too, was the very range of issues on which they took a firm stand in relation to the perceived interests of the G8 countries (the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia).

The G5 called on the G8 to act in line with their speeches at the G20 meeting of major industrialised and emerging nations in London in April. The leaders then had agreed to financial stimulus to boost investment and economic activity in developing countries. Nothing of the sort happened since. As a first step out of the economic crisis, the G5 said Wednesday, “we call for the full implementation of the G20 London summit declaration without delay.”

The G5 declared they would work together to reform the world’s financial system and to replace it with one that is “fair, just, inclusive and well-managed.” They declared they would work together to “fundamentally resolve the issue of under-representation and the inadequate voice of developing countries in international financial institutions, which is urgently needed.”

They asked for an end to trade protectionism and measures “inconsistent with the World Trade Organisation (WTO),” and agreed to “vigorously support South-South and trilateral cooperation,” while acknowledging that it is not a substitute for North-South cooperation.

The G8 have also stepped up their campaign for reform of the U.N. system, most potently the United Nations Security Council. That demand, primarily for expansion of the Security Council’s five permanent members with veto powers, has the backing of several of the G8 countries as well, particularly Britain.

The G5 issued a trade declaration separately from their political declaration. And that only firms up the position the developing countries have taken at talks so far that have blocked a deal on the principle that no deal is better than a bad deal.

The G5 said they want to see an end to subsidies in rich countries. Broadly speaking, the developed world has refused to drop subsidies, while demanding that developing countries open up their markets to goods from industrialised nations.

On trade rules, as with the negotiations on climate change, developing countries have been holding firm, and holding together. This G5 summit appears to have toughened their plans to work together to break down established forms of dominance.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

G8 ITALY SUMMIT.
G8 summit gets off to rough start – Hu’s exit damages climate talks as emerging economies challenge the industrialized powers

By JUN HONGO
Staff writer, The Japan Times online. – Japan Time – Thursday, July 9, 2009.

ROME — With the relevance of the Group of Eight being challenged by emerging powers, the G8 leaders got down to business Wednesday addressing climate change and what their next move might be when and if the global recession subsides.

But the launch of the three-day G8 summit in L’Aquila was spoiled even before it began, with Chinese President Hu Jintao returning home to get a handle on the ethnic riots tearing apart the restive city of Urumqi in the northwest.

A shadow also grew over the climate change issue as chances appeared slim that the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, or MEF, would be able to hammer out long-term greenhouse gas emissions cuts, Japanese diplomatic sources said.

The key multinational emissions forum was to meet Thursday on the sidelines of the summit in the Italian mountain town.

The sources said MEF preparatory negotiations failed to bridge the gap between members of the industrialized and developing countries, effectively dashing hopes of achieving a substantial agreement.
Hu’s absence exacerbated the MEF discord, the sources said.

An initially prepared MEF draft declaration pledged a global emissions reduction of 50 percent by 2050, with industrialized countries promising an 80 percent cut in the same time frame, they said.

The 17-member MEF was established in March under the initiative of U.S. President Barack Obama to complete the groundwork for forging a new international carbon-capping framework to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Along with the G8, major greenhouse gas emitters China, India and Brazil are also members of the MEF.

Despite the forum’s apparent inability to produce tangible results, the G8 was nevertheless expected to issue a joint statement on climate change later in the day, in addition to discussing the global economy, the sources said.

The eight leaders were expected to share views on how not to jeopardize the “green shoots” of recovery being seen in some areas, as well as “exit strategies” for reversing the heavy fiscal stimulus that many countries embraced to revive their economies, the sources said, adding that how to stave off global unemployment was also on the agenda.

During a working dinner, the G8 was expected to focus on political matters, including domestic unrest in Iran and North Korea’s nuclear threat.

Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, who agreed Tuesday to reduce the size of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, were expected to lead the discussion on global denuclearization.

For Prime Minister Taro Aso,denuclearization and how to end North Korea’s nuclear threat are expected to be key concerns.

Earlier this month, Foreign Ministry officials in Tokyo listed five key themes for this year’s summit: Iran, North Korea, global denuclearization, the Middle East peace process and the war in Afghanistan.

The L’Aquila summit concludes Friday after assistance to Africa is discussed. But with emerging economic powers like Brazil and India being kept outside the discussion framework, critics say any talks held within the G-8 alone are incapable of resolving global economic issues.

In that sense, the Thursday meeting with the emerging powers will have more relevance than the G-8 itself, they said.

But Japanese officials defended the G-8 framework, saying its agreements are still influential in forming the base for discussions with other economic powers.

The G-8 includes the United States, Britain, Canada, Japan, Italy, Germany, France and Russia.

——————

www.SustainabiliTank.info take on the Wednesday-Thursday-Friday July 8-10, 2009 meetings follows:

President Obama of the US came to Rome after having achieved an agreement with the Medvedev/Putin leadership of Russia on what concerns nuclear arms reduction and certain aspects of non-proliferation. Those issues allow thus for US leadership at the G8 meeting. On the other hand, at the Obama created G-16 + the EU and the UN meeting on climate change, the fact that the US is well behind Europe on the main issues on Global Warming, the US is really not in position of leadership.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK is in very weakened internal position so he is no great asset at the G8 table.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper leads now a weak minority government and does not radiate influence either.

Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso is just as weak at home as Messrs. Brown and Harper and thus not really in a leadership position either.

Italy’s Berlusconi, thanks to his personal peccadilloes, is rather an international joke, even though his countrymen may think his behavior charming. His country-women – that is those that did not profit from his closeness – may think differently.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is in best position of them all when it comes to the issues of climate change, but in what concerns applying stimulus packages in Europe she is just slow or lacks interest as she saw that this might not have brought in the US the results that the Obama administration was promising to Americans and the world. She clearly has no intention to cooperate in what she is not convinced that it works, and is also critical of the US lack of progress in alternatives to the old fossil-fuels based economy. We do not think that President Obama will be able to convince her to change her mind during the three days of these meetings.

France’s President Nicolas Sarcozy is strong politically at home – so here no problems – but when it comes to evaluating his two years in office, one has difficulty finding his international agenda – thus another non-leader for these events.

Russia’s double-headed eagle – President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin – will rest on the perch and don’t expect them to lead either.

Looking at the above and at the ruins of the earth-quake damaged Italian age-old city of L’Aquila, one can only hope for reconstruction if the world is going to see a better economy in the future and in the process also create a program of what to do with the pesky issue of climate change. Let us face the reality that there is little chance to achieve progress at the   July 2009 meetings.

***

Thursday there is the meeting of 17 members that is the G16 + the EU – or actually the G8 + G5 (Brazil, India, China,   Mexico, South Africa) + Australia, Indonesia, Korea,   and the EU.

Those are the 17 that were invited to participate at the State Department building, in Washington DC, meeting for climate talks under the Major Economies Forum (MEF) April 27, 2009. That meeting was organized by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Later there was also a meeting in Mexico City and in September 2009 they will have yet another meeting in Pittsburgh. The intent was to come up with an agreement to be presented before the Copenhagen climate meeting this December.

OK – so where are we now? Did the US and China formally agree on how to proceed jointly on the effort to find a G2 solution? But really we will not find out if this is the case on Thursday, July 9, 2009. Chinese President Hu Jintao returned home today to deal with the ethnic riots tearing apart the restive city of Urumqi in the Muslim Northwest Province of Xinjang, and without him present there is little sense for the Thursday meeting. India also does not seem to be ready to let the OECD countries of the hook so indeed setting only long term targets without well funded immediate action will not do this time. India just released its budget plans and worldwide there are reactions that the government did not plan enough as stimulus packages either. Indeed, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton will be going mid July to India like she did go to China at the start of her taking over at State. Will she be able to come up with better understanding with India, while it seems to the Indians that the US is back to a pre Bush China-first policy?

Also Indonesia will not be there as President Yudhoyono just was having a reelection campaign that it seems he won.

***

Friday is the last day and it is dedicated to the provision of funds for Africa. OK – this subject will get some figures and it will be $15 Billion that President Obama pushed for – as aid for poor farmers – and when President Obama will be on Saturday in Ghana he will be able to present those figures to his African hosts.

Our prediction is thus that from L’Anquila the main product of these meetings will be a new promis for Africa. Will it be funded this time in reality – that is something to check upon later. But then a serious review regarding Africa is really in the making indeed. The key is to be henceforth less reliance on food aid from subsidized produce in the US and the EU, and more investments and help in order to build up local agriculture in Africa – as the future economy of Africa. Some of the African NGOs have finally spoken up that the relliance on food hand-outs has destroyed Africans’ potential to feed themselves.

***

Will the real legacy of L’Anquila be that the G8 has lost its relevance in a world where most of the so called great economies are indeed dependent for their well being on some of the members of the lesser G5? With China, India and Brazil not part of the august post-World War II group is there any reason for the separate G8 pow wow? Would not going directly to a more updated group have been more effective? Then what about the EU? Could it not be practical to letthe member states finally decide that they could speak with one voice? If that is not the case why litter the G16 with an added presence at a time that the UN is rightly not mentioned at all?

——-

G8 must galvanise talks on warming.
The Financial Times, July 8 2009

The summit meeting of the Group of Eight industrialised nations that opened in Italy on Wednesday looks increasingly like an event in search of a purpose. The more broadly based G20, including China and India among others, is the place where deals on the global economy are being done. So what is the point of the G8?

The answer should be: to galvanise the debate on climate change. A consensus is needed between the rich and poor for a new deal to slow down global warming. It is supposed to be finalised by the United Nations at Copenhagen in December. But to have any hope of progress there, the leaders gathered in L’Aquila this week must give a clear sense of direction.

The European Union has been consistently in the lead in setting ambitious targets to cut emissions. The good news now is that the US president is engaged and enthusiastic. Barack Obama will co-chair Thursday’s meeting of the 17-member Major Economies Forum, including both China and India. The bad news is that Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, has gone home to deal with the ethnic unrest in Xinjiang. But that should not give an excuse for indecision.

The first ominous sign is that the two sides have not agreed on a target of halving global emissions by 2050. That is the minimum necessary to ensure that the rise in global temperatures should not exceed 2 degrees Celsius, the danger level agreed by scientists. It would require the developed economies to cut their emissions by 80 per cent, to allow developing economies to pollute more as they grow faster. But China is not prepared to sign up to the target until there are more concessions on the table. It is hard to understand, as China stands to be a big beneficiary.

India is also playing hard to get. Delhi will not move on a complete package until there is more money on the table, with rich countries paying the poor to mitigate the effects of global warming, and adapt to them. Such an attitude could scupper any deal.

The G8 leaders can and should do more. In particular, they should start work on a commercial mechanism via the cap-and-trade system to finance bigger transfers from rich to poor. That would be politically more acceptable than straight handouts. The EU might also unilaterally increase its target to cut emissions in 2020 from 20 to 30 per cent. Both the US and Japan need to set more ambitious targets for 2020 as well as 2050. But in the end, a deal on climate change is not just for the rich to do. The poor will suffer most if it fails.

———–

Nations agree to steeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions
By Fiona Harvey in London, and Guy Dinmore and George,Parker in L’Aquila
Published: July 9 2009 03:00 | Last updated: July 9 2009 03:00
The Group of Eight industrialised countries yesterday agreed to more stringent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions than ever before.

The G8, meeting in Italy, pledged to take on the lion’s share of the emissions reductions scientists say are needed, with cuts of 80 per cent by 2050 for developed countries. This would contribute to a hoped-for target of halving emissions globally by the same date.

They also resolved to try to hold global temperature rises to no more than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, which scientists regard as the limit of safety.

This is the first time such a target has been formally adopted in a leading international forum. Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, hailed the deal as “historic”.

But British officials said there was “no chance” that these targets would also be agreed by a wider group of countries, including emerging economies, meeting today on climate change.

Leaders of 16 of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitting countries are meeting at the G8 at the request of Barack Obama, US president.

He called the meeting, known as the Major Economies Forum, which he is co-chairing with Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister, to break the deadlock in climate change talks aimed at producing a successor to the Kyoto protocol at a conference in Copenhagen in December.

It is the first time leaders of all the big emitters have held a summit on climate change. The United Nations secretary-general held a meeting for world leaders in 2007, but George W. Bush, then US president, turned up only for the dinner at the end.

However, China and India have so far refused to agree to the target of halving global emissions by 2050, despite assurances that the G8 will take on the largest slice of the burden.

The early departure of Hu Jintao, China’s president, from the meeting yesterday made any change in position even less likely.

One of the aims of the MEF was to bring leaders of the main emitting countries together so that they could allow their environment ministers – who attend the UN negotiations – greater latitude in making a deal.

Anantha Guruswamy, Greenpeace programme director, said China and India had refused to sign up to the global target because the G8 club of rich nations had not put forward proposals for financing emissions cuts and measures to adapt to climate change in poor countries.

“It is up to Obama to show leadership on this,” he added.

Beijing and Delhi also want rich countries to agree higher targets on cutting emissions by 2020 than they have come up with.

The 16 countries in the MEF produce 80 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. The European Union and Denmark, as host of the Copenhagen conference, also attend its meetings.

***

to be a bit more exact the first 9 out of the 16 – CO2 emissions in billions of metric tons, 2006 are as follows – and if you wish it is about 75% just for the first 8 total and they are not the old G8.

China     6.0

US           5.9

Russia     1.7

India       1.3

Japan       1.3

Germany     0.9

Canada         0.6

UK               0.6

S. Korea       0.5

———-

CLIMATE CHANGE
Obama insists world climate accord possible.
By George Parker and Guy Dinmore in L’Aquila and Fiona Harvey in London
The Financial Times,   July 9 2009

Barack Obama, US president, insisted on Thursday there was still time for the world to agree binding commitments to cut greenhouse emissions, in spite of stalemate at the G8 summit in L’Aquila.

Mr Obama takes centre stage in the Italian town on Thursday when he chairs a session on global warming, bringing together 17 rich and emerging economies, including China and Brazil.

US diplomats say there is no chance that the countries will agree to cut world emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 – from a still undecided baseline of 1990 or later. They are however likely to agree on an aspiration to stop temperatures rising more than 2 degrees centigrade compared with pre-industrial levels.

The early departure of Hu Jintao, China’s president of China, from the meeting made any change in position on cuts even less likely.

But Mr Obama believes an agreement on binding intermediate targets – for a deadline sometime before 2050 – can be reached before a UN climate change summit in Copenhagen in December.

Robert Gibbs, White House spokesman, said Mr Obama told President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil that “there was still time in which they could close the gap on that disagreement in time for that important [meeting]“.

Mr Obama is seen as a pivotal figure in reaching any Copenhagen agreement, but months of tense negotiations lie ahead.

India, China and other big emerging economies want to be sure the west is serious about meeting medium term targets for cutting emissions before they commit themselves. They also want money to help them clean up their industries.

The credibility of the G8 on climate change was challenged by Russia, which had earlier signed up to a communique by the group committing wealthy nations to an even more ambitious 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050 – again with a still undecided baseline. The Russian delegation however has questioned whether such a long-term target is meaningful.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, said progress on climate change at the G8 was so far “not enough”. He added: “This is politically and morally [an] imperative and historic responsibility … for the future of humanity, even for the future of the planet Earth.”

————–

Further – the UN travelog:

UN DAILY NEWS from the
UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
8 July, 2009 =========================================================================

SECRETARY-GENERAL EN ROUTE TO ITALY TO MEET WITH G8 LEADERS

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is heading today to the Italian city of L’Aquila, where he will meet with the leaders who are attending the annual summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations, after wrapping up his first official visit to Ireland.

On development, the Secretary-General urged the G8 to outline how donors will scale up aid to Africa over the next year to fulfil the commitments the Group made at its summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005.

Mr. Ban departed for Italy from Ireland, where he met today with Irish Defence Minister Willie O’Dea. They travelled to the McKee Barracks, where the Secretary-General met with a group of veteran UN peacekeepers from Ireland and also took part in a ceremony paying respect to Irish peacekeepers that made the ultimate sacrifice while serving the Organization.

The UN chief is scheduled to travel again next week to attend the 15 July Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where he will deliver an address encouraging the group to build on its leadership role to address some of today’s challenges, including disarmament, the economic crisis and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The eight MDGs – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education – have a target date of 2015, as agreed by world leaders in 2000.  

The G8 and climate change: towards Copenhagen – Andrew Pendleton, July 8, 2009.
A coherent focus on low-carbon technology is the missing ingredient in the world’s climate-change strategy, says Andrew Pendleton.

Andrew Pendleton is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) in London

John D Podesta, president and CEO, Center for American Progress, USA   is the soul behind the study mentioned in the attachment.

No nation wants a global climate-change deal this year more than Denmark. Its capital, Copenhagen, plays host on 7-18 December 2009 to the next big United Nations summit on global warming – which marks the end of two years of increasingly fraught negotiation to reach agreement.

The global stakes are high; and for the modest Danes, the event holds out the prize of a new, international accord bearing the name of their capital city – the “Copenhagen protocol”, perhaps.

From the perspective of early July, however, there is a long way to go. As leaders of the world’s major economies – which are also its biggest greenhouse-gas emitters – gather for the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, on 8-10 July to try to add urgency to the search for a Copenhagen deal, it is clear that profound and fundamental disagreements on critical issues persist. How to break the deadlock? Most commentators will seek the answer in the headline issue of emissions-reduction targets. But the relatively neglected area of negotiations on transferring technology and finance to developing countries to support a radical shift in their model of industrial growth is of equal importance.

The technology fix

When the climate debate was coming of age, the “numbers game” – which country will cut what quantity of greenhouse-gas emissions by when and relative to what baseline – was at the top of everyone’s list of priorities. Logically, since the problem is precisely about the quantity of gas being pumped into the atmosphere, setting targets to reduce emissions was the best way of understanding the structure of the problem. But targets do not lead to emissions cuts: policies and actions do.

I am not for a moment arguing that industrialised countries should be excused their responsibilities; they must take on ambitious, legally-binding commitments as part of a new deal. But the fight against climate change will not be won without a technology revolution – yet technology is still the poor relation of other issues in the negotiations.

The promise – and the frustration – lie in the fact that many of the technologies needed to fight climate change are within our grasp. But to seize this opportunity, a much better understanding of why we have not yet managed to harness their potential – of why low-carbon technologies of even the most rudimentary nature remain underexploited – is desperately needed.

The Global Climate Network – a prestigious alliance of influential think-tanks in countries key to successful international action, of which the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) is a founder member – publishes a joint study on 8 July 2009 that examines the barriers in the way of much wider use of low-carbon technology. The results are surprising; if they are taken on board they could help leaders of G8 countries and the rich states grouped in the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) to bridge the gap between reality and aspiration.

—

Three lessons

Our research involved speaking to more than 100 leading businesspeople, government officials and academics in eight countries – Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Nigeria, South Africa and the United States. Three conclusions emerged:

- The first is that a “low-carbon technology revolution” will not happen by itself: it requires government intervention. A major block to the wider use of low-carbon technology is the lack of coherent policy at the domestic level, in both industrialised and developing countries. This, we conclude, requires industrial activism of the like that – over two decades of neo-liberal hegemony in the developed world – became unfashionable. Will the current economic crisis lead to a long-term reversal of the trend?

The case that government should have a strong role in driving new, low-carbon technology is compelling. This is clear in the way that each individual policy-shift has much larger implications. For instance, if electric vehicles are to become the norm in big cities, then recharging-points will have to be installed, parking facilities will have to be altered and vehicle design will have to be driven in this direction. If this kind of initiative is not led by governments, then who else will lead it?

That said, activism by governments has to be executed with a light touch so as to unleash and not stifle low-carbon entrepreneurial spirit. Furthermore, the subsidies and other favours that carbon-intensive industries still enjoy – an issue raised by some of the interviewees in our study – will have to be phased out.

- The second conclusion is the inescapable need for finance. Almost all of those whom we interviewed in our study identified the lack of upfront cash, and in some cases (carbon-capture technology [CCS], for example) higher running-costs as among the obstacles to low-carbon technology. Here a public-private partnership seems essential: the private sector may well ultimately be the main source of finance for the low-carbon technology revolution, but governments will have to lead to make new technologies cheaper and less risky. The existing United Nations climate agreement requires developed countries to be the major contributors to this effort.

The financial crisis may make it harder for sovereign governments to contemplate helping global and not just national decarbonisation. Barack Obama’s championing of greater energy independence and of job-creation through green expansion is a good example of a progressive national project at work. But there has also to be greater clarity about the all-round benefits of the process – by projecting the low-carbon narrative onto the international sphere and linking it to the reality of global economic interdependence.

After all, it is also in the interest of the US, Europe and Japan to expand the markets for low-carbon technologies in India,   China and across continental Africa – for they are currently the main inventors of these technologies.

The shared advantages of the low-carbon revolution must be understood more widely. The danger, however, is that every nation will want to be both producer and consumer of everything; a great deal more intergovernmental collaboration, as well as the unleashing of low-carbon entrepreneurial spirit, will be needed to resolve this.

- The third conclusion from our research is the need for an “international technologies initiative”. This idea, endorsed by Britain’s ex-prime minister Tony Blair, could help accelerate the collaborative development of new technology and realise the brightest and best ideas from the difficult demonstration stage through to full commercial production and deployment. The so-called “valley of death” in which many great ideas perish for want of finance must not be allowed to kill off potentially important low-carbon innovations.

The current financial constraints reinforce more routine difficulties in technological cooperation. But the message of our research to the G8 and the Major Economies Forum is to take a direct route and circumvent these as much as possible by:

* putting technology at the heart of negotiations

* rewarding robust national low-carbon development strategies

* pooling resources to invest in research & development and demonstration

* focusing on know-how as much as equipment

* sharing knowledge and propagating skills.

—

A time to commit

There is even more to be done. All the countries represented at the L’Aquila summit are doing something to encourage low-carbon technology – and some are doing a lot. But none has a coherent low-carbon growth or development strategy. This wider strategy advocated by the   Global Climate Network would include tough carbon standards for specific products or sectors; tax incentives to drive investment in low-carbon energy; structural changes to energy markets to encourage greater efficiency and renewable energy and government support for research, development and deployment.

The chances of success at the Copenhagen summit in December are already in the balance. They depend on reaching consensus in all of the key areas of the climate negotiation – emissions-reduction targets included. But the collective need for a technology revolution to fight climate change and achieve the necessary reductions is overwhelming. A clear commitment by G8 countries to find finance for this endeavour and agreement at the MEF to collaborate on the development of new technology could yet lay the foundations for agreement. A turning-point protocol that will benefit the world – and please the Danes too. The prize is too great to let slip away.

——

attachment:

The Global Climate Network is an alliance of nine influential think-tanks in countries key to successful international action on climate change. Its secretariat is based at the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) in London. Its prominent representatives   are:

John D Podesta, president and CEO, Center for American Progress, USA

Rajendra K Pachauri, director-general of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India; chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Jiahua Pan, executive director of the Research Centre for Sustainable Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China

Rubens Born, director, Vitae Civilis, Brazil

Manfred Fischedick, vice-president, Wuppertal Institute, Germany

John Connor, chief executive, The Climate Institute, Australia

Lisa Harker and Carey Oppenheim, co-directors, ippr, UK

Andrew Gilder, director, IMBEWU Sustainability Legal Specialists, South Africa

Ewah Eleri, director, International Centre for Energy, Environment and Development, Nigeria.

Climate change divides the Alps down the middle
Global warming is already causing flooding in the north and water shortages in south, report says

The dramatic effect of climate change on the Alps comes into focus as never before this week with the publication of a major report which reveals that the mountain range is rapidly dividing into two contrasting climatic zones, each posing new problems.

By Michael Day in Milan
Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Michael McCarthy: Don’t be fooled by this winter’s powder. The Alpine snow line is already in retreat
The Convention on the Protection of the Alps is a statutory EU body set up in 1991 and its magisterial second report, published tomorrow, which has been seen by The Independent, reveals that the northern ranges of the Alps are suffering ever more serious flooding while the parched southern mountains see less and less snow.

According to the report, precipitation in the south-east of the region has fallen nearly 10 per cent in the past 100 years while rain and snowfall in the north-west ranges has increased by the same amount over this time.

“Predictions that the European climate is dividing into two are becoming all too real,” said Marco Onida, secretary general of the Convention, who will present the report at the organisation’s headquarters in Bolzano, Italy, tomorrow, in the presence of EU officials and national representatives. “The result will be havoc for the Alps and the communities and wildlife that rely on area.”

Changing patterns of rain and snowfall, shrinking glaciers and rising temperatures will affect not only the mountains but also the communities which rely on their resources, the report warns. Already some Alpine villages in the north of the range face flooding, while areas further south are seeing tourist and other trades increasingly threatened. Some areas have already suffered water shortages.

The Alps’ most famous high peaks, Mont Blanc, The Matterhorn and Monte Rosa mark part of the dividing line between the increasingly wet north of the region and Italy and Slovenia in the dryer south.

North of the dividing line, flooding and mud slides are becoming a common threat in some Alpine communities. In the south, some of the Europe’s most celebrated Alpine beauty spots, including Italy’s Dolomites are under threat, although some micro-climates mean the dividing line does not following a rigid north-south line.

As a result of these changes, only one Alpine river – Italy’s 178-mile-long Tagliamento in the north-east of the country – has not suffered drastic modifications, the reports says. And even the Tagliamento may not be safe: the wildlife charity WWF has warned that even this, the Alps’ last river system, is threatened by water abstraction in the upper Tagliamento valley, organic pollution, and gravel exploitation.

The situation across the Alps is made worse, the Convention report says, by the increasing demand for artificial snow created during the winter months by snow machines working on the ski slopes. This is needed to sustain the winter sports industry which is an economic mainstay of the slopes, but places a further heavy burden on water and energy supplies which are already under great stress.

“The Alps are the water tower of Europe,” Dr Onida told The Independent, “But increasingly much of the water is not reaching the places downstream where it is needed, for ecosystems, agriculture and energy production.”

Around 16 million people in eight countries, from France in the west to Hungary in the east, live in the arc of Europe’s biggest mountain range. Rain and snow from its mountains provide the Danube, Rhine, Rhone and Po rivers with up to 80 per cent of their water.

Representatives from all eight Alpine countries – France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Lichtenstein, Slovenia and Hungary – together with the European Union – signed up to the Alpine Convention in 1991.

The report warns not only that the destruction of the Alps is accelerating, but that disruption to water supplies will be felt much further afield than originally thought.

Glacier shrinkage earlier this year led the Italian and Swiss governments to propose the first changes in the border line between the two countries in more than a century.

Dr Onida said there was “a battle between agriculture and tourism for control over water supplies” owing to the increasingly intensive exploitation of the slopes.

Climate change is also driving Alpine species further up the mountains while exotic species including palms get a foothold lower down.

 The Greens — unique in campaigning on a common Europe-wide platform — proposed a Green New Deal economic plan to invest in environmental initiatives that would create ‘green-collar’ jobs in renewable energy, social care, sustainable housing and public transportation…

They Greens in Europe say – Lets create 5 million jobs – Europe needs a Green New Deal!

There is a way to combat climate change, and there is an answer to the economic crisis. Introducing a Green New Deal we can fight both at the same time. We need policies which will:

- create green collar jobs for five million Europeans within 5 years.

 - mobilise a cohesive strategy for private and public investment in the green economy   that amounts to 500 billion Euros   over the next five years (0,75% of the GDP of the EU).

 - keep energy affordable.

 - help to fight climate change and green the European economy.

The Green New Deal will set the European economy on a sustainable path and place Europe at the forefront of the Green industrial revolution.

———–

“Riding a wave of public concern over the effects of climate change, the Green-European Freedom Alliance bloc captured 53 of the EU parliament’s 736 seats, compared with 43 spots in the last 785-seat assembly… .

The Greens saw their biggest electoral surprise in France, where the Europe Ecologie party took third place nationally.

Acknowledging that support, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said France’s governing conservative UMP party would make tackling the economic crisis and global warming its priorities in the European Parliament.

Greens also took third place in Germany, where they pushed the campaign for renewable energy.

Greek Greens won one seat for the first time, while Green candidates from Sweden and Finland went from one to two seats each.

There were some setbacks. British Greens failed to add to their two seats,

Italian Greens fell short of the 4% threshold for a seat,

and Austrian Greens lost one of their two seats.”

The Renewable Energy Policy Network REN21 is pleased to announce that the
Renewables Global Status Report 2009 Update was released today. The report
shows that the fundamental transition of the world’s energy markets
continues.

Download the report at: http://www.ren21.net/globalstatusreport

REN21 Secretariat
15 rue de Milan
75441 Paris Cedex 9
France

Renewables Global Status Report 2009

Renewables Global Status Report 2005

Renewables Global Status Report: Energy Transformation Continues Despite Economic Slowdown
Paris, 13 May 2009: The REN21 Renewables Global Status Report released today shows that the fundamental transition of the world’s energy markets continues.

“This fourth edition of REN21’s renewable energy report comes in the midst of an historic and global economic crisis,” says Mohamed El-Ashry, chairman of REN21. Although the future is unclear, he says, “there is much in the report for optimism.”

Global power capacity from new renewable energy sources (excluding large hydro) reached 280,000 megawatts (MW) in 2008 – a 16 percent rise from the 240,000 MW in 2007 and nearly three times the capacity of the United States nuclear sector.

Solar heating capacity increased by 15 percent to 145 gigawatts-thermal (GWth), while biodiesel and ethanol production both increased by 34 percent. More renewable energy than conventional power capacity was added in both the European Union and United States for the first time ever.

“The recent growth of the sector has surpassed all predictions, even those made by the industry itself,” says El-Ashry, adding that much of this growth was due to more favourable policies amidst increasing concerns about climate change and energy security.

During 2008, a number of governments enacted new policies, and many countries set ambitious targets. Today, at least 73 countries have renewable energy policy targets, up from 66 at the end of 2007. In response to the financial crisis, several governments have directed economic stimulus funding towards the new green jobs the renewable energy sector can provide, including the U.S. package that will invest $150 billion over ten years in renewable energy.

Developing countries – particularly China and India – are increasingly playing major roles in both the manufacture and installation of renewable energy. For example, China’s total wind power capacity doubled in 2008 for the fourth year running.

For several previous years, the modern renewable energy industry has been viewed as a “guaranteed-growth” sector, and even “crisis-proof” due to the global trends underlying its formidable growth throughout the past decade. In 2008, renewable energy resisted the credit crunch more successfully than many other sectors for much of the year and new investment reached $120 billion, up 16 percent over 2007. However, by the end of the year, the impact of the crisis was beginning to show.

El-Ashry stresses that “now is not the time to relax policies that support a global, expanding renewable energy sector. By maintaining – and expanding – these policies, governments, industry and society will reap substantial economic and environmental rewards when the economic rebound requires energy markets to meet rapidly increasing demand”.

Climate change and energy security, two of the main drivers of the renewable energy sector, are still at work. As the REN21 report shows, the renewable energy sector offers an essential path for growth that can stimulate economic recovery and job creation without the burden of increasing carbon emissions.

For more information contact Philippe Lempp at the REN21 Secretariat.

Further highlights from the Report:

Markets and Industry
Wind

• Existing wind power capacity grew by 29 percent in 2008 to reach 121 GW, or more than double the 59 GW of capacity in place at the end of 2005.
• China doubled its wind power capacity for the fifth year in a row, ending 2008 at 12 GW, and breaching China’s 2010 development target of 10 GW two years early..

Solar

• Grid-connected solar PV continued to be the fastest growing power generation technology, with a 70 percent increase in existing capacity to reach 13 GW.
• Spain became the PV market leader, with 2.6 GW of new grid-tied installations.
• The concentrating solar power industry saw many new entrants and new manufacturing facilities in 2008
• Solar hot water in Germany set record growth in 2008, with over 200,000 systems installed.

Geothermal

• Geothermal power capacity surpassed 10 GW in 2008, led by the United States.
• Direct geothermal energy (ground source heat pumps) is now used in at least 76 countries.

Companies

• By August 2008, at least 160 publicly traded renewable energy companies worldwide had a market capitalization greater than $100 million.
• India emerged in 2008 as a major producer of solar PV, with new policies leading to $18 billion in new manufacturing investment plans or proposals by a number of companies.

Policy

• Among the many new renewable energy targets set in 2008, Australia targetted 45 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity by 2020. Brazil’s energy plan sought to slightly increase through 2030 its existing share of primary energy from renewable energy (46 percent in 2007), and its electricity share (87 percent in 2007). India increased its target to 14 GW of new renewables capacity by 2012. Japan set new targets for 14 GW of solar PV by 2020 and 53 GW by 2030. The EU formally adopted its target to reach a 20 percent share of renewable energy in final consumption by 2020, setting also country-specific targets for all member states.
• At least 64 countries now have some type of policy to promote renewable power generation.
• Feed-in tariffs were adopted at the national level in at least five countries for the first time in 2008/early 2009, including Kenya, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, and Ukraine.
• Several hundred cities and local governments around the world are actively planning or implementing renewable energy policies and planning frameworks linked to carbon dioxide emissions reduction.

Download:

• Renewables Global Status Report 2009 Update (pdf, 880KB)
• Press Release, including report highlights (pdf, 50KB)
• Past editions

International Conference on Financial Crisis and Climate Policy: A Science-Policy Debate.

DATE of Conference – April 4, 2009
LOCATION: Ca’ Foscari University – Venice, Italy

The European Climate Forum (ECF - http://ecf.pik-potsdam.de/) and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM - http://www.feem.it/) are pleased to announce the International Conference on “Financial Crisis and Climate Policy”, to be held on April 4th, 2009, at Ca’ Foscari University (Mario Baratto Room), Venice, Italy. The conference has been organised in collaboration with the European Centre for Living Technology (ECLT - http://www.ecltech.org/).

“Europe must lead the world into a new, or maybe one should say, post-industrial revolution, the development of a low-carbon economy”. This is the perspective offered by EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso when the EU declared its ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, increasing renewable energy use, and improving energy efficiency. In summer 2007, this step enabled the G-8 summit of Heiligendamm to declare the aim to halve global CO2 emissions by 2050, and at the end of the year, it kept the momentum in the global climate policy process at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali.

A year later, however, the biggest financial crisis since 1929 hit the world. That crisis made painfully clear how unsustainable the financial boom of the past decades had been. But the perspective of sustainable development has been largely absent in the haphazard way different European nations have tried to counter a global financial crisis that will shape the 21st century.

The possibility of this crisis had not been anticipated by the sophisticated computer models run by major central banks and leading institutions of economic research. And the scientists working on the risks of climate change and the options for climate policy had not taken such a possibility in consideration either.

It looks like both scientists and policy-makers have some homework to do. The science-policy debate organized by the European Climate Forum and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei aims to identify the tasks that need to be tackled and the means needed to do so.

Four distinguished panelists will look at the problem from four different perspectives: climate research, economic research, business, and the study of complex systems. With that background, researchers and stakeholders from a variety of fields are invited to engage in an open discussion. Main findings of the debate will be fed into the EU conference “Sustainable Development: A Challenge for European Research” that will take place on May 26-28 in Brussels.

Agenda

Saturday, April 4

9:00 Welcome
Prof. Klaus Hasselmann, Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany

9:15 Science and Policy: Dialogue of the Deaf?
Prof. Antonio Navarra, Director of Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), Bologna, Italy

9:45 What lessons from the financial crisis for climate policy?
Prof. Carlo Carraro, Director of the FEEM Sustainable Development Programme, University of Venice, CMCC, Venice, Italy

10:15 What Lessons from Climate Policy for the Financial Crisis?
Prof. Peter Hoeppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research/ Corporate Climate Centre, Munich, Germany

10:45 Navigating Complexity: Financial Crisis and Climate Policy
Dr. John Finnigan, Director of the CSIRO Centre for Complex Systems Science, Canberra, Australia

11:15 Coffee break

11:30 Open Debate: Challenges for Research
Moderated by Prof. Carlo Jaeger, Chairman ECF

13:30 Lunch

This public debate follows a technical workshop on Agent-Based Modeling for Sustainable Development documented in the attached file. If you are interested in the workshop, please check the corresponding box on the registration form.

Contacts:
Aida Abdulah
European Climate Forum
E-mail:  aida at european-climate-forum.net

The Indian Jewish Purim celebration will be held in Rego Park, Queens next Saturday evening, March 7th, from 7pm – until.   Please see below and attached flyer for more details.   Reservations are a must!

Charge is $25 for adults and $10 for children under 12 years!

Hope to see you there!

————————————————
————————————————

From: Romiel Daniel <rdaniel@ariela-alpha.com>
Subject: FW: PURIM CELEBRATION 2009 revised
To:  jewsofindia at yahoo.com

Community Listing

————————————————

PURIM CELEBRATIONS

Purim is just round the corner. Let us enjoy the festival in the spirit it warrants.

Enjoy Bollywood, Israeli and the latest American music with one of the best DJ’s.

Music for grandchildren, children, adults and grandparents.

Dress code suitable for Purim. Your choice whether you want to be Mordechai or Esther or Ahasuerus or any other character of Purim. Or come as yourself.

Enjoy delicious Indian Kosher Food and snacks, also American snacks.

Place:                           Rego Park Jewish Center, Crystal Ballroom

97-30 Queens Boulevard,   Rego Park, NY 11374

Date:                             Saturday March 7th, 2009

Time:                           7:00 PM and onwards

The charge is only $25.00 per adult $10.00 for children below the age of 12 years.

RSVP with a check to “Indian Jewish Congregation of USA” by March 3rd, 2009.

Romiel Daniel

Presiding Officer

 UNSG Ban Ki-moon and Diplomats accredited to the UN came Saturday January 24, 2009, to Park East Synagogue in New York City for a Holocaust Remembrance Day Service.

In November 1, 2005, 60 years since the creation of the UN in the aftermath of WWII and the Holocaust, the UN decided to designate January 27 as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. This year will be thus   thus the fourth year of such a   Commemoration and it will be held at the UN next week, while some at the UN will try to connect   these memorial events by holding parallel activities targeting the State of Israel for the recent invasion of the Gaza Strip and for the essence of its existence. As one example of this cloud over the UN, we posted   – www.SustainabiliTank.info posted:   http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2009/01….

With above in mind, nevertheless, the Park East Synagogue community, in the presence of Holocaust survivors, was proud to host the UNSG, four more UN officials, and the Diplomats that showed up – including the Diplomats from six European countries on whose territory the Holocaust was committed – Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Italy. The Ambassador to the UN from Rwanda, a non-Muslim African country came as he knows the impact of genocide from his own country’s experience. Also present were diplomats from Australia, Israel and the United States, and from the Latin American countries – Argentina, Costa Rica, and Mexico. Thus,14 countries out of the 192 Representations to the UN, showed up at this memorial service, but then, thinking of the WWII differences – seeing Germany, Russia, Israel, and the US sitting side by side, in the presence of survivors, and honoring the memory of the victims of the Holocaust in the presence of the UNSG, means that change is possible. Albeit, change through the UN maybe still very far off. There a great number of members may still take the position that Jews are not entitled to sit in the same bus with them, and when the issue is the Holocaust they will try to muddle it with “The question of Palestine.” January 26-27, 2009 will be just this sort of UN days. So what?

New Fascism Hunts Roma.
David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Nov 13 (IPS) – A political ideology based on the desire to exterminate Roma gypsies is emerging in parts of Europe, a Brussels conference has been told. Following a number of violent attacks on Roma by skinheads and other extremists in Bulgaria, it was announced during August 2007 that the far-right National Guard party was being established. The ‘anti-gypsyism’ advocated by its leader Vladimir Rasate could be compared to the anti-Semitism that helped bring the Nazis to power in 1930s Germany, according to Michael Stewart, professor of anthropology at University College London. “With the National Guard party, the disposing of the Roma is seen as a basis for national renewal,” said Stewart, who has worked extensively with Roma communities in former communist countries. “This is a new phenomenon in Europe that has not existed before. It is a real danger.” Stewart’s comments, delivered to a hearing in the European Parliament Nov. 13, echo the findings of a recent report on hate crime against Roma by Human Rights First. The New York-based organisation stated that for Roma in some countries “the newly virulent anti-gypsyism is an eerie reminder of the Porrajmos, the Romany Holocaust during the Second World War that killed more than half of Europe’s Roma population. “When senior European political leaders publicly discuss ’solutions’ to the ‘Roma problem’, advocating the use of dynamite, electrified fences, mug shots, fingerprinting of men, women and children, and deportations, historical parallels inadvertently come to mind.” The hostility against Roma has been particularly acute in Italy, where parties in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition have openly tried to portray all Roma as criminals. In May, the Italian government introduced a ’security package’ which provided for the dismantling of Roma camps and the automatic deportation of migrants who cannot prove they have regular employment.

Discrimination against Roma in Italy is “unrivalled by any other country in Europe,” said Monica Rossi, researcher at the University of Rome, explaining that Roma are denied the official status of a minority and are unable to claim Italian citizenship. Programmes ostensibly aimed at allowing Roma children go to school have failed, she said. “After 40 years of having schooling projects, we have got 20 underage Roma who are in secondary schools. That is out of a population of 15,000 people.”

Graziano Halilovic from Xoraxane Rrom, Italy’s Roma federation, described the conditions in the camps where his people live as “pretty extreme”.

“It’s a shame for the Italian nation to allow Roma to live in such conditions,” he added. “What’s even worse is that Italy is a part of the European Union. Italy’s shame can readily become the shame of the European Union.”

During September, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, hosted a Roma summit, which heard calls for the development of an EU strategy on Roma inclusion. Estimated to comprise between 12 and 15 million people, the Roma are frequently described as the largest ethnic minority in Europe, up to nine million of which live within the EU’s 27 countries.

Valeriu Nicolae, secretary-general of the European Roma Grassroots Organisation, said Roma are not properly consulted when policies affecting them are being formulated. “The main body dealing with Roma issues in the European Union — which is the European Commission — does not employ any Roma or any Roma policy expert,” he said.

Jan Jarab, a Commission official dealing with social policy, said the EU’s executive is willing to increase its efforts to ease the plight of the Roma. But it is reluctant, he added, to simply “repackage” previously introduced laws against discrimination and “put on the label ’strategy’.”

At the moment, policies in EU countries on Roma are often based on either a ‘laissez-faire’ approach or repression, he said. He cited Spain as a country where success has been registered in providing Roma with decent jobs and housing.

Marian Nedelica, a teacher in the Romanian city Craiova, said that although his country has enacted a law guaranteeing access to education, some 27 percent of Roma children do not attend school. Penalties should be introduced against school authorities that allow discrimination to occur, he argued.

Livia Jaroka, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament of Roma origin, said that her people suffer from an “extreme sub-Saharan Africa type of poverty.” Instruments to punish EU governments that fail to enforce the Union’s anti-discrimination laws are needed, she added.

Gabriela Hrabanova, an official with the Czech ministry of labour and social affairs, said that there is a “lack of coordination” between the EU’s member states on issues concerning the Roma. “In many member states, there is nothing going on at the local level, although on paper it looks like everything is great.”