Sunday, July 11, 2010

Extraordinary times in Cuba

Laura Pollan, leader of Las Damas de Blanco, marches along Quinta Avenida in Havana on Sunday.

There has been a flurry of news in Cuba. First came the Cuban government’s decision to release 52 political prisoners over the next three months. Then came the extradition of Francisco Chavez Abarca, a Salvadoran accused of carrying out violent attacks against Cuba.

More news came today when Fidel Castro’s photographer son Alex posted photos showing the former Cuban president visiting a research center in Havana. Alex Castro shot the pictures last week at the National Center for Scientific Investigation in Havana. One news report said Castro used a cell phone camera to take the pictures; I haven’t confirmed that.

Photos by Alex Castro. Source: CubaDebate

News of Fidel Castro’s rare public appearance comes days after the Cuban government said it would free 52 prisoners held since a government crackdown on dissidents in March 2003.
Guillermo Fariñas announced he’d end his 134-day hunger strike after Cuban authorities announced the release. Fariñas is a dissident and independent journalist in the central town of Santa Clara. He began his protest after dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in February after an 86-day hunger strike.

About Along The Malecón

The Malecón is the famed avenue stretching for more than four miles along Havana’s seawall. People go there every day: Blacks, whites and mulattoes – people of every hue. Young and old, they all go, die-hard revolutionaries and those who are fed up with the revolution. They take in the ocean air, dance and look for romance. They sip rum and stare at the water.

More than a dozen reporters and photographers showed up to cover the Damas’ march on Sunday. The women marched without any interference. A passing motorist yelled something like, “Those people aren’t news.” Another shouted, “Mariconas,” which means lesbians.

The Damas kneeled in front of Santa Rita Church and prayed after finishing their march, then they chanted “Freedom! Freedom!” A few minutes later as they gathered at a nearby park and some of them repeated the chant. A man who was shooting video missed that shot and asked the Damas to repeat it. One prominent member of the group refused, saying that these chants “come from the soul” and aren’t meant to be repeated just because someone asks.

The cameraman asked if, well, the Damas could please be inspired again to feel it “from the soul.” More than a half dozen of the women complied, chanting “Freedom! Freedom!” once again, then told the cameraman that they hoped he was satisfied.

What makes a good UN story? We hinted at the Kevin Rudd idea earlier but we were still waiting for further developments.

Are we seeing here rumors because of infighting in Australia on the way to their National elections August 21, 2010?

Are we on the trail of rumors intended to save the Ban Ki-moon reelection to a second term?

Are we watching an Obama approach to create a new environment to save negotiations on climate?

Kevin Rudd would be an excellent choice to extricate the UN from the hole it created in the “Seal the Deal” charade when every child could have seen that the G192 is no environment to talk about Sustainable Energy options.

Australia is no good example either – but Kevin Rudd was ready to step out of his nation’s “is” and aim for a better future.

He got punished for this and perhaps is now ready for revenge by working on a global level that will then sweep with him his own country as well.

With his experience as Australia’s Prime Minister with-vision that was cut short from bringing his own country into the group of real leaders for tomorrow, he can work with President Obama and perhaps the other four leaders that hammered out the Copenhagen platform that is not dependent on all climate mongers of the UN circuit. As a fresh figure, he could perhaps sit down with the ALBA folks and take the best ideas they have and incorporate them also in a new recipe under the SUSTAINABILITY big sky of the future.

Will the UN accept him as a new Super Czar of a combined  UNCSD and UNFCCC – or let him form a new structure so these older structures will just wilt away into oblivion slowly? Who knows? But let us follow this new world hype.

The subject having slowly boiled in the PRESS has reached also www.UNelection.org – so it is time for us to try out the waters ourselves also. This then reinforced the UNelections interest in the issue as per added -
http://unelections.org/?q=node/2056

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 http://unelections.org/?q=node/2052

 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special…

Click here to read “Kevin Rudd could be offered UN role before end of election campaign” – Herald Sun, July 29, 2010

Kevin Rudd talks with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon / AP Source: AP

KEVIN Rudd’s new United Nations post could be announced before the end of the election in what looms as another major embarrassment for Julia Gillard.

The Herald Sun can reveal the UN body Mr Rudd is being considered for is being set up under the working title High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability.

Mr Rudd is believed to have been backed for the post by the UN’s chief climate adviser, Janos Pasztor, and is odds-on to be offered the job.

Diplomatic sources said the decision could be made within weeks, which raises the spectre of an appointment before the election.

“It’s on the cards,” a source said of a pre-election announcement.

The Herald Sun believes Mr Rudd is favoured in part because he will have direct access to resources paid for by the Australian taxpayer.

This is on the assumption that the former prime minister is re-elected to Federal Parliament on August 21, 2010.

Related Coverage

• Cabinet leakers face the axe Daily Telegraph, 6 hours ago
• Kevin Rudd signs off on nomination Adelaide Now, 1 day ago
• Why Labor fears a vengeful Kevin Rudd NEWS.com.au, 2 days ago
• Rudd ‘not fit’ to be in Labor Cabinet Perth Now, 6 days ago
• Man tackled at Gillard speech Herald Sun, 7 days ago

Climate change reform will be the centrepiece of the panel, virtually guaranteeing conflict with a Gillard government, assuming Labor is re-elected.

Sources said it would be created to look at climate change in the context of broader sustainable development, and would be part-time.

Mr Rudd has declined to say whether the appointment would be paid.

If he were to be paid, this could raise allegations he would be a part-time MP.

Mr Rudd’s spokesman directed questions to the UN, declining to say whether he already had accepted the position.

Mr Rudd has previously said he would serve a full term in Parliament and that any UN position would be part-time.

“It is a matter, of course, for the United Nations Secretary-General to clarify what roles would be played by any individual on such a panel,” Mr Rudd said on July 22.

The biggest political risk for the Government is that the UN body clashes on climate change policy backed by Ms Gillard.

Mr Rudd previously backed a 5 per cent emissions cut on 2000 levels by 2020 as well as a so-called cap-and-trade scheme, which involves setting limits on carbon emissions but allowing heavy polluters to buy permits to allow them to emit more carbon.

Mr Rudd dropped his legislation this year when it was blocked by the Coalition in the Senate and his handling of the issue was considered crucial to him being dumped as PM.

Climate Extremes Fuel Hunger in Guatemala.
By Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Jul 28, 2010 (IPS) – “Three-quarters of the fields are still under water. Maize, plantains, okra and pasture are all lost,” José Asencio told IPS at the village of Santa Ana Mixtán in southern Guatemala, the area worst affected by tropical storm Agatha.

The villagers have been working for food in order to survive. “We’ve been shoring up the banks of the Coyolate and Mascalate rivers, and the mayor has been giving us food rations, although we haven’t received any for the past two weeks because supplies have run out,” he said.

Asencio said that food shortages and unemployment, caused by the extreme weather and the floods, have worsened the plight of the 373 families in the village, which is part of the municipality of Nueva Concepción in the department (province) of Escuintla, in the far south of the country.

The same dramatic situation is seen in Madronales, a village in the coastal municipality of Ocós in the southwestern province of San Marcos. “The fields sown with maize and plantain are flooded; we need food aid,” community leader Amparo Barrios told IPS.

Tropical storm Agatha flooded the crops that are the mainstay of 210 families, and “the little that was spared was destroyed by Atlantic storm Alex,” which hit the country a month later, she complained.

Agatha departed from Guatemala May 30, leaving behind 165 people dead and over 100,000 affected by destruction of their homes, crops or livelihoods. One month later, Alex added two more to the death toll and 2,000 to the number of material victims, according to the National Disaster Reduction Coordination agency (CONRED).

The storms also hit El Salvador and Honduras, where at least 29 people died and thousands were left homeless, according to disaster relief agencies.

But the worst hit by the double whammy of the storms was Guatemala, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, where half the population live on incomes below the poverty line and 17 percent are extremely poor, according to United Nations statistics.

“Climate change is exacerbating the conditions of poverty and extreme poverty in the country, and above all is complicating the lives of the most vulnerable,” Carlos Mancilla, head of the Climate Change Unit at the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (MARN), told IPS.

Flooding is not the only concern. Paradoxically, one of the main chronic problems in Guatemala is drought, in the “dry corridor” in the north and east of the country.

“Adapting to drought is not as easy as coping with floods. How can the social fabric destroyed by a drought be repaired? What happens when the head of a family has to migrate? In contrast, if a bridge is washed away by the rains, it can simply be rebuilt,” Mancilla said.

The General Directorate of Epidemiology reported that at least 54 children died of hunger in 2009 because of the drought, which was described as the worst in 30 years. Meanwhile, 2.5 million people went hungry due to the food crisis, the U.N. reported.

Just under 50 percent of children in Guatemala are malnourished, the highest rate in Latin America and one of the highest in the world, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

But in Mancilla’s view, adaptation to climate change must be broader in scope than just dealing with the food crisis, because inappropriate location of human settlements and the construction methods used compound the risks.

In addition to its economic vulnerability, Guatemala has unstable geology, with a high risk of disasters from volcanic activity, geological faults and its many mountains and rivers.

For example, the Pacaya volcano, 30 kilometres from the capital, erupted May 27 and rained ash over Guatemala City, killing one person and affecting thousands of others.

Among the government measures taken to adapt to the climate emergencies, Mancilla mentioned the creation of an inter-institutional Climate Change Commission, made up of 17 secretariats and ministries, that is “assessing the impact, including on food production, within the different sectors.” In this way “we examine how each one can contribute” to overcoming the challenge, he said.

Sucely Girón, coordinator of the non-governmental Observatory on the Right to Food Security (ODSAN), told IPS that the country “is not investing in prevention,” in spite of having passed a law on food and nutrition security.

“The main thrust of the reconstruction budget is replacing infrastructure. They forget that Agatha and Alex left people with no crops and no jobs that would enable them to buy food,” she said, referring to the announcement by the government of social democratic President Álvaro Colom that it needs one billion dollars to reconstruct the country.

Girón said that crop diversification and alternative economic activities need to be promoted, in order to reduce Guatemala’s dependence on agriculture.

She mentioned tourism, fish farming and craft making as possible ways of earning incomes for families whose crops have suffered from climate change impacts.

The programme on Strengthening Environmental Governance in the face of Climate Change Risks in Guatemala, an initiative of government and non-governmental organisations, community organisations and international aid agencies, aims at sustainable agriculture.

Leonel Jacinto, coordinator within the project for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told IPS that food security for the population is being sought through agricultural best practices.

In the central province of Baja Verapaz, affected by drought, the programme encourages avoidance of slash-and-burn techniques, and promotes agroforestry (combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock) and preserving and making use of stubble, in order to improve water retention in the soil.

The project, which is to benefit 791 families directly and another 100,000 families indirectly, promotes the recycling of water used for washing clothes to irrigate vegetable plots. It also encourages energy generation in biodigesters, which produce biogas from organic waste materials.

Jacinto said programmes like this one can change the face of agriculture in Guatemala and make it more resistant to climate change. But it needs to be extended across the country and to be sustained over time, he stressed.

WORLD NEWS – JULY 29, 2010
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424…

Climate report shows Earth has heated up over 50 years.

Which in the printed Wall Street version was rechristened – “CLIMATE STUDY CITES 2000 as WARMEST DECADE.” This appropriate to the US inward look of New York, while the above title is clear better positioned for the world at large -

By GAUTAM NAIK

A new assessment concludes that the Earth has been getting warmer over the past 50 years and the past decade was the warmest on record.

The State of the Climate 2009 report, published Wednesday as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was compiled by 300 scientists from 48 countries and drew on measures of 10 crucial climate indicators.

Seven of the indicators were rising, including air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, sea level, ocean heat and humidity. Three indicators were declining, including Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere.

“Each indicator is changing as we’d expect in a warming world,” said Peter Thorne, senior researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, a research consortium based in College Park, Md., who was involved in compiling the report.

The report’s conclusions broadly match those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, which published its last set of findings in 2007. The IPCC report contained some errors, which further stoked the debate about the existence, causes and effects of global warming.

The new report incorporates data from the past few years that weren’t included in the last IPCC assessment. While the IPCC report concluded that evidence for human-caused global warming was “unequivocal” and was linked to emissions of greenhouse gases, the latest report didn’t seek to address the issue.

The report “doesn’t try to make the link” between climate change and what might be causing it, said Tom Karl, an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration involved in the new assessment.

The report said, “Global average surface and lower-troposphere temperatures during the last three decades have been progressively warmer than all earlier decades, and the 2000s (2000-09) was the warmest decade in the instrumental record.” The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere.

The scientists reported that they were surprised to find Greenland’s glaciers were losing ice at an accelerating rate. They also concluded that 90% of planetary warming over the past 50 years has gone into the oceans. Most of it had accumulated in near-surface layers, home to phytoplankton, tiny plants crucial to virtually all life in the sea.

A new study has found that rising sea temperature may have had a harmful effect on global concentrations of phytoplankton over the past century.

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BUT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL IS VERY ANEMIC ON CONTENT OF ABOVE NEWS – IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, AS MOSTLY ALMOST – GO TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES. HERE YOU FIND FIONA HARVEY’S FULL ARTICLE – SHE  CONTRIBUTES TO THE EDITORIAL SECTION AS WELL. YOU WILL BE IN THE CLEAR ABOUT THE MACHINATIONS IN WASHINGTON AS WELL.

You will also see there the Washington rot as in the following: “Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, formerly in charge of energy with the powerful CSIS, said the new report would not change people’s minds. “It’s clear that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is weak. The scientific case for [many of the claims] is unsound and we are finding out all the time how unsound it is.”

You will find that there was no doubt about the implication that it is humans who did it except in the words of that outspoken minority of industry lobbyists that hold power over Washington.

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 http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/author…

NOAA finds “human fingerprints” on climate

July 28th, 2010  by Fiona Harvey

 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d1fd25c-9a69-…

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 http://planetark.org/wen/58965

Developing Nations See Cancun Climate Deal Tough.

Much of the UN rebuttal is mush and we will report on how this unfolds.

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Departing U.N. official calls Ban’s leadership ‘deplorable’ in 50-page memo.

Inga-Britt Ahlenius wrote a 50-page memo upon the end of her term as head of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services. (2008 Photo By Mark Garten/Associated Press)

By Colum Lynch

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/19/AR2010071904734.html?referrer=emailarticle

UNITED NATIONS — The outgoing chief of a U.N. office charged with combating corruption at the United Nations has issued a stinging rebuke of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, accusing him of undermining her efforts and leading the global institution into an era of decline, according to a confidential end-of-assignment report.

The memo by Inga-Britt Ahlenius, a Swedish auditor who stepped down Friday as undersecretary general of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, represents an extraordinary personal attack on Ban from a senior U.N. official. The memo also marks a challenge to Ban’s studiously cultivated image as a champion of accountability.

Shortly after taking office in 2007, Ban committed himself to restoring the United Nations’ reputation, which had been sullied by revelations of corruption in the agency’s oil-for-food program in Iraq.

But Ahlenius says that, rather than being an advocate for accountability, Ban, along with his top advisers, has systematically sought to undercut the independence of her office, initially by trying to set up a competing investigations unit under his control and then by thwarting her efforts to hire her own staff.

“Your actions are not only deplorable, but seriously reprehensible. . . . Your action is without precedent and in my opinion seriously embarrassing for yourself,” Ahlenius wrote in the 50-page memo to Ban, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “I regret to say that the secretariat now is in a process of decay.”

Ban’s top advisers said that Ahlenius’s memo constituted a deeply unbalanced account of their differences and that her criticism of Ban’s stewardship of the United Nations was patently unfair.

“A look at his record shows that Secretary General Ban has provided genuine visionary leadership on important issues from climate change to development to women’s empowerment. He has promoted the cause of gender balance in general as well as within the organization. He has led from the front on important political issues from Gaza to Haiti to Sudan,” Ban’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, wrote in a response.

“It is regrettable to note,” Nambiar added, “that many pertinent facts were overlooked or misrepresented” in Ahlenius’s memo.

The departure of Ahlenius, 72, coincides with a period of crisis in the United Nations’ internal investigations division. During the past two years, the world body has shed some of its top investigators. It has also failed to fill dozens of vacancies, including that of the chief of the investigations division in the Office of Internal Oversight Services. That post has been vacant since 2006, leaving a void in the United Nations’ ability to police itself, diplomats say.

“We are disappointed with the recent performance of [the U.N.'s] investigations division,” said Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. “The coming change in . . . leadership is an opportunity to bring about a significant improvement in its performance to increase oversight and transparency throughout the organization.”

The U.N. General Assembly established the Office of Internal Oversight Services in 1994 to conduct management audits of the United Nations’ principal departments and to conduct investigations into corruption and misconduct. The founding resolution granted the office “operational independence” but placed it under the authority of the secretary general and made it dependent on the U.N. departments it policed for much of its funding and administrative support.

The dispute between Ahlenius and Ban has underscored some of the resulting tensions and exposed a protracted and acrimonious struggle for power over the course of U.N. investigations.

While Ahlenius cited Ban’s move to set up a new investigations unit as a sign that he was seeking to undermine her independence, Nambiar said that it was intended to strengthen the United Nations’ ability to fight corruption.

Ahlenius also clashed with Ban over her efforts to hire a former federal prosecutor, Robert Appleton, who headed the U.N. Procurement Task Force, a temporary white-collar crime unit that carried out aggressive investigations into corruption in U.N. peacekeeping missions from 2006 to last year. The unit’s investigations led to an unprecedented number of misconduct findings by U.N. officials and prompted federal probes into corruption.

Ban’s advisers said they blocked Appleton’s appointment on the grounds that female candidates had not been properly considered and said that the final selection should have been made by Ban, not Ahlenius.

“The secretary general fully recognizes the operational independence of OIOS,” Nambiar said. But that, he said, “does not excuse her from applying the standard rules of recruitment.”

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The above story, as per – http://www.orf.at/#/stories/2004590/ - also echoed in Vienna.

Scheidende UNO-Diplomatin rechnet mit Ban ab.

Die scheidende Chefkontrolleurin der Vereinten Nationen geht laut Medienberichten mit Generalsekretär Ban Ki Moon hart ins Gericht. Ban habe ihre Arbeit als oberste Korruptionsbekämpferin unterlaufen und die UNO in eine Ära des Niedergangs geführt, schrieb Inga-Britt Ahlenius laut einem Bericht der „Washington Post“ gestern in einem vertraulichen Memorandum.

Entgegen seinen Ankündigungen zum Amtsantritt 2007 habe Ban die durch mehrere Affären angeschlagene Reputation der Vereinten Nationen nicht mit allen Mitteln geschützt.

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„Verwerflich“

Vielmehr habe er ihr Amt der Chefrevisorin mehr und mehr geschwächt, schreibe Ahlenius in dem 50-Seiten-Papier an Ban: „Ihr Handeln ist nicht nur bedauerlich, sondern sogar verwerflich.“ Es sei beispiellos und „meiner Meinung nach für Sie selbst beschämend“. Das Blatt zitierte: „Ich bedaure es, sagen zu müssen, dass das Sekretariat in einem Zerfallsprozess ist.“

Kritiker werfen Ban seit langem vor, die UNO nur zu verwalten und vor wirksamen politischen Initiativen zurückzuschrecken. UNO-Mitarbeiter wiesen die Vorwürfe in der „Washington Post“ als „unfair“ zurück. Ban habe mehrere politische Schwerpunkte gesetzt, etwa beim Klimaschutz und bei der Gleichstellung der Frau. Die Abrechnung der scheidenden Schwedin sei ein „höchst unausgewogener Ausdruck ihrer Differenzen“ mit Ban.,

CENTRAL AMERICA:  Doors Wide Open for Renewable Energy.
By Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Jul 15, 2010 (IPS) - Heavy reliance on petroleum imports, the need for electricity in rural areas, and the ongoing effort towards sustainable development have focused Central America’s attention on renewable energy. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t opposition.

This year, Honduras plans to have one of the largest wind energy farms in Latin America up and running, with an output of 100 megawatts of electricity.

In the 1980s, about 75 percent of the region’s electricity came from renewable sources — primarily hydroelectric dams. That portion has now dropped to 50 percent, according to the non-governmental Energy Network Foundation BUN-CA, based in Costa Rica. The rest comes from hydrocarbon- based sources.

Nicaragua, meanwhile, through its Ministry of Energy and Mines, announced in May that all of the energy generated in 2016 would come from renewable sources through the implementation of the National Programme for Sustainable Electrification and Renewable Energies.

He said that at the “macro” level, the main objective is to achieve 100 percent energy from renewable sources, while at the “micro” level the goal is to extend the electrical network in rural areas.

About 10 million people in Central America, of a total population of 40 million in the region, do not have electricity in their homes.

In El Salvador, which is already producing biofuels and has tapped into solar and geothermal energy, the Japan International Cooperation Agency will finance 1.5 million dollars for drafting a master plan for developing renewable energies, to begin at year’s end.

Of the 22,000 megawatts of potentially exploitable hydro-energy, the Central American isthmus has developed just 17 percent, according to the Central American Electrification Council.

Costa Rica is the region’s leading producer of clean energy, with 80 percent coming from hydroelectric sources, according to the governmental Costa Rican Institute of Electricity (ICE).

President Laura Chinchilla announced that she wants to make Costa Rica the first country in the world to run 100 percent on renewable energy.

But it is no easy task. Guatemala’s renewable energy coordinator at its Ministry of Energy, Otto Ruiz Balcárcel, told IPS that there is a great deal of misinformation about renewable energy, which limits investment in the sector.

“They are transnational or national businesses that use the water for their own benefit, and the communities just watch it go by,” he said.

This is a sequel to: http://www.sustainabilitank.info/page/2/#16610

“Will a new Energy Policy Institute, by studying complex systems, to be established at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, be a factor in the saving of the US and the World?”

It is written after we received two very interesting documents:

(a) The Workshop Summary of the Washington December 8-9, 2009 meeting on “Developing Sustainable Human Space Exploration Policy.”

(b) the powerpoint part of a June 22, 2010 presentation titled “JOULE: Joining Our Understandings to Leverage Energy Analyses, Decisions, Engineering, Technology, and Policy” at the University of Alabama Huntsville Center for Eystems Studies, the Shelby Center, Huntsville.

First let me say that I love this new meaning for JOULE – “JOINING OUR UNDERSTANDING TO LEVERAGE ENERGY – analysis, decisions, engineering, technology and policy.”

This is actually exactly what we started out by hoping that it might take hold of the opportunities that became available at Huntsville.

The workshop makes it clear that the present situation of Huntsville is under attack in Washington, and the powerpoint presentation shows that Huntsville is looking at acceptable new outlets and they came up with a start.

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From the December 2009 very defensive Washington workshop, that by the way happened by coincidence at the same time the Climate meeting was going on in Copenhagen, but made no single reference to anything that could have been helpful to the US position in Copenhagen, we pick up, talking just of Human Space Exploration – the following points – and please note – not in any original order:

 http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/…

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Yvo de Boer officially steps down today from his post as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), making way for incoming UNFCCC chief Christiana Figueres.

Mr. de Boer took over the position in September of 2006, shepherding the unwieldy international climate negotiating process through several landmark sessions, including Bali in 2007 and Copenhagen last year. Everyone, including de Boer, was disappointed by the outcome of COP15, yet he defends the work of his UNFCCC colleagues in the face of near insurmountable odds and relentless international acrimony throughout COP15.

And it was at the feet of the international community that de Boer laid some of his harshest criticism before stepping down from the UNFCCC.

The one thing that has appalled me most is to witness the degree to which the international community is cutting off its nose to spite its face,” de Boer said at a Hong Kong business conference last week.

“(The world) is behaving as though climate change is somebody else’s problem… This is in the collective interest and it’s a collective challenge” he said, adding that ”Unless we deal with that challenge … we really are in big trouble.”

Yvo de Boer’s final round of international negotiations ended last month with the conclusion of two weeks of talks in Bonn, Germany in preparation for CO16 in Cancun, Mexico. Despite  de Boer’s cautious optimism for progress as the outcome of the Bonn talks, few hold out the kind of expectations for a “fair and binding” climate deal at COP16 that haunted COP15.

Upon handing the reigns to Figueres, who shocked some last month with her assessment that a “final, all-ecompassing” international climate treaty would likely take decades to achieve, de Boer will take up a climate advisory job at consulting firm KPMG.

Richard Attias (born 1959 in Morocc) – he is a  global events producer. As chairman of PublicisLive Attias was the producer of the World Economic Forum in Davos for over fifteen years. His personal history and the history of the organizations he was involved with are plainly fascinating and we write this longer posting because we feel that he is embarking now upon even a greater voyage with his new NEW YORK FORUM, then in his previous activities.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Geneva-based non-profit foundation best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world, including health and the environment. Beside meetings, the WEF produces a series of research reports, and engages its members in sector specific initiatives. WEF also organizes the “Annual Meeting of the New Champions” in China, and a series of regional meetings throughout the year. In 2008 those regional meetings included meetings on Europe and Central Asia, East Asia, the Russia CEO Roundtable, Africa, the Middle East, and the World Economic Forum on Latin America. In 2008 it launched the “Summit on the Global Agenda” in Dubai.

The WEF was founded in 1971 by Klaus Martin Schwab, a German-born business professor at the University of Geneva. Originally named the European Management Forum, it changed its name to the World Economic Forum in 1987 and sought to broaden its vision further to include providing a platform for resolving international conflicts.

In the summer of 1971 Schwab invited 444 executives from Western European firms to the first European Management Symposium held in the Davos Congress Centre, under the patronage of the European Commission and European industrial associations, where Schwab sought to introduce European firms to US management practices. He then founded the WEF as a non-profit organization based in Cologny, Geneva, and drew European business leaders to Davos for their annual meetings each January.

Schwab developed the “stakeholder” management approach which based corporate success on managers taking account of all interests: not merely shareholders, clients and customers, but employees and the communities within which the firm is situated, and governments. Events in 1973 including the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate mechanism, and the Arab-Israeli War, saw the annual meeting expand its focus from management to economic and social issues, and political leaders were invited for the first time to Davos in January 1974.

As the years went by, political leaders began to use Davos as a neutral platform to resolve their differences. The Davos Declaration was signed in 1988 by Greece and Turkey, helping them turn back from the brink of war. In 1992 South African President F. W. de Klerk met with Nelson Mandela and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi at the Annual Meeting, their first joint appearance outside South Africa. At the 1994 Annual Meeting, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat reached a draft agreement on Gaza and Jericho. In 2008 Bill Gates gave a keynote speech on Creative Capitalism, a form of capitalism that works both to generate profits and solve the world’s inequities, using market forces to better address the needs of the poor.

Frederik de Klerk and Nelson Mandela shake hands at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum held in Davos in January 1992.

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For The New York Forum

Contact:         Rubenstein Communications, Inc.

Iva Benson (212) 843-8271,  ibenson at rubenstein.com

Thomas Chiodo (212) 843-8289,  tchiodo at rubenstein.com

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The Reuters title says: “Rich-Poor Rifts Stall Progress At U.N. Climate Talks.” But really – this is not a “Rich and Poor” issues. In effect on both sides are the rich – perhaps it would br more fitting to talk of old rich and new rich that were made rich because the old rich do not perform up to their needs. There are many sides to this and eventually a solution will be found with US and China agreeing on a pact first. Now we hear of the US, the ALBA group, the SIDS, Southern Africa as the initial players. You bet that Saudi Arabia will throw more sticks into the spikes to help (?) the poor. We understand that of the 192-194 potential participants, this feast has 185 present. We note with interest that Germany in particular, and we assume with it the whole EU mechanism, will try to pay back the US for having been left outside the room in Copenhagen and will go their own way to fluster the US. We believe that the meek will have to lead and we mean the Small Island States. We will also watch carefully where Costa Rica will come down in the US – ALBA contest. This because coming July 1, 2010 it will be Christiana Figueres who takes over the UNFCCC mantle from Yvo de Boer.

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The June 1, 2010 Reuters reporting by Gerard Wynn Date: 01-Jun-10 from Bonn:

U.N. climate talks opened on Monday, exposing familiar rifts between rich and poor countries which delegates said were likely to delay a re-start of formal negotiations.

The 185-nation Bonn conference, which will run until June 11, is the biggest international meeting on climate change since a summit last December in Copenhagen failed to agree a new pact.

Several countries {the ALBA and more} said they could not give a green light to formal negotiations on a new text published in mid-May and which outlines a huge range of options for fighting climate change.

The Copenhagen summit last year struggled to overcome suspicion on how to share global effort to curb greenhouse gases under a new deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

On Monday differences re-emerged when a clutch of Latin American countries {the ALBA – our addition} said they could not start negotiations on the new text.

The United States said it did not think the new text was intended as a basis for negotiations and South Africa said the document put too much burden on developing countries.

The Latin American group including Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba said on Monday that the new text placed too much emphasis on the Copenhagen accord, which they opposed in December.

“The chair has prioritized the Copenhagen Accord,” said Rene Gonzalo Orellana Halkyer, a member of the Bolivian delegation, speaking on the sidelines of the talks in Bonn.

Bolivia also wanted tougher targets, for example to return atmospheric greenhouse gases to a level far below where they are already, he added.

Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe of Zimbabwe chairs the U.N. talks on forging agreement on global action and is expected to release a revised version next weekend, delegates said.

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FIRST STEP

The United States said it believed Mukahanana-Sangarwe’s text was not intended to be the basis of negotiations.

“Our view is that the text is Margaret’s effort to elicit views so she can develop a formal negotiating text,” said Jonathan Pershing, head of the U.S. delegation. “It’s a constructive next step.”

It remained to be seen whether countries can start negotiations on a revised text in the next two weeks, he told Reuters.

However Karsten Sach, head of Germany’s delegation, said: “We think it is a basis for negotiation.”

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An additional, specific gap to be addressed at the Bonn talks was whether or not developed countries should be allowed to exclude from their national greenhouse gases carbon emissions from chopping trees to produce renewable energy.

That rule, allowed under the existing Kyoto Protocol, would represent “fraudulent accounting,” said the head of Papua New Guinea’s delegation, Kevin Conrad.

UNEP leads 27 countries of the Wider Caribbean on  “land-based pollution” at an International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting in Panama City based on the ISTAC of Kingston, Jamaica (Interim Scientific, Technical and Advisory Committee to the Cartagena Convention. Will they touch nevertheless the menacing Deep-Water Oil-Well Blow-Out?

from: James Sniffen <sniffenj@un.org>

UNEP/CEP PRESS RELEASE: REGIONAL GOVERNMENT POLLUTION EXPERTS MEET IN PANAMA.

Panama City, 24th May, 2010:

Over 50 pollution control experts from 27 countries of the Wider Caribbean
gather today (Monday 24th May) in Panama City at the invitation of the
United Nations Environment Programme’s Caribbean Environment Programme
(UNEP CEP) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

The gathering of experts for the 5th Meeting of the Interim Scientific, Technical and Advisory Committee (ISTAC) to the Protocol concerning pollution from land-based sources, commonly known as the LBS Protocol, will last for five days.  The CEP is the Secretariat for this Protocol and is based in Kingston, Jamaica.

The LBS Protocol is one of three agreements under the Convention for the
Protection and Development of the Marine Environment in the Wider Caribbean
Region (the Cartagena Convention).  It establishes regional guidelines and
standards for reducing the impact of pollution on the coastal and marine
environment, and on human health.   Over 80% of the pollution of the marine
environment of the Wider Caribbean is estimated to originate from land
based sources and activities.

Panama, the host country, is one of only six countries to have ratified the LBS Protocol.  The others are Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Saint Lucia, France and the United States.  Discussions during the meeting will focus on measures to increase the region’s commitment to ratify the Protocol, and have it enter into force and become international law as soon as possible.

In support of regional cooperation, UNEP CEP is partnering with the IMO and their joint Regional Activity Centre for Oil Spills (RAC REMPEITC) to bring together experts from environmental agencies, maritime authorities and port administrations for this 5th LBS ISTAC.

Delegates are expected to identify practical measures to improve the implementation of marine environmental agreements including the IMO London Convention on the control of pollution from dumping of wastes at sea and the MARPOL Convention on the prevention of pollution of the marine environment by ships.

According to Nelson Andrade, Coordinator of UNEP CEP”   “It is vital that
Governments adopt a more integrated approach to reducing pollution from
land and marine based sources”.  He noted that the continued partnership
between UNEP and IMO will help to effectively implement the Cartagena
Convention and its three Protocols and to reduce marine contamination.

Meeting Participants are also expected to review recent achievements of the
UNEP CEP to reduce and control marine pollution and to endorse a new work
plan and budget for 2010-2011.

For additional information, please contact:

Christopher Corbin,Programme Officer,
Assessment and Management of Environment Pollution (AMEP),
Regional Co-ordinating Unit, UNEP CEP
Kingston, Jamaica
Telephone: (876) 922-9267 — Fax: (876) 922-9292
http://www.cep.unep.org; cjc@cep.unep.org;

About UNEP’s Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) -  The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) in 1976 under the framework of its Regional Seas Programme.   It was based on the importance and value of the Wider Caribbean Region’s fragile and vulnerable coastal and marine ecosystems including an abundant and mainly endemic flora and fauna,

A Caribbean Action Plan was adopted by the Caribbean countries and led to the adoption, in 1983, of the only current regional, legally-binding agreement for the protection of the marine environment, the Cartagena Convention.  The Convention and its first Protocol (Oil Spill) entered into force in 1986.

Two other protocols were developed by the region – the Protocols on Special Protected Areas and Wildlife (SPAW) and the Control of Pollution from Land Based Sources (LBS) in 1990 and 1999 respectively.

The SPAW Protocol entered into force in 2000, whereas three ratifying countries are still needed for the LBS Protocol.

The Caribbean Regional Coordinating Unit (UNEP-CAR/RCU) serves as the Secretariat to the Cartagena Convention and is based in Kingston, Jamaica.

Each Protocol is served by a Regional Activity Centre.  These Centres are
based in the Netherlands Antilles (Regional Marine Pollution Emergency
Information and Training Center for the Wider Caribbean, RAC/REMPEITC) for
the Oil Spills Protocol, Guadeloupe (RAC/SPAW) for the SPAW Protocol, Cuba
(Centre of Engineering and Environmental Management of Coasts and Bays) and
Trinidad & Tobago (Institute of Marine Affairs) for the LBS Protocol.

From Jeannette Larue, Coordinator Environmental Education, Ministry of Education, Seychelles. 5/19/2010.

To celebrate Earth Day, the Ministry of Education in Seychelles, organized a public speaking competition for its young people to give their views on climate change. Please find attached an article on the outcomes.

Calderón’s Washington Visit. May 19, 2010.

Calderón and Obama Condemn Arizona Immigration Law

U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderón to Washington this week where the two leaders decried a tough immigration law approved by Arizona last month. During remarks, Obama said he would ask the Department of Justice to take a “very close look” at the law to determine its constitutionality. “We’re examining any implications, especially for civil rights, because in the United States of America, no law-abiding person, be they an American citizen, a legal immigrant, or a visitor or tourist from Mexico, should ever be subject to suspicion simply because of what they look like.” Calderón rejected SB1070 as “discriminatory.” In his first official visit to Washington, the Mexican president will deliver remarks to U.S. Congress on Thursday. Read an AS/COA analysis about Calderón’s visit.

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News Alert: Financial overhaul dealt setback – Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Senate votes to continue debating a bill that would overhaul financial regulations, dealing a setback to Democratic leaders, who wanted to move toward a final vote on the legislation. The motion to end debate fell three votes short of the two-thirds majority required.

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com:
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/NQU5FR/JK83W/N3Z9G3/2XP5K3/TON4I/AZ/t

The plan was for the financial-regulation reform bill to have a vote for cloture — that is to say, a vote to end debate and move to a final vote — at 2 p.m. today. But a handful Senate Democrats angry that their amendments haven’t been considered derailed that. At 3:15 p.m., Democrats called an emergency caucus meeting. About 30 minutes after that meeting, Majority Leader Harry Reid called for a cloture vote.

He lost; 57-42.

And he lost because he lost Democrats. Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins actually voted for cloture. Their votes were canceled out by Democrats like Maria Cantwell and Russ Feingold, who aren’t ready to give up on their amendments.

Before getting to what that means, it’s worth saying why Reid wants to move to a final vote. The answer is floor time. Next week, the Senate is scheduled to take up the next war supplemental, which will have funding both for Iraq and Afghanistan and also for various disaster-relief efforts, and it will take up a bill to extend economic supports for the jobless.

If the Senate doesn’t finish financial regulation this week, it probably can’t do those bills next week because the GOP’s routine filibusters mean that each vote will require days of floor time. And the plan, as of now, is for the Senate to adjourn come Memorial Day.

Of course, the Senate could just choose to work past Memorial Day, which would solve the problem of floor time.

As for what happens now, debate on financial regulation will continue. More amendments will be considered, at least if Democrats and Republicans can come to an agreement on whether to consider them. And another cloture vote will have to be called. That might be bad for the Senate schedule, but it’s probably good for the bill. This is the rare process in which the amendments are making the legislation substantially better. If the Senate has to work over Memorial Day to accommodate that process, so be it.

UN NAMES COSTA RICAN AS NEW CLIMATE CHANGE CHIEF.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today appointed Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica to lead United Nations efforts to combat climate change.

She will take the reins of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from Yvo de Boer, who announced that he was stepping down to pursue new opportunities to advance progress on the issue in the private sector and academia.

“Ms. Figueres is an international leader on strategies to address global climate change and brings to this position a passion for the issue, deep knowledge of the stakeholders and valuable hands-on experience with the public sector, non-profit sector and private sector,” Mr. Ban’s spokesperson, Martin Nesirky, said in announcing the decision.

She has been involved in climate change negotiations since 1995, serving as a negotiator for both the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol.

Ms. Figueres founded the Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas (CSDA), a non-profit think tank for climate change policy and capacity building, and has both worked on and served on the boards of non-governmental organizations intimately involved in climate change issues.

“There is no task that is more urgent, more compelling or more sacred than that of protecting the climate of our planet for our children and grandchildren,” she said, upon hearing that she was appointed as the new Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC.

The news comes five months after the Copenhagen Accord was reached at last December’s UN conference in the Danish capital.

That non-binding pact aims to jump-start immediate action on climate change and guide negotiations on long-term action, pledging to raise $100 billion annually by 2020. It also includes an agreement to working towards curbing global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius and efforts to reduce or limit emissions.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that to stave off the worst effects of climate change, industrialized countries must slash emissions by 25 to 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, and that global emissions must be halved by 2050.

The next round of high-level global talks on climate change will be held later this year in Cancun, Mexico.

When announcing his resignation earlier this year, Mr. de Boer said, “I have always maintained that while governments provide the necessary policy framework, the real solutions must come from business.”

Countries did not reach a clear legal agreement in Copenhagen, but, he noted, “the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen.”

With 194 Parties, UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which has been ratified by 190 of the UNFCCC parties. Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments.

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Figueres, 53, will take the helm just five months before 193 nations reconvene in Cancun, Mexico, in December for another attempt to reach a worldwide legal agreement on controlling greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for the gradual heating of the Earth that scientists predict will worsen weather-related disasters.

De Boer, European Union officials and others are cautioning that the Cancun conference probably will yield only a first answer on curbing greenhouse gases, and a legally binding climate change treaty isn’t likely until next year at the earliest.

Figueres has a long history with the climate change convention: From 2007 to 2009 she was vice president of its bureau, representing Latin America and the Caribbean, and over the years she has chaired numerous international negotiations.

Her father, Jose Figueres, who led the 1948 revolution and founded modern democracy in Costa Rica, was president of the country three times. Her mother, Karen Olsen Beck, served as Costa Rican ambassador to Israel in 1982 and was elected a member of Congress from 1990-1994.

Figueres graduated from Swarthmore College in 1979 and received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

In 1994, she became the director of the technical secretariat of the Renewable Energy in the Americas program, today housed at the Organization of the American States. The following year she founded and became executive director of the Center for Sustainable Development in the Americas, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the participation of Latin American countries in the Climate Change Convention.

She is married, has two daughters and is based in the United States, outside Washington, D.C.

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The Green blog spoke with her recently about her candidacy and how she might jump-start negotiations toward a meaningful climate accord.

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Figueres is the first leader of the U.N. climate change secretariat to come from a developing country.  She beat fellow short-listed candidate Marthinus van Schalkwyk, a former South African environment minister.

The scale of Figueres’ task is underscored by a Copenhagen summit where 120 world leaders failed to reach a binding deal, pledging instead to mobilize $30 billion from 2010-2012 to help poor countries deal with droughts and floods, and to try to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

This year, negotiators have agreed little except to hold two extra sessions in the run-up to a meeting in Cancun, Mexico, that begins in late November.  Many policymakers expect the Mexico meeting to fall short of a binding deal, looking to 2011 for agreement on a successor to Kyoto, whose provisions expire in 2012.

Some analysts are doubtful of any new formal, binding pact beyond Kyoto, expecting instead a patchwork of national targets and schemes.

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GOOD FOR BUSINESS:

In an interview with Reuters after her appointment, Figueres said the world can salvage a new deal to combat global warming but this was not a priority for 2010. Rich countries must first fulfill their pledges on climate aid, she said. “Parties need to prove to themselves that issues already on the table, such as fast-tracking financing, that’s not just on paper but can also be delivered. That’s the focus of Cancun,” she said.

The appointment of a U.N. climate chief from the South was widely forecast after a rich-poor rift in Copenhagen, where developing countries said the industrialized world was shirking its historical responsibility for causing climate change. Figueres has been a member of the Costa Rican climate negotiating team since 1995 and has held many senior posts in the U.N. climate process. Her father, Jose Figueres Ferrer, was president of Costa Rica three times.

Danish Climate and Energy Minister Lykke Friis said Figueres won unanimous support on Monday from key nations at a meeting of the U.N. climate bureau in Bonn. “She is highly experienced, she is well connected, she knows all the negotiators. She knows the dossiers,” Friis said.

U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern called her “well qualified.”

One source close to the matter said: “If they wanted a technical bureaucrat, she’s probably as good as you’ll get.” Business and those involved in the carbon market would welcome Figueres, said Andrei Marcu, head of regulatory and policy affairs at oil trading firm Mercuria. “From a business point of view, she has been willing to listen in the past and we hope she will continue to do so,” he said. Figueres has chaired talks to increase transparency in the global carbon offset market under Kyoto, which delivers about $6.5 billion finance annually to help developing countries cut greenhouse gas emissions.

One source said the small island developing states — among those most at risk from climate change — argued strongly for Figueres, saying they wanted someone from a smaller nation. Costa Rica has one of the world’s most environmentally friendly policies, including a strong focus on ecotourism and a long-term goal of becoming “carbon neutral,” under which industrial emissions would be soaked up by forests.

At UN, Bolivia’s Morales Hits Obama “Blackmail” and Lack of Change, “Sign Kyoto”

UNITED NATIONS, May 8 — “Maybe the color of the skin of the U.S. President has changed,” Bolivian President Evo Morales told the Press on Friday, “but nothing else has changed.” Video here, from Minute 47:45.

Inner City Press asked Morales about reports in the Latin American press that the U.S. had “blackmailed” Bolivia and Ecuador by cutting off aid for not signing the Copenhagen Accord on climate change. Video here, from Minute 26:24.

Morales confirmed that “Ecuador lost $2 million, and Bolivia lost $3 million,” but said these were more than made up for by money from Venezuela and Brazil. “They took away the Millennium Account,” he said. “We don’t have any trade preferences any more. But we’re better off than before.”

Last month Morales convened an alternative Copenhagen meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Morales contrasts the non-binding Copenhagen Accord with the previous binding Kyoto protocol. On Friday he said the U.S. is “making a mistake” by cutting aid, that they could cooperate if the U.S. just “signed the Kyoto Protocol.”

Evo Morales at UN, change he can believe in not shown

To Cochabamba, the UN sent its Under Secretary General for Latin America, Alicia Barcena, to attend. She was reportedly booed as she read a statement from Ban Ki-moon, then offered “if you don’t want us here, then we will withdraw … we also represent peoples.”

Inner City Press asked Morales if, as requested in connection with the Cochabamba “cumbre,” he had raised the issue of the U.S. blackmail to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and if so what Ban had said. Morales did not answer this part of the question.

Since Ban is focused on obtaining a second term, which could be blocked by the U.S., France, UK, Russia or China, it is unlikely he would issue any criticism of the U.S., even about cutting off aid to countries like Bolivia and Ecuador. Millennium Development Goals, indeed.

One issue that was raised in the Morales group’s meeting with Ban was the upcoming naming of a new head of the UNFCCC, to lead the UN climate change talks into Cancun. Last week Inner City Press reported, based on tips from well placed Ambassadors, that the UN’s short list of four consists of the candidates from Costa Rica, India, South Africa and Hungary. The last is an inside candidate who already works for Ban Ki-moon, Janos Pasztor, who has recused himself from much of his work while seeking the UNFCCC post. We’ll see.

Footnote: given Evo Morales’ direct attack on Barack Obama, in a televised and well attended UN press conference, one might have expected the US Mission to the UN to have issued some response.  But so far, there’s been no statement from the US.

22 March 2010

Press Conference to Introduce Costa Rica’s Candidate for Executive Secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Christiana Figueres, Costa Rica’s nominee for Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said today that she intended to bring her more than 15 years’ experience of working on climate change issues to bear should her bid succeed.

Ms. Figueres said at a Headquarters press conference that she agreed with the Secretary-General’s frequent description of climate change as the greatest challenge facing the human family, adding that the December Copenhagen Conference had made that point even more evident and “painful”.

Introducing Ms. Figueres, Jorge Urbina, Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to the United Nations, said she had been active in environmental issues, particularly climate change, adding that his country, among the first to sign up to the Copenhagen Accord, had decided to nominate her to head the Climate change Convention.

Ms. Figueres said that, inspired by United States astronaut Neil Armstrong’s words, she liked to think of the Copenhagen Accord as a “big step for the community of nations, but a very small step for the planet”.  It was a big step for the community of nations because, for the first time, the international community had agreed to strive for a maximum temperature increase of fewer than 2? Celsius, and second, all large emitters, as well as many small ones, had actually made public mitigation pledges in a multilateral context.  That had been somewhat unforeseeable before Copenhagen, she noted, because previously, many countries, particularly large ones, had made unilateral pledges, but only within their own sovereign spheres rather than inserting them into a multilateral framework, which was crucial for the process.

Third, the Copenhagen Accord called for a commitment to transparency in accounting for emission reductions, which was the only way to know whether there was forward movement or not, she said.  Fourth, Member States had a commitment urgently to initiate funding for adaptation and mitigation to the point where “we have a commitment from the industrialized countries to put on the table $30 billion over the next three years, and then ratchet that up to $100 billion per year by the year 2020”.  Those efforts were already under way, she said.  Fifth, was acknowledgement of the important role of deforestation both as one of the causes, but more importantly, as a potential contribution to resolution of the problem, she said, adding that there was finally, for the first time, recognition of the need to provide incentives for low-emission countries.

Explaining why she considered Copenhagen “a small step for the planet”, she said there was a need further to specify the sub-2? Celsius, noting that “below 2 degrees has a huge range”.  Was it 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7? she asked.  “That may not mean much to those in industrialized countries, but to the most vulnerable countries, the small island States, the difference between 1.5 and 1.6 or 1.7 is the difference of survival, so that needs to be further specified as we move further into the negotiations.”

She went on to point out that the current level of mitigation pledges on the table was actually not enough even to reach the 2? Celsius maximum.  Most of the several available analyses of the pledges agreed that the maximum temperature would end up at a 3? Celsius maximum, she said, noting that some had even suggested that it could end up at 3.9? Celsius, which was clearly insufficient.

The Copenhagen Accord did not provide for mid- and long-term reductions, long-term reductions for industrialized countries, or long-term reductions as a global effort by all countries, she continued.  Moreover, it did not establish any financing architecture.  While $30 billion could be on the table this year, it was not clear how the funds would be funnelled or what criteria would be used to allocate them.

Many countries would also argue that the Copenhagen Accord was not a legally binding instrument, which was the aspiration of many countries as they travelled to the Danish capital, she said, emphasizing the importance of responding to that diverse picture of strengths and weaknesses in order to move forward, particularly on how to allow the Accord to shed some light on the ongoing negotiations, given that some countries had not signed on.

With some 111 countries signed up as of last week, those not yet on board presented a challenge for the negotiations, she said.  “The Copenhagen Accord, as it was not adopted by the Conference of the Parties, but rather taken note of, is not considered an agreement of the Conference of the Parties and will have to be treated as political direction and political guidance that goes into the current negotiation tracks, which are the Kyoto Protocol and long-term cooperative action,” she added.

Regarding the role of the many other forums in which climate change was under discussion ?? among them the G-20, the Major Emissions Forum (MEF), bilateral and multilateral exchanges and informal consultations, as well as meetings of the Basic Group of Countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China, the developing world’s major emitters) ?? they were all “helpful” in generating new ideas, but it was very clear that all of those ideas needed to be funnelled back into the Climate Change Convention since only the United Nations actually provided the framework to give a voice to the concerns and interests of all countries.  While it was difficult to work within the United Nations context, it was “absolutely impossible” to work outside it, she stressed.

She emphasized this year’s Cancun Summit had to be “quite different” from Copenhagen since it must be results-oriented.  While the past few years had been spent on creating the architecture for a new chapter of the climate regime, it may be time to shift the focus from architecture to very concrete deliverables, she said.  However, such a shift would present challenges of its own because Member States had to ensure that there was no gap in the regime as the start forward was made as the Kyoto Protocol’s commitment period expired at the end of 2012.

While there were several concrete issues that could be tackled in Cancun, there was a need for innovation and creativity in approaching the issue in order to avoid the mistakes of the past, she stressed.  “That is a situation that we cannot have any more in Cancun.  We really need to be very creative and very innovative in how we approach our work while still remaining within the rules of procedures of the UN.”

It was widely agreed among participants that the Copenhagen process had been neither inclusive nor transparent, and thus it had not been effective and, above all, had eroded trust, she said.  “The challenge we are facing is that the atmosphere within which we have been working over the past few years has been pervaded by a deep lack of trust at all levels of the system.”  There was a lack of trust in climate science; in the negotiations themselves, and whether such a complex issue could be negotiated in a multilateral process; in whether Governments should take the lead, as opposed to the private sector or civil society; and between the North and South.  That erosion of trust pervaded the inside of the Secretariat itself.  “Way too many roads and not enough bridges have been built,” she declared, stressing that that could not continue.

She added:  “I don’t want to pretend that this is something that we can do overnight.  Trust-building is a process over time.  It will not happen miraculously.  It will certainly not appear magically in Cancun.  It is a very difficult path, but I am convinced that it is the path that we need to follow, that we need to embark on immediately.  It is the only path that will lead us to creativity, innovation and any sort of agreement in Cancun and beyond.”

Asked her view of the controversies surrounding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the science of climate change and other findings, Ms. Figueres said she welcomed the initiative that both IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had taken to conduct an independent review of the Panel’s procedures.  It must be understood clearly that the review was of the procedures and not the science itself, she stressed, adding that the mistakes made in the report were human errors and must be treated as such.  Over the years the IPCC had provided the scientific basis for advancing the negotiations and would continue to do so, she said, acknowledging, however, the inherent uncertainty in the science of climate change.  It was impossible to be absolutely certain for the very simple reason that it relied on “modelling” into the future.

In response to a question concerning whether she felt the appointment of fellow Costa Rican Rebeca Grynspan as Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) would affect her own appointment, she said she did not.  “I know Rebeca very well.  She is a brilliant woman.  We admire her very much in Costa Rica and she has, since coming to the UN in her various posts, gained the respect and admiration of many countries, and certainly of the UN system.  And I am grateful actually to Rebeca for what she has done for Costa Rica and for the UN.”

She continued:  “Yes, it may be a stretch to think that Costa Rica, a country of 4 million would have another position at the UN, but frankly, it is the Secretary-General’s call, and I trust the Secretary-General to make a decision based on the competence of the people who are presenting themselves; on their trajectory, on their track record.  And that is absolutely for him to decide.”

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CLIMATE CHANGE: Native Peoples Reject Market Mechanisms.
By Daniel Zueras

SAN JOSÉ, Apr 1, 2010 (IPS) – Solutions to global warming based on the logic of the market are a threat to the rights and way of life of indigenous peoples, the Latin American Indigenous Forum on Climate Change concluded this week in Costa Rica.

Proposals from governments and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as the Clean Development Mechanism and the UN-REDD Programme (United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), “are new forms of economic geopolitics” that endanger indigenous rights enshrined in treaties, says the final declaration of the forum, which ended Wednesday.

These proposals allow states and transnational corporations to promote dams, agrofuels, oil exploration, tree plantations and monoculture crops, that cause expropriation and destruction of indigenous peoples’ territories and the criminalisation, prosecution and even murder of native people, the document says.

The Forum, which opened Monday, included the Indigenous Council of Central America (CICA), the Meso-American Indigenous Council (CIMA), the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests, the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), the Indigenous Women’s Biodiversity Network (IWBN), the South American region of the Continental Network of Indigenous Women (ECMIA), the Intercultural Indigenous University (UII) and the International Indigenous Women’s Forum (IIWF).

Indigenous people and their organisations are putting forward holistic solutions that respect the rights of human beings and of Mother Earth, and that are not limited to Western scientific knowledge but include traditional wisdom, indigenous practices and innovations that have contributed to efforts to preserve ecosystems and biodiversity, the Forum declaration says.

There are some 400 different native groups in Latin America, totaling about 45 million people.

“We discussed indigenous peoples’ strategies and positions with respect to climate change,” the general coordinator of the Guatemala-based Sotz’il – Centre for Maya Research and Development, Ramiro Batzin, told IPS. Governments talk to each other without taking civil society into account, but indigenous people must be listened to, because they are the most affected by global warming, he said.

Climate change is due to “a model of development that has forced indigenous people into extreme poverty,” he said.

The worst harm they are suffering is lack of food, because of drought and floods, and the loss of their cultural identity.

The UN-REDD Programme provides for rich countries to pay for maintaining tropical forests in the developing world, in compensation for their carbon dioxide emissions, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

People here pinned their hopes on the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, to be hosted this month by the Bolivian government. The meeting is conceived as an alternative approach to the solutions explored to date by the international community.

Official climate negotiations will be resumed at the next United Nations conference in Mexico in November, after the failure of the Copenhagen meeting last December.

“The failure was to expect an outcome from such a meeting. In the midst of an economic crisis, industrialised countries do not want to sacrifice production,” Pascal Girot, Mesoamerica and Caribbean coordinator for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told IPS.

The present model “is exterminating Mother Nature,” said Batzin, who criticised the governments of Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala for not protesting against the documents that emerged from Copenhagen, which he said were “not very democratic and lacked transparency.”

Costa Rica, for instance, is planning to be a carbon neutral country by 2021, and to sell greenhouse gas emissions mitigation mechanisms to industrialised countries.

Mechanisms like the REDD programme must guarantee the long term survival of the world’s large forests. But to achieve that in Central America is very difficult, because of the pressures on forested areas, and because “investors want guarantees that the mechanisms will be measurable,” Girot said.

 http://www.innercitypress.com/fccc1figue…

By Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press

UNITED NATIONS, March 22, 2010 —

(1) The embattled chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, refuses to disclose how much money he makes from his simultaneous consultancies with Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and other institutions. Now, a candidate to head the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, has announced she would cease all outside consulting if given the “full time and a half” post.

Inner City Press asked Ms. Figueres on Monday for her view of Pachauri’s side business and other IPCC matters. “That would not be my choice,” Ms. Figueres said, of Pachauri’s side work for business. She also said diplomatically that “Doctor Pachauri, I believe is at freedom to allocate his time as he sees fit.” Video here, from Minute 27:18.

But shouldn’t Pachauri at least be required to formally disclose who he works for on the side, and how much he gets paid? He has resisted even this.

Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon and his spokesman for the UN view on this lack of transparency. The answer was that the IPCC is not a UN body, and that Pachauri would answer the questions himself. But when he came to the UN, seeking to use Ban Ki-moon as a prop and character witness, neither took any questions from the press.

* * *

(2) Ms. Figueres, the daughter of a former Costa Rican president, is viewed as a serious contender to replace Yvo de Boer, who is moving to KPMG (some are calling it cashing in). Inner City Press asked her if the recent appointment of another Costa Rican, Rebecca Grynspan, to the number two post at the UN Development Program might make it less likely she will get this job.

At UN, climate speakers Sept. 09, 2009 Costa Rica’s president there, gender balance not shown

“It may be a stretch,” Ms. Figueres agreed, that a country of four million people could get two high posts.

(3) India’s candidate is said to also have the support of ChinaInner City Press asked Ms. Figueres about the opposition to the Copenhagen process by the five Latin American countries in the Alba Group. Surprisingly to some, Ms. Figueres responded that the Alba Group was “correct in the moment,” that all now agree with them. An Alba Group-er afterwards said skeptically to Inner City Press, “Costa Rica never gets along with the Alba Group.”

Hey — climate change bring everyone together…

At UN, Ban and Pachauri Take No Questions on IPCC and Outside Income, Transparency Charade.

Back on December 21, Inner City Press asked Ban about Pachauri’s presumptive financial conflicts of interest and failure to disclose, but Mr. Ban did not answer the question.

UN’s Ban and Pachauri at photo op, no questions allowed

Later, Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky said that Ban did not have to respond to the controversies surrounding the IPCC, and that Pachauri would answer questions himself.

On Wednesday, Pachauri did not allow or answer any questions, and neither did Ban Ki-moon. What was first advertised as a sit down press conference at 12:30 was converted into a stand up stakeout from which the two men left immediately after speaking. So much for transparency.