BSR Conference November 2-5, 2010, Grand Hyatt, New York

Regularly ranked by  analysts as a top sustainability conference, the annual BSR Conference is one of the world’s largest events devoted to corporate responsibility.

Now entering its 18th year, the Conference features expert speakers, a creative program, and a global audience of senior business executives, entrepreneurs, and distinguished leaders from the public sector and civil society, giving participants opportunities to engage with sustainability leaders and practitioners.

In the post-Copenhagen era, and just before the Cancun meeting that is expected to emphasize country goals on the climate issue,there is no wonder that BSR has just released the BSR Report, “Communicating on Climate Policy Engagement: A Guide to Sustainability Reporting,”   http://www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_Communica…).

There is also a press release at CSRwire  http://www.csrwire.com/press/press_relea…) and short article in ClimateBiz  http://www.climatebiz.com/blog/2010/03/1…).

Key messages of this short report:

1. Climate policy engagement has become a critical aspect of climate-related sustainability reporting, joining 1) impacts and 2) risks and opportunities as a key climate communication topic (p 5)

2. Stakeholders want companies to lead in policy-driven climate solutions and discuss their efforts—and they no longer need to “reduce first” (p 12)

3. In response to patchy advice about communicating efforts, we examine 150+ companies’ materials to show reporting in 5 mechanisms and 3 themes (p 5-7; and Appendix 1 and 2)

4. “Engagement” means more than lobbying and political spending. It includes calling-to-action more generally, plus informing, enabling, and stage-setting, which we summarize in a detailed framework (p 8)

5. Communicating on climate policy engagement should include governance, strategy, and activities integrated together. This enhances credibility, promotes meaningful dialogue, and fulfills multiple reporting needs (pp 13-17)

Further they say:

As we look towards COP16 and beyond, BSR hopes this guide will help companies that are not yet engaged in promoting strong climate policy the confidence they need to do so, while enabling more meaningful discussion about the proper role of business in the climate policy process—and movement towards climate stability in general.

Ryan Schuchard
Manager, Research & Innovation

BSR
111 Sutter Street, 12th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94104 USA
+1 415 984 3264
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State of the Planet, March 25, 2010.

From The Earth Institute, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Thursday, March 25, 2010 -  8:30am-5:30pm EDT

Beijing, London, Nairobi, New Delhi, New York, via live links/webcast

New York site: Lerner Hall, Columbia University, 115 St/Broadway

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Webcast/event site: http://www.stateoftheplanet.org/

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The State of the Planet conference, held every two years, brings together insights on critical issues from the world’s most influential thinkers and leaders. This year, the Earth Institute, The Economist and Ericsson join forces to bring the conversation to the global community. With broadband access enabled by Ericsson, live events in five cities will be brought together in real time, moderated by Economist journalists. Viewers at home can participate via interactive online tools and discussion boards.

Four major topics are on the table: the science and politics of climate change; healing the world economy in an environmentally sustainable way; the ongoing challenge of ending extreme poverty; and how we can build and strengthen international systems able to deal with continuing crises that span borders.

Speakers include:  UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon; President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa of Mexico; Prince Albert II of Monaco; Sanjeev Chadha, CEO of Pepsico India; Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme; Xu Jintao, head of the environmental economics program, Peking University; and many others. Moderator: Al Jazeera journalist Riz Khan. Hosts of the event are: Earth Institute director Jeffrey D. Sachs; Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg; and Matthew Bishop, American business editor and New York bureau chief of The Economist.

New York press registration/info: Kevin Krajick kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu 212-854-9729

Beijing: brookings@tsinghua.edu.cn

Nairobi: Nick Nuttall  nick.nuttall@unep.org

New Delhi: Abhijit Sinha  Abhijit.sinha@teri.res.in

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DRAFT AGENDA –  New York, NY

March 25, 2010

8:30 a.m. EDT     Video Introduction

Welcome and Introduction by Event Hosts:

• Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Earth Institute
• Hans Vestberg, Ericsson
• Matthew Bishop, The Economist

Introduction of Global Sites:  Riz Khan, Al Jazeera English (Master of Ceremonies).

8:55 a.m. EDT SESSION I:  CLIMATE CHANGE – What Would It Take to Complete the Climate Deal?

In recent months, the world saw failed negotiations in Copenhagen, attacks on the validity of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and calls from politicians to open criminal investigations into climate science.  In this context, discussion is likely to go beyond “completion” of a climate deal to delve into the true state of our knowledge; how the world perceives it; and whether, and how, the world can move forward toward real action on climate change.

New York

Event Site Host: The Earth Institute, Columbia University

Moderator: Matthew Bishop, American Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief, The Economist
Panelists:

• Wallace S. Broecker, Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University
• Mark Cane, G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences and Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University
• Johan Rockström, Executive Director, Stockholm Environment Institute and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University

Beijing

Event Site Host: Brookings Institution, Tshingua University

Moderator: James Miles, China Correspondent, The Economist

Panelists:

• Xiao Geng, Director, Brookings Tsinghua Center for Public Policy; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution (speaking from Beijing)
• Xu Jintao, Professor of Natural Resource Economics; Head of the Environmental Economics Program in China, Peking University
• Jiang Kejun, Research Professor and Director, Energy Systems Analysis and Market Analysis Division, Energy Research Institute, National Development and Reform Commission
• Qi Ye, Professor of Environmental Policy and Management; Director; Climate Policy Institute, Tsinghua University

Monaco – HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco

New Delhi – Event Site Host: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)

Moderator:  Simon Cox, Correspondent, The Economist

Panelist:

• Nitin Desai, Former UN Under-Secretary-General; Distinguished Fellow, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) (TBC)

10:30 a.m. EDT   Break

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10:45 a.m. EDT SESSION II:  POVERTY – How Do We Achieve the Millennium Development Goals?

Only five years remain until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the world’s agreed-upon targets to end extreme poverty and fight hunger and disease. This year is pivotal. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to attend a summit in New York September 20-22, to boost progress toward the MDGs and agree on a plan of action to achieve them. The prospect of falling short of the goals due to lack of commitment is real, but achieving the MDGs remains feasible with adequate commitment, policies, resources and effort.

New York

Event Site Host: The Earth Institute, Columbia University

Moderator:  Matthew Bishop, American Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief, The Economist

Panelists:

• HRH Princess Máxima of the Netherlands, UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development
• Glenn Denning, Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University
• Hans Vestberg, President and CEO, Ericsson

Nairobi (Special Focus: Is Green Growth the Answer for Africa?)

Event Site Host: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Moderator: Jonathan Ledgard, Correspondent, The Economist

Panelists:

• James Mwangi , Group Managing Director and CEO, Equity Bank
• Sylvia Mwichuli Mudasia, Director of Africa Communications, UN Millennium Campaign
• Achim Steiner, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); UN Under-Secretary-General

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12:15 p.m. EDT  Lunch

1:30 p.m. EDT     Keynote Address

President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, Mexico (speaking from Mexico City)

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1:58 p.m. EDT     SESSION III:  ECONOMIC RECOVERY – What Does a Green Recovery Look Like?

This session will deal with two colliding questions. First: How do we haul the world out of the current economic recession? Second: Given that economic activity helps drive environmental degradation, how do we make a recovery environmentally sustainable? Discussion may start with shorter-term questions of money and finance, but will quickly move on to longer-term ones on how the world economy fits in with the usage or conservation of  natural resources; systems of energy generation, old and new; and the survival or fall of natural ecosystems.

New York

Event Site Host: The Earth Institute, Columbia University

Moderator: Riz Khan, Host of the Riz Khan Show, Al Jazeera English
Panelists:

• Sanjeev Chadha, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo India
• Geoffrey Heal, Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility and Professor of Economics and Finance, Columbia University
• Peter  Wierenga, Executive Vice President and CEO,  Philips Research

London

Event Site Host: The Economist

Moderator: John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist, London

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3:55 p.m. EDT     SESSION IV:  How Can an International System Be Built To Deal with Transnational Issues?

4:00 p.m. EDT     Keynote Address

Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General

The challenges of sustainable development—whether heading off climate change, fighting extreme poverty, stabilizing populations, or ensuring adequate water supplies for human use and crops—must all harness actions from a wide array of institutions. Gaining cooperation among the many stakeholders involved is the toughest challenge of all. In the countdown to achieving the MDGs by 2015, and in the midst of a global economic crisis, the need to strengthen global cooperation has become an emergency rather than simply a matter of urgency. Strengthening global partnerships in the areas of aid, trade, debt relief, and access to affordable medicines and new technologies is critical to prevent a decline in development.

New York

Event Site Host: The Earth Institute, Columbia University

Moderator: Riz Khan, Host of the Riz Khan Show, Al Jazeera English

Panelists:

• Matthew Bishop, American Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief, The Economist, New York
• Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute, Columbia University
• Rajiv Shah, Administrator, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (TBC)
• Ann Veneman, Executive Director, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

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5:17 p.m. EDT     Wrap-Up: Jeffrey D. Sachs, Hans Vestberg and Matthew Bishop

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

MORE INFORMATION:

Kevin Krajick, The Earth Institute
212-854-9729
kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu

Dayna De Simone, The Economist

Daynadesimone@economist.com

Ericsson Corporate Public & Media Relations

Phone: +46 10 719 69 92

The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. Through interdisciplinary research among more than 500 scientists in diverse fields, the Institute is adding to the knowledge necessary for addressing the challenges of the 21st century and beyond. With over two dozen associated degree curricula and a vibrant fellowship program, the Earth Institute is educating new leaders to become professionals and scholars in the growing field of sustainable development. We work alongside governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals to devise innovative strategies to protect the future of our planet.

The Economist, edited in London since 1843, is a weekly international news and business publication offering clear reporting, commentary and analysis on world politics, business, finance, science, technology, culture, society, media and the arts.  The Economist has a North American circulation of 813,000, a global circulation of more than 1.4 million and 4 million monthly unique visitors at The Economist online.  Because of its international editorial perspective, it is read by more of the world’s political and business leaders than any other magazine.

Ericsson is a world-leading provider of telecommunications equipment and related services to mobile and fixed network operators globally. Over 1,000 networks in more than 175 countries utilize its network equipment, and 40 percent of all mobile calls are made through its systems. It is one of the few companies worldwide that can offer end-to-end solutions for all major mobile communication standards. Ericsson is advancing its vision of being the “prime driver in an all-communicating world” through innovation, technology and sustainable business solutions. More than 80,000 employees around the world generated revenue of SEK 206.5 billion (USD 27.1 billion) in 2009. Founded in 1876, with the headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Ericsson is listed on OMX NASDAQ, Stockholm and NASD

The New York Times Co.’s stock was surging today, March 1st, up 6.3%. It reached greater heights earlier in the day, spiking an astounding 11% on rumors that a billionaire shareholder – the Mexican Carlos Slim – would buy the whole company.

A representative for Mr. Slim has told CNBC that Slim won’t be buying The New York Times. For its part, the Times Co. has said it doesn’t comment on rumors.

Trading volume in New York Times shares is about four times as much as average today.

Slim bought a 6.9% stake in the Times in 2008. In January 2010 he invested an additional $250 million.

Over the weekend, New York Magazine reported that Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal was mooting a $15 million initiative to take on The New York Times with a new New York metro section, in hopes of cut into the Times’ advertising base. The Times needs money even though it actually returned last week the salaries of some of its employees that were cut because of the recession.

Does the NYT try to retain some of the staff so that its writing does not suffer further?

Are Murdoch – Salim fighting matches on New York’s horizon?

We think the beneficiary of this will continue to be The Financial Times.

Climate Migration in Latin America: A Future “Flood of Refugees” to the North?
by COHA (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Research Fellow Alexandra Deprez, February 22, 2010.

This COHA research piece synthesizes the current developments regarding environmentally-driven human migration –and more specifically, migration caused by the environmental manifestations of anthropogenic climate change– seeking to expose its potential harmful effects in Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean. Although this region has received less media attention and academic focus than Western Africa, South East Asia or the Pacific Islands, it certainly houses the climate and non-climate factors that could cause mass human displacement.
The first section introduces the concept of environmentally-induced migration, expounding upon the current state of the debate that surrounds it and the challenges it faces. This is followed by an examination of different climate processes and natural disasters as drivers of migration in Latin America. It also addresses non-climate factors such as poor governance, poverty, overpopulation, and unequal land distribution that can compound these migratory pressures.
The second section opens with a case study of Mexico, a country several reports have identified as a potential hotspot for environmentally-induced migration in Latin America, due to the confluence of climate and non-climate migration factors it houses. The relevance of this study is also increased due to Mexico’s position as the largest immigration feeder to the United States. The segment goes on to discuss larger developmental impacts of environmentally-induced migration in Latin America –such as the effects on regions of origin and destination, the health and security issues migrants face, and the debate between environment, migration and national security factors– before ending by speculating which potential actions the United States might eventually take to address what could be a looming problem.

PART 1: Environmentally Induced Migration in Latin America and Beyond;
Climate and Non Climate Drivers of Migration in Latin America
Typhoon Morakot, the unusually strong tropical storm that hit South East Asia in mid-August 2009, displacing more than 1.5 million people in China alone, is only one of the most recent natural disasters that raise questions about environmental change and its link to migration. This link has increasingly attracted attention over the past few years, in particular since 2007, when the 4th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report confirmed that human migration would be one of the most important consequences of anthropogenic climate change. The manifestations of environmental change derived from human activities notably include sea level rise (SLR), intensified drought or rainfall, and the increasing recurrence and strength of natural hazards such as hurricanes.1 Although estimates vary widely and their reliability are questioned by migration experts, the frequently quoted figure of 200 million environmental displacees by 2050 testifies to this phenomenon’s looming importance. The developmental charity, Christian Aid, has increased its figure of estimated victims to a catastrophic 1 billion by mid-century.2
Policy and non-profit actors’ increasing awareness of environmentally-induced migration coincides with recent scientific confirmations that not only is anthropogenic climate change bound to occur no matter what mitigation steps are taken, but moreover it will prove more drastic than previously predicted.3 A paradigm shift in the policy response to climate change –from an exclusive focus on its prevention to a greater importance given to adaptation strategies, which may, inevitably, include migration itself– is a necessary consequence to this state of affairs.
Despite the recent spike of interest in the past few years, human populations have long employed environmentally-induced migration as a coping strategy – with studies indicating that it was commonplace in ancient societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia.4 Although the frequently used term ‘environmental refugee’ was first coined more than three decades ago,5 international organizations and scholars have still not reached a consensus on how to define those populations who migrate by choice or necessity due to environmental modifications in their regions of origin. Divergent expressions such as “environmentally induced migrant,”6 “environmentally displaced person,”7 “climate refugee,”8 or “climate migrant”9 populate international migration reports and journal articles. Most definitions place particular emphasis on those environmental processes and events that may arise or are intensified due to anthropogenic climate change, while broader terms also tend to take into account environmental modifications such as earthquakes, which are less directly related to human activity. In his seminal 1985 definition, Professor Essam el Hinnawi includes case specific human events that may have an impact on the environment – such as large-scale development projects, industrial accidents, and conflicts. He describes environmental refugees as:
“Those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life.”10
Although el Hinnawi’s definition would designate Haitian victims of the January 12, 2010 earthquake as potential environmental refugees, the Haiti case deserves to be addressed in literature exclusively devoted to it. This COHA research memorandum instead will adopt a narrower definition of environmentally induced migration, emphasizing those environmental events and processes which have been linked to anthropomorphic climate change, as well as natural and man-induced land degradation, which holds a particular historic importance in Latin America.
As manifested by the lack of a universal definition and the large variation between predictions, the debate over environmental change (and more particularly climate change) and migration is still at an embryonic phase, riddled with complexities, unknowns, and diverse actors that have yet to work in a more interdisciplinary, cooperative fashion.11 Predictions of extensive migration may have been publicized by environmental scientists like Norman Myers, with the intention of raising awareness and promoting action against climate change, as well as by human rights organizations that jumped at the opportunity to advocate protection for these potential new victims.12 However, these large-scale ominous predictions have also alarmed Western policymakers that a new “flood of refugees”13 would add to the migratory and asylum pressures their countries already face and have been seeking to manage and contain. Reports on different aspects of environmentally induced migration that have been prolifically produced over the past few years by international organisms such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), further demonstrate the heightened importance recently placed upon these issues.
Nonetheless, the recent hype surrounding climate migration may seem disproportionate to the limited amount of visible victims, particularly in light of the sometimes-sparse attention given to many other issues at the forefront of the international migration and refugee organisms’ agendas.14 Although the present number of individuals who fall directly into the category of ‘climate’ migrants or refugees15 might be dwarfed by the large number of international migrants, the UNHCR estimated that in 2002, 24 million individuals around the world were displaced due to natural disasters,16 a figure nearly double that of the current amount of refugees, estimated above 15 million.17 This fact attests to the veritable potential that anthropogenic climate change has in inducing large-scale population displacements, while the numerous legal, developmental and humanitarian consequences of these potential movements underscore the issue’s importance and the urgent attention which it merits.
But what are the implications for Latin America?
Specialists and scholars have determined that environmentally induced migration initially will take place in developing regions around the globe, with South-East Asia, West Africa and low-lying islands being particularly at risk.18 Even though the impact climate change may have on migration in Latin America is rarely mentioned and has yet to be exclusively studied in depth, this region bears a combination of factors that may converge to give rise to ‘hot spots’ for mass population movements. Indeed, not only is it host to a number of environmental processes and events that will most likely be intensified and accelerated due to anthropogenic climate change, but it also possesses conditions such as poverty and an unequal geographical distribution of the population that heighten their vulnerability to these effects, thus compounding the migratory potential.
Predictions of environmentally-induced migration concur that the majority of cases will occur within the same state or region. But, with such well-established migration channels between most Latin American countries and the United States, it is plausible that the manifestations of climate change may have an increasingly stronger impact on South-North human flows in the Western hemisphere. Developed nations such as the United States hold a responsibility vis-à-vis the anthropogenic climate change their industrial activities helped engender, as well as the economic conditions that may have contributed to perpetuate an unequal geographical distribution of the population in Latin America. However, the United States’ present migration policy does not give significant consideration to environmental factors, and this is clearly not likely to change in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, this COHA memorandum seeks to raise awareness of an issue that Western policymakers –and particularly North American policymakers– might one day not have the luxury to continue to ignore.
The current state of the debate over environmentally induced migration
The first and basic point of contention in this debate is how to characterize those affected by environmental change: are they migrants or refugees? The expression ‘environmental refugees’ was first used in the 1970s as a way to depoliticize the displacement of populations within their own country –due, for example, to famines or droughts– prior to the introduction of the term Internally Displaced Person (IDP) in 1998.19 Today, some human rights organizations have reclaimed it as a way to point to the urgency of addressing the issue and providing aid to those mobilized by environmental change. However, it has encountered strong opposition from practically all other actors involved in the debate.
Roger Zetter, the director of the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) at Oxford University, notes that the use of ‘refugee’ here is problematic, “not least for its conceptual inadequacy in interpreting the complex structural causes and consequences of flight.”20 It is also legally incorrect, as ‘environmental persecution’ – to term it that way – is not part of the 5 causes of persecution included in the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
Using the expression ‘environmental refugee’ may also strongly undermine the scale of the problem at hand as it only refers to those forced to leave their country, thus failing to include the numerous individuals affected by climate change who either have been displaced within their own country or who choose to migrate abroad.21 Western governments are certainly not keen to expand the UN’s definition, for fear that this would exponentially raise the number of asylum applicants to their countries, while refugee specialists oppose the inclusion of the environment as a cause of persecution, predicting it would place unnecessary stress on already strained resources devoted to those fleeing their countries from racial, religious, gender, membership of a particular social group, or political discrimination.22
Other terms have been proposed, but with little overall success, and the UN is still in the process of agreeing on a “phraseology to describe the phenomenon.”23 ‘Environmental migrant’ raises opposition due to its negative implication that those people who are moving are doing so solely out of their own will, while more conciliatory terms, such as ‘environmentally displaced person’ may be criticized by some for being too broad to be of any use. In particular, RSC’s report favored the tripartite definition proposed by Fabrice Renaud – an academic official at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) – composed of “environmentally motivated migrants,” “environmentally forced migrants,” and “environmental refugees.”24 What is certain is that no matter what designation is used, until it is given legal authority, individuals currently displaced by natural disasters and environmental degradation, as well as the future victims of ‘climate migration’ will continue to “fall through the cracks” of international protection and aid distribution.25
The second argument centers on the validity of environmentally-induced migration as a phenomenon. Some scholars have gone as far as to affirm that there is no such thing as environmentally-induced migration and that all migration is necessarily motivated by other reasons. Nonetheless, the description of human displacement presented by Stephen Castles – director of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford – as comprising “complex patterns of multiple causality, in which natural and environmental factors are closely linked to economic, social, and political ones,”26 seems to embody the emphasis that has been placed on multi-causality in this ongoing debate. Although there may be relatively limited instances in which environmental change can be seen as the only factor of human displacement – such as when people are forced to leave their homes due to a natural disaster – it is most certainly already influencing an ever larger number of migration cases, and has the potential to induce further unprecedented migration in decades to come.
However, determining the degree of environmental factors in migratory movements, and separating it from other factors, has proven challenging. This difficulty, as well as the lack of a formal definition of the phenomenon that would help delineate which causes would be permissibly included in data collection and future predictions, only hint at the problems inherent in undertaking these measuring processes. Another complication is the lack of reliable and current figures, which must be placed in context with the current situation of data collection in migratory flows at large. Unlike with the populations defined as refugees, for whom the UNHCR produces annual figures, precise data on the extent of international migration worldwide is much more complicated to compile.
According to Hiroyuki Tanaka, research assistant at the Washington DC-based Migration Policy Institute, “many industrialized economies don’t collect data on immigration, and those that do, collect data in different ways and apply different definitions for ‘immigrant.’ Reliable comparative data is very hard to come across, given the limited government data we have access to.”27 The fact that up to 50 percent of migration may be irregular (term preferred to ‘illegal’ by migration specialists) further complicates measurement intents.28 Internal displacements of populations remain even less documented, as many countries either do not want to publish these figures or simply lack the capacity to collect them.29
Additional difficulties have also been encountered by attempts to predict the future impact of climate change on migration. The areas – and consequently the populations – at risk vary widely depending on which climate models are used, and there is great uncertainty as to which model will most accurately represent future reality.30 There has also been a tendency to directly equate the number of those populations who will be affected to those who will migrate; this clearly does not take into account the extensive amount of other adaptive measures those populations may instead choose to take.31 However, despite widely varying in number, recent predictions seem to concur that future environmentally induced migration will primarily take place internally, in developing countries, and be mostly temporal in nature.
Better collection of data and the increased accuracy of future predictions are very important to appropriately address environmentally induced migration. This has been rightfully sensed by agencies such as the IOM, who in 2008 released a 100-page report on ways to improve those methodologies currently used.32 However, over the past few years there has been a general shift from a focus on global numerical predictions toward a more empirically based approach. This approach notably emphasizes the analysis, mapping, and monitoring of migration ‘hotspots,’ located at areas of convergence between environmental and non-environmental migration drivers. Although still approximate at best, the RSC states that, “a focused mapping program, which could be conducted by national agencies, is the key to more accurate prediction of the nature, scale and time-scale of environmentally-induced migration crises in the making, and how these might be mitigated.”33

Climate processes and natural disasters as drivers of migration in Latin America: drought, sea level rise, melting glaciers and hurricanes
Anthropogenic climate change will in part predictably manifest itself discretely, through an intensification of environmental processes such as drought, sea level rise and the melting of glaciers. Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, are not spared from any of these natural phenomena. Climate change will modify rain patterns geographically and temporally, inducing a shift in the start of rainy seasons as well as an increase of precipitation in some temperate areas, and a decrease in other regions, particularly in the tropics. This decline in rainfall may produce an intensification of aridity and a more recurrent drought with a capacity to negatively impact crop yields.34
The exact impact of severe drought on migration has not yet been satisfactorily determined. Sabine Perch-Nielsen, Michèle Bättig and Dieter Imboden, who undertook an in-depth analysis of the link between different climate processes and human displacement, explain that drought is the “most complex and least understood natural hazard,” and that there are a number of adaptive measures households might take before recurring to migration.35
Notwithstanding, new research suggests that the likelihood of migration as an adaptive measure is higher in response to certain selective environmental phenomena, such as droughts. In 2005, the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment concluded that the third of the global population that lives in areas already suffering from aridity is most vulnerable to the effects of increased drought.36 Indeed, empirical examples indicate that out-migration is already occurring in some regions affected by it. Northern Mexico, where 60 percent of arid or semi-arid land suffers from erosion, has over the past few decades seen a decrease in precipitation that has been projected to steadily worsen.37 The United Nations University’s (UNU) influential June 2009 report Control, Adapt or Flee: How to Face Environmental Migration stated, “based on Mexican Government’s data, approximately 900,000 people left arid and semi-arid areas every year [since the mid 1990s] in part because of their inability to make a living from the land due to excessively dry conditions and soil erosion.”38 Another salient example of the effect of drought on migration in Latin America may be found in Northeastern Brazil. In this primarily agricultural region, spikes in out-migration to the country’s southern regions have been observed following decreases in crop yields during years that suffered from severe droughts.39
Another environmental process that will be intensified by anthropogenic climate change is sea level rise (SLR); differing streams of predictions have posited a change of 50 cm to 1.5 meters by the end of the 21st century. It has been widely assumed to be the ‘climate-process’ with the strongest and most direct push effect on migration. In their Climatic Change article, Perch-Nielsen, Bättig, and Imboden agreed that although the current amount of information available is insufficient to reach a fairly accurate prediction, “the potential extent of migration due to sea level rise is large.”40 Even though the greatest impact is sure to be felt in the very densely populated coasts of South East Asia, media coverage has been almost exclusively been placed upon the fate of low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean. One such island is Tuvalu, where, due to fears of SLR, almost 30 percent of the population has already migrated to New Zealand.41
Although drawing practically no press coverage, several Caribbean islands are also at risk of being partially or completely submerged.42 In absolute terms, the number of potential victims of SLR in the Caribbean may pale in comparison to that in South East Asia. However, as more than 50 percent of the islands’ inhabitants live less than 1.5 km inland from the coast, the relative impact of SLR on the Caribbean population has the potential to be strongly felt.43 But specific predictions researching the future of the SLR in this region – as well as on most of the coastlines of Latin America – and its impact on migration up to now are sparse. The European Commission’s Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios (EACH-FOR) Project, which has started to map the regions most likely to be affected, has currently undertaken only one case study in the this region – on the island of Hispaniola – with an exclusive focus on deforestation.44
The melting of glaciers is a third process that has been taking place since the industrial revolution, and due to the ever increasing concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it will continue to occur at an accelerated pace. In South America, this translates into concerns about how the Andes Mountain range may now be seeing a reduction of water availability for agricultural and personal consumption, as well as an increased risk of fires during the dry season,45 and a change in rain patterns, all of which could provoke greater flooding during the rainy season.46
The Argentine EACH-FOR case study, which partially focuses on the pre-Andean regions of Patagonia and Cuyo, remarked that while a few years ago the two regions were still the sites of incoming migration, they now started to experience emigration flows linked to justified environmental fears.47 Reduction of water availability is of particular relevance and concern in this region, as it may place even greater economic pressures on the poorer sectors of society, who already have been strongly affected by the wave of provocative water privatizations which have swept over the continent during the past twenty years.48 In short, these economic pressures are likely to translate into stronger migratory impulses.
Climate change is also being manifested through the intensification and increased recurrence of certain natural hazards. Natural disasters – those natural acts of devastation that have intersected infrastructure and human settlements – reportedly have been on the rise over the past decades.49 From 1980 to 2000, inhabitants of developing countries accounted for more than 95 percent of all of those who lost their houses in natural disasters.50 The extremely disproportionate impact that these events have had on the world’s developing regions may be explained by the much higher vulnerability they face in comparison to Western nations. Not only are the tropics –where most of the developing regions are located – at higher risk of experiencing natural hazards, but a combination of political, economic and social factors lower their populations’ resiliency and capacity to respond effectively to these disasters.
Although examples of lack of risk preparation and disaster response can be found in industrialized nations (Hurricane Katrina comes most quickly to mind), these characteristics are significantly more common and recurrent in developing countries. Undeniably, an environmental event of the same scale will have a higher humanitarian cost – and consequently a potential damaging migratory impact – in the latter. The situation of disaster prevention and relief in Central America, where hundreds of thousands of people are periodically left homeless during the hurricane season, may serve as an illustration of the normally low capacity of response present in areas of Latin America. Costa Rica’s disaster response plan, which offered an only somewhat acceptable response to the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit its Central Valley in January 2009, is indeed considered the best in the region.51 Unacceptable delays and insufficient responses, such as those given by ex-president Manuel Zelaya when he declared a state of emergency three weeks after Honduras was shaken by a 7.1 earthquake in June 2009, are much more common in the isthmus. Of course, these examples are now slighted by the incomparable catastrophe the poorest country in the Western hemisphere has been suffering following the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti’s capital on January 12, 2010, incurring a death toll of over 200,00052 and the damage or destruction of almost 300,000 residences and commercial buildings.53
An article published in the August 2009 issue of the scientific journal Nature strongly supported the theory that as the oceans’ temperature continues to rise due to climate change, tropical storms will become increasingly recurrent and potent.54 This trend was particularly noted in the Caribbean basin, the region most strongly affected by hurricanes in the Western hemisphere. Studies of the region’s past hurricanes and their responses, particularly in Mexico, indicate that the vast majority of the populations who suffered from the events – and thus those who might have been displaced – intended to remain in their homeland or to return as soon as possible. Although predictions posit that migration will continue to be mostly temporal and internal, it is reasonable to presume that as hurricanes hit the Caribbean with more frequency and strength, households that have repeatedly suffered from these events may increasingly consider permanent or international migration as an adaptation strategy.55 The latter option may be facilitated by the existence of strong migration ties and networks between Latin American countries and the U.S.
Non-climate drivers and the question of unequal land distribution in Latin America
The largest amount of climate migration is most likely to be concentrated in areas where ‘non-environmental’ factors – such as poor governance, political persecution, population pressures, and poverty – are already present and exercise migratory pressures on the local populations. The authors of the RSC’s report assimilate the conjunction of poor governance or political persecution and environmental migration to Amartya Sen’s famous adage that famines are not bound to occur in a democracy.56 Similarly, environmental changes should not induce mass migrations in a country that has an accountable and responsive government.
At the interface of climate and non-climate drivers, UNU’s June 2009 report In Search of Shelter asserts that the loss of ‘ecosystem services’ such as arable soil, clean air, and water, will be the principal cause of mass environmental migration.57 Specialists argue that as climate change – in conjunction with unsustainable human usages and population pressures – starts to overwhelm an ecosystem, it will progressively become less capable to provide ‘its services.’58 Those populations mostly dependent on these ‘services’ for their livelihood – such as farmers, who could suffer from reductions in crop yield s– will be harshly affected by these changes, making them more likely to choose migration or be obligated to resort to it as an ultimate adaptive option.59
General economic pressures, as well as a lack of natural hazard risk assessments and zoning laws, may push those less fortunate populations onto marginal areas, as happened in the case of Typhoon Marakot, and its particularly strong effect on Taiwan’s rural poor. Incidentally, these marginal lands may be at greater risk of suffering from natural hazards as floods or mudslides. But, in a region such as Latin America where, in addition to current economic forces, historical factors have also fatefully contributed to these displacements, it becomes necessary to analyze and include the population’s geographical distribution in this region’s future debate of environmentally-prompted – and more specifically – climate migration.
In his article Roots of Flight: Environmental Refugees in Latin America, York University Professor Andil Gosine explains the processes that forced indigenous populations and small farmers from the rich arable valleys onto marginal arid or mountainous lands, often putting such areas at greater risk of suffering from climate processes or events.60 The arrival of European ‘Conquistadores’ to Latin America marked the installation of a very unequal land tenure system, visible to this day in countries such as Nicaragua, where in 2003 less than 25 percent of the rural population owned almost 85 percent of the country’s land.61 The capitalist systems established in many Latin American countries in the 19th century, exerted economic pressures on the region to produce monocultures for export. According to Gosine, this trend, that was further emphasized by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) infamous Structural Adjustment Plans of the 1960s – which strongly supported the production of cash crops – has served to perpetuate until the present day an unequal geographical distribution of the population.62
Relegated to less productive lands, small farmers in Latin America face undeniable economic hardships as their produce customarily has to compete against strongly subsidized American and European agricultural goods. The migratory pressures already in place due to these hardships will most likely be cemented by climate change, and the inequality in land distribution only further underscores the disproportionate influence it is bound to have on the poorer sectors of Latin American society.

———————
 http://www.coha.org/climate-migration-in…

Climate Migration in Latin America: A Future ‘Flood of Refugees’ to the North? Part 2
by COHA Research Fellow Alexandra Deprez

The second segment of this research piece identifies Mexico as an environmentally induced migration ‘hotspot,’ discusses development impacts in Latin America, and speculates on potential responses from Washington.
‘Hotspot’ case study: Mexico

US Oil Imports From Western Hemisphere Countries To The US Are Dropping:

Mexico Petroleum Supply, Exports to U.S. and Net Exports. Source: EIA. Chart by Chris Nelder.

= = = =

Venezuela Petroleum Supply, Exports to U.S. and Net Exports. Source: EIA. Chart by Chris Nelder.

= = = =

Combined Annual Net Oil Exports From Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Source: Jeffrey J. Brown, Samuel Foucher, PhD, Jorge Silveus.

= = = =

The Oil Export Crisis Has Unofficially Arrived.
By Chris Nelder | Friday, February 5th, 2010

Last March, his study of the effect of peak oil on U.S. imports had
brought Mexico to the forefront. “As our #3 source of imports, the
crashing of its supergiant Cantarell field had put the future of our
oil supply in serious jeopardy.”

The possibility that Mexico’s oil and gas exports to the U.S. could go
to zero within seven years looked very real.

As I explained in that piece, rising domestic consumption coupled with
declining supply puts an ever-tightening squeeze on imports. I have
found no evidence that policymakers are paying any attention to this
critically important dynamic, but it is the very point of the peak oil
spear.

Were it not for the market meltdown and recession, it would have
pierced our vital organs. Instead we felt a pinprick. Hardly anybody
realized what it really was, and most ran off on a wild goose chase
for evil oil speculators.

Now Venezuela has appeared on my radar for similar reasons… only
this time, we’re really going to feel it.

Let’s begin with a review of Mexico’s exports.

Mexico:

Shortly after publishing that article, I casually remarked to my
friend and fellow energy analyst Gregor Macdonald that Cantarell’s
production could fall to under 0.5 million barrels per day (mbpd) by
the end of the year.

I arrived at this somewhat startling conclusion by calculating the
effect of its decline rate — 38% at the time and accelerating — on
production of 0.77 mbpd in January, down precipitously from its 2.1
mbpd peak in 2003.

Gregor’s recent data sleuthing on Cantarell found its production in
December 2009 was 0.527688 mbpd, just a hair above my estimate.

To update the data on Mexico, it’s now our #2 source of imported
petroleum because Saudi Arabia has fallen from #2 to #4.

As of November 2009 (the latest data available) the U.S. imported 1.08
mbpd of crude and finished petroleum products from Mexico. Its exports
to the U.S. peaked at 1.46 mbpd in 2004, the same year as its
production peaked. Net exports (production minus consumption) fell to
1.06 mbpd in 2008.

For the years 2005-2008, Mexico’s exports to the U.S. declined by 0.51
barrels per day. In 2010, supply is expected to fall to 2.5 mbpd —
nearly half a million barrels per day less than 2009.

Mexico nationalized its petroleum operations in 1938 in a
constitutional amendment and handed over total control to the state
oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), with predictable results.

Oil now provides more than 40% of the country’s revenues, which have
been used to pay for a vast array of public services and line the
pockets of the oligarchy while starving investment in both upstream
activities (new oil supply) and downstream (finished products).

Consequently, Mexico’s oil reserves have decreased by more than 75% in
two decades (owing partly to the correction of a previous,
ridiculously inflated figure), production has begun to decline and
exports are falling fast.

It now imports $4.5 billion a year worth of gasoline, $10 billion a
year in petrochemicals, and 25% of its natural gas, mostly from the
U.S. This despite having nearly 13 billion barrels of proven oil
reserves and more than 50 billion barrels of (unproven) reserve
potential.

Mexico would be in a far better position, were it not for its hostile
stance on foreign participation. PEMEX simply lacks the technical
ability to develop its more difficult, remaining resources —
particularly deep water.

Venezuela:

As of November, the U.S. was importing 0.9 mbpd from Venezuela, making
it our #3 source. Its exports to the U.S. peaked at 1.8 mbpd in 1997,
the same year as its production peaked. Net exports (production minus
consumption) have fallen 38% from the 1997 peak of 3.1 mbpd to 1.9
mbpd in 2008.

Venezuela’s oil exports to the U.S. have been declining markedly since
2004, after a long period of relative stability. From 2004 through
2009, Venezuelan petroleum exports fell 0.7 mbpd.

Like Mexico, Venezuela is endowed with enormous energy resources and
could be producing at a far higher level. Estimates of its oil
reserves range from 153 billion barrels of certified proven; to 513
billion barrels technically recoverable in the USGS’ January estimate;
to 1.5 trillion barrels in offshore potential, if you believe the
effervescent Dr. Marcio Mello of Brazil.

Most of it is heavy oil, a low-grade which must be upgraded to synthetic crude.

And like Mexico, President Hugo Chavez has exiled the Western oil
companies who might have made the investment to bring those resources
to market.

A Nation in Free Fall

The good times rolled for Chavez in the first years after his election
in 1998. His socialist programs to rebuild the country and raise its
standard of living were popular but expensive, and soon began to fail
under the crush of declining energy supply.

Oil revenues make up 90% of Venezuela’s foreign earnings, so its
dependence on oil exports is extreme.

Billions of dollars in profits from the national oil company,
Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) were diverted to welfare programs
and into the pockets of oligarchs, while investment in future
petroleum and power supply languished.

The precipitous drop in oil prices since mid-2008 only compounded the
revenue shortfall.

Oil production has fallen 25% since Chavez was elected, and a long,
devastating drought has cut into its hydropower supply, of which 73%
comes from the massive Guri Dam.

Chavez responded by nationalizing most of its petroleum operations and
its grid in 2007.

In 2009, another 76 oil services companies on the Maracaibo Lake were
taken over. The projects now sit abandoned, waiting for PDVSA to
compensate the displaced operators and put them back into operation.

Almost half a million hectares of land were seized in 2009 with the
rationalization that it was underused.

Measures to counter the declining hydro supply have been implemented
in a haphazard fashion, resulting in frequent, unscheduled blackouts,
including seven national blackouts since 2007. Malls and government
offices have had their hours of operation cut and water rationing has
been imposed.

“Some people sing in the bath for half an hour,” Chávez cried at a
cabinet session in October. “What kind of communism is that? Three
minutes is more than enough!”

In January, a wave of public protest erupted, prompting Chavez to
implement a rapid series of desperate measures.

Rolling blackouts were imposed in the capital city of Caracas. After a
few days of protests, Chavez lifted the blackouts and fired the
electricity minister. Blackouts are expected to be reinstated in an
effort to keep hydro reservoir levels from falling to the point of
collapse.
A recent report gave the power shortage a paradoxical twist,
indicating that power from one of the state refineries may have to be
diverted to the grid, cutting distillate output by 200,000 barrels per
day — or more. This will result in less heating oil for China, who
will make up the loss by burning more coal.
Chavez devalued Venezuela’s bolivar currency by half; the president
went on to nationalize a chain of French-owned supermarkets over
alleged price gouging.
He ordered cutbacks in the operation of state-run steel and aluminum
manufacturing operations, which account for up to 20% of the country’s
power demand.
This week he turned to Cuba for help on how to cope with the power
shortage, since Cuba has been through similar problems. The island
nation is providing tens of thousands of energy-efficient lightbulbs
and cloud-seeding technology to Venezuela.
Last weekend, he forced six television channels off the air for
failing to broadcast one of his speeches — up to six hours in length —
in a continuation of his campaign for “communicational hegemony.”
Since December, all radio and television networks are required by law
to broadcast his speeches live, whenever he chooses to make one.
Nationwide student marches have been met by troops armed with rubber
bullets, and at least two deaths have been recorded.
Chavez has said he’s prepared to take “radical measures” should the
situation worsen, begging the unsettling question of what could be
more radical than what he has already done.

Looking East, Not North

Now Chavez is turning east for help in developing his nation’s oil and
gas resources. Recent agreements include a $20 billion joint venture
with Russia to develop the Junin 6 field in the Orinoco oil belt, with
a potential top production rate of 450,000 barrels per day.

China has agreed to build a refinery and develop the Orinoco heavy oil
fields, and Venezuela has guaranteed 560,000 barrels per day to China
this year.

Venezuela has launched its first major auction for drilling rights in
more than a decade, for access to areas east of the existing
operations in the Orinoco. Developing the leases will be expensive
because of their distance from the existing infrastructure, and
winning bidders are expected to make offers in the $10 billion-plus
range including early payments of at least $1 billion, financing
plans, and commitments to build the necessary roads, pipelines, ports,
and upgraders. Potential bidders include Spain’s Repsol, Japan’s
Mitsubishi, the UK’s BP, and Chevron.

Given the sheer size of its resources, it’s too soon to declare the
end of Venezuela’s glory days in the oil patch. However, it does seem
likely that the new barrels it brings to market will be headed east —
not north — and Western producers will have very little stake in the
projects.

Chavez will put exports to the U.S. on a short path to zero the first
chance he gets.

—————–

Oh Imports, Where Art Thou?

The combined decline in imports from Mexico and Venezuela for 2005
through 2008 is 0.89 mbpd. If the trend continues in 2009, then over 1
mbpd will have disappeared from the U.S. import stream in the last
five years — a decline of 8% from 2004 levels.

Since 2007, the loss of production from Cantarell alone was 0.7 mbpd,
but the recession cut U.S. demand by 2 mbpd, effectively masking the
decline. This raises the question: If U.S. demand rises from here,
where will those barrels come from… and how much will they cost?

The U.S. is not only in first place worldwide in its demand for oil,
but in paying the market rate for it. Nobody else buys 8.5 mbpd of
crude at retail.

Drivers in Venezuela are still filling up for 25 cents a gallon, even
as their exports decline.

Mexico’s gasoline prices are more on par with the U.S., but its
consumption has been rising steadily since 1997 and continues to cut
into exports.

Saudi Arabia’s domestic consumption is currently growing at the rate
of 7% per year, following a trend of more than three decades. It uses
a whopping 1.5 mbpd — 1.8% of total world oil supply! — to desalinate
water, at the equivalent of 7 cents a gallon.

Before the OPEC cuts of 2009, its exports to the U.S. had essentially
flatlined at 1.5 mbpd since 2004.

Exports from our #5 source, Nigeria, have also declined — from 1.17
mbpd in 2005 to 0.98 mbpd in 2008.

In fact, of the top five oil exporting countries to the U.S.,
representing 63% of our crude imports, only Canada posted an increase
(of 0.2 mbpd).

The combined annual net oil exports from our top three exporting
countries — Canada, Mexico and Venezuela — illustrate our situation:

Given the very modest increases from unconventional domestic production and Canada, the decline of imports from Mexico and Venezuela means the U.S. will be increasingly forced to depend on suppliers farther afield — the very same suppliers that China has been buying into in size. The “collision course with China” that I wrote about in July 2005 has nearly reached the point of impact.

It also means that when oil prices rise again, the pain will be far greater for the U.S. than it is for our top suppliers. Next time, the spear of declining oil exports will puncture a lung.

The oil export crisis has arrived… We just haven’t felt it yet.

Production, consumption, and export data herein is the latest available from the EIA.

Until next time,
Chris

Thanks to the following individuals for their contributions to this
article: Venezuelan oil expert Carlos Rossi for sharing excerpts from
his forthcoming book, The Completion of the Oil Era: The Economic
Impact; Gregor Macdonald for sharing his data on Cantarell; and
Jeffrey Brown and Samuel Foucher, for their work on net exports data
and the Export Land Model.

Investor’s Note: While declining oil imports from Mexico and Venezuela
paint a nightmare scenario for meeting future U.S. demand, all hope
isn’t lost… In fact, one U.S. oil play is developing at a breakneck
pace. You’re likely aware of the Bakken oil formation. But you may not
realize fully how the Bakken has single-handedly thrust North Dakota
into the international investment spotlight.

Of course, members of the $20 Trillion Report know how profitable the
Bakken oil formation is. So far, they’ve raked in gains of 305%, 249%
and 130%! We want you to share in their success.

—————————-

Our reaction to the above goes in two directions:

To every straights there is also the possibility for an answer that provides for new opportunities. in this case:

(1) it becomes even clearer that the US has here an opportunity to make policy accommodations with its neighbors to the south.

(2) the US does not have to – and will not – continue its dependence on oil alone as its source for energy. The US can go for novel and mostly renewable sources of energy, then the Saudis might also discover sun and wind as good replacement for this insanity of using 25% of their oil to provide their water needs. Whatever – energy independence – or at least oil imports reduction for the US – is not an excuse for  a “drill baby drill” US energy policy. Actually, put a carbon tax on the use of oil in the US as a good way to tell the world that the US is capable to detoxify from its addiction to oil imports.

The Happiest People: Hmmm. You think it’s a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, New York Times, OP-ED Columnist.

Published: January 6, 2010
from – SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica

Hmmm. You think it’s a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth.

There are several ways of measuring happiness in countries, all inexact, but this pearl of Central America does stunningly well by whatever system is used. For example, the World Database of Happiness, compiled by a Dutch sociologist on the basis of answers to surveys by Gallup and others, lists Costa Rica in the top spot out of 148 nations.

That’s because Costa Ricans, asked to rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale, average 8.5. Denmark is next at 8.3, the United States ranks 20th at 7.4 and Togo and Tanzania bring up the caboose at 2.6.

Scholars also calculate happiness by determining “happy life years.” This figure results from merging average self-reported happiness, as above, with life expectancy. Using this system, Costa Rica again easily tops the list. The United States is 19th, and Zimbabwe comes in last.

A third approach is the “happy planet index,” devised by the New Economics Foundation, a liberal think tank. This combines happiness and longevity but adjusts for environmental impact — such as the carbon that countries spew.

Here again, Costa Rica wins the day, for achieving contentment and longevity in an environmentally sustainable way. The Dominican Republic ranks second, the United States 114th (because of its huge ecological footprint) and Zimbabwe is last.

Maybe Costa Rican contentment has something to do with the chance to explore dazzling beaches on both sides of the country, when one isn’t admiring the sloths in the jungle (sloths truly are slothful, I discovered; they are the tortoises of the trees). Costa Rica has done an unusually good job preserving nature, and it’s surely easier to be happy while basking in sunshine and greenery than while shivering up north and suffering “nature deficit disorder.”

After dragging my 12-year-old daughter through Honduran slums and Nicaraguan villages on this trip, she was delighted to see a Costa Rican beach and stroll through a national park. Among her favorite animals now: iguanas and sloths.

(Note to editor of the New York Times: Maybe we should have a columnist based in Costa Rica?)

What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable decision in 1949 to dissolve its armed forces and invest instead in education. Increased schooling created a more stable society, less prone to the conflicts that have raged elsewhere in Central America. Education also boosted the economy, enabling the country to become a major exporter of computer chips and improving English-language skills so as to attract American eco-tourists.

I’m not antimilitary. But the evidence is strong that education is often a far better investment than artillery.

In Costa Rica, rising education levels also fostered impressive gender equality so that it ranks higher than the United States in the World Economic Forum gender gap index. This allows Costa Rica to use its female population more productively than is true in most of the region. Likewise, education nurtured improvements in health care, with life expectancy now about the same as in the United States — a bit longer in some data sets, a bit shorter in others.

Rising education levels also led the country to preserve its lush environment as an economic asset. Costa Rica is an ecological pioneer, introducing a carbon tax in 1997. The Environmental Performance Index, a collaboration of Yale and Columbia Universities, ranks Costa Rica at No. 5 in the world, the best outside Europe.

This emphasis on the environment hasn’t sabotaged Costa Rica’s economy but has bolstered it. Indeed, Costa Rica is one of the few countries that is seeing migration from the United States: Yankees are moving here to enjoy a low-cost retirement. My hunch is that in 25 years, we’ll see large numbers of English-speaking retirement communities along the Costa Rican coast.

Latin countries generally do well in happiness surveys. Mexico and Colombia rank higher than the United States in self-reported contentment. Perhaps one reason is a cultural emphasis on family and friends, on social capital over financial capital — but then again, Mexicans sometimes slip into the United States, presumably in pursuit of both happiness and assets.

Cross-country comparisons of happiness are controversial and uncertain. But what does seem quite clear is that Costa Rica’s national decision to invest in education rather than arms has paid rich dividends. Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad.

In the meantime, I encourage you to conduct your own research in Costa Rica, exploring those magnificent beaches or admiring those slothful sloths. It’ll surely make you happy.

———–

Our further take: The US had to build a stronger military in the belief it must safeguards the supply of oil and other natural resources to keep up a military hardware production needed to strengthen that military. Does that sound like a chicken and egg cycle? Does this explain lack of time and resources to do something about social issues, education, and the environment? Are people really happier even when provided with a longer car and wider highway? We refer our readers to www.CultureChange.org – a site that followed this for years.

Mexico vows to set new efficiency rules for autos, it will also push for more efficient new government buildings.
05 Jan 2010, Reuters

(Adds background on alternative energy, efficient buildings)
MEXICO CITY, Jan 5 (Reuters) – Mexico will limit imports of inefficient used cars and encourage low-carbon technology to reduce its overall volume of tailpipe exhaust, the energy ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry said it was also mulling regulations that would for the first time set a national standard for auto emissions. Such standards would be at the “vanguard” of international best standards, the agency said.

—
Officials hope to slowly purge heavy, inefficient autos from among the roughly 21 million cars now on the road in Mexico. The nation’s auto fleet is expected to rise by more than 14 million vehicles by 2017.
Only 1 percent of Mexican automobiles currently use alternative fuel, the ministry said.
The new importation rules will aim to “avoid the accelerated aging of the Mexican car fleet,” the agency said in a statement.
A senior Mexican environmental policymaker said in August the country would likely adopt fuel efficiency standards compatible with those in place in the United States. [ID:nN03537208]
Mexico is one of the world’s largest car builders and most global auto companies have at least one factory in the country.
Stakeholders in the domestic auto market have long lobbied for limits to be placed on the import of older used cars from the United States to help support the domestic market.
The new goals were developed as part of a multi-year national plan to create a sustainable energy policy.
In a separate move, the ministry promised to outline new standards for energy efficiency in newly-built government offices.

——–

We wish to bring up the possibility that some unscrupulous US interest might yet bring up NAFTA and free trade arguments to disallow  stopping the dumping of old US cars in Mexico, a measure that clearly has to do with Mexico interests that prefer not to have this competition to their home produced vehicles. We will watch.

This amazing article was penned by Fidel Castro himself, then later we watched how Presidents Morales of Bolivia and Chavez of Venezuela spoke in the Copenhagen plenary similar words to these, in the name of the ALBA group of Latin and Caribbean States, on that very important Friday-the eighteenth.

Today, when finally writing about this, I also wonder if besides Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti, Chavez is not ready to accept also Abraham Lincoln as a third member of a historic triumvirate intended to set the Western Hemisphere apart from global machinations, provided President Obama does indeed stretch out a friendly hand to Cuba? I believe that this is within the realm of possibilities, and perhaps the easiest way for the US to free itself of the tyranny of oil and the influence of the oil lobby of Washington. I believe that our times start looking more and more like the pre-WWII days. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade that went to Spain had among its people some of the best the US had to offer. They were not stupid and recognized the Stalinist stealth-riders, as well as the fascist opponents, and remained true to democracy ideals that brought them there. Climate change provides the world the same opportunity as fighting for democracy did in those years. If Obama is ready to rein in the US extremists when it comes to economic relations with the countries of the Southern part of the Western Hemisphere, new line-ups are possible based on new agreed common goals of helping in the sustainable development of these countries, rather then continuing to regard them only as source of raw materials. Had the US done so earlier the world might have been a friendlier place to America – at least in that part that fell into the geopolitical Western Hemisphere Monrovian design.

Clearly, Castro and Chavez will criticize the US when being held at bay by the stick of US corporations, but when approached as partners for change they might actually be ready for political compromise. The reality is that even though they do not apply democracy to their States, the did eradicate analphabetism, hunger, and established health care systems, ahead of the US. Venezuela can help fund such positive activities thanks to its income from oil, but they seem ready to help fund also other positive activities if offered a place at the American table. The way they show pride in their baseball culture that derived from the US via Cuba, shows to me that I am not dreaming about pie in the sky.

———–
 http://monthlyreview.org/castro/2009/10/…

Reflections of Fidel: The ALBA and Copenhagen.

The festivities associated with the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, showed the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults in general by the singing, the dancing, the costumes and rich expressions of the human beings of all ethnic groups, colors and shades: aborigine, black, white and mixed people. We could see there thousands of years of human history and precious culture that explain the determination with which the leaders of various Caribbean, Central and South American peoples convened that summit.

The meeting was a great success. Bolivia was the venue. I recently wrote on the excellent prospects of that country, an heir to the Aymara-Quechua culture. A small group of peoples from that area are bent on proving that a better world is possible. The ALBA – created by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Cuba, inspired by Bolivar’s and Marti’s ideas, as an unprecedented example of revolutionary solidarity- has showed how much could be done in barely five years of peaceful cooperation. This started shortly after Hugo Chavez’s political and democratic victory. Imperialism underestimated him, and deliberately tried to oust him and remove him. The fact that for a good part of the 20th century Venezuela had been the world’s largest oil-producer, practically owned by the Yankee transnationals, made the chosen path particularly rough to pursue.

The powerful adversary had neoliberalism and the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas]; two instruments of domination always used after the Cuban Revolution to crush resistance in the hemisphere.

It is irritating to think of the shameless and disrespectful way in which the US administration imposed the government of millionaire Pedro Carmona and tried to have elected President Hugo Chavez removed, at a time when the USSR had disappeared and the People’s Republic of China was a few years away from becoming the economic and commercial power it is today, after two decades of over 10 percent growth. The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, resisted the brutal thrust. The Sandinistas recovered, and the struggle for sovereignty, independence and socialism gained ground in Bolivia and Ecuador. Honduras, which had joined the ALBA, was the target of a brutal coup d’etat inspired by the Yankee ambassador and propelled from the US military base in Palmerola.

Today, there are four Latin American countries that have completely eradicated illiteracy: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. A fifth country, Ecuador, is quickly advancing towards that goal. The comprehensive healthcare programs are underway in the five countries at an unprecedented pace in the Third World. The programs of economic development with social justice have become projects of these five states, which already enjoy great prestige in the world for their brave position in the face of the empire’s economic, military and media power. Three English speaking Caribbean countries of black ancestry, determined to fight for their development, have also joined the ALBA.

This alone would be a great political merit if in today’s world that were the only big problem of man’s history.

The economic and political system that in a short historical period has led to the existence of more than one billion hungry people, and many more hundreds of millions whose lives are hardly longer than half the average of those in the wealthy and privileged countries, was until now the main problem for mankind. But, a new and extremely serious problem was strongly discussed at the ALBA Summit: climate change. A danger of such magnitude had never been known in human history.

As Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega waved the people goodbye in the streets of Cochabamba yesterday, Sunday, that same day, according to news spread by BBC World, Gordon Brown was chairing in London a session of the Major Economies Forum mostly made up by the highest developed capitalist countries, the main culprits for the carbon dioxide emissions, that is, the gas causing the greenhouse effect.

The significance of Brown’s remarks is that they have not been made by a representative of ALBA or one of the 150 emerging or underdeveloped countries on the planet but of Great Britain, the country where industrial development started and one of those which have released most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The British Prime Minister warned that if an agreement is not reached at the UN Summit in Copenhagen, the consequences will be ‘devastating.’

Some of the ‘catastrophic’ consequences would be floods, droughts and lethal heat waves claimed the environmental group Nature World Fund referring to Brown’s assertion. “The climate change will be out of control within the next five to ten years if the CO2 emissions are not drastically cut down. There will not be a plan B if Copenhagen fails.”

The same news source claims that: “BBC specialist James Landale has explained that not everything is happening as expected.”

Newsweek reported that “it seems more unlikely every day that the states will commit to something in Copenhagen.”

According to reports from the major American press outlet, the chairman of the session, Gordon Brown, said that “if no agreement is reached, there is no doubt that the damage of the uncontrolled emissions will not be repaired with a future agreement.” He then went on to mention such conflicts as “unchecked migration and 1.8 billion people afflicted by water shortage.”

Actually, as the Cuban delegation claimed in Bangkok, the United States led the highest industrialized countries most opposed to the necessary reduction of emissions.

At the Cochabamba meeting, a new ALBA Summit was convened. The timetable will be: December 6, elections in Bolivia; December 13, ALBA summit in Havana; December 16, participation in the UN Copenhagen Summit. The small group of ALBA nations will be there. The issue is no longer “Homeland or Death”; it is truly and without exaggeration a matter of “Life or Death” for the human race.

The capitalist system is not only oppressing and plundering our countries; the wealthiest industrial nations wish to impose to the rest of the world the bulk of the burden in the struggle on climate change. Who are they trying to fool with that? In Copenhagen, the ALBA and the Third World countries will be struggling for the survival of the species.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 19, 2009
6:05 PM

Analysis of national climate action plans of emerging economies – Proposals for quantifiable emission reduction contributions of emerging economies.

Side Event at the UNFCCC Barcelona Climate Talks:

Tuesday, November 3rd 2009 
7.45 – 9.15 pm, Room LENTISCO

In this side event Ecofys and the Wuppertal-Institute, two German independent consultants, will present results of a recent analysis of national climate action plans of emerging economies (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea) in regard to mitigation of GHG emissions.

The study includes an update of an ealier sector-based assessment of mitigation potential in 2008. Based on these results the presenters will introduce a preliminary assessment of options on how to integrate national appropriate mitigation actions in particular countries .

This study was commissioned by the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA), an independant scientific body of the Federal Environment Ministry, based in Dessau, Germany.

————-

Dr. Guido Knoche
Federal Environment Agency
- Climate Change Division -
D-06844 Dessau-Rosslau
eMail: guido.knoche[at]uba.de

Please look at  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/68fed498-85c0-11de-98de-00144feabdc0.html

Oil sands test of Obama’s green credentials.

By Sheila McNulty in Houston

Published The Financial Times: August 10 2009 .

The topic is extremely interesting when one remembers that the US had to pay a penalty for not allowing into the country the importation of Tetra-ethyl lead – the then California forbidden lead additive to gasoline, that its US producers moved to have a Canadian production line from which to force its importation into the profitable US octane market.

Sure, no-one has yet forbidden in the US the us of Canadian sand-oil, and energy security folks will have ready the argument – better Canadian imports then Middle East imports – but then how will compare the building of a new pipeline for these sand-oils with all those nice statements the US President made about US Climate Policy?

We wait to see!

Unpaid workers can switch jobs, UAE ministry says – paper
by Neeraj Gangal on arabianbusiness.com, Friday, 24 July 2009

LABOUR GAINS: The acting Director-General of UAE’s labour ministry informed about the move – Any worker who has not been paid for more than two months has the right to change jobs without a No Objection Certificate (NOC) even after receiving his dues, according to a report.

Humaid Bin Deemas, the acting Director-General of UAE’s Ministry of Labour informed this on Thursday, the Gulf News daily reported. The senior official was speaking at a press conference that was held after an open day event at the ministry’s premises in Dubai, it added.

“Workers who have not been paid for more than two months have the right to stay with the same company or choose to change jobs without the NOC.

“The rule is also applicable to those who have not been paid for the same duration of time but decided to cancel their work permits where they will have the six month ban, which is usually enforced by the ministry, lifted,” Bin Deemas added.

Related: IN PICS: Inside Dubai’s labour camps.
Related: Registered firms to pay workers via WPS from September.

The worker has now the right to leave his employer without filing the required notice period if the firm does not fulfil any of its commitments as stipulated in the employment contract, Gulf News noted.

Also, all firms registered with the UAE Ministry of Labour will start making payment of workers’ wages through the newly introduced wages protection system (WPS) from September, the ministry said on Thursday.

The new system makes the electronic transfer of labourers’ wages from employer to employee mandatory following a decree issued by Labour Minister Saqr Ghobash.

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.  

Michael Pollan: “Don’t Buy Any Food You’ve Ever Seen Advertised”
“The real food is not being advertised. And that’s really all you need to know.”

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted May 15, 2009.

Amy Goodman: Energy, healthcare, agriculture, climate change, global outbreaks like swine flu—what do all these topics have in common? Food. That’s right, none of these issues can really be tackled without addressing some of the fundamental problems of the food system and the American diet.

Well, my next guest, writes Amy Goodman as per her radio program, is one of the leading writers and thinkers in this country on food. Michael Pollan is a professor of science and environmental journalism at University of California, Berkeley, author of several books about food, including The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and his latest, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, which just came out in paperback. … Let’s start with the latest news over the last month, swine flu. How is that connected to industrialized agriculture?

Michael Pollan: Well, we don’t know for sure yet. We’re still kind of investigating. But the best knowledge we have is that this outbreak came from a very large industrial pork operation, pork confinement operation, where, you know, tens of thousands of pigs live in filth and close contact. And this was in Mexico.

And, you know, it’s very interesting. Last year, eighteen months ago, the Pew Commission on animal agriculture released a report calling attention to the public health risks of the way we’re raising pork and other meat in this country. And they actually predicted in that report—they said the way you’re raising pigs in America today creates a perfect environment for the generation of new flu pandemics, basically because once you get that mutation, which sooner or later is about to happen, it very quickly—you have … so much genetic material coming together, so concentrated, and then so many pigs can catch it, and … we’ve created these Petri dishes for new diseases. And here we go.

Goodman: And what has been the industry response?

Pollan: Oh, the industry response and the media response, by and large, is not to pay attention to that part of the story. We haven’t gotten a lot of investigation of, well, exactly how do these things evolve and how did these conditions contribute to it.

The other angle, too, is that, you know, as we bring any pressure to bear on American animal agriculture, the tendency is going to be for it to move to Mexico. And indeed, that appears to be the case here, that these are American corporations who have to escape any kind of environmental regulation, have moved their confinement, animal operations, south of the border.

——-

And if you really want to know more – please continue to read at:
 http://www.alternet.org/environment/1400…

——-

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

Water Wars

By Jeffrey Sachs

May 1, 2009

Many conflicts are caused or inflamed by water scarcity. The conflicts from Chad to Darfur, Sudan, to the Ogaden Desert in Ethiopia, to Somalia and its pirates, and across to Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, lie in a great arc of arid lands where water scarcity is leading to failed crops, dying livestock, extreme poverty, and desperation.

Extremist groups like the Taliban find ample recruitment possibilities in such impoverished communities. Governments lose their legitimacy when they cannot guarantee their populations’ most basic needs: safe drinking water, staple food crops, and fodder and water for the animal herds on which communities depend for their meager livelihoods.

Politicians, diplomats, and generals in conflict-ridden countries typically treat these crises as they would any other political or military challenge. They mobilize armies, organize political factions, combat warlords, or try to grapple with religious extremism.

But these responses overlook the underlying challenge of helping communities meet their urgent needs for water, food, and livelihoods. As a result, the United States and Europe often spend tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars to send troops or bombers to quell uprisings or target “failed states,” but do not send one-tenth or even one-hundredth of that amount to address the underlying crises of water scarcity and under-development.

Water problems will not go away by themselves. On the contrary, they will worsen unless we, as a global community, respond. A series of recent studies shows how fragile the water balance is for many impoverished and unstable parts of the world. The United Nations agency UNESCO recently issued the UN World Water Development Report 2009; the World Bank issued powerful studies on India and Pakistan; and the Asia Society issued an overview of Asia’s water crises.

These reports tell a similar story. Water supplies are increasingly under stress in large parts of the world, especially in the world’s arid regions. Rapidly intensifying water scarcity reflects bulging populations, depletion of groundwater, waste and pollution, and the enormous and increasingly dire effects of manmade climate change.

The consequences are harrowing: drought and famine, loss of livelihood, the spread of water-borne diseases, forced migrations, and even open conflict. Practical solutions will include many components, including better water management, improved technologies to increase the efficiency of water use, and new investments undertaken jointly by governments, the business sector, and civic organizations.

I have seen such solutions in the Millennium Villages in rural Africa, a project in which my colleagues and I are working with poor communities, governments, and businesses to find practical solutions to the challenges of extreme rural poverty. In Senegal, for example, a world-leading pipe manufacturer, JM Eagle, donated more than 100 kilometers of piping to enable an impoverished community to join forces with the government water agency PEPAM to bring safe water to tens of thousands of people. The overall project is so cost effective, replicable, and sustainable that JM Eagle and other corporate partners will now undertake similar efforts elsewhere in Africa.

But future water stresses will be widespread, including both rich and poor countries. The United States, for example, encouraged a population boom in its arid southwestern states in recent decades, despite water scarcity that climate change is likely to intensify. Australia, too, is grappling with serious droughts in the agricultural heartland of the Murray-Darling River basin. The Mediterranean Basin, including Southern Europe and North Africa is also likely to experience serious drying as a result of climate change.

However, the precise nature of the water crisis will vary, with different pressure points in different regions. For example, Pakistan, an already arid country, will suffer under the pressures of a rapidly rising population, which has grown from 42 million in 1950 to 184 million in 2010, and may increase further to 335 million in 2050, according to the UN’s “medium” scenario. Even worse, farmers are now relying on groundwater that is being depleted by over-pumping. Moreover, the Himalayan glaciers that feed Pakistan’s rivers may melt by 2050, owing to global warming.

Solutions will have to be found at all “scales,” meaning that we will need water solutions within individual communities (as in the piped-water project in Senegal), along the length of a river (even as it crosses national boundaries), and globally, for example, to head off the worst effects of global climate change. Lasting solutions will require partnerships between government, business, and civil society, which can be hard to negotiate and manage, since these different sectors of society often have little or no experience in dealing with each other and may mistrust each other considerably.

Most governments are poorly equipped to deal with serious water challenges. Water ministries are typically staffed with engineers and generalist civil servants. Yet lasting solutions to water challenges require a broad range of expert knowledge about climate, ecology, farming, population, engineering, economics, community politics, and local cultures. Government officials also need the skill and flexibility to work with local communities, private businesses, international organizations, and potential donors.

A crucial next step is to bring together scientific, political, and business leaders from societies that share the problems of water scarcity—for example, Sudan, Pakistan, the United States, Australia, Spain, and Mexico—to brainstorm about creative approaches to overcoming them. Such a gathering would enable information-sharing, which could save lives and economies. It would also underscore a basic truth: The common challenge of sustainable development should unify a world divided by income, religion, and geography.

• Water: A Global Innovation Outlook Report (Policy Library)
• Managing Water Well (Briefings)
• Ethics Be Dammed? China’s Water Projects (Commentary)
• Beyond Scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis (Policy Library)

GCC ministers meet to discuss swine flu threat
by Martin Morris on Saturday, 02 May 2009

SWINE FLU: Outbreak may not be as severe as earlier inidcated. (Getty Images)

GCC health ministers and their Yemeni counterpart held an emergency meeting in Doha on Saturday to discuss urgent measures to fight swine flu.

UAE Health Minister Humaid Al Qatami, who headed the UAE delegation, said it had been agreed to set up a unified Gulf strategy – effective next week – to combat swine flu.

Secretary-General of the GCC, Abdulrahman Al-Attiyah, said GCC members have developed the necessary plans for dealing with any eventuality and are in contact with other Arab and foreign countries in following up developments of the fatal disease, KUNA news agency reported.

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Related: Swine flu – Egypt to cull pig population
by AFP on Saturday, 02 May 2009

Egypt is to begin a controversial slaughter of the nation’s 250,000 pigs in earnest on Saturday, despite the World Health Organisation saying there was no evidence the animals were transmitting swine flu to humans.

Cairo governor Abdel Halim Wazir told the state news agency MENA that the government will begin slaughtering an estimated 60,000 pigs raised by rubbish collectors in a shanty town in Egypt’s sprawling capital.

Egypt announced on Wednesday that it will slaughter the nation’s entire pig population after an outbreak of swine flu in other countries, even though no cases have been detected in Egypt.

(The pigs belong to poor Coptic Christians, the bottom of the Egyptian human pyramid, for whom this is a real blow – and this is totally unnecessary!   So far as Israel is concerned, without a Minister of Health in the new government, but only a Rabbi-in-charge, Rabbi Litzman,   with the title as Deputy Minister, though two cases are known, imports from Mexico, there is no talk of Swine Flu – as swine is not to be mentioned in a Kosher ministry – they call it Mexican Flu instead – SustainabiliTank comments. We liked the fact that the GCC call it swine flu – but then what about this leading to the Egyptian excess?)

Related: Latest figures on swine flu
by Joanna Hartley on Saturday, 02 May 2009

Latest worldwide figures show that as of 6.00 GMT on may 2, show 15 countries have officially reported 615 cases of swine flu, influenza A (H1N1) infection.

Mexico has reported 397 confirmed human cases of infection, an increase of 241 in the past 24 hours, which include 16 deaths.

The rise in cases was due to ongoing testing of previously collected specimens, WHO said.
The US government has reported 141 laboratory confirmed human cases, including one death.

The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths – Austria (1), Canada (34), China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (1), Denmark (1), France (1), Germany (4), Israel (2), Netherlands (1), New Zealand (4), Republic of Korea (1), Spain (13), Switzerland (1) and the United Kingdom (13).

Individuals are advised to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water on a regular basis and should seek medical attention if they develop any symptoms of influenza-like illness.

No restrictions have been announced on international air travel and borders should remain open, WHO said.

It has also reiterated the point that cinsuming well cooked pork products contains no risk of infection in humans.

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GCC Ministers agreed to put the health facilities of the region on high alert by activating national surveillance and early warning systems.

The meeting’s final communique advised GCC nationals to avoid travel to countries hit by the epidemic.

Commenting on the advice, Al-Attiyah said it does not mean a travel ban to and from such countries.

Al-Attiyah, also sought to allay citizens’ fears telling reporters: ”We should not exaggerate ….. the swine flu epidemic, especially when we have (had) a successful experience in dealing with bird flu (H5N1).”

He added: “We were able to defeat the bird flu through collective measures and close coordination among the GCC countries.”

Elsewhere, new laboratory data showed fewer people have died in Mexico than first thought from the H1N1 flu strain.

Mexico cut its suspected death toll from the virus to up to 101 from as many as 176, as dozens of test samples came back negative. Fewer patients with severe flu symptoms were also checking into hospitals, suggesting the infection rate of a flu that has spread to Europe and Asia was declining.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed the outbreak may not be as severe as it looked a few days ago, citing many mild cases that were not immediately noticed.

The World Health Organization said on Saturday 15 countries have reported 615 infections with the new flu virus A-H1N1.

President Barack Obama said the United States was responding aggressively to the new flu strain.

He outlined steps his administration was taking to address the virus, including school closures, and said antivirals were being distributed to states where they may be needed and new stockpiles had been ordered.

It has world health experts racing to find a vaccine and is wreaking havoc with a travel industry that flies hundreds of thousands of people to and from Mexico each week.

China suspended flights to Mexico after Hong Kong authorities on Friday confirmed a Mexican man who flew via the Chinese mainland was infected with the flu strain.

A swine flu outbreak is dominating the news. The headlines are changing hourly but at the time of this writing it has been confirmed that this new strain of swine flu originated in Mexico and that Americans traveling in Mexico have returned to the U.S. infected with swine flu.

The U.S. Department of State has issued the following Travel Alert:

“The Department of State alerts U.S. citizens of the health risks of travel to Mexico at this time due to an outbreak of H1N1 “swine flu.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued an April 27 notice recommending that American citizens avoid all nonessential travel to Mexico at this time. CDC’s notice also suggests precautions that travelers and U.S. citizen residents in Mexico can take to reduce their risk of infection while in Mexico. CDC provides recommendations for those who must travel to an area that has reported cases of swine flu, and recommends measures to take following return from an area that has reported cases of swine flu. The complete CDC notice can be found at the following link: http://www.cdc.gov/travel/. Please check this site frequently for updates…“

As a result of this advisory and in an abundance of caution, major cruise lines that we represent have stopped calling on ports in Mexico and have developed–or are developing–positions with regard to future calls at ports in Mexico, while the outbreak lasts. We have been waiting for these official statements and I wanted to get them to you as quickly as they were available–hence the second newsletter this week. To see these cruise line announcements now, please click http://www.vacationstogo.com/swine_flu.cfm.

These itinerary changes disrupt the vacation plans of guests, cost the cruise lines money and deal a harsh blow to anyone in Mexico who relies on tourists for their livelihood. Indeed, there are no winners in the swine flu outbreak, but canceling port calls in Mexico was absolutely necessary to ensure the safety of every passenger and crewmember and to combat the spread of the influenza.

I applaud the cruise lines for taking prompt and decisive action.

No one knows how long this outbreak will take to run its course but I will be the first to announce the cruise lines’ return to Mexico when the swine flu is behind us. That announcement can hardly come soon enough.

Alan Fox
Chairman & CEO
alanfox@vacationstogo.com

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EVERYTHING’S SWINE

Is swine flu linked to factory farms?

Grist food writer Tom Philpott created quite a stir this week by suggesting that the current bout of swine flu might have originated at industrial hog facilities in Mexico. Now New Scientist magazine and the CDC are linking the swine-flu virus to large-scale pork-raising operations in the United States. Meanwhile, President Obama is avoiding saying the phrase “swine flu”, apparently out of deference to the pork industry.

And we’ve got lots more swine-flu news where that came from.

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So, is it again the industrialization of life that caused it? Should we look for the blame in the US rather then pour it on Mexico?