Latest Developments, November 23

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A disturbing precedent
The UN News Centre reports three top officials have issued a statement calling on member states not to adopt a protocol they say would weaken the current ban on cluster munitions.
“‘The protocol that is being discussed will lower the standard set by the [Convention on Cluster Munitions] and fail to address the well-documented humanitarian and development threats posed by cluster munitions,’ [UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos, UN Development Programme Administrator Helen Clark and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay] stated.
‘If adopted, it will allow the indefinite use of cluster munitions produced after 1 January 1980 that meet certain technical requirements and that are prohibited by the CCM because of the unacceptable harm they pose to civilians.’
The adoption of this protocol would set ‘a disturbing precedent’ in international humanitarian law, creating – for the first time – a new global treaty that is actually weaker than existing international humanitarian law, they added.”

Tahrir ammo
Tree Huging Hoolah provides a “round-up” of weapons and ammunition allegedly being used against protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
“There seem to be a growing number people in and around the Square angry at being fired on by weapons supplied from countries making nice noises about democracy and restraint in Egypt, and are starting to document markings and specifications of what’s being used. It won’t help stop any violence, but I’m generally in favour of causing a modicum of embarrassment to those governments and companies which continue to supply tools of repression, usually for profit, to those who they well know will use them to violate human rights and repress their own citizens.”

Putting the “lethal” in “non-leathal”
Al Jazeera asks how dangerous the so-called non-lethal weapons being used against protesters around the world really are.
“With over 36 killed in Egypt since November 19, and medical sources citing ‘suffocation after inhaling tear gas’ as the cause of many of the deaths, the non-lethality of the weapons employed – as well as how they were imported – has come under serious question.
Khalid Abdala, an Egyptian actor and activist, told Al Jazeera from Tahrir that he held international governments ‘complicit in everything that is happening here’.
‘International governments have replenished the stocks of bullets that have been shot at people right now, and the tear gas that is clinging to my lungs,’ he said.”

E-waste exports
A new makeITfair report calls on the European Union to ensure revisions to its legislation on e-waste put an end to the export of such hazardous materials to poor countries.
“Electronics waste in industrialized countries is growing three times faster than regular waste – the result of the fast pace of technological innovation and the consequent short life of many electronic products. Up to 50 million tonnes of e-waste containing hazardous substances such as lead, cadmium and mercury are generated worldwide every year. A vast amount of the European e-waste is exported to developing countries such as Ghana, a major hub for European e-waste. This causes pollution and health problems because the country has no adequate infrastructure to deal with the hazardous waste.”

Let them eat processed food
The Guardian reports global food and drink companies are increasingly targeting the world’s poor whom they view as the primary “vehicle for growth” for processed products that increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.
“As diets and lifestyles in developing countries change, their patterns of disease are following those seen in industrialised countries in the north equally rapidly. But for poor countries there is a double whammy: they have started suffering from high rates of [non-communicable diseases] before they have managed to deal with hunger and malnutrition. The double burden is devastating both their economic growth and their health budgets.”

Free trade impacts
Embassy Magazine reports an environmental assessment of a possible Canada-India free trade agreement will not examine Canadian exports of asbestos to the South Asian giant.
“Canada exported $40.3 million worth of asbestos-related products to India in 2010, according to Industry Canada, and the World Health Organization says asbestos causes an estimated 8,000 deaths each year in India—a phenomenon described in a recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary as an ‘epidemic.’”

Enabling corruption
Global Witness’s Anthea Lawson argues banks in wealthy countries must stop playing an integral part in the corruption that is devastating poor countries.
“Three entrenched, repressive and corrupt regimes fell this year largely because the people they ruled were fed up with epic levels of corruption.
That kind of corruption cannot happen without a bank. Dictators cannot steal millions of dollars from the state, nor accept massive bribes, if the money has to be kept under the bed.
Payments for natural resources like oil and gas do not arrive in dollar bills, they are paid by bank transfer; increasingly, bribes and rake-offs from commercial deals are too. Plus it’s safer to keep money out of the country — away from opponents, and accessible if you’re ousted from power.”

Accounting advice
York University economist Fred Lazar suggests many governments could make their perceived financial difficulties disappear simply by reporting their finances in the same way as corporations currently do.
“For example, many government expenditures are investments – capital expenditures. Expenditures on infrastructure clearly are in this category. Some of the expenditures on training, healthcare, education, R&D (e.g. NASA and the Departments of Defense and Energy in the US), and the judiciary also should be classified as investments, for all of them contribute to enhancing the productive capacity of the economy.
Such expenditures should be excluded in the calculation of the budget balance – the equivalent of a company’s income statement – and instead be included in the government’s cash flow statement, as is the case with investment expenditures by companies. If these expenditures were treated in this manner, most government deficits would disappear immediately, replaced with budget surpluses.”

Latest Developments, November 22

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Mining tax precedent
Australia’s proposed 30 percent tax on the country’s mining industry, which is “being eyed by other resource nations in South America and Africa,” has passed the parliament’s lower house by 73 votes to 71.
“[Prime Minister Julia] Gillard wants the new tax on mining profits to pay for a company tax cut and boost pensions, helping to spread the benefits of Australia’s resources boom to other parts of the economy struggling with the global downturn.
‘This is a way in which all Australians share in the bounty of the mining boom,’ Treasurer Wayne Swan told parliament.”

Surging investor-state lawsuits
A new Institute for Policy Studies report indicates that the number of lawsuits brought before international tribunals by oil, gas and mining companies against “governments seeking to increase the benefits of those resources for their own people” has risen sharply along with commodity prices in recent years.
“Under free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties, foreign investors have the right to file such “investor-state” lawsuits in international tribunals to demand compensation for government actions that reduce their profits.
This newly updated edition of “Mining for Profits” finds that at the most frequently used tribunal, the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), 43 of 137 pending “investor-state” cases are related to oil, mining, or gas. By contrast, one year ago there were only 32 such cases and 10 years ago there were only 3.”

Transparency not enough
A new report by the University of British Columbia’s Philippe Le Billon argues  initiatives to improve governance of the extractive industries tend not to go far enough.
“Among other priorities, transparency initiatives should demand higher disaggregation of information disclosed by extractive companies and host governments. Transparency requirements should extend beyond revenues to licensing, contracts, physical resource flows, and other production factors, as well as to public expenditure. Extractives transparency initiatives also need to integrate elements of the tax justice and tax evasion agendas in order to expand their relevance to the effort to reduce illicit financial flows.”

Accessible innovation
Intellectual Property Watch reports on a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Doha Declaration on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health, which addressed the question of how to encourage innovation while keeping medicines accessible to the world’s poor.
“‘The sustainability of access at the end of the day is going to come back to the issue how you finance R&D,’ [James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International] said. Love argued that it is essential to de-link the prices of medicines and the development of new medicines in order to fulfil ‘the promise of Doha’ and access to medicines for all.”

Supply and demand
Agence France-Presse reports on a new World Wildlife Fund assessment of the palm oil market which suggests that, despite improvements, companies are not doing enough to ensure the oil they buy comes from sustainable sources.
“Palm plantations are considered one of the biggest threats to rainforests in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia — the source of 85 percent of world palm oil supply — as virgin forests are typically cleared to make way for them.
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The scorecard focuses on major companies in Europe, Australia and Japan, the world’s biggest palm oil markets.
About 5.2 million tonnes of certified sustainable palm oil was produced last year — roughly 10 percent of world supply — but only 56 percent was purchased, the WWF said.”

Unsustainable food
The International Institute for Environment and Development uses the example of ketchup to illustrate how unsustainable the global food industry is.
“Analysis of the steps involved in processing ketchup – from farming the tomatoes through to packaging – to transporting and retailing that symbol of American mass consumerism reveals an alarming fact. To produce it requires a mind-boggling 150 separate processes, across several continents, according to research cited in a new book by the International Institute for Environment and Development.
It’s just one small part of a ‘staggeringly inefficient’ food system according to the new book Virtuous Circles. When the overall energy costs for producing food are taken into account – including farm machinery, transportation, processing and packaging – ‘the modern food system consumes between ten and fifteen calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food energy (nutrition) produced.’”

Just say no (to the war on drugs)
The Overseas Development Institute’s Jonathan Glennie argues wealthy, recreational drug-consuming countries need to renounce the war on drugs in order to “save west Africa from a fate worse than Mexico.”
“Clearly an end to prohibition will not end the problems created by the war on drugs at a stroke, nor the problems created by drugs themselves. The gangs that are now so powerful in Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere engage in many types of crime including people trafficking and kidnapping. But one of their largest sources of income would be decimated, as prices fall in a regulated market.
Insiders are more hopeful than ever that an end to global prohibition is possible within a decade. Both Barack Obama and David Cameron, the leaders of two of the most important drug-consuming nations in the world, are on the record in their opposition to the war on drugs before they were elected. If they followed through on their promise of a rethink they could go down in history as the leaders that began one of the most important global policy shifts of our time.”

Symbolic justice
Princeton University’s Richard Falk writes about past and present efforts to address the double standard of victors’ justice that has been the international norm since the end of World War II through “societal efforts to bring at large war criminals to symbolic justice.”
“The existence of double standards is part of the deep structure of world politics. It is even given constitutional status by being written into the Charter of the United Nations by allowing the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, that is the winners in 1945, to exercise a veto over any decision affecting the peace and security of the world, thereby exempting the world’s most dangerous states, being the most militarily powerful and expansionist, from any obligation to uphold international law.”

Latest Developments, November 21

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Chevron spill
Agence France-Presse reports Brazil is fining oil giant Chevron “at least $28 million” over a spill from one of its wells off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state.
“Haroldo Lima, head of the National Oil Agency said Chevron was facing a series of fines that each could be worth $28 million dollars for having given false or incomplete information about the incident. Exactly how many fines will be determined by the investigation, he added.
ANP accused Chevron of having released “false information” in presenting an action plan that called for the use of equipment not currently available in the country and also of having presented edited pictures on the damage, according to Lima.
Meanwhile Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira also said more fines would be imposed if environmental violations were proven.”

Reversal of fortunes
The New York Times reports debt-ridden Portugal is appealing to its former colony Angola – “once a prime source of slaves, then a dumping ground for the mother country’s human rejects and now swimming in oil wealth” – for investment, but not everyone sees a new dawn in relations.
“There is still the colonial mentality in Portugal,” according to anticorruption campaigner Rafael Marques de Morais. “They just want to extract resources and plunder the country. The only difference is this time they didn’t take them by force.”

Plundering the Congo
Reuters reports a British lawmaker believes the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government is selling its mining assets at below-market prices to shell companies located in tax havens.
“[Labour MP Eric] Joyce said the documents showed that four sales of assets in Katanga had officially netted the government just $272 million, instead of $5.8 billion, which he said was the estimated total market value for the assets.
The involvement of off-shore vehicles had made it impossible to track who had in fact benefited from the sale, he added.”

Growth not enough
The Guardian reports on a new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development document that warns of the dangers posed by increasing levels of inequality, not only in fast-growing countries such as China and India, but also in 17 of the 34 members of its own rich-country club.
“‘Both poor and middle-class populations are increasingly alienated from the richest in many societies. Stark inequalities persist between groups defined by sex, working status and ethnic origin. Both rising inequalities and their persistently high levels can sow the seeds of future conflict and social unrest,’ says the report. It warns that ‘the emergence of a global elite that is isolated from less fortunate echelons of the societies from which its members originate is an important risk that policymakers must be aware of’.”

Climate cop-out
The Guardian also reports that rich countries have “given up” on the prospect of a new climate change treaty for this decade, even before international negotiations on replacing the expiring Kyoto protocol get underway in South Africa next week.
“The UK, European Union, Japan, US and other rich nations are all now united in opting to put off an agreement and the United Nations also appears to accept this.
Developing countries are furious, and the delay will be fiercely debated at the next round of international climate talks beginning a week on Monday in Durban, South Africa.
The Alliance of Small Island States, which represents some of the countries most at risk from global warming, called moves to delay a new treaty ‘reckless and irresponsible’.”

Africa leading on climate
The head of the UN Environment Programme tells Reuters that Africa is leading the world when it comes to actually implementing clean-energy policies.
“Kenya is currently doubling its energy and electricity generating infrastructure largely using renewables. These are policies that are pioneering, that are innovative,” according to UNEP’s Achim Steiner.
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“We see across the continent both a realisation of how threatening climate change really is and also the inevitable necessity that governments have an interest in beginning to put their own development priorities on a different trajectory.”

Dismissing the three Ds
New York Univesity economist Bill Easterly argues the US aid program has been “taken over by national security interests, abetted by delusions of nation-building” and calls for a clear separation between aid and defense departments.
“The misguided mindset across two administrations has been that development is – as Hillary Clinton put it in January 2010 – ‘mutually reinforcing’ to defence. Experience and commonsense suggest the opposite – aid works better where bullets are not flying. As for aid winning hearts and minds in war zones, it hasn’t worked. Not in Pakistan, where despite $3.7bn in economic aid between 2003 and 2009, the US is more unpopular than ever. Not in Afghanistan, where 52% of Afghans said ‘foreign aid organisations are corrupt and are in the country just to get rich’.”

Food imbalances
World Trade Organization head Pascal Lamy argues the trade policies of major food-exporting countries have as much to do with hunger in Africa as the continent’s low yields.
“The burden must not fall on Africa alone. The developed world also has a role to play by curbing the use of trade distorting subsidies which result in food surpluses being dumped on third country markets.
Low levels of African agricultural productivity have kept the continent on the sidelines of global agricultural trade and helped create a situation today in which a handful of countries dominate production and export. In a world of nearly 200 countries, there are only between five and 10 major exporters of cereals.”

Latest Developments, November 18

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Structural maladjustment
The Inter Press Service reports on the release of a new UN report on the current state of the world’s Least Developed Countries, while quoting some of the organization’s economists who are highly critical of the impact the World Bank and IMF have in such countries.
“There are currently 48 poorest countries with low per capita income of less than a dollar a day. About two-thirds of LDCs are located in Africa, and all indicators suggest that they are the worst affected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank’s market-oriented policies.
‘The neo-liberal policies (fostered by the IMF and World Bank) devastated these countries,’ says Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, [UN Conference on Trade and Development’s] secretary general. ‘These policies turned most sub-Saharan African countries from net food producing countries into net food importing countries.’
Team leader for the report, Zeljka Kozul-Wright, said that the LDCs are the victims of ‘structural maladjustment’ policies followed over the last 40 years, which resulted in ‘boom-bust cycles and growth collapses.’

Aiding repression
The Washington Post reports the US government has launched an investigation to determine whether technology made by California-based Blue Coat Systems helped the Syrian government monitor dissidents.
“On Thursday, three senators urged the Obama administration to investigate whether Blue Coat and another California-based company had provided “tools of repression” to Damascus.
‘The sale of U.S.-made equipment that may have contributed to ongoing violence is unacceptable and should be investigated as soon as possible,’ said the letter from Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.).
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The senators who asked the Obama administration to investigate Blue Coat also asked for an investigation into the California-based company NetApp.
Bloomberg News has reported that NetApp equipment is part of a Syrian Internet surveillance project designed to intercept and catalogue all e-mail in Syria.”

Copyright trumps all
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Trevor Timm argues a proposed US copyright law – the Stop Internet Piracy Act – will give corporations the power to censor Internet sites and could endanger human rights activists around the world.
“Ironically, we know from the WikiLeaks cables that the State Department has also aggressively lobbied many other countries for strict new laws similar to SOPA. They have even offered to fund enforcement and literally draft the laws that sacrifice free speech for greater copyright protection for Hollywood.
Over one hundred law professors signed a letter staunchly opposing the Senate’s version of this bill on constitutional grounds earlier this year. Even Google’s public policy director Bob Boorstin said the bill ‘Would put the US government in the very position we criticise repressive regimes for doing – all in the name of copyright’. Here’s hoping Hillary takes a closer look and repudiates SOPA as adverse to US interests both at home and abroad.”

Shadow world
Bradford University’s Paul Rogers reviews a new book, written by former South African member of parliament Andrew Feinstein, on the global arms trade and the “web of malpractice” into which it draws the world’s politicians.
“Throughout The Shadow World, Feinstein emphasises the sheer corruption of the whole process, pointing to the enticements and kick-backs, always overshadowed by the ubiquitous use of ‘commission’ and ‘agents’, as though the distancing of corruption through intermediaries somehow makes it more acceptable. What he seeks to do is open up perhaps the greatest international can of worms of the current era, but this is inevitably an area replete with rumour and all too often affected by conspiracy theories that divert attention from the reality of trading in death.”

Cheaper is not always better
Michael Jennings, a lecturer at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, argues that donor pressure for poor countries to open public tenders to international competition is not necessarily good for their economies.
“Public procurement is generally seen as a technical, accounting issue, not a development one. This view is profoundly wrong. State and donor-funded purchasing is a significant part of overall GDP in developing countries, around 20% (and substantially more in some countries). Where that money is spent, and whether governments are able to make decisions on how to use their public resources, matters considerably for development.
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Getting value for money is important, of course. Spend less per individual drug, for example, and you get more drugs for the overall money spent. But “value” should not only reflect monetary considerations. Used in the right way, procurement could be an important development tool: helping create jobs, boosting skills, supporting emerging industrial sectors, helping national economies wean themselves gradually off aid.”

Ostracizing tax havens
ECONorthwest’s Ann Hollingshead writes that although not much in the way of concrete policy came out of the recent G20 summit, its host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, had some harsh words for a handful of tax havens, including one of France’s neighbours.
“Sarkozy intonated that a list of eleven uncooperative jurisdictions should be ‘excluded from the international community,’ including: Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua, Botswana, Brunei, Panama, Seychelles, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. He added that a list of countries which do not conform to acceptable tax practices would be published at all future G20 summits. ‘We don’t want to have tax havens any more.’ He said ‘Our message is very clear.’”

Power shift
The Overseas Development Institute’s Jonathan Glennie argues there has been “a subtle rebalancing of power” between aid donor and recipient countries over the last few years.
“Changes in the global context are the main causes of this change in body language: donor economies are doing badly, calling into question their assumptions of always knowing best; emerging powers are doing well, implying different ways of doing things and providing poor countries with other avenues for trade and aid relationships; and poor countries are doing better economically than before, giving them more confidence and shaking off an attitude of dependence.”

Latest Developments, November 17

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Mali’s land rush
The Guardian reports on a new study that found foreign investment in Mali’s arable land, much of which has been worked for generations by farmers with no formal ownership rights, increased by 60 percent from 2009 to 2010.
“The bulk of these land deals – covering an area the report says could sustain more than half a million small farmers – were negotiated by just 22 foreign agri-investors. Less than 5% of west Africa’s largest country is arable.
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The report levels significant blame on the World Bank, which it says has ‘shaped the economic, fiscal and legal environment of Mali in a way that favours the acquisition of vast tracks of fertile lands by few private interests instead of bringing solutions to the widespread poverty and hunger plaguing the country’.”

Zambia doubles up on miners
The Centre for Trade Policy and Development has welcomed the Zambian government’s proposal to double royalty rates on mining companies to six percent.
“Our analysis of the mining sector’s tax payments, its contribution to employment and supporting backward and forward linkages to local supply chains reveals that these are not commensurate to the levels of incentives and concessions that the government currently gives to the industry. The cost structure of most of the mining entities is weighted to promote shifting of profits outside the country through such schemes as transfer pricing, use of derivatives and thin capitalization,” according to CTPD’s Savior Mwambwa.

Air battle
Reuters reports that Nigeria is fining two British airlines for overcharging on flights between the two countries, claiming flights from the UK to nearby Ghana are considerably cheaper.
“’We are charging British Airways $135-million and Virgin Atlantic $100-million for abuse of a dominant position, fixing prices, abusing fuel surcharges and taking advantage of passengers,’ said Harold Demuren, director-general of Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
‘We have been investigating for the last six months. Lagos to London has the highest route yield in the world. Our market is open for exploration, not exploitation.’”

Generic pressures
The Inter Press Service reports that even though there are international mechanisms – such as the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health laid out in the Doha Declaration of 2001 – that theoretically enable poor countries to prioritize public health over intellectual property rights, important obstacles to generic treatments persist.
“Surprisingly, very few developing countries, including South Africa, have amended their Patent Acts to make use of the possibilities the Doha Declaration provided – mainly due to international pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the United States and European Union, where many of the world’s patented drugs are manufactured, health experts argue.”

Green economics
The International Institute for Environment and Development’s Kate Munro says green economics has yet to “leap the chasm that divides it from mainstream economic thinking” but it is gaining political traction in “developing” countries.
“However as the [New Forests Company] project in Uganda illustrates, the wide range of activities that can fly the green flag currently includes development projects with major negative social impacts. Such cases risk leaving popular audiences in developing countries unconvinced that green economics really can provide solutions to the problems they face, such as poverty, inequity and a lack of social justice.”

Understanding the Western brain
Saleemul Huq of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh has some tips on how the Climate Vulnerable Forum should present its message if it wants to get the attention of policy makers in rich countries.
“The most important factor is the high level political strategy and messaging. Firstly, it is time to stop repeating that we are the most vulnerable and not responsible for the emissions that cause climate change. While this remains true, it is not new (we have repeated it ad nauseum) and so attracts no media attention. Nor does it find resonance among the developed countries, as they find the accusatory tone unpalatable. It is therefore time to drop the tone of “victimhood” and move on to a more positive message as follows:
Even though we are the most vulnerable and lowest emitters, we are nevertheless prepared to do what we can to reduce our own emissions of Green House Gases (GHGs) because every ton of carbon dioxide, regardless of whether it is produced in Bangladesh, China, or USA, causes the same amount of climate change. Therefore, reducing a ton of carbon dioxide contributes as much to the solution, whether it is done in Bangladesh, China or USA. We, as most vulnerable countries, are prepared to do our best to reduce our emissions and encourage and recommend other to do all they can do as well, whether or not there is any global agreement.”

Journalistic imperialism
Freelance journalist Stanley Kwenda writes about the experience of filming his own documentary for Al Jazeera after years of working as a fixer for foreign journalists telling stories about his native Zimbabwe even if they had “little or no knowledge of the local landscape or culture.”
“Africa’s story has often been about crises, about war, poverty and hunger but Al Jazeera has established a means through which other stories about Africa can be showcased. Those stories may be about Africa’s problems too, but in telling them ourselves it shows that we understand them and can work to find our own solutions.”

Hunger numbers
Oxfam’s Richard King writes about the dodginess of global hunger estimates and the Food and Agriculture Organization’s ongoing attempts to come up with way to get more reliable numbers.
“But all this will take time to overhaul, and will likely still result in indicators that are more suited to measuring recent chronic food insecurity rather than current acute hunger. For that, we may have to turn to more subjective indicators, such as those in the Gallup World Poll surveys recently analysed by [the International Food Policy Research Institute], in which people were asked: ‘Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy the food that you or your family needed?’ (yes or no). This is an imperfect alternative, not least because ‘food’ and ‘need’ are more abstract than counting calories and are likely to be interpreted differently depending on respondents’ location.”