Tag Archives: G20

Latest Developments, November 10

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In today’s latest news and analysis…

Beyond aid
The Overseas Development Institute’s Alison Evans reviews UK Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell’s speech on taking a multi-faceted approach to promoting development and she suggests the country “has a lot more to do on its beyond-aid agenda.”
“Mitchell noted the positive ranking of UK funding and policy on climate change in the latest Commitment to Development Index 2011. The same could be said on development-friendly investment and, of course, aid.  What he didn’t mention, however, is that in the very same index, the UK continues to be ranked amongst the bottom four (out of 22 OECD countries) on security (largely reflecting the continued export of military hardware to poor and undemocratic regimes); on technology (mainly regarding spending on research and development and intellectual property rights issues); and, worst of all, on migration (which reflects how easy – or not – it is for people from poor countries to immigrate, access education or find work, send money home, and even return home with new skills and capital). This is the dark side of UK policy on development and it is not heading in the right direction.
As Mitchell celebrates the powerful alchemy of public, private and voluntary sector commitment to development in the UK, he needs also to focus his energy on making UK policy as a whole development-friendly.”

Mining politics
Bloomberg reports the decision by South Africa’s ruling Africa National Congress to suspend Julius Malema is being welcomed by mining executives who had been made nervous by the Youth League leader’s push for nationalizing the country’s mines.
“In April 2010, Citigroup Inc. valued the country’s mineral resources at $2.5 trillion, the most of any nation.
Malema has lobbied the ANC to adopt a policy of nationalization, saying South Africa’s black majority hasn’t benefited adequately from those riches in the 17 years since the end of white-minority rule. Last month, he led thousands of young supporters on a 62-kilometer (39-mile) march between Johannesburg and Pretoria, calling for nationalization and jobs. A quarter of South Africa’s workforce is unemployed.”

Roma deportations
Al Jazeera reports that a European rights watchdog has declared that France’s expulsion of over 1,000 Roma immigrants last year constituted an “aggravated violation of human rights.”
“A Council of Europe committee has now condemned the move as a violation of its social charter – a document that sets out ‘social rights’, such as the right to fair working conditions and to housing. France is a signatory.
France claimed the expulsions were ‘voluntary’ repatriations only.
The committee dismissed the argument, saying ‘the so-called voluntary returns were in fact disguised forced repatriations in the form of collective expulsions’.”

Cleaning bill
Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development  have called on Shell to pay $1 billion as a “first step” toward cleaning up Nigeria’s Niger Delta.
“In 2008, two consecutive spills, caused by faults in a pipeline, resulted in thousands of barrels of oil polluting the land and creek surrounding Bodo, a town of some 69,000 people. Both spills continued for weeks before they were stopped. No proper clean up has ever taken place.
‘The situation in Bodo is symptomatic of the wider situation in the Niger Delta oil industry. The authorities simply do not control the oil companies. Shell and other oil companies have the freedom to act – or fail to act – without fear of sanction. An independent, robust and well-resourced regulator is long overdue, otherwise even more people will continue to suffer at the hands of the oil companies,’ said Patrick Naagbanton, CEHRD’s Coordiantor.
Shell, which recently reported profits of US$ 7.2bn for July-September, initially offered the Bodo community just 50 bags of rice, beans, sugar and tomatoes as relief for the disaster.”

G20 food inaction
The Inter Press Service reports that the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, believes the lack of substantive progress on global food policies at last week’s G20 summit was the result of lobbying from commercial interests, especially in biofuel-producing countries.
“Back in 2008, a note released by the World Bank’s development prospects group spotlighted how biofuels were responsible for a full 75 percent of the then skyrocketing food prices.
But in spite of strong evidence that biofuels and agrofuels are ‘one of the major drivers of speculation on the commodities markets and one of the major reasons why we have such high pressure on land in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa,’ according to De Schutter, the G20 completely bypassed the issue.”

Legal empowerment
Namati’s Vivek Maru calls on the international community to establish a global fund for “legal empowerment” in order to ensure laws and policies apply as much in practice as in theory.
“Legal empowerment is a public good: it renders governments more accountable, and makes development more equitable. But unlike public health, for example, states have a natural disincentive to support legal empowerment, because it constrains state power – which is all the more reason for a multilateral financing mechanism.
Social movements in India, the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere are demanding institutions that promote greater citizen participation and oversight. The challenge of responding to those movements does not belong exclusively to a handful of governments. It belongs to all of us.”

Sector equality
The European Network on Debt and Development’s Alex Marriage argues the European Commission’s recently proposed corporate transparency rules need to target more than just mining, oil and gas, and logging companies.
“Evidence presented in [an upcoming] report finds that extractive commodities are only a small part of the problem and accounted for just 5% of the trade mispricing activity taking place between the EU and third countries in 2007. This clearly suggests country-by-country reporting is needed in all sectors.”

Latest Developments, November 3

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G20 futility
The Res Publica Foundation’s Julien Landfried argues that despite the apparent multilateralism of G20 summits, competing interests stand in the way of actual progress.
“Everything is happening as though it were inconceivable to neutralize the predations of the financial system on the economy. US President Obama has disappointed his most devoted supporters with his concessions to American financial lobbyists. Financial institutions are calling the shots and dictating the terms, for the most part, of bank bailout plans past and future. They have not just escaped the costs of the crisis, but have taken the ascendancy over states thanks to the public debt crisis, even though its causes lie in the private debt crisis. Nothing will be possible as long as a dismantling of the “financial complex” has not been undertaken. Let’s wager a government that summoned the courage to stand up to financial interests would retrieve not only its own dignity but the respect of the people as well. (Translated from the French.)

Bill Gates & Robin Hood
The Guardian reports Bill Gates has thrown his weight behind a proposed EU financial transaction tax – the so-called Robin Hood tax – despite concerns, particularly in London’s financial sector, that the tax would be bad for business.
“The City has been lobbying the government hard to resist an FTT but Gates said he hoped the prime minister would allow other members of the G20 to press ahead even if Britain remained opposed. ‘It doesn’t seem that the UK should have an objection when it has a settlement tax of its own,’ Gates said, referring to stamp duty levied on share deals. He added: ‘Hong Kong and the UK, which are both big financial centres, have settlement taxes. At the same rate levels it could be adopted by more countries and raise a fair amount of revenue.’”

Amazonas 2030
The Inter Press Service reports on the Colombian government’s decision to reconsider mining titles in its Amazon region, as well as the release of a new index that attempts to measure “the quality of life of ecosystems.”
“The Ministry of Mines and Energy’s announcement that it is studying the cancellation of mining concessions was made on Oct. 26 at the presentation of the Amazonas 2030 Index, developed by an alliance of the same name which collects social, environmental and economic data on the Colombian portion of this rainforest that constitutes the heart of South America.
The study is innovative in that it grants the same importance to the dimensions of the environment and indigenous communities as it does to economic, social and institutional dimensions. Each has a weight of 20 percent.”

Limited protectionism
The Fondation Jean-Jaurès’s Gérard Fuchs has some suggestions – involving land title, agricultural imports and market speculation – that he believes the G20 should adopt to tackle world hunger without having to promise new funds.
“The other threat to food production is the importation of agricultural products which countries in the South have been compelled to accept. Local agriculture has suffered as a result, leading to an uncontrolled rural exodus and mushrooming slums, and when the prices of imported products skyrocket, food riots erupt. It is necessary then to regulate food imports to provide local farmers with the protection they still need to improve productivity, but this position runs counter to free trade. A second proposal, therefore, should be debated within the World Trade Organization to allow regional groupings like ECOWAS [the Economic Community of West African States] or the EU to adopt protective measures aimed at maintaining as much food self-sufficiency as possible. (Translated from the French.)

Fair trade caution
The Landless Workers Movement’s Janaina Stronzake makes the case against treating food as a commodity and argues that fair trade is not automatically a good thing.
“Fair trade is one of the components that can help cure the world’s hunger. Nevertheless, some data from 2009 pointed to a large concentration of commerce in cacao, coffee and tea, so seeing fair trade without seeing food sovereignty in these countries can also bring a problem of monocultures and the concentration of leadership of one or a few NGOs that rule over these fair trades.
Relationships between people in this fight to end hunger cannot be based purely on commerce.”

The nature of foreign policy
The University of Texas, Austin’s Robert Jensen calls for the US to “shift to policies designed not to allow us to run the world but to help us become part of the world.”
“Whether it was Latin America, southern Africa, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia, the central goal of US foreign policy has been consistent: to make sure that an independent course of development did not succeed anywhere. The ‘virus’ of independent development could not be allowed to take root in any country out of a fear that it might infect the rest of the developing world.”

Paying the piper
The Broker provides a mid-point roundup of the Busan debate it is hosting in the run-up to this month’s aid effectiveness conference, in which it highlights, among other things, the power imbalance inherent in the aid industry.
“Touching on the conversation about new donors, Akemi Yonemura also argues that national development plans and local priorities need to be given top priority. Both traditional and new approaches, she argues, are not necessarily needs-based. Ideas often come from donors. Recipients provide the information that donors want to hear and implement projects that donors recommend (or exclusively fund) until the donor money is exhausted. Thus some local concerns remain neglected, a sentiment echoed by Sundar Kumar Sharma. Both the donors and recipients are uncomfortable with the extent to which development is donor-driven, but phasing out this relationship is remarkably difficult once it has been established.”

Latest Developments, October 17

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Supreme moment for Alien Tort
The Associated Press reports the US Supreme Court has agreed to use a suit brought by Nigerian plaintiffs against Royal Dutch Shell to decide if corporations can be held liable in the US for alleged human rights violations committed abroad.
“The justices said they will review a federal appeals court ruling in favor of Shell. The case centers on the 222-year-old Alien Tort Statute that has been increasingly used in recent years to sue corporations for alleged abuses abroad.
Other cases pending in U.S. courts seek to hold accountable Chiquita Brands International for its relationship with paramilitary groups in Colombia; Exxon and Chevron for abuses in Indonesia and Nigeria, respectively, and several companies for their role in apartheid in South Africa.”

Drone growth
TomDispatch’s Nick Turse refers to military documents, press reports and “other open source information” to estimate the US is currently using at least 60 bases around the world for its drone operations, but he anticipates that number will increase as America’s reliance on unmanned aircraft grows.
“Earlier this year, an analysis by TomDispatch determined that there are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases scattered across the globe — a shadowy base-world providing plenty of existing sites that can, and no doubt will, host drones.  But facilities selected for a pre-drone world may not always prove optimal locations for America’s current and future undeclared wars and assassination campaigns.  So further expansion in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is a likelihood.”

LRA love
Premiere Networks talk show host Rush Limbaugh slammed US President Barack Obama’s decision to send American troops to Uganda to fight the Lord’s Resistance Army, accusing him of wanting to “to wipe out Christians in Sudan” until additional information gave him pause.
“Is that right? The Lord’s Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We’re gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless we got a hundred troops being sent over there to fight these guys — and they claim to be Christians.”

Thinktank transparency
Guardian columnist George Monbiot argues that thinktanks “are the means by which corporations and the ultra-rich influence public life without having to reveal their hand” and calls on them to disclose their sources of funding.
“The public sector is now so transparent that we have a right to read the private emails of climate scientists working for a state-sponsored university. The private sector is so opaque that we have no idea on whose behalf the people who appear every day on the BBC, using arguments that look suspiciously like corporate propaganda, are speaking.”

G20 inaction
Responding to the communiqué released at the end of last week’s meeting of G20 finance ministers in Paris, Global Financial Integrity has expressed disappointment at the apparent absence of any comprehensive vision for increasing the transparency and accountability of the world’s financial system.
“The Finance Minister’s communiqué fails to mention country-by-country reporting, automatic exchange of tax information, disclosure of beneficial ownership, or strengthening anti-money-laundering laws,” according to GFI director Raymond Baker. “These measures are key to creating global economic development, and financial stability. What we have here are piecemeal fixes to a systemic problem.”

Money on the mind
Author Dan Hind argues that people need to understand fundamental concepts, such as what money is, in order to have the “reasonable conversation” the established order fears more than riots.
“The problems we face are complicated, it’s true, but they are not as complicated as some would like to make out. We will begin to see how to solve them when we have a clear understanding of the fundamentals of social organisation, including the origins and nature of money.
It is an understanding that those who are currently powerful would rather we didn’t have. After all, as another great American ironist, Walter Karp, put it, “usurped power is only secure as long as it remains unregarded”. For too long, the banks have shaped the laws of economic exchange in private. Even in the midst of a debt crisis their privilege has so far evaded our understanding. It is time that it became the object of our steady and patient attention.”

Locals vs multinationals
Al Jazeera is airing a film entitled How to Stop a Multinational which focuses on the efforts of three activists who have successfully taken on a Canadian mining company in the Argentinian Andes and are now turning their attention to a Chinese one.
“Historically, this region’s never had enough water, so when a mining company comes to use 1,000 litres of water per second, we risk becoming a ghost town, disappearing, because it doesn’t make sense to stay in a town without water, and I don’t want to leave,” according to activist Gabriela Romano.
“I was born here, I love this land, and I will defend it.”

Legalize or die
The Globe and Mail’s Neil Reynolds argues for the legalization of cannabis, opiates, cocaine and “most other drugs” in order to stem the illegal trade’s growing violence in the Americas (15,000 deaths last year in Mexico alone), though he concedes that no country can go it alone.
“Assuming some international consensus for repeal, though, Canada has a number of retail models to contemplate. Assuming a government monopoly, it could regulate the drug trade through government-owned outlets (“beer and liquor stores”). Assuming a regulated industry, it could exploit existing pharmaceutical emporiums (“drugstores”). Assuming a more free-market approach, it could use corner-store outlets (“smoke shops”). All these establishments sell lots of government-regulated drugs already – most of them, when you think about it, for medical purposes of one kind or another.”

Latest Developments, September 26

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Waiting for the politicians
Grist reports that 11 major engineering organizations have issued a joint statement saying a lack of political will, rather than technological shortcomings, are standing in the way of an 85-percent cut in global emissions by 2050.
“The statement calls on world leaders to reach a global commitment to emissions reduction and energy efficiency at December’s COP17 climate change talks. Once that commitment is in place and adequately backed up, say the engineers, the technology is there to carry it out.”

Killer profits
The Arms Trade Treaty Monitor has collected statements made last week to the UN General Assembly by the leaders of countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, Ghana and Costa Rica concerning the agreement which should be finalized in 2012.
“It is unjust and inhuman that the profits of the arms industry should decide the deaths of thousands of people,” according President Felipe Calderón of Mexico.

Untapped markets for unmanned aircraft
The Globe and Mail reports worldwide drone sales are expected to double over the next decade but with a sluggish US market, the quest for profits could trump proliferation concerns.
“Both surveillance and armed U.S. drones, which have been widely deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, have received strong interest from Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia and nuclear neighbours India and Pakistan, among others.”

Trafficking losses
The Financial Times reports on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s growing interest in cracking down on loopholes that enable companies to play one country against another in order avoid paying taxes.
“The OECD last year highlighted its fears about the ability of banks to use losses accumulated since the financial crisis – calculated by the OECD to be worth $700bn – as a tool for aggressive tax planning. Among the concerns is ‘loss trafficking’ – schemes in which losses are sold to other companies to reduce their tax payment. In a report published in August, the OECD also warned about aggressive tax planning concerning the carry-forward of ‘vast’ corporate losses than can be as high as 25 per cent of gross domestic product in some countries.”

G20 and tax dodging
Christian Aid’s David McNair accuses G20 finance and development ministers of “backing away from their commitments to help poor countries collect more of the billions they lose to tax dodgers” at last week’s meeting in Washington.
“If the G20 were serious about harnessing the power of tax against poverty, they would have made a specific commitment to the big solution to tax dodging – financial transparency. Such transparency would make life far harder for companies and individuals hiding wealth in tax havens, not to mention the multinationals that use financial secrecy to dodge billions in tax in poor countries.”

Dodgy oil contracts
A new Global Witness report calling for reforms in Liberia’s oil sector also touches on some questionable behaviour by American oil giant Chevron.
“In 2007, Nigeria’s Oranto Petroleum authorized a bribe to be paid to the Legislature in connection with the passage of at least one of its contracts. In 2010, US company Chevron purchased a 70 % share of the same contracts, despite information about how they were obtained being in the public domain.”

Oversimplifying the economy
University of Toronto historian Michael Bliss suggests the thinking underlying the last few decades of Western economic policy reveal “a naive, self-serving misreading of history” and warns against anyone who suggests “obese and addicted societies” can painlessly right themselves by pushing the right fiscal buttons.
“The danger of listening to the people who oversimplify the past and then oversimplify the present… is that they really can make things worse, especially when they propose to dope us up on more of the same. The longer we avoid accepting complex, unmanageable realities, and the real discomforts involved in convalescence and recovery, the more we risk the long-term future for our children and grandchildren.”

The power of aid
The Guardian reports on the remarkable similarities between the UK’s “centre right development policy,” as described by the man who runs it, Andrew Mitchell, and the development policy of the ostensibly centre left Obama administration.
“Over the past 18 months, the US and the UK have been treading very similar development policy paths. As well as results, both talk about the important role to be played by the private sector, and by science and technology, in bringing about development. And both pepper speeches and announcements with mentions of national interests, security and power. The opening line of the executive summary in the USAid policy framework for 2011 to 2015, published earlier this month, provides a clear example. ‘International development co-operation is a key component of American power, along with diplomacy and defense,’ it reads.”

Latest Developments, September 23

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Normalizing drones
Reuters reports on the deterioration in US-Pakistan relations, with the most recent incident – chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen’s allegation that Pakistan’s intelligence agency is a “veritable arm” of the violent Haqqani network which operates inside Afghanistan – suggesting targeted assassinations have become less controversial than harsh words expressed publicly.
“Mahmud Durrani, a retired major general and former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, said both sides should ease tensions to avoid American military action beyond drone strikes or economic sanctions.”

Arming against democracy
Human Rights Watch has called on the US to hold off on selling $53 million in armoured vehicles and missiles to Bahrain in light of alleged abuses committed against “peaceful critics” of the regime.
“It will be hard for people to take US statements about democracy and human rights in the Middle East seriously when, rather than hold its ally Bahrain to account, it appears to reward repression with new weapons,” according to the group’s deputy Washington director, Maria McFarland.

Who you gonna believe?
In the aftermath of Oxfam allegations that a British company’s carbon offset project in Uganda had led to the forcible eviction of more than 20,000 people, the Wall Street Journal reports the New Forests Company said all relocations were “voluntary, legal and fully respected and in accord with all stringent protocols” and the World Bank said the project “had met its standards so far.”
“Matt Grainger, an Oxfam spokesman and co-author of the Uganda report, faults New Forests and its investors for not digging deeper into the project. In interviews with hundreds of former residents, he said, ‘we can’t find any evictee that doesn’t describe violence….We can’t find anybody who was compensated.’”

Diplomatic oil leak
The Courthouse News Service reports on Wikileaks cables describing efforts by Chevron to convince the Ecuadorean government to make a massive lawsuit over pollution in the Amazon rainforest go away despite the oil company’s public criticism of the country’s “politicized” courts.
“Chevron had begun to quietly explore with senior GOE officials whether it could implement a series of social projects in the concession area in exchange for GOE support for ending the case, but now that the expert has released a huge estimate for alleged damage, it might be hard for the GOE to go that route, even if it has the ability to bring the case to a close,” according to a note written by former US ambassador Linda Jewell April 7, 2008.

Putting the green in greenwash
A new Bottom Up Thinking post suggests that even if companies that donate funds to tropical conservation “are consciously attempting to atone for their ‘bad’ acts elsewhere that have harmed the cause of conservation,” pragmatic engagement may be the best approach.
“Wrapped up in all this is one of the big questions of CSR: compensatory philanthropy versus integration into core business practices. I think just about everyone agrees that it is better not to sin in the first place, than to make some later atonement, and thus conservation BINGOs need to be wary of cosying up to big polluting businesses who are fundamentally uninterested in changing their ways… But on the other side of the coin, we must be realistic: the modern world consumes an awful lot of resources (hydrocarbons, minerals, timber, food) whose production or extraction is inevitably messy. So, yes, we should constantly push polluters to improve their acts, but we should accept that some environmental damage is unavoidable, and welcome their attempts to atone for this elsewhere.”

With or without you
Embassy Magazine reports that British Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to Canada, suggested that an outcome of increased global trade liberalization was more important than a process of inclusive negotiation.
“And if we can’t get a deal involving everyone, then we need to look at other ways in which to drive forward with the trade liberalization the world needs, ensuring the continued work of the WTO preventing any collapse back to protectionism,” he told Parliament. “But going forwards, perhaps with a coalition of the willing where countries like Britain and Canada who want to, can forge ahead with more ambitious deals and others can join later if they choose.”

An end in itself
The Trade Justice Movement’s Ruth Bergan criticizes the G20’s development working group for prioritizing the interests of big business and seeing development as a means to increasing trade.
“While governments are allowed to continue doing business in the G20, we should expect little more than lip service to development and a shopping list of measures to benefit the vested interests of the private sector. The WTO may be in freefall, but we must be vigilant that the G20, which does not even pretend to be democratic or accountable, does not become a substitute.”

The trouble with accountability
The Institute of Development Studies’ Noshua Watson argues that because pressure from domestic voters can reduce the quality of foreign aid provided by governments in wealthy countries, official development assistance needs to be supplemented by other sources of non-state giving.
“The provision of global public goods is dependent on the willingness of the most fortunate to give to the less fortunate. Whether this aid actually contributes to development and wellbeing depends on how aligned donors’ intentions are with recipients’ needs. It also depends on recipients’ capacities to use that aid. Because they are not responsible to the voting public, philanthropies can more closely meet recipients’ needs and help them build capacity.”