Tag Archives: post-2015

Latest Developments, June 6

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Torture money
The BBC reports that in announcing a settlement package for victims of colonial-era torture in Kenya, the UK government said it “sincerely regrets” the abuses while rejecting any legal liability for them:

” ‘The British government recognises that Kenyans were subject to torture and other forms of ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration,’ [UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said].
‘The British government sincerely regrets that these abuses took place and that they marred Kenya’s progress towards independence.’
Mr Hague said 5,228 victims would receive payments totalling £19.9m following an agreement with lawyers acting for the victims, who have been fighting for compensation for a number of years.
The compensation amounts to about £3,000 per victim and applies only to the living survivors of the abuses that took place.
Mr Hague said Britain still did not accept it was legally liable for the actions of what was a colonial administration in Kenya.”

Bilderberg thaw
Comedy writer Charlie Skelton says that the 2013 edition of the Bilderberg conference marks a departure from the elite gathering’s “cold war policy of disengagement and secrecy” as mainstream news media converge on the event for the first time:

“Four Bilderbergs ago (has it been that long?) there were barely a dozen people outside the conference in Greece. The relationship with the press back then was simple: arrest them. Follow them, harass them, chase them out of town.
…
Never mind the steady stream of limousined technocrats and hedge-fund billionaires humming up the hill. The weird ritual of ducking delegates, tinted windows and rings of steel. Up on the hill, an ugly looking steel and concrete fence, a paranoid scar on the landscape. But over here in the paddock, in front of news crews, this is where Bilderberg changed.”

Violence silence
The Justice and Corporate Accountability Project has lodged a complaint with the Ontario Securities Commission over a Canadian mining company’s “poor disclosure” concerning violence near its silver project in Guatemala:

“According to Securities Commission requirements, Tahoe Resources must file material changes ‘forthwith’. Company disclosure, however, has been both insufficient and inaccurate.
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‘As the company’s only mine project, investors, and the public in general, need to know about the implication of its employees in such an egregious attack, as well as widespread and ongoing opposition to the mine,’ remarked Jen Moore for MiningWatch Canada.”

War on pot
Postmedia News reports on a new American Civil Liberties Union study revealing the racial component of US anti-marijuana measures:

“The study shows that literally in every state and community in the U.S. there is a huge racial disparity in marijuana arrests despite the fact that the rate of marijuana use is about identical between whites and blacks.
On average, 3.73 times more blacks are arrested than whites. In some states, this rate rises to five.
…
The study shows that blacks are targeted no matter where they live, where they go, wealthy or poor, within small or large black communities.”

Unhappy shareholders
The New York Times reports that Walmart’s board of directors will face “largely symbolic” opposition at its annual shareholders’ meeting over perceived ethical lapses:

“A group of investors, including pension plans from Connecticut and Sweden and the United Automobile Workers medical benefits trust, is sponsoring a shareholder proposal related to an inquiry over Wal-Mart Stores’ potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The proposal asks that Wal-Mart disclose whether the company is holding current and former executives financially responsible for breaching company policies.
Calpers, the nation’s largest public pension fund, which owns about $400 million in Wal-Mart shares, says it continues to be concerned about the Mexico inquiry, and it is troubled by recent Wal-Mart supply-chain issues. It says it will vote against several board members and support several shareholder proposals.
‘We’re extremely concerned about Wal-Mart’s monitoring on its supply chain — the fires and deaths in Bangladesh, and other concerns about supply-chain issues in the U.S.,’ said Anne Simpson, senior portfolio manager for investments at Calpers.”

Post-2015 miss
The Green Economy Coalition’s Emily Benson writes that a UN panel’s recommendations for the Millennium Development Goals’ successors were disappointing on the sustainability front:

“The Panel falls short of recognising all of our planetary boundaries, arguably one of the most important research developments in the last decade. It reiterates the commitment on CO2 levels and insists on the need for sustainable consumption and production. But most of the emphasis is on the role of efficiency gains from production and technological advances, rather than tackling issues of how we consume – particularly in rich countries. Taken together, their goals do not measure progress in staying within our ecological limits.”

Evicted and uncompensated
IRIN reports on the plight of 250 people forced from their homes by construction of a mine owned by South Africa’s Anglogold Ashanti, just one of several such incidents in Tanzania in recent years:

“The area, which resembles a refugee camp and is known by residents as Sophiatown – or colloquially, Darfur – is inhabited by farming families who were displaced in 2007 to make way for one of the country’s largest gold mines.
…
The resettlement issue sparked a legal battle between Mine Mpya’s residents and Anglogold Ashanti. According to the company, no compensation was paid upon eviction because a High Court ruling found that ‘those on the land had no legal rights of occupancy.’ ”

Unburnable fuels
EJOLT’s Nick Meynen writes that European climate and energy policies are “mutually exclusive”:

“While [the Directorate-General for Energy] wants to open Europe for a new source of fossil fuels, [the Directorate-General for Climate Action] is working to prevent 2°C or more of global warming. In 2009, the EU has committed itself to this goal in Copenhagen. Scientists now know that in order to stand a reasonable chance of keeping below 2°C, around 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground as burning them would cause too much global warming. Even The Economist recognizes that we are faced with huge amounts of unburnable fuels. Policymakers in the EU, who read The Economist, know that this liberal magazine is not some environmental activist group crying wolf on the coming apocalypse without checking their sources. But instead of debating which reserves will be kept under the ground and how, the recent EU Energy Summit concluded with the message that Europe needs a shale-gas revolution. If that plan goes ahead, something is deeply rotten in the way policy is made in the EU. The simple truth is that the EU needs to choose which policy it wants: more or less fossil fuels? You can’t have both.”

Latest Developments, May 30

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Beyond MDGs
The Guardian reports that the UN panel tasked with drawing up the post-2015 development agenda has claimed its new report presents “a clear road map for eradicating extreme poverty by 2030”:

“But the proposals do not include a standalone goal on inequality, reflecting [UK prime minister and panel co-chair David] Cameron’s priorities: growth rather than reducing inequality.
…
‘Nice goals, but the elephant in the post-2015 room is inequality,’ said Andy Sumner, a development economist at King’s College London. ‘We find in our number-crunching that poverty can only be ended if inequality falls so one should ask: where’s the inequality goal? Something resembling that elephant in the room – on data disaggregation – is in annex 1 of the report, but will anyone remember an annex note in 2030?’
…
The high-level panel proposed 12 measurable goals and 54 targets. Goals include ending extreme poverty for good, making sure everyone has access to food and water, promoting good governance, and boosting jobs and growth. Targets include promoting free speech and the rule of law, ending child marriage, protecting property rights, encouraging entrepreneurship, and educating all children to at least primary school level.”

Pros and cons
The Overseas Development Institute’s Claire Melamed argues that the post-2015 report’s absence of an inequality goal may prove a “wise decision” but calls the treatment of global partnerships a “missed opportunity”:

“An income inequality goal risks focusing campaigners and policymakers on shifts in, say, a country’s Gini coefficient – which is a pretty poor indicator of how people are actually faring, and doesn’t go to the heart of the multiple, intersecting inequalities, and the different dimensions of inequality. If talk of a ‘data revolution’ is carried through, and we know what is happening to the poorest and most remote communities – if their children are going to school, if they have healthcare, if they are at risk of violence – that is much more useful information than a shift in the Gini coefficient.
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The panel has ducked some hard choices [on global partnerships] – or maybe failed to reach a consensus. There’s great language on the need for all institutions, including the private sector, to be much more transparent and accountable. The report goes beyond MDG eight by suggesting a target on keeping global warming within 2C. But there’s little that’s specific – instead of measurable targets, we get vague aspirations to create an ‘open, fair and development-friendly trading system’, or ‘reform the international financial architecture’, or ‘reduce tax evasion’.”

Corporate thinking
The Christian Science Monitor explores the “different paths” that EU and US companies have taken following the garment factory collapse that killed over 1,000 people in Bangladesh last month:

“Clothing firms quickly came under activist and union pressure to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh: a five-year, legally binding commitment from retailers, whose suppliers will be subject to independent inspections and public reports. A finance mechanism also requires each firm to contribute to safety upgrades, at a maximum of $2.5 million each over the five-year commitment.
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US firms, which have cited legal liabilities, have embraced a lawyer-driven dialogue that favors a corporate instead of consumer response, [International Marketing Partners’ Allyson] Stewart-Allen says. North American re-tailers say they are drawing up their own safety plan.”

Radioactive workplace
The Daily Times reports on allegations that a uranium mine run by Australia’s Paladin Energy in Malawi is a “death trap” for local workers:

“Rex Chatambalala, who said he worked as control room operator in the final product area until August 2010, said local workers are exposed to radioactive material, highlighting two worst areas.
‘The first is the pit or mine where workers are exposed to radioactive dust, and the second is the processing line starting from crushers to the final product area,’ said Chatambalala in an exclusive interview.
‘When pipes block, Malawians are the ones unblocking them and they do this manually. Supervisors just instruct from far, telling you even to pick a radioactive stone with hands.
‘The expatriates don’t work where they know it is dangerous. They send locals there while they sit the offices drinking coffee.’ ”

Lily pads
Nikolas Kozloff writes in the Huffington Post about the growing US military presence in and around Africa:

“Reportedly, the Pentagon wants to establish a monitoring station in the Cape Verde islands, while further south in the Gulf of Guinea U.S. ships and personnel are patrolling local waters. Concerned lest it draw too much attention to itself, the Pentagon has avoided constructing large military installations and focused instead on a so-called ‘lily pad’ strategy of smaller bases. In São Tomé and Príncipe, an island chain in the Gulf of Guinea and former Portuguese colony, the Pentagon may install one such ‘under the radar’ base, and U.S. Navy Seabees are already engaged in construction work at the local airport.”

Conflict catalysts
Peru-based filmmaker/journalist Stephanie Boyd argues that reporters who accompanied Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper on his recent trip to Latin America should have focused less on scandals back home and more on the human rights records of Canadian mining companies in the region:

“There are currently 229 social conflicts in Peru and over half of these are related to mining, oil and gas projects, according to Peru’s government Ombudsman’s office.
…
‘Many of Peru’s historic and current mining conflicts are related to Canadian companies,’ says Jose de Echave, who served as vice-minister of the Environment during President Humala’s first cabinet.
One of the most recent involves Vancouver-based Candente Copper, which hopes to build a copper mine in one of northern Peru’s fragile tropical forests. Leaders from the nearby indigenous community of Cañaris say the proposed mine would destroy their source of water and livelihood. Last year the community held a referendum in which 95 per cent voted against the mine, but the company has ignored the results and is pushing ahead with the project.”

Racist violence
Despite recognizing “legitimate concerns about the overbroad scope of some provisions,” Human Rights Watch pushes for parliamentary debate on a Greek bill aimed at protecting immigrants from the country’s growing number of racially motivated hate crimes:

“A version of the draft law seen by Human Rights Watch would protect migrants who are victims of, or substantive witnesses to crime from deportation, as well as their families, while the alleged attackers are prosecuted. Human Rights Watch research indicates that fear of deportation deters undocumented migrants from reporting attacks to the police.”

Latest Developments, February 5

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Redefining imminence
NBC News reports that a confidential US government document lays out the conditions needed to ensure the “lawfulness of a lethal operation” against American citizens who are thought to be senior members of certain organizations:

“It refers, for example, to what it calls a ‘broader concept of imminence’ than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.
…
Instead, it says, an ‘informed, high-level’ official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American has been ‘recently’ involved in ‘activities’ posing a threat of a violent attack and ‘there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.’ The memo does not define ‘recently’ or ‘activities.’ ”

Conflict parasites
Olivier Roy, of the School of Advanced Social Science Studies (EHESS), argues the solution to Mali’s current conflict will require more political negotiation than military force:

“Al-Qaeda’s strategy is global and deterritorialized: it seeks to multiply confrontations, always with the West.
In a word, al-Qaeda draws on local conflicts, each of which has its own logic, in order to promote radical anti-Western sentiment and lure the West into the trap of intervention.
…
It would be absurd for France to hope it can dislodge al-Qaeda from the Maghreb by occupying territory: the group will just reconstitute itself a little further away.
And it would be equally absurd to aim to destroy these groups: given their small number of fighters (a few hundred) and international recruiting, nothing would be easier for them than to relocate, cross borders or come back clean-shaven and wearing jeans in Toronto or London.
Al-Qaeda is a nuisance, but not a strategic threat. To remove a big part of its power, one must ensure the local forces off which the movement wants to feed no longer have any good reason to protect it.” [Translated from the French.]

ICC detainees
Radio Netherlands reports that Congolese witnesses before the International Criminal Court are struggling to get the attention of the Dutch state, which “tries to keep people away from court and out of range of Dutch law”:

“Last month the International Criminal Court (ICC) handed down the second verdict in its 10-year history: Congolese militia leader Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui was found not guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes relating to a deadly 2003 attack in the Ituri region of DR Congo. Ngudjolo was released pending the prosecutors’ appeal, but the three Congolese witnesses who testified against him remain in custody.
The witnesses have spent almost two years in a prison cell in the ICC’s detention unit in a legal limbo one of their lawyers has compared to Guantanamo Bay. Last month they lost their first legal round in an attempt to get asylum from the Dutch state.”

Swiss plunder
The Berne Declaration alleges that Trafigura, Switzerland’s third largest company, has extensive ties with a pair of Angolan generals who dominate their country’s economy:

“In the US, laws have been passed forcing oil and mining companies to publish any payments made to governments in countries where they are active; the EU is also about to do the same. Switzerland has decided to do nothing. The lack of transparency and regulation in Switzerland provides a refuge for unscrupulous companies and contributes to enriching dictators to the detriment of the poorest peoples on the planet. Angola is but another country on the long list where Switzerland is complicit in the plundering of their natural resources.”

Right to say no
The Guardian reports, in photo essay form, on a recent gathering in Mexico, which brought together activists from across the Americas to “co-ordinate growing local resistance” to mining on indigenous lands:

“In the final moments of the gathering a declaration of intent was read out: ‘The time when the government represented absolute power is a thing of the past, we need a new relationship with the government, where indigenous peoples decide the fate of their territories. Faced with the great threat that the mining industry represents to our Mesoamerican region, we call on the people and communities of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Canada and Mexico to strengthen our networks of resistance and to generate broad-based partnerships based on our knowledge, where the defence of territory is the basis of our co-ordination.’ The event closed with the statement: ‘We have the right to say NO to imposed development and to define our own forms of economic, social, political and cultural production’ ”

Population boom
Inter Press Service reports that the number of inmates in US federal prisons has increased by close to 800 percent over the past three decades:

“ ‘Last year, some 95,000 juveniles under 18 years of age were put in prison, and that doesn’t count those in juvenile facilities,’ [Human Rights Watch’s Maria McFarland] noted.
‘And between 2007 and 2011, the population of those over 64 grew by 94 times the rate of the regular population. Prisons clearly aren’t equipped to take care of these aging people, and you have to question what threat they pose to society – and the justification for imprisoning them.’ ”

Fragile states
Oxfam’s Duncan Green summarizes (and quotes extensively) from a recent report that lays out some of the ways in which outside actions can further destabilize countries they are ostensibly meant to help:

“ ‘There is a strong, negative and significant association between military interventions and democracy. Military interventions have tended to destroy a state’s conflict-resolution mechanisms, often unleashed forms of politics incompatible with democracy, upset political settlements and critically weakened state systems in general.’
…
‘Policy makers need to consider the extent to which deregulating an economy across the board will be politically destabilising and actually undermine economic reforms….. policies that contribute to state withdrawal are often evaluated on grounds of efficiency and equity, but almost never for their impact on the institutional resilience of the state. This is a major blind spot which has far-reaching consequences for the ability of states to embark upon or return to a path of institutional consolidation.’ ”

Global new deal
UN economist Richard Kozul-Wright and Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Jayati Ghosh argue the international community is “in the wrong frame of mind” for solving global problems, such as extreme poverty and environmental destruction:

“Making inequality part of the development policy agenda has already gained traction. But to make lasting progress, it will be necessary to move beyond MDG-style targets and instead consider a global new deal allowing different economic strategies providing benefits for all.
…
Policies of universal social protection (including basic income policies) can help repair the social contract. Along with humanitarian aid for the poorest and most vulnerable, the international community needs to guarantee adequate policy space for countries to develop measures relevant to their own contexts.”

Latest Developments, January 31

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Blue helmet talks
Reuters reports that, following the French military’s capture of northern Mali’s principal towns, the UN Security Council looks set to discuss the deployment of peacekeepers:

“Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had resisted U.N. peacekeepers becoming embroiled in an offensive combat mission but the recapture of the main Malian towns has made a deployment less risky. The Security Council is due to discuss the possibility soon, U.N. diplomats said on Wednesday.
“This development is extremely positive and I want this initiative to be carried through,” [French Defence Minister] Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Inter radio.”

Lockdown
In its newly released World Report 2013, Human Rights Watch criticizes America’s enthusiasm for depriving individuals of their freedom:

“The US incarcerates more people than any other country. Practices contrary to human rights principles, such as the death penalty, juvenile life-without-parole sentences, and solitary confinement are common and often marked by racial disparities. Increasing numbers of non-citizens are held in immigration detention facilities although many are not dangerous or at risk of absconding. Federal prosecutions for illegal entry and reentry have escalated.
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As of 2010, the US maintained the world’s largest incarcerated population, at 1.6 million, and the world’s highest per capita incarceration rate, at 500 inmates per 100,000 residents.”

Development fail
The Toronto Star reports that one Canadian NGO is having second thoughts about its participation in a federal government program that pairs up civil society organizations and mining companies for overseas development projects:

“ ‘Would we try it again? Probably not,’ Rosemary McCarney, [Plan Canada’s] president, said in an interview with the Toronto Star. ‘It’s upsetting to donors. People are mad. The reality is that working with any mining company is going to be a problem. There are going to be (employee) strikes and spills. Is it worth the headache? Probably not.’
…
[The Canadian International Development Agency] is giving Plan $5.6 million over five years to run an educational program in Burkina Faso. Iamgold, which operates a gold mine in the West African country, pledged another $1 million per year to the project. Plan has also committed $1 million. ”

Outsourcing radiation
Yale Environment 360 reports on concerns over Australian-based Lynas Corporation’s shipping of rare earths from Australia, where they are mined, to Malaysia for processing:

“The plant lies in an industrial zone atop reclaimed swampland, just 12 miles from Kuantan, a city of 600,000. The chief worry is that the rare earth elements are bound up in mineral deposits with the low-level radioactive element thorium, exposure to which has been linked to an increased risk of developing lung, pancreatic, and other cancers.
…
The [Institute for Applied Ecology] study faults a Lynas plan to dispose of wastewater through an open channel rather than a closed pipeline; a refusal by the company to disclose what the plant’s exact chemical byproducts will be; and a temporary waste storage facility that the institute predicts will cause radioactive leakage ‘even under normal operating conditions.’ ”

Treeckle down
The Guardian reports that the World Bank’s own evaluators say the billions it has invested in forestry over the last decade have helped commercial loggers more than poor people:

“The World Bank funded 345 major forestry projects in 75 countries in the decade to July 2011. The [Independent Evaluation Group] panel, which visited many of the projects and interviewed hundreds of people, criticised the bank strongly for:
• Continuing to support industrial logging.
• Not involving communities in decision-making.
• Assuming that benefits would accrue to the poor rather than the rich and powerful.
• Paying little attention to rural poverty.”

Good and bad murder
Foreign Policy’s Micah Zenko writes that the current US administration fiercely opposes extrajudicial killings, except for the kind that it carries out routinely in places like Pakistan and Yemen:

“The Obama administration deserves credit for strongly endorsing an extension of the mandate of the U.N. special rapporteur of extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, and for repeatedly fighting to include language in General Assembly resolutions that specifically condemn extrajudicial killings of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Obama administration officials have also been willing to discuss targeted killings with the special rapporteurs, albeit in general terms. However, as the current mandate-holder, Christopher Heyns, observed after a two-day ‘interactive dialogue’ with U.S. officials in June: ‘I don’t think we have the full answer to the legal framework, we certainly don’t have the answer to the accountability issues. My concern is that we are dealing here with a situation that creates precedents around the world.’ This is exactly what his predecessors observed and warned about over the past ten years.”

Defining sustainability
Inter Press Service reports on concerns over the lack of guidelines in the “sustainable investment sector”:

“One significant point of concern among some environmentalists, for instance, is that investment funds will look to strengthen their ‘green’ credentials by choosing to invest in alternatives to fossil fuels – the biofuel products that to a great degree are fuelling the purchases of massive swaths of arable land across parts of Africa by Western corporations.
…
‘Investment is necessary, but only if investment criteria are first vetted by local communities, to incorporate labour, environmental and social concerns. Given that no such standards exist, and given that corporate accountability remains a major difficulty, this is extremely problematic,’ [according to the Oakland Institute’s Anuradha Mittal].”

Social contract sans frontières
UK shadow secretary for international development Ivan Lewis MP claims to lay out an “ambitious vision for a progressive post-2015 development framework”:

“Ultimately, the new framework must be developed through an authentic and equal partnership. Gone are the days when G8 governments could impose their views on the rest of the world.
…
Trade, jobs, migration, the cost of living, the impact of climate change, our security are all profoundly affected by factors beyond our borders. One Nation: One World is our best and only route to fairness and prosperity in the future. But our values mean globalisation must work for the many not the few and we have a particular duty to reassure people that we understand the insecurity this rapid change is creating. In the 21st century to be a British patriot is to be an internationalist.”

Latest Developments, January 22

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Casualties of war
In an interview with France 24, the UN refugee agency’s William Spindler discusses the uncertain humanitarian situation since the start of the French offensive in northern Mali, where the number of refugees “could rise by as much as 400,000”:

“Only organisations that already had staff on the ground are present. International NGOs have not yet been given access to the combat zones since the French army launched its offensive.
…
The situation will only worsen because of growing difficulties in transportation, especially between the cities of Mopti and Gao. We also fear an increase in the number of internally displaced people, which we currently estimate at 229,000.”

Splitting Africa
Reuters reports that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has come out strongly against the French-led military intervention currently underway in Mali:

“ ‘I would like to confirm that we do not agree, ever, to military intervention in Mali because this would inflame the conflict in this region,’ Mursi said.
‘The intervention must be peaceful and developmental and funds must be spent on development,’ he said. ‘What we don’t ever want is to … separate the Arab north from the core of Africa.’ ”

The Pakistan exception
The Washington Post reports that a nearly completed US government counterterrorism “playbook” establishing rules for targeted killings will not immediately apply to CIA drone strikes in Pakistan:

“The adoption of a formal guide to targeted killing marks a significant — and to some uncomfortable — milestone: the institutionalization of a practice that would have seemed anathema to many before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Among the subjects covered in the playbook are the process for adding names to kill lists, the legal principles that govern when U.S. citizens can be targeted overseas and the sequence of approvals required when the CIA or U.S. military conducts drone strikes outside war zones.
…
The decision to allow the CIA strikes to continue was driven in part by concern that the window for weakening al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan is beginning to close, with plans to pull most U.S. troops out of neighboring Afghanistan over the next two years. CIA drones are flown out of bases in Afghanistan.”

Lessons from Bangladesh
The Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart has announced a new “zero tolerance policy” that would mean terminating contracts with suppliers that use subcontractors without the American retail giant’s permission:

“The changes, which begin taking effect March 1, come after Wal-Mart clothing was found at a Bangladesh factory where a fire killed 112 people in November—a factory the company said was no longer supposed to be making its clothes.
The tougher new policies replace the Bentonville, Ark., retailer’s prior ‘three strikes’ approach to policing suppliers, which gave the suppliers three chances to address problems before being terminated.”

New treaty
In a Q&A with Inter Press Service, Uruguayan diplomat Fernando Lugris, who chaired 140-nation negotiations on the newly agreed and legally binding Minamata Convention on Mercury, discusses some of the issues that divided rich and poor countries:

“The GRULAC (Latin American and Caribbean Group) clearly sought to introduce health as an issue throughout the convention, and the agreed text basically contains many measures for health protection.
The group also insisted on the need to include a specific article on health. In principle, the industrialised countries felt that an article on health was irrelevant in an environmental agreement.
However, Latin America’s persistence and its clear interest in protecting human health succeeded in getting the final session of the plenary to agree on an article specifically about health.
…
The international community has clearly formulated this issue [of indigenous rights] through the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is a non-binding agreement, but unfortunately at the level of binding agreements there are still some countries that oppose making specific reference to native peoples. This is not the case in Latin America.”

Commodification salvation
The Guardian’s Claire Provost urges greater scrutiny of “market-based approaches to the world’s water woes,” whose growing popularity is setting off alarm bells in some circles:

“The global water justice movement – emboldened by a decade of struggles against the commodification and privatisation of water – warns that setting up markets for the benefits provided by ecosystems could pave the way for a wholesale commodification of nature while doing little to address imbalances of money, power and resources. Commentators have lashed out at payments for ecosystems services for heralding the greatest privatisation since the enclosure of common lands, and sounded the alarm over prospects for a future financialised global water market and the impact that could have on food security.
Alarmingly, this week’s report notes that social goals – from poverty reduction to gender inequality – are not measured or monitored in most projects, even when mentioned as priorities.”

Concentration problems
Oxfam is calling on world leaders, many of whom are about to meet at the World Economic Forum in Davos, to “commit to reducing inequality to at least 1990 levels”:

“Barbara Stocking, Oxfam Chief Executive, said: ‘We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many – too often the reverse is true.’
…
‘In a world where even basic resources such as land and water are increasingly scarce, we cannot afford to concentrate assets in the hands of a few and leave the many to struggle over what’s left.’
Members of the richest one per cent are estimated to use as much as 10,000 times more carbon than the average US citizen.”

Small answers
A Guardian editorial argues the international development industry appears to be incapable of leading the necessary conversation about changing the world, a debate that “needs blasting open”:

“While the questions in development are getting bigger, the professional and intellectual scene has never been so fragmented. It will take a formidable alchemy to forge strong solutions here. One thing is clear: wasting years on a technocratic debate about goals which are for advocacy more than anything else – and likely drawn up without reference to such fundamentals as political rights – is not a serious response to the dysfunctional summitry, procrastination and missed targets of recent years. And it will leave the global public square in the same state of disrepair. The conversation we need has barely begun.”