Tag Archives: sustainable investing

Latest Developments, October 11

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In the latest news and analysis…

Immigration disaster
The Associated Press reports that another boat carrying African migrants, this time an estimated 200, has capsized on its way to Europe:

“The capsizing occurred some 65 miles (105 kilometers) southeast of Lampedusa but in waters where Malta has search and rescue responsibilities.
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Last week, a ship carrying some 500 people capsized off Lampedusa, killing more than 300 people. Only 155 survived. The deaths prompted calls for the European Union to do more to better patrol the southern Mediterranean and prevent such tragedies.”

And the winner is…
RT reports that the global watchdog tasked with overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons has won this year’s Nobel peace prize:

“The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was founded in 1997 to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international treaty that bans the production, storage and use of chemical weapons.
Its main job since then has been the ongoing monitoring of the process of chemical disarmament by the treaty’s signatories, particularly the US and Russia, the countries that held the largest stockpiles at the time it was signed.
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Awarding the prominent prize to the OCPW came as a surprise to many. Nobel Prize watchers didn’t mention the organization as a likely laureate. Predictions favored several individuals, including Malala Yousafzai, a teenage Pakistani women’s rights campaigner who survived a Taliban attack, Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist and rape victims’ defender from Congo, Claudia Paz y Paz, the resilient mafia-fighting Guatemalan attorney general, and Sister Mary Tarcisia Lokot, a nun at the forefront of post-war reconciliation in Uganda.”

Above the law
In a New York Times op-ed, Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu argues countries (like the US) that reject membership in the International Criminal Court are “looking for a license to kill, maim and oppress” with impunity:

“Most of all, they believe that neither the golden rule, nor the rule of law, applies to them.
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Perpetrators of violence must not be allowed to wriggle free.
Moreover, where justice and order are not restored, there can be no healing, leaving violence and hatred ticking like a bomb in the corner.”

Mercury treaty
The BBC reports that countries have started signing a legally binding agreement regulating the trade and use of mercury:

“The Minamata Convention was named after the Japanese city that, in the 1950s, saw one of the world’s worst cases of mercury poisoning.
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The [UN Environment Programme] assessment said the concentration of mercury in the top 100m of the world’s oceans had doubled over the past century, and estimated that 260 tonnes of the toxic metal had made their way from soil into rivers and lakes.”

Falling short
Human Rights Watch’s Jessica Evans argues that the World Bank “lags behind” when it comes to mitigating human rights risks:

“The bank’s safeguard policies partially address protecting indigenous peoples’ rights and ensuring that people are resettled appropriately, but fall short of international human rights law on those areas and more generally. Moreover, the policies don’t even require the World Bank to analyze human rights risks in designing and carrying out its activities.
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The World Bank is undertaking its first wholesale review of its safeguard policies. If it goes right, bank staff will be required to identify potential human rights risks and work to prevent or mitigate them, to avoid contributing to abuses.”

For-profit spying
The Guardian reports on the Canadian government’s “increasingly aggressive promotion of resource corporations at home and abroad,” which appears to extend to espionage and intelligence sharing with companies:

“ ‘There is very substantial evidence that the spying Canada was doing for economic reasons aimed at Brazil is far from an aberration,’ Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald told Canadian media on Tuesday. Greenwald hinted that he will be publishing further documents on [Communications Security Establishment Canada].
‘We’ve already seen how Canadian embassies around the world essentially act as agents for Canadian companies – even when they’re implicated in serious human rights abuses,’ said Jamie Kneen of MiningWatch Canada, an NGO watchdog. ‘We just had no idea how far they were willing to go.’ ”

More equal than others
In the wake of the recent US military raids in Somalia and Libya, Foreign Policy’s David Rothkopf writes that America must reject “exceptionalism” in order to be a great nation:

“Exceptionalism is contrary to the spirit of the U.S. Constitution and the ideas that led to the founding of the country. If there is one lesson of human civilization, it is that equality under the law needs to apply to nations as well as people or else chaos and injustice ensue. This past weekend’s raids were more damaging not because the outcome of one was unsuccessful but because the outcome of the other was. If countries feel they can swoop in and snatch up bad guys anywhere, whenever, and however it suited them, the world would quickly fall into a state of permanent war.”

Water justice
The Blue Planet Project’s Meera Karunananthan argues that the private sector cannot provide “silver bullet solutions” for ensuring the human right to water:

“The real crisis is a political one: corporations are attempting to control water policy to guarantee secure access to scarce water resources. When governments relegate basic services, such as water and sanitation, to profit-driven multinationals that hike up the service fees and exploit scarce resources, we are dealing with a crisis generated by an unsustainable economic model.
Yet that model continues to be promoted around the world at events like the Budapest Water Summit, where governments discuss the future of the world’s water with polluters and water profiteers rather than with the communities most impacted by the global water crisis.”

Latest Developments, October 2

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In the latest news and analysis…

Lived poverty
Results from Afrobarometer’s poll of over 50,000 people in Africa suggest the continent’s rapid economic growth is doing little to reduce poverty:

“This data, based on the views and experience of ordinary citizens, counters projections of declining poverty rates that have been derived from official GDP growth rates. For the 16 countries where these questions have been asked over the past decade, we find little evidence for systematic reduction of lived poverty despite average GDP growth rates of 4.8% per year over the same period. While we do see reductions in five countries (Cape Verde, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe), we also find increases in lived poverty in five others (Botswana, Mali, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania). Overall, then, despite high reported growth rates, lived poverty at the grassroots remains little changed. This suggests either that growth is occurring, but that its effects are not trickling down to the poorest citizens (in fact, income inequality may be worsening), or alternatively, that actual growth rates may not match up to those being reported.”

Out of the club
Reuters reports that Gambia is quitting the Commonwealth, a group of 54 mostly ex-British colonies, calling it a “neo-colonial institution“:

“ ‘The government has withdrawn its membership of the British Commonwealth and decided that the Gambia will never be a member of any neo-colonial institution and will never be a party to any institution that represents an extension of colonialism,’ read a statement broadcast on state television.”

Sugar rush
Oxfam has released a new report alleging the sugar needs of big Western food and beverage companies are fuelling land grabs around the world:

“This includes a fishing community in Pernambuco State, Brazil fighting for access to their land and fishing grounds, after having been violently evicted in 1998 by a sugar mill, which provides sugar to Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. In Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil indigenous communities are fighting the occupation of their land by sugar plantations supplying a mill owned by Bunge. Coca-Cola buys sugar from Bunge in Brazil but says it does not buy from this particular mill. In Sre Ambel District in Cambodia, 200 families are fighting for land from which they were evicted in 2006 to make way for a sugar plantation. The plantation has supplied Tate & Lyle Sugars, which sells sugar to franchises that manufacture and bottle products for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Associated British Foods, through their ownership of Illovo, Africa’s biggest producer of sugar cane, has also been linked in media reports to land conflicts in Mali, Zambia and Malawi.”

Asia pivot
Al Jazeera reports on a new military agreement between the US and South Korea for “tailored deterrence” against North Korea:

“South Korean defence ministers agreed on Wednesday to review the timing and transfer of wartime command control of their combined forces on the Korean peninsula from US military to South Korea, a joint statement said.
While South Korea is scheduled to take over wartime operational command in 2015, there have been calls in the government for it to be postponed while North Korea continues to push ahead with its nuclear weapons and long-range missile programmes.
US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel listened ‘very seriously’ to their apprehensions.”

Counterproductive closures
Al Jazeera reports that plans by UK banking giant Barclays to shut down remittance sending to Somalia over terrorism fears could backfire in a number of ways:

“ ‘No one is going to let their loved ones starve to death. Money will be sent no matter what,’ said Mohamed Ibrahim, chairman of the London Somali Youth Forum.
‘The money will be sent through underground channels, which are hard to monitor, and only result in criminalising the hardworking members of the community.’
Another worry for community leaders is the account closures could be used by al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab as a recruitment opportunity.
‘If you cut off people’s only income, they will find other ways of making a living and al-Shabab will surely take advantage and offer an alternative source of income,’ Ibrahim said.
In the UK, the remittance industry is also one of the biggest employers in the Somali community, providing jobs directly to hundreds of people. Barclays’ move will instantly render them unemployed.”

Fossil fuel binge
The World Development Movement’s Alex Scrivener uses Borneo to illustrate the harmful effects of British institutional investments on communities half a world away:

“Throughout East Kalimantan, there are many communities like Segading that have been devastated by coal mining.
The shocking truth is that 83 per cent of the coal production of East Kalimantan is extracted by companies with a link to Britain’s financial sector. For example, Bumi plc, which owns big stakes in both Bumi Resources and Berau Coal, raised £707 million on the London Stock Exchange when it floated in 2010. Much of this money will have come from big institutional investors such as pension funds, which supposedly invest on behalf of ordinary pension scheme holders across Britain.
It’s time to call time on the British banks’ fossil fuel binge. We need urgent regulation to control the flow of money to fossil fuel companies so that banks and pension funds are held to account for the impact of their investments.”

High price
Agence France-Presse reports on the ongoing protests in Romania over a Canadian-owned project that promises to become Europe’s largest open-pit gold mine:

“Gabriel Resources hopes to extract 300 tonnes of gold with mining techniques requiring the use of thousands of tonnes of cyanide.
It promises 900 jobs during the 16-year extraction period, as well as economic benefits.
But academics and environmentalists say the [Rosia Montana] mine is an ecological time bomb and threatens the area’s Roman mining galleries.”

Law avoidance
Global Witness refutes arguments opposing legally binding rules for companies regarding the trade in conflict minerals:

“Instead of legislation, [Forbes’s Tim Worstall] advocates a voluntary, industry-led scheme which focuses on ‘fingerprinting’ minerals at processing plants to combat the conflict minerals trade. Any argument for voluntary measures to address the problem is seriously flawed. A decade and a half of UN and NGO reports exposing the links between conflict and minerals in eastern DRC failed to compel companies to look more closely at their supply chains. It is only since the US introduced legislation that companies have significantly changed their behaviour.”

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.’
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[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.
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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.
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‘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.
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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.”