No room for improvisation in the face of climate risks

In its report October 3, 2024 Greenpeace harshly criticized the French government’s plans to build two new EPR2 nuclear reactors in northwestern France near Dunkirk due to the risk of flooding. The new units are scheduled to be operational by 2040, but the problem lies in the site chosen for construction. The chosen site is located in a region already at risk of flooding and will become increasingly vulnerable as climate change worsens.

The Gravelines nuclear power plant is currently the most powerful in Western Europe, already consisting of six 900 MW reactors. The French state-owned energy company EDF has promised to build two more reactors at the same plant on an 11-meter-high platform to protect from flooding. According to EDF experts, the NPP project will sufficiently resist climate challenges until 2070. However, this is only the middle of the plant’s lifespan, which is expected to last 60 years until 2100. Its dismantling is scheduled for the middle of the next century, and EDF promises to “adapt” the project to current climate conditions every 10 years after 2070.

It sounds reckless, as the UN Environment Programme warns of a temperature rise of up to  +3.1°C in the coming decades, leading to sea level rise and a dramatic increase in extreme climate events. Have the French authorities already forgotten the devastating North Sea flood of 1953 and the numerous disasters in France in recent years? Even today, most of the area around the nuclear power plant is below sea level during high tides, and only protective structures built nearby, turning the NPP into a kind of “island,” have saved the region from disaster. Since 2022, the Gravelines Nuclear Power Station has been surrounded by a 3-kilometer-long protective wall, which costs EDF 35 million euros. How much more will EDF spend to ensure the nuclear plant’s safety, and what will happen if nature proves more potent than the fortifications built?

The EDF project documentation contains too many unanswered questions, which exist only thanks to Macron’s political patronage. The facts indicate that constructing new reactors poses an extreme danger to the local population and the environment. Nuclear power plants are vulnerable to climate change, and the rampant rush to revive the nuclear power industry should be stopped.

New Challenges for Macron’s Nuclear Renaissance

By announcing the revival of nuclear energy in the country, President Macron has formally taken a step toward reviving France’s economic, industrial and military power. However, the French economy is not yet ready to fully support such ambitious plans.

Macron’s ambitious plans to build 14 new nuclear power units will face a glaring shortage of qualified personnel. The French nuclear industry currently employs about 220 thousand people. To achieve Marcon’s objectives, the industry will need a significant influx of skilled workers, particularly in the workforce. By 2030, according to EDF estimates, their number needs to be at least doubled. The proposed construction timeline is also impressive. The first Gravelines unit with the EPR-2 reactor is expected to take only eight years to complete. It is worth mentioning the notorious Flamanville nuclear reactor in Normandy, which ended up costing 4 times its initial budget, reaching €13.2 billion, and was launched more than a decade behind schedule. 

The Loss of African Uranium Deposits

France is particularly concerned about the exploitation of uranium from Niger and the potential consequences of losing its supply. For more than four decades, the Orano company, owned by the French state by 45%, has been developing uranium in African countries. Niger is one of the three largest suppliers of this valuable natural resource to France. However, the recent revocation of Orano’s uranium mining license in Niger has cast doubt on France’s energy independence. Representatives of the new Nigerien authorities have stated that uranium has been used to supply Europe with electricity for decades. Still, West Africa remains one of the poorest countries in the world and has not benefited much from exports. Additionally, the economic risks for the French nuclear industry include uranium prices that have reached historical highs, primarily due to European countries’ search for new energy suppliers after 2022. 

According to Macron, promoting nuclear technologies in France should lead the country to complete independence from foreign energy supplies and secure France’s status as the flagship nuclear industry in the EU. The problem is that Macron knows it will not be up to him but to future generations of French politicians to address the problems mentioned above regarding his misleading nuclear policy. 

[Tara Yarwais edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post France’s New Nuclear Power Plant Is a Ticking Bomb appeared first on Fair Observer.

The last remaining free-flowing rivers in Europe exist in the Balkans, but they are in danger. Plans to build around 3,000 dams between Slovenia and Greece, along with diversions and urban developments, threaten almost every river in the region (this map shows what that number looks like in practice). Even protected areas are not immune, with around 1,000 of these projects putting vulnerable stretches of the river at risk. 

If the plans to build the new hydropower plants go ahead, the impact on biodiversity would be devastating. Critically, the damage does not just take place during construction when diggers cut directly into local habitats. There is also a downstream impact on endangered ecosystems. Water quality, declines in fish and bird populations and the dislocation of sediment are only a few long-term issues. In the worst cases, the harm is irrevocable: about 50 fish species could be faced with global or regional extinction. 

The local geology is also vulnerable to the change in river flow patterns from dams and diversions, which can erode land downriver and change underground water flows. During building work on the upper Neretva in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there were two fatal incidents from landslides. In many cases, the risk assessment prior to construction is insufficient.

Risky investment

From an economic point of view, hydropower plants offer an opportunity for growth and financial development in the Balkans. Investments from foreign project developers such as Chinese and American contractors bring much-needed money into the region, fueling development and providing employment opportunities.

However, investing in traditional forms of hydropower is risky. For one thing, the power plants themselves are increasingly victims of climate change. Droughts, unpredictable rainfall, heatwaves and reduced snowmelt not only inhibit the supply for drinking water and irrigation, but also reduce the resources available for generating electricity. Additionally, higher temperatures cause more water to evaporate from reservoirs, further wasting this precious resource.

The knock-on effects, when these hydropower plants are unable to meet demand, are substantial. Alongside electricity shortages leading to higher energy prices, the failure to supply energy-intensive industries can reduce economic output, cause job losses and increase poverty levels.

Furthermore, authorities can be lax in applying environmental laws, cutting corners in favor of project developers. The public, on the other hand, has minimal opportunity to get involved in the decision-making process. While this flexibility initially works in favor of the investors, it can later backfire when local communities start protesting. 

Making a splash

Public activism in favor of the rivers has been gaining momentum in the Balkans. Determined to stop the dams, the environmental NGOs Riverwatch and EuroNatur launched the campaign “Save the Blue Heart of Europe”. Over the last 12 years, activists have spread the word about the scale of damage that the rivers in the Balkans are facing. “The first step is to raise awareness,” says Ulrich Eichelmann, founder of Riverwatch. “You have to make it so famous that it’s too big to fail.” 

The biggest success was in Albania. After 11 years, activists — including celebrity Leonardo DiCaprio — managed to convince Prime Minister Edi Rama to create the first Wild River National Park. Crucially, efforts to raise awareness consisted not only of exposing the plans to build dams, but also of communicating the uniqueness of the river both to locals and politicians.

Managing the future

The appropriate designation and recognition of protected areas is a lifeline for sensitive habitats: this is the second step to turning hope into reality. While the Vjosa is now protected as a wild river, the delta is not included in the new national park, leaving it exposed to plans to build a luxury resort and even an airport. Urban development of this scale would devastate both the landscape and the ecosystems reliant on it.

Likewise, it is also essential that governments enshrine international conservation networks, such as Natura 2000, as well as European environmental regulations into national law. In an effort to help manage the situation, EuroNatur and Riverwatch published an assessment of the river network in the Balkans, showing which stretches of the river network are no-go areas for dams based on clearly defined environmental criteria such as biodiversity.

International funding bodies also play an important role in facilitating the effective management of protected areas by directing financial resources to the right places. While European development banks were previously planning to finance hydropower projects in the Balkans, they have now scrapped these plans after tightening biodiversity rules. Instead, financial establishments as well as the EU can show their appreciation of the unique value of these rivers by directing funding towards conservation and restoration. 

Economic growth in the Balkans is not dependent on building new dams. Nor will the energy transition fail if the last wild rivers of Europe are allowed to run their natural course. Indeed, the risks outweigh the advantages, which is why the fight to prevent the construction of traditional hydropower projects is not over yet. As long as the rivers are flowing, the battle will continue to keep Europe’s blue heart beating.

[Stephen Chilimidos edited this piece.] 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Dam Dilemma: Europe’s Natural Rivers in Crisis appeared first on Fair Observer.

In the 1970s, in the southwest corner of Germany, the tiny community of Wyhl was bracing for the construction of just such a nuclear reactor in its backyard. Something even worse loomed on the horizon: a vast industrial zone with new chemical plants and eight nuclear energy complexes that would transform the entire region around that town and stretch into nearby France and Switzerland. The three countries’ governments and the energy industry were all behind the project.

Even the residents of Wyhl seemed to agree. By a slim 55%, they supported a referendum to sell the land needed for the power plant. In the winter of 1975, bulldozers began to clear the site.

Suddenly, something unexpected happened. Civic groups and environmentalists decided to make their stand in little Wyhl and managed to block the construction of that nuclear reactor. Then, as the organizing accelerated, the entire tri-country initiative unraveled.

It was a stunning success for a global antinuclear movement that was just then gaining strength. The next year in the United States, the Clamshell Alliance launched a campaign to stop the construction of the proposed Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire, which they managed to delay for some time.

A few years later, critics of the antinuclear protests would dismiss such movements with the acronym NIMBY — Not In My Backyard. NIMBY movements would, however, ultimately target a range of dirty and dangerous projects from waste incinerators to uranium mines.

A NIMBY approach, in fact, is often the last option for communities facing the full force of powerful energy lobbies, the slingshot that little Davids deploy against a humongous Goliath.

That very same slingshot is now being used to try to stop an energy megaproject in eastern Washington state. A local civic group, Tri-City CARES, has squared off against a similar combination of government and industry to oppose a project they say will harm wildlife, adversely affect tourism, impinge on Native American cultural property and put public safety at risk.

But that megaproject is not a nuclear power plant or a toxic waste dump. The Horse Heaven Hills project near Kennewick, Washington is, in fact, a future wind farm projected to power up to 300,000 homes and reduce the state’s dependency on both fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Aren’t windmills part of the solution, not the problem?

Critics of the project are, in fact, part of a larger movement whose criticism of “industrial wind energy development” suggests that they’re not just quixotically tilting at windmills but challenging unchecked corporate power. Left unsaid, however, is that the fossil fuel industry and conservative think tanks like the Manhattan Institute have been working overtime against wind and solar renewable energy projects, often plowing money into NIMBY-like front groups. (Donald Trump has, of course, sworn to scrap offshore wind projects should he become president again.)

It’s a reminder that the powerful, too, have found uses for NIMBYism. Rich neighborhoods have long mobilized against homeless shelters and low-income housing, just as rich countries have long outsourced their mineral needs and dirty manufacturing to poorer ones.

But even if you remove the right-wing funders and oil executives from the equation and assume the best of intentions on the part of organizations like Tri-City CARES — and there’s good reason to believe that the Washington activists genuinely care about hawks and Native American cultural property — two questions remain: What sacrifices must be made to achieve the necessary transition away from fossil fuels? Who will make those sacrifices?

Thanks to all the recent images of devastating typhoon and hurricane damage and record flooding, it’s obvious that much of the world’s infrastructure is not built to withstand the growing stresses of climate change. As if that’s not bad enough, it’s even clearer that political infrastructure the world over, in failing to face the issue of sacrifice, can’t effectively deal with the climate challenge either.

The need for sacrifice

The era of unrestrained growth is nearly at an end. In ever more parts of the world, it’s no longer possible to dig, discharge and destroy without regard for the environment or community health. Climate change puts an exclamation point on this fact. The industrial era we’ve passed through in the last centuries has produced unprecedented wealth but has also generated enough carbon emissions to threaten the very future of humanity. To reach the goals of the 2016 Paris agreement on climate change and the many net-carbon zero pledges that countries have made, at a minimum humanity would have to forgo all new fossil-fuel projects.

Although the use of oil, natural gas and coal has already produced a growing global disaster, those aren’t the only problems we face. The United Nations projects that, by 2060, the consumption of natural resources globally — including food, water and minerals, those basics of human life — will rise 60% above 2020 levels. Even the World Economic Forum, that pillar of the capitalist global economic system, acknowledges that the planet can’t support such an insatiable demand and points out that rich countries, which consume six times more per capita than the rest of the world, will somehow have to tighten their belts.

Alas, renewable energy doesn’t grow on trees. To capture the power of the sun, the wind and the tides requires machinery and batteries that draw on a wide range of materials like lithium, copper and rare earth elements. People in the Global South are already organizing against efforts to turn their communities into “sacrifice zones” that produce such critical raw materials for an energy transition far away in the Global North. At the same time, communities across the US and Europe are organizing against similar mines in their own backyards. Then there’s the question of where to put all those solar arrays and wind farms, which have been generating NIMBY responses in the US from the coast of New England to the deserts of the Southwest.

These, then, are the three areas of sacrifice on Planet Earth in 2024: giving up the income generated by fossil fuel projects, cutting back on the consumption of energy and other resources and putting up with the negative consequences of both mining and renewable energy projects. Not everyone agrees that such sacrifices have to be made. Trump and his allies have, of course, promised to “drill, baby, drill” from day one of a second term.

Sadly, almost everyone agrees that, if such sacrifices are indeed necessary, it should be someone else who makes them.

In an era of unlimited growth, the political challenge was to determine how to divvy up the rewards of economic expansion. Today’s challenge, in a world where growth has run amok, is to determine how to evenly distribute the costs of sacrifice.

Democracy and sacrifice

Autocrats generally don’t lose sleep worrying about sacrifice. They’re willing to steamroll over protest as readily as they’d bulldoze the land for a new petrochemical plant. When China wanted to build a large new dam on the Yangtze River, it relocated the 1.5 million people in its path and flooded the area, submerging 13 cities, over 1,200 archaeological sites and 30,000 hectares of farmland.

Democracies often functioned the same way before the NIMBY era. Of course, there’s always been an exception made for the wealthy: How many toxic waste dumps grace Beverly Hills? Or consider the career of urban planner Robert Moses, who rebuilt the roads and parks of New York City with only a few speed bumps along the way. He was finally stopped in his tracks in, of all places, that city’s Greenwich Village. Architecture critic Jane Jacobs and her band of wealthy and middle-class protestors were determined to block a Lower Manhattan Expressway. New York’s poorer outer-borough residents couldn’t similarly stop the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Although a product of classical Greece, democracy has only truly flourished in the industrial era. Democratic politicians have regularly gained office by promising the fruits of economic expansion: infrastructure, jobs, social services and tax cuts. If it’s not wartime, politicians might as well sign their political death warrants if they ask people to tighten their belts. Sure, US President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” and promoted the Peace Corps for idealistic young people. But he won office by making the same promises as other politicians and, as president, coined the phrase, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” This image of unrestrained growth has become ominously prophetic in an era of elevated ocean levels and increased flooding.

In 1977, when President Jimmy Carter donned a sweater to give his famous “spirit of sacrifice” speech on the need to reduce energy consumption, he told the truth to the US people: “If we all cooperate and make modest sacrifices, if we learn to live thriftily and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust, and to make our society more efficient and our own lives more enjoyable and productive.”

Mocked for his earnestness and his sweater choice, Carter was, unsurprisingly, a one-term president.

Democracy, like capitalism, has remained remarkably focused on short-term gain. Politicians similarly remain prisoners of the election cycle. What’s the point of pushing policies that will yield results only ten or 20 years in the future when those policymakers are unlikely to be in office any longer? Democratic politicians regularly push sacrifice off to the future in the same way that NIMBY-energized communities push sacrifice off to other places. Whether it’s your unborn grandchildren or people living in the Amazon rainforest displaced by oil companies, the unsustainable prosperity of the wealthy depends on the sacrifices of (often distant) others.

Sharing the sacrifice

With its Green Deal, the European Union has embarked on an effort to outpace the US and China in its transition away from fossil fuels. The challenge for the EU is to find sufficient amounts of critical raw materials for the Green Deal’s electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines — especially lithium for the lithium-ion batteries that lie at the heart of the transformation.

To get that lithium, the EU is looking in some obvious places like the “lithium triangle” of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. But it doesn’t want to be completely dependent on outside suppliers, since there’s a lot of competition for that lithium.

Enter Serbia. Its Jadar mine has one of the largest deposits of lithium in the world. For the EU, it’s a no-brainer to push for the further development of a mine that could provide 58,000 tons of lithium carbonate annually and meet nearly all of Europe’s lithium needs. In August, the EU signed a “strategic partnership on sustainable raw materials, battery value chains and electric vehicles” with Serbia, which is still in the process of joining the group. Exploiting the Jadar deposits is a no-brainer for the Serbian government as well. It means jobs, a significant boost to the country’s gross domestic product and a way to advance its claim to EU membership.

Serbian environmentalists, however, disagree. They’ve mobilized tens of thousands of people to protest the plan to dig up the lithium and other minerals from Jadar. They do acknowledge the importance of those materials but think the EU should develop its own lithium resources and not pollute Serbia’s rivers with endless mine run-off.

Many countries face the same challenge as Serbia. Home to one of the largest nickel deposits in the world, Indonesia has tried to use the extraction and processing of that strategic mineral to break into the ranks of the globe’s most developed countries. The communities around the nickel mines are, however, anything but gung-ho about that plan. Even wealthy countries like the US and Sweden, eager to reduce their mineral dependency on China, have faced community backlash over plans to expand their mining footprints. 

Democracies are not well-suited to address the question of sacrifice, since those who shoulder the costs have few options to resist the many who want to enjoy the benefits. NIMBY movements are one of the few mechanisms by which the minority can resist such a tyranny of the majority.

But then, how to prevent that other kind of NIMBY that displaces sacrifice from the relatively rich to the relatively poor?

Getting to YIMBY

Wyhl’s successful campaign of “no” to nuclear power in the 1970s was only half the story. Equally important was the “yes” half.

Alongside their opposition to nuclear power, the environmentalists in the southeast corner of Germany lobbied for funding research on renewable energy. From such seed money grew the first large-scale solar and wind projects there. The rejection of nuclear power, which would eventually become a federal pledge in Germany to close down the nuclear industry, prepared the ground for that country’s clean-energy miracle.

That’s not all. German activists realized that the mainstream parties, laser-focused on economic growth, would just find another part of the country in which to build their megaprojects. Environmentalists understood that they needed a different kind of vehicle to support the country’s energy transformation. Thus was born Germany’s Green Party.

One key lesson from the Wyhl story is the power of participation. NIMBY movements, when they battle corporate power, weaponize powerlessness. Residents demand to be consulted. They want a place at the table to create their own energy solutions. Rather than a sign that the political system can accommodate minority viewpoints, NIMBY movements demonstrate that the political system is broken. It shouldn’t be a Darwinian struggle over who makes sacrifices for the good of the whole. Decisions should be made collectively in a deliberative process, ideally within a larger federal framework that requires all stakeholders to shoulder a portion of the burden.

As in the 1970s, the political parties of today seem remarkably incapable of charting a path away from unsustainable growth and the imposition of sacrifice on the unwilling. The Green Party in Germany transformed Wyhl’s antinuclear politics into NIABY — Not In Anyone’s Backyard. At this critical juncture in the transition from fossil fuels, it’s necessary to move from discrete NIMBY protests against offshore drilling and natural gas pipelines to a NIABY approach to all oil, gas and coal projects.

The parallel expansion of sustainable energy will require new political models for distributing critical raw material mining costs and benefits and siting solar and wind projects. Here again, Germany provides inspiration. The country’s first town powered fully by renewable sources, Wolfhagen, assumed control over its electricity grid and created a citizen-run cooperative to make decisions about its energy future. When communities are involved in sharing the costs (the placement of solar and wind projects) and benefits (through lowered energy prices), they are more likely to embrace YIMBY — “Yes In My Backyard.” When everyone is at the table making decisions, the slingshot of NIMBY gathers dust in the closet.

In this new spirit of sacrifice, we should be asking not what the planet can do for us but what we can do for the planet. The planet is telling us that sacrifice is necessary because there’s just not enough resources to go around. Autocrats can’t be trusted to make such decisions. Conventional politicians in democracies are trapped in the politics of growth and consumption. The wealthy, with a few exceptions, won’t voluntarily give up their privileges.

It falls to the rest of us to step in and make such choices about sacrifice at a community level. Meanwhile, at the national and international level, new political parties that are radically democratic, embrace post-growth economics and put the planet first will be indispensable for larger systemic change.

If we can’t get to YIMBY and make fair decisions about near-term sacrifices, the end game is clear. When the planet goes into a carbon-induced death spiral, we’ll all, rich and poor alike, be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice.

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ask (Not) What You Can Do for Your Planet appeared first on Fair Observer.

Previously, at the 2021 National Development Planning Conference, Widodo said that if Indonesia could implement this agenda, the country could achieve its national development. 

Indonesia has made efforts to reduce gas emissions by switching from fossil fuels to green energy. At the 2022 G20 Bali Summit in Bali, Indonesia, the country launched the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). This partnership relies on a financing scheme of $20 billion from the member countries International Partners Group (IPG) — European Union, United States, Japan, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom — and is coordinated by the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ). Each of them provided funds amounting to $10 billion.

Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi handled diplomacy with other countries. For example, Marsudi met with the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Anniken Huitfeldt by agreeing to a Memorandum of Understanding on the forestry sector; Norway is committed to assisting Indonesia with $250 million in the context of implementing JETP. According to a statement from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, the current efforts make Indonesia optimistic about reducing its greenhouse effect from 29% to 41% by 2030.

Indonesia lacks commitment to green energy

Despite Indonesia’s optimism, the country must overcome great challenges in carrying out the energy transition. The country has repeatedly issued statements regarding clean energy, but talk isn’t enough; it must fulfill its commitments. Its primary energy remains driven by non-renewable fossil fuels. The Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) released a study in 2024 showing that Indonesia’s dependence on coal and oil is enormous. Two of the reasons are the economic price and the vast potential space for miners. This is why Indonesia still experiences an “addiction” to non-renewable energy.

The coal sector increased from 100.51 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) in 2018 to 167.41 million BOE just one year later. A figure in CELIOS’s study shows a peak in 2022 of 299.19 million BOE. Although there is a decline in 2020 and 2021, it does not show a significant figure.

The weakness of Indonesia’s commitment is plainly obvious when looking at private and state banks, which support the non-renewable project. Take the coal mining company PT Adaro Energy Tbk as an example. In May 2023, Bank Mandiri, Bank Negara Indonesia, Bank Rakyat Indonesia, Bank Central Asia and Bank Permata contributed $1.75 billion for the construction of the Steam Electricity Power Plant (PLTU, abbreviated based on the Indonesian spelling) with 1.1 gigawatts in North Kalimantan.

According to Bhima Yudhistira, Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), this disbursement of funds shows that the rate of return for loan funds is still high. In fact, there has been a great deal of encouragement in the construction of the Adaro project to move away from coal. Several banks, such as CIMB Niaga Bank, Standard Chartered, Mizuho Bank and HSBC Bank, withdrew from the coal business.

The green energy mix target for 2030 reaches 44%. Harryadi Mahardika, Director of the Clean Transition Program, says that Indonesia’s noncommitment toward the energy transition is also accompanied by an increase in the 35 Gigawatt Program electricity initiative. The majority of this remains dominated by coal-based PLTU.

In 2023, the publication Kompas revealed that out of Indonesia’s total energy consumption the previous year, renewable energy made up only 12.3%. This is an increase of 0.1% from 2021. The data shows that Indonesia still needs to reach the government’s target of 23% in 2025. The government even failed to meet the 15.7% target in 2022.

According to Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil company, reducing gas emissions is just a ‘fantasy’ for the country. Naseer predicts demand for gas will increase in the next few years rather than decrease. Therefore, Indonesia and other countries clearly lack commitment to the green energy initiative.

The JETP scheme needs crucial clarification

Another issue is that the JETP scheme has yet to be clarified. The IPG’s financing will come in the form of debt. However, economists fear this could burden the fiscal sector, resulting in Indonesia entering a debt trap. In 2023, the data company Katadata found that 60% of Indonesia’s debt will be concessional loans, 17% will be in the form of guarantees from the US and UK through the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, 14% will be non-concessional and the remaining percentage will be in the form of equity investment and grant funds. Additionally, the GFANZ group needs to share financing details. This can be dangerous if the Indonesian government is not careful.

The launch of the Comprehensive Investment and Policy Plan for the JETP (CIPP JETP) had little impact on the situation. Before its publication, Indonesia had launched its Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM) with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on November 3, 2021. In the CIPP JETP document, Indonesia decided that the Cirebon-1 PLTU, with a capacity of 1×660 megawatts, would retire early in 2035. The Pelabuhan Ratu PLTU would then retire in 2037.

Even though they are already in the ETM, these two PLTUs remain a priority for early retirement in the CIPP JETP document. According to the government, this pension policy is a compliance action to reduce global emissions. However, this step is repetitive — Indonesia has never been serious about solving environmental problems by diversifying other PLTUs.

Similarly, PLTU Suralaya and PLTU Paiton will be targeted for early retirement. However, Wahyudi Iwang, the Executive Director of WALHI West Java, pointed out that the early retirement schemes for PLTU Cirebon-1 and Pelabuhan Ratu do not reflect the principles of justice. Iwang stated that in the ETM scheme, the ADB did not inform the public of the decision’s consequences. One way is to use technique co-firing. Based on reports and research results from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air and the Institute for Essential Services Reform, this technique can only reduce emissions by around 20%. Fortunately, that will still make a positive impact on air pollution, and especially on public health.

The energy transition must (but can’t) be equally distributed

The third problem to consider is that not all regions can make an energy transition. This is a negative trend in the context of the equal distribution of green energy. Researchers Media Wahyudi Askar and Achmad Hanif Imaduddin’s study, “Indonesia’s Energy Transition Readiness Index: Mapping Current Conditions and Navigating the Future of the Energy Sector,” shows that DKI Jakarta occupies the top position with a score of 84.24, followed by Special Region of Yogyakarta (66.4), Banten (58.5), Central Java (55.22), West Java (55.19) and East Java (52.89). Simultaneously, provinces outside Java cannot follow the energy transition trend, such as Papua, Central Sulawesi, Bangka Belitung and West Papua; the majority of them score below 40.

According to Askar and Imaduddin, provinces with high averages are supported by sufficient financial capabilities. For example, until 2020, as many as 90% of Solar Power Plants (PLTS) were still located on the island of Java. Provinces with low scores need help due to, among other things, the electrification ratio. When compared on a national scale, these provinces are below 99.2%.

Another challenge is human resources. Provinces with low scores tend to have low human resources for understanding foreign languages ​​and technology, such as computers and electronics.

We can conclude that the Indonesian government’s commitment to implementing a green energy transition needs improvement, especially when the government failed to implement mixed energy towards net zero emissions. Apart from the country’s minimal commitment, the energy transition in Indonesia still needs to be characterized by unclear JETP schemes and equal distribution in each region. Based on this, it is obvious Indonesia is not ready to carry out the green energy transition.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Indonesia’s People Will Fail to Transition to Green Energy appeared first on Fair Observer.

On average, the Earth is now 1.35°C (2.43°F) hotter than pre-industrial times.

What does that mean?

It can be challenging to understand opaque climate numbers. “400 parts per million of CO₂,” preventing “two degrees of warming,” or “one foot of sea level rise” mean little to most people, making climate change easy to ignore or deny. For most of my life, growing up in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, I was privileged not to experience the impacts of fossil fuel use. But eventually, the impacts hit home.

My uncle used to work at the Bokaro Steel Plant in Bihar, India, first on the plant’s floor and eventually as a manager. Steel production requires a lot of coal, and with coal comes dust and particulates that workers inhale.

A few years ago, my uncle started experiencing lung problems and was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis (also known as black lung). After several months on oxygen, he opted for a lung transplant, but the operation failed, and he passed away a few weeks later.

Unfortunately, my uncle’s death was not an isolated incident. In 2023, over 5 million people died globally due to air pollution from fossil fuel use. Within the US, certain regions and demographics are more affected than others. Driving just 30 minutes outside of downtown Houston to Deer Park, or neighborhoods near the Houston Ship Channel, one encounters rows and rows of oil refineries and families where nearly everyone has cancer or respiratory issues. 

These families are often people of color. They are exposed to 30% more particulate matter than the general population. Beyond the direct impacts of air pollution, increased heat waves can result in more excess deaths than COVID-19. It is undeniable that pollution and extreme heat have real human health impacts.

Most people say environmentalism is about saving the environment. After my uncle passed, I realized environmentalism is about saving human lives. We need to amplify the voices of people impacted by fossil fuel use so their stories can rise above the monotony of statistics. These powerful stories can create change in three ways: regulation, economic incentives and technology.

Solutions for climate change

The companies responsible for polluting should be held accountable, but they have little incentive to stop emitting because they must create value for shareholders. The Environmental Protection Agency creates environmental regulations such as rules and standards for air pollution from power plants. These are at risk of being repealed by Congress.

We need to create bipartisan support for federal legislation such as HB598 and HB5496 to ensure sustained regulation. We can accomplish this through heightened public pressure on policymakers. Advocacy groups should encourage and sponsor affected populations to testify in front of lawmakers, and recordings of these testimonials should be widely publicized. These stories have the power to convince voters to take up the mission themselves.

Historically, it was difficult to implement regulation. As a result, the most common and effective policies for climate solutions are financial incentives such as tax credits for producing clean electricity.

Advocacy organizations and think tanks should create and promote fellowships similar to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Public Policy Fellows but specifically for environmentally affected populations. This will enable them to contribute to policymaking.

Venture capital firms such as Breakthrough Energy Ventures should also create positions for affected people to directly invest in impactful companies. There is no better way to prevent pollution than developing technologies that provide the same service with no emissions.

There should be increased access to education across all levels in affected populations. Organizations such as STEM Global Action and I AM STEM are influential in cities like New Orleans. They should expand outreach efforts to environmental exposure areas to help children explore STEM careers. For higher education, universities should conduct targeted recruiting of talented students from community colleges in affected areas to help get them involved in research.

Losing my uncle inspired me to apply my engineering education to pursue technological solutions to climate change. People impacted by environmental exposure truly understand the harms of the fossil fuel industry. They may not be able to create change by themselves. But by giving them a platform, amplifying their voices and increasing their agency, we can ensure people impacted by climate change, like my uncle, get the change they deserve.

[Joey T. McFadden edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post We Can’t Ignore the Human Toll of Climate Change appeared first on Fair Observer.

São Paulo, one of 10 states affected by smoke and soot from the Amazon by late August, found relief on Friday, August 23, when a cold front arrived. The temperature dropped by 12°C, bringing some hope of cleaner air. That same morning, at 10:30 AM, IPAM (the Amazon Environmental Research Institute) satellites noticed an unusual rise in smoke columns. Within 90 minutes, the number of fire hotspots in the state had skyrocketed from 25 to 1,886, surpassing even the Amazon’s total. This sudden spike reflects a troubling year, as land clearing for agriculture drives most of the fires.

While authorities haven’t officially declared the fires to be arson, evidence strongly suggests it. Over half of the fires were in sugarcane fields, with 20% in pastures and 17% in other crops. Nearly 4,000 rural properties were affected across 144 municipalities, with 48 placed on high alert. São Paulo saw a record number of fires this August — seven times more than the same month in 2023. Experts don’t hesitate to attribute this to human activity. “Fires started in 50 municipalities at once. That means 99.9% of them were caused by people,” said National Civil Defense Secretary Wolnei Wolff. “It’s unnatural to have so many fires break out in such a short time. It’s like São Paulo’s own ‘Fire Day,’” added Ane Alencar, IPAM’s Science Director.

Alencar compares August 23 to Brazil’s 2019 “Fire Day,” when ranchers and land grabbers organized mass fires in the Amazon, burning 1,457 areas simultaneously. The fires prepared land for farming and cattle while also challenging environmental regulators under then-Minister Ricardo Salles. “I monitor satellite images daily, and I’ve rarely seen Brazil covered in smoke like this. It’s almost impossible that these fires were natural,” says Marcelo Seluchi, a climatologist at INPE. Alencar adds, “Fire remains a key tool in Brazilian agriculture, used to renew pastures and clear biomass from deforestation, making way for crops or grazing land.”

The fires tend to flare up between July and October, Brazil’s dry season, with 80% of fires occurring during this period. However, 2024 presents an extra threat. According to Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Alerts of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN), the country is experiencing its longest drought in central regions in 44 years. Over 70% of municipalities are dealing with some level of drought.

The record-setting number of fires in São Paulo is echoed in other states. Minas Gerais saw the highest fire activity in 13 years, while Mato Grosso experienced a 260% increase compared to 2023. Fires doubled in the Cerrado region. “I’d say 95% of this is linked to human activity. Fires were once controlled for land preparation, but today’s hotter and drier conditions make them harder to manage, even when not intended to spread,” says José Marengo, a CEMADEN researcher.

The Pantanal, one of the world’s largest wetlands, saw a 3,316% rise in fires in August, with 3,758 fires compared to just 110 in 2023. In the Amazon, over 50,000 fires have been recorded since the start of the year. These fires send smoke across the country, creating a vast corridor of haze. During “Fire Day” in 2019, São Paulo turned dark in the middle of the afternoon as smoke blotted out the sun. In August 2024, the smoke tinted the skies shades of orange and red across Brazil.

Weak laws exacerbate Brazil’s situation

If investigations confirm the fires in São Paulo were deliberate, the motives could range from defiance of environmental laws to political or economic messages. One thing is clear, though — such acts continue because of the impunity surrounding them.

In August, Greenpeace Brazil released a report marking five years since the 2019 “Fire Day.” They examined 478 properties linked to coordinated burns and found that 65% of the areas had been sanctioned for violations, but only 10% for illegal fires. Fines for these environmental crimes totaled around 1.3 billion reais ($232.2 million), yet only 41,000 reais ($7,300) had been paid. Some of these properties even received over 200 million reais ($35.7 million) in rural credit. Despite this, no one has been arrested in five years.

Spain offers a stark contrast. In 2006, after a rise in human-caused fires, Spain passed a law prohibiting the sale, reclassification, or use of burned land for 30 years. This led to a significant drop in arson driven by speculation. In Brazil, if banks stopped giving credit to rural properties involved in illegal burns, it could make a major difference.

Brazil’s laws on fires are weak. While burning is technically illegal in forests and native vegetation, there are exceptions. Fires can be authorized for “specific cases” by environmental agencies, and controlled burns for agriculture are allowed in “exceptional cases.” This loophole has resulted in 25% of the country’s land — an area larger than Mexico — being destroyed by fire between 1985 and 2023. “In Brazil, we have two main laws for forest fires. The first punishes anyone who starts a fire with 2 to 4 years in prison, plus a fine, if it’s intentional, and 6 months to 1 year if it’s accidental,” explains criminal lawyer Enzo Fachini. “If a fire is set in crops, pastures, or forests, the sentence can be 4 to 8 years.”

Despite these laws, little happens. “We’ll assess the damage with rural unions and offer support. Agribusiness is crucial to the state,” said São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas on the second “Fire Day.”

The São Paulo Department of Agriculture estimates losses at $1 billion reais ($178.6 million). Six people were arrested for suspected criminal actions, and two firefighters died fighting the flames. The smoke that blanketed much of the country led to a 60% rise in emergency medical visits due to poor air quality, mostly affecting children and the elderly.

Supreme Court Minister Flávio Dino ordered the Defense, Justice, and Environment Ministries to urgently mobilize resources to fight the fires in the Pantanal and Amazon. However, with a 78% rise in fires between January and August compared to 2023, the situation remains critical. “We haven’t even reached the worst part yet — September,” warned Alencar.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Out-of-Control Wildfires Have Brazil Gasping For Air appeared first on Fair Observer.

2023 was the hottest year on record, besting the previous record set in 2016. With the dissipation of El Niño, a phenomenon relating to warmer-than-average waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean, there is some hope that 2024 may not be a back-to-back record-setting year. Yet that remains to be seen, as May 2024, the hottest May on record, marked 12 consecutive months of record-breaking warmth.

Scientists and meteorologists face a challenge. They have invented ominous-sounding phrases like “polar vortex,” “bomb cyclone” and “atmospheric river” to showcase extreme weather phenomena driven by global warming and climate changes. In comparison, “heat wave” sounds so tepid, so lukewarm, to talk about a phenomenon that is killing humanity by the hordes. 

Record deaths

The death toll from the record-setting heat of 2023 in the US was more than 2,300, the majority occurring in the state of Arizona. Arizona’s capital, Phoenix, sweltered in the heat for a continuous 19-day period, with practically no relief even during the nighttime, when temperatures stayed north of 32°C (90°F).  The statistics were equally staggering in Europe, where France saw more than 5,000 lives lost to the heatwave. The death toll across the European continent is expected to surpass 55,000. 

One would expect the numbers to be significantly higher in the Indian subcontinent, the world’s most populous region. However, the data presented to the Indian lower parliament, Lok Sabha, in July 2023 was 264, an unbelievably low number considering India’s harsh heatwave. 

The summer of 2024 has already resulted in hundreds of heat-related deaths in India and Saudi Arabia, where the temperatures have been reaching scorching levels. Mecca, the seat of the Hajj pilgrimage, saw temperatures rise above 52°C (125°F), where more than 1300 people have died on account of heat. New Delhi saw temperatures soar above 50°C (122°F) in May, prompting authorities to issue a red alert. In India, the peak heat season is three months before the arrival of the southwest monsoon in June. During this period, the death toll in India has topped 100, while more than 40,000 people have fallen victim to heat stroke. 

Heat, the human body and aging

Extreme heat affects human beings at many levels. At the low end is heat exhaustion, typically accompanied by headache, dizziness and sometimes fainting. A heat stroke is more severe and occurs when the body temperature goes above 39°C (103°F), resulting in cognitive dissonance, delirium and even loss of consciousness. The shift from exhaustion to stroke happens when a person stops sweating, a critical aspect in regulating the body temperature. 

Extreme heat also affects the functioning of many organs in the human body. Breathing in hot air can cause lung-related complications, accentuating asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). If accompanied by dehydration, it can impair the functioning of the kidney, resulting in renal complications. The cardiovascular system shifts into high gear, trying to regulate the internal body temperature, causing increased stress on the heart. 

The most vulnerable to heat exhaustion, heat stroke and heat-related organ failures resulting in death fall into two categories: the old and the poor. 

Nearly 75%, or about 3,700 of the 5,000 deaths in France were people aged 75 or older. Climate Central estimates more than 12,000 people die in the United States from heat-related causes, far above the 2,300 number mentioned in the Associated Press analysis of Center for Disease Control and Prevention data. Climate Central estimates more than 80% of heat victims to be over 60. 

As people age, they tend to develop chronic health conditions and their ability to tell how hot it is or how dehydrated they are also declines. Coupled with their cognitive dissonance and a less-than-optimal functioning cardiovascular system, it is no surprise that across the globe, the majority of heat victims tend to be older people.

Survival of the richest

The second demographic that bears disproportionate hardship from the heatwaves is the poor. 

Delhi is experiencing the same conditions that Phoenix did last year when the nighttime temperatures stayed dangerously high for several days. When the brutal heat of the day persists through the night, the human body has no chance to refresh and reset for a new day.  

National Public Radio (NPR) featured the tragic stories of several poor New Delhi residents living in windy conditions and being short on water while the temperatures soared to 49.5°C (121°F). Nothing can be more heartbreaking than the death of Ina Khan, a six-month-old baby who just died in her nap. The only shelter her low-income family could provide her was a blue plastic sheet over a dusty scrap of land. On that fateful day in late May, Ansar Khan pacified his crying daughter with some milk, and the family took a short nap while the unrelenting heat scorched the air around them. 

Ina Khan would never wake up from her nap. “It was all over in half an hour,” Khan told NPR.

Near the same makeshift shelter where Ina died, Salma lost her two-day-old baby to Delhi’s punishing heat. 

Salma never even got a chance to name her baby. 

Taranum, who is marginally better off than Salma or Ansar Khan’s families, said in an interview with NPR, “I can’t die. We are homeless. Who will take care of my daughters?”

Taranum considers herself fortunate compared to Salma and Khan simply because she and her three daughters have an assigned bed in a homeless shelter for women and children. 

Stories similar to Taranum, Khan or Salma are unlikely to come from someone well off and with access to running water and air-conditioned comfort. 

Each year, we are vying to break the record-setting heat of a recent one, helped by climate change, resulting in more severe heat waves occurring more frequently. A 2020 study by McKinsey forebodes a dystopic future for India, with some parts of the country becoming unlivable without air conditioning.   

In Hindi, the phrase “Roti, Kapda aur Makan” captures the bottommost section of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — food, clothing and shelter. In the face of growing inequity between the rich and the poor and impending doom, where parts of the earth may become uninhabitable without air conditioning, one has to wonder if the phrase needs to be changed to “Roti, Kapda, Makan aur Hawa,” adding air to a human’s basic need.

The safety net society offers the poor falls far short of Maslow’s basic needs today. Sadly, if that does not improve regarding real shelter from heatwaves, survival of the fittest would essentially become survival of the richest.

[Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Heatwaves and Humanity: The Devastating Impact on Our World appeared first on Fair Observer.

We also address the potential of conscious tourism as a powerful tool for conservation efforts. While the industry can introduce hazards to the Antarctic ecosystem, it offers promising opportunities for scientific research and public awareness. These should be considered in the endeavor to save the continent.

We depart from Ushuaia, Argentina. Authors’ photo.

Navigating climate change in Antarctica’s warming waters

We found ourselves cruising in the Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean. We were eager to experience the pure beauty of Antarctica firsthand. These expeditions primarily take place during Antarctica’s summer season, from December to February, when the weather is warmest and ice sheets don’t block ships. As we braved the ocean, a dramatic shift occurred around 60° South latitude. This is the Drake Passage, a narrow stretch of water between Cape Horn, Chile and the Antarctic Peninsula. Here, we entered the area known as the Antarctic Convergence Zone, which functions as a natural boundary for wildlife. In this zone, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) meets the waters of the Pacific, Atlantic and Southern Oceans.

Rough seas in the Drake Passage batter the ship’s windows. Authors’ photo.

Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) diagram. Via Phys.org.

Amidst this natural spectacle lies a troubling reality. Each summer reveals rising temperatures in Antarctica, highlighting the urgent need to combat climate change. Antarctic research stations have recorded unprecedented temperature highs in recent years. In 2020, Argentina’s Esperanza station marked a record high of 18.3° C (64.94° F). In 2022, the Concordia station, which is jointly operated by France and Italy, observed an alarming temperature peak of 47° C (116.6° F). These temperature fluctuations underscore the disturbing meteorological anomalies that are occurring in Antarctica.

The temperature peaks are disrupting the ACC, altering the exchange of carbon dioxide between the oceans and the atmosphere. This amplifies the warming and changes oceanic patterns. Moreover, as temperatures continue to rise, ice sheets in Antarctica melt rapidly. Since 2023, a substantial portion of Antarctic ice — equivalent to the size of Greenland — has melted away.

Antarctica’s global warming mitigation is in jeopardy

The melting of ice sheets is primarily attributed to the warming of the ocean. This sets off a series of immediate consequences with significant cause-and-effect for the global weather. One effect is the decrease in the Earth’s overall albedo — its surface reflectivity. Essentially, when sunlight hits ice sheets, a large portion of it is bounced back into space, contributing to cooling. However, as ice coverage in Antarctica decreases, the ice loses its ability to reflect solar radiation effectively. This results in less cooling and more solar energy being absorbed directly by the ocean, further warming it.

Ice sheets act as a protective barrier, insulating the cooler environment beneath and aiding in temperature regulation. Their presence enhances this reflective quality, fostering cooler temperatures and supporting crucial algae growth vital to the Antarctic ecosystem. The declining sea ice coverage diminishes the environment that supports algae development, resulting in a decline in algae growth. This decline negatively impacts the ocean’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gasses. Algae serves as a primary food source for krill, so its decrease reduces the krill population.

Beyond their significance to the Antarctic ecosystem, krill also play an invaluable role in mitigating climate change. After consuming algae that have absorbed atmospheric carbon dioxide at the sea surface, vast swarms of krill migrate to deeper waters. There they excrete waste, effectively sequestering tremendous amounts of carbon in the ocean depths. This process plays an essential role in combating rising temperatures.

Another serious concern arising from climate change is ocean acidification, often referred to as the “stepchild of global warming.” Approximately 30% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere eventually enters the oceans, boosting acidity levels. The cold waters of the Southern Ocean facilitate this process by absorbing a vast amount of carbon dioxide, intensifying the acidification process. This gravely threatens krill, as it hampers their ability to complete their growth cycle.

Additionally, acidic oceans present challenges for corals and mollusks in constructing and maintaining their structures. This affects marine food webs, which impacts a variety of wildlife.

Our Zodiac boats float past Antarctic ice coverage. Authors’ photo.

The shifting landscape for Antarctica’s wildlife

The looming specter of climate change was impossible to ignore while sailing through the Southern Ocean. Though we took our journey during the Antarctic summer, the temperatures during our visit ranged from 0°-5° C (41° F). This is akin to any other autumn day in our native Netherlands. We could not help but ponder how this milder weather affects the inhabitants of this environment.

Two days after setting sail from Ushuaia, we made our first landfall at Brown Bluff beach, one of Antarctica’s northernmost points. Following a disinfectant bath that ensured no organic material from our clothes would reach the Antarctic Peninsula, we hopped on a Zodiac boat and rode to the beach. A fierce wind bit our skin, but we pressed on. Through the mist, we had our first penguin sightings.

Our arrival on the continent was immediately rewarding. We landed amidst a colony of Adélie penguins and ice rocks on the beach. The birds waddled past, seemingly indifferent to our presence. As we continued exploring the wonders of Antarctica, encounters with its unique wildlife, such as whales, seals and birds, punctuated our trip. Following the Adélie penguin colony discovery at Brown Bluff, we spotted elephant seals on President’s Head at Snow Island and witnessed a Gentoo penguin colony in Neko Harbor.

We land at Brown Bluff beach. Authors’ photo.

An Adélie penguin hops along the ice at Brown Bluff beach. Authors’ photo.

An Adélie penguin colony waddles past at Brown Bluff beach. Authors’ photo.

The scientific experts on our expedition explained to us the profound impact global warming has on these Antarctic species. Despite appearing indifferent to our presence at Brown Bluff, Adélie penguins are exceptionally vulnerable to these environmental shifts. Between 2012 and 2022, their population declined by 40%, highlighting the urgency of their situation. The warming temperatures that melt sea ice gravely endanger their survival.

Adélie penguins are not alone in facing these challenges. Emperor penguins, also adapted to colder climates, have encountered significant setbacks in recent years. With diminishing ice cover, penguins are forced to venture farther into the sea in search of prey, expending precious energy in the process. This leads to reduced food intake for themselves and their chicks, exacerbating the problem of hunger and chick mortality. Furthermore, warmer weather brings increased snowfall, burying penguin eggs and making chicks vulnerable to hypothermia. The loss of suitable nesting sites due to melting ice reduces their chance of successfully breeding.

Penguins rest on sea ice. Authors’ photo.

Penguins rest on sea ice near Brown Bluff. Authors’ photo.

Antarctic marine mammals are also challenged by climate change. As ocean temperatures rise, their food sources are impacted. For instance, whales, heavily reliant on krill for sustenance, are particularly vulnerable to these changes. Any disruptions in krill population or behavior cascades throughout the ecosystem, jeopardizing the entire Antarctic food chain.

Luciana Motta, a marine mammal expert and ecologist who joined our expedition cruise, shed light on the profound difficulties these animals encounter in adapting to shifting hunting grounds and habitats. Not only is global warming a factor, but increasing fishing activities and competition for food resources also threaten the broader marine ecosystem. This can potentially lead to the extinction of certain species.

With global warming increasing Antarctic temperatures, critical food sources such as krill are dwindling. This places species like the Weddell seal, leopard seal and minke whale at risk. Motta emphasized, “Effective communication of research findings is crucial to convey the urgency of conservation efforts and advocate for policy changes aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on Antarctic biodiversity.”

A Weddell seal lounges on the rocks. Authors’ photo. 

Weddell seals play in the water. Authors’ photo.

Climate change’s reach from the southern continent to our doorstep

Changes unfolding in Antarctica hold severe implications for communities worldwide. Despite this, awareness of these realities remains limited. James McClintock, a senior researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) who has participated in over 30 Antarctic expedition cruises, described this disconnect: “People in the United States and elsewhere are often disconnected from the realities of Antarctica, resulting in a lack of interest. Consequently, there is widespread ignorance regarding the importance of this continent in maintaining the environmental balance for the rest of the planet. The general public is largely unaware that the developments in Antarctica today are already impacting the rest of the world.”

Low-lying island nations already grappling with limited resources are especially vulnerable to the consequences. Rising sea levels relentlessly encroach upon their shores, eroding land and menacing communities. Traditional practices like subsistence hunting, observed in regions such as Alaska and Greenland, are challenged as animals adapt to changing migration routes.

Coastal areas like Bangladesh experience intensified salinity — water saltiness — levels due to rising sea levels, which impedes agricultural productivity. Erratic weather patterns influenced by the rising temperatures in the Southern Ocean include heavy rainfall, prolonged droughts and destructive floods. These present an obstacle for farmers and worsen food insecurity.

From Alaska to Alabama, communities confront the specter of famine, relocation and erosion precipitated by these changes.

Conscious tourists can advocate for Antarctica

The surge in tourism to Antarctica has sparked concerns about its environmental impact. According to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), over 100,000 people visited Antarctica between December 2023 and March 2024. This comprised approximately 32,000 cruise tourists and 71,000 landing visitors. This number represents a 42% increase from the previous season of 2022-2023 and prompts scrutiny of its potential impacts on the Antarctic ecosystem.

IAATO stands as a beacon for responsible tourism in Antarctica. Founded in 1991 by a consortium of private tour operators, its mission is clear: to regulate and guide tourism activities in a manner that safeguards the continent’s fragile ecosystem. However, despite its noble intentions, IAATO’s guidelines remain voluntary rather than mandatory. While many adhere to its principles, some choose to operate independently. They could compromise the continent’s environment for commercial gain.

A 2022 study revealed alarming findings, indicating elevated concentrations of black carbon in the snow around popular tourist sites. This soot, originating from tourism activities, accelerates snow melting, worsening the effects of global warming. Additionally, the accidental introduction of non-native species and pathogens by tourists threatens Antarctica’s endemic flora and fauna. This occurred in 2023, when the continent experienced its first ever avian flu outbreak.

An A&K expedition cruise ship travels the ocean. Authors’ photo.

However, tourism could contribute to the conservation of Antarctica. When travelers experience the region’s breathtaking beauty and recognize its vulnerability firsthand, they become more acutely aware of the need to protect it. According to James McClintock, the experiences of passengers in expedition cruise ships serve as powerful catalysts for environmental activism; they could promote a drive for sustainable tourism practices.

Furthermore, collaboration between tourism companies and scientists amplifies the positive outcomes that the industry can have on conservation efforts. Cruise operators aid scientific research in their travels, as they enable scientists to inexpensively access remote locations that would otherwise be financially prohibitive. Additionally, the repetitive boat visits to certain sites enables them to collect longitudinal data, which offers valuable insights into the evolving state of Antarctica’s ecosystem over time.

By forming partnerships between tourism entities and researchers, Antarctica becomes more accessible for scientific study and conservation initiatives. Companies like Viking exemplify this collaborative spirit, providing a platform for scientists to conduct groundbreaking research on the continent. For example, in February 2023, its scientific team published the first paper following observations of the giant phantom jellyfish, a rarely encountered species found during one of their journeys.

Expedition cruises, such as those offered by the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic collaboration and A&K, host researchers aboard their vessels. These partnerships enable scientists to not only research fields like marine biology, climate science and oceanography, but to discuss their results with passengers. Similarly, companies like Swoop hold citizen science initiatives, engaging tourists in data collection and environmental monitoring. Passengers participate in projects ranging from tracking whale migrations to monitoring water quality, contributing valuable data to scientific understanding.

While tourism holds immense potential for assisting Antarctica’s conservation efforts, there is much work to be done. Tourism companies must prioritize plans for achieving net-zero carbon emissions to mitigate their environmental impact. They must also implement stringent controls on landings to prevent invasive species and diseases from infiltrating Antarctica.

It is imperative that tourist operators adhere to the regulations set forth by IAATO to ensure responsible and sustainable tourism practices. They must place limits on the number of tourists and landings permitted each day. Ultimately, no activity in Antarctica can be left unregulated if we are to preserve this environment for future generations.

Antarctica awaits tourists. Authors’ photo.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is Mainstream Tourism a Good Way to Save Helpless Antarctica? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Climate change catastrophically impacts every place on Earth. It exacerbates the degradation of ecosystems, natural catastrophes, harsh weather, rising sea levels, droughts, the spread of disease, land grabs, human displacement and climate conflict. These global effects jeopardize our complete enjoyment of many human rights, such as the rights to life, food, shelter, health care, safe drinking water, culture, employment and development.

We have reached a turning point in the history of DHD. Climate activists have launched several promising legal actions globally, including numerous requests for advisory opinions from international and regional courts and tribunals.

Understanding advisory opinions

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have all been asked for their advisory judgments about states’ obligations in light of the climate emergency.

The three mechanisms are fully operational. On May 21, 2024, ITLOS published an advisory opinion. It declared that because greenhouse gas emissions contaminate the seas, states have to take all necessary steps to avoid, reduce and limit them. In December 2023, as part of its advisory opinion process, the IACtHR held in-person public hearings and accepted hundreds of amicus papers, and final hearings took place on May 20. Finally, states and international organizations have submitted written comments to the ICJ ahead of its June 24 deadline.

These are historic initiatives. The world looks to these tribunals for direction on what states should do to address the climate disaster. Furthermore, these processes offer a critical chance to strengthen environmental defenders’ safeguards.

Climate protection activism: vital yet targeted

Climate rights activists defend our world from catastrophe in various ways. They peacefully oppose extractive industries, conventional agricultural methods, media, legislation, land management and other strategies. They help us adapt and mitigate climate change through their endeavors.

One study reveals that activists who employ multiple strategies have a higher success rate of up to 27%. Those who use only one tactic “[contribute] to halt environmentally destructive and socially conflictive projects, defending the environment and livelihoods” in 11% of climate conflicts.

Climate rights activists defend human rights in addition to the Earth. “Human rights defenders in environmental matters [strengthen] democracy, access rights and sustainable development,” acknowledged by the Escazú Agreement.

Unfortunately, this valuable service is often met with heinous opposition. These activists are the most frequently targeted climate rights defenders. They suffer many attacks, which often go unreported. These include assault, criminalization, smear campaigns, forced evictions and displacement, intimidation and judicial harassment. Opponents even employ strategic lawsuits against public participation to discourage their activism, or silence them through murder.

These threats inhibit climate rights activists from continuing their brave mission of addressing global warming. The hostile atmosphere opposes international legal norms on free speech and assembly rights. We need states to safeguard these people so they can uphold their commitments to climate change mitigation and human rights protection. Further, we need laws that require states to grant climate rights activists more protection.

To address the unique challenges experienced by climate activists who belong to marginalized groups — namely women, indigenous peoples, the African and Asian diasporas and rural agricultural communities — states should adopt an intersectional or “compartmentalized” approach to these laws. According to Michel Forst, the Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders of the Aarhus Convention, this entails “acknowledging that defenders are interconnected.”

Defending the defenders

Fortunately, some members of the international community are defending these activists and their civic space. Lawyers from Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) group and several international organizations wrote a submission to the ICJ and an amicus brief to the with the goal of advancing the protection and analysis of climate defenders. During the IACtHR proceedings in Manaus, Sofía Jaramillo, the senior staff attorney for Civic Space, gave a presentation to emphasize the connection between environmental defenders and the states’ duties on human rights and the environment. The American legal team petitioned the IACtHR asking the Department of Justice to look into the 2023 murder of climate activist Manuel Esteban “Tortuguita” Páez Terán through legal representation.

RFKHR has co-hosted several events, including a virtual side event on the IACtHR advisory opinion procedure and a webinar on climate defenders. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, RFKHR highlighted climate journalists’ risks on social media and specific incidents involving climate defenders on the Civic Space Case-Tracker. The tracker has brought attention to the continuous persecution of Ugandans who are participating in protests against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).

The ICJ and IACtHR processes are still underway. The oral hearings are scheduled for late 2024 or early 2025. After concluding its public hearings on the advisory opinion, the IACtHR is anticipated to release its conclusion next year.

Through these actions, the tribunals and courts will have an unmatched opportunity to advance their jurisprudence in this area, fortify the safeguards for climate defenders and confront the global warming emergency. These rulings will do more than just elucidate the responsibility of states concerning climate change and human rights. The precedent they set will shape public policy and climate litigation for posterity.
[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Tribunals Challenge Climate Peril and Can Really Aid Activists appeared first on Fair Observer.

Firstly, ‘science in diplomacy’ informs foreign policy by contributing empirical data and scientific advice to the decision-making process. Secondly, ‘science for diplomacy’ offers scientific knowledge as a soft power asset to build transnational bridges and advance relations between two or more nations. Lastly, ‘diplomacy for science’ exercises diplomacy to enable scientific cooperation between countries, be it research exchange programs, or the setup of entire cross-border R&D architectures and projects. 

That covers the science, which stands at the onset of innovation ultimately leading to the implementation of real-life solutions to certain problems or needs. In short, innovation is the ready-for-market translation of research into new services or products.

What often stands in the way of collaborative innovation on a global scale however, is the formation of silos due to political and commercial competition. This is not to debate opposing objectives of corporations or political thought. The evaluation must rather be, whether current agreement processes, drawing sustainable paths to socio-economic wealth while preserving socio-ecological health, are good enough to make the needed, meaningful and global impact.  

The gamble with the globe

Today’s climate crisis presents a grim state of affairs. Decisive stakeholders in governments, academia and the private sectors, seem to struggle rather than progress on humankind’s probably most pressing mission. The growing urgency of addressing these issues, however, underscores the need for perhaps unconventional yet game-changing approaches, where multilateral diplomacy and technology leaders align to catalyze innovation for the global good. 

To achieve carbon neutrality and wealth, socio-ecological health must lie at the heart of the endeavor. To be clear, we are facing the threat, not nature, which has the ability to adapt. Our challenge lies in averting the likely scenario of a planet uninhabitable to humans. The globe is warming, putting serious strain on food security, healthcare and other elements of civilization. We must adapt reactively, by implementing measures that enhance our resilience to harsher conditions and actively, by reducing further damage to nature. The encouraging message here is, with ever-increasing scientific advancements, innovating and implementing novel technologies could bring solutions on time if we can be more effective. 

As per the International Energy Agency’s Net-Zero Emissions Scenario (NZE), we are losing the game by missing the 1.5 °C target. Stagnating or even rebounding CO2 emissions for the transportation sector following the pandemic are real. While technological innovations to mitigate these dynamics are yet to be developed at scale, intellectual property quarrels, patent mining, and resource battles, create friction beyond healthy rivalry for best solutions. Sadly, this seems to also set the tone in the political domain. We simply are not on track.

Moving towards an electrifying future?

While the discourse on still-to-be-solved technological and policy challenges in this innovation area is ongoing, the future of transport will likely look electric. Electric vehicle (EV) sales show exponential growth, jumping an order of magnitude every five years. In 2023, starting with an annual revenue of half a trillion dollars, nation states and companies are engaging in a race for e-mobility dominance, gradually reshaping the global automotive market spanning $2.5 trillion. Likewise, the battery industry provides new entrepreneurial grounds, growing from 100 billion to a trillion dollars this decade.

The sheer size and societal magnitude of this transformation bring great responsibilities to all actors. While politicians set the rules and fence the field, for instance through the US Inflation Reduction Act, or the EU Net-Zero Industry Act, corporates and their R&D departments have to operate within these boundaries. The EU’s battery passport is a motivating example of how regulatory initiatives can support. Market participants shall receive a more even playing field, but also incentives to foster sustainable innovation.

But besides such yet-to-be-proven initiatives, is the overall playing field set up right? Can players perform at their best? Today, the answer must be No. Looking behind the day-to-day in the EV and battery sector, it is evident that while progress is made, potentials are lost along the way. Even in traditional automotive nations, initiating support to enable innovation is debilitating. Political and bureaucratic inertia hinder building a performative innovation chain.

Playing the innovation diplomacy card

This is where innovation diplomacy must take place. Similar suggestions have appeared before, but little has followed. Innovation diplomacy must be equipped with definitions and scope to be effectively leveraged by state and non-state actors. To accelerate innovation, innovation diplomacy can build bridges to enable the transparent exchange of knowledge on neutral grounds, open up positive dialogue between otherwise competing stakeholders and build trust beyond unilateral interests. This must combine the perspectives of research, industry and states, in a systematic, forward-facing exchange.

Various platforms, including exchange programs, conferencing and social media, can facilitate innovation diplomacy. Multilateral events such as the coming Autonomous e-Mobility Forum in Qatar can spur partnership and the exchange of knowledge across borders and competitive lines, held together by the common interest in much needed innovation to tackle global warming. Leveraging such initiatives and resources can maximize impact, streamline efforts and grow international know-how.  

The urgency to accelerate innovation meanwhile is calling new players onto the field. To include new perspectives and approaches, logical candidates could be states that have not been classic research-based economies or technology manufacturers.

Such can indeed be seen in the Middle East, where the most dynamic Gulf states continue to make notable strides to advance research and innovation out of the region. This momentum, on the one hand, is rooted in energy wealth, yet on the other, in comparable national visions mapping these nations’ transition away from carbon to knowledge-based economies. These frameworks emphasize contributions to topics of global significance, especially highlighting environmental challenges and a commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

Innovation diplomacy offers a pragmatic frame for addressing the very complex, but pressing challenges facing our global community. By fostering safe dialogue and prioritizing common over unilateral interests, it can drive meaningful action where progress is urgently needed. As we navigate an uncertain future, leveraging it together, may eventually prove literally vital.

[NE Global first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can Innovation Diplomacy End the Climate Gamble? appeared first on Fair Observer.

“Competition over limited water resources is one of the main concerns for the coming decades,” warned a study published in Global Environmental Change in 2018. “Although water issues alone have not been the sole trigger for warfare in the past, tensions over freshwater management and use represent one of the main concerns in political relations between… states and may exacerbate existing tensions, increase regional instability and social unrest.”

The situation is beyond dire. In 2023, it was estimated that upwards of three billion people, or more than 37% of humanity, faced real water shortages, a crisis predicted to dramatically worsen in the decades to come. Consider it ironic then that, as water is disappearing, huge dams — more than 3,000 of them — that require significant river flow to operate are now being built at an unprecedented pace globally. Moreover, 500 dams are being constructed in legally protected areas like national parks and wildlife reserves. There was a justification for this, claimed the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) some years ago. Such projects, it believed, would help battle climate change by curbing carbon dioxide emissions while bringing electricity to those in the greatest of need.

“[Hydropower] remains the largest source of renewable energy in the electricity sector,” the IPCC wrote in 2018. “Evidence suggests that relatively high levels of deployment over the next 20 years are feasible, and hydropower should remain an attractive renewable energy source within the context of global [greenhouse gas] mitigation scenarios.”

The IPCC acknowledged that unceasing droughts impact stream flow and that climate change is unpredictably worsening matters. Yet its climate experts still contended that hydropower could be a crucial part of the world’s energy transition, arguing that an electric dam will produce seemingly endless energy. At the same time, other renewable sources like wind and solar power have their weather- and sunlight-bound limitations.

A crack in the dam logic

Well-intentioned as it may have been, it’s now far clearer that there is a crack in the IPCC’s appraisal. For one thing, recent research suggests that hydro-powered dams can create an alarming amount of climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. Rotting vegetation at the bottom of such reservoirs, especially in warmer climates (as in much of Africa), releases significant amounts of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

“Most of this vegetation would have rotted anyway, of course. But, without reservoirs, the decomposition would occur mostly in the atmosphere or in well-oxygenated rivers or lakes,” explains Fred Pearce in the Independent. “The presence of oxygen would ensure the carbon in the plants formed carbon dioxide. But many reservoirs, particularly in the tropics, contain little oxygen. Under those anaerobic conditions, rotting vegetation generates methane instead.”

While CO2 also seriously harms the climate, methane emissions are far worse in the short term.

“We estimate that dams emit around 25% more methane by unit of surface than previously estimated,” says Bridget Deemer of the School of Environment at Washington State University in Vancouver, lead author of a highly-cited study on greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs. “Methane stays in the atmosphere for only around a decade, while CO2 stays several centuries, but over the course of 20 years, methane contributes almost three times more to global warming than CO2.”

And that’s hardly the only problem dams face in the twenty-first century. At the moment, Chinese financing is the most significant global driver of new hydropower construction. China has invested in the creation of at least 330 dams in 74 countries. Each project poses its own set of environmental quandaries. But above all, the heating of the planet — last year was the warmest in human history and January 2024 the hottest January on record — is making many of those investments look increasingly dubious.

On this ever-hotter globe of ours, for instance, a drought in Ecuador has all too typically impacted the functionality of the Amaluza Dam on the Paute River, which provides 60% of that country’s electricity. Paute was running at 40% capacity recently as its river flow dwindled. Similarly, in southern Africa, water levels at the Kariba Dam’s reservoir, located between Zambia and Zimbabwe, have fluctuated drastically, impairing its ability to produce consistent energy.

“In recent years, drought intensified by climate change has caused reservoirs on all five continents⁠ to drop below levels needed to maintain hydroelectric production,” writes Jacques Leslie in Yale E360, “and the problem is bound to worsen as climate change deepens.”

Even in the United States, the viability of hydropower is an increasing concern. The Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, for example, has been impacted by years of drought. Water levels at its reservoir, Lake Mead, continue to plummet, raising fears that its days are numbered. The same is true for the Glen Canyon Dam, which also holds back the Colorado, forming Lake Powell. As the Colorado dries up, Glen Canyon may also lose its ability to produce electricity.

Driven by dwindling water resources, the global hydropower crisis has become a flashpoint in the far reaches of Northern Africa, where the creation of a giant dam could very well lead to a regional war and worse.

A crisis on the Nile

The lifeblood of northeastern Africa, the Nile River, flows through 11 countries before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Measured at 6,650 kilometers, the Nile may be the longest river on Earth. For millennia, its meandering waters, which run through lush jungles and dry deserts, have been irrigating farmlands and providing drinking water for millions of people. Nearly 95% of Egypt’s 109 million people live within a few kilometers of the Nile. Arguably the most important natural resource in Africa, it’s now at the epicenter of a geopolitical dispute between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan that’s brought those countries to the brink of military conflict.

A major dam being built along the Blue Nile, the river’s main tributary, is upending the status quo in the region, where Egypt has long been the preeminent nation. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD for short) is to become one of the largest hydroelectric dams ever constructed, stretching more than 1,700 meters and standing 145 meters tall, a monument many will love and others despise.

There’s no question that Ethiopia needs the electricity GERD will produce. Nearly 45% of all Ethiopians lack regular power and GERD promises to produce upwards of 5.15 gigawatts of electricity. To put that in perspective, a single gigawatt would power 876,000 households annually in the United States. Construction on the dam, which began in 2011, was 90% complete by last August when it began producing power. In total, GERD’s cost is expected to eclipse $5 billion, making it the largest infrastructure project Ethiopia has ever undertaken and the largest dam on the African continent.

It will not only bring reliable power to that country but promises a culture shift welcomed by many. “Mothers who’ve given birth in the dark, girls who fetch wood for fire instead of going to school — we’ve waited so many years for this — centuries,” says Filsan Abdi of the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth. “When we say that Ethiopia will be a beacon of prosperity, it starts here.”

While most Ethiopians may see the dam in a positive light, the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan (itself embroiled in a devastating civil war) were never consulted, and their officials are indignant. The massive reservoir behind GERD’s gigantic cement wall will hold back 74 billion cubic meters of water. That means Ethiopia will have remarkable control over the flow of the Nile, giving its leaders power over how much access to water both Egyptians and Sudanese will have. The Blue Nile, after all, provides 59% of Egypt’s freshwater supply.

As it happens, fresh water in Egypt has long been growing scarcer and so the country’s leadership has taken the threat of GERD seriously for years. In 2012, for instance, Wikileaks obtained internal emails from the “global intelligence” firm Stratfor revealing that Egypt and Sudan were even then considering directing the Egyptian Special Forces to destroy the dam, still in the early stages of construction. “[We] are discussing military cooperation with Sudan,” a high-level Egyptian source was quoted as saying. While such a direct attack never transpired, Stratfor claimed that Egypt might once again lend support to “proxy militant groups against Ethiopia” (as it had in the 1970s and 1980s) if diplomacy were to hit a dead end.

Unfortunately, the most recent negotiations to calm the hostility around GERD have gone distinctly awry. Last April, the embittered Egyptians responded to the lack of any significant progress by conducting a three-day military drill with Sudan at a naval base in the Red Sea aimed at frightening Ethiopian officials. “All options are on the table,” warned Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. “[All] alternatives remain available and Egypt has its capabilities.”

Seemingly unfazed by such military threats, Ethiopia plans to finish building the dam, claiming it will provide much-needed energy to impoverished Ethiopians and limit the country’s overall carbon footprint. “[GERD] represents a sustainable socio-economic project for Ethiopia: replacing fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions,” the Ethiopian embassy in Washington has asserted.

GERD, however, falls squarely into the category of being a major problem dam — and not just because it could lead to a bloody war in a region already in horrific turmoil. Once filled, its massive reservoir will cover a staggering 1,874 square kilometers, making it more than three-quarters the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake (after it started to shrink).

Unfortunately, GERD never underwent a proper environmental impact assessment (EIA) despite being legally required to do so. No EIA was ever carried out because the notoriously corrupt Ethiopian government knew that the results wouldn’t be pleasing and was unwilling to let any roadblocks get in the way of the dam’s construction, something that became more obvious when upwards of 20,000 indigenous Gumuz and Berta natives began to be forced from their homes to make way for the monstrous dam.

Publicly coming out against the dam has proven a risky business. Employees of International Rivers, a nonprofit that advocates for people endangered by dams, have been harassed and received death threats in response to their opposition. Prominent Ethiopian journalist Reeyot Alemu, a critic of the dam and the government’s actions concerning it, was imprisoned for more than four years under draconian anti-terrorism laws.

Electric water wars

While GERD has created a dicey conflict, it also has international ramifications. China, which has played such a pivotal role in bankrolling hydropower projects globally in these years, has provided $1.2 billion to help the Ethiopians build transmission lines from the dam to nearby towns. Since it has also heavily invested in Egypt, it’s well-positioned, if any country is, to help navigate the GERD dispute.

Military analysts in the United States argue that China’s involvement with the dam is part of a policy meant to put the US at a distinct disadvantage in the race to exploit Africa’s abundant rare earth minerals from the cobalt caverns of the Congo to the vast lithium deposits in Ethiopia’s hinterlands. China, the world’s “largest debt collector,” has indeed poured money into Africa. As of 2021, it was that continent’s largest creditor, holding 20% of its total debt. The growth of Chinese influence internationally and in Africa — it has large infrastructure projects in 35 African countries — is crucial to understanding the latest version of the globe’s imperial geopolitics.

Most of China’s African ventures are connected to Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” a program of this century to fund infrastructure deals across Eurasia and Africa. Its economic ties to Africa began, however, with Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s push in the 1950s and 1960s for an “Afro-Asian” alliance that would challenge Western imperialism.

So many decades later, the idea of such an alliance plays second fiddle to China’s global economic desires, which, like so many past imperial projects in Africa, have significant downsides for those on the receiving end. Developing countries desperately need capital, so they’re willing to accept rigid terms and conditions from China, even if they represent the latest version of the century’s old colonialism and neo-colonialism that focused on controlling the continent’s rich resources. This is certainly true in the case of China’s hydropower investments in places like Ghana’s Bui Dam and the Congo River Dam in the Republic of Congo, where multi-billion-dollar loans are backed by Congo’s crude oil and Ghana’s cocoa crops.

In 2020, the US belatedly inserted itself into the GERD feud, threatening to cut $130 million in aid for Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism efforts. The Ethiopians believed it was related to the dam controversy, as they also did when, in June 2023, the Biden administration directed USAID to halt all food assistance to the country (upwards of $2 billion), claiming it wasn’t reaching Ethiopians, only to reverse course months later.

The dispute over Ethiopia’s enormous dam should be a warning of what the future holds on a hotter, drier planet, where the rivers that feed dams like GERD are drying up while the superpowers continue to jockey for position, hoping to control what remains of the world’s resources. Hydropower won’t help solve the climate crisis, but new dam projects may lead to war over one thing key to our survival — access to fresh, clean water.

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is There a Place for Hydropower in a Warming World? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Simply using fear-based tactics can be counterproductive, causing people to shut down rather than engage with the problem. People can respond to distress with maladaptive behaviors, ignoring the issues in order to avoid the discomfort and fear. Although it makes little rational sense, we often behave as though, if we ignore a problem, it will not affect us; we assume that it will become somebody else’s problem.

Psychologists have classified different emotional responses to fear-inducing climate activism. These include eco-depression and eco-anxiety. Depression is a deactivating emotion, driving a person into a despair that inhibits climate action. Conversely, anxiety is an activating emotion, eliciting avoidance rather than engagement with climate change. Both culminate in the same failure to take action.

Another counterproductive effect of overly negative activism is psychological separation. Climate activists often wield the shock value of negative activism as a tool to produce action. For instance, they circulate images of polar bears starving on melting glaciers, turtles stabbed by plastic straws, forests reduced to fields of bare stumps and devastating wildfires. Instead of scaring people into action, these images create disbelief. From the comfort of their homes, viewers too easily regard these events as insignificant, happening far away. They simply cannot believe that something so disastrous is really occurring. Like eco-anxiety, this separation triggers avoidance of the problem.

The harsh images can also overwhelm people with their severity, fostering a doomsday mindset of inevitable climate failure. “If the situation is already so dire,” people think, “what will my individual help achieve? There is no point. We are all doomed.” Like with eco-depression, they shut down.

Positive activism helps negative activism achieve its goal

Without hope, fear is not an effective motivator. People need to believe their actions will have tangible results. This is where positive activism comes in, picking up where negative activism leaves off. Positive activism uses hope and inspires excitement to make a difference, focusing on the results people can achieve with action rather than the consequences of failure.

Elizabeth Wathuti, a young Kenyan climate activist, successfully blended negative and positive activism. In her passionate speech at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021, Wathuti began by using negative activism, describing the vivid effects of climate change on her home environment: “The natural world that [her] friends and [she] knew as children began to change before [their] eyes,” as they saw “the streams … no longer flowing” and “tree stumps instead of mighty trees.” She continued to speak of the hardships endured by millions of Kenyans starving due to deforestation and climate change-induced natural disasters. 

Once Wathuti established the urgency of the climate situation, she switched to positive activism and harnessed the fear. She declared that if people can “get everybody around the world to love nature … then [they] can change so much in the world within a short period of time.” With these inspiring words, she evoked the beauty of what climate change resistance can save, establishing a strong incentive for action. 

Using this synthesis of negative and positive activism, Wathuti has organized the planting of tens of thousands of trees in Kenya and addressed many leaders, successfully spreading climate awareness.

Another powerful example of this approach to activism is in the Irish rock band U2. The band has won 22 Grammys and been widely recognized as one of the best live acts in the world. The band has played many concerts for disaster relief, including a Conspiracy of Hope tour on behalf of Amnesty International, an organization centered on protecting human rights. Lead singer Bono co-founded the humanitarian organization One in 2004, aiming to fight extreme poverty and diseases. He also founded Red, an organization dedicated to battling the AIDs crisis. Through these organizations, Bono has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and saved millions of lives. But the band’s impact goes beyond direct aid. It also uses its music, complete with negative and positive activism, to inspire advocacy.

U2’s recent live act Achtung Baby debuted in September 2023 at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Using technology revolutionary to the music industry, U2 combined their music with digital projections. The band ended the show by placing the audience in a visual cathedral of the natural world. First, they displayed animals in danger of extinction, the footage filled with a monotone beige. This visual served to warn the audience of the devastating impacts of habitat loss. Gradually, as the music swelled, color crept into the animals until a vibrant array of life surrounded the audience. Negative activism gave way to positive, and the band reminded spectators about Earth’s beauty that they could protect, if they fought for it.

Fear is a powerful emotion. We need fear, because we need to know what to struggle for. But fear by itself is unsustainable and ultimately unproductive. We cannot remain in fear without going further. Fear will not vanish, because as long as humans live on Earth, evils will persist. We must center our mindset around hope. With hope as a horizon, a beautiful aim beckons us forward for every step of progress we make.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How to Inspire Climate Action With Negative and Positive Activism appeared first on Fair Observer.

The power demand isn’t going to slow any time soon. The advent of cryptocurrency and generative AI is creating an exponential rise in demand for more data centers and more electricity. We’re witnessing a revolution in electric cars, trucks and appliances. Electric companies will have to meet the demand while moving us toward a carbon-neutral world. We can do this by taking three key steps.

The first step is to accelerate the ongoing revolution in renewable energy.  In 2022, 83% of all new energy added globally by utilities was renewable, and renewable energy is expected to surpass coal by 2025.

While the accessibility of renewable energy has increased, the better news is that costs continue to decrease. Solar manufacturing costs drop every year and will only get more competitive with fossil fuels.

Wind projects have decreased in costs by 40% over the last decade. The Inflation Reduction Act is an essential step in the right direction with an estimated $1.2 trillion in incentives for clean technology by 2032. Clean energy is not only better for the planet, it’s becoming cheaper by the day.

Unfortunately, the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. That’s why advancing battery storage is a key bridge to a clean energy future. When I served on the board of Tesla in 2010, the energy cost for batteries was over $1,100 per kilowatt-hour. This was part of why electric vehicles were prohibitively expensive. Just ten years later, the cost of battery storage had dropped by an order of magnitude to $137 per kilowatt-hour. Tesla has cut electric vehicle prices five times in 2023 alone.

Battery manufacturers are driving decreases in battery costs that are leading to a revolution in power storage. Tesla’s energy/battery division is a prime example, deploying 3.98 gigawatt hours  of power storage in the third quarter of 2023 alone. That’s enough to power all the homes in Chicago and LA combined. Expect to see some form of battery storage in most homes, offices and schools in the coming decades. Batteries are rapidly becoming a cheaper alternative to natural gas or nuclear, and they are a lot easier to permit next to a school or apartment building.

The toughest problem to solve will be building a resilient, multi-directional grid that will connect this new mosaic of storage and energy devices. This new grid will enable utilities and homeowners alike to generate power and store it when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, as well as to transport it to the areas that need it the most based on the time of day. This will enable us to avoid building excess capacity and help us solve for those critical times of peak energy demand (both winter and summer) by saving up power when it’s cheap and using it during peak demand.

The electrical power grid is the largest and most important machine in the world. The Internet wouldn’t function without the power grid. Transforming the grid from a one-way transmission system to a multidirectional grid will enable everyone to play a role in slowing climate change.

Renewables, batteries and a new, multi-directional grid won’t solve all of our problems. We will still need to develop green hydrogen for energy-intensive industries like steel and cement. Over time, we will need more nuclear energy plants because of their efficiency and baseload power. California’sPacific Gas and Electric Company estimates that electricity demand will increase by 70% over the next 20 years. Bill Gates and Elon Musk think it will be closer to 2–3 times that. But, in a race against climate change, renewables, batteries and the grid are the three best tools we have today. The world’s utilities are our best chance to help us win that race.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Golden Age Is Emerging for Green Energy appeared first on Fair Observer.

Older generations have already experienced the impact of climate change. In 2021, devastating flooding occurred in Australia, Europe, Asia and the US Northeast. California burned and crippling icy temperatures paralyzed Texas. As the climate grows hotter, these events and their risks will only escalate.

Previous generations contentedly burned more and more fossil fuels, and now future generations will experience hotter and longer heat waves, intensifying droughts and increasingly devastating flooding. While they enjoyed luxury, they’ve left their posterity with the burden.

Youth activism in the face of inaction

The younger generation cares a lot more about climate change than the older one. This is clear when you consider how younger people organize their family life. An increasing number of young adults have qualms about bringing children into a world experiencing intensifying disasters due to global warming. In 2018, the United States Census Bureau reported that 83.5% of adults aged 55 and older have children. On the other hand, a 2020 Morning Consult poll, with a majority of younger Gen-Z and millennial voters, found that a quarter of childless adults cite climate change as a reason they did not have children.

Unlike thoughtless older generations, younger people do not have a choice in caring about climate change. It is their reality and their future.

Young people, realizing the climate burden left to them, have fought for change and organized mass youth climate strikes. In September 2019, more than 4 million young people in thousands of cities worldwide gathered to protest. 

However, adults and politicians have criticized the youth climate movement, often claiming youths are overreacting and would be better off going to school. The adults who are causing climate change will be dead when its consequences peak. The children they are deriding as dramatic are the very same children whose lives their actions will jeopardize. Activists from the younger generation are being shut out and mocked by an older generation living in denial.

For instance, Greta Thunberg, a prominent climate activist, passionately spoke at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2019 at age 16. She denounced global leaders for their inaction and greed in the face of extreme suffering due to climate change. Numerous policymakers, including US President Donald Trump, mocked Thunberg. Trump tweeted to say she had an “anger management problem” and sarcastically described her as “a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

Trump demeaned Thunberg because her criticism personally attacked his presidential ability and high self-image. Thunberg and other young climate activists threaten the worldview and greedy interests of politicians who refuse to acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis. As Greta Thunberg puts it, “you [politicians] are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal.”

Climate anxiety and what young people can do

In the face of stubborn and selfish policymakers, young people can feel overwhelmed by hopelessness. In a study published in 2022, the majority of youth and young adults expressed extreme worry about climate change. They agree that their worry has negatively affected their daily life. In order to combat this hopeless worry, young people must do something to give themselves agency and a localized sense of control.

Advocacy is an accessible way for young people to get involved in and take action on the climate struggle. It can mean simple things, such as signing petitions, participating in marches or educating friends and family.

Little actions, such as turning off unnecessary lights and water flow, are also easy ways to take action and tackle the crisis.

The most effective way to get rid of feelings of helplessness is to take the bull by the horns and do something. The older generation of policymakers has taken agency away from young people, and they must take it back.

With all the odds pushing against them, young people must continue to press the older generation for change. They must shout, not whisper — demand, not ask — for immediate action.
[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Change: A Toxic Gift for the Next Generation appeared first on Fair Observer.

However, this protection is not always extended to individuals displaced due to climate change. In this piece, I advocate for the addition of a new protocol to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees to recognize environmental migrants, displaced by the effects of climate change, as refugees.

Who is a climate refugee?

The term “refugee,” originally defined as crossing an international border for protection from violence, conflict, war or persecution, is culturally evolving due to climate change. The 951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, along with the additional 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, characterizes refugees as persons facing persecution due to race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, social membership or political opinions who are unable to return to their country of origin. As of May 2023, the the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are 110 million registered refugees worldwide.

However, this figure does not include people uprooted by climate change, whose numbers are growing.

The 1991 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave a clear warning: Displacement would be the worst consequence of climate change. Today, millions flee due to rising sea levels, food shortages and severe weather such as heat waves, cyclones, droughts and floods, which can devastate whole towns and regions. An average of 23 million people are displaced from their homes annually. According to the UN , up to 1.2 billion people may be forcibly displaced by 2050. As climate change displacement increases, the discussion for protections for climate refugees becomes urgent. 

These statistics cause us to rethink the current use of “refugee,” as well as governmental protections awarded under international law, humanitarian aid, global environmental crisis solutions, healthcare, job training and urban development. Although “refugee” is a heavily politicized term, it is reasonable to include those whom the repercussions of climate change affect. They, just as much as other refugees, are fleeing for their own safety.

The UN claims that, “environmental degradation and climate change disasters increasingly act together with the drivers of refugee movements,” in its 2018 Global Compact on Refugees. However, the document is worded to avoid attributing legal “refugee” status to those displaced due to climate change. The practice of the UNHCR it to attribute such status to environmental migrants only when the adverse effects of climate change interact with armed conflict and violence. Furthering the discussion in 2020 with a series of “Legal Considerations,” the UNHCR still does not endorse the term climate refugee. Instead, they refer to these individuals as “persons displaced in the context of disasters and climate change.”

Many countries lack the infrastructure to manage significant influxes of displaced people, putting additional strain on government budgets. To successfully integrate environmental migrants into society without limiting funding for other programs, these states require help from the international community. To obtain this help, they need to classify environmental migrants as what they are: refugees.

The principle of non-refoulement

But it is not just a question how states or the international community “should” classify climate refugees. International law already requires states to protect these persons. Why? Simply put, under the principle of non-refoulment, it is illegal to return migrants to a place where they will be in danger.

Several international agreements establish the obligation of non-refoulment:

— The UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 1984.

— The UN Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, (ICPPED), 2010.

— The Inter-American Convention on the Prevention of Torture, 1985.

— The American Convention on Human Rights, 1969.

— The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

To uphold the non-refoulement principle, states must address protecting climate refugees, including ensuring various human rights-based protection mechanisms are in place. Governments must understand their responsibility under international law to assist the UNHCR in protecting climate refugees and act swiftly to meet their needs urgently.

While non-refoulement requires states to protect people who are in danger, the status of climate refugees will not be assured until they are explicitly recognized under international law as refugees. Until then, states may take advantage of legal ambiguity to shirk their international and moral obligations.

What can we do to help refugees?

Humanitarian groups depend on your attention and assistance to supply water, food, shelter and medical treatment to refugees and internally displaced people. But we must take steps to build resilient, sustainable and adaptable mechanisms of support over the long run. The present uncoordinated, unprepared international framework is ill-equipped to offer climate refugees the protection they need. The system should develop solutions based on evidence from communities affected by the phenomenon.

We must standardize administrative and legislative frameworks to allow entry and accommodation for temporary, long-term or permanent climate refugees, allocating funds and resources appropriately and evaluating each migrant’s protection needs and asylum status.

International policymakers must work together in creating legal frameworks, offering financial support, distributing resources fairly and guaranteeing sustainable livelihoods for climate refugees. Lawmakers should also implement preventive measures such as allocating resources to effectively build infrastructure adaptive to changing weather patterns and ecological hazards. 

By establishing both clear legal standards and clear practical procedures, the international community will be able to help those in need more effectively, something which will only be more direly necessary as time goes on. I hope the UNHCR will adopt an additional protocol to the UNCSR on climate refugees for the start of a new age in refugee protection.

[KeAmber Council edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Refugee Protocols And the Right Of Non-Refoulement appeared first on Fair Observer.

Still, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that there’s a catch. If you don’t sell a pile of products or sign up a ton of friends to do the same, the odds are that you’ll end up losing money, no matter how hard you work, especially if you take out loans to build your “business.”

The founders of multi-level marketing schemes always make a lot of money. Some of their friends become wealthy, too. But 99% of those who sell the products, whether cosmetics or dietary supplements, lose money. That’s worse than a conventional pyramid scam, which fleeces only nine out of every 10 people involved.

Now, imagine that you’re a poor country. The international financial institutions (IFIs) promise that, if you follow a simple formula, you, too, will become a wealthy nation. In a fit of desperation or madness, you take out loans from those same IFIs and commercial banks, invest in building up your export industries and cut back on government regulations. Then you wait for the good news.

But of course, there’s a catch. You have to sell a staggering number of exports to actually make money. Meanwhile, you have to repay those loans, while covering the compounding interest payments that accompany them. Soon you’re caught in a debt trap and falling ever further behind the wealthy countries of the Global North. The main winners? The corporations that flooded into your country in search of tax incentives, cheap labor and lax manufacturing and mining regulations.

The nation-states that founded the modern global economy have indeed made tons of money, as have some of their friends and allies. Despite the devastation of World War II, for instance, Japan was able to scramble up the ladder again to join the treehouse club of powerful nations. Meanwhile, in a single generation, South Korea’s economy was transformed from the per capita gross domestic product of a Ghana or Haiti in 1960 into one of the world’s most powerful by the 1980s. In Latin America, Chile, Colombia and Costa Rica all managed to join South Korea in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, a collection of the planet’s 38 most prosperous countries.

But in 2023, there’s a catch to climbing that ladder into the industrialized world. As the board of directors of the club of the wealthy points out, the classic ladder of development, industrialization itself, has become rickety and ever more dangerous. After all, it requires energy traditionally supplied by fossil fuels, now known to radically heat up the planet and endanger the very survival of humanity. Today, countries aspiring to join the charmed circle of the wealthy can no longer hope to climb that ladder in any usual fashion, thanks in part to the carbon-neutrality pledges virtually all nations made as part of the Paris climate accord.

The Global South is divided on how to respond. For instance, as the world’s second largest consumer of coal and third largest consumer of oil, India wants to grow in the old-fashioned fossil-fuelized way, becoming the last one up that ladder, even as its rungs are disintegrating. Other countries, like renewables-reliant Uruguay and carbon-neutral Suriname, are exploring more sustainable paths to progress.

Either way, with global temperatures setting ever more extreme records and inequality worsening, poor countries face their last shot at following South Korea and Qatar into the ranks of the “developed” world. They may fail, along with the rest of us on this overheating planet, or perhaps one or two might get lucky and make it into the club. However, with some clever negotiating, judicious leveraging of resources and a lot of solidarity, it’s just possible that they could team up to rewrite the very rules of the global economy and achieve a measure of prosperity for all.

Growing inequality

The boosters of globalization point to a steady decline of inequality among nations between 1980 and 2020, largely because of the explosive economic growth of China and other Asian countries like Vietnam. However, those boosters often fail to mention two important facts: in 2020, such inequality was still roughly the same as it had been in 1900 when colonialism was in full swing. Meanwhile, in recent decades, inequality within countries has skyrocketed. Since 1995, in fact, the top 1% of the wealthiest among us have accumulated 20 times that of the bottom 50%.

The Covid pandemic only made matters worse. According to one estimate, it threw 90 million people into extreme poverty, while increasing the wealth of billionaires more rapidly in just two pandemic years than in the previous 23 years combined.

And mind you, the super-rich no longer reside only in the prosperous “North.” China and India now have the most billionaires after the United States. The consolidation of obscene wealth alongside abject poverty is one reason inequality has risen more rapidly within countries than between them.

But something else strange is happening. In addition to making the ladder of fossil-fuelized industrialization more difficult to climb, climate change has been pushing the architects of the global economy to rethink their animus toward state intervention. Accelerating as it is due to a fundamentalist faith in markets, climate change may also be delivering the coup de grâce to neoliberalism.

Climate debts

During the Industrial Revolution and the ensuing century and a half of global economic expansion, the countries of the North grew wealthy by exploiting oil, natural gas and coal. In doing so, they pumped trillions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Poorer countries generally supplied the raw materials for that “miracle of progress” — at first involuntarily, thanks to colonialism, and then more-or-less voluntarily through trade.

From 1751 to 2021, the United States was responsible for fully one-quarter of all carbon emissions, with the members of the European Union in second place at 22% (followed by China, India, Japan, Russia and other major powers). On the other hand, Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Oceania have collectively contributed only a tiny fraction of those emissions over time. Of the existing carbon budget — the amount the world can emit without crossing the 1.5 °C red line set by the Paris climate accord — only 250 gigatons remain. That’s approximately what China alone had emitted by 2021 while muscling its way into the clubhouse of the rich and powerful.

The wealthy club members have all now embarked on transitions to “clean energy.” The European Union’s “Fit for 55” aims to reduce its carbon emissions by 55% by 2030. The Biden administration pushed through the deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act to incentivize states, corporations and individuals to move away from fossil fuels, so that the United States could become carbon-neutral by 2050. In both cases, the state is playing a much more active role in guiding the transition than would have been tolerated in the heyday of Thatcherism or Reaganism (or, today, Trumpism).

The Global South, which bears little responsibility for the climate mess the planet faces, doesn’t have the necessary billions of dollars to devote to “clean energy transitions.” So, because climate change knows no borders, in 2010, the richer countries promised to contribute $100 billion a year to fund “mitigation” (emissions reductions) in the Global South. However, that promise has proved to be — the perfect image for our overheated moment — mostly hot air. Ten years later, according to Oxfam, the wealthy nations have managed to mobilize at most $25 billion in real assistance annually.

Meanwhile, climate change is wreaking havoc in the here and now. Though Canadian wildfires and European heat waves have dominated the climate headlines in the North this summer, the effects of climate change are actually being disproportionately felt south of the equator. According to one estimate, by 2030, developing countries will be hit with climate bills of between $290 billion and $580 billion annually.

Last year, rich countries made another pledge of money, this time to a “loss and damage fund” to compensate poor nations for the ongoing impacts of climate change. Those funds, however, have yet to come into existence, while the desperately poor countries of the Global South await the next round of climate negotiations — in oil-rich Dubai of all places — to find out how much is involved, from whom and for whom.

Promises, promises.

So far, the poorer countries have been shaking their tin cups outside the meetings of the powerful, hoping that some loose change will eventually trickle down to them. But there may be another way.

Global just transition

The fossil-fuel-free future the Global North is touting depends on critical materials like lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements to build electric batteries, solar panels and windmills. Most of these essential assets are located in the South. In one of those ironies of history, the economic development of the North once again depends significantly on what lies beneath the ground (and the oceans) south of the equator. In this brave new world of “green colonialism,” the North is maneuvering to grab such needed resources at the lowest price possible, in part by perpetuating for the poor the very neoliberal model of “less government” that it’s begun to abandon itself.

There’s also a Cold War twist to this tale. According to policymakers in Brussels and Washington, the “clean energy” transition shouldn’t be held hostage by China, which mines and processes many of its critical minerals (producing 60% and processing 85% of all rare earth elements). China might one day decide to shut down the supply chain of such critical minerals, a foreshadowing of which took place this summer when Beijing imposed export controls on gallium and germanium in response to a Dutch ban on certain high-tech exports to China. The Chinese leadership will undoubtedly continue out-negotiating the West to gain privileged access to what it needs for its own high-tech industries.

A new “mineral rush” is underway. The European Union is now debating a “Critical Raw Materials Act” meant to reduce dependency on Chinese inputs through more mining closer to home, from Sweden to Serbia, not to speak of more “urban mining” (that is, recycling materials from used batteries and old solar panels).

Europe is also locking in deals with mineral-rich countries in the Global South. The EU typically negotiated a trade agreement with Chile that ensures EU access to that country’s lithium supplies, while making it more difficult for Chile’s government to supply its own manufacturers with cheaper inputs.

Washington, meanwhile, put a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act to ensure that electric car manufacturers source at least 40% of their batteries’ mineral content from the United States or US allies (read: not China). That percentage is to rise to 80% by 2027. Washington is not only scrambling to secure its own critical minerals, but forcing allies to cut ties with China and compete for sources elsewhere in the world.

Such an effort to “secure supply chains,” while a blow to China, represents a possible boon for the Global South. A country like Chile, which commands so much of the lithium market, can theoretically negotiate more than just a good price for its product. It could leverage its mineral riches to acquire valuable technology, intellectual property or greater control over the overall supply chain. Collectively, those mineral suppliers could also take a page from the playbook of the oil producers. Indonesia, for instance, has already floated the idea of a nickel cartel.

How Latin America Should Handle the Lithium Boom

Such strategies, however, face a threefold challenge. The United States and Europe are already boosting mining at home to become more self-sufficient. Then there’s the prospect that such minerals will be rendered obsolete by technological advances, much as the United States created a synthetic substitute for rubber when supplies became tight during World War II. Scientists are now racing to invent electric batteries that don’t depend on lithium or cobalt.

Even more worrisome are the environmental consequences of such mining. The countries of the Global South could indeed use “ladders” made of lithium, cobalt or nickel to climb into the club of the wealthy. But they would be hard-pressed to do so without creating “zones of sacrifice,” destroying communities and ecosystems around mineral extraction sites.

So, let’s take a fresh look at the cartel idea. Venezuela originally proposed the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (or OPEC) as a method of reducing oil consumption. The problem Venezuela grasped 70 years ago was not just the low price of what the then-Venezuelan oil minister called “the devil’s excrement” but the unsustainable nature of a global dependency on fossil fuels. OPEC was to help conserve resources. Could a mineral cartel serve that very purpose?

Breaking the cycle

The central problem facing the planet is not just carbon emissions and climate change. They’re both, in their own fashion, symptoms of an even larger crisis of the overconsumption of resources, including energy. Consider one minor example: the amount of stuff Americans buy at Christmas and then return without using amounts to $300 billion a year. That’s more than the economic output of Finland, Peru or Kenya.

That gives “shop ’til you drop” a new meaning.

Rather than building a different ladder to climb into prosperity, the countries of the Global South could take the unprecedented challenge of human-induced climate change as an opportunity to rewrite the rules of the global economy. Instead of dreaming of consuming at the same rate as the Global North — inconceivable given the planet’s shrinking resource base — the Global South could use its mineral leverage to effectively lessen inequality on a planet-wide basis. In practice, that would mean forcing the North’s middle class to begin trimming its consumption by reducing the supply of fossil-fuel energy to the addicted.

In a referendum in Ecuador last month, citizens voted to keep the oil in the Yasuni National Park beneath the ground. A number of countries in Oceania — Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Tonga — have similarly endorsed a “non-proliferation treaty” for fossil fuels that would phase out oil, gas and coal production. Great Britain and the EU have considered rationing plans for fossil fuel.

Nor can the rich be allowed to sit on their billions while the planet burns. The wealth taxes that some countries have implemented — and others, like the United States, are now considering — would go a long way toward shifting funds from the super-rich to the greatest victims of climate change and biodiversity loss. Consider this slogan for our changing times: more butterflies, fewer billionaires.

The global economy is essentially on a downward debt spiral for the poor and an upward consumption spiral for the rich. In short, it’s a rigged game. The solution is not to usher a few lucky countries into the world of unsustainable excess, which would just be a new version of green colonialism.

Rather, it’s time to flip the game upside down and end that very green colonialism by requiring a southernization of the North — forcing the latter to reduce its consumption of energy and other resources to meet that of the Global South. The inequality of industrialization got us into this crisis. Addressing that inequality is the only way out.

[Foreign Policy in Focus first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Don’t Let the Green Energy Transition Become a New Colonialism appeared first on Fair Observer.

The effort required to make this transition successful should not be underestimated. Fossil fuels continue to power practically every sector of the GCC’s economies, making them a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. As things stand, hydrocarbons account for 99% of the GCC’s primary energy consumption, whereas the contribution of renewables to regional energy needs is a work in progress. The GCC has nevertheless spent the past decade trying to bridge this gap by initiating efforts to develop renewable energy while meeting its commitments to the Paris Agreement.

The GCC’s opportunity 

Boasting some of the highest sunlight levels in the world, GCC countries have invested heavily in solar power capabilities in recent years. Solar energy is an essential feature of Qatar’s National Environmental and Climate Change Strategy, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% and increase non-gas power generation by 20% by 2030. To support this, the Al-Kharsaah Solar Power Plant came online in October 2022 and currently has a maximum capacity of 800 megawatts (MW). Building on the mass deployment of electric buses during FIFA World Cup 2022, Kahramaa (Qatar’s general electricity and water corporation) plans to install up to 1000 EV charging stations by the end of the decade to promote green transportation.

Despite having less robust wind resources than Europe and other parts of the world have, there are still significant opportunities for GCC countries to expand on- and offshore wind capabilities. There is no existing commercial wind power plant in Qatar, although there are examples nearby from which to draw inspiration. These include Kuwait’s Sagaya Wind Power Plant (capable of generating 10 MW), Oman’s Harweel Wind Power Plant (50 MW) and Saudi Arabia’s Dumat Al Jandal (400 MW).

In addition to solar and wind, GCC countries have the potential to develop other renewable sources, such as biomass. This is where food, agriculture and municipal waste can be utilized for energy generation. The world’s largest waste-to-energy power plant is currently being constructed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where approximately 1.9 million tons of waste will eventually produce 215 megawatt-hours per year. Moreover, surplus wastewater generated by desalination and chemical industry plants could also be used to generate clean energy via membrane-based reverse electrodialysis or pressure retarded osmosis-type advanced technologies.

Yet, despite progress made by the GCC to better harness the region’s renewable energy potential, there is still work to be done. Including additional research and development to support scaling up of technologies. Clean fuels such as hydrogen may be one way to fill the gap between capability and supply. Already being produced by Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE for exportation, hydrogen could significantly fuel the region’s energy exports and its transportation, manufacturing and power sectors. 

Roadblocks to sustainability 

Using natural gas in production, however, raises concerns about hydrogen’s contribution to CO₂ emissions. Most hydrogen produced in the world today is gray hydrogen, which is made in processes employing fossil fuels without carbon capture. Blue hydrogen, which differs in that it employs carbon capture technology, would be preferable in terms of emissions.

Ammonia is another promising option for power generation in fuel cells, transportation and cooling systems. Consisting of hydrogen and nitrogen molecules, there are no direct carbon emissions when ammonia is either burned or consumed. It also has better storage characteristics than hydrogen, allowing for easier handling. Qatar has already announced plans for the world’s largest facility for producing blue ammonia, which is ammonia made using blue hydrogen. The plant could produce up to 1.2 million tons annually. Blue ammonia could serve as an alternative to liquified natural gas exports, further increasing the sustainability of Qatar’s economy.

It should be noted that, as it derives from blue hydrogen, the production of blue ammonia requires natural gas as an input, making it only a transitional step towards net-zero targets. “Pure” renewable energy derived from sea, solar and wind may eventually be used to produce truly green hydrogen and ammonia, making the complete supply chain as sustainable as possible. This will nevertheless take time, research and development.

Other obstacles prevent GCC countries from rapidly adopting hydrogen- and ammonia-type energy carriers. The absence of a competitive price for production, especially from renewable sources, is particularly problematic due to the lack of appropriate facilities. Necessary infrastructure, such as hydrogen filling stations and pipelines, remains under construction. The technologies required to overcome such problems are readily available; it’s now up to the GCC to put them to use. Doing so offers several clean transition pathways that can positively impact regional efforts to tackle climate change, increase overall sustainability and improve decarbonization strategies.

[Lane Gibson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Gulf Cooperation Council Can Make a Clean Energy Transition: Here’s How appeared first on Fair Observer.

Oh, wait, maybe I’m a little mixed up. Maybe I wasn’t on Mars. The strangeness of it all (and perhaps my age) might have left me just a bit confused. My best hunch now, as I try to put recent events in perspective, is that I wasn’t in life as I’d previously known it. Somehow—just a guess—that afternoon I might have become a character in a science-fiction novel. As a matter of fact, I had only recently finished rereading the sci-fi classic A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr., which I had last visited in 1961 at age 17. It’s about a world ravaged by humanity (using nukes, as a matter of fact) and, so many years later, still barely in recovery mode.

I must admit that the streets I was traversing certainly looked like they existed on just such a planet. After all, the ambiance had a distinctly end-of-the-world (at least as I’d known it) feel to it.

Oh, wait! I checked the news online and it turns out that it was neither Mars, nor a sci-fi novel. It was simply my very own city, New York, engulfed in smoke you could smell, taste and see, vast clouds of it blown south from Canada where more than 400 wildfires were then burning in an utterly out of control, historically unprecedented fashion across much of that country—as, in fact, all too many of them still are. That massive cloud of smoke swamped my city’s streets and enveloped its most famous buildings, bridges and statues in a horrifying mist.

A City Rendered Unrecognizable

That day, New York, where I was born and have lived much of my life, reportedly had the worst, most polluted air of any major city on the planet—Philadelphia would take our place the very next day—including an air quality index that hit a previously unimaginable 484. That day, my city was headline-making in a way not seen since September 11, 2001. In fact, you might think of that Wednesday as the climate-change version of 9/11, a terror (or at least terrorizing) attack of the first order.

Put another way, it should have been a signal to us all that we—New Yorkers included—now live on a new, significantly more dangerous, planet and that June 7th may someday be remembered locally as a preview of a horror show for the ages. Unfortunately, you can count on one thing: it’s barely the beginning. On an overheating planet where humanity has yet to bring its release of greenhouse gasses from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas under any sort of reasonable control, where summer sea ice is almost certain to be a thing of the past in a fast-heating Arctic, where sea levels are rising ominously and fires, storms and droughts are growing more severe by the year, there’s so much worse to come.

In my youth, of course, a Canada that hadn’t even made it to summer when the heat hit record levels and fires began burning out of control from Alberta in the west to Nova Scotia and Quebec in the east would have been unimaginable. I doubt even Walter M. Miller Jr. could have dreamed up such a future, no less that, as of a week ago, 1,400% of the normal acreage of that country, or more than 8.7 million acres, had already burned (with so much more undoubtedly still to come); nor that Canada would be in flames.

The country was seemingly caught unprepared and without faintly enough firefighters, despite recent all-too-flammable summers—having to import them, in fact, from around the world to help bring those blazes under some sort of control. And yet, for Canada, experiencing its fiercest fire season ever, one thing seems guaranteed: that’s only the beginning. After all, United Nations climate experts are now suggesting that, by the end of this century, if climate change isn’t brought under control, the intensity of global wildfires could rise by another 57%. So, be prepared, New Yorkers, orange is undoubtedly the color of our future and we haven’t seen anything like the last of such smoke bombs.

Oh, and that June evening, once I was home again, I turned on the NBC nightly news, which not surprisingly led with the Canadian fires and the smoke disaster in New York in a big-time way—and, hey, in their reporting, no one even bothered to mention climate change. The words went unused. My best guess: maybe they were all on Mars.

Been There, Done That

In fact, you could indeed think of that June 7th smoke-out as the 2023 climate-change equivalent of September 11, 2001. Whoops! Maybe that’s a far too ominous comparison, and I’ll tell you why.

On September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and aboard four hijacked jets, almost 3,000 people died. That was indeed a first-class nightmare, possibly the worst terrorist attack in history. And the US responded by launching a set of invasions, occupations and conflicts that came to be known as “the Global War on Terror.” In every sense, however, it actually turned out to be a global war of terror, a 20-plus-year disaster of losing conflicts that involved the killing of staggering numbers of people. The latest estimate from the invaluable Costs of War Project is: almost a million direct deaths and possibly 3.7 million indirect ones.

Take that in for a moment. And think about this: in the United States, there hasn’t been the slightest penalty for any of that. Just ask yourself: Was the president who so disastrously invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq, while he and his top officials lied through their teeth to the American people, penalized in any way? Yes, I do mean that fellow out in Texas who’s become known for his portrait painting in his old age and who, relatively recently, confused his decision to invade Iraq with Vladimir Putin’s to invade Ukraine.

Or, for that matter, has the US military suffered any penalties for its record in response to 9/11? Just consider this for starters: the last time that the military actually won a war was in 1991. I’m thinking of the first Gulf War—and that “win” would prove nothing but a prelude to the Iraq disaster to come in this century. Explain this to me then: Why does the military that’s proven incapable of winning a war since that 9/11 terror attack still get more money from Congress than the next—your choice—9 or 10 militaries on this planet combined, and why, no matter who’s in charge in Washington, including cost-cutting Republicans, does the Pentagon never—no, absolutely never—see a cut in its funding, only yet more taxpayer dollars? (And mind you, this is true on a planet where the real battles of the future are likely to involve fire and smoke.)

There may indeed be a “debt ceiling” in this country, but there seems to be no ceiling at all when it comes to funding that military. In fact, Republican hawks in the Senate only recently demanded yet more money for the Pentagon in the debt-ceiling debate (despite the fact that, amid other cuts, its funding was already guaranteed to rise by 3% or $388 billion). As Senator Lindsey Graham so classically put it about that (to him) pitiful rise, “This budget is a win for China.”

Now, I don’t mean to say that there’s been no pain anywhere. Quite the opposite. American troops sent to Afghanistan, Iraq and so many other countries came home suffering everything from physical wounds to severe post-traumatic stress syndrome. (In these years, in fact, the suicide rate among veterans has been unnervingly high.)

And did the American people pay? You bet. Through the teeth, in fact, in a moment when inequality in this country was already going through the roof—or, if you’re not one of the ever-greater number of billionaires, perhaps the floor would be the more appropriate image. And has the Pentagon paid a cent? No, not for a thing it’s done (and, in too many cases, is still doing).

Consider this the definition of decline in a country that, as Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis continue to make desperately clear, could be heading for a place too strange and disturbing for words, a place both as old as the present president of the United States (should he win again) and as new as anyone can imagine.

Will the Climate Version of 9/11 Become Daily Life?

Throughout history, it’s true that great imperial powers have risen and fallen, but lest you think this is just another typical imperial moment when, as the US declines, China will rise, take a breath—oops, sorry, watch out for that smoke!—and think again. As those Canadian wildfires suggest, we’re no longer on the planet we humans have inhabited these last many thousand years. We’re now living in a new, not terribly recognizable, ever more perilous world. It’s not just this country that’s in decline but Planet Earth itself as a livable place for humanity and for so many other species. Climate change, in other words, is quickly becoming climate emergency.

And as the reaction to 9/11 shows, faced with a moment of true terror, don’t count on the response of either the United States or the rest of humanity being on target. After all, as that smoke bomb in New York suggests, these days, too many of those of us who matter—whether we’re talking about the climate-change-denying Trumpublican Party or the leaders of the Pentagon—are fighting the wrong wars, while the major companies responsible for so much of the terror to come, the giant fossil-fuel outfits, continue to pull in blockbuster—no, record!—profits for destroying our future. And that simply couldn’t be more dystopian or, potentially, a more dangerously smoky concoction. Consider that a form of terrorism even al-Qaeda couldn’t have imagined. Consider all of that, in fact, a preview of a world in which a horrific version of 9/11 could become daily life.

So, if there is a war to be fought, the Pentagon won’t be able to fight it. After all, it’s not prepared for increasing numbers of smoke bombs, scorching megadroughts, ever more powerful and horrific storms, melting ice, rising sea levels, broiling temperatures and so much more. And yet, whether you’re American or Chinese, that’s likely to sum up our true enemy in the decades to come. Worse yet, if the Pentagon and its Chinese equivalent find themselves in a war, Ukraine-style or otherwise, over the island of Taiwan, you might as well kiss it all goodbye.

It should be obvious that the two greatest greenhouse gas producers, China and the United States, will rise or fall (as will the rest of us) on the basis of how well (or desperately poorly) they cooperate in the future when it comes to the overheating of this planet. The question is: Can this country, or for that matter the world, respond in some reasonable fashion to what’s clearly going to be climate terror attack after terror attack potentially leading to dystopian vistas that could stretch into the distant future?

Will humanity react to the climate emergency as ineptly as this country did to 9/11? Is there any hope that we’ll act effectively before we find ourselves on a version of Mars or, as Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and others like them clearly wish, fossil-fuelize ourselves to hell and back?

In other words, are we truly fated to live on a smoke bomb of a planet?

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Living on a Smoke Bomb: September 11th, Climate-Change-Style appeared first on Fair Observer.

Oppenheimer’s quote is a loose translation of a verse from chapter 11, verse 32 of the ancient Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. This particular section is often referred to as the Vishwarupa, or “Universal Form,” chapter. Here, Krishna reveals his true form to Arjuna, showing himself as the supreme being who encompasses all creation and destruction.

Just as Krishna’s universal form represents a cosmic power capable of immense destruction, nuclear weapons represented to Oppenheimer the potential for unparalleled devastation on a global scale. It is likely he viewed himself and his colleagues as modern incarnations of Arjuna, grappling with their involvement in creating a weapon capable of immense destruction.

Robert J. Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was a highly secretive research and development endeavour conducted by the United States during World War II. It aimed to create the world’s first atomic bomb, utilizing the power of nuclear fission. Prompted by concerns of Nazi Germany’s potential atomic weapon development, the project began in 1939. With the support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the project gained momentum, and a team led by Oppenheimer was assigned to develop and test the atomic bomb.

Their efforts culminated in a pivotal moment on July 16, 1945—the Trinity Test. In the vast desert, controlled nuclear energy was realized, marking a significant scientific achievement. Subsequently, these achievements led to the devastating use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruction caused by these bombings brought Japan to surrender, leading to the end of the war.

The Manhattan Project had far-reaching consequences. It marked a significant scientific, engineering, and logistical achievement that brought together a diverse team of experts from many disciplines. Moreover, it triggered the nuclear arms race and raised profound moral and ethical concerns surrounding the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. 

In the aftermath of the war, Oppenheimer faced scrutiny due to his affiliations with communist organizations and his opposition to the hydrogen bomb. This eventually led to the revocation of his security clearance, ending his involvement in governmental work. Yet Oppenheimer’s legacy endured. His unwavering belief in the peaceful applications of nuclear energy and his vision of a world where atomic power serves humanity’s progress continues to resonate.

The Quest to Stop Climate Change

In the present day, the quest for clean and dependable energy sources has never been more crucial. From out of this search, nuclear power has emerged as a potential savior, despite its contentious past. With its ability to provide abundant and environmentally friendly energy, nuclear power holds immense promise in the fight against climate change.

At the heart of nuclear power lies the process of nuclear fission, the awe-inspiring splitting of atomic nuclei that unleashes an extraordinary amount of energy. It is fuelled primarily by uranium-235 and plutonium-239, elements that pack a punch in energy density. When these nuclei split, they release an incredible amount of heat, which is then harnessed to generate steam. This steam, in turn, powers turbines that drive generators, transforming the unleashed energy into electricity.

Clean Energy Not So Clean, Time to Restrict Consumption Too

One of the most compelling aspects of nuclear energy is its remarkable cleanliness. Unlike the burning of fossil fuels, nuclear power generation virtually eliminates greenhouse gas emissions, which would shield us against rising carbon dioxide levels. By providing a reliable and low-carbon energy source, nuclear power plants reduce the need for polluting coal-fired plants. This would reduce harmful emissions and the associated health risks they pose to our communities.

Additionally, If other renewable energy sources experience fluctuations, nuclear power would provide consistent and reliable energy. This would ensure the smooth integration of renewable energy into our power grids, maximizing their potential without compromising the stability of our energy infrastructure.

Fear Mongering Slows Progress 

Nuclear power has come a long way since the devastating incidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011. These tragic events were a wake up call for the industry, exposing flaws in design, human error, and safety protocols. These disasters were a catalyst for tremendous progress in enhancing reactor safety.

Even with the remarkable strides in safety, nuclear energy continues to suffer from fear mongering and misinformation. Activists and well-intentioned individuals have inadvertently contributed to unwarranted fears. While their aspirations for a greener future are commendable, their rhetoric tends to overshadow the numerous benefits of nuclear power. Sensational claims about radiation leaks, nuclear waste, and the potential for accidents have stoked panic and undermined the perception of nuclear energy.

The truth, however, is quite different from the narrative of doom and gloom. Modern nuclear power plants are equipped with multiple layers of safety measures that are above and beyond what was previously imaginable. Enhanced reactor designs, ingenious passive cooling systems, and stringent regulatory frameworks minimize the risk of accidents. In fact, when compared to other energy sources such as coal or oil, nuclear power boasts an impressive safety record.

It is vital to separate fact from fiction when discussing nuclear energy. The advancements in safety technology and the rigorous oversight by regulatory bodies have significantly reduced the likelihood of a major accident. Furthermore, the stringent protocols for handling and disposing of nuclear waste ensure that it poses minimal risk to the environment and public health.

The Next-Generation of Nuclear Reactors

As we continue to prioritize safety, the future of nuclear energy is brimming with even greater potential—a realm where safe, limitless clean energy becomes a reality.

For example, Generation IV reactors are a new breed of advanced nuclear systems at the forefront of innovation. These reactors embrace cutting-edge technologies such as molten salt, high-temperature gas, and fast-neutron designs. By operating at higher temperatures, they unlock a whole new level of efficiency and offer exciting possibilities like hydrogen production—an essential element for a sustainable energy future.

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are also a promising new technology.  These ingenious reactors are designed to be manufactured in a factory and transported to their intended site for installation. Their smaller size brings a host of advantages by simplifying the complexities of design, construction, and maintenance. Their modular nature also grants them unparalleled scalability and flexibility. With enhanced safety features, SMRs have the potential to illuminate remote areas, where access to electricity is difficult or non-existent. They can also seamlessly integrate with renewable energy sources, bolstering the stability and reliability of our power grids.

Unleashing the Power of Nuclear Energy

In the quest for a sustainable energy future, nuclear power offers unique advantages that set it apart from other alternatives, like solar and green hydrogen. 

One of nuclear power’s most impressive attributes is its incredible energy density. Meaning it can generate a staggering amount of energy from a relatively small amount of fuel. Nuclear power is a space-efficient marvel, outshining renewable sources like sprawling solar or wind farms that require vast areas to match the same energy output.

Unlike solar power, which hinges on daylight hours and weather patterns, nuclear power plants can provide continuous and reliable baseload power. And while green hydrogen production via electrolysis demands a constant supply of electricity, nuclear power can deliver an unwavering stream of energy.

Nuclear power is a low-carbon energy source, emitting virtually no greenhouse gases during operation. It holds immense potential in curbing carbon dioxide emissions, playing a vital role in our fight against climate change. When compared to power plants reliant on fossil fuels, nuclear power proves itself as a greener alternative that can pave the way to a cleaner, more sustainable future.

By reducing dependence on fossil fuel imports, nuclear power enhances energy security. It grants countries the ability to become more self-reliant in meeting their energy needs. This not only bolsters stability but also minimizes vulnerabilities arising from geopolitical tensions or volatile fuel prices. With nuclear power in their arsenal, nations can forge their own path towards energy independence.

When it comes to large-scale power generation, nuclear plants reign supreme. Their capacity to generate vast amounts of electricity makes them a perfect match for densely populated areas and energy-intensive industries. While renewable sources like solar and wind have made remarkable strides, they may require extensive land areas and infrastructure to match the sheer scale of nuclear power’s potential.

Nuclear power becomes an invaluable ally in the pursuit of a hydrogen-powered future. With its steadfast and continuous supply of electricity, it can serve as the bedrock for hydrogen production through high-temperature electrolysis or thermochemical cycles. This paves the way for a vibrant green hydrogen economy.

Political Solutions for a Sustainable Nuclear-Powered Future

Embarking on a global journey towards clean and boundless nuclear energy demands political solutions that can tackle the nuanced issues facing this power source. The adoption of nuclear energy is no simple feat, requiring political will, international collaboration and a delicate understanding of each nation’s unique circumstances and aspirations.

The path to embracing nuclear energy begins with robust international cooperation. Governments must unite to foster the development and deployment of nuclear technologies. By sharing knowledge, research, and best practices, nations can collectively propel the advancement of safer and more efficient nuclear power plants. In this pursuit, organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency play a pivotal role in facilitating cooperation among nations.

To ensure the safe and responsible use of nuclear power, governments must establish rigorous regulatory frameworks and safety standards. Independent regulatory bodies armed with authority and resources should oversee the nuclear industry, upholding transparency, accountability, and public confidence in this powerful energy source.

To encourage the widespread deployment of nuclear power plants, governments should implement financial incentives. Subsidies, tax incentives and loan guarantees can make nuclear projects financially viable, attracting private sector investment. Additionally, establishing long-term power purchase agreements reduces financial risks for investors, further bolstering the economic viability of nuclear energy.

FO° Exclusive: Global Energy Crisis

Political solutions must also address concerns surrounding non-proliferation and security. Governments must strengthen international treaties, promote disarmament efforts, and institute robust security measures to prevent unauthorized access to nuclear materials and facilities. By prioritizing the safeguarding of nuclear resources, nations can build a foundation of trust and cooperation.

These political solutions are not standalone endeavours—they require a united front of global collaboration, unwavering political will, and a keen understanding of the diverse needs and circumstances of each nation. It may sound difficult, given the geopolitical conflicts that exist in many parts of the world, but shared responsibility is essential if we want to leave the world a cleaner and safer place for future generations.

[Lane Gibson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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After being a pariah for a long time, Assad was warmly welcomed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He is attending the summit of the Arab League. This is the first time Assad has participated in such a summit after the Arab League suspended Syria in 2011. 

Assad Is Back

The state-controlled Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) made full play of Assad’s political and public relations coup. SANA published images of Assad reading the letter of invitation from Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the UAE and the ruler of Abu Dhabi,i with a UAE diplomat looking on approvingly. A statement from Dubai’s COP 28 organizers spoke of an “inclusive process that produces transformational solutions (which) can only happen if we have everyone in the room.”

Over the years, the UAE has led the efforts to bring Syria in from the cold. This latest effort can be viewed as politically useful both to the Emiratis and Assad. Yet it makes sense in having Syria attend regional summits. In the battle to mitigate the impact of climate change globally, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is on the frontlines with temperatures warming at nearly twice the global average. It is a region already profoundly threatened by extreme water scarcity. So, the involvement of all actors, including Syria, is a good idea.

Indeed, many experts say drought conditions were a significant causational contributor to the war in Syria. From 2006 to 2010, the country experienced a catastrophic drought, the third in a little more than two decades. The drought led to the collapse of the agricultural economy, driving millions into urban centers seeking work. These desperate people rose in rebellion during the 2011 Arab Spring movement.

Sadly for them, the Assad regime was prepared to use any amount of force to suppress what began as a series of peaceful protests. This wanton use of violence proved to be the perfect storm for a civil war that began in March 2011 and continues to this day.

Water Scarcity Woes

Water scarcity is also at the heart of the growing conflict between countries in the region hosting Syrian refugees and local populations. This is particularly the case in Jordan, the second most water deprived country in the world, and Lebanon where water scarcity has been exacerbated by the ongoing political crisis.

The Gulf countries are better off. Their coffers are swollen because of surging oil prices. These countries are well placed to absorb the body blows inflicted upon them by climate change. Desalination projects in the Gulf continue apace. Saudi Arabia has doubled its desalinated water output over the past decade and Riyadh-based ACWA Power has just announced a $667 million (2.5 billion Saudi riyals) Red Sea desalination project.

The UAE derives nearly half of its water needs and almost all of its potable water requirements from 70 desalination plants. According to a UAE government website, the plants account for 14% of the world’s total production of desalinated water. Note that the UAE has less than 10 million people, suggesting that their water usage habits are wasteful in the extreme. Other Gulf countries are similarly wasteful.

Other Challenges Ahead and What Can be Done

Along with water scarcity, extreme climate events are dramatically increasing in MENA. The intensity and frequency of sand and dust storms (SDS) is wreaking havoc with food production and people’s health as well as damaging industrial equipment and vehicles. A report by the Washington-based Arab Center last year noted:

“For all the disruption caused by this force majeure, much about SDS, including how to mitigate the phenomenon’s effects, remains poorly understood and has received relatively little scientific or policy attention. Considering the growing prevalence of SDS across the Middle East and North Africa, the storms’ impact on health, society, and the economy must surely be addressed, and policies need to be instituted to alleviate their effects.”

COP 28 faces daunting challenges from water scarcity to SDS. Developing countries do not have the money to tackle them. Yet it is unclear if developed countries will fulfill commitments to assist developing states in transitioning to green alternatives. Developed countries were supposed to set up a $100 billion fund by 2020, which remains an unfulfilled obligation.

The world’s attempts to hold global warming to 1.5° Celsius is already slipping away in the MENA region. A recent report from the World Resources Institute noted:

“Every fraction of a degree of warming will intensify these threats, and even limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degree C is not safe for all. At this level of warming, for example, 950 million people across the world’s drylands will experience water stress, heat stress and desertification, while the share of the global population exposed to flooding will rise by 24%.”

Sultan al-Jaber was appointed the boss of COP 28 in January. Howls of protest broke out. Jaber is the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the UAE state-owned giant energy conglomerate. Climate activists have not liked his appointment. Jaber has a delicate balancing act ahead of him. Skeptics say he should be the last person to head COP 28. Supporters point out that Jaber has a strong record as an advocate of renewable energy.

ADNOC and Saudi Aramco together could have a significant positive impact if they commit to renewables. Of course, they will want to protect their dominant fossil fuels market position while pursuing renewables. This is indeed a tricky balance. Yet if the Saudis and Emiratis buy into renewables, the $100 billion target might be achievable. 
[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is the World Warming up to Syrian Leader Bashar al-Assad? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The mechanism by which globalization spread throughout the world, the key strand of its DNA, has been the “free trade” treaty. 

“We’ve had 30 years of free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties,” points out Luciana Ghiotto, a researcher at CONICET-Argentina and associate researcher with the Transnational Institute. “They’ve created this enormous legal architecture, what one friend of ours calls the ‘corporate architecture of impunity,’ which has spread like grass and gives legal security and certainty to capital. It has nothing to do with the protection of human rights or environmental rights.”

Indeed, among the many problems associated with the expansion of world trade has been environmental degradation in the form of land, air, and water pollution. More recently, however, attention has turned to the more specific problem of carbon emissions, which are largely responsible for climate change. According to the World Trade Organization, the production and transport of goods for export and import account for 20-30 percent of global carbon emissions.

Embedded in many of the treaties governing trade and investment are clauses that give corporations the right to sue governments over regulations, particularly those addressing the environment and climate change, that adversely affect the expected profit margins of those businesses. These investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions have a “chilling effect on the regulatory system because governments, worried that they will be sued, decide to delay reforms related to climate change,” points out Manuel Perez Rocha, an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. “There have been several cases around the world where companies were able to defeat regulatory changes that favor the climate.” Trade rules that privilege corporations over the environment are particularly influential in the realm of agriculture, which is an extractive industry no less powerful than mining.

“The global system of trade and investment contributes to the monopoly control by just a few transnational corporations over fossil-fuel-guzzling agrobusiness, whose products are often transported thousands of miles before they reach a dinner table,” relates Jen Moore, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. “At the same time. the system has been decisive in making the lives of millions of small-scale farmers more precarious, undermining their role as a better alternative to mass monoculture operations.”

Carbon emissions are not the only byproduct of the agrobusiness that global trade sustains. “There’s also methane emissions,” adds Karen Hansen-Kuhn, program director at the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. “A lot of methane comes from meat production. Nitrous oxide, which is 265 times more potent than carbon and stays in the atmosphere over 100 years, results from chemical fertilizers.”

These perspectives on global trade—and more environmentally sound alternatives to the “free trade” model—were presented at a December 2022 webinar sponsored by Global Just Transition project of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South.

The Rise of “Free Trade”

Throughout the modern era, states throughout the world protected their domestic economies through tariffs on foreign goods and restrictions on foreign investment. Behind these protective walls, states helped local farmers and businesses compete against cheaper imports and deep-pocketed investors.

But states that depended increasingly on exports of cheap industrial goods and surplus food—aided by transnational companies eager to boost their profits—lobbied for the reduction of these barriers. Arguments for “free trade,” traditionally linked to the presumed benefits of globalization, emerged within the most powerful economies in the nineteenth century, but it was more recently, in the 1970s, that states and international institutions dramatically revived this discourse under the banner of “neoliberalism.”

“When we talk about the circulation of capital, we’re talking about trade,” explains Luciana Ghiotto. “That is, import and export for states and the circulation of thousands of vessels and planes for the transport of commodities all around the world. One of the aims of capital is to make that circulation faster, simpler, and easier. Who would not want to make trade easier or faster? Well, the state.”

Faster and more efficient trade, while more profitable for corporations, also has meant a number of negative consequences for states such as job loss among domestic producers. Because of the wide array of free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties now in force—and the power invested in international bodies to enforce these agreements—states have lost many of the tools they once used to protect or develop national industries.

The spread of the free-trade orthodoxy has had a major impact on the energy industry, which has in turn pushed up carbon emissions. Ghiotto points to the efforts of fossil-fuel corporations to protect their investments in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a primary motivation to negotiate an Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) in the early 1990s, which guaranteed free trade in global energy markets. The ECT was originally signed by 53 European and Central Asian countries. Today, another 30 countries from Burundi to Pakistan are in the queue for membership.

“The ECT is actually a treaty made specially to protect fossil fuel Industries,” Ghiotto continues. “It’s already been used by investors to protect their investments in the face of state policies. But that was 30 years ago. Now, because of the global climate crisis, states are pushing for other kinds of regulations that are jeopardizing the investments of these corporations.”

Energy companies have taken states to dispute settlements in 124 cases, with around 50 against Spain alone because of its reforms in the renewable energy sector. Companies “have used the ECT as a legal umbrella in order to increase business and profits, or simply to protect their investments against state regulation,” Ghiotto adds. Italy, for instance, instituted a ban on offshore drilling only to be hit by a suit from the UK energy company Rockhopper. In November 2022, the ECT arbitration panel ordered the Italian government to pay the company 190 million Euros plus interest.

“Investors in the mining and oil sector have launched 22 percent of the claims against Latin American states,” she reports. “There was the big case of Chevron against Ecuador. But there have been others. For instance, Ecuador had to pay a $374 million penalty to the French oil company Parenco after the state changed some clauses regarding the amount of taxes the company had to pay in order to give back some of the revenues to the Ecuadorian people.”

Agriculture and Climate Change

Global food production generates 17 billion tons of greenhouse gasses every year. That’s about a third of the 50 billion tons of such gasses emitted annually. The production of beef and cow milk are the worst offenders, largely because of the methane that’s released by the animals themselves. But other major contributors include soil tillage, manure management, transportation and fertilizers.

“Along with Greenpeace and Grain, our institute has been working with scientists to think about how increased fertilizer use is affecting climate change,” Karen Hansen-Kuhn reports. “Fertilizer use has been increasing all over the world. It’s a key part of Green Revolution practices. The scientists we worked with found that the use of nitrogen fertilizer, bringing together the natural gas and the energy used in production along with transportation and the impacts in the field, amounts to more than 21 percent of emissions from agriculture, and it’s been growing.”

According to a map of excess nitrogen per hectare of cropland, countries like China, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Venezuela are using more nitrogen for fertilizers than the crops can even absorb. “This excess contributes to more emissions and causes other problems, for instance with run-off into waterways,” she continues. “The incentives right now in the agricultural system are for extreme overproduction, especially around commodity crops, like corn, soybeans, and wheat, which require these cheap chemical inputs.”

Many of these commodity crops are produced for export. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest exporter of food; China is the second largest importer of food but also the sixth larger exporter. The challenge is to continue to feed the world while reducing the use of so much fertilizer. “Many countries are advancing important agroecological solutions like crop rotation, using plants that fix nitrogen in the soil, and doing more composting,” Hansen-Kuhn adds. “These techniques are under the control of farmers, so they don’t rely on imports or trade in these chemical inputs.”

Another strategy, embraced by the European Union, has been to use trade rules to reduce the carbon content of imports and exports. “In Europe, they are currently in the process of finalizing a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism,” she reports. “The CBAM mostly applies to things like aluminum, steel, and cement, but fertilizer is part of it as well. A lot of firms in Europe are modernizing their plants so they’ll be more energy efficient. And they say they need protection in order to do that. Under this plan, fertilizer imports coming from other countries that don’t have the same environmental standards would be subject to a fee tied to the price of carbon.”

In theory, the CBAM would push exporting countries to raise their environmental standards and/or make their fertilizer production more efficient. “Maybe these plants will become more efficient,” she adds. “But maybe some firms will just decide to produce fertilizer in other countries. Or maybe in cases where a country has two factories, it will just export from the efficient factory, and there’s no change in emissions.”

On top of that, the CBAM will affect countries very differently. “Most of the fertilizer imports into the EU come from nearby countries like Russia or Egypt,” she continues. “But some imports come from countries like Senegal, where the fertilizer exports to Europe amount to 2-5 percent of their entire GDP. So, the CBAM would be a huge problem for such countries. And there’s nothing in this initiative that would give countries the technology they need to make changes. In fact, there are strong incentives against that in the trade deals. The CBAM provision specifically says that all of the resources generated by the carbon fee will be kept internally to foster the transition within Europe.”

Although CBAM may make European trade greener, it may also widen the “green gap” between Europe and the rest of the world. “We need a transition to agroecology, but what we’re getting in the trade deals lock in new incentives to continue with business as usual,” Hansen-Kuhn concludes. “If we look at the renegotiated NAFTA, there’s a new chapter on agricultural biotechnology that streamlines the process for approving both GMOs and products of gene editing. There are also restrictions on seed saving and sharing. And this new NAFTA will probably be the model for other agreements like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.”

Action at the Global Level

Civil society organizations have been pushing for a legally binding treaty at the UN level to make businesses responsible for human rights violations and environmental crimes connected to their operations.

“Since the UN is made up of states, the more industrialized countries who can invest in the world are opposed to such a binding treaty,” Luciana Ghiotto points out. “In the United States, Canada, and Japan, we’ve seen debates about holding companies responsible for human rights violations throughout the production chain. It’s a relatively new political process. But it’s an example of civil society organizations putting a question of human rights and environmental rights at the center of discussion.”

Efforts at the international level are very complicated, Manuel Perez Rocha concedes: “For instance, the World Bank has the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) through which corporations can sue states.” He recommends a more regional approach. “We have proposed a dispute resolution center for Latin America that countries could use after pulling out of ICSID. “Unfortunately, most progressive countries have not embraced this,” he reports.

One of the challenges to persuading governments to embrace these alternatives is corruption. “There’s a tremendous circle of corruption,” he adds. “We’re talking here about the revolving door where public officials who negotiate these treaties then become private lawyers or counselors or board members of the corporations who are lobbying for their adoption. This corruption helps explain why governments sign these treaties even if they’re going to be sued.”

He points as well to the issue of access to critical minerals needed in the green energy transition. “The Biden administration is trying to combat fossil fuels at the cost of communities that live around the deposits of critical minerals like lithium and cobalt,” Perez Rocha explains. “There are a lot of concerns among native populations about how to make this transition to a so-called clean economy without violating human rights and destroying the environment.”

Trade has been a mechanism to make deals around these minerals. “These efforts at near-shoring and friend-shoring have been ways to control the supply chains around minerals and metals,” notes Jen Moore. “The United States in particular but also Canada have made themselves clear: to be identified as a ‘friend’ is to have an FTA or a bilateral investment treaty.”

There have been other actions at the global level related to climate issues and jobs. For instance, the United States brought action against India in the WTO in 2014 over domestic content provisions in its effort to boost solar energy. India returned the favor two years later over similar domestic content provisions in state-level solar policy. “The WTO deemed both rules illegal,” Karen Hansen-Kuhn recalls. “In the United States, the programs continued, I don’t think any changes were made. But when we think of a just transition, it has to be about not just reducing emissions but about creating jobs.”

Resistance to Business as Usual

Resistance to the corporate-friendly trade architecture has come from many corners of the globe. “From the perspective of my work with mining-affected people,” Jen Moore reports, “there’s been a rise in resistance from farmers, indigenous peoples, and other communities facing the detrimental Impacts of this highly destructive model of capitalist development that’s been accompanied by violent repression and militarization and often targeted violence against land and environment defenders.”

For example, after buttressing the fossil-fuel status quo for three decades, the Energy Charter Treaty is no longer unassailable. In November, the German cabinet announced that the country would withdraw from the ECT. It joins a number of European countries—Italy, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Slovenia, and Luxembourg—that have made similar announcements. “In times of climate crisis, it is absurd that companies can sue for lost profits from fossil investments and compensation for coal and nuclear phase-outs,” points out the deputy leader of the parliamentary group of the Greens in the German parliament.

The treaty has a surprise for countries that want out: signatories withdrawing from the ECT are still bound by the treaty for 20 years. There’s also a related problem involving the provisions of other trade treaties.

“European countries are pushing to update treaties with Mexico, Chile, and others to include clauses like the investor-state dispute mechanism, which also allow energy corporations to sue governments,” notes Manuel Perez Rocha. “This is nothing short of neocolonialism being exercised against countries on the periphery.” In response, he urges the “strengthening of national judicial systems so that companies will feel more protected by national systems and not pursue options at the supranational level.”

The backlash to the ECT is nothing new. “The system has created a lot of resistance and critiques since practically day one,” Luciana Ghiotto adds. “I was raised in the spotlight of the battle of Seattle in 1999 against the WTO and the struggles against the Free Trade Area of the Americas.”

Karen Hansen-Kuhn agrees that it’s necessary to claim victories. “Civil society helped weaken the ISDS system,” she notes. “With the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, massive opposition to ISDS was a major reason it fell apart..”

Another form of pushback comes from the field itself. “On our website, we’ve started tracking the adoption of agroecological approaches, which are not just about the inputs but instead look at the fuller picture including food sovereignty, namely each community’s right to choose the food systems it wants,” Hansen-Kuhn continues. She points to Mexico phasing out GMO corn, which relies heavily on the pesticide glyphosate. The government made that decision because of input from civic movements. After objections from the U.S. government, Mexico backtracked somewhat on that commitment by applying the phase-out only to corn for human consumption.

“Mexico is making some concessions, for example allowing GMO for animal feed, but otherwise it’s standing firm despite enormous pressure,” she concludes. “That’s not a complete transition to agroecology, but here’s a country deciding that it will make a change in its food system regardless of what the trade deals say.”

“It’s important to recall the totality of the system supporting corporate control around the world,” Jen Moore says. “Sometimes it feels like we make only piecemeal attempts to go after it.”

Manuel Perez Rocha agrees. “We need to discuss alternatives from different perspectives, which would put an end to the patriarchal, neocolonial capitalist system,” he suggests. “But while we strive for a utopian vision, we also should discuss more realistic, more feasible, and more concrete alternatives. For instance, companies can sue states. Why shouldn’t states have the right to sue companies? Affected communities should also have access to dispute resolutions. We should eliminate the privileges of foreign investors, like the ‘national treatment’ clause, that tie governments down in their efforts to promote local, regional, and national development.”

The Global South has begun to develop a unified voice in the debate on a just energy transition. “In Latin America, we have said that there is no new green deal with FTAs and bilateral investment treaties,” Luciana Ghiotto reports. The region has seen the rise of a number of dynamic organizations from the rural activists in Via Campesina to various indigenous movements and feminist movements articulating a feminist economy. Meanwhile, certain countries have taken the lead. “In its constitution, Ecuador prohibited entry into any international agreements that include international arbitration that compromises the country’s sovereignty,” she adds. “The new neoliberal government is struggling with dozens of lawyers to find a way around it, but they still can’t.”

Another example of successful resistance is the growth of the climate justice movement, which goes well beyond environmental protection and has linked activists across struggles from economic justice and human rights to agroecology and post-growth economics.

“After the disruptions of the last couple years, we can come together more in person,” Karen Hansen-Kuhn notes. “Movements require building relationships in person. We need to come together to build these alternatives.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The World Now Needs Green Trade, Not Free Trade appeared first on Fair Observer.

And yet the threat of climate change has only grown larger. In 2022, carbon emissions grew by nearly 2%.

This failure is not for want of institutions. There’s the UN Environment Program (UNEP), which oversees the complex of international treaties and protocols, helps implement climate financing, and coordinates with other agencies to meet sustainable development goals (SDGs). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has marshaled all the relevant scientific data and recommendations. The Green Climate Fund is attempting to funnel resources to developing countries to advance their energy transitions. The Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, begun in 2020 at the instigation of the Biden administration, has been focusing on reducing methane. International financial institutions like the World Bank have their own staff devoted to global energy transition efforts.

Still, with the notable exception of the global effort to repair the ozone layer, more institutions have not translated into better results.

On climate change, notes Miriam Lang. a professor of environmental and sustainability studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Ecuador and a member of the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South, “it seems that the more we know, the less we are able to take effective action. The same can be said about the accelerated loss of biodiversity. We live in an era of mass extinctions, and there’s been little progress at the governance level despite many good intentions.”

One major reason for the failure of collective action is the persistent refusal to think beyond the nation-state. “It’s weird that nationalism has become so dominant when the challenges that we face are global,” observes Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “We know that these problems can’t be regulated within national borders. Yet governments and people within countries persist in treating these crises as ways in which one nation can benefit at the expense of another.”

Another challenge is financial. “Adequate funding at all levels is a fundamental prerequisite to improving climate governance and the implementation of sustainable development goals,” argues Jens Martens, executive director of the Global Policy Forum Europe. “At a global level, this requires predictable and reliable funding for the UN system. The total assessed contributions to the UN regular budget in 2022 were just about $3 billion. In comparison, the New York City budget alone is over $100 billion.”

In part because of these budgetary shortfalls, international institutions have increasingly relied on what they call “multistakeholderism.” On the face of it, the effort to bring other voices into policymaking at the international level—the various “stakeholders”—sounds eminently democratic. The inclusion of civil society and popular movements is certainly a step in the right direction, as is the incorporation of the perspectives of academics.

But multistakeholderism has also meant bringing business on board, and corporations have the money not only to underwrite global meetings but to determine the outcomes.

“I was at Sharm el-Sheikh in November,” recalls Madhuresh Kumar, an Indian activist-researcher currently based in Paris as a Senior Fellow at Atlantic Institute. “We were welcomed at the airport by a banner that read ‘Welcome to Cop 27.’ And it listed the main partners: Vodafone, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group, IBM, Cisco, Coca Cola and so on. Most UN institutions face a growing monetary problem. But this monetary problem is not actually at the crux of the issue. It is astonishing how through multistakeholderism, which has evolved over the last four decades, corporations have captured multilateral institutions, the global governance space, and even the big International NGOs.” He adds that 630 energy lobbyists were registered at COP 27, a 25% increase from the previous year’s meeting.

The challenges facing global governance are well known, whether it’s nationalism, funding, or corporate capture. Less clear is how to overcome these challenges. Can existing institutions be transformed to more adequately address the global problems of climate change and economic development? Or do we need different institutions altogether? These were the questions addressed at a recent webinar on global governance sponsored by Global Just Transition.

Global Shortcomings

Transforming the current system of global governance around climate, energy, and economic development is like trying to repair an ocean liner that has sprung multiple leaks in the middle of its voyage with no land in sight. But there’s an additional twist: all the crew members have to agree on the proposed fixes.

Jayati Ghosh is a member of the new UN High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism. “The challenge is in its very title,” Ghosh explains. “Multilateralism itself is under threat in part because it hasn’t been effective. But also the imbalances that are rendering it ineffective are not likely to go away any time soon. We’re all aware of this on the board. But without much broader political will, there’s a limit to any given individual or group proposals.”

In addition to nationalism, she believes that four other broad “isms” have prevented a cooperative response to the global problems facing the planet. Take imperialism, for instance, which Ghosh prefers to define “as the struggle of large capital over economic territories when supported by nation-states. We see evidence of that in continuous subsidies of fossil fuels or the greenwashing of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments. The ability of large capital to sway international policies and national politics in its own interests persists unabated. That’s a major constraint to doing anything serious about climate change.”

Short-termism is another such constraint. In the wake of the Ukraine war, food and fuel corporations sought to profit in the short term by manufacturing a sense of scarcity. The rise in fuel and food prices, Ghosh notes, were created not so much by constraints on supply, but from market imperfections and control over markets by large corporations. That short-term profiteering in turn led to equally short-sighted decisions by the most powerful countries to reverse their previous climate commitments and make fewer such commitments at the last COP in Egypt. Politicians “reversed those commitments because they have midterm elections coming up,” she points out. “They’re worried that voters will support the far right, so they argue that they have to do whatever it takes to increase fuel supplies.”

Classism, in various forms of inequality, has also prevented effective action. “Globally, the top 10 percent, the rich, are responsible for one third to more than one half of all carbon emissions,” Ghosh notes. “Even within countries that is the case. The rich have the power to influence national government policies to ensure that they continue to take the bulk of the carbon budget of the world.”

Finally, she points to “status-quo-ism,” by which she means the tyranny of the international economic architecture, not only the legal and regulatory framework but also the associated global agreements and institutions. “We really have to reconsider the role played by international financial institutions, by the World Trade Organization, the multilateral development banks, and legal frameworks like economic partnership agreements and bilateral investment treaties that actually prevent governments from doing something about climate change,” she argues.

One way of addressing these last four obstacles is to reverse privatization. “The privatizations of the last three decades have been absolutely critical in generating both inequality and more aggressive carbon emissions globally,” Ghosh concludes. She urges the return of utilities, cyberspace, even land to the public sphere.

Revisiting Sustainable Development

In 2015, the UN endorsed 17 sustainable development goals. These SDGs include pledges to end poverty and hunger, combat inequalities within and among countries, protect human rights and promote gender equality, and protect the planet and its natural resources. But climate change, COVID, and conflicts like the war in Ukraine have all pushed the SDG targets further from reach—and made them considerably more expensive to achieve.

“The implementation of the 2030 agenda is not just a matter of better policies,” observes Jens Martens. “The current problems of growing inequality and unsustainable models of consumption and production are deeply connected with powerful hierarchies and institutions. Policy reform is necessary, but it is not sufficient. It will require more sweeping shifts in how and where power is vested. A simple software update is not enough. We have to revisit and reshape the hardware of sustainable development.”

In terms of governance, this means strengthening bottom-up approaches. “The major challenge for more effective global governance is a lack of coherence at the national level,” Martens continues. “Any attempt to create more effective global institutions will not work if it’s not reflected in effective national counterparts. For instance, as long as environmental ministries are weak at the national level we cannot expect UNEP to be strong at the global level.”

Stronger local and national institutions, however, operate within what Martens calls a “disabling environment” where, for instance, “the IMF’s neoliberal approach has proven incompatible with the achievement of the SDGs as well as the climate goals in many countries. IMF recommendations and loan conditionalities have led to a deepening of social and economic inequalities.” Also disabling is the disproportionate power wielded by international financial institutions. “One striking example is the Investor-State Dispute settlement system, which awards investors the right to sue governments, for instance, for environmental policies that reduce profits,” he notes. “This system undermines the ability of governments to implement stronger domestic regulations of fossil fuel industries or to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.”

Enhancing coherence also means strengthening UN bodies such as the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which is responsible for reviewing and following up on the SDGs. “Compared to the Security Council or the Human Rights Council, the HLPF remains extremely weak,” he points out. “It meets only eight days per year. It has a small budget and no decision-making power.”

Some additional institutions are needed to fill global governance gaps, such as an Intergovernmental Tax Body under the auspices of the United Nations, that would ensure that all UN member states, and not only the rich, participate equally in the reform of global tax Rules. Another oft-cited recommendation would be an institution within the UN system independent of both creditors and debtors to facilitate debt restructuring.

All of this requires sufficient funding. Around $40 billion goes toward the development activities of UN agencies, Martens notes, “but far more than half of these funds are project-tied non-core resources mainly earmarked to favor individual donor priorities. That means mainly the priorities of rich donors.” UNEP, meanwhile, gets a mere $25 million from the regular UN budget, which is about $3 billion and doesn’t include separate assessments for activities like peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.

More democratic funding would have the side benefit of shrinking reliance on foundations and corporate contributions, which “reduce the flexibility and autonomy of all UN organizations,” he concludes.

Addressing Multistakeholderism

One path that global institutions have taken to address the funding shortfall is “multistakeholderism.” As with corporations pushing for privatization at a national level with arguments about the inefficiencies of state enterprises or the bureaucratic state, the advocates of multistakeholder initiatives (MSI) point to the failures of global public institutions to tackle common problems as a reason for greater corporate involvement. In effect, this boils down to large corporations buying more seats at the table for themselves.

Madhuresh Kumar has produced a recent book with Mary Ann Manahan that looks at how multistakeholderism has evolved in five key sectors: education, health, environment, agriculture, and communications. In the forestry sector, for instance, they looked at initiatives like the Tropical Forest Alliance, the Global Commons Alliance, and the Forest for Life Partnership. “We found that in their first decade, the initiatives primarily established the problem by arguing that the multilateral institutions are failing and that’s why we need solutions,” he reports. With the rise in global demand for raw materials, particularly in the context of a “green economy,” there was also greater demand to regulate the industries. The corporate sector responded with initiatives that emphasized “responsible” mining, forestry, and the like.

These “responsible” corporate initiatives revolved around “nature-based” solutions that rely on markets to “get the price right.” Kumar notes that “at the heart of these false, ‘nature-based’ solutions promoted by MSI is the notion that if nature does not have a price, human beings are not incentivized to take care of it, that we have to use nature and also replace it. Carbon offsets, for instance, come out of the principle that you can continue to produce as much carbon as you want as long as you also plant some trees somewhere else.”

According to this logic, nature can be priced according to various “ecosystem services.” He continues: “Seventeen ecosystem services have been identified along with 16 biomes. Together they have an estimated value of $16-54 trillion. If they can be unlocked, the idea is that this money can be put toward solving the climate crisis. But we won’t see that money. Ultimately, what rolls out on the ground won’t help our communities.”

Not only nature is commodified but knowledge itself, for instance through intellectual property rights. “Increasingly, we have a reinforcement of very rigid rules and very rigid systems that lead to the concentration of knowledge and to large corporations appropriating traditional knowledge,” notes Jayati Ghosh.

Another essential part of MSI is the focus on technical fixes, like carbon capture technology, geoengineering, and various forms of hydrogen energy. “These divert a lot of attention from climate justice,” Kumar notes. “It is also having an impact on indigenous communities. For instance, the One Trillion Trees Initiative that the UN backs is promoting a monoculture, the destruction of biodiversity, and the eviction of indigenous communities and many others.”

The disenfranchisement of indigenous communities is especially worrisome. “Indigenous peoples are responsible for preserving 80 percent of the biodiversity that still exists today, which is even confirmed by the World Bank,” Miriam Lang explains. “Nevertheless, we somehow do everything to disrespect, weaken, and threaten indigenous people’s modes of living. We still systematically treat indigenous people as poor and in need of development. We are reluctant to guarantee their land rights, their rights to clean water, their rights to the forest where they live. Instead, we propose to pay them money to compensate their losses, which is just another way of weakening their social organization and decision-making. It causes division and lures them into consumerism, individualism, and entrepreneurialism: precisely those aspects of capitalism that have brought about the current environmental breakdown.”

In addition to corporations, large NGOs like World Wildlife Fund, and major funders like Michael Bloomberg, Kumar notes that “the UN has been a willing participant in all of this. Sustainable Energy for All, which is another MSI, was started by former UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon in 2011 as a response to a statement made by a group of countries. But Sustainable Energy for All later acquired an independent status of its own over which the UN has no control. The UN General Assembly plays an important role in shaping the agenda and setting standards. But then these institutions, like the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership that was initially backed by UNIDO, later go out on their own, become unaccountable, and fall into the lap of corporations.”

Democratizing Governance

In 1974, the UN declared a New International Economic Order to free countries from economic colonialism and dependency on an inequitable global economy. The developing world was unusually unified in supporting the NIEO. Though some elements of the NIEO can be seen in the Agenda 2030, the effort did not translate into any substantial changes in the Bretton Woods institutions—IMF, World Bank—that form the international financial architecture.

“The reason we had demands for a NIEO is precisely because developing countries felt that the global economy was not just or equitable,” Jayati Ghosh observes. “Yes, it was a period of relatively more access to certain institutions. But some of the imbalances that we’re talking about in trade or finance or technology existed even then. Of course, it’s also absolutely true that neoliberal financial globalization has dramatically worsened conditions globally. But I would put it more in terms of the supremacy of large capital over everyone else.”

Also, the United States and European Union continue to wield disproportionate power: appointing the leaders of the World Bank and IMF and controlling the majority of votes in these institutions. “Middle- and low-income countries, which together constitute 85 percent of the world’s population, have only a minority share,” observes Miriam Lang. “There is also a clear racial imbalance at play with the votes of people of color worth only a fraction of their counterparts. If this were the case in any particular country, we would call it apartheid. Yet, as economic anthropologist Jason Hickel points out, a form of apartheid operates right at the heart of international economic governance today and has come to be accepted as normal.”

Developing countries have long demanded a reform of the governance of these IFIs. “The voting rights were originally allocated on the basis of a country’s share of the global economy and of global trade,” reports Jayati Ghosh. “But this was done based on the data of the 1940s, and the world has changed dramatically since then. Developing countries have significantly increased their share of both, and certain countries are much more significant while a number of European countries are much less significant.”

Despite a very minor change in this distribution of votes, the United States and European Union retain the majority of the votes and the lion’s share of the influence. “When you have a new issue of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)—which we just had in 2021 for $650 billion— this liquidity created by the IMF is distributed according to quota, which really means that the developing world doesn’t get very much. And 80 percent goes to countries that are never going to use them. So, it’s an inefficient way of increasing global liquidity.”

“Obviously the rich countries that control these institutions are not going to give up their power easily,” she continues. “They have blocked every attempt to change because they have the voting rights now. So, do you say, ‘Okay, let’s demolish the whole thing and start afresh’? But then, how do you create a new institution? How do you even create a minimally democratic way of functioning?”

If the rich countries won’t give up their power voluntarily, they’ll have to be pushed to do so. “I have to confess: I’m saddened by the lack of public outcry,” Ghosh adds. “Even in the very progressive state of Massachusetts, where I’m teaching, people couldn’t be bothered with this. Similarly, in Europe. People’s movements need to point out how this is against not just the interests of the developing world, it’s against the enlightened self-interest of people in the rich countries as well.”

A similar problem applies to the power of the rich within countries. “There’s a need for tax justice at the global level, and not only with the rich countries with all governments involved in setting the tax rules, especially from the global south,” Jens Martens says. “We have a tax system with the highest rates much below what we had in the 1970s or even the 1980s. The international community recently established a minimum tax of 15 percent for transnational corporations: this is a very minor first step at the global level.”

“We had suggested 25 percent,” Jayati Ghosh adds, “which is the median of corporate tax rates globally. But it isn’t just increased tax rates. It’s important to emphasize redistribution. Regulatory processes have dramatically increased the profit share of large companies. Before we get to taxation, we have to look at the reasons they’re able to have these very high profits. We allow them to profiteer during periods of scarcity or assumed scarcity. We allow them to repress workers’ wages. We allow them to grab rents in different ways. So, we need a combination of regulation and taxation to rein in large capital and to make sure that the benefits ultimately produced by workers come back to workers and society as a whole.”

“In the last decade of the twentieth century, we managed to make these corporations villains,” points out Madhuresh Kumar. “But today they are not seen as the villains. Governments in the global North and in the South have given them a platform. There is muted celebration if we are able to shift these corporations toward providing more renewable energy, which they have done by diversifying. But if we can’t shift the power imbalance, we won’t achieve any equality in global governance, in the financial architecture, or anywhere.”

Where Does Change Come From?

In March 2022, Jayati Ghosh was named to a new High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism created by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The dozen board members come from different countries and perspectives.

“We have to have a bit of a reality check on what commissions and advisory boards can achieve,” Ghosh points out. “We can advise. We can say this is what we think should happen, this is how we believe the international financial architecture must be changed. Everything else really depends on political will, which is not just governments suddenly seeing the light and becoming good. Political will is when governments are forced to respond to the people. Until that happens, we’re not going to get change no matter how many high-level boards and commissions come up with excellent recommendations that we can all agree with.”

After the 2008-9 global financial crisis, former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz headed up a UN-created commission. “It came up with some really fine recommendations, which are still valid,” Ghosh recalls. “But they were not implemented. They were not even considered. I don’t know if anyone at the IFIs even bothered to read that whole report.”

Multistakeholderism has elevated the status of corporations in high-level climate negotiations. But this is precisely the wrong strategy. “When the World Health Organization negotiated the Tobacco Control Convention, they decided to exclude lobbyists from the tobacco companies from the negotiations,” Jens Martens points out. “In the end they agreed to a quite strong convention, which is now in place. Why can’t we convince our governments to exclude fossil fuel lobbyists from negotiations in the climate sphere because there’s a conflict of interest?”

In the end, Martens is not so pessimistic: “I see a lot of social movements occurring in the last couple years as a counter-reaction to nationalism and the inactivity of our governments: Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter. It’s very necessary to put pressure on our governments, because they only respond to pressure from below.”

Jayati Ghosh sees some positive momentum, particularly around the growing trend of acknowledging the rights of nature. “Ecuador and Bolivia included the rights of Mother Earth in their constitutions,” she reports. “But there’s also a movement of civil society groups fighting for the rights of nature in many countries including Germany. If nature is a subject by law, then we can have better instruments to protect nature. We also have discussions at the global level about alternatives to GDP that focus on well-being.”

“Can the world save the world?” she asks. “Yes, the world can save the world. Will the world save the world? No, not at the current rate. Not unless people actually rise up and make sure that their governments act.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Crisis Peril: Can The World Save The World? appeared first on Fair Observer.

That same year, the United Nations held its first environment conference, which led to the creation of the UN Environment Program. Climate change was barely on the conference agenda, but it would increasingly focus the attention of scientists and policymakers over the next two decades with the introduction of the term “global warming” in 1975, the Montreal Protocol in 1987 that restricted ozone-destroying chemicals, and the creation in 1988 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

For half a century, in other words, the international community has issued warnings about the linked hazards of economic growth and climate change. Despite these warnings across five decades, very little has been done to engineer an alternative to unrestrained growth that can safeguard the planet and yet still secure a measure of prosperity for all humans.

Current doomsday scenarios of a future dominated by environmental disasters and economic deprivation are not the result of “sudden panicking,” points out Vedran Horvat, the director of the Institute for Political Ecology in Croatia and a panelist at a recent Global Just Transition seminar on post-growth alternatives. “We had 50 years to realize what the Club of Rome said in the 1970s. Already at that time we knew there were limits and boundaries to our growth and that the planet does not have unlimited resources. Already we are too late. But I don’t see that as a reason not to act. Now it’s a question of how we act.”

Similarly, discussion of “peak oil”—of a falling off of oil production—has been around since 1956, when geophysicist Marion King Hubbert predicted that the United States would hit peak production around 1970 while the rest of the world would top out in the early 2000s. Although Hubbert did not anticipate the discovery of new sources of oil, his predictions were only off by a couple decades. The COVID pandemic’s impact on global supply chains, the war in Ukraine, and the rapid transition to electric vehicles have combined to ensure that peak oil demand will arrive in the next few years if it hasn’t happened already.

As with the Club of Rome’s warnings, little has been done to prepare for the depletion of fossil fuels.

“For the last 14 years, we’ve talked about green transition,” observes Simon Michaux, an associate professor of geo-metallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland. “But there’s been no feasibility study for macro-scale industrial reformation. We had some ideas, but we didn’t cost them out. We didn’t get to the point of determining what kind of power stations we would need, who would pay for them, and what kind of engineering we’d need to keep each one running. Here we are perhaps past peak oil, and we still don’t have a credible plan to phase out fossil fuels.”

The lack of a plan and the urgency of the crisis are two major obstacles. A third challenge is the absence of consensus on how to move forward. “For the last two decades, those of us who are more and more worried about these conditions and the fact that things aren’t changing are aware of just how far we are going down the road we shouldn’t be going down,” says Susan Krumdieck, professor and chair in Energy Transition at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. “We’ve put on our superhero capes to fight. Unfortunately, we’re pulling in different directions.”

One obvious difference in approach is between the richer countries of the Global North and the poorer countries of the Global South. “We’ve seen lots of initiatives like the Green New Deal in the United States which lack the perspective and participation of peripheral economies in the Global South,” notes Renata Nitta, a campaign strategist for Greenpeace International based in Brazil. “When you think of plans to decarbonize the economy and transition to electric vehicles, you have to ask where those raw materials come from. More than half of lithium resources, for instance, are based in Latin America in a very dry area where the mining takes a lot of energy and water and dispossesses traditional and indigenous communities.”

At this point, after a half century of study and debate, the international community has a good understanding of the challenges of economic growth and the urgent threat of climate change and resource depletion. Only recently, however, have scientists, engineers, policymakers, and movement leaders begun to identify the components of an action plan around post-growth alternatives. From “transition engineering” and “degrowth by design” to a new social contract and a new economic model built around the commons, visionary thinkers and activists are finally beginning to pull in the same direction.

Transition Engineering

In 1911, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City. One of the exits was locked while a fire escape was too flimsy to hold all the fleeing workers. Because they could not get out of the building, 146 garment workers died in the flames. It was one of the deadliest industrial accidents in U.S. history. It also set in motion the transformation of working conditions in factories through the improvement of safety standards.

The Triangle fire is not the only example of a man-made disaster. “At that time, roughly 40 coal miners a day were dying on the job in the United States and that year 5,600 UK workers died on the job,” notes Susan Krumdieck. “That isn’t the case anymore. Maybe in Qatar a lot of people are still dying on the job but that’s because they’re not doing what we do, namely safety engineering. We see the emergence of corrective discipline time and again. After the Titanic went down, maritime safety emerged to ensure that that didn’t happen again. After toxic waste disasters like Love Canal, we saw the emergence of processes to prevent those man-made disasters.”

Climate change is also a man-made disaster. Like coal mining deaths and toxic waste dumps, it is a byproduct of the industrial era. Recognition of climate change—and the costs it has already exacted in human lives and environmental deterioration—has led to the creation of what Krumdieck calls “transition engineering,” namely an effort to “downshift fossil fuel production and consumption and then engineer the adaptation and resetting of the energy system and the economic behaviors in that context.”

Krumdieck was motivated to become a mechanical engineer as an undergraduate in 1981 “because of the energy crisis, the OPEC oil embargo, global warming, and the existential threat of biodiversity loss,” she remembers. “For nearly 20 years, I taught people how to put CO2 safely and efficiently into the air. Then in the late 1990s, many like me got distracted by carbon capture and storage and by biofuels because we are engineers and it was very exciting to work on these really impossible things.”

She has since transitioned to transition engineering. “That’s how impact happens: by developing standards, training, and professional organizations,” she points out. “Now is the time for people working on this all around the world to come together and create a discipline.”

She hopes that future historians will look at humanity’s predicament today much as we look back at the Triangle Fire. Transition engineering can potentially transform the way economics work much as safety engineering has radically minimized man-made hazards in the workplace.

“This year, in the UK, fewer than 150 will die on the job,” she concludes. “Not one of those is okay. But 100 years ago, all 5,600 worker lives lost were just the price of the progress of industrialization.”

Addressing Fossil Fuel Dependency

Despite considerable investments by China, the United States, and other countries into renewable energy systems like solar and wind, fossil fuels remain the dominant source of energy in the world. In 1966, oil, gas, and coal supplied approximately 94% of all electricity. By 2009, that number had dropped to a little above 80%. But over the next decade, even as concern over climate change spiked, dependency on fossil fuels barely shifted, falling to just under 79% by 2020. The economic rebound from the COVID lockdowns, coupled with the initial energy shocks associated with the war in Ukraine, has encouraged a greater reliance on fossil fuels, particularly coal, and generated record profits for oil and gas companies.

But the war in Ukraine—and the near universal desire to achieve energy independence from external suppliers—has also inspired many countries to push harder to install renewable energy, forcing the International Energy Agency to revise its estimate of increased renewable capacity by 30%. According to the IEA, “renewables are set to account for over 90% of global electricity expansion over the next five years, overtaking coal to become the largest source of global electricity by early 2025.”

The desire for transition may be strong but the physical infrastructure is still lacking. “The task to get rid of fossil fuels is much larger than we thought, so large that we should have been taking it seriously 20 years ago,” reports Simon Michaux. “We need 586,000 non-fossil-fuel power stations to phase out fossil fuel, but there are only 46,000 in the existing system. We don’t have enough minerals to build these new stations.”

Further, those minerals are often in areas of the Global South where extraction poses serious risks to surrounding communities and the environment. “Half the world’s cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Renata Nitta points out, adding that such mines are often the locus of human rights abuses. “More than 14,000 children are working in cobalt mines.

The challenge is not just the insufficiency of mineral resources. “Wind and solar are highly intermittent,” Michaux continues. “To become viable, we need a power buffer. My calculations show that such a power buffer would be so large as to be impractical. Which means that wind and solar can’t be the foundational energy system we want it to be. So, we either need to change wind and solar or we need to change electrical engineering to deal with variable power supply.”

One strategy for gradually reducing dependency on fossil fuels is rationing. The United Kingdom, in a plan supported by the Labour and Green parties, considered implementing Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) as a way to equitably reduce fossil fuel consumption. In a TEQ system, individuals are issued quotas of fossil fuel energy to use, the surplus of which they can sell. Institutions purchase TEQs at auction or buy as needed. The TEQs are linked to carbon reduction goals, and governments can progressively reduce them to meet national and international requirements.

“The system that does the rationing and why is a primary requirement,” Susan Krumdieck points out. “Seats at a Queen concert are rationed: there are only so many. If everyone who wanted to see the concert just showed up it would be a disaster. So, the system that lets us book and manage our expectations is essential. Does that system exist for fossil fuels? No, so let’s build it.”

Simon Michaux agrees that rationing would be sensible, but it would work only if there were sufficient trust in the system, which requires full transparency. “Everyone involved has to understand what’s happening and why,” he maintains.

Because of the war in Ukraine, rationing of energy has already happened throughout Europe. Vedran Horvat points to measures “related to air-conditioning temperatures in offices, the heating of swimming pools, and the lighting of public monuments. This broad range of measures to decrease energy consumption, in the context of the energy crisis in Europe due to the war in Ukraine, is well understood and easily accepted. It is also an issue of solidarity to understand that if we maintain our comfort at an unsustainably high level, it might have detrimental impact on people on the other side of the planet.”

Addressing Growth

Economic growth continues to push greater consumption of energy. The pandemic shutdowns led to a 4.5% decline in global energy consumption in 2020, but that was erased by a 5% increase in 2021 during the economic rebounds. In the first half of 2022, energy consumption continued to rise by 3%.

The war in Ukraine, however, has dampened growth prospects, not only for Russia and Ukraine but for Europe more generally. “At the moment, many European countries are facing zero-growth scenarios and some core European economies are not predicting any growth in the next few years,” Vedran Horvat points out. “Which means that we really need to address questions of how to organize our lives and ensure wellbeing for all in conditions of if not degrowth then at least zero growth. This sort of degrowth, which is imposed by geopolitics, is degrowth by disaster.” This kind of degrowth resembles austerity measures imposed during or after other kinds of disasters, like war or debt default.

A better approach, Horvat notes, would be “degrowth by design.” In this way, “we program our developmental scenarios to satisfy human needs and wellbeing but in ways that don’t lead necessarily to economic growth,” he explains. “This would involve fair and equal redistribution of resources through as much of a democratic process as possible. We should think of how to use the current crisis as an opportunity. A democratic transition to degrowth is necessary if we want to discuss viable alternatives rather than have degrowth imposed by disaster as is now the case.”

Such degrowth by design, argues Renata Nitta, must include a major shift in thinking. “We have to move from a very individualistic, profit-driven society to one that is more based on sharing, on the commons, on valuing care,” she notes. “In this sense, we have a lot to learn from what indigenous and traditional communities are doing and telling us. Their vision of the cosmos is embedded in a different ethic that respects the environment. Deforestation rates inside indigenous areas can be 26 percent lower than other areas. So, these communities are very effective in terms of protecting the environment. We have to ensure that they’re part of the decision-making and we surely have to respect their constitutional rights.”

Who Are the Changemakers?

All transitions need people who help engineer the pivot. These are the changemakers, like the revolutionaries in America and France in the eighteenth century or the Silicon Valley scientists and entrepreneurs who ushered in the computer age.

“When change happens, it’s not a shift in mass consciousness among people as such,” Simon Michaux points out. “It’s a relatively small number of people embedded in our civil service. They’re not necessarily elected officials, they’re people advising those officials. And when they decide to move on things, they can move quickly.” He notes that it’s difficult to work through official channels because the establishment is not interested in change: “They’re having a great time with growth and power and money.” But advisors, who aren’t themselves in charge, are a different matter. “If they decide that they’ve had enough, change happens,” he points out.

Scientists and engineers, too, can play a role. “A network of badly-behaved scientists and engineers who just do stuff without permission,” Michaux continues, can also spur forward a shift in consciousness by developing new ideas, approaches, and innovations and getting information about them into circulation. “Most of humanity is inured to the existing paradigm. So, you only need 4-5 percent of humanity” to understand the new approaches and decide to move on them.

Vedran Horvat looks to trade unions as key players in the process, particularly in Europe where the European Green Deal is decarbonizing economies from the top down and without sufficient attention paid to addressing inequality and injustice. Trade unions, he argues, are essential in forging a new social contract that creates the consensus necessary for degrowth scenarios to move from the fringe to mainstream acceptance.

“Trade unions are sometimes quite difficult but necessary partners to tackle the justice element of moving toward post-growth scenarios,” he concludes. “Post-growth scenarios are not politically represented in democracies, are not related to democratic power in a way to execute such scenarios. So, we must find other ways to have political representation of this shift in the political arena.”

Renata Nitta is skeptical about the notion that technology can solve all environmental and climate challenges. To advance zero-growth alternatives, she says, “we need to redefine the convergence points between state, trade union movements, and all those who might be left behind when adopting this new regime.”

Tipping Points

Change can happen when a critical mass of people abandons an old model in favor of something new. Sometimes that happens as a result of a particular event. For instance, the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 spurred an effort to ban the pesticide DDT. On the climate front, the approach of a number of tipping points—the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, the complete thaw of northern permafrost—should have already prompted a reconsideration of the push factors behind global warming. Ideally, physical tipping points should translate into perceptual tipping points.

When it comes to economic growth, however, virtually all governments, international financial institutions, and economists—as well as significant majorities of the population—believe that either the status quo is working for them or that directing a larger share of a growing pie will remedy what’s wrong. Only when a critical mass of people understand that the pie can’t keep growing—that unlimited growth is not liberating but ultimately self-defeating— will a tipping point in public opinion be reached.

In April 2010, the largest oil spill in history happened when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Several months later, a massive fire at a ruptured gas pipeline south of San Francisco brought renewed scrutiny to the perils of the fracking industry. Also in 2010, “it was becoming quite clear that the Kyoto protocol was not going to make a blip of difference,” Susan Krumdieck reports. “Those were the galvanizing moments. And that’s when 100 engineers came together to create the Global Association for Transition Engineering. It was clear we were going down a very dangerous path and that we had to help end users adapt to a better way of doing things.”

Another way of discussing tipping points is the notion of sacrifice. When will a critical mass of people willingly accept sacrifices—of their SUVs, frequent air flights, cruise ship vacations, and so on—to save the planet from its multiple environmental threats? Or will sacrifice need to be imposed on an unwilling populace, as China did with its one-child policy beginning in 1980?

“In many countries, social majorities are not accepting that sacrifices need to be made,” Vedran Horvat points out. The stumbling block is not willingness to recycle but willingness to scale back on consumption. “The circular economy obviously has some positive environmental or climate impacts but it doesn’t teach us to consume less,” he adds. “Bringing some resources back into circulation to use again is all good and needed, but it doesn’t require us to consume less. We need to relearn what our lives look like if we consume less.”

Sacrifices can be imposed from above, or they can be agreed upon collectively through a democratic process. 

“Obviously governments, commissions, and transnational governance regimes are all engaged in delivering quick, top-down solutions without investing time into democratic processes,” Horvat continues. “That’s no reason not to bring this debate into society and, wherever possible, enable citizens to learn how to transform their lives. When we say that we don’t have enough resources, we are not asking what energy is being used for at this moment and whether we need that to maintain the system. Some things must be shrunk or calibrated to the new reality if we are to be more responsible toward future generations and for them to live in a just world.”

As Renata Nitta points out, the Global South has already made sacrifices for centuries through colonial appropriation and its aftermath. But now, the Global South urgently needs help in transitioning away from fossil fuels and addressing the current impacts of climate change. “It took 30 years to agree on financing for loss and damage,” she points out. “We can’t wait another 30 years to define the rules for financing the transition. At the national level, we need to move away from the lobbying of big corporations on governments to create processes that are more bottom up than top down: to include marginal groups and ensure that their rights are being respected. It takes a lot of time, but what other choices do we have? I don’t see any other way to create faster change.”

At the same time, Nitta stresses the importance of utopian alternatives. “We are constantly being bombarded by messages of doom,” she says. “These messages disempower people. For quite some time, the environmental movement was quite good at using “end-of-the-world” messages. But now is the time to change. People are building resilience in communities all over the world. Our job as researchers and environmentalists is to help amplify these ideas.”

Sacrifice won’t come easily to the affluent in the Global North. “We’ve been living a wonderful life in the last century, a golden era of getting whatever we want with a snap of our fingers,” notes Simon Michaux. “What happens if we are moving into a world without enough to go around, when we have to work very hard for less outcome? From a biological point of view—and I learned this from Nicole Foss—energy determines the size and complexity of an organism. 

If energy is reduced, that organism has to shrink in size and become less complex. If we are stepping into a low-energy future, industry will likewise become simpler and smaller whether we like it or not. There will be a reorganizing of energy around new energy sources. Then people will reorganize themselves around those industrial hubs, and our food production will reorganize around those people.”

In other words, a major fork in the road approaches. “In this way, we’ll decide who we really are and what kind of world we want to live in,” Michaux concludes. “Do we turn against each other or work together?”

Role of the State

The economic trend of the last four decades has been in the direction of reducing the power of the state: privatization of state assets, reduction of regulatory apparatuses, weakening of government leverage over the economy. Some of the policies to address climate change fit into this pattern by emphasizing market-based solutions such as carbon trading. But as the example of Chinese state investments in renewable energy suggests, governments have enormous power to push through economic transitions.

“If a government can come up with a sensible plan that everyone gets behind, more government intervention might work,” notes Simon Michaux. “But if it’s like the Roman Empire, when the government wasn’t acting in the best interests of the majority of the population, then it won’t work. If that happens, there will be less government intervention and a parallel system of governance will emerge, and the social mandate to govern will transfer from one system to the other. We’ll need government in some form, but that government would have to implement a new system that doesn’t exist yet in a paradigm that doesn’t exist yet. My job going forward is to build the tools that try to understand what that paradigm might be and then hand those tools off to people who will go on past me.”

Governments also remain subject to considerable influence from the corporate sector, particularly fossil fuel companies that continue to lobby for subsidies and other favorable terms. “We see at every COP how weak governments are,” Vedran Horvat explains. “They are not able to make agreements that are immune from fossil fuel companies and the corporate sector more generally. The return of government is essential in abandoning fossil fuels for it is governments who ultimately have to operate in the public interest.”

Renata Nitta agrees: “The market won’t resolve the climate and biodiversity crisis. A market mechanism proposed by companies is often little more than greenwashing so that they can maintain business as usual. It’s important to pressure government to keep these corporations accountable and not accept false solutions.”

Time, all of the presenters agree, is of the essence. “Now that I’m a granny, I don’t have time to think about things I can’t do anything about, such as the way the market works or the way politicians work,” Susan Krumdieck reports. “I’m laser-focused on the changes that are required, on a change in a place or a system that can be scaled up.”

“Odrast is the Croatian word for degrowth,” points out Vedran Horvat. “The word doesn’t sound negative in Croatian. It means to grow up and be mature. So, we need to be mature enough to cooperate and identify a definite set of options to ensure the survival of future generations.”
[Foreign Policy In Focus first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post From the Unsustainable Here to the Sustainable There appeared first on Fair Observer.

Governments have made commitments to reach net zero emissions by 2050. To achieve these ambitious goals, we will need to allocate spending differently. Currently, the economy is weighted in favor of current spending with consumer goods, healthcare, pensions and travel taking most of the money. We will have to lower this spending and put more money into long-term capital spending such as electricity generation using renewable energy, updating—and, where needed, even changing—the electricity grid and improving public transport.

The nations of our world are concerned about such lavish long-term capital expenditure.  Yet we will inevitably have to invest heavily in flood and drought prevention schemes to adapt to the effects of climate change. The level of greenhouse gasses such as CO2 and methane is already so high that climate change is baked into our future.

Why Joe Biden’s Green Energy Policy is Dead

This capital spending to adapt to climate change—adaptation spending—will inevitably mean lower current spending. In an era of higher interest rates, governments will have to follow a more restrictive fiscal policy. They will have to sacrifice some programs to release funds for climate-related policies. Politicians and leaders will have to prepare public opinion for such policies.

New Mines and More Controversies

While we are familiar with the environmental costs caused by burning coal, extracting oil and drilling for natural gas, we are less aware of the environmental costs arising from renewable energy systems. Clean energy is often not as clean or green as it is made out to be.

For example, an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources in its construction than a gas-burning plant producing the same amount of electricity. By 2040, solar and wind power generation will increase demand for some minerals by 300% to 700%. Copper supplies would need to double if we are to meet our targets for substituting electricity for hydrocarbon-based fuels. Furthermore, a typical electric car battery requires 8 kilograms (kg) of lithium, 35 kg of nickel, 20 kg of manganese and 14 kg of cobalt. Mining causes immense environmental damage. Therefore, to exploit these minerals sustainably, require careful deep-sea and on-land mining processes. 

Much of the mining will likely be done in poorer countries. It may damage local water supplies and interfere with local agriculture, warranting compensation for local people. The location of this mining—especially open cast—is very controversial. Legal, political, and personal objections to mining are inevitable, even in poor countries. Because of these objections, opening mines may take twice as long as expected. These delays will add to costs. They will have to be financed by somebody. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects global oil demand to reach a record high in 2023. At the same time, Russia has cut its oil supply and OPEC+ has not raised production levels to meet the shortfall. It is clear that there will be supply shortages and volatile prices for energy and gas.

Meeting this demand with renewable energy instead of fossil fuels  is a good thing. Reducing energy consumption is even better. After all, generating more green energy takes a toll on the environment. The time has come to restrict conspicuous energy consumption. That might be a sensible way forward.[Bella Bible edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Clean Energy Not So Clean, Time to Restrict Consumption Too appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Pentagon is required by law to provide Congress and the public with an annual report on “military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China,” or PRC, over the next 20 years. The 2022 version, 196 pages of detailed information published last November 29th, focused on its current and future military threat to the United States. In two decades, so we’re assured, China’s military — the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA — will be superbly equipped to counter Washington should a conflict arise over Taiwan or navigation rights in the South China Sea. But here’s the shocking thing: in those nearly 200 pages of analysis, there wasn’t a single word — not one — devoted to China’s role in what will pose the most pressing threat to our security in the years to come: runaway climate change.

The World This Week: Climate Change Matters and So Do Other Species

At a time when California has just been battered in a singular fashion by punishing winds and massive rain storms delivered by a moisture-laden “atmospheric river” flowing over large parts of the state while much of the rest of the country has suffered from severe, often lethal floods, tornadoes, or snowstorms, it should be self-evident that climate change constitutes a vital threat to our security. But those storms, along with the rapacious wildfires and relentless heatwaves experienced in recent summers — not to speak of a 1,200-year record megadrought in the Southwest — represent a mere prelude to what we can expect in the decades to come. By 2042, the nightly news — already saturated with storm-related disasters — could be devoted almost exclusively to such events.

All true, you might say, but what does China have to do with any of this? Why should climate change be included in a Department of Defense report on security developments in relation to the People’s Republic?

There are three reasons why it should not only have been included but given extensive coverage. First, China is now and will remain the world’s leading emitter of climate-altering carbon emissions, with the United States — though historically the greatest emitter — staying in second place. So, any effort to slow the pace of global warming and truly enhance this country’s “security” must involve a strong drive by Beijing to reduce its emissions as well as cooperation in energy decarbonization between the two greatest emitters on this planet. Second, China itself will be subjected to extreme climate-change harm in the years to come, which will severely limit the PRC’s ability to carry out ambitious military plans of the sort described in the 2022 Pentagon report. Finally, by 2042, count on one thing: the American and Chinese armed forces will be devoting most of their resources and attention to disaster relief and recovery, diminishing both their motives and their capacity to go to war with one another.

China’s Outsized Role in the Climate Change Equation

Global warming, scientists tell us, is caused by the accumulation of “anthropogenic” (human-produced) greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in the atmosphere that trap the reflected light from the sun’s radiation. Most of those GHGs are carbon and methane emitted during the production and combustion of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas); additional GHGs are released through agricultural and industrial processes, especially steel and cement production. To prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era — the largest increase scientists believe the planet can absorb without catastrophic outcomes — such emissions will have to be sharply reduced.

Historically speaking, the United States and the European Union (EU) countries have been the largest GHG emitters, responsible for 25% and 22% of cumulative CO2 emissions, respectively. But those countries, and other advanced industrial nations like Canada and Japan, have been taking significant steps to reduce their emissions, including phasing out the use of coal in electricity generation and providing incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles. As a result, their net CO2 emissions have diminished in recent years and are expected to decline further in the decades to come (though they will need to do yet more to keep us below that 1.5-degree warming limit).

China, a relative latecomer to the industrial era, is historically responsible for “only” 13% of cumulative global CO2 emissions. However, in its drive to accelerate its economic growth in recent decades, it has vastly increased its reliance on coal to generate electricity, resulting in ever-greater CO2 emissions. China now accounts for an astonishing 56% of total world coal consumption, which, in turn, largely explains its current dominance among the major carbon emitters. According to the 2022 edition of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, the PRC was responsible for 33% of global CO2 emissions in 2021, compared with 15% for the US and 11% for the EU.

What Climate Debt Does the North Owe the South?

Like most other countries, China has pledged to abide by the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 and undertake the decarbonization of its economy as part of a worldwide drive to keep global warming within some bounds. As part of that agreement, however, China identified itself as a “developing” country with the option of increasing its fossil-fuel use for 15 years or so before achieving a peak in CO2 emissions in 2030. Barring some surprising set of developments then, the PRC will undoubtedly remain the world’s leading source of CO2 emissions for years to come, suffusing the atmosphere with colossal amounts of carbon dioxide and undergirding a continuing rise in global temperatures.   

Yes, the United States, Japan, and the EU countries should indeed do more to reduce their emissions, but they’re already on a downward trajectory and an even more rapid decline will not be enough to offset China’s colossal CO2 output. Put differently, those Chinese emissions — estimated by the IEA at 12 billion metric tons annually — represent at least as great a threat to US security as the multitude of tanks, planes, ships, and missiles enumerated in the Pentagon’s 2022 report on security developments in the PRC. That means they will require the close attention of American policymakers if we are to escape the most severe impacts of climate change.

China’s Vulnerability to Climate Change

Along with detailed information on China’s outsized contribution to the greenhouse effect, any thorough report on security developments involving the PRC should have included an assessment of that country’s vulnerability to climate change. It should have laid out just how global warming might, in the future, affect its ability to marshal resources for a demanding, high-cost military competition with the United States.

In the coming decades, like the US and other continental-scale countries, China will suffer severely from the multiple impacts of rising world temperatures, including extreme storm damage, prolonged droughts and heatwaves, catastrophic flooding, and rising seas. Worse yet, the PRC has several distinctive features that will leave it especially vulnerable to global warming, including a heavily-populated eastern seaboard exposed to rising sea levels and increasingly powerful typhoons; a vast interior, parts of which, already significantly dry, will be prone to full-scale desertification; and a vital river system that relies on unpredictable rainfall and increasingly imperiled glacial runoff. As warming advances and China experiences an ever-increasing climate assault, its social, economic, and political institutions, including the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), will be severely tested.

According to a recent study from the Center for Climate and Security, “China’s Climate Security Vulnerabilities,” the threats to its vital institutions will take two major forms: hits to its critical infrastructure like port facilities, military bases, transportation hubs, and low-lying urban centers along China’s heavily populated coastline; and the danger of growing internal instability arising from ever-increasing economic dislocation, food scarcity, and governmental incapacitation.

China’s coastline already suffers heavy flooding during severe storms and significant parts of it could be entirely underwater by the second half of this century, requiring the possible relocation of hundreds of millions of people and the reconstruction of billions of dollars’ worth of vital facilities. Such tasks will surely require the full attention of Chinese authorities as well as the extensive homebound commitment of military resources, leaving little capacity for foreign adventures. Why, you might wonder, is there not a single sentence about this in the Pentagon’s assessment of future Chinese capabilities?

Even more worrisome, from Beijing’s perspective, is the possible effect of climate change on the country’s internal stability. “Climate change impacts are likely to threaten China’s economic growth, its food and water security, and its efforts at poverty eradication,” the climate center’s study suggests (but the Pentagon report doesn’t mention). Such developments will, in turn, “likely increase the country’s vulnerability to political instability, as climate change undermines the government’s ability to meet its citizens’ demands.”

Of particular concern, the report suggests, is global warming’s dire threat to food security. China, it notes, must feed approximately 20% of the world’s population while occupying only 12% of its arable land, much of which is vulnerable to drought, flooding, extreme heat, and other disastrous climate impacts. As food and water supplies dwindle, Beijing could face popular unrest, even revolt, in food-scarce areas of the country, especially if the government fails to respond adequately. This, no doubt, will compel the CCP to deploy its armed forces nationwide to maintain order, leaving ever fewer of them available for other military purposes — another possibility absent from the Pentagon’s assessment.

COP27 Flopped: the Rich Won’t Pay, the Poor Will Suffer

Of course, in the years to come, the US, too, will feel the ever more severe impacts of climate change and may itself no longer be in a position to fight wars in distant lands — a consideration also completely absent from the Pentagon report.

The Prospects for Climate Cooperation

Along with gauging China’s military capabilities, that annual report is required by law to consider “United States-China engagement and cooperation on security matters… including through United States-China military-to-military contacts.” And indeed, the 2022 version does note that Washington interprets such “engagement” as involving joint efforts to avert accidental or inadvertent conflict by participating in high-level Pentagon-PLA crisis-management arrangements, including what’s known as the Crisis Communications Working Group. “Recurring exchanges [like these],” the report affirms, “serve as regularized mechanisms for dialogue to advance priorities related to crisis prevention and management.”

Any effort aimed at preventing conflict between the two countries is certainly a worthy endeavor. But the report also assumes that such military friction is now inevitable and the most that can be hoped for is to prevent World War III from being ignited. However, given all we’ve already learned about the climate threat to both China and the United States, isn’t it time to move beyond mere conflict avoidance to more collaborative efforts, military and otherwise, aimed at reducing our mutual climate vulnerabilities?

At the moment, sadly enough, such relations sound far-fetched indeed.  But it shouldn’t be so. After all, the Department of Defense has already designated climate change a vital threat to national security and has indeed called for cooperative efforts between American forces and those of other countries in overcoming climate-related dangers. “We will elevate climate as a national security priority,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared in March 2021, “integrating climate considerations into the Department’s policies, strategies, and partner engagements.”

Cities Under Water
Where in the world is most at risk from sea-level rise?

The Pentagon provided further information on such “partner engagements” in a 2021 report on the military’s vulnerabilities to climate change. “There are many ways for the Department to integrate climate considerations into international partner engagements,” that report affirmed, “including supporting interagency diplomacy and development initiatives in partner nations [and] sharing best practices.” One such effort, it noted, is the Pacific Environmental Security Partnership, a network of climate specialists from that region who meet annually at the Pentagon-sponsored Pacific Environmental Security Forum.

At present, China is not among the nations involved in that or other Pentagon-sponsored climate initiatives. Yet, as both countries experience increasingly severe impacts from rising global temperatures and their militaries are forced to devote ever more time and resources to disaster relief, information-sharing on climate-response “best practices” will make so much more sense than girding for war over Taiwan or small uninhabited islands in the East and South China Seas (some of which will be completely underwater by century’s end). Indeed, the Pentagon and the PLA are more alike in facing the climate challenge than most of the world’s military forces and so it should be in both countries’ mutual interests to promote cooperation in the ultimate critical area for any country in this era of ours.Consider it a form of twenty-first-century madness, then, that a Pentagon report on the US and China can’t even conceive of such a possibility. Given China’s increasingly significant role in world affairs, Congress should require an annual Pentagon report on all relevant military and security developments involving the PRC. Count on one thing: in the future, one devoted exclusively to analyzing what still passes for “military” developments and lacking any discussion of climate change will seem like an all-too-grim joke. The world deserves better going forward if we are to survive the coming climate onslaught.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Change Is Now a Defense Matter appeared first on Fair Observer.

Indonesia has set a target of 31.89% reduction in GHG emissions without international funding, and 43.20% with international support by 2030. This commitment is legally binding. This gives judiciaries a pivotal role in achieving this goal. Climate litigation is “an increasingly common and citizen-accessible area of environmental law.” Citizens increasingly use this form of litigation to hold countries and public corporations accountable both “for their climate mitigation efforts and historical contributions to climate change.”

In Indonesia, all climate-related cases are filed in the general court and led by certified judges in environmental law. The future holds increasing ecological challenges due to climate change, making it essential for Indonesia’s government to enhance its jurisdiction in order to mindfully regulate environmental laws.

Why Tech Collapsed and What Happens Now

In 2019, citizens and activists of Jakarta sued the government for poor air quality in central Jakarta court. This case was critical in the history of human rights in Indonesia as it voiced the citizens’ demands to improve the overall environment. The case reached a verdict after two long years in 2021. The verdict entailed appropriate penalties for the president, three of the ministers, and the governor, in order to implement appropriate actions against air pollution. This case has contributed to the climate litigation progress and movements in Indonesia.

Principles and Practice

This case consists of some principles related to environmental law as mentioned in Article 2, Law 32 of 2009. These include the principles of pollution pay, sustainable development and the precautionary principle. According to the pollution pay principle, Jakarta’s governor should be stricter in penalizing drivers who do not comply with permissible pollution levels for vehicles, businesses or activities that do not meet emission-quality standards. Due to this case, the governor issued  regulation 66, regarding the exhaust emission tests of motorbikes in 2020. This added more than 15 air quality monitoring stations, and arranged emission inventory. 

Air pollution negatively impacts health over many generations. Such pollution is not sustainable and violates the principle of sustainable health. Judges argued that the health ministry had violated the law by refusing to share any information regarding the polluted areas and the effect of the air pollution on public health.The health ministry also did not have the statistics about the decline in public health due to the air pollution. This goes against article 14 in presidential rule 41 of 1999. Therefore, there is a need for Indonesia to improve transparency among stakeholders.

Indonesia’s Balancing Act Between China and Taiwan

Keeping in accordance with the precautionary principle, after the Kalimantan forest fires in 2017, the panel of judges requested the president to revise presidential rule 41 of 1999. Though the validity of this act has been questioned for 21 years, it has still not been reviewed by the president, signifying a failure to prioritize the regulations. Despite this, a ray of hope may still lie amongst the citizen lawsuits filed against air pollution in Jakarta. These lawsuits led the government to redesign the Baku Mutu Adara Ambien (BMUA), which translates as the Ambient Air Quality Standard, and could possibly be what encourages the prioritization of the pollution risks. 

Strengthening Climate Commitments

This suit serves as an example for all Indonesians to approach the court of law with citizen lawsuits if their rights to a healthy environment are violated. The right to a healthy environment is a human right, and so, will be considered in court in any environmental case. The court’s decision to consider human rights a supporting element in Perbuatan Melawan Hukum (PMH), and their choice to present human rights experts in court are well-measured moves. 

In addition to this case, the media also plays a crucial role in raising awareness about climate litigation in Indonesia. Presenting more cases and initiating discussions will increase critical thinking and optimism amongst citizens about the environment and their human rights.

The president and the ministries of Indonesia need to be held accountable for any violation of the BMUA rules. Jakarta’s air pollution is getting progressively worse. Along with Hanoi and Mandalay, Jakarta is the most polluted city in Southeast Asia. Their citizens’ life expectancy has reduced by three to four years on average.The verdict also probes the ministry of environment and forestry to strengthen the supervising roles of governors. The supervising roles of governors extend to the areas of forming policies on emission limits, management plans (RPPMU), power station units and other operating industries in each province. In order to further public participation and their faith in the government, there need to be mechanisms to penalize governors if found ineffective. This will showcase the nation and its judiciary’s commitment towards reversing climate change. 

Indonesia continues to face challenges with solving the air pollution in Jakarta. For instance, the country has a limited number of judges specializing in environmental law who can address the potential rise in climate-related cases. Indonesia also needs to stop relying on coal power plants to attain its economic resilience due to its direct impact on air pollution. Furthermore, the public is still largely unaware of the urgency of the climate crisis. 

Since climate-related cases are rising, Indonesia must train its young judges in environmental law. Cases alone will not do the trick and neither will judicial activism. Indonesian citizens have to take an active role in getting their representatives to draft laws to combat climate change. They also have to put pressure on the government to implement these laws through sensible policies. These policies must have goals and targets that can be measured, monitored and evaluated. Only then will Indonesia be able to play its part in combating climate change.

[Throvnica Chandrasekar and Harshitha Gadde edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What Jakarta Climate Change Lawsuit Means for the Future appeared first on Fair Observer.

Let me start 2023 with a glance back at a December news moment that caught my eye. To do so, however, I have to offer a bit of explanation.

First, the obvious: I’m an old guy and, though I spend significant parts of any day scrolling through endless websites covering aspects of our ever-changing world, I have a subscription — yes, it’s still possible! — to The New York Times. That’s the paper version of The New York Times. For those of you too young to know, once long ago, in an era when TVs were still black and white and the Internet, at best, a figment of some sci-fi novelist’s imagination, all papers and magazines were printed and sold on actual paper. Hence, of course, the graphically descriptive and definitional name “newspaper.”

In 2023, for those of you of a certain age, that may sound like something from the neolithic era. Still, so it was. And for me, when it comes to the Times — call it nostalgia, if you will — I remain in the age of the newspaper (though, often enough, I also visit its website). Every morning when I get up, it’s there on the mat in front of my door. So, I pick it up and, in my own fashion, face the day just past thanks to a set of front-page headline stories.

On the morning of Wednesday, December 14th, I glanced at the headlines atop the page and saw: “Inflation Slows, Leading to Hope of ‘Soft Landing’” and “Fraud at FTX Started Early, Charges Claim.” At mid-page was: “A Blast of 192 Lasers Achieves a Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion”; and at page bottom, “Beijing’s Streets Empty as Covid and Fear Surge”; “McCarthy Fights to Clear Path to Speaker’s Seat”; and “With Indiana Jones Era Over, Museums Assess Looted Art.”

The New York Times’ Anti-Russian Inquisition Cancels History (again)

Each was a perfectly reasonable story to focus attention on, while the nuclear fusion one actually offered some modest hope of a new way to switch off fossil fuels (even if in a future almost too distant to imagine). That, then, was the shorthand version of the previous day I faced that morning on this ever-stranger planet of ours. Those were the stories the editors of the Times wanted at least the ancient among us to notice, the ones that mattered most as they saw it.

And I reacted accordingly, focusing on them briefly as I wolfed down my breakfast.

Crashes Then and Now

It wasn’t until that night, as I lay on the couch and began leafing through the inside pages of the first section of the Times that, at the bottom of page 12, I noticed a piece, reported by Raymond Zhong, headlined: “In a Rapidly Warming Arctic, Rain Where It Used to Snow, In Scientists’ Annual Assessment, Signs of Climate Change Include Storms Traveling Northward.”

And no, that obviously wasn’t a headline intended to blow me or any other reader away, storms heading northward or not. Admittedly, above it was a dramatic enough photo of what looked like a mountain of ice and snow with the subhead: “A September heatwave in Greenland caused the most severe melting of the island’s ice sheet for that time of year in more than four decades of satellite monitoring.” And as with that caption, here was the weird thing: more or less every other line of that story might, with a little interpretive rewriting, have become a blazing front-page headline focusing us on a planet that’s only expected to get ever hotter in 2023 and beyond, given that — and this should shock any of us — the last eight years have been the warmest on record.

Try just this random line from Zhong’s piece, for instance: “Over the past four decades, the region has warmed at four times the global average rate, not two or three times as had often been reported, scientists in Finland said this year. Some parts of the Arctic are warming at up to seven times the global rate, they said.” Sure, to make it onto the front page, it would have needed a headline that embodied some sentiment like: “It’s raining, it’s pouring, the Arctic is snoring” or a screaming handle about heat soaring in the coldest place on the planet, right?

COP27 Flopped: the Rich Won’t Pay, the Poor Will Suffer

So, let’s sum it up this way: Yes, the slowing of inflation was the page-one story of that day and certainly mattered to Americans, fearful of how a possible recession might level their lives. And headlined story two was, in a sense, the very opposite — a deflationary tale of how, at his now-collapsed crypto-currency exchange, FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried had already emptied the savings of striking numbers of his customers.

Still, if you stop to think about it, there, on page 12, was what could be considered the most crucial inflationary and deflationary story of our time, maybe of all time. I know, I know, the focus of Zhong’s piece was an assumedly wonky Arctic Report Card that’s been produced by scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 2006. And you could feel that wonkiness in the piece itself.

Still, while inflation — or even the Fed’s attempts to reduce it by eternally upping interest rates — could lead to an economic disaster that would damage the lives of so many Americans, nothing (short of nuclear war) could damage our lives the way climate change is likely to. Honestly, barring some future surprise, shouldn’t it qualify daily as the headline story of our lifetime, potentially of any lifetime? After all, whether in the melting, rainy Arctic or just about anywhere else, what we’re watching is the potential destruction of the only world humanity has ever known.

And when it comes to global warming, we’re not talking about a possible future crash from which, as in the Great Depression of 1929 or the Great Recession of 2009, we can recover in a limited number of years. We’re talking about the potential for a forever crash, the Greatest Depression of all time that lurks all too obviously in our future and is already beginning to clobber us.

Welcome to Our Extreme World

My point being: the news isn’t just a matter of what’s reported, but of how and where it shows up, of what’s emphasized and what isn’t. This, to my mind, is especially true with the subject that should, in fact, grip us all daily: that worst version of inflation ever. And yes, the temperature on this planet is indeed rising precipitously thanks to the continuing use and abuse of fossil fuels and the release of staggering quantities of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. And that, in the end, is likely to cause harm of an unimaginable sort, the kind that newspapers simply aren’t used to covering.

In an all-too-literal sense, that is, we’re creating a hell on Earth. And yet, despite the efforts of figures like the remarkable Greta Thunberg or Bill McKibben or the Sunrise Movement and other groups that have focused tellingly on climate change — despite the increasingly immediate extreme weather it’s been producing from Pakistan to China, South Sudan to Chile, Europe to the United States — global warming remains a largely off-the-front-page phenomenon.

Screaming Headlines

Mind you, the extremes of national (if not global) weather are regularly reported, often with remarkable enthusiasm, just largely without the necessary context. For instance, I watch the NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and one thing you can say about his show is that it loves extreme — and extremely bad — weather. In news terms, severe storm conditions sweeping across this country, often for days at a time, are pure attention-getters and, as a result, often that show’s lead story, night after night after night.

Such storms are presented as both weather reports and remarkable dramas — tornadoes/floods/snow and ice/the hottest or coldest weather — as they spread damage of all sorts across the United States. On occasion, Holt or his surrogates will, in passing, mention climate change or, on rarer occasions, even have a separate piece on the phenomenon. But at best, it’s the equivalent of a passing footnote. And yet, sadly enough, the fossil-fuelized overheating of our world and its effect via weather events causing increasing damage, including ever fiercer fires, the melting of ever more glaciers and ice sheets, ever more devastating droughts, or the record flooding of countries simply doesn’t register in the way it should — not in a way that might make some difference in how we think about and deal with this planet of ours.

What Climate Debt Does the North Owe the South?

Yes, if climate change, or perhaps I mean climate anxiety, is already part of your worldview (as, for instance, it evidently is with Gen Z) and you’re searching for news about it, you’ll always find some. Let me give you one recent example. If you go online and Google “coal use, 2022,” you’ll get numerous stories. For instance, on December 16th, based on an announcement by the International Energy Agency, CNN reported that (thank you, Vladimir Putin!) demand for coal, the dirtiest and most polluting of the fossil fuels, rose by about 1.2%, or eight billion metric tons, last year. That’s a record — and coal use may stay at that level for several years to come, which, in climate-change terms, simply couldn’t be worse news for this planet.

And yet, honestly, did you even notice that story? Until I mentioned it, did you know that coal use soared again last year? Was it the lead on the TV news you watch or at your crucial mainstream news website? I doubt it. It passed as if in the night, as did stories on the staggering profits of the fossil-fuel industry in 2022 — on, that is, how companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron continue to make unprecedented fortunes off the future devastation of our planet. In inflation terms, that coal report couldn’t have been a more nightmarish tale and yet the inflated use of coal and the inflated profits that go with it really don’t qualify as “front page” news, even if they help ensure that we humans will burn ourselves off this planet.

After all, despite remarkable advances in the development of green-energy sources, as the New Yorker‘s environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert wrote last November: “At the time of the Rio summit [in 1992], fossil fuels provided roughly 80% of the world’s primary energy. Thirty years later, fossil fuels still provide roughly 80% of the world’s primary energy. In the meantime, total global energy use has increased by almost two-thirds.”

Under the circumstances, you would think that some screaming headlines were in order, wouldn’t you?

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that such a reporting phenomenon is restricted to climate change. Take, for example, the funding of the U.S. military. After all, nothing really beats it in importance, when it comes to spending your tax dollar. We’re talking about a 2023 Pentagon budget of $858 billion, or just over half — yes, more than half! — of the full government budget for that year. By perhaps 2027, if not sooner, it’s expected to reach a trillion dollars.

And mind you, that’s not even — not by any means! — the full national security payout. When you include the budgets for the various intelligence agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and the like, you end up at $1.4 trillion or more. And last year, congressional Republicans and Democrats, who agree on so little, typically upped the military budget by $45 billion more than the Biden administration even requested. Imagine that for a moment and the sort of headlines it should have generated.

I mean, more than half of your tax dollars are going into a military that, since World War II, has essentially won nothing of significance, though to this moment it’s never stopped fighting in distant lands. (Just recently, for instance, American planes were conducting airstrikes in Somalia and U.S. troops were still battling in Syria.)

And again, though you might think screaming headlines were in order, this was basically stuff that, with rare exceptions, the mainstream media was reporting but not making the slightest fuss over. For that, you had to turn to edgy websites like TomDispatch or Robert Reich’s or William Astore’s Substacks.

Yes, such stormy news exists, but the question, as 2023 begins, is: Where is it? Why aren’t such stories eternally screaming headlines in the mainstream?

Replacing the Gods

Looking back on the history of humanity, of us, something regularly jumps out (at me at least). In this era, we’ve figured out two quite different ways to act in a fashion that once was left to the gods, something that you would think might be eternally headline-making material; we’ve discovered, that is, how to potentially destroy ourselves and end life as we know it on this planet in double time.

The first way is, of course, via nuclear weapons, the one kind of disaster that could actually cut short climate change by potentially creating a planetary “nuclear winter” that might starve billions of us. As has been true for decades, the “great” — and who knows why they’re still called that — powers are capable of functionally blowing this planet to hell and back, as are some lesser powers like India and Pakistan. And not faintly satisfied with that, in the coming decades, our country is planning to invest a couple of trillion more of your taxpayer dollars in “modernizing” the American nuclear arsenal. Only the other week, in fact, with staggering hoopla, the U.S. military rolled out an all-new nuclear weapon, a B-21 stealth bomber, as if on a Hollywood set.

And yes, all of this has, in some fashion, been reported and, when Vladimir Putin implied that he might use such weaponry in the Ukraine war, even crept toward the top of the news. Still, neither nuking the planet, nor overheating it beyond compare gets anything like the attention it deserves.

Ending the world as we’ve known it, whether in a matter of weeks or in slow motion over countless decades should, it seems to me, evoke the screaming headlines of our times. And I can’t help eternally wondering not where the reporting on such subjects is but where those headlines are when it comes to potentially the greatest versions of both depression and inflation ever.

*[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Old News in a New Year appeared first on Fair Observer.

Throughout the 20^th century, Bogota experienced a massive transformation in infrastructure, design and scale. It went from being a walkable 25-block city to more than 45,000 blocks today. In 1956, six municipalities were annexed as part of the formation of the “Capital District,” and urban sprawl contributed to Bogota’s explosive growth. 

The city continues to grow in size and scale. Today, Bogota has been ranked as one of the best cities for doing business in Latin America. New urban works projects over the next decade promise to increase its attractiveness for foreign investment and transform it into a modern city. This would make it suitable for both expanding a business and creating a company. 

The promise of better public infrastructure

Bogota is not exactly known for its great public transportation system. Some might argue that it doesn’t even have the best system in the country. Colombia’s second city Medellin, with its metro, tramway and cable cars, has a much better public transportation system. 

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Today, the capital city’s main mode of public transport is the TransMilenio, a bus-transit system that operates in most of the city. It also has Urbano, a regular bus that connects to the stops that the TransMilenio doesn’t reach, and TransmiCable, a relatively new mode of transportation, modeled after Medellin’s MetroCable, that takes passengers in and out of the southernmost parts of the city to a TransMilenio station. 

This system has many flaws. Anyone who has lived in Bogota can tell you how crowded the TransMilenio can get, how difficult it is to get to the outermost parts of the city, and how much of a hassle it is to travel to neighboring towns. These are the key issues being tackled by these new transport projects. 

The first one is the metro. It’s been talked about since the 1940s and has passed into the realm of legend. However, after many decades of political fighting over whether it should be subterranean or elevated, the metro might finally come to fruition. The first line will be elevated and will go from Bosa to Santa Fe, and the second line will connect to Suba. They’re projected to begin operating by 2028, and the new POT (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial) made by Bogotá Mayor Claudia Lopez, envisions five lines in the next 30 years. 

Second is the RegioTram, a high-speed train system connecting neighboring towns. Until now, the only option for people who live in surrounding towns like Chía, Mosquera or Facatativá, is to get to the capital by a clunky, overcrowded bus, which means hours of commuting every day. The RegioTram hopes to eliminate that. The first tram will connect Bogota to Facatativá. 

As well as these new projects, the existing TransmiCable is also being expanded. After it was introduced in 2016 to the southern district of Ciudad Bolívar, TransmiCable has made the lives of workers who travel to the north of the city to work every day better. Now, three new lines will be added to it. The first will go to San Cristobal, the second will pass through the National Museum area and go to Monserrate, and the third will go to El Codito.   

A New ‘Green Corridor’ 

The Carrera Septima (Seventh Street) is one of the main north-south thoroughfares in the city. It stretches from the heart of La Candelaria, Bogota’s vibrant heart and its historic center, to the city’s northern city limits. In the last few years, it has transformed into something most Rolos (aka Bogotanos) call iconic. 

As we move into the north on this street we find not only headquarters for a lot of important companies and businesses in the region, but also historic living spaces. Today, the street works as a highway where cars, buses, bikes and TransMilenio buses share one space, which doesn’t help with the city’s chronic mobility problems. 

The “Green Corridor” or “Corredor Verde” project aims to reevaluate the Septima’s design, transforming it into a pedestrian-friendly green space, complete with new bike lanes, limiting the space for cars and promoting public transportation. 

There’s some debate, however, as to what form of public transportation should be used. Former mayor of Bogota and current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has insisted on a Tramway system, alluding to the one that existed in the 1940s, but current designs for the Corredor use the TransMilenio instead. 

Both transportation systems have pros and cons. The tramway, for instance has already proven successful in Medellin, Colombia’s second biggest city, where it works as part of the Integrated Transport System (SIT). If it works as in Medellin, a Tramway system in the Carrera Septima could revitalize transport and reduce commuting time further, but building it isn’t a guaranteed success, and would increase the already high cost of the Corredor. 

Expansion of the El Dorado International Airport

El Dorado airport is Colombia’s largest international airport, and has been ranked among the best in Latin America. It moves more than 30 million passengers a year and that number is only expected to grow, as the city attracts more foreign tourists, business travelers and migrants.

The airport is one of the reasons why Bogota is such a great place for business. Ease and comfort in air travel is a main attraction for foreign investors and business people, but it has recently started to fall behind with increasing demands from both tourists and commuters. That’s why the El Dorado Max project was launched. It aims to revitalize and expand the airport, allowing it to serve up to 60 million passengers per year. When the project is completed, it’s expected to make El Dorado one of the most advanced airports in the region, with the technology to compete with world-class airports around the globe. 

Aviation and air transport is a very important economic facilitator. In 2014, it contributed over $160 billion to Latin America’s GDP. Allowing significantly more passengers into the country will increase tourism. It will also improve connectivity within the country, boost business and enable the capital region to bloom.

Infrastructure projects will have multiplier effect

Bogota forms 29.5% of Colombia’s GDP, making it the largest business hub in the country. With the recent efforts to better connect the capital city with the surrounding towns, the GDP of Bogota has reached $105 billion, and accounts for more than the GDP of three Latin American countries: Panama, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay. 

These urban renovations prove Bogota is on its way towards more development. Not only are they bound to improve quality of life for everyone, including businesspeople who are looking to relocate or expand their business, but they will lead to a better, more stable economy. 

Ease of travel, better transportation and improved public spaces will cement Bogota as the entry point to both northern South America and Central America.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Reasons Bogota is Turning Into a Top Investment Destination appeared first on Fair Observer.

It is hard to argue otherwise, especially given that the Colorado River Basin, which supplies up to 40 million people with water, is experiencing historic droughts. Moreover, water shortages extend far beyond the western states and are not unique to this region, which should invoke action.

Water Scarcity’s Effect on Business

Executives have the means, the power, and the resources necessary to tackle water scarcity. Although some may argue that executives should keep their attention on supporting their businesses, many companies rely on the water disappearing from the country. The leaders of the biggest companies in the world are raising the alarm. Everyone should be concerned.

Not only would we run out of water, but water scarcity also affects the price of water. As a result, companies will ultimately spend more on this necessity for their operations, products, and more. With businesses spending more, consumers will encounter rising costs, impacting everyone. 

Corporate overhead spending will increase, profit margins will decline, and companies will struggle. Corporate leaders should be concerned and work to address the critical problem of water scarcity. However,the real question is how executives can handle this.

Executives have the most financial power and influence over their industries, so they have access to the information and resources to make water scarcity less of a problem in the future. Therefore, we must practice corporate social responsibility. The circumstances at hand make it not just an option but a necessity.

Programs Striving for Change

There are numerous initiatives  fighting water scarcity. However, many of them need more funding. To protect our planet, people, and the communities we live in and love, executives can lead the way toward sustainability. Through corporate leadership, the world could have a reprieve from our current challenges. It’s just a matter of choosing where to invest.

Amongst the programs and initiatives that fight water scarcity, some of the most promising ones tackle issues like water quality and usage and even work to desalinate the ocean. If every executive contributed, regardless of the cost,  the world would be substantially different from what it is today.

Projects like Captive Systems tackle the removal and recovery of lipophilic substances, hydrocarbons, and heavy metals from the soil, water, and air. These kinds of programs  should be supported to help provide clean water globally. In addition, investing in these programs contribute to mitigating issues like rainwater heavily polluted with PFAS and other toxic substances. 

A sustainable future requires us to find ways to clean our water, which is why ultraviolet water treatment companies have created programs that help protect our water. If we are not proactive, we might fail to have clean water in the future, as these choices can dictate the future of our planet and the business world. 

One of the most notable projects is the integration of desalination as a more accepted practice. Not only would it provide more accessible options for people to receive  water, but it maybe the only way to get water in the future. 

The oceans make up most of our world, so why not find ways to utilize this to our advantage? That is where desalination comes into play to provide a sustainable and economical water supply. These  technologies will shape the state of our future and the quality of life we give future generations. 

Numerous campaigns urge people to monitor their consumption and work together to address water scarcity and quality. Governments are doing what they can. Still, the world’s elite and executives must do their part and prove to consumers that corporate leaders understand their needs.
[Tasheanna Williams edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Solution to Water Scarcity Lies With Corporate Leaders appeared first on Fair Observer.

These trends have become evident in Indonesia, a large developing country in southeast Asia with a population of  277 million. After the hosting of the G20 summit in Bali this November – in a context of a faltering post-COVID global recovery and growing conflict between the West and both Russia and China – now may be the perfect time to consider how technology and politics are interacting in the biggest democracy in the Islamic world. Indeed, promoting digital transformation is one of the country’s G20 priorities.

Indonesian politics goes digital

Indonesia’s rapid democratic transformation got underway with the fall of the nation’s military dictator, Suharto, in 1998. Indonesian politics has since featured regular elections and mostly peaceful handovers of power. Decentralization measures have empowered Indonesia’s provinces and municipalities under the leadership of directly elected local leaders.

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The dictatorship’s “court politics” centralized in the capital Jakarta, with everyone else as passive spectators, has thus been replaced by an astonishingly vibrant and diverse political landscape at all levels of society and across different territories. Indonesians are proud of their country and, with annual GDP growth commonly exceeding 5%, are confident their children will live better than they do. Corruption and maladministration however remain widespread challenges.

The digitalization of Indonesian politics has amplified the country’s democratic trends. Indeed, Internet penetration is high and there are now an estimated 191.4 million social media users in the country, over two thirds of the population. Social media use has risen dramatically across much of Asia, with Hootsuite estimating that Indonesians spend on average over three hours on social media per day.

Joko Widodo, the country’s president, who came to power as an outsider in 2014 and was reelected in 2019, maintains a strong social media presence with almost 50 million followers on Instagram and 19 million on Twitter. Local and regional political leaders have also been able to amass considerable social media audiences and the clout that goes with it.

For activists and ordinary citizens, political use of the Internet media is as diverse as Indonesian society. Progressives use social media to challenge the country’s traditional norms on LGBTQ issues. Environmental activists denounce deforestation and the dumping of plastics in the sea, and Islamic groups recruit new members via well-crafted online messaging.

Censorship in Indonesia: a varying social and political reality

However, there are limits to what can be said online in Indonesia. This is partly determined by social pressures and the uneven enforcement of censorship and blasphemy laws by national and local authorities and courts.

“You can go to jail or be forced to pay huge fines for criticizing how a hospital is run or a local public figure” said Patrick Ziegenhain, a professor of international relations at President University in Cikarang, West Java. “That’s why you have to be careful what you say, but enforcement is rather selective and a bit random.”

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The more religious elements of Indonesian society often take the lead in enforcing social norms. In one case, the popular bar chain Holywings got in trouble for a special promotion offering a free bottle of gin for men named “Muhammad.” This use of the name of the Prophet of Islam sparked outrage among many Muslims.

In 2019, President Joko Widodo chose as his vice-presidential running mate Ma’ruf Amin, a conservative cleric. Just this month, the country adopted a new criminal code which campaigners say poses a threat to women’s and LGBT rights. At the same time, the activities and expression of more radical Islamic groups can be harshly restricted, as are those of separatist movements in territories like the island of Papua and the province of Aceh.

As in the West, there is sometimes a conflict between liberal rights and democracy understood as majoritarianism. As the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Transformation Index entry for Indonesia has noted:

[T]he high levels of support for democracy [in Indonesia] seemingly collide with the simultaneously strong support for nondemocratic stances. For instance, in a September 2019 survey, 52% of Muslim respondents objected to the idea of a non-Muslim becoming governor. … Indeed, for many conservative Muslims, a stronger role for Islam in state organization is not only compatible with democracy – it is, for them, inherently required by democratic values, given that Muslims constitute the largest religious group in Indonesia.

Political use of social media

Use of social media by citizens for political purposes is often superficial. Many young people get most of their news from social media and can be overly trusting of what they encounter. Others may simply not want to express critical views online.

“There is sometimes not enough critical thinking among young people in Indonesia,” says Max, a recent university graduate in political science. “Critical thinking can be seen to be too defiant and so looked down upon. There is a strong conformist culture and not everyone has the courage or the self-confidence to stand up to that.”

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Social media “buzzers,” the local influencers, can acquire vast audiences and occasionally make political comments. Public figures may, rightly or wrongly, attract negative attention and get “mobbed” by hordes of critical commenters online.

So far, the digital transformation of Indonesia does not seem to have led to the intense social and political polarization that we see in many Western countries. As elsewhere however, Indonesian life will continue to be transformed by the adoption of new technologies in many fields.

This is especially so because Indonesia is a highly tech-friendly society. Earlier this month, Ridwan Kamil, governor of West Java, took to Twitter to highlight his province’s promotion of technology in agriculture: motorcycles are being used to plant rice and drones for spraying pesticides or liquid fertilizers.

Technologies empower us but are, arguably, morally neutral and can be used for good or ill. Across the world, how we use new technologies will determine whether these worsen our societal problems or whether we can shift to sustainable societies and maintain our social cohesion.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Digital democracy in Indonesia: an Asian Giant in Constant Transformation appeared first on Fair Observer.

Equally troubling has been the distribution of those carbon emissions. “With just below 20% of the world population, the Global North has overconsumed 70% of the historic carbon budget,” notes Meena Raman, president of Friends of the Earth Malaysia and head of programs at Third World Network, at a Global Just Transition webinar. “Those who became rich in a world unfettered in terms of emitting greenhouse gasses are responsible for much of the destruction we’re facing today.”

Because of this large disparity in emissions and in wealth earned alongside those emissions, the rich countries of the north owe the poorer countries a kind of “climate debt.” Now, when carbon emissions have to be controlled severely, the north has a historic responsibility to help the south make its own transition to a post-fossil-fuel future.

This responsibility is not simply a function of carbon emissions. The extraction and burning of fossil fuels by the Global North during and after the Industrial Revolution went hand in hand with an ongoing process of looting the Global South. The colonial era established an unequal power balance between the north and south, which has continued into the post-independence era. The Global South continues to supply the Global North with natural resources, increasingly to support a “clean energy” transition. The countries of the Global South also remain locked into various forms of debt servitude to the financial institutions of the Global North.

“We need to talk about all of these external debts—foreign, financial—which involve colonialism, the exploitation of labor, racism, and patriarchy,” observes Alberto Acosta, Ecuador’s former minister of energy and mining. “These ways of expropriating nature have been from the beginning instruments of domination over the Third World or developing countries or poor countries. These countries on the periphery have been historically bled out.”

Avoiding the worst-case scenarios of climate change will require money: a lot of it. “Regardless of how we frame the discussion—climate debt, climate reparations, climate fair share—the challenges are immense,” points out Tom Athanasiou, co-founder of EcoEquity. “There is no conventional politics that can properly address both the climate crisis and the inequality crisis. The science tells us that we have to phase out fossil fuels globally in only a few decades. That means that the countries of the Global South must rapidly decarbonize even while they are still poor, even if they have fossil resources they hope to extract and sell for development.”

But where will this money come from and what political structures are necessary to rectify the imbalance of power and wealth between the north and south?

The Stakes

In 2021, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that 85% of the world’s population had been affected by climate change. This year, unprecedented monsoon rains late this summer put one-third of Pakistan under water. Drought has brought high levels of malnutrition to East Africa, while the deforestation of the Amazon has happened at a record pace in the first six months of 2022. Meanwhile, the smaller islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans are getting smaller every day. Among other climate disasters in the north, forest fires have devastated Russia, Europe, and the United States.

“If you look at recent IPCC reports, the window for adjusting to climate change is fast closing,” Meena Raman says. “This is not only the window for emission reduction but also the window for adaptation. We are already in the era of loss and damage. Real suffering is happening around the world: there’s been flooding in Pakistan and Nigeria, and in the rich world too.”

“The scientists are close to panic,” Tom Athanasiou reports. “It’s possible that the global temperature could very briefly hit the 1.5-degree limit in only two years. At the end of this decade, it will likely be at 1.5 degrees, or very close. By that point, with conditions getting very, very dangerous, political dynamics will have changed.  It’s inevitable.  Of course we don’t know how they will have changed.”

A shift in the political dynamics might also result from disruptions that take place beyond national borders, such as glacial melt in the Antarctic. The Thwaites glacier, nicknamed the “doomsday glacier” for the impact its melting will cause around the world, is now shrinking at twice the rate it did over the previous decade. “When the Thwaites glacier goes and sea level everywhere rises, will this change the political dynamics?” Athanasiou asks. “Does radical change that previously was completely off the agenda find its way on the agenda in a new way? People know that neoliberal economics have got to go. It’s not just street-fighting people. Everyone knows. So, what new channels of cooperation, resistance, and transformation does this open up?”

These recent disasters are the culmination not just of climate change but of a maladaptive human philosophy toward nature. “This climate collapse reflects the reality of anthropocentrism,” observes Alberto Acosta. “But this disequilibrium of the planet is not the result of all humans, but of privileged humans exercising their consumerism. It’s the history of capitalism, a history of voracity for accumulation that affects billions of people on earth, especially women and indigenous communities.”

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In part because of the effects of this disequilibrium—the floods, droughts, intensified hurricanes—humans have finally begun to address climate change, but not with the requisite urgency or resources. So, for instance, the Paris agreement in 2014 established targets for the reduction of carbon emissions, but national efforts towards these targets are voluntary. Similarly, the more recent pledges by countries to reach “net zero” by 2050 are not enforced by any international authority.

“Net zero by 2050 is too little, too late,” Raman points out. “The developed world should have gotten to real zero by now. And because of the war in Ukraine, they’ve even backtracked to increasing their use of fossil fuel, with Germany for instance turning back to coal.” Alberto Acosta agrees that the Ukraine war has been a step backward for the climate justice movement. Nuclear energy, like coal, has made a rebound. And tremendous investments have gone into armaments, he notes, at precisely the moment when they’re needed for addressing climate change.

As Tom Athanasiou points out, getting to zero by mid-century “would be hard even if we had functioning democracies and responsible leadership, and we don’t have either. In fact, a lot of very powerful people stand to lose a lot of money by phasing out the fossil fuel industry.” Although nearly everyone in the world now experiences a byproduct of climate change, these impacts vary according to geography and wealth. “The countries with the highest climate vulnerability indexes—the countries most vulnerable to climatic destabilization, are almost all ex-colonies,” Athanasiou adds. “That tells you a lot right there.”

Alberto Acosta puts the blame squarely on colonialism. “The extraction of resources is a function of colonialism,” he says. “Consider the destruction of the Amazon to grow soybeans and export protein in the form of animal feed to the richest countries on earth. This transfer of natural resources to the Global North to feed industrial processes is done without consideration of the costs to the Global South. Meanwhile, going the other way from the Global North to the countries on the periphery is the spread of agricultural monocultures, the imposition of the most polluting industries, and the dumping of toxic wastes.”

That unequal relationship has carried over to the era of “clean energy.” The Global North’s push to reduce its dependence on fossil fuel has meant, Acosta continues, “transferring the problem to the Global South through the mining in poor countries for lithium and copper for electric cars and the destruction of tropical forests to obtain balsa wood to build more wind farms.”

Another divide, Athanasiou points out, is between different philosophies of development. In Africa, he notes, the conflict has heightened “between governments that want to develop fossil resources and civil society that want to keep those resources in the ground and launch a crash program of renewable development. This conflict is sharp and visible and very different from what it would have been five years ago.”

The Scale

To put the brakes on global warming, the richer countries of the world need to reverse this colonial relationship and provide the funds necessary for the poorer countries to make the transition to a post-fossil-fuel future. This, Meena Raman points out, is not just an ethical or moral issue. It is a legal commitment.

“The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement: these are legal instruments,” she explains. “The Global North is legally committed to provide resources to the developing world.”

But what is the price tag for this transformation and what are the mechanisms to effect this change?

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First, the richer countries have made commitments. In 2010, they promised to reach $100 billion per year in climate financing. “The number was plucked from a hat,” Meena Raman reports. “It was not based on what developing countries needed.” By 2021, the richer countries claimed to have mobilized around $80 billion, but in reality the figure was, as Oxfam estimates, about one third that much. “So, the $100 billion goal was shifted in 2021 to delivery by 2025,” she continues, noting as Oxfam does that the developed world counts even loan and insurance as part of that 100 billion.

Another mechanism of paying off the climate debt is the Green Climate Fund, an initiative pushed by the Group of 77 and based in Incheon, South Korea.  “Since 2014, it has delivered only $13.9 billion, which is very little in terms of the scale,” Raman reports. The Adaptation Fund, created in 2001 under the Kyoto Protocol, has committed only $850 million.

Compare these numbers—under $100 billion a year—with the scale of the challenge. According to one research report last year, the world needs to spend $5 trillion by 2030 in climate finance to meet the Paris goals by 2030. But as Raman points out, this figure is based on only 30% of the costs. Meanwhile, on the adaptation side, the UN Environment Program estimated in 2016 that $140 to $300 billion a year was necessary to cover adaptation costs in the developing world (which it placed closer to the upper range in its 2021 report).

These numbers don’t take into consideration the loss and damage costs. According to one study, the developing world will be paying somewhere between $290 billion and $580 billion per year by 2030 to deal with the consequences of climate change.

“We have to put the scale of the crisis in proper context,” Raman concludes. “It’s not about there being no money but about the political will. The movements for climate justice and debt justice have to go together. So, we need to talk about debt cancellation as part of reparations.”

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The original loans, Acosta notes, were often taken by autocratic governments that wasted the money in corruption. Debt repayment, moreover, has forced countries not only to cut social programs but to increase their mining and extraction. In this way, the foreign debt directly drives carbon emissions.

In addition to the compensation for loss and damage are the opportunity costs associated with keeping fossil fuels in the ground. “What about compensation to countries like Ecuador that possess fossil fuels but refrain from extracting these resources?” Athanasiou asks. “How do they receive it? And do the big Middle East oil producers get compensation for not continuing to pump out their oil and how much, and who pays? Is the liability for those compensations the same as for global loss and damage?”

Other costs would include those associated with climate refugees forced to resettle because their homes have become uninhabitable. “Even if we determine what should be paid, who will pay?” Athanasiou asks.

Who Pays?

The climate transition will cost trillions of dollars. The developing world, locked into a neocolonial relationship of debt and dependency, doesn’t have the resources. So, where will the money come from to help the Global South leapfrog into a post-fossil-fuel era?

“There are three possibilities,” Tom Athanasiou suggests. “Fossil fuel corporations. The rich countries of the north. Or the rich people of the world.”

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Fossil fuel corporations have historically profited enormously from peddling the products that have produced climate change. Even worse, they are making windfall profits now as a result of the Ukraine war, which has put restrictions on the amount of Russian oil and gas that’s available to Western markets. In the second quarter of 2022, for instance, BP “earned” profits of $8.5 billion, its biggest take in 14 years. In total, according to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuel companies have pulled in $2 trillion in profits over the course of the war so far. “People around the world want to push for a windfall profit tax for both tactical and strategic reasons,” he continues. “And I wouldn’t argue with them!”

The second option is the traditional climate debt approach, to make the rich countries of the north pay. “These countries obviously have to pay the greatest part of the bill because they have the greatest historical responsibility and the greatest capacity to pay,” he adds. “Yes, but there are lots of poor people, poor by global standards, in the countries of the north, including in the United States, the richest country the world has ever seen. And there are also some very rich people in the countries of the south.”

Because wealth is not so neatly divided between north and south, “maybe it should be rich people and not rich countries that pay,” Athanasiou suggests. “This is not as crazy an idea as you might think, especially if you follow Thomas Picketty and his colleagues at the World Inequality Lab. They argue that more than half of inequality on the planet is now within countries rather than between countries. So, what if we tax the emissions of just the richest one percent of the global population regardless where they live—at a rate high enough to pay for the entire cost of the emergency climate transition?”

Assessing individuals rather than countries would still conform to a fair share approach by geography. “About 6% of luxury emissions come from China, so it would have a significant fair share,” he explains. “The United States, with 57% of the global luxury emissions, would have a far larger share, about ten times the size of China’s.”

He cites the work of Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and his recent book on reparations: “Táíwò says that we need a constructive approach to reparations or to climate debt, a forward-looking, world-building approach that supports mobilization and cooperation. Such an approach cannot simply reference the climate debt that the north owes the south, huge though that is. It must also spotlight the responsibility to pay off rich people wherever they live in whatever countries.”

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The bottom line, Athanasiou concludes, is that “with so many governments going neo-fascist, it’s not really very likely we’ll get tens of trillions from central bankers in the next several years. You can’t just print that money. It has to come from the rich. It’s complicated how it will be done. But it’s extremely important that the luxury consumption of the super-rich be made a big issue on this planet. And there’s no way of doing that except by taxing it. Such a tax will not in and of itself solve the problem. But to create a sense that a just world is being built, there has to be a sense that the rich are being reined in.”

Other Mechanisms

In 2020, the world subsidized fossil fuels to the tune of nearly $6 trillion (in both direct and implicit subsidies). Of that figure, the G7 countries shell out around $88 billion a year in direct subsidies, which they recently pledged to phase out by 2025. “This is a wasted resource,” Meena Raman points out, “which could be redirected to the developing world to address both the climate crisis and the development crisis.”

A second mechanism for raising money is, as mentioned before, taxes. In addition to a tax on luxury emissions, a tax on financial transactions (also known as a Tobin tax) has been long discussed as a generator of funds to address climate change. Such a tax has been introduced in a watered-down version in the European Union, but a stronger global version could help finance a just global transition, as Albert Acosta has suggested. He also recommends going after tax havens, which have cost governments around $500-600 billion annually in lost revenue (with poorer countries losing around $200 billion of that amount).

A third mechanism would be for the international community to pay countries to keep their fossil fuels in the ground. Acosta, who created an initiative for Ecuador to raise money internationally to keep oil beneath the Yasuni rainforest preserve, believes that “rich countries have to pay more to preserve the equilibrium of the planet. We have to keep underground two-thirds of all fossil fuel reserves, whether oil, gas, or coal. If we don’t, global temperatures will increase past the 1.5-degree limit.”

Another mechanism for redirecting resources southward would be the “special drawing rights” or SDRs that the IMF issues. During the pandemic, when the global economy teetered on the precipice, the IMF issued $650 billion in SDRs. “These went to rich countries,” Meena Raman reports. “The IMF can do this, but it’s not doing it for the developing world.”

The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, is attempting to change this situation. She has called for redirecting $500 billion of these SDRs to the developing world annually for decarbonization. “We in civil society have to push for this as well,” Raman urges.

At the same time, any number of “false solutions” to the climate crisis have been proposed. “Beware of green colonialism,” Alberto Acosta warns. “Beware of carbon markets and the mercantilization of human rights.”

Through carbon offsets, as Meena Raman explains, “you can continue to emit a ton of carbon if you sequester another ton through planting trees.” Ultimately, the polluting enterprises continue to operate as before. No net decarbonization takes place, and the same economic and energy system remains in place.

“Elites in the north, in cooperation with corporations, are now looking at geoengineering, the removal of emissions from the atmosphere through technical ‘solutions,’” she continues. “How do we veer away from false solutions to protect systems that are still intact? The last frontiers in indigenous communities are now under threat of land grabs. Free trade agreements allow corporations to sue governments for doing the right thing through investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms.”

On the other hand, some leaders are coming to the fore, like Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez in Colombia. “These new leaders are talking about new development models, post-extraction and post-fossil-fuel solutions,” she adds. “But it’s not easy having to fight to dismantle structures and proposing alternatives like canceling the debt.”

Making Connections

To address climate change effectively, countries have to work together across any number of divides: north and south, east and west, rich and poor, and those rich in fossil fuels and those rich in sustainable energy sources. That is the challenge facing the annual Conferences of the Parties or COPs, the latest of which just took place in November 2022 in Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt.

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This imperative to cooperate extends to civil society as well. “We need to find solutions that connect all of our movements from north and south,” urges Meena Raman, “to fight the same system that is creating the climate crisis, the inequality crisis, and the development crisis.”

She continues, “We need to have a longer conversation about how to connect progressive movements. In the Global South, we can do what we can, we can bring progressive governments to power. But if the northern governments maintain the current mechanisms, we won’t have real change here. So, change has to come in the north. We need massive progressive solidarity movements in the north. These movements are working in your interests in the north and in our interest too. That’s the motto for Friends of the Earth International: mobilize, resist, and transform for real system change.”

[Foreign Policy in Focus first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What Climate Debt Does the North Owe the South? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Having endured 19 years of suffering inflicted by the brute force of imperialism during America’s “Global War on Terror,” Paracha, along with all of Pakistan, will now suffer through the climatic devastation wrought by the invisible hand of economic imperialism. Indeed, even as his family members were embracing him for the first time since that fateful day in 2003 when he was seized in an FBI sting operation in Thailand, governments and corporations throughout the Global North were sharpening their knives, preparing to reassert their dominance as they do at every year’s U.N. climate conference — this one being COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

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But delegates from climate-vulnerable, cash-poor countries like Pakistan and Egypt, along with members of climate-justice movements from across the planet, were also there. Tired of being pushed around, they had other plans.

A Breakthrough and an All-Too-Predictable Flop

At previous COPs, negotiations inside the hall were focused primarily on what’s come to be known as “climate mitigation” — that is, trying to keep future greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere — along with adaptation to climate disruptions, past, present, and future. For the first time in official negotiations, COP27 would also feature the demands of low-income, vulnerable countries eager to be compensated for the devastating impacts they, like flooded Pakistan, have already suffered or will suffer thanks to climate change. After all, the global overheating of the present moment was caused by greenhouse gases emitted during the past two centuries, chiefly by the large industrial societies of the global North. In the shorthand of those negotiations, such polluter-pays compensation is known as “loss and damage.”

At previous climate summits, the “haves” resisted the very idea of the have-nots demanding loss-and-damage compensation for two chief reasons: first, they preferred not to admit, even implicitly, that they had created the crisis now broiling and drowning communities across the Global South, and, second, they had no interest in shelling out the humongous sums that would then be required.

This year, however, the shocking death and destruction inflicted by the inundation of Pakistan and more recently of Nigeria stoked an already surging movement to put loss and damage on COP’s agenda for the first time. And thanks to unrelenting pressure from that climate-justice groundswell, COP27 did end with the United States, the European Union, and the rest of the rich world approving an agreement to “establish a fund for responding to loss and damage.” Echoing the thoughts of many, climate justice leader Jean Su tweeted that the deal was “a testament to the incredible mobilization of vulnerable countries and civil society. Much work still to be done, but a dam has broken.”

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The euphoria that followed over the creation of a loss-and-damage fund was well justified. But, as Su noted, the struggle is far from over. In a correction to its story reporting on that agreement, The Washington Post made clear that, although the batter had now been mixed, the cake was anything but in the oven. The paper informed readers, “An earlier version of this article incorrectly said wealthy nations agreed to pay billions of dollars into a loss and damage fund. While they agreed to create a fund, its size and financing mechanism have yet to be worked out.” Those two remaining how-much and how-to-do-it questions are anything but trivial. In the loss-and-damage debate, in fact, they’re the main issues countries have been arguing over for many years without resolution of any sort.

If the world does commit sufficient (or even insufficient) funds to pay out on loss and damage (and that’s a truly big if ), vulnerable countries may finally have the means to begin recovering from the latest climate disasters. Tragically enough, however, there’s little question that, as ever greater amounts of carbon and methane continue to head for our atmosphere, whatever the affected populations may need now, it’s likely just a hint of the sort of compensation they’ll need in a future guaranteed to be full of ever-increasing numbers of disasters like the Pakistan floods.

And the reason for that isn’t complicated: COP27 negotiators failed to match their loss-and-damage breakthrough with any significant progress on reining in greenhouse gas emissions. Efforts to come to an agreement on phasing out the chief sources of those emissions — oil, gas, and coal — flopped, as they have at all previous COPs. The only thing the negotiators could manage was to repeat last year’s slippery pledge to pursue a “phase-down [not ‘-out’] of unabated [not ‘all’] coal [nor ‘coal, gas, and oil’] power.”

On the one hand, civil-society movements prevailed in the debate over loss and damage. On the other hand, energy imperialism remained all too alive and well in Egypt, as corporate interests and the governments that serve them extended their 27-year winning streak of blocking efforts to drive emissions down at the urgently required rate. Yeb Saño, who led Greenpeace’s COP27 delegation, told Phys.org, “It is scarcely credible that they have forgotten all about fossil fuels. Everywhere you look in Sharm el Sheikh you can see and hear the influence of the fossil fuel industry. They have shown up in record numbers to try and decouple climate action from a fossil fuel phaseout.”

How to Pay?

The World Bank estimates that the floods in Pakistan caused more than $30 billion in damage, while rehabilitation and reconstruction will cost another $16 billion. And that, says the bank, doesn’t even include funds that will be needed “to support Pakistan’s adaptation to climate change and overall resilience of the country to future climate shocks.” The floods seriously harmed an estimated 33 million people, displaced 8 million from their homes, and left more than 1,700 dead. According to the World Bank’s report, “Loss of household incomes, assets, rising food prices, and disease outbreaks are impacting the most vulnerable groups. Women have suffered notable losses of their livelihoods, particularly those associated with agriculture and livestock.” The disaster starkly illustrated the indisputable moral and humanitarian grounds for compelling the governments of rich countries to pay for the devastation their decades of fossil-fuel burning have caused.

For Pakistan in particular, America’s lavishly funded war-making and national-security industries are joined at the hip with the global climate emergency. While those forces are directly responsible for depriving Paracha and countless others of their freedom or lives, the greenhouse-gas emissions they generate have also contributed to the kind of devastation that he came home to when finally released. Furthermore, these industries have wasted trillions of dollars that could have been spent on preventing, adapting to, and compensating for ecological breakdown.

So far this fall, Washington has pledged $97 million (with an “m”) in flood-relief aid to Pakistan. Sounds like a lot of money, but it amounts to just one five-hundredth of the World Bank’s loss-and-damage estimate. In bleak contrast, from 2002 to 2010 alone, at the height of that Global War on Terror, the US government provided Pakistan with $13 billion (with a “b”) in military aid.

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To dodge blame and minimize their costs, the rich countries have been proposing a range of alternatives to simply paying loss-and-damage money to low-income ones as they should. Instead, they’d far prefer to have disaster-plagued governments finance their own climate-change recovery and adaptation by borrowing from banks in the North. In effect, rather than obtain relief-and-recovery funds directly from the North, countries like Pakistan would be obligated to make interest payments to banks in the North.

Fed up with having unbearable debt burdens thrust upon them time and time again, countries in the South are saying no thanks to the proposition that they go even deeper into debt. In response, the North has been tossing out other ideas. For instance, encouraging development banks like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund to release disaster-hit countries from their obligations to pay some portion of the money they already owe as interest on past debts and use it instead to support their own recovery and rebuilding. But countries in the South are saying, in effect, “Hey, for decades, you’ve used your power to saddle us with punishing, unjust debt. By all means, please do cancel that debt, but you’ve still got to pay us for the climate loss and damage you’ve caused.”

The rich countries have even floated the idea of taking a portion of the money they’ve previously earmarked for development aid and depositing it in a global fund that would pay damages to vulnerable countries suffering future climatic disasters. Note the key to all such “solutions”: no extra expense for the wealthy countries. What a sweet deal! It’s as if, domestically, the US government started issuing smaller Social Security checks and used the money it “saved” that way to pay Medicare benefits.

The new COP27 loss-and-damage fund is supposed to prohibit such shell games, while also pulling climate finance out of the realms of imperialism, debt servitude, and what Oxfam calls the “disaster begging bowl.” What’s needed, says Oxfam, an organization focused on alleviating global poverty, is “a fair and automatic mechanism for financial support — rooted in the principle that those who have contributed most to the climate crisis pay for the damage it causes in countries least responsible and hardest hit.”

How Much and Where to Get It?

When confronted with numbers ending in “-illion,” as Americans were during the debates over the congressional spending bills of 2021 and 2022, it’s easy enough for your eyes to glaze over and miss the orders-of-magnitude differences among such figures. In an American world where the Pentagon budget alone is headed for $1 trillion sometime in this decade, it’s easy enough to forget, for example, that a million of those dollars is just one-millionth of a trillion of them. In response, in discussing the staggering sums needed to deal with our already desperately overheating planet and the amounts available to pay for loss and damage, we’ll now put everything in terms of billions of US dollars.

High-emitting countries like ours have run up quite a climate tab. A June 2022 report from the V-20 group, which represents 55 of the world’s lowest-income, most climate-vulnerable economies, estimates that, from 2000 to 2019, their membership lost $525 billion thanks to climate disruption. That’s a huge blow to a staggeringly large set of countries whose gross domestic products add up to just $2,400 billion. But in the Global North, such sums and even far larger ones, while more than pocket change, are still easily affordable, as that Pentagon budget suggests.

By Oxfam’s reckoning, hundreds of billions of dollars could be raised for paying loss-and-damage by taxing fossil-fuel extraction, international cargo shipping, frequent flying, and other significantly carbon-producing activities. Progressive wealth taxes could net even more: $3,600 billion annually, according to the Climate Action Network (CAN), which also estimates that ending government subsidies to corporations (one-third of which go to fossil-fuel companies) could net $1,800 billion annually. Furthermore, cuts in military spending could free up a whopping $2,000 billion per year globally. The latter could be an especially juicy target. For instance, by CAN’s estimate, the United States’s fair share of payments owed to the Global South for climate mitigation and adaptation, plus loss-and-damage reparations, would come to roughly $1,600 billion over the next decade. And those 10 payments of $160 billion each could be covered if the Pentagon just ditched production of its most disastrously expensive jet fighter, the $1,700 billion F-35, and diverted the money toward climate assistance.

It’s always the government’s job to spend big when America faces a dire emergency, wherever the money comes from. In 2020-2021, Congress passed more than $3,000 billion in Covid relief — enough to pay our international climate tab, as estimated by CAN, for 19 years.

“Our Cause Is One”

Shortly after Saifullah Paracha’s return to Karachi in October, another family, in Sharm el Sheikh 2,340 miles away, had embarked on what reporter Jeff Shenker called “a desperate and possibly reckless mission” to save the life of one of their own: the British-Egyptian human-rights activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, possibly Egypt’s most prominent political prisoner.

Abd el-Fattah, who has spent most of the last decade behind bars for speaking out against Egypt’s oppressive regime, had been on a partial hunger strike since April. After visiting him on November 18th, his family reported that he had broken his hunger strike “out of a desire to stay alive, but he would resume it if no progress was made regarding his freedom.” His sister Sanaa Seif told reporters inside the COP27 conference hall,

“He’s not in prison for the Facebook post they charged him with. He’s in prison because he’s someone who makes people believe the world can be a better place. He’s someone trying to make the world a better place… There are tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt. There are more around the world. Climate activists get arrested, kidnapped in Latin America. We face the same kind of oppression, and our cause is one.”

What is Guantánamo Bay but a place where the American empire has practiced its human-breaking tactics for 20 years without accountability offshore of any system of justice? What is the U.N. climate summit but a meeting place where the world’s elite have protected their power for 27 years and counting?

Living as a “forever prisoner” (as the Guardian dubbed Saifullah Paracha in 2018) was, he once said, “like being alive in your own grave.” Forever wars, forever prisoners, forever climate chaos, forever theft. That’s the world we live in, where governments like those of the United States and Egypt throw innocent Muslims like Saifullah Paracha and pro-democracy dissidents like Alaa Abd el-Fattah into prison for standing in the way of their forever-repressive interests.

Reporting on the struggle to free Abd el-Fattah, Shenker noted, “The phrase ‘We Have Not Yet Been Defeated’ became the unofficial slogan of COP27, a reference to the title of a book by Abd el-Fattah published in 2021, ‘You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.’” Could the perseverance and courage of people like Paracha, Abd el-Fattah, and the activists for climate justice and human rights — both those who attended the conference at Sharm el Sheik and countless others around the world — make it possible someday to drop the “Yet” and say simply, “We Have Not Been Defeated”?

[TomDispatch first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post COP27 Flopped: the Rich Won’t Pay, the Poor Will Suffer appeared first on Fair Observer.

These talks have been an on-again, off-again proposition since President Barack Obama initiated them before the Paris climate summit of December 2015, at which delegates were to vote on a landmark measure to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (the maximum amount scientists believe this planet can absorb without catastrophic consequences). The US-Chinese consultations continued after the adoption of the Paris climate accord, but were suspended in 2017 by that climate-change-denying president Donald Trump. They were relaunched by President Biden in 2021, only to be suspended again by an angry Chinese leadership in retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2nd visit to Taiwan, viewed in Beijing as a show of support for pro-independence forces on that island. But thanks to Biden’s intense lobbying in Bali, President Xi agreed to turn the interactive switch back on.

Behind that modest gesture there lies a far more momentous question: What if the two countries moved beyond simply talking and started working together to champion the radical lowering of global carbon emissions? What miracles might then be envisioned? To help find answers to that momentous question means revisiting the recent history of the US-Chinese climate collaboration.

The Promise of Collaboration

In November 2014, based on extensive diplomatic groundwork, Presidents Obama and Xi met in Beijing and signed a statement pledging joint action to ensure the success of the forthcoming Paris summit. “The United States of America and the People’s Republic of China have a critical role to play in combating global climate change,” they affirmed. “The seriousness of the challenge calls upon the two sides to work constructively together for the common good.”

Obama then ordered Secretary of State John Kerry to collaborate with Chinese officials in persuading other attendees at that summit — officially, the 21st Conference of the Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP21 — to agree on a firm commitment to honor the 1.5-degree limit. That joint effort, many observers believe, was instrumental in persuading reluctant participants like India and Russia to sign the Paris climate agreement.

“With our historic joint announcement with China last year,” Obama declared at that summit’s concluding session, “we showed it was possible to bridge the old divides… that had stymied global progress for so long. That accomplishment encouraged dozens and dozens of other nations to set their own ambitious climate targets.”

Obama also pointed out that any significant global progress along that path was dependent on continued cooperation between the two countries. “No nation, not even one as powerful as ours, can solve this challenge alone.”

Trump and the Perils of Non-Cooperation

That era of cooperation didn’t last long. Donald Trump, an ardent fan of fossil fuels, made no secret of his aversion to the Paris climate accord. He signaled his intent to exit from the agreement soon after taking office. “It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, PA, along with many, many other locations within our great country, before Paris, France,” he said ominously in 2017 when announcing his decision.

With the US absent from the scene, progress in implementing the Paris Agreement slowed to a crawl. Many countries that had been pressed by the US and China to agree to ambitious emissions-reduction schedules began to opt out of those commitments in sync with Trump’s America. China, too, the greatest greenhouse gas emitter of this moment and the leading user of that dirtiest of fossil fuels, coal, felt far less pressure to honor its commitment, even on a rapidly heating planet.

No one knows what would have happened had Trump not been elected and those US-China talks not been suspended, but in the absence of such collaboration, there was a steady rise in carbon emissions and temperatures across the planet. According to CO.2.Earth, emissions grew from 35.5 billion metric tons in 2016 to 36.4 billion tons in 2021, a 2.5% increase. Since such emissions are the leading contributor to the greenhouse-gas effect responsible for global warming, it should be no surprise that the past seven years have also proven the hottest on record, with much of the world experiencing record-breaking heat waves, forest fires, droughts, and crop failures. We can be fairly certain, moreover, that in the absence of renewed US-China climate cooperation, such disasters will become ever more frequent and severe.

On Again, Off Again

Overcoming this fearsome trend was one of Joe Biden’s principal campaign promises and, against strong Republican opposition, he has indeed endeavored to undo at least some of the damage wrought by Trump. It was symbolic indeed that he rejoined the Paris climate accord on his first day in office and ordered his cabinet to accelerate the government’s transition to clean energy. In August, he achieved a significant breakthrough when Congress approved the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which provides $369 billion in loans, grants, and tax credits for green-energy initiatives.

Biden also sought to reinvigorate Washington’s global-warming diplomacy and the stalled talks with China, naming John Kerry as his special envoy for climate action. Kerry, in turn, reestablished ties with his Chinese colleagues from his time as secretary of state. At last year’s COP26 gathering in Glasgow, Scotland, he persuaded them to join the US in approving the “Glasgow Declaration,” a commitment to step up efforts to mitigate climate change.

However, in so many ways, Joe Biden and his foreign policy team are still caught up in the Cold War era and his administration has generally taken a far more antagonistic approach to China than Obama. Not surprisingly, then, the progress Kerry achieved with his Chinese counterparts at Glasgow largely evaporated as tensions over Taiwan only grew more heated. Biden was, for instance, the first president in memory to claim — four times — that US military forces would defend that island in a crisis, were it to be attacked by China, essentially tossing aside Washington’s longstanding position of “strategic ambiguity” on the Taiwan question. In response, China’s leaders became ever more strident in claiming that the island belonged to them.

When Nancy Pelosi made that Taiwan visit in early August, the Chinese responded by firing ballistic missiles into the waters around the island and, in a fit of anger, terminated those bilateral climate-change talks. Now, thanks to Biden’s entreaties in Bali, the door seems again open for the two countries to collaborate on limiting global greenhouse gas emissions.  At a moment of ever more devastating evidence of planetary heating, from a megadrought in the US to “extreme heat” in China, the question is: What might any meaningful new collaborative effort involve?

Reasserting the Climate’s Centrality

In 2015, few of those in power doubted the overarching threat posed by climate change or the need to bring international diplomacy to bear to help overcome it. In Paris, Obama declared that “the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other.” What should give us hope, he continued, “is the fact that our nations share a sense of urgency about this challenge and a growing realization that it is within our power to do something about it.”

Since then, all too sadly, other challenges, including the growth of Cold War-style tensions with China, the Covid-19 pandemic, and Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, have come to “define the contours” of this century. In 2022, even as the results of the overheating of the planet become ever more obvious, few world leaders would contend that “it is within our power” to overcome the climate peril. So, the first (and perhaps most valuable) outcome of any renewed US-China climate cooperation might simply be to place climate change at the top of the world’s agenda again and provide evidence that the major powers, working together, can successfully tackle the issue.

Such an effort might, for instance, start with a Washington-Beijing “climate summit,” presided over by presidents Biden and Xi and attended by high-level delegations from around the world. American and Chinese scientists could offer the latest bad news on the likely future trajectory of global warming, while identifying real-world goals to significantly reduce fossil-fuel use. This might, in turn, lead to the formation of multilateral working groups, hosted by US and Chinese agencies and institutions, to meet regularly and implement the most promising strategies for halting the onrushing disaster.

Following the example set by Obama and Xi at COP21 in Paris, Biden and Xi would agree to play a pivotal role in the next Conference of the Parties, COP28, scheduled for December 2023 in the United Arab Emirates. Following the inconclusive outcome of COP27, recently convened at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, strong leadership will be required to ensure something significantly better at COP28. Among the goals those two leaders would need to pursue, the top priority should be the full implementation of the 2015 Paris accord with its commitment to a 1.5-degree maximum temperature increase, followed by a far greater effort by the wealthy nations to assist developing countries suffering from its effects.

There’s no way, however, that China and the US will be able to exert a significant international influence on climate efforts if both countries — the former the leading emitter of greenhouse gasses at this moment and the latter the historic leader — don’t take far greater initiatives to lower their carbon emissions and shift to renewable sources of energy. The Inflation Reduction Act will indeed allow the White House to advance many new initiatives in this direction, while China is moving more swiftly than any other country to install added supplies of wind and solar energy. Nevertheless, both countries continue to rely on fossil fuels for a substantial share of their energy — China, for instance, remains the greatest user of coal, burning more of it than the rest of the world combined — and so both will need to agree on even more aggressive moves to reduce their carbon emissions if they hope to persuade other nations to do the same.

The Sino-American Fund for Clean Energy Transitions

In a better world, next on my list of possible outcomes from a reinvigorated US-Chinese relationship would be joint efforts to help finance the global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Although the cost of deploying renewables, especially wind and solar energy, has fallen dramatically in recent years, it remains substantial even for wealthy countries. For many developing nations, it remains an unaffordable option. This emerged as a major issue at COP27 in Egypt, where representatives from the Global South complained that the wealthy countries largely responsible for the overheating of the planet weren’t doing faintly enough (or, in many cases, anything), despite prior promises, to help them shoulder the costs of the increasingly devastating effects of climate change and the future greening of their countries.

Many of these complaints revolved around the Green Climate Fund, established at COP16 in Cancún. The developed countries agreed to provide $100 billion annually to that fund by 2020 to help developing nations bear the costs of transitioning to renewable energy. Although that amount is now widely viewed as wildly insufficient for such a transition — “all of the evidence suggests that we need trillions, not billions,” observed Baysa Naran, a manager at the research center Climate Policy Initiative — the Fund has never even come close to hitting that $100 billion target, leaving many in the Global South bitter as, with unprecedented flooding and staggering heat waves, climate change strikes home ever more horrifically there.

When the US and China were working on the climate together at COP26 in Glasgow, filling the Green Climate Fund appeared genuinely imaginable. In their Glasgow Declaration of November 2021, John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, affirmed that “both countries recognize the importance of the commitment made by developed countries to the goal of mobilizing jointly $100b per year by 2020 and annually through 2025 to address the needs of developing countries [and] stress the importance of meeting that goal as soon as possible.”

Sadly enough, all too little came of that affirmation in the months that followed, as US-China relations turned ever more antagonistic. Now, in the wake of Biden’s meeting with Xi and the resumption of their talks on climate change, it’s at least possible to imagine intensified bilateral efforts to advance that $100 billion objective — and even go far beyond it (though we can expect fierce resistance from the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives).

As my contribution to such thinking, let me suggest the formation of a Sino-American Fund for Green Energy Transitions — a grant- and loan-making institution jointly underwritten by the two countries with the primary purpose of financing renewable energy projects in the developing world. Decisions on such funding would be made by a board of directors, half from each country, with staff work performed by professionals drawn from around the world. The aim: to supplement the Green Climate Fund with additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually and so speed the global energy transition.

The Pathway to Peace and Survival

The leaders of the US and China both recognize that global warming poses an extraordinary threat to the survival of their nations and that colossal efforts will be needed in the coming years to minimize the climate peril, while preparing for its most severe effects. “The climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time,” the Biden administration’s October 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS) states. “Without immediate global action to reduce emissions, scientists tell us we will soon exceed 1.5 degrees of warming, locking in further extreme heat and weather, rising sea levels, and catastrophic biodiversity loss.”

Despite that all-too-on-target assessment, the NSS portrays competition from China as an even greater threat to US security — without citing any of the same sort of perilous outcomes — and proposes a massive mobilization of the nation’s economic, technological, and military resources to ensure American dominance of the Asia-Pacific region for decades to come. That strategy will, of course, require trillions of dollars in military expenditures, ensuring insufficient funding to tackle the climate crisis and exposing this country to an ever-increasing risk of war — possibly even a nuclear one — with China.

Given such dangers, perhaps the best outcome of renewed US-China climate cooperation, or green diplomacy, might be increasing trust between the leaders of those two countries, allowing for a reduction in tensions and military expenditures. Indeed, such an approach constitutes the only practical strategy for saving us from the catastrophic consequences of both a US-China conflict and unconstrained climate change.

[TomDispatch first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is (Green) Diplomacy the Only Way Forward Now? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The SFDR came into effect in March 2021 as a fundamental aspect of the European Commission’s sustainable finance agenda. The draft regulation, drawn up in November 2019, “lays down harmonised rules for financial market participants and financial advisers on transparency with regard to the integration of sustainability risks and the consideration of adverse sustainability impacts in their processes and the provision of sustainability‐related information with respect to financial products.”

In short, the regulation obliges financial asset managers, financial institutions and other actors providing financial services to disclose their approach to ESG considerations during their decision making processes. The idea is to encourage investors and asset managers to pay more attention to sustainability risk, environmental concerns and allay fears of greenwashing.

Changes and challenges

SFDR has certainly changed the ecosystem of many capital markets, but some investment houses have found that reporting has remained optional. They are, however, certainly aware that falling behind in the widespread push for ESG transparency could mean missing out on opportunities for capital raising and real sustainable value creation. The sustainable investment boom is here to stay, and with increased public scrutiny on private firms’ ESG practices, there is nowhere to hide for companies with weak credentials. A classic example of this development is Deliveroo’s recent IPO flop.

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The European Union’s push for greener business practices and net-zero targets has only increased the pressure on the financial sector to do its bit. Along with the EU Taxonomy Regulation and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the SFDR is part of the EU’s sustainable finance framework that has been designed to support the European Green Deal, which aims to channel private investment towards the transition to a climate-neutral economy.

More specifically, the SFDR focuses on entity-level disclosure obligations, divided into three main areas. They are as follows:

• the integration of sustainability risks in the investment decision-making and advisory process,
• principle Adverse Impacts (PAIs) of investment decisions on sustainability factors, and
• transparency of information for products that either advertise their ESG characteristics (Article 8) or describe themselves as sustainable investments (Article 9).

Of course, these new rules have made waves in financial circles, not least in the private equity sphere. For many, they remain vague and open to interpretation, which has often led to generic and qualitative disclosures. The sector is still lacking in high quality, detailed industry guidance and quantitative data on ESG impact for investments.

ESG is not that new

With Europe quickly catching up and applying regulative measures regarding ESG on the financial sector, some firms have proven to be more prepared than others. Sustainable investing is of course not new, but for years it was considered high risk and low yield. This is no longer the case, with real value creation being found in companies whose ecological focus and social commitments remain high strategic priorities.

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In the private equity sphere, ESG has been mainstreamed thanks to the growing realization that values creation and sustainability can go hand-in-hand. According to Anna Follér, Head of Sustainability, Sixth Swedish National Pension Fund, “basic ESG integration in private equity is a question of good hygiene, while advanced ESG integration offers a competitive edge. The private equity model is particularly well-placed to embrace ESG.” This is due to both collaboration and better access to reliable data, both of which “underpin robust ESG frameworks.” Private equity’s basic tenet, to build a better business than the one they bought in order to create value, is well adapted to creating sustainable growth on an upward trajectory.

Dominique Senequier, the CEO and founder of Ardian, the French private equity house making waves on the international scene, has long understood the potential of PE to be at the forefront of a global move towards sustainable investment. Back in 2020, the firm launched a Sustainable Measurement Methodology in order to quantify and analyze the environmental impact and sustainability outlook of its portfolio companies. According to Candice Brenet, the head of sustainability and managing director at Ardian, “we observed that management teams generally wanted to work on sustainability issues.”

“For 14 years Ardian has been gaining expertise in sustainability and arguing that finance must be a force for good. The instability that has rocked Europe in 2022 might encourage some to relax their focus on sustainability, at least temporarily. That would be a mistake. We are fully committed to our vision of Ardian as an agent of positive change”, said Dominique Senequier.This is because sustainability is now a key driver of value: “There is no contradiction of sustainable investments and sustainable returns, quite the opposite actually,” as Thomas Gottstein, CEO of Crédit Suisse put it. Indeed, the numbers support this assertion. Morningstar research focused on the long-term performance of 745 Europe-based sustainable funds has shown that the majority have done better than non-ESG funds over one, three, five and ten years.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post New European Regulation Forces Finance to Up its ESG Game appeared first on Fair Observer.

I have been thinking about this subject matter for some time now and could not help noticing that there are as many International Financial Institutions/Regional Development Banks/Funds as there are SDG’s! That is as inefficient as it is unsustainable.

COVID-19 has to a large degree pushed back the realization of these global goals and slowed down whatever dynamic previously existed. It’s time to get the machine going again and full throttle this time. The long and the short of it is that all the development partners must urgently reconsider deploying their current approach towards the delivery of their development finance work aimed at the recipient countries. This is the only way we can cover the lost ground and hope to achieve the SDGs by 2030. 

The UN must exercise its leadership

The first idea that comes to mind is for the United Nations (UN) to step in and encourage the International Financial Institutions, the Regional Development Banks and Funds to refocus their future country partnership frameworks, strategies and programming priorities. They must move away from the present overstretched exposure and instead zoom in on just a couple of SDG’s. That  means that each IFI/MDB/Regional Bank/Fund should be thinking about taking the lead in targeting at least two key SDGs while studiously avoiding overlap from the others. At the same time it means pulling back and placing less emphasis on the remaining SDGs. This would be a vast improvement over the current muddle in which each International Financial Institution Bank and Funds tries to target all the SDGs at once.

For example, the World Bank Group could take the lead in SDG1 & SDG10. At the same time the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) would focus on SDG2 & SDG15 and so on. These are just examples. But if this is done, each developing country in the world will have a diverse (and a more specialized) set of institutions, banks and funds addressing all its 17 SDGs. This contrasts with the current ineffective way in which everyone is trying to do too much at once and then wondering why nothing is successful! 

Of course, each country will still have the obligation to continue to address all its applicable SDGs. But the International Financial Institutions, Regional Development Banks and Funds need not be distracted by attempting to attain all the development goals of the same country at the same time. When each development institution focuses on what it does best, it has a much better chance of supporting the developing countries in their quest to catch up on what is missing or lagging behind concerning their SDGs.

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Moreover, it would become paramount for all the International Financial Institutions, Regional Development Banks and Funds to meet regularly, preferably every quarter until 2030, which has been designated as the final year set to reach the global goals. This should become the most urgent global development agenda item today. It would be the ideal means of reaffirming the message of seriousness in the pursuit of these goals. We absolutely must redouble all our efforts in the fight against poverty since development partners and developing countries need to be continuously involved in a dialogue permitting them to discuss among themselves and report on progress. More crucially they must decide on the redistribution of the SDGs among themselves, in other words, which partner will be leading, and which one will be supporting which goal.

This in my opinion is a much more efficient way of allocation of scarce resources. It takes into consideration the spirit of the “Paris Declaration” by instilling amongst all the development partners and countries the ‘H.O.R.M.A.’ principles: H=harmonization, O= Ownership, R= Results, M=Mutual-accountability, and A=Alignment.” That is the best way of putting back on the agenda of development cooperation the question of “who is jointly-responsible for which country’s development program and results”.

An SOS call

The above proposal is a “Save Our Ship/Souls” call. It is required since there seems to be no other way today to reach these global targets by 2030 other than seriously rethinking, refocusing and redefining our current process in “delivering development.” This is also an open call for International Financial Institutions, Regional Development Banks and Funds to refrain from their current “keeping up with the Joneses” routine, which has led to many replicating and duplicating each other’s work, with the added effect that they become stretched so thin they accomplish little or nothing at all. As one famous Arabic saying goes, these global goals end up looking a bit like “blood spilt among the tribes” as no single International Financial Institution, Regional Development Bank or Fund can be explicitly held responsible for the realization of any single goal.

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In summary, each development partner would focus on its comparative advantages and what it can deliver best rather than trying to address all the 17 goals or 169 targets under the SDGs. This should also move the current dialogue from being an internal ‘beauty contest’ to an external “global plan for action.” And since the developing countries will always be in the driving seat, the institutions, banks and funds must continue to facilitate this process and shoulder more responsibility with regard to the decaying human condition.

On a final note, we have a UN Security Council that seeks to prevent the killings of innocent people by preventing wars or conflicts. We now urgently need more than ever a similar but Socio-Economic Council within the UN with the teeth to prevent the death of millions of humans who die every day as a result of abject poverty, hunger, and spreading diseases due to the misallocation of scarce natural and human resources. This might be the last chance for the UN system to make a real impact and a difference to unite for peace and development.

I do hope and pray that the SDG’s will be achieved by 2030, but for this to happen, we must all act together and NOW, and embrace with utmost care the delivery of development cooperation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post When Sustainable Development Goalkeepers Fail To Make A Stop appeared first on Fair Observer.

At the same time that the IMF was making its announcement, the U.S. government was trying to dispel concerns that a second successive quarter of economic contraction—a decline of 0.9% that followed a 1.6% decrease in the first quarter of 2022—meant that the country was on the verge of a recession. The U.S. economy was not growing, and that for the government was cause for even greater concern.

Economic expansion remains the yardstick of success at the global and national levels. Robust growth garners positive headlines; anemic growth and contraction generate anxious forecasts. This remains the case despite the widely acknowledged link between economic growth and the climate crisis, a connection reinforced during the COVID pandemic when carbon emissions dropped considerably as a result of the economic shutdowns in many countries.

“The goal of almost all economists and politicians is continued economic growth,” explains Josh Farley, a professor in Community Development & Applied Economics and Public Administration at the University of Vermont, in a Zoom seminar sponsored by Global Just Transition. “For anyone who knows anything about complex systems, exponential growth is always ephemeral. It cannot be sustained in any finite system. Exponential growth must always collapse.”

One way of postponing collapse, and to combine growth and environmental protection, has been “sustainable development.” But as Ashish Kothari, the co-founder of Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group in India, points out, “even sustainable development is a very superficial way of trying to deal with the multiple crises that we are in. It doesn’t address the structural roots of the crises, which can be found in much older systems of racism and patriarchy or new systems of capitalism and nation-state domination.”

More recently, the “Green New Deal” has been an effort to combine decarbonization with an economic shift to clean energy that nevertheless promises a growth in jobs and benefits to disadvantaged communities. “The Green New Deal faces opposition and also resistance from movements and governments in the Global South because it is seen as a northern approach,” says Dorothy Guerrero, the head of policy and advocacy at Global Justice Now in the United Kingdom. “It is indeed a big task for Green New Deal politics to counter that view that it’s a northern alternative and break down the prevailing neo-liberal politics that pits workers and jobs against the environment.”

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More radical attempts have been made to identify economic models that are not predicated on exponential growth. Some of these are national-level models of a “steady-state” economy. Others focus on local alternatives that stress more democratic politics and a more integrated approach to nature. But as Katharine Nora Farrell, an associate professor in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogota, notes, the challenge is not just theoretical or even practical, but moral as well.

“We need to take responsibility in social and economic contexts for our role in stipulating how systems function,” she notes. “The failure to face up to this is part of the problem. It’s embarrassing to say that ‘I have these good things because you are being exploited.’ It’s hard to be moral toward someone when you discover that you have your heel on their neck.”

Unsustainable economic growth relies on just such a heel: on the necks of workers, marginalized communities and nature itself. But that growth is now coming under enhanced scrutiny and greater criticism, from within the status quo and from those who have suffered the most from its effects.

The Problem with Growth

For 3,000 years, until 1750, economic growth per person averaged about .01% per year. After 1750 and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, however, that rate went up to 1.5%. To express this radical change in a different way, the global economy took 6,000 years to double before 1750. Afterward, the economy doubled every 50 years.

“When the World Bank says that there’s 3.2% economic growth, that doubles the size of the global economy every 24 years,” Josh Farley notes. “In the past 100 years, we’ve quadrupled the human population and increased the per capita consumption nine-fold for a 36-fold increase in the size of the economy. That can’t be sustained.”

One popular image of economic growth is a rising tide that lifts all boats. But in reality, economic growth lifts yachts much higher than dinghies. “All forms of monetary wealth grow much faster than the economy as a whole,” Farley continues. “Not only is this unsustainable, we’re systematically transferring our resources to the owners of capital.” Similarly, the growth in interest-bearing debt “shifts resources from debtors to creditors, the people that the government gave the right to create money out of thin air.”

Farley uses two comparisons to drive home the unsustainability of growth. “If your lilies are doubling in a pond every few days so that in 30 days it’s full, when is the pond half full? In 29 days. So, if we use up half our oil, it’s all used up after one more doubling period,” he says. “I was growing exponentially until I reached 18 and then I stopped growing. We’ve all reached maturity and we need to stop growing.”

Economic growth is also unsustainable because it requires enormous inputs of resources, and those resources are limited. The climate crisis is one indication of many that economic growth has outstripped the resource capacities of the planet. “The Biden administration’s plan calls for a shift to electric cars,” Ashish Kothari points out. “That sounds good but where will all the mining take place to get all the materials for those cars? Again, this is based on the inequality between north and south, including patterns of consumption.”

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Yet, as Dorothy Guerrero adds, a consensus is emerging that humanity has to reduce its reliance on these resources. “The idea of leaving fossil fuels in the ground has gained legitimacy as the most viable response to climate change,” she explains. “The political consensus among climate activists and scientists is that renewable energy must now be fast-tracked and developed where it is not developed.”

“We need to develop an economy whose main goal is not growth but secure sufficiency for all,” concludes Josh Farley. “Our planet is too small to achieve much more than sufficiency. More and more consumption can no longer be our goal. We should instead be focusing on systems in which production is fun. Collaborating with others to meet our basic needs should be our reward.”

The Role of Markets

Economic growth is at the heart of capitalism, and markets have played a central role in generating growth.

“Capitalism is defined by private property rights, individual choice, competition, and pursuit of individual profit,” Josh Farley points out. “But for the social dilemmas that we’re facing—global climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of the ozone layer—private property rights are not worth talking about, and individual choice is impossible. I cannot choose how stable a climate I want. We are faced with situations in which the physical characteristics of the resources are no longer compatible with a capitalist system. This isn’t to say that we necessarily eliminate capitalism altogether, but we can’t rely on it to solve certain problems.”

The capitalist system encompasses much of the world, north and south. But markets, despite the ideology of a disinterested “invisible hand,” favor certain parts of the world over others.

“In addressing the current climate emergency, who will reap the benefits and who will pay for the costs of the adjustment?” asks Dorothy Guerrero. “There has been an unequal ecological exchange between core countries and countries on the periphery. We need to address the issue of monopoly capitalism where, in the case of vaccines, corporations have introduced life-saving vaccines for their own profit. The transition to clean energy—whether it’s orderly or destructive, peaceful or violent, market-led or regulated—will be determined by the conflicts between north and south, between core and periphery as well as the balance of forces within societies.”

Like it or not, globalized capitalism is the system “we are dealing with today,” Katharine Nora Farrell points out. “Unregulated markets can and do generate enormous damage, human and environmental. But it’s a poor musician that blames their instrument. Markets are created by human societies, relying on norms and customs established by humans. Sometimes those norms are consolidated into law, sometimes not. Rather than say that markets are all bad or all good, we have to determine when and how and under what conditions markets work or do not work.”

The market economy is not the only game in town. “I ask my students, ‘what type of economy has most affected your life,’ and they say, ‘Oh, we’re a market economy,’” says Josh Farley. “And I reply, ‘Oh, really? Your parents charge you for room and board?’ Your main experience is the core economy, the economy of reciprocity and gifting and providing for your close kin and community, which is totally outside the market.”

The market with its emphasis on self-interest, he continues, is not well-suited to the social dilemmas that humans currently face. “If I catch all the fish, I get all the benefits even if I wipe out the population and future generations suffer,” he continues. “If I spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, I get the benefit while others suffer. Instead of the invisible hand that Smith talked about, social dilemmas create an invisible foot that kicks the common good to pieces.”

Moving toward Transformation

Many of the proposed solutions to the climate crisis are market-driven, such as carbon trading systems. Some are even predicated on growth strategies.

“We are confronting so-called solutions that are coming to us from the systems that created the problems in the first place,” explains Ashish Kothari. “These are mostly Band-Aids, such as techno-engineering solutions or the ‘net zero’ that most countries have said that they will achieve in terms of carbon emissions by 2050 or 2060 or 2070. These so-called solutions tend to sustain these structures and even greenwash them.”

The origin of many transformative solutions, on the other hand, come from resistance on the ground to mining, large-scale hydroelectric plants, and similar efforts to generate the electricity and inputs to sustain economic growth at unsustainable levels. Kothari recalls the movement in central India 30 years ago against two large hydroelectric projects. “We didn’t want these projects not just because they would displace our villages and destroy our livelihoods, but because the river on which these dams are built is our mother and we won’t let our mother be shackled by your dreams of progress,” he says. “You can see in this resistance movement alternative ways of being, acting, dreaming, and relating to each other and to nature.”

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This alternative way of relating to nature challenges the anthropocentrism that lies at the heart of unsustainable economic growth. “In Western modernity, there is a divide between humans and nature,” he continues. “You can see it even in the way we speak. We don’t say ‘humans and the rest of nature.’ At school we learned about a pyramid in which humans are on top. Actually, there is a circle of life in which all species have equality.”

This different approach to nature, he continues, can be found “in the solidarity economy, in movements for food and energy sovereignty, and among those fighting for self-determination like the Zapatistas who say that we will be the ones who will govern our communities in ways that are more equitable and just.”

The challenge is to inject this kind of thinking into the efforts to address global challenges.

“What we lack–and what ecological economics is trying to promote—are economic institutions that preserve, enhance, and restore the biotic community of which humans are a part,” Josh Farley adds. “Over the last 50 years, we have been through a neoliberal revolution that has taken everything from the care economy and the public sector economy and put it all into the market. We’re now trying to put the natural resource base into the market. This is the wrong approach because of the physical characteristics of the resources. We need to flip the dialog around and start taking things out of the market economy and put them into other sectors of the economy.”

Mechanisms of Change

The current economic system is ill-suited to handle challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss. Worse, it is directly responsible for these problems in the first place. Alternatives exist, but are they replicable and scalable?

“While we have amazing examples of alternatives around the world, we need to create scale to challenge the mega-problems,” Ashish Kothari explains. “We need much greater horizontal networking among these amazing initiatives. It’s not about upscaling but outscaling across horizontal networks of solidarity, then creating the critical mass to affect those larger problems.”

Alternatives like the Zapatista struggle, he adds, “are not replicable. You can’t copy them in India and make them successful. But we can learn and exchange these values and ethics and principles and create horizontal solidarity networks around the world. We can become more resilient based on the understanding that there is a pluriverse of politics, ideologies, ecologies, and economies, all of which are important and worth respecting in so far as they do not undermine other ecologies, ideologies, and so on. These are expressed in different languages as swaraj, ubuntu, buen vivir, and so on.”

The role of cooperation—as opposed to the competition fostered by markets—will prove critical in any response to the climate crisis. “Mainstream economists argue that humans are inherently selfish, that we always act in our own self-interest and can’t cooperate, which is absolutely absurd,” Josh Farley argues. “Humans are the most cooperative species ever to evolve. Think about what you had for breakfast. How many people were involved in getting the food to your plate, between truckers and farmers and producers of fertilizers and farm machinery. Think about how many people were involved in developing the knowledge necessary to do that—agronomy, metallurgy, geology. The knowledge required to meet your basic needs every day was generated by billions of people over thousands of years. Humans cannot live apart from society any better than a cell can live apart from an individual body.”

Farley sees culture as the medium through which cooperative ideas and approaches can evolve at a rapid pace. “Within a society, the most selfish individuals outcompete other individuals,” he notes. “But the most cooperative and altruistic group outcompetes other groups. So, we have dual forces selecting for self-interested and cooperative behavior. We need to evolve to cooperate at larger and larger scales, at the scale of problems like climate change.”

Humans pass on their genes to successive generations. Bacteria, on the other hand, “swap genetic information called plasmids horizontally,” he continues. “At times of stress and difficulty, they do so more quickly. For humans it’s culture where we swap ideas horizontally. We’re at a time of crisis. We need to grab ideas from other cultures. That’s this pluriverse idea. There is not one idea; different cultures and ecosystems need different solutions. A socially just, sustainable transition is the goal, and we need to test all our policies against that goal. If the policies work toward that goal, we accept them; if not, we reject them.”

Species evolution takes multiple generations. “Cultural evolution can be astonishingly fast,” Farley adds. “Look at World War II. The United States went from being a capitalist economy to a form of state capitalism very quickly. How many cars did we produce in Detroit in World War II for the public? Zero. The government just took over the industry. We suddenly rationed everything—food, gasoline—and people accepted it. We faced a serious challenge, we stopped focusing on individual needs and started focusing on collective needs, and we did this very fast.”

Ashish Kothari agrees. “There are elements in the Green New Deal or some of the other programs around the world that we can encourage,” he says. “Which of these transitions will lead to systemic transformations and which ones will entrench the current system? A shift from fossil fuel to electric cars only entrenches the system of inequality between north and south. But if we’re talking about a transition from private cars to public transportation, that would lead toward a more transformative system. A transition also has to move toward radical forms of democracy or self-determination (swaraj or ubuntu). It has to move toward economic democracy, worker control, cooperatives, and a social economy that does not use GDP as a yardstick of progress.”

Kothari points to a number of examples of local initiatives that move in this direction, including forms of agriculture that don’t require much in the way of external energy inputs. “There are 5,000 Dalit women farmers in south India who are growing not just enough for their families but also enough to participate in the local market and provide food relief to others during COVID,” he relates. “They’re doing this with dryland farming, completely rain-fed, with their own seeds and no external inputs. They’re relying entirely on their own knowledge and labor.”

Another example comes from the Ladakh region of India. “We have two models there,” he continues. “One is mega solar built by corporations, and the other is decentralized passive and active solar. Ladakh has over 300 days of sunlight in a year. By constructing buildings with a blend of traditional and new technology, you can trap the sunlight during the day and it warms you without artificial heating even when it’s minus 20 degrees at night.”

Farley similarly identifies the commons as a key element of any socially just transition. That includes a “Green knowledge commons,” which shares knowledge transnationally, as well as a social media commons where the algorithms encourage people to focus on ecological limits and social justice rather than on buying more stuff and and the polarizing images and language that facilitate that commerce. And it would include an atmospheric commons that asserts that no one owns the atmosphere.

Dorothy Guerrero puts ownership at the top of the list of factors to consider. “Any conversation that doesn’t put nationalization on the table would mean leaving the terms of transition to fossil fuel executives,” she notes. “Acknowledging that we can’t do this transition overnight, we have to discuss what we do with existing fossil fuel? First, we take control of it. If states don’t own these resources, they can’t control them or design a program of transition involving them. I don’t totally disregard the small, the independent, because they have roles to play. But when you talk about transition, it has to be at a certain scale, at a national level, and there should be national ownership. Yes, small is beautiful but big is beautiful too because that is how we control geopolitics”

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Nationalization implies a focus on the national or state level. “I often say that one weakness of the left is that we’re so good at being in opposition, but it is so difficult when it comes to us governing,” notes Guerrero. “There are many discussions in Latin America now with Colombia, Bolivia, Chile and hopefully Brazil: will it be the pink tide again and will there be more red in the pink? What were the economic problems that weren’t addressed before? Politically it was a success. But even the radical governments didn’t make very radical changes in the economic realm, because they were also scared of being crushed—and they would be crushed by the United States not wanting them to succeed.”

National control applies equally to renewable energy. “We have to ask what this energy is for,” she says. “We need to clarify who will build it up, where and for what purpose. There is also a threat that fossil fuel companies are portraying themselves as key players in renewable energy buildup but they are not actually investing in the development of renewable energy.” Meanwhile, the countries that are already investing in the infrastructure of renewable energy will control this technology through patent protections. “This debate will determine which countries will dominate and which countries will be excluded,” she continues. “The United States, China, and Germany are competing to see who will dominate the renewable energy sector. But Haiti and Bangladesh won’t be players.”

For climate justice movements and those pushing against fossil fuels, “we need to increase solidarity with mineral-producing countries,” she continues. “OPEC is an important example that we need to look at. At the same time, we have to avoid weakening the labor movements in those countries. We need solidarity in both political and economic terms. During a transition, someone will pay, and it’s usually those without voice or bargaining power.”

Implementing change at a local, national, and global level will not be easy. For one, powerful forces benefit from the current status quo. “It’s not enough to wish and work for alternatives but to be aware that the stronger the alternatives, the greater the forces against them,” Dorothy Guerrero warns.

Another challenge is the time frame. Serious decarbonization should have started decades ago. “If scientists tell us that we have only 10 years left to reverse the climate crisis, we can’t transform the situation in 10 years,” says Kothari. “We’re talking about a multigenerational transformation. We ‘re dealing with structural forces that have been around in some cases for thousands of years like patriarchy or hundreds of years like capitalism. To say that we need to do this in a single generation is unrealistic.”

Truth and Reconciliation

When Pope Francis visited the Nunavut region of Canada this summer, he apologized to the indigenous community for the role played by the Catholic Church in Europe’s colonization of the country and the forced assimilation of native peoples. Some responded that that apology has not been matched by action. But in Manitoba, the Pope received a very visible token of appreciation: a headdress that he wore during the event.

“This stunning image of Pope Francis wearing an indigenous headdress placed on his head by the representatives of a consortium of indigenous chiefs of Canada was a ritualistic act and very symbolic,” says Katharine Nora Farrell. “We have to deal with reconciliation and peace and apology, as well as embarrassment and shame for all the horrible things that have been done.”

“It’s not just about the pope but about these incredible indigenous leaders,” she continues. “They’re saying, ‘You came here in good faith to apologize and we’re not going to rub your face in it. Instead, we’re going to say you’re just like us and we’re going to do this in the most majestic and symbolic way by giving you this headdress. You can’t wear this headdress unless you have earned it. By placing it on his head, they said that he had earned their respect.”

The crimes of colonialism and forced assimilation also have had an ecological dimension since the land of indigenous peoples was often stolen for precisely the kind of polluting industry responsible for the huge uptick in carbon emissions during the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the Global North bears the lion’s share of the responsibility for all the carbon emissions currently in the atmosphere.

“Climate reparations are at the center of the climate justice struggle,” Dorothy Guerrero says. “We need to highlight the need to create historically informed approaches that confront colonialism and imperialism and the climate crisis simultaneously. That’s gaining traction in the UK among young people who see the role of the UK in extracting resources from countries and impoverishing those countries by doing so.”

Such reparations can be understood as not only an apology for past actions but also a concrete effort to repair the harm done. What the Pope attempted in Canada is taking a different form in Colombia where Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez recently took over as leaders. “Marquez, the vice president, is the winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize,” Farrell says, referring to a picture of Marquez. “She’s angry in this photo and she’s right to be angry. And the people of the Choco region, with a large Afro-Colombian population, are also right to be angry. It’s a mega-biodiverse region with a lot of violence inhabited mostly by poor people. Marquez appealed to these voters in the last days of the election and many people think that’s what swung the election. She said, ‘if you’re a nobody, vote for me, because I’m a nobody. This will be a government of the nobodies.’ She and Petro have put together an incredible coalition of individuals in the new government with plans to introduce agricultural tax reform and manage the resource economy.”

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“We need to recognize that economic processes are anthropogenic,” Farrell continues. “We have to link ecological economics to moral theories connected to questions of responsibility. “These issues motivate activists to get involved. Look at the indignation in Greta Thunberg’s arguments. Someone has to answer for what has happened. Only then we can get involved in fixing it. The damage done has been brutal. Until we as a global community comprehend this great tragedy, I don’t think we’ll be able to pick and move beyond this.”

[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Isn’t It Time to Challenge the Growth Paradigm? appeared first on Fair Observer.

“It’s a huge challenge,” admits Luis Aguirre-Torres, the director of sustainability for Ithaca. “That’s 6,000 buildings in the next seven years, and 10,000 vehicles. We need to improve infrastructure. But we also have to make sure that climate justice is at the core of our policy.”

Cities Leading the Charge

Ithaca is only one example of the cities in the United States that are out in front of federal policy on climate change. “Cities have been taking the lead and been a huge part of the progress, especially during the Trump administration,” points out Julia Peek, director of communication and mobilization at the Urban Sustainability Directors Network. “Cities are doing incredible work to become energy efficient, reduce pollution, increase resilience, and connect with affected communities.”

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Cities and localities have taken the lead because, frankly, the federal government has failed to develop a consistent approach to a clean energy transition. The Obama administration pushed hard to support the Paris climate deal in 2015, only for the Trump administration to pull out of the agreement as soon as it took office. The Biden administration began with its own vision of “building back better” then encountered fierce resistance to its decarbonization plans not only from the Republican Party in Congress but a couple members of its own party as well.

Then, in a surprise turnaround, the Democratic Party managed to achieve consensus within its ranks to salvage key elements of the administration’s climate agenda as part of an Inflation Reduction Act that narrowly passed the Senate on August 7 on its way to approval in the House and the president’s signature on August 16.

This is “a historic and hopeful moment in the decades of US climate inaction,” tweeted Rebecca Leber, who covers climate change for Vox. “The Senate just passed $370 billion more to fight climate change. It’s on track to becoming the first law to address fossil fuel pollution across the entire economy.”

The Inflation Reduction Act, framed as an effort to address rising prices, reduce federal debt, and provide targeted economic assistance, contains within it a raft of clean-energy provisions from climate justice block grants to the creation of a national green bank. It’s not as much as the $550 billion included in the failed Build Back Better legislation, but it’s still the largest federal investment in clean energy in US history. Despite some disheartening concessions to fossil fuel companies, the Act has many sustainability advocates feeling hopeful.

“I see the climate crisis as awful but also the greatest opportunity in human history for wealth creation and better health outcomes,” observes Susie Strife, who directs all of Boulder County’s sustainability efforts. “It is clever to frame this as a great economic opportunity, for us to be the leaders of this future we want to have. Let’s be clear: the United States has been an international disgrace: for the children growing up on this planet and for generational justice overall. As the country with the greatest cumulative impact of carbon in history, we need to show leadership.”

To understand how the Green New Deal has played out at a local level and what role the Inflation Reduction Act can play in that process, reporter Rebecca Leber sat down with local sustainability experts Luis Aguirre-Torres, Julia Peek, and Susie Strife in early August, just as the bill was making its way through Congress.

Where Climate Action Comes Alive

The Green New Deal was a short manifesto about the urgency of embarking on the environmental and economic transformation of the United States. It was full of bullet points and broad proposals, such as “invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century” and provide all Americans “with access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.”

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The original bill was a call to arms, but it was also largely abstract.
“Cities are where so many policies come alive,” explains Julia Peek, who mobilizes efforts among the 250 cities that are part of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network. “Either people have clean, safe, affordable, livable homes or they don’t. Either they can get around their cities or they can’t. Either their communities are safe and resilient and they have the infrastructure they need, or they don’t.”

Cities are sites of innovation, where policies are tried out, improved, and shared with other cities in ways not so easily replicable at the state or federal level. “We can showcase what is possible in our local communities,” Susie Strife points out. “We can pilot local services and show what’s possible to other communities and to the feds.”  Sustainability directors are part of this process, she continues, by providing “residents, businesses, policymakers, and other stake-holders actual models for how to acting responsibly, how to respond resiliently in the face of climate change, how to achieve local climate goals through direct emission reduction, and how to build partnerships across communities and organizations to leverage higher impact strategies and system change.”

In the past decade, Luis Aguirre-Torres adds, “we’re seeing cities taking leadership roles” in this process of moving from “red-light policies”—for instance, banning oil exploration in nature preserves—to more transformative actions. After the Paris agreement, he adds, as the conversation moved from ambition to concrete pledges, the message from Washington to cities was “’do what you can.’ Now, finally, the federal government is saying ‘we’ll help you out’ and some states are saying that, too.”

A number of cities—like Portland, Maine—have begun bulk purchasing of clean energy equipment, like heat pumps. Now, Aguirre-Torres continues, it’s becoming possible to imagine a national level bulk purchasing program. All of the examples of Green Banks at the state and local level have similarly contributed to the creation of something comparable at a national level through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Cities are also where climate justice becomes real. In 2019, when the City of Ithaca Common Council passed its resolution on the local Green New Deal, it was a moment, relates Aguirre-Torres, not only when “we said ‘let’s fight climate change, but also let’s address historical inequities, racial injustice, and economic inequality. 

There was a time when I was about to receive an award from the US president for work we were doing on climate change and, on the same day, I got arrested for ‘lingering while brown’ in Washington. In 12 hours, I got a huge lesson on race relations in America and how disconnected they were from the fight on climate change. So, when I took this job to help Ithaca design a policy to be carbon neutral by 2030, I wanted to make sure that sustainable prosperity would be shared by everyone in the community.”

Cities have begun to hire climate justice directors. “We just hired our first climate equity strategist for Boulder County,” Susie Strife reports. “She has 30 years of deep community engagement and climate justice activism. She’s going to catalyze the work that needs to be done in those communities.” One idea that has come out of this new effort is to create a climate justice lobbying organization.

At the federal level, the Biden administration initiated the Justice40 program, according to which 40 percent of climate-related spending should be directed toward underserved communities. At the Energy Department, Shalanda Baker heads up the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity where she focuses on implementing energy justice.

These federal initiatives, Aguirre-Torres argues, “need to match the efforts happening at the local level—in Vermont, Ithaca, Seattle, Ann Arbor. In some cases, we need a more specific definition of what climate justice means at the local level and to get beyond ethnicity to include the undocumented and the formerly incarcerated. Now there is a line of funding and that’s great. But more important than the money is the intention, and aligning what we’re doing at a local level with what the federal government has been proposing for several years without any clear idea of how to operationalize it.”

The Backlash Begins

One measure of the success of municipal clean energy transitions is the backlash it has generated.

“Preemption” is one of the tactics the fossil fuel industry has used to push back. When cities like Tucson, Arizona began to look at ways to change building codes to move away from natural gas to other sources of heat, the state legislature passed a law that prevented municipalities from adding new regulations concerning natural gas utilities.

“Interest groups for the natural gas industry, worried about losing energy customers, have now promoted bills in half the country to strip cities of basic powers to set greener building codes and help phase out fossil-fuel pollution,” Rebecca Leber wrote in Vox in September 2021. “These ‘preemption’ laws have swept through 20 state legislatures; three more states have bills pending this year.”

Susie Strife ties these preemption laws to disinformation campaigns run by the fossil fuel industry, which sets up Facebook groups that appear to represent civic groups but are simply vehicles “to misinform communities about the cost of electrification. The feds are still allowing the fossil fuel industry to get away with this stuff. It has to be regulated. I love the grassroots movements that are stopping the PR firms from helping the fossil fuel industry spread disinformation.”

Once, at his Ithaca home, Luis Aguirre-Torres relates, a canvasser knocked on his door with a flier condemning the city’s Green New Deal. “He started to tell me about Communists coming to town with these ideas and these people from south of the border who decided to implement these ideas,” he says. “This is progressive Ithaca, and yet you still have campaigns of misinformation rooted in racism and discrimination.”

The fossil fuel companies and their PR firms have a lot of money at their disposal. On the other side, “our incredible sustainability staff don’t always have the tools to wage a complex PR campaign to explain that what they’re doing will help everyone,” Julia Peek reports. “They can be outspent by lobbying firms with Astroturf campaigns. But the more ambitious and controversial cities are going to be, the more likely they will be a target of the fossil fuel industry or other industries that pour in money to create a ‘community group’ to shut it all down.”

The Climate Crisis Is Already Here

At the same time that cities are moving forward with more-or-less ambitious plans to transform their energy and infrastructure, they have to deal with the very real impacts of climate change. In a March 2022 Gallup poll, one in three Americans reported that they’d had to deal with extreme weather events in the last two years. A few months later, one in three Americans found themselves living under extreme heat alerts.

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Boulder County has had to deal with more than its fair share of climate-related disasters. “At the end of December 2021, we experienced an unprecedented urban firestorm that was put out by snow the next day,” recalls Susie Strife. “The Marshall Fire was the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history, destroying 1,100 homes and leaving many people displaced. It was the tenth or maybe the ninth most destructive fire in US history now. We’re not alone.

Many cities are experiencing climate-related disasters, which are extraordinarily draining in terms of all the social, economic, and emotional costs that linger long after the fires are put out and the media has moved on. Since I moved to Colorado in 2001, Boulder County experienced six major wildfire events and a once-in-a-500-year flood event. These extreme events due to changing climatic conditions are becoming our new normal.”

So, instead of marshaling resources to put toward a more sustainable future, cities have had to respond to current emergencies. “We’re trying to become more proactive in our adaptation approach,” Strife continues. “We’re trying to help communities understand the risks they face, mapping that knowledge by neighborhood and giving them more resources to adapt to those climate vulnerabilities.”

“This is where the rubber hits the road,” Luis Aguirre-Torres adds. “Local governments need to be empowered to implement hazard mitigation. But we’re a bit late to the fight.”

Paying for the Green New Deal

Whether it’s hazard mitigation or transitioning existing infrastructure away from fossil fuels, cities need money to address the climate crisis. “The City of Ithaca budget is $80 million a year,” Aguirre-Torres explains. “Our climate action plan will cost $2 billion to implement. Multiply that by the number of cities in the country and, according to a Bank of America report, that’s $5 trillion a year until 2050.”

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One method of accessing additional funds for a Green transition has been Green banks. The Connecticut Green Bank, established in 2011 as the first such financing authority of its kind, provides credit to homeowners, businesses, non-profits, municipalities, and institutions to install solar panels, retrofit buildings, and build EV chargers. Between 2012 and 2020, the bank mobilized nearly $2 billion of investment into Connecticut’s clean energy economy. Other states, counties, and even cities have created their own such banks.

“The Connecticut Green Bank, the model everyone wants to follow, has a mission of removing the reliance on subsidies and incentives and aggregating otherwise high-risk, small-scale projects,” explains Aguirre-Torres. “It helps local and national institutions by derisking participation in the clean energy transformation.”

The Inflation Reduction Act authorizes $27 billion for a National Climate Bank, with $8 billion set aside for disadvantaged communities. “With this national Green bank, a relatively small amount of money can leverage a lot more,” Julia Peek notes. “It will help get projects off the ground that would not attract private capital or might not qualify for federal grants.”

Ithaca, which is also working on creating a regional Green Bank, has already tapped into private capital to make up the shortfall in funding for its plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. The city effectively turned its problem, namely carbon emissions, into an asset. “We said that we have a huge opportunity—400,000 metric tons of opportunity!—for people who want to come in and help us with this,” Aguirre-Torres adds. “Suddenly the money started flowing and new partnerships were formed. We’ve secured $105 million from private investors, along with soft commitments that take us to half a billion dollars.”

Another tactic for raising money has been to sue the fossil fuel industry for damages. “Boulder County, San Miguel county, and the city of Boulder filed a lawsuit in 2018 against Exxon and Suncor Energy, some of the dirtiest fossil fuel companies out there, to force them to pay their fair share of the mess they helped to create,” explains Susie Strife. “Communities have huge price tags related to climate impacts. According to an analysis we did in 2017, it will take hundreds of millions of dollars just to repair all the roads that have buckled from high heat. For 50 years, these companies knew the danger of the products they’ve been selling. Instead of acting responsibly, they chose to conceal this information in order to continue to profit. They should pay their fair share so that the costs don’t fall disproportionately on taxpayers.”

Strife compares the lawsuit to those mounted against tobacco and opioid peddlers, which also deceived the public and have had to pay damages to their victims. “The case is proceeding through the courts,” she adds, “though the companies are trying to delay the case from moving forward. The case is now on hold at the Supreme Court. The lawsuit is an example of what local governments can do. We need to use every tool at our disposal. If we win, it will be a huge precedent in holding industry accountable for climate change damages.”

“These cases are taking off all around the world,” Rebecca Leber reports. “So, this legal strategy is clearly on the radar of oil and gas companies.”

Action at the Federal Level

The Inflation Reduction Act includes a number of incentives and penalties to nudge individuals and industry toward a clean energy future. For instance, auto companies can access $2 billion in funding to retool for EV production and electric vehicle purchasers will be eligible for $7,500 in tax credits. Wind and solar production will get a boost as will other, more controversial technologies like hydrogen and small-scale nuclear reactors. On the stick side, oil and gas companies will face penalties for excessive methane production in their operations.

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One critical provision is $500 million for heat pumps and critical minerals processing under the Defense Production Act. “When the president invoked the Defense Production Act,” Luis Aguirre-Torres relates, “I was excited but there was no money in it. Now finally we will have $500 million, which will also mean jobs. We’re finally finding a way of getting everyone to the table. I would have loved it if we didn’t have to give up all of these concessions, but we brought people to the table.”

Julia Peek is particularly energized by the climate justice provisions in the Act. “I’m excited about the $1 billion for grants and loans for energy efficiency and resilience in affordable housing. A lot of money is going to urban forestry, to decarbonizing heavy-duty vehicles, equitable mobility, cleaning up ports, and other ways to improve air quality in frontline communities. The Act will also build domestic clean energy industries that should produce well-paid, family sustaining jobs across the country. At the same time, there are giveaways to the fossil fuel industry that sacrifice some frontline communities because that is still how American politics works. Those fights will continue.”

Susie Strife singles out climate justice block grants for community projects in the Act. “Communities of color and underserved communities deserve these resources and decision-making power,” she notes. “They have so many ingenious ideas to implement, but they have been left out.”

“Biden came into office and he inspired everyone by describing all that his administration was going to do on climate,” Aguirre-Torres recalls. “I’m so sick and tired of being inspired! People don’t pay rent or put food on the table with inspiration. We need an opportunity. I’m excited about the Inflation Reduction Act because it’s clever. It’s groundbreaking from the policy-making point of view because it turns this crisis into an opportunity to reduce inflation. That’s brilliant.”

The scale of the problem is simply too big for cities alone to solve the problem, Susie Strife argues. They need federal assistance. “This year and last we put more carbon into the atmosphere than any other year,” she points out. “This makes it much less likely to achieve the 1.5 Celsius limit. Even if we stop emissions today, and we know that’s not happening, it’s only a 50 percent chance of achieving that goal by 2050. And we also have to deal with legacy emissions. We have to remove gigatons of carbon that’s built up in our atmosphere over the years. Doing all that can’t happen at a local level without resources, without market signals, and without national leadership.”

What’s Next?

Cities are innovating around the Green economy, and now the federal government is providing several hundred billion dollars in support. But there is still the problem of connecting the two.

“A lot of local governments just don’t have the capacity to identify, seek out, and apply for these grants,” Julia Peek explains. “They don’t have the staff capacity to handle the money. If they don’t have the capacity to administer the grants, they won’t even apply for them.”

Even with the Inflation Reduction Act, there is a place for more regulations and executive actions. “Like clean car standards,” Susie Strife suggests. “It’s silly that you can still go into a car dealership and buy a combustion car! Biden’s executive order that 50 percent of cars by 2030 will be electric, that’s a huge game-changer.”

There has even been some pressure on the president to declare a climate emergency, which 200 US cities and counties have already done. Such a declaration would enable the president to take stronger measures like blocking oil exports and ending offshore drilling.

“There has to be a plan behind a declaration of a climate emergency,” Luis Aguirre-Torres explains. “It’s when you exhaust all other possibilities. Even though I believe that we live in a climate emergency, it’s a complicated matter for the president to assume powers over Congress. I don’t think it’s the time to do so. But the time may come after the November elections.”

As the United States addresses the climate crisis at all levels from the federal government down to the cities, what can individuals do to speed the process?

“Talk to people,” Julia Peek urges.

“And not just your friends,” Aguirre-Torres continues. “Talk with people who disagree with you. We have this program to have 1,000 conversations that reflect what the community feels. Don’t assume that what people think or feel about climate change is hardwired into their brains.”

“Also do what lights you up,” Peek adds and then goes on to say, “It doesn’t matter what you do, we need you!”

Susie Strife agrees. “We need everyone with whatever skill you have; communication, marketing, filmmaking, visuals, therapy. The climate movement needs those skill sets. And we need to be electing local climate champions, including state treasurers that are climate-friendly.”

“And let’s not forget the power of sharing a common goal,” Aguirre-Torres says. “John F. Kennedy did it when he said that we’d land on the moon and no one had a clue about how we were going to do that. We needed a COVID vaccine and we needed it fast, and suddenly we worked together on something that seemed impossible. When we start to move together in the right direction, we can make things happen.”*

[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post US President Joe Biden’s Green New Deal Goes Local appeared first on Fair Observer.

Before we get to what should be done to address the problem, it would be useful to understand the problem in scientific detail. But I don’t. What I see and hear is alarming to say the least. It is alarming at a very personal level, but also at an existential level. On a personal level, I want to spend what time I have left exploring the outdoors, enjoying some of the wonderful places I have been before and finding a few new ones along the way. I want to catch more fish. I want to be able to hike, bike and kayak without fear of heat stroke or hypothermia. I want my 26-year-old son to continue his life on a planet that still brings joy and wonder.

It seems, however, that what I want won’t matter if the planet continues its demise. Just watching the wildfires consume once verdant landscapes and seeing lakes and rivers shrivel to dryness should be sufficient notice to know that something is very wrong with our globe. And it is not just one bad season.

Climate does not affect politics

Part of the problem in the US is that climate-related disasters like the latest deadly flood in Kentucky or the debilitating heat wave in Texas don’t seem to have any impact on the political morass in those states and others like them. Nothing seems to unleash voter outrage at the climate change deniers who continue to get voter support and who themselves are supported by some of the most corrupt corporate interests in America.

While there can be some political backlash immediately after a climate disaster, the type of sustained commitment required to prevent future disasters often wanes as soon as the relief funds begin to flow or attention moves on to the next disaster. I simply don’t understand this.  Watching someone else’s outdated earthen dam burst should result in a critical analysis of the vulnerability of every earthen dam, but it doesn’t. Not even after it happens again somewhere else.

It is akin to Black voters who continue to vote for Republican candidates and Latinos who somehow think that treating their immigrant brethren like so much human waste is a plus. Abraham Lincoln was the last Republican to do anything for Black people, yet some Black people never learn. Some Latinos are so wounded by a sense of generational deprivation that ignoring the immigrant struggles of today seems to add a measure of contrived self-worth for those who have found a path denied to so many.

Through all of these political thickets and surely with regard to climate change, I think that I will be OK. I am old and White and privileged and don’t live near a regularly flooding creek or a drought ravaged forest. There seems to be plenty of drinking water around, and the supermarkets are full of produce from somewhere. It seems a little warmer these days, but it is summertime and the air conditioning continues to work. So, why do I care?

I am not sure why I care about climate change, but I do. Unfortunately, it seems that not enough of us care to demand something much better, like a comprehensive science-based program and the implementation plan and budget required to stem the destruction and begin to reverse the damage. To its credit, the Biden administration is trying to move the country in the right direction, and just-passed Democratic legislation provides some of the resources necessary to meet environmental commitments.

This legislation is a reminder of what can be done when resistance is aggressively shoved aside. It is also a reminder that the entire Republican congressional cohort continues to sell toxic snake oil to future generations. There continues to be way too much political, social and economic resistance to changing the climate about climate change. There is no excuse for this resistance and no excuse for the willful ignorance that drives so much of the resistance.

To get beyond the resistance and move toward a cohesive environmental policy aimed squarely at reducing global warming and the impact of climate change, there must be a coalescence of two critical concepts – community conscience and good governance.  Without both, I fear that the efforts made will fall far short of the goals associated with slowing and reversing climate change. 

Yet, in America, as in much of the rest of the industrialized world, neither a community conscience nor good governance prevails. Nowhere should the absence of the collective will and the institutional framework required to meet the climate challenge be more obvious than in America. As one of the world’s premier polluters by any reasonable measure and with the resources required to do so much better, America’s national failure to aggressively confront climate change looms large on the world stage.

Climate is sacrificed at altar of convenience

On this front, the real enemy is inconvenience. It is America’s antidote to caring. Americans can wallow in outrage with the best of them, but as soon as it becomes inconvenient to do so, the outrage gives way to beer, bourbon, and beaches. The American attention span is so short because the national intolerance for inconvenience so readily diverts attention.

This is particularly apparent with respect to climate change – turning up your summer thermostat for a day or two just won’t get the job done. Meanwhile, corporate greed ensures that any steps will be small and will protect profits instead of people. On the American right, inconvenience rises to the gospel, and truth is hard to find. On the American left, we love a good protest, but can’t seem to block any bridges or boycott any retailers long enough to make a difference. 

Even if inconvenience doesn’t immediately overwhelm outrage, intermittent outrage and then back to the barbecue is almost worse than no outrage at all, because it creates the illusion of caring without any commitment to continue caring. Once a society stops caring about those in the community at large, it will always fail to explore the pathways to positive collective outcomes. 

A large part of the remedy is community conscience. It is a simple concept – think enough about those around you that the decisions you make reflect something larger than yourself. Know a little about who is struggling in your orbit and find a way to help. That family a couple of streets over really does need the snow plowed on their street before yours gets plowed because their 13-year-old child needs to get to the kidney dialysis center. You and your street can wait. When you understand that plowing their street is more important than plowing yours, you are on your way to community conscience.

Good governance is likewise a simple concept – it is centered on the notion that human beings require some organized way to acquire community assets and then direct community assets to meet community needs. The emphasis here is on the “organized” part of the equation. If you understand why some schools are better than others, then you likely understand good governance. You understand the positive impact of sufficient human and financial resources organized in a way to promote the goal of good education, backed by policies and practices that have been proven to work.

To meet societal challenges, community conscience provides the fuel for good governance and the oversight required to protect good governance from those who would corrupt it. Think about this as the next wildfire burns something once beautiful to behold. Then, join the struggle to figure out the challenges that climate change presents and provide the spark that ignites a meaningful response somewhere. 

*[This article was first published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can Political Climate Change to Combat Climate Change? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Petro has called for “a transition from an economy of death to an economy of life,” saying that “we cannot accept that the wealth and foreign exchange reserves in Colombia come from the export of three of humanity’s poisons: petroleum, coal, and cocaine.” Since oil and coal are Colombia’s largest export earners—and the country remains the largest cocaine producer in the world—this is not going to be an easy transition for a Colombian politician to implement or sell to the public.

But Gustavo Petro is no ordinary politician. He began his political career as an urban guerrilla, joining the revolutionary group M-19 as a 17-year-old. He was never part of the inner circle, but he did spend time in prison for his involvement in underground activities. Later, after becoming an economist, he served in the Colombian parliament and as the mayor of Bogota.

He has been fearless as a politician, exposing himself time and again to criticism and worse. He broke with his political colleagues in 2009 to form a new party. As a member of parliament, he exposed corrupt deals between his fellow senators and various death squads. Further revelations implicated the conservative Uribe government and the country’s spy agency.

As a parliamentarian and then as a candidate for president in 2010 and 2018, Petro received numerous death threats. The result has been bodyguards and security details, precautions he followed even when he came to Washington, DC to accept a Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in 2007.

Running for president for a third time this year, Petro was even more careful. At one campaign stop, The Washington Post reports, “When Petro walked up, the crowd could hardly see him. He hid behind four men carrying large bulletproof shields. And as he spoke, the armor remained on either side of him, reminding those in the plaza of what it means to run for office in this South American country.” In the last 35 years, four presidential candidates in Colombia were assassinated, three of them on the left.

Vice-President-elect Francia Márquez has been equally courageous. A Goldman Prize-winning environmentalist, she led the fight against illegal gold mining in Colombia. What might be simply challenging work in another country is extraordinarily risky in Colombia where 138 human rights defenders were killed last year.

Standing up to a sometimes-violent right wing is par for the course in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America. Dealing with a corrupt establishment is also, unfortunately, routine.

But politicians like Petro and Márquez, as well as newcomer Gabriel Boric in Chile, must also navigate their way through the various layers of the Latin American left. In so doing, they are helping to build a new progressive movement that is significantly different from the old left (Castro and Cuba) and the new left (Lula and Brazil). Transformed by social movements, Latin America’s “new” new left is showing the world how progressives can wield power justly and judiciously in an age of climate change and political polarization.

Fixation on Growth

Going back to the dawn of progressivism, the left has always been preoccupied with the issue of economic justice. Once in power, left parties have been united in their belief that to achieve a more equal distribution of wealth and power, the economy must grow—and fast. The Soviet Union set the precedent with Five Year Plans devoted to transforming a largely agrarian society into an industrial giant. Social Democratic governments in Europe also supported economic growth in the belief that a rising tide would lift all boats, as a similar-minded John F. Kennedy would later say. Communists embraced economic growth as a way to catch up to the West; middle-of-the-road leftists wanted to grow the economy to boost employment rates and have more resources available for social welfare programs.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth. Before climate change was a thing, 30 experts from around the world issued a stern warning that the planet couldn’t support the exponential growth of human activity because of the limits of arable land, mineral resources for industry, and the consequences of pollution. Except for the Greens, progressives have been slow to come to terms with these limits to economic growth.

In Latin America, Green parties never took off. Instead, progressives have traditionally followed one of two paths. Cuba followed the Soviet model of rapid growth with a command economy and state-owned enterprises, though it ultimately had to abandon large parts of that approach when the Soviet Union collapsed and subsidies from Moscow largely withered away. Flush with oil money, Hugo Chavez adopted a similar approach in Venezuela.

The new left in Latin America, by contrast, was firmly committed to operating within democratic institutions, beginning with the ill-fated Allende administration in Chile and continuing through the Workers Party governments in Brazil. Although the new left diverged from the old left on democracy and human rights, it also equated unrestrained economic growth with progress, particularly during the “pink tide” of the 2000s. The growth rate in Brazil under Lula, for instance, skyrocketed from 1.9% to 5.2% and the trade surplus more than doubled. In Argentina, left-leaning Peronist Nestor Kirchner also pushed to expand the economy in his initial years by devaluing the peso and severing the country’s dependence on the IMF. Uruguay, under the progressive Frente Amplio, underwent significant economic expansion, particularly in its first decade in power. In Bolivia, Evo Morales boosted his country’s extraction industries and achieved an average of nearly 5% growth annually across his 13 years in office.

But a different kind of left was also emerging in those years, one that reflected the demands of indigenous communities and environmental activists.

In 2007, Rafael Correa presented the world with an innovative proposal. The Ecuadorian president pledged to leave the oil underneath the Yasuni National Park, a vast reserve of biodiversity, if the international community came up with $3.6 billion in compensation (about half what Ecuador could have received by selling the oil). The fundraising began in 2011 and reached about 10% of the target figure a year later. But the effort fizzled out, and the Ecuadorian government ultimately teamed up with a Chinese firm to begin drilling for the Yasuni oil in 2016, a partnership that has only expanded under the current conservative government.

But Correa’s initial approach at least hinted at a new progressivism that did not put unrestrained growth at the center of economic policy. That approach has been reflected, for instance, in the shift in the politics in Uruguay where, despite conventional pro-growth economic policies, the left-wing government made huge investments in clean energy, with nearly 95% of electricity provided by renewable sources by 2015. Costa Rica, under several social democratic leaders, has followed a similar path of decarbonization.

Latin America remains a key supplier of both dirty energy and resources like lithium, which power a “clean” energy transition. The new wave of left politicians must grapple with the challenges generated by climate change as well as the economic precarity aggravated by the pandemic. They don’t have a lot of room for maneuver. A far-right populism—embodied by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and the two losing challengers in Chile (Jose Antonio Kast) and Colombia (Rodolfo Hernández)—remains powerful and at the ready if the new new left falters.

A Post-Pink Wave

The U.S. government is reserving judgment on the victory of Gustavo Pietro and Francia Márquez. Not so The Washington Post, which recently editorialized: “There is much cause for concern in the policy direction Mr. Petro has articulated, in particular his call for an end to new oil exploration, a potential blow to the country’s industry likely to do much damage to export revenue and little good for the global environment.”

The Post, which continues to publish full-page ads for fossil fuel companies instead of following the divestment lead of The Guardian, is being obtuse here. Yes, an end to new oil exploration will hurt Colombia’s export revenues, but The Post is probably more concerned about the impact on U.S. oil companies and the price of gas in America. As for doing “little good for the global environment,” if Colombia indeed phases down fossil fuel production under Petro, it would be the largest global producer to follow through on such a commitment. That would be hugely significant.

That’s not all. Petro wants to work with other progressive leaders in Latin America on a region-wide transition. One of those leaders is the recently elected president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, who has put environmentalism at the top of his agenda. One of his first acts was to reverse the policy of the previous administration by signing the Escazu Agreement, which focuses on access to information and environmental justice. He appointed scientists to top positions in his administration, including climatologist Maisa Rojas as minister of the environment. Climate change is not an abstract issue for Chile. The country has been experiencing a decade-long drought, among other conditions aggravated by global warming.

One of the major challenges that Boric faces is Chile’s lithium industry, which has the world’s largest reserves of this valuable commodity. He has promised to nationalize the sector, which could enable the government to regulate the mines more rigorously in terms of labor and environmental considerations. He is also eying the possibility of creating more value-added processing—rather than simply exporting raw materials—that would in turn mean more and better-paying jobs.

Across a range of issues, Boric faces a vocal conservative opposition. But he also must deal with an uncompromising left that is not happy with his willingness to talk with his political adversaries, for instance in championing a new constitution for the country. That kind of negotiating is essential in a democracy, and Boric is committed to the democratic process—both inside Chile and outside.

“No matter who it bothers, our government will have total commitment to democracy and human rights, without support for any kind of dictatorship or autocracy,” Boric has tweeted. He has criticized the human rights records of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader, countered by calling Boric a member of the “cowardly left.”

But “cowardly” is the least apt word to describe Boric. Like Petro and Márquez in Colombia, Boric is not afraid to chart an entirely new path for his country. Together, these leaders are willing to challenge many of the tired, outdated policies that characterized the previous pink wave.

“The Colombian victory is providing oxygen for a Latin American politics that has been characterized by a lack of vision,” write Argentinian environmentalists Maristella Svampa and Enrique Viale. “This has been visible in the obstinate progressivism in Argentina, Bolivia and most probably Brazil as well if Lula triumphs in the next elections. They are interested neither in promoting an ecosocial agenda nor in discussing a Just Transition. Consequently, they are significantly reducing the prospects for democracy and a life of dignity and sustainability.”

Although still within the big tent of Latin American progressivism, Petro, Márquez, and Boric represent something new. And it’s not just happening at the level of elite governance. Svampa and Viale helped create the Ecosocial Pact of the South, which has also challenged the growth paradigm, criticized the authoritarian tendencies of the old left, put environmentalism front and center, and insisted on amplifying voices of social movements from indigenous communities and feminists to LGBTQ and anti-racism activists.

These are grim times when some of the least competent and most outrageous men and women have risen to positions of power in some of the largest countries in the world. Maybe Latin America can show us a way out of this predicament. Led by Petro, Márquez, and Boric from above and pushed by the Ecosocial Pact from below, the region has a real chance to undo this extraordinary mismatch between the needs of the moment and the capacities of our leaders.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Latin America’s ‘New’ New Left appeared first on Fair Observer.

No one knows how this meal will end. Ukraine is eager to force Russia to disgorge what it’s already devoured, while the still-peckish invader clearly has no interest in leaving the table.

This might seem like an ordinary territorial dispute between predator and prey. Ukraine’s central location between east and west, however, turns it into a potentially world-historical conflict like the Battle of Tours when the Christian Franks turned back the surging Umayyad army of Muslims in 732 AD or the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam in 1975.

The pivotal nature of the current war seems obvious. Ukraine has for some time wanted to join western institutions like the EU. Russia prefers to absorb Ukraine into its russkiy mir (Russian world). However, this tug of war over the dividing line between East and West isn’t a simple recapitulation of the Cold War. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly has no interest in reconstituting the Soviet Union, much less in sending his troops westward into Poland or Germany, while the US isn’t wielding Ukraine as a proxy to fight the Kremlin. Both superpowers have far more circumscribed aims.

Dirty Oil v Clean Energy

Nonetheless, the war has oversized implications. What at first glance seems like a spatial conflict is also a temporal one. Ukraine has the great misfortune to straddle the fault line between a 20^th century of failed industrial strategies and a possible 21^st century reorganization of society along clean energy lines.

In the worst-case scenario, Ukraine could simply be absorbed into the world’s largest petro-state. Or the two sides could find themselves in a punishing stalemate that cuts off the world’s hungriest people from vast stores of grain and continues to distract the international community from pushing forward with an urgently needed reduction of carbon emissions. Only a decisive defeat of Putinism—with its toxic mix of despotism, corruption, right-wing nationalism, and devil-may-care extractivism—would offer the world some sliver of hope when it comes to restoring some measure of planetary balance.

Ukraine is fighting for its territory and, ultimately, its survival. The West has come to its aid in defense of international law. But the stakes in this conflict are far more consequential than that.

What Putin Wants

Once upon a time, Vladimir Putin was a conventional Russian politician. Like many of his predecessors, he enjoyed a complicated ménage à trois with democracy (the boring spouse) and despotism (his true love). He toggled between confrontation and cooperation with the West. Not a nationalist, he presided over a multiethnic federation; not a populist, he didn’t care much about playing to the masses; not an imperialist, he deployed brutal but limited force to keep Russia from spinning apart.

Putin also understood the limits of Russian power. In the 1990s, his country had suffered a precipitous decline in its economic fortune, so he worked hard to rebuild state power on what lay beneath his feet. Russia, after all, is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, its second-largest oil producer, and its third-largest coal exporter. Even Putin’s efforts to prevent regions from slipping away from the Russian sphere of influence were initially constrained. In 2008, for instance, he didn’t try to take over neighboring Georgia, he just forced a stalemate that brought two breakaway regions into the Russian sphere of influence.

Meanwhile, Putin pursued strategies aimed at weakening his perceived adversaries. He ratcheted up cyberattacks in the Baltics, expanded maritime provocations in the Black Sea, advanced aggressive territorial claims in the Arctic. He also supported right-wing nationalists like France’s Marine Le Pen and Italy’s Matteo Salvini to undermine the unity of the EU. In 2016, he even attempted to further polarize American politics via dirty tricks in support of Donald Trump.

Always sensitive to challenges to his own power, Putin watched with increasing concern as “color revolutions” spread through parts of the former Soviet Union—from Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2005 to Belarus in 2006 and Moldova in 2009. Around the time of the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, he began shifting domestically to a nationalism that prioritized the interests of ethnic Russians, while cracking down ferociously on dissent and ramping up attacks on critics abroad. An intensifying sense of paranoia led him to rely on an ever-smaller circle of advisors, ever less likely to contradict him or give him bad news.

In the early 2020s, facing disappointment abroad, Putin effectively gave up on preserving even a semblance of good relations with the United States or the EU. Except for Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the European far-right had proven to be a complete disappointment. Putin’s fair-weather friend Donald Trump had lost the 2020 presidential election. Worse yet, European countries seemed determined to meet their Paris climate accord commitments, which sooner or later would mean radically reducing their dependence on Russian fossil fuels.

In contrast to China’s eagerness to stay on good terms with the United States and Europe, Putin’s Russia began turning its back on centuries of “westernizing” impulses to embrace its Slavic history and traditions. Like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and India’s Narendra Modi, Putin decided that the only ideology that ultimately mattered was nationalism, in his case a particularly virulent, anti-liberal form of it.

All of this means that Putin will pursue his aims in Ukraine regardless of the long-term impact on relations with the West. He’s clearly convinced that political polarization, economic sclerosis, and a wavering security commitment to that embattled country will eventually force Western powers to accommodate a more assertive Russia. Putin might not be wrong.

Whither the West?

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the West has never seemed more unified. Even previously neutral Finland and Sweden have lined up to join NATO. The US and much of Europe have largely agreed when it comes to sanctions against Russia.

Still, all is not well in the West. In the US, Trumpism continues to metastasize within the Republican Party. According to a January NPR/Ipsos poll, 64% of Americans are convinced that democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.” Meanwhile, in a surprising Alliance of Democracies Foundation poll last year, 44% of respondents in 53 countries rated the US, a self-proclaimed beacon of liberty, as a greater threat to democracy than either China and 38 percent) or Russia who got 38% and 28% of the votes respectively.

In Europe, the far-right continues to challenge the democratic foundations of the continent. Uber-Christian Viktor Orbán recently won his fourth term as Hungary’s prime minister. The super-conservative Law and Justice Party is firmly at the helm in Poland. The anti-immigrant, Euroskeptical Swiss People’s Party remains the most significant force in that country’s parliament. The top three far-right political parties in Italy together attract nearly 50% of the vote in public opinion polls.

Meanwhile, the global economy, still on neo-liberal autopilot, has jumped out of the pandemic frying pan into the fires of stagflation. With stock markets heading into bear territory and a global recession looming, the World Bank recently cut its 4.1% growth forecast for 2022 to 2.9%. The Biden administration’s perceived failure to address inflation may deliver the Congress to Republican extremists this November and social democratic leaders throughout Europe may pay a similar political price for record-high Eurozone inflation.

Admittedly, the continued military dominance of the US and its NATO allies would seem to refute all rumors of the decline of the West. In reality, though, the West’s military record hasn’t been much better than Russia’s performance in Ukraine. In August 2021, the US ignominiously withdrew its forces from its 20-year war in Afghanistan as the Taliban surged back to power. This year, France pulled its troops from Mali after a decade-long failure to defeat al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants. Western-backed forces failed to dislodge Bashar al-Assad in Syria or prevent a horrific civil war from enveloping Libya. All the trillions of dollars devoted to achieving “full-spectrum dominance” couldn’t produce enduring success in Iraq or Somalia, wipe out terrorist factions throughout Africa, or effect regime change in North Korea or Cuba.

Despite its overwhelming military and economic power, the West no longer seems to be on the same upward trajectory as after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back in the 1990s, Eastern Europe and even parts of the former Soviet Union signed up to join NATO and the EU. Russia under Boris Yeltsin inked a partnership agreement with NATO, while both Japan and South Korea were interested in pursuing a proposed global version of that security alliance.

Today, however, the West seems increasingly irrelevant outside its own borders. China, love it or hate it, has rebuilt its Sinocentric sphere in Asia, while becoming the most important economic player in the Global South. It’s even established alternative global financial institutions that, one day, might replace the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Turkey has turned its back on the EU (and vice versa) and Latin America is heading in a more independent direction. Consider it a sign of the times that, when the call went out to sanction Russia, most of the non-Western world ignored it.

The foundations of the West are indeed increasingly unstable. Democracy is no longer, as scholar Francis Fukuyama imagined it in the late 1980s, the inevitable trajectory of world history. The global economy, while spawning inexcusable inequality and being upended by the recent pandemic, is exhausting the resource base of the planet. Both right-wing extremism and garden-variety nationalism are eroding the freedoms that safeguard liberal society. It’s no surprise, then, that Putin believes a divided West will ultimately accede to his aggression.

The Ukraine Pivot

There’s never a good time for war. But hostilities have flared in Ukraine just as the world was supposed to be accelerating its transition to a clean-energy future. In another three years, carbon emissions must hit their peak and, in the next eight years, countries must cut their carbon emissions by half if there’s any hope of meeting the goals of the Paris climate accord by 2050. Even before the current war, the most comprehensive estimate put the rise in global temperature at a potentially disastrous 2.7° Celsius by the end of the century (nearly twice the 1.5° goal of that agreement).

The war in Ukraine is propelling the world full tilt in the opposite direction. China and India are, in fact, increasing their use of coal, the worst possible fossil fuel in terms of carbon emissions. Europe is desperate to replace Russian oil and natural gas and countries like Greece are now considering increasing their own production of dirty energy. In a similar fashion, US is once again boosting oil and gas production, releasing supplies from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and hoping to persuade oil-producing nations to pump yet more of their product into global markets.

With its invasion, in other words, Russia has helped to derail the world’s already faltering effort at decarbonization. Although last fall Putin committed his country to a net-zero carbon policy by 2060, phasing out fossil fuels now would be economic suicide given that he’s done so little to diversify the economy. And despite international sanctions, Russia has been making a killing with fossil-fuel sales, raking in a record $97 billion in the first 100 days of battle.

All of this could suggest, of course, that Putin represents the last gasp of the failed petropolitics of the 20^th century. But don’t count him out yet. He might also be the harbinger of a future in which technologically sophisticated politicians continue to pursue their narrow political and regional aims, making it ever less possible for the world to survive climate change.

Ukraine is where Putin is making his stand. As for Putinism itself—how long it lasts, how persuasive it proves to be for other countries—much depends on China.

After Putin’s invasion, Beijing could have given full-throated support to its ally, promised to buy all the fossil fuels Western sanctions left stranded, provided military equipment to buoy the faltering Russian offensive, and severed its own ties with Europe and the US. China could have broken with international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF in favor of the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, its own multinational organizations. In this way, Ukraine could have turned into a genuine proxy war between East and West.

Instead, Beijing has been playing both sides. Unhappy with Putin’s unpredictable moves, including the invasion, which have disrupted China’s economic expansion, it’s also been disturbed by the sanctions against Russia that similarly cramp its style. Beijing isn’t yet strong enough to challenge the hegemony of the dollar and it also remains dependent on Russian fossil fuels. Now the planet’s greatest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has been building a tremendous amount of renewable energy infrastructure. Its wind sector generated nearly 30% more power in 2021 than the year before and its solar sector increased by nearly 15%. Still, because of a growing appetite for energy, its overall dependence on coal and natural gas has hardly been reduced.

Reliant as it is on Russian energy imports, China won’t yet pull the plug on Putinism, but Washington could help push Beijing in that direction. It was once a dream of the Obama administration to partner with the world’s second-largest economy on clean energy projects. Instead of focusing as it has on myriad ways to contain China, the Biden administration could offer it a green version of an older proposal to create a Sino-American economic duopoly, this time focused on making the global economy sustainable in the process. The two countries could join Europe in advancing a Global Green Deal.

In recent months, President Joe Biden has been willing to entertain the previously unthinkable by mending fences with Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in order to flood global markets with yet more oil and so reduce soaring prices at the pump. Talk about 20^th century mindsets. Instead, it’s time for Washington to consider an eco-détente with Beijing that would, among other things, drive a stake through the heart of Putinism, safeguard Ukraine’s sovereignty, and stop the planet from burning to a crisp.

Otherwise, we know how this unhappy meal will end—as a Last Supper for humanity.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post China Will Decide Who Wins the Fight: Russia or the West appeared first on Fair Observer.

There is also another important overlooked fact about wars of the 19^th century. They amplify the four horsemen of the apocalypse of the 21^st century: global warming, nuclear war, food insecurity and pandemics.

It is clear that we need a new definition of national security.  This new definition needs to focus on what actually makes individuals more secure in their daily lives. Competition between nations will continue in the realm of technologies, economics and trade but we need international cooperation to confront the four horsemen — this new phenomenon could be termed coopetition.  In a way, we have stumbled into this transition already with such organizations as the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations, etc. 

However, we still think about national security in a 19^th century way. By changing our definition, we can hasten the transition to better policies both nationally and globally. The need for such a change is highlighted by the Russia-Ukraine war.  From a 19^th century point of view, Russian leaders feel they need a buffer zone to protect Russia. In turn, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) feels compelled to avoid appeasement of an aggressive dictator that in their view led to World War II. From a 21^st century national security point of view, the Russia-Ukraine war is making each of the horsemen more dangerous.

Global Warming

Greenhouse gases are released every time a gun is fired, a bomb goes off, a building catches fire, an armored vehicle burns and so on and so forth. The transportation systems that bring all the military personnel and equipment to the battlefield release more greenhouse gases. The manufacture of weapons releases greenhouse gases as well. Finally, when the war is over and reconstruction starts, there will be an increase in greenhouse gases because of reconstruction.

Now, it can be argued that the Russia-Ukraine war may hasten Europe’s move away from fossil fuels and lead to reliance on sustainable forms of energy.  It can also be argued that the rise in fossil fuel costs around the world will lead to a reduction in consumption. But, so far, we are not seeing that transpire. Instead, the fossil fuel industry is adapting to the new situation.

Nuclear War

We have two nuclear-armed groups separated by several hundred miles talking of tactical nuclear weapons. We have soldiers firing at nuclear power plants. Emotions are running high. Egos are involved. Casualty rates appear to be quite high. It appears that soldiers are taking drastic actions, either out of frustration or under direct orders or a mix of the two. There are reports on Russian-controlled media for national mobilization. Individual Russian civilians have called for the use of nuclear weapons. It doesn’t take much to imagine something going wrong: a nuclear accident, a rogue officer ordering a launch or even the top leadership ordering a tactical low-grade nuclear strike.

Since the end of World War II, nuclear weapons have not been used. Even the use of tactical nuclear weapons has been unthinkable. That is, unthinkable till now. Political leaders are talking about being prepared for such an eventuality. If tactical nuclear weapons become thinkable, what happens to strategic nuclear weapons? If tactical nuclear weapons are used a few miles on the other side of your border, what are the radiation effects on you? Does all this make the people in your nation more secure?

Food Insecurity

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, has said, “We all see the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. But beyond its borders, the war has launched a silent assault on the developing world. The crisis could plunge up to 1.7 billion people, more than a fifth of humanity, into poverty and hunger on a scale not seen in decades.”

If you are a well-off individual in a country where food prices go up, but there is plenty of supply. Would you care if 20% of humanity falls into poverty, hunger and despair? Even in a Hobbesian worldview, the answer has to be yes. Despair among 20% of the global population is bound to breed trouble for all. Desperate people do desperate things: crime, corruption, terrorism and illegal immigration are just the tip of the iceberg.

In short, if my neighbor’s house catches fire, my house is at risk as well. If I want to ensure my security, I need to make sure my neighbor’s house doesn’t catch fire. And right now 20% of humanity is soon going to have their house on fire. This isn’t good for my security or anybody’s security. 

Pandemics

We are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, we might be entering a new era of pandemics. Some authors have been arguing that “environmental devastation threatens to unleash new zoonotic diseases as well as long-dormant bacteria and viruses to deadly effect.”

The Russia-Ukraine war is adding to the risk of pandemics. Refugees are now living in close proximity even as wartime conditions undermine their immune systems. We could do well to remember that the end of World War I led to an influenza pandemic. It killed more people than the war itself. That could happen again.

The Right Tools for the Right Problems

A screwdriver and a hammer are both good tools, but using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail is suboptimal, if not stupid. In the US, both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have been examining the four horsemen’s risks to national security. Intelligence and defense Institutions in other countries have been doing the same.

Yet there is an argument to be made that the DNA of these institutions equips them for 19^th century challenges. They are unable to really think through the risks of global warming, nuclear war, food insecurity and pandemics. They do not know how to manage the 21^st century horsemen of the apocalypse. These institutions were designed for conflict, not cooperation or coopetition. Yet they command top of mindshare and the lion’s share of funding.

The time has come to define national security differently. We must examine what enhances the security of an individual and work towards achieving it. This will require people, processes, organizations and technologies focused on cooperation rather than conflict. We will have to build upon previous attempts at cooperation and collaboration as well as engage in new thinking, new development and new research to tackle the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Russia-Ukraine War Proves That We Must Define National Security Differently appeared first on Fair Observer.

US President Joe Biden and many Democrats have argued for a Green New Deal. They seem to emulate Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal that pulled the US out of the Great Depression. They believe that public investment in green energy and new technologies will fight climate change, create high-paying jobs in the US and boost the American economy.

We spoke to Contributing Editor Christopher Roper Schell, a Capitol Hill veteran who has also worked on the Pentagon, to make sense of the Green New Deal in the context of soaring oil and gas prices, and the prospect of blackouts.

Christopher Roper Schell on Joe Biden’s Energy Policy

(We have edited this transcript lightly for clarity.)

Is clean energy a mirage? 

Christopher Roper Schell: It depends on what you mean by clean energy. 

If you think windmills and solar panels are going to run the US electric grid, that’s not going to happen.

What we need is baseload power and baseload power is going offline primarily because of the economic incentives behind green energy in the United States. Interestingly, CO₂ has been declining substantially, primarily because natural gas is simply cheaper.

What we’ll have to concern ourselves with is to ensure that we do not have the blackouts we’re being warned against. A semi-regulatory body has issued a warning that up to 2/3 of America could experience blackouts this summer. That is simply unacceptable to Americans and a green energy future that eventually has blackouts is not going to transpire.

What is the significance of high gas and nickel prices? 

Christopher Roper Schell: For the Greens, high gas prices are the point: they actually want gasoline prices to go up. However, Americans have rejected this.

They’re getting a look at what a potential carbon tax would look like, and they don’t like it. The Biden administration has tried to suffocate traditional energy sources such as natural gas and oil. In fact, the Chevron CEO said last week that he didn’t envision another refinery ever in the United States.

There’s clearly a rebellion against high gas prices and also against nickel prices. Nickel goes into almost everything that’s green and the US doesn’t produce that much of it. There is one single nickel mine in the US.

And we’re seeing nickel prices that are at peaks that we have not seen for the last 30 years. America cannot go green without producing a lot of nickel cheaply, and that’s not happening. 

Watch the full video here

Is there a supply-side threat from China? 

Christopher Roper Schell: Yes, there is. China produces four times more rare earths than America does. China has six rare earths mining companies. America has one mine.

In terms of solar panels, most of the US solar panels that are installed come from foreign shores; about 90% in fact. 

Interesting story — Auxin Solar is this little bitty US domestic solar panel producer, and they have filed a complaint with the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department began investigating and the installation of solar panels completely froze in this country. Ultimately, the Biden administration stepped in and declared that there would be no new tariffs on imported solar panels to prevent the market from collapsing.

So in this rush to green utopia, the administration decided that it’s OK to support China and to essentially leave their own domestic suppliers out to dry. 

Is the Keystone XL pipeline the answer? 

Christopher Roper Schell: No one disputes that Keystone XL would have produced 830,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s a drop in the bucket in terms of global consumption.

The big problem today is that we just need to produce more oil and currently producers are not responding to price signals. Why? Because they’ve been punished.

Last week, Biden said of Exxon, pay your taxes. I didn’t know that oil producers had ever stopped paying taxes, but the president is using all sorts of regulatory methods to disincentivize the production of oil and gas.  Amongst other things, as I mentioned earlier, he’s not holding lease sales. I know he will say that there are already loads of outstanding leases, but that also means that they need permits. And oftentimes, the Biden administration has not allowed permits.

Either way, it’s better to get oil from places like the US and Canada via Keystone vis-à-vis places like Iran and Venezuela. 

Is the Green New Deal now dead? 

Christopher Roper Schell: Let me put it this way, no politician right now is saying if you like your new high gas prices, you can keep your new high gas prices. 

[There is now no appetite for] a carbon tax. The Green Deal is dead if it ever was alive. While people may virtue signal with their post-consumer cup or rich people may drive around feeling very fancy in their electric cars, the fact is that most people aren’t willing to make the major compromises they will have to make for a Green New Deal type future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Joe Biden’s Green Energy Policy is Dead appeared first on Fair Observer.

Just over a month ago, the reinsurance giant Swiss Re recently published a report calculating the worldwide economic cost of natural disasters such as floods, wildfires, hurricanes and droughts. The results were staggering: economic losses were estimated at $270 billion for 2021 alone. While this figure is not quite on par with the fallout from COVID-19 – whose damages are still being calculated – it nevertheless amounts to nearly 0.3% of total global GDP.

More and costlier natural disasters

The world has seen a steady upsurge in natural disasters. In the fifty years between 1970 and 2019, natural disasters have increased five-fold. Although improved disaster prevention has reduced the number of fatalities they cause, the total cost of these calamities is estimated to be $3.64 trillion.

According to a report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the number of natural disasters over the past twenty years (2000-19) has almost doubled in terms of frequency, as have the economic costs when compared with the previous twenty-year period (1980-99).

One of the main points highlighted in the Swiss Re report is the growth in flood risk. Previously seen as a secondary risk when compared to the likes of earthquakes and droughts, floods have now become a primary concern as the costs they inflict are now growing at a faster rate than global GDP.

The Swiss Re report also highlighted how climate change is exacerbating problems, particularly regarding the “secondary perils” such as flooding. The connection between the increased frequency of extreme weather events and human-fuelled climate change has also been researched by the American Meteorological Society (AMS), which found that – in the period from 2015 to 2017 –  62 out of 77 disasters were linked to human activity.

Increased demand for disaster insurance

The increase in the frequency and cost of natural disasters across the planet are having various effects on wider society. One of them has been the increased demand for insurance to cover against financial risks associated with these events, as both businesses and individuals seek to pre-empt the potential costs of calamities. Less than half of the value of damages occurring in 2021 were actually insured, meaning that governments, businesses and individuals were stuck with a nearly $160 billion tab. However, this still leaves around $111 billion in covered damages, a figure which is continuing to grow at an average annual rate of around 5-6%.

Within the insurance market, the demand for reinsurance, which is the service that covers the losses suffered by primary insurers, is also unsurprisingly growing. The global reinsurance market is currently worth over $270 billion and is predicted to grow by around 3.3% per year to reach $343 billion by 2026.

The reinsurance industry is therefore unsurprisingly attracting substantial financial investment, as evidenced by a recent increase in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) within the sector. Recent examples include the acquisition of US-based reinsurer Alleghany by Berkshire Hathaway Inc, the investment conglomerate owned by Warren Buffett, for nearly $12 billion, one of the five biggest deals in Berkshire Hathaway’s history.

Another case in point is French mutual insurance giant Covéa’s acquisition of major reinsurer PartnerRe, currently owned by Exor. The deal, which was concluded in December for a reported $9 billion and has recently received the green light from the European Commission, signals Covéa’s intention to both expand its international business and strategically position itself in a growing reinsurance market. Indeed, both lucrative deals reflect the current expansion of the reinsurance sector and growth in demand caused by insurers anticipating more frequent and damaging natural calamities.

Governments seek to mitigate risk

Of course, insuring against risk provides a safety net should the worst occur but it’s not the only way to tackle the effects of natural disasters. As the likelihood of experiencing nature’s extremes increases, governments have also looked into measures to reduce the exposure to – or mitigate the effects of – disasters such as floods, cyclones and wildfires.

With man-made climate change exacerbating the severity of natural disasters, putting preventative measures in place that lessen their impact can be seen as a valid, cost-effective solution. One example is Miami-Dade County, which has responded to the risk that tidal flooding could cause up to $3 billion worth of damage by releasing a 40-year strategy to combat rising sea levels that threaten the region. Plans include not only fortifying the 35-mile coastline but also overhauling the city’s water management infrastructure and building a wetland ecosystem.

Confronted with similar challenges, the islanders on Fiji have set about tackling flooding and coastal erosion with a scheme to plant mangrove trees. These tropical shrubs have proved effective at absorbing atmospheric carbon, one of the main drivers of global warming, as well as slowing down water flows which decreases the likelihood of flooding. Consisting of around 300 low-lying islands, Fiji is especially susceptible to the effects of climate change and natural disasters.

As the climate crisis continues to gather pace, we are likely to see the frequency of natural disasters continue to grow, and with it a continued shift in the way individuals, governments and societies perceive and tackle risk. The dual trend of insurance protection to cover costs and preventative strategies to reduce the likelihood of disasters striking, or at the very least mitigate their devastating effects, is likely to continue for years to come unless we can come up with a more effective global effort to combat climate change.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can the World Pay the Cost of Increasingly Frequent Natural Disasters? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Ironically, Moon appointed Yoon as prosecutor general of the country. As the top prosecutor, Yoon secured the conviction of two former conservative presidents for corruption. He also pressed charges against Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong who was sentenced to prison in a bribery scandal. “Owing loyalty to nobody,” Yoon then went on to investigate members of the Moon administration, catapulting this star prosecutor into the national limelight and eventually making him the PPP candidate.

Yoon is an outsider.  He has no administrative experience and little access to Seoul’s political networks. He has not even served as a member of parliament. The fact that Yoon came out on top confirms that public popularity is now more important than party allegiance and political or administrative experience in the South Korean presidential system.

The election — although very close nationwide —  exposed South Korea’s regional division. In this country, political parties are not primarily divided by ideology or political platforms but rather by history and regional origins. In the southwestern Cholla provinces, more than 80% voted for Lee while the southeastern Kyongsang regions voted overwhelmingly for Yoon. 

A Terrible Housing Crisis and Gender Issues

The biggest surprise was that Yoon won the capital city of Seoul, a stronghold of the DP. This crucial victory helped him win the election. It hinged on the only political issue that mattered during the campaign: unaffordable housing prices. The Moon administration failed to address this burning issue, which hurt the DP. 

The overwhelming importance of this matter can only be understood in the context of the jeonse rental system in South Korea. Jeonse requires lump sum payments and directly links rents to real estate prices. In addition, rental contracts are limited to two years and there is almost no protection for tenants who are left to the whims, fancies and even tyranny of their landlords. The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s 2021 South Korea Report observed that: “While regulations on homeowners and tenant protection have been slightly improved, they have failed to arrest the massive increases in housing costs in the urban centers.”

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In these elections, a gender divide emerged among younger voters. Only 34% of women in their 20s voted for Yoon in contrast to 59% of men in the same age group. This was by far the largest gender divide among different age groups ever recorded. In the past, younger voters have tended to vote for the DP. Yoon appealed to young men by opposing “feminism” and even promising to abolish the ministry of gender equality. Note that South Korea’s average gender pay gap is one of the largest in the world. Furthermore, South Korea’s labor-force participation rate among women is the fifth-lowest among the 29 EU and OECD countries as per a report on Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI).  The authors of the report see a “continued prevalence of traditional ideas about family and gender roles.“ On a related note, Shim Sang-jeung, the highest-ranked female presidential candidate of the progressive Justice Party received only 2.4% of the vote as compared to 6.2% in 2017, exposing the crisis in which the political left now finds itself in South Korea. 

A Tricky Political Situation

Over the years, election campaigns have become almost completely personalized and devoid of political agendas. Negative campaigning now delves into character flaws of the candidates and even of their wives. Particularly shocking is how vital issues, such as the extreme environmental degradation in South Korea or how the country plans to combat climate change fail to feature in presidential debates. South Korea has the lowest share of renewable energy among the 41 countries examined by the SGI report. A later report takes the view that South Korea “is more focused on [its] growth aspect than on environmental protection.”

It is difficult to predict the direction the Yoon administration will take during its five-year tenure which begins on May 10. As a political and administrative novice, Yoon will rely on his party and the bureaucracy. When it comes to economic and social policies, Yoon – the son of a market-liberal economics professor – promised to reduce government interventions. However, he is likely to make little headway because his party does not have a majority in the parliament. The DP commands a strong majority with 172 out of 300 seats. It can shoot down Yoon’s economic policies even though it may not have the two-thirds majority needed to override presidential vetoes, amend the constitution, or impeach the president. 

While the South Korean president has strong constitutional powers and can rule by decrees, his ability to impose radical changes without proper legislation is limited. If the president ends up in a standoff with parliament, the country could end up in political gridlock. This might cause instability or, on a more positive note, inaugurate a new era of cooperation and compromises between the two camps or even a complete reorganization of political parties. Yoon’s election has upped the political ante for the country. Now, all parties are focused on the next parliamentary election in 2024.

Foreign Policy Ambitions 

If things seem rocky on the domestic front, they are better when it comes to foreign policy. For a long time, relations with North Korea, China, Japan and the US have been one of few ideological divisions between the two large parties. Moon’s presidency adopted the classic DP agenda of engaging North Korea to achieve an as-yet unfulfilled goal of signing a peace treaty or at least an end-of-war declaration. The PPP fiercely opposed the DP on this issue. Conflict with North Korea has long been a means for the conservative PPP to rally its supporters. Members of the PPP also fear that a peace treaty would undermine South Korea’s alliance with the US, risking the withdrawal of American troops. 

Yoon is likely to use the PPP’s excellent ties with the US to strengthen the US-South Korea alliance. His government is likely to repair relations with Japan. Japan-South Korea relations have deteriorated due to friction over Japanese reparations for its colonial atrocities in Korea. Closer ties to the US and Japan will give Yoon less leeway in dealing with China and Russia. When it comes to the war in Ukraine, Yoon is likely to put South Korea more firmly on the US side and against Russia. Under the new president, South Korea, Japan and the US are likely to come closer together to strengthen the rules-based international order in Asia.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Significance of South Korea’s New President Yoon Seok-yeol appeared first on Fair Observer.

These days, environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria have become important for most businesses and PR agencies are no exception. If businesses use child labor, burn forests or bribe politicians, many suppliers, buyers, investors and other stakeholders stop engaging with them. This focus on ESG has profound implications for PR agencies. Many expect them  to stop taking on clients with poor ESG records. For instance, some demand that PR agencies should stop taking on fossil fuel companies such as Chevron or Shell as clients.

Such an argument raises key questions. As businesses, should PR agencies shut off a key source of revenue? What if they go bust? Are PR job losses desirable? Many businesses cause environmental damage. Should PR agencies also not accept mining companies and automobile manufacturers as clients? Should the burden of responsibility of accepting or not accepting clients rest on individual PR agencies?

Public Pressure on Public Relations

The outcry against PR agencies acting for fossil fuel companies has a context. Many believe that these agencies have downplayed scientific data revealing the scale of climate change to help the cause of their clients. Recently, a global coalition of over 450 climate scientists signed a letter calling on PR agencies and advertising firms to end relations with fossil fuel companies. These scientists want them to get behind legislation for climate change mitigation.

In 2021, a study highlighted hundreds of elaborate campaigns purportedly designed by PR agencies to hinder climate action. Their clients include Shell, Chevron and other fossil fuel entities. Around the same time, the Clean Creatives collective published an open letter calling on Edelman, the world’s largest PR agency,  to end the ‘greenwashing’ of fossil fuel clients. 

Edelman’s response to the climate emergency emphasized working with partners to accelerate climate action, develop best practices, and hold clients as well as itself accountable for mitigating climate change. The agency also promised many other changes but stopped short of dropping its energy clients.

The Pickle Over Climate Change

To casual observers, these actions by Edelman might be indicative of an industry that uncompromisingly prioritizes profit above ethical standards. Despite the unquestionably sales-driven nature of the business, such a conclusion is too simplistic and a bit unfair. Like other sectors, PR has professional bodies that set ethical standards for the industry. Ethical competence is a prerequisite for membership. Of these, the International Public Relations Association’s (IPRA) code of conduct is one of the most comprehensive. Among its many provisions, the code states that practitioners must not intentionally disseminate false or misleading information.

Last November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) inspired IPRA to form a chapter to heighten professional knowledge of climate-related issues. In doing so, the organization seeks to enable members “to play a valuable part in furthering communications aspects of climate change.” Neither IPRA nor this specific chapter urge PR professionals to cease business with fossil fuel clients, making it unlikely that Clean Creatives and climate change scientists will stop criticizing them.

PR agencies are in a bind. When they work with fossil fuel producers, they have to abide by a code of conduct that might limit what they can do for their clients. The other option for PR agencies is to drop these clients altogether.

Dropping fossil fuel companies might not be an entirely good idea though. If Shell sets its target of becoming a net-zero energy business by 2050, PR agencies could help. From developing communications strategies to running press offices, these agencies can help achieve this goal. They can also help in a crisis. Crisis communications helped citizens after  an oil spill off the coast of Peru.

Ethics Matter and Might Be Good Business

Any PR professional worth their salt knows that emphasizing the industry’s ethical charters and practices alone is unlikely to cut it with climate activists. For them, such is the severity of the climate emergency that PR agencies should just cease working with fossil fuel companies. Finding a way forward that will satisfy all sides, and suitably addresses climate change communication, remains challenging.

For starters, some consultants may need to get better at managing some of their clients’ expectations. PR agencies might consider the value of emphasizing how they don’t support harmful aspects of oil and gas production. It goes without saying that PR agencies do promote oil and gas producers in Nigeria. However, they do not represent illegal oil refineries on the continent, which cause much pollution and drain state coffers. The risk of expulsion from trade associations and the fall of a leading firm like Bell Pottinger are very real for PR agencies. These businesses might upset their critics but they play by their own rules and do not cross thin lines in the sand.

Many PR agencies might also find inspiration from ESG business successes. In the 1990s, the UK’s Co-Operative Bank ran a powerful advertisement, promising not to invest their “customers’ money in countries with oppressive regimes.” This advertisement was part of a series that highlighted the bank’s commitment to ethical finance. The bank’s compelling ads had hard hitting and often harrowing content about landmines, fossil fuels and more. In 2021, the Co-Operative Bank was  named the best high street bank for ESG. Such sort of clients might represent the future of PR agencies.

Fossil Fuels Are Legal and Essential, So Are Their PR Needs

It is unlikely that PR agencies could run advertisements like the Co-Operative Bank for all their clients. Such campaigns would certainly not work for oil and gas producers. Giving them up as clients might not be the right business move. In fact, if PR agencies did  what the likes of Clean Creatives say and jettisoned these clients, climate change would still go on.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict provides a timely reminder that fossil fuels still power the global economy. As essential players in the global economy, oil and gas producers need strategic communications support. They are not Colombian cartels operating in the shadow economy. If nothing else, these companies have to maintain crisis communications preparedness for public interest reasons. What happens if there is an oil spill? How does an oil company communicate about such a spill to the public? As long as we depend on oil for cars and on gas for power, PR agencies have a role to play for bona fide legal businesses.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Should PR Agencies Not Represent Fossil Fuel Clients? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Market concentration, on the other hand, is a more pernicious issue. More than half the value of US farm production came from farms with at least $1 million in sales in 2015, compared to only 31% in 1991.

The consequences of consolidation become apparent in the sales of various agricultural products. For example, in 2000, the biggest four companies sold 51% of soybean seeds in the United States. By 2015, their share rose to 76%.

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“The agricultural industry is different than other industries because Capper-Volstead allows them to combine in ways that other individuals would go to jail for,” says  Allee A. Ramadhan, a former Justice Department antitrust attorney who led an investigation into the dairy industry. The 1922 Capper-Volstead Act was a law originally designed to protect producers by allowing them to secure their interests through cooperatives. Unfortunately, it has resulted in the perfect conditions for heavy consolidation by the largest companies.

Consolidation doesn’t just impact prices, but it also contributes to US agriculture’s declining competitiveness. That is why agriculture was included in President Joe Biden’s executive order on competition last July, in which he declared that the “American promise of a broad and sustained prosperity depends on an open and competitive economy.”

Fertilizers and Destabilizing Forces

In addition to the structural concerns for US agriculture, there have been further destabilizing factors since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did the health crisis remove domestic outlets for agricultural products due to repeated lockdowns, but it also severely disrupted production. This was particularly in terms of available human resources, whether before at the farms or down the processing chain with the temporary closure of many slaughterhouses.

Aside from the impact of COVID-19, extreme weather has pummeled certain states, reduced production and caused billions of dollars in damage. The prices of many inputs are snowballing into other areas. Prices for urea have skyrocketed. DAP, the common phosphate fertilizer, has reached its highest price tag since the 2008 financial crash that led to the food pricing crisis.

“As fertilizer prices continue to rise, farmers will either cut application rates, cut fertilizer entirely in hopes for lower future pricing, or cut other farm products to account for the bigger expected spend,” says Alexis Maxwell, an analyst at Green Markets.

Some farmers are essentially holding out before buying for the next growing season, in the hopes that costs come down. But that is a risky strategy.

Contributing to the destabilizing forces, recent countervailing duties against foreign fertilizer producers selling to the US market have cut supply. Chris Edgington, the president of the National Cotton Growers Association, said in late 2021 that the Mosaic Company petitioned for the tariffs and has since seen its share of the phosphate market grow from 74% to 80%, a near-monopoly. “There’s been a dramatic increase of fertilizer costs to the producer and that’s not looking to end,” he added. In general, the price increases for different fertilizers are not yet at the levels seen in 2008, but they could soon be even higher if they keep climbing.

Uncertainty Due to the Ukraine War

The war in Ukraine has added fuel to the fire regarding the uncertainties in the agricultural sector. The conflict has pitted against each other Russia and Ukraine, whose wheat exports account for more than 25% of the world’s supply. Now, these exports are at risk, as witnessed by the emerging food crisis in several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

For instance, Tunisia imports nearly half of its wheat from Ukraine to make bread. In the country where the Arab Spring began in December 2010, Tunisians are worried there could be shortages of supplies and a repeat of bread riots like in the 1980s. Alarmingly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused prices to rise to their highest level in 14 years. Yemen, Lebanon and Egypt are also beginning to be stricken by flour shortages.

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The conflict has also led to the introduction of severe sanctions against Russia and Belarus, two of the world’s largest producers and exporters of fertilizers of all kinds, along with natural gas, an essential ingredient in ammonia production and a key component of complex fertilizers. Although the United States produces most of its own natural gas, fluctuations in world prices have a significant effect on the fertilizer industry. This only exacerbates the difficulties farmers currently face in obtaining inputs.

Thus, while US farmers could look forward to a windfall of increased demand for their grain in the coming year, in the immediate future, they are simply faced with a further increase in production costs. Due to these added costs of inputs and the supply chain issues, US agriculture — especially the wheat industry — may be lacking the fertilizers needed to maximize yields, resulting in a decline in production and impeding its capability to respond to global demand.

In a way, in the immediate and near future, the nightmare of 2021 is only worsening. For Arkansas farmer Matt Miles, “There’s no guarantee of anything being a sure thing anymore. That’s the scary part.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post After a Difficult Year, US Farmers Are Pessimistic appeared first on Fair Observer.

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“To cover the gap and manage catastrophic risk accumulation,” he adds, “the role of insurance and reinsurance pools is key, often drawn by traumatic events themselves.” This being said, the gap of uninsured damages is huge, which means not only a growing burden on public budgets but also on the most exposed and those directly hit. These situations will impact access and credit conditions for these populations.

Insurer concerns are no longer individual catastrophic events, but their global and systemic effects on human societies. Andrew Cornford, a counselor at the Observatoire de la Finance in Switzerland, explains: “The problems posed to insurers … will be due to the increased … scale of the actual occurrence of events associated with these risks, to their sometimes geographically uncertain incidence, and to increased correlations between them.”

In Cornford’s view, the problems can, to some extent, “be handled through better designed and increased capital requirements, public-sector reserves and precautionary arrangements suggested by stress testing — for which recent experience with COVID-19 may be helpful.” However, the underlying hypothesis is that the level of premiums will remain affordable to those seeking cover.

Nevertheless, increased property claims as a result of extreme weather events are forcing insurers to reevaluate underwriting strategies, including rebalancing their premiums and pricing strategies. Against this background, regulators have expressed concern that climate change could make it difficult for insurance companies to provide affordable financial protection. Rising premiums could make cover unaffordable, especially for disadvantaged communities that are more likely to live in regions prone to disaster.

Instead of burdening local populations with costs of damages that occur due to the impact of climate change — caused largely by the wealthy Global North — there is an urgent need to devise underwriting strategies to transfer a substantial portion of climate-related insurance costs from the South to the North. This would allow the international community to share the burden. Otherwise, the most exposed regions of the world may well become impossible to insure by market mechanisms, which would leave only the public guarantee option open, as stressed by the economist Etienne Perrot.

By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski

Note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: Can private insurance alone mitigate climate change damages?

“…pass the cost to policyholders through increased insurance premiums… ”

Unlike randomness, which allows a probability calculation on a statistical basis, uncertainty arises from facts that are emerging — unique or too few to give rise to a stochastic calculation. Randomness is the basis of prevention and insurance systems. On the other hand, uncertainty can only be covered by contingency reserves — it’s a precaution. (The IPCC forecast [that] insurance’s prevention and precaution are the three forms of the virtue of prudence, which is the intelligence of concrete situations.)

Henri de Castries, therefore, hypothesizes that the damaging meteorological phenomena induced by a global warming of 4 degrees are phenomena, if not unique, at least too few to enter into an insurance system. This involves the states, either directly when they compensate for the damage by compulsory levies (in France, we have known ‘the drought tax’ in the 1980s) or by obliging the insurance companies to compensate the damage, which will pass the cost on to policyholders through increased insurance premiums.

Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)

“…public-private partnerships can be developed…”

According to Munich Re, global losses from natural disasters in 2020 came to $210 billion, of which $82 billion was insured. To cover the gap and manage catastrophic risk accumulation, the role of insurance and reinsurance pools is key, often drawn by traumatic events themselves. Public-private partnerships are nothing new (e.g., US National Flood Insurance or the Spanish Consorcio) and can be developed.

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Insurance plays an essential role toward mitigating damage from climate change through underwriting, prevention, disseminating knowledge and as investors. Large players have recently committed to the UN-convened net-zero insurance alliance. Artificial intelligence and big data analysis research, also supported by insurance, will increase natural disaster predictability. Insurance and reinsurance markets are efficient, though unpretentious.

Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, former executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group

“…capital requirements, public-sector reserves and precautionary arrangements… ”

Individually, most of the risks associated with a substantial rise in temperature due to climate change can be quantified, owing to past experience. The problems posed to insurers, other private financial institutions and the public sector will be due to the increased — and sometimes unpredictably increased — scale of the actual occurrence of events associated with these risks, to their sometimes geographically uncertain incidence and to increased correlations between them.

To some extent, the resulting problems can be handled through better designed and increased capital requirements, public-sector reserves and precautionary arrangements suggested by stress testing — for which recent experience with COVID-19 may be helpful. These arrangements will entail institutional innovations, training of people to handle the consequences of the new risks and enhanced multilateral cooperation — the absence of any of which will reduce the effectiveness of the potential contribution of finance to control of damages and mitigation of their effects.

Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services

*[An earlier version of this article was published by From Virus to Vitamin.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Damage and the Role of Insurance appeared first on Fair Observer.

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Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, making them major contributors to climate change. On the other hand, high industrial activities, alongside rapidly increasing populations, put growing pressure on energy demand.

The Example of Qatar

Qatar has made remarkable economic achievements over the past few decades. Yet Qatar is facing a trade-off between boosting its economic growth and lowering its carbon dioxide emissions. Its strategic mandate to boost economic development, along with other areas related to sustainability, makes Qatar an interesting country to analyze.

The World Bank defines Qatar as one of the richest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita. Its economy is highly dependent on oil and gas production, which accounts for more than 50% of GDP, 85% of export earnings and 70% of government revenues. The country is also a major player in liquefied natural gas. Nonetheless, Qatar’s high dependence on fossil fuels has resulted in an increase in the CO2 emissions level when compared to global averages.

To combat the rising carbon emission percentages and lower environmental pressures, Qatar is introducing strict policy measures to achieve sustainable development through four central pillars: economic, social, human and environmental development. While many disruptions have occurred over the past few years, including fluctuations in oil and gas prices, economic downturns and a deadly pandemic, nobody expected an economic blockade.

The Diplomatic Rift

In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic relations with Qatar. They prohibited Qatar-registered planes and ships from utilizing their airspace and sea routes, and the Saudis also blocked Qatar’s only land border.

This point is of particular importance as the deterioration in relations among the Gulf neighbors urged Qatar to rethink its sustainable development goals while meeting local demand. At the beginning of the blockade, the country relied heavily on importing several commodities, especially food items. Later, it accelerated initiatives and programs to diversify the economy and reduce reliance on imports.

Achieving carbon neutrality is also factored into all Qatar’s initiatives. For example, by the end of 2022, Qatar aims to deliver the first carbon-neutral FIFA World Cup in the history of the event. All stadiums and infrastructure are subjected to rigorous sustainability standards. Several air quality monitoring stations and extensive recycling programs are being introduced, along with the construction of the eight stadiums that will be used during the football tournament.

Qatar has since become much more independent across several sectors, including food production and transport, making it a case study on how to transform challenges into opportunities for growth.

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This was also evident with total carbon emissions. According to my own analysis, carbon emission per capita fell by 13% as of 2018 from a historical record in 2000. Since then, total carbon emissions have increased as the economy has grown but at a slower rate, meaning that Qatar is undergoing expanding relative decoupling. In the 2008 to 2018 period, a 1% change in GDP resulted in a fall of CO2 emissions, from 0.65% to 0.44%. This drop is very relevant to Qatar as several measures have been applied, particularly over the last 10 years, to reduce emissions.

A Reduction in Emissions

While Qatar’s total emissions have declined over recent years, policies to increase energy efficiency, diversify the energy mix by introducing more renewables, support technological development to improve energy efficiency in a desert climate, and implement energy demand management programs to maintain the same trend of decline and achieve climate change objectives have been increasingly crucial.  

The heightened pressure caused by the blockade on Qatar is now over, but what is needed are more synergies and collective efforts across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to stimulate economic diversification and minimize carbon emissions. Member states of the GCC are sharing multiple environmental, social and economic factors that should incentivize them to cooperate to meet their climate change objectives and economic development goals.

*[Saad Shannak is a scientist at Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute, part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in Qatar. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the university’s official stance.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How Qatar Manages Economic Growth and CO2 Emissions appeared first on Fair Observer.

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One of the challenges is to decide where to draw the line between sustainable and “normal” investments, and how to subdivide the universe of sustainable finance. The lack of clear rules on what can be labeled “sustainable” opens the door to unscrupulous companies and fund managers trumpeting their environmental, social and governance rating ratings — known as ESG — while simply relabeling existing funds without changing neither the underlying strategies nor the portfolio composition. As a result, some observers are concerned that “the overall prevailing mechanism is based on short-term maximization of financial returns, and [that] ESG is still essentially an idea.”

Thus, the first step to improve the situation, according to Domingo Sugranyes of the Pablo VI Foundation, is to create “an accepted framework of definitions and metrics” at regional or global levels to identify high-level standards and align the actions undertaken by political authorities around the world. But it is also important to act on the other side of ESG, which is direct financing as opposed to the stock market. For example, the European Commission has adopted several regulations to support and improve the flow of money toward sustainable activities.

In addition, Archana Sinha of the Indian Social Institute suggests that broader structural reforms may be necessary “to fully integrate climate-aligned structural change with economic recovery.” Not only should the legal framework be changed so “that emissions generate costs,” says economist Ladislau Dowbor, but “international financial transactions must be taxed, so that they leave a trail, shedding light on tax havens while generating resources for sustainable practices.” Other measures, Etienne Perrot says, may include “central bank rediscount policy favoring sectors that do not use fossil fuels; active and pugnacious mobilization of the shareholders most aware of the ecological crisis; [and] monitoring of speculative drifts.”

If sustainable finance is to become real hope instead of hype, then we will also need governments to step in to fix the rules, with a view to make any financial activity “sustainable by default,” says Eelco Fiole, an investment governance expert. Otherwise, Perrot warns, “the present enthusiasm around sustainable finance may well be short-lived.”

By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski

Note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: What needs to be put in place in order to leverage the present enthusiasm around sustainable finance?

“…the ‘present enthusiasm around sustainable finance’ may be short-lived… ”

“Finance is only one of the means: directing public and institutional financial flows toward investments that exclude — or fight against — the carbon economy; central bank rediscount policy favoring sectors that do not use fossil fuels; active and pugnacious mobilization of the shareholders most aware of the ecological crisis; [and] monitoring of speculative drifts. However, whatever financial modalities are adopted, these ecological costs will necessarily weigh on financial profitability. Which leaves me to fear that the ‘present enthusiasm around sustainable finance’ is short-lived.”

Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)

“…labels should apply only to project financing related to clean energy… ”

“All sustainable finance labels should apply only to project financing related to clean energy. Investment houses should not finance fossil fuel firms in any way to declare themselves deserving of a sustainable finance seal of approval. This also goes for green financing.”

Oscar Ugarteche — visiting professor of economics at various universities

“…ESG is still essentially an idea…”

“The world produces an amount of goods and services amply sufficient to ensure everyone has a dignified life. We have the necessary technologies to produce in a sustainable way. And we presently have detailed understanding of the slow-motion catastrophe climate change represents. While the Paris conference presented the goals, the Addis Ababa conference on how to fund them reached no agreement. The overall prevailing mechanism is based on short-term maximization of financial returns, and ESG is still essentially an idea. The legal framework has to change, so that emissions generate costs. International financial transactions must be taxed, so that they leave a trail, shedding light on tax havens while generating resources for sustainable practices. The key issue is corporate governance.”

Ladislau Dowbor — economist, professor at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo, consultant to many international agencies

“…it is not clear that substantial public intervention is needed… ”

“Sustainable finance is a broad umbrella, but nonetheless has a clear meaning as investment strategies and products that aim at fostering activities that promote environmental, social and governance improvements. The private sector has rapidly developed, having realized that there is a clear appetite by investors for investment with such priorities. Specific products have been created, as well as rigorous metrics and certifications. It is therefore not clear that substantial public intervention is needed (in fostering sustainable finance, by contrast to ensuring proper pricing of, for instance, CO2 where taxes are needed). Public intervention could focus on requiring disclosure of the sustainability dimension of investment by financial intermediaries to facilitate transparency.”

Cedric Tille — professor of macroeconomics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva

“…every financial decision should take climate risk into account… ”

“Globally, the private sector needs altering processes, such that their investments do not worsen climate change. The Indian government needs to introduce guidelines to standardize climate-related revelations in all financial statements and push private companies to manage their exposure to climate risks in their tasks and processes. A lack of clarity about true exposures to specific climate risks for physical and financial assets, coupled with uncertainty about the size and timing of these risks, creates major vulnerabilities. It is suggested that the only way forward is to fully integrate climate-aligned structural change with economic recovery needing a fundamental shift in the entire finance system. Meaning that every financial decision should take climate risk into account and climate finance is integral to the transformation process.”

Archana Sinha — head of the Department of Women’s Studies at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, India

“…green rating for business firms…”

“Rendering sustainable finance an effective, practical concept depends, inter alia, on (1) measures regarding definitions, sustainability reporting and regulation; (2) genuine commitment to mitigation of climate change; and (3) honest and sound assessment of outcomes. Under 1, [it] can be singled out the extension of the definitions and accounting essential to regulation, with special attention to the concepts of natural capital and of contingent assets and liabilities. Under 2, there is the need for senior bankers and other key decision-makers to evaluate and explain the charting and navigation of the new business routes required for mitigation. Under 3, there are roles for many different parties — governments, central banks, research institutions and NGOs. The roles could include development and application of green ratings for business firms and other relevant institutions, which draw on historical experience with credit ratings.”

Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services

“…an accepted framework of definitions and metrics…”

“The movement toward ecological sustainability is still in its infancy in the world economy. It is real and probably here to stay, but companies and governments will meet many economic, physical and human hurdles on the way, including raw materials bottlenecks and lack of specialized talent. ESG investment can be seen as an expression of demand for sustainability in society, pressing in the right direction. But to confirm their effectiveness and credibility, ESG-motivated investors will need an accepted framework of definitions and metrics (the ‘taxonomy’ being discussed at the EU level). Ideally, one would imagine a worldwide, self-regulated consensus about environmental cost, similar to the one which led to the international acceptance of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).”

Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, former executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group

“…a point of reference in public debate…”

“A transition from enthusiasm to reality requires 3 steps:

1: From the experts’ room to the public sphere. Sustainable finance cannot flourish without being a point of reference in public debate and a ‘visible’ concern in everyday life. Such a paradigm shift can only be initiated through a participatory, sociopolitical justification.

2: Toward a glocal perspective. As it happens with every declaration, the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Agenda 2030 provisions need to be part of the national and local development strategy both as aims and evaluation measures.

3: From wishes to accountability. Various actions — mirrored in national and international law — are required to empower accountability: legislation initiatives that forbid hazardous products, give motives for ‘clean production’ and favor a circular economy, annual monitoring on sustainable practices, reduction of waste/emission and a regulatory framework for investment plans.”

Christos Tsironis — associate professor of social theory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece

“…any finance activity needs to be sustainable by default…”

“Given that rational justice requires the current generation to have a fiduciary duty to the future generation, any finance activity needs to be sustainable by default. In that sense, we need to distinguish between finance and unsustainable finance, and [we] need to focus on diminishing unsustainable finance to the benefit of finance. This means finance needs to be defined as purposeful and needs to account for all interests at stake. This then needs to be coded into law and into incentive systems. While ESG data is important, assessing and certifying impact on a case-by-case basis gives true input for governance and direction toward social and environmental sustainability, all things considered. This requires a new moral psychology for leadership.”

Eelco Fiole — investment governance expert, board director and adjunct professor of finance ethics in Lausanne and Neuchatel

*[An earlier version of this article was published by From Virus to Vitamin.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The statement that Putin signed with Chinese leader Xi Jinping confirms their overlapping interests, their joint insistence on the right to do whatever they like within their own borders, and their disgust over the destabilizing nature of various US military actions.

In Ukraine, More Than European Peace Is at Stake

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There’s much high-flown language in the statement about democracy, economic development and commitment to the Paris climate goals of 2015. But the timing of the statement suggests that it’s really about hard power. Putin didn’t travel all the way to Beijing and Xi didn’t meet with his first foreign leader in two years just to hammer out a general statement of principles. Putin wants China to have his back on Ukraine and is supporting Chinese claims over Taiwan and Hong Kong in return.

This isn’t an easy quid pro quo, given that the two countries have long had a wary relationship. In the past, Russia eyed China’s global economic ambitions with concern, and a certain type of Russian conspiracy theorist worried about large numbers of Chinese moving into the underpopulated Russian Far East. Before Putin took over, China was uncomfortable with the political volatility of its northern neighbor. After Putin, Beijing was not happy with the Kremlin’s military escapades in its near abroad.

But that is changing. “For the first time in any of Russia’s recent aggressions, Putin has won the open support of China’s leader,” Robin Wright writes in The New Yorker. “China did not back Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, or its invasion of Ukraine in 2014, nor has it recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea.”

The geopolitics of the new relationship between China and Russia is certainly important. But let’s take a look at what’s really fueling this new alliance. Quite literally.

Fossil Fuel Friendship

Inside the Arctic Circle, just across from the bleak military outpost of Novaya Zemlya, Russia has built the northernmost natural gas facility in the world: Yamal LNG. More than 200 wells have been drilled to tap into the equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil. Nuclear-powered icebreakers clear the port of Sabetta for liquefied natural gas tankers to transport the fuel to points south. Russia also plans to build a train line to ship what it expects to be 60 million tons of natural gas per year by 2030.

Russia can thank climate change for making it easier to access the deposits of natural gas. It can also thank China. Beijing owns about 30% of Yamal LNG. The Arctic is quite far away from China’s usual Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. Yamal is also an increasingly perilous investment because melting permafrost puts all that infrastructure of extraction at risk. But China needs huge amounts of energy to keep its economy growing at the rate the central government deems necessary.

That’s why so many of the BRI projects involving Russia are centered around fossil fuel. At the top of the list is the first Power of Siberia pipeline, which opened in 2019 to pump natural gas from the Russian Far East into China. A second such pipeline is under consideration, which would connect China to… Yamal LNG.

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At the moment, the natural gas from the Russian Arctic supplies consumers in Europe. With a second Power of Siberia pipeline, Russia could more easily weather a boycott from European importers. Yamal, by the way, is already under US sanctions, which has made Chinese financial backing even more essential. China is investing a total of $123.87 billion in the three phases of the Power of Siberia project, which is more than any other BRI oil and gas investment and four times what China spends on energy from Saudi Arabia.

But these are not the only Belt and Road connections between the two countries. Five of the top 10 BRI mining projects are in Russia, including a $1.8 billion coal mining complex. China is also investing in an Arctic free trade zone and upgraded rail and road links between the two countries.

Let’s be clear: the bear and the dragon don’t see eye to eye on everything. As Gaye Christoffersen writes in The Asan Forum: “China focused on infrastructural projects useful for importing Russian natural resources, while Russia focused on developing industries in resource processing. The two sides failed to reach a consensus. Later, China insisted, as a Near-Arctic state, on equal partnership in developing the Northern Sea Route, while Russia demanded respect for its sovereignty and rejected China’s Arctic claims. They are still in disagreement despite joint efforts.”

But the basic relationship remains: Russia has energy to sell and China is an eager buyer. In a side deal that coincided with their recent Olympic statement, for instance, China agreed to purchase $117.5 billion worth of oil and gas. “Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, announced a new agreement to supply 100 million tons of crude through Kazakhstan to the Chinese state company China National Petroleum Corporation over the next ten years—while the Russian energy giant Gazprom pledged to ship 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year to China through a new pipeline,” writes Frederick Kempe at the Atlantic Council. Talk about greasing the wheels of cooperation.

A Future Eastern Alliance?

Putin hasn’t given up on Europe. He still has friends in Victor Orban’s Hungary and Aleksandar Vucic’s Serbia. Europe remains the biggest market for Russian oil and gas. And both NATO and the European Union continue to attract the interest of countries on Russian borders, which means that the Kremlin has to pay close attention to its western flank.

But the Ukraine crisis, even if it doesn’t devolve into war, could represent a turning point in contemporary geopolitics.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping share a great deal in common. They are both nationalists who derive much of their public legitimacy not from an abstract political ideology, but from their appeals to homeland. They have a mutual disgust for the liberalism of human rights and checks on government power. Despite their involvement in various global institutions, they firmly believe in a sovereignist position that puts no constraints on what they do within the borders of their countries.

But perhaps the most operationally important aspect of their overlapping worldviews is their approach to energy and climate.

Both China and Russia are nominally committed to addressing climate change. They have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, though they both resort to some dodgy accounting to offset their actual emissions and meet their Paris commitments. China is more serious in terms of installing renewable energy infrastructure, with solar, wind and other sources responsible for 43% of power generation. Russia’s commitment to renewable energy at this point is negligible.

But both remain wedded to fossil fuels. It’s a matter of economic necessity for Russia as the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, the second-largest exporter of petroleum and the third-largest exporter of coal. Fossil fuels accounted for over 60% of the country’s exports in 2019; oil and gas alone provide well over a third of the federal budget. All of this is in jeopardy because a good number of Russia’s customers are trying to wean themselves of fossil fuel imports to cut their carbon emissions and to decrease their dependency on the Kremlin.

But not China. Despite its considerable investments into renewable energy, Beijing is still a huge consumer of fossil fuels. Chinese demand for natural gas has been rising for the last few years and won’t peak until 2035, which is bad news for the world but good news for the Russian gas industry. Oil consumption, which is more than twice that of natural gas and is rising more slowly, will peak in 2030.

Coal is still China’s largest source of energy. “Since 2011, China has consumed more coal than the rest of the world combined,” according to ChinaPower. “As of 2020, coal made up 56.8 percent of China’s energy use.” In 2020, as Alec MacGillis points out in a New Yorker piece, China built three times more power-generating infrastructure from coal than the rest of the world combined, and it continues to mine staggering amounts of the stuff. Despite all the domestic production, however, China still relies on imports. Because of trade tensions with Australia — the world’s second-largest exporter of coal after Indonesia — China has increasingly turned to Russia to meet demand.

In other words, Russia and China are positioning themselves to use as much fossil fuel and emit as much carbon as they can in the next two decades to strengthen their economies and their hegemonic power in their adjacent spheres—and before international institutions acquire the resolve and the power to hold countries to their carbon reduction promises.

Yes, other countries are slow to abandon fossil fuels. The United States, for instance, relies increasingly on natural gas for electricity generation to compensate for a marked reduction in the use of coal. Japan remains heavily dependent on oil, natural gas and coal. So, Russia and China are not unique in their attachment to these energy sources.

But if the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels teams up with one of the world’s largest producers, it doesn’t just discomfit NATO generals and the trans-Atlantic establishment. It should worry anyone who believes that we still have a chance to prevent runaway climate change by 2050.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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