By Chryso D'Angelo
NEW YORK, May 17 2010 (IPS)

Countries closest to the equator will suffer most from climate change, according to Gwynne Dyer, a geopolitical analyst and journalist who predicts catastrophic events over the next few decades if temperatures continue to rise.

Gwynne Dyer Credit: Courtesy of Gwynne Dyer

His new book “Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats” explores the calamity that escalating temperatures will cause to the world’s food supply, healthcare systems, militaries, and migration patterns.

“Africa takes the biggest hits in the region,” Dyer told IPS, adding that it could lose half of its food production over the next 25 years.

Dyer’s theory, based on interviews with world-renowned scientists, paints a grim picture of starvation, pandemics, and full-out war if carbon and greenhouse gas emissions are not halted.

“A few degrees make a big difference,” he told IPS. “Think of that difference as having a fever versus not having a fever. A few degrees hotter could be deadly to your body.”

In an interview with IPS correspondent Chryso D’Angelo, Dyer spoke about the threats of climate change that will reshape planet Earth. Excerpts follow.

Q: Much of “Climate Wars” emphasises food scarcity. How will failed crops affect developing countries? A: Two regions are affected in terms of food supply – the tropics and the subtropics. In the tropics (the Amazon, Burma, Northern Borneo, Philippines, Congo and Nigeria, among others), it rains a lot. Climate change will not bring a lack of water, but it will get hotter.

Major food crops (rice, wheat, corn), which are not native to that area, will fail if the temperature rises two to three degrees above 35 C for even a few hours during their critical three-week growing period. Native crops – yams, sweet potatoes and sorghum – might survive, but they don’t feed as many people.

Q: What will happen to food crops in the subtropics? A: These big grain-growing areas (including parts of Central America, Mexico, North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, China, the U.S. Australia, and Argentina, among others) are semi-deserts right now. Take away the water and the soil will be too dry to cultivate.

Q: Won’t melting glaciers compensate for the water loss? A: The glaciers will take at least 100 years to melt.

Q: In your book, you discuss how starving people will migrate to other countries. A: You can already see it happening. A quarter of the population in Zimbabwe has migrated to South Africa due to food shortage. There are riots because they are seen as taking jobs from South Africans. What happens when all of these countries send people elsewhere to feed themselves? The answer is countries slam their borders shut as a survival mechanism.

Q: How will climate change hamper health care? A: New diseases generally come out of the tropics and the sub-tropics, where peasant societies live with their animals. Food shortage will lead to failed states. Where there is no government, there is no health infrastructure, with no healthcare system to pick up on the early warning signs of a brewing pandemic. If a disease spreads, it can get into the population in a big way and be unstoppable before you know its name.

Q: Are any countries safe from the effects? A: The countries a long way from the Equator, like the northern United States, Canada, and Russia, will fare better.

Q: What’s your opinion on the outcome of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark? A: That was a train wreck – 192 countries were there, but that’s not a useful bargaining unit. You have to choose 20 countries that have most of the food, most of the consumption, have them make a deal and have other countries hop on board.

Q: Which countries should lead? A: The “old rich” countries (U.S., Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Canada, Japan) and the newly developing, but fast developing countries (China, India, Brazil). But they are at loggerheads at how to share the burden. Eighty percent of the human-sourced carbon dioxide, which is causing the problem, was put there by the “old rich” countries. So you have the rich countries saying, ‘You have to curb your emission because we’re at the brink’ and the developing countries are saying, ‘Well, who drove us there?’

Q: What’s the solution? A: The “old rich” must break emissions and help the rapidly developing countries grow their energy production with clean energy, like wind farms and solar panels, not coal-fired plants. It’s the debt we owe for what we did…but we didn’t mean any harm.

Q: How are the “old rich” countries moving toward a solution? A: In Copenhagen, the Europeans offered to cut 20 percent of emissions over the next 20 years and said if the developing world is willing to do this, they’ll go to 30 percent. The United States offered four percent and that’s as far as President Barack Obama could take it. He cannot, in the current political environment with the negative economy and so many years under George Bush, alienate everyone in Congress.

If he fights to get a big climate change bill through, he’s going to lose. It would be political suicide. Plus, Americans don’t want to hear they have to subsidise clean energy in China and cut their own emissions. In much more of the world, the governments are more frank with people, but they aren’t going to get punished for being frank.

Excerpt:

By Chryso D'Angelo
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 29 2010 (IPS)

Since the expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in December, U.S. and Russian negotiators have been busy hammering out a new pact that will reduce the number of nuclear warheads deployed in both countries by about one-quarter, according to Washington.

Jody Williams Credit: Photo by Judy Rand

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow Mar. 18 to discuss the progress of the START agreement, originally signed by the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) Jul. 31 1991, during the Cold War.

“It especially is important for the United States and Russia, who bear the responsibility, to continue the way forward on non-proliferation and to work as partners in the global effort to secure fissile materials and counter the threat of nuclear terrorism,” Clinton said.

The meeting came ahead of upcoming talks on nuclear disarmament: the Nuclear Security Summit, which will be held on Apr. 12-13 in Washington, and The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) conference, slated for May 3-28 in New York.

“We’re hearing rhetoric from governments, but words without action are not very useful,” Jody Williams, whose group helped ban anti-personnel land mines in 1997 tells IPS. Williams won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on the Mine Ban Treaty of 1997. She is founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).

“Governments are not going to move forward unless citizens come together to make it happen,” Williams says. “There are too many vested interests in the world to keep nukes.”

Following are excerpt from the interview:

Q: The Mine Ban Treaty was quite a success. It managed to stop the production of landmines in 38 nations and destroy almost 42 million anti- personnel mines worldwide. How can it be used as a model for nuclear disarmament? A: We succeeded because we brought together a range of non-government organisations with the common goal of disarming landmines. These were ordinary people that pressured governments to bring about change. We need that kind of model in order to bring about nuclear disarmament. I’m a little critical of civil society work on banning weapons, however. It doesn’t make my friends happy to hear me say it. It’s just my opinion as a grassroots activist on disarmament. I don’t see enough NGOs coming together with a single focus to stop nuclear proliferation.

Q: Why do you think that is? A: One of the great pluses we had in the landmine movement is that nobody had been doing it. We were coming into virgin territory. There were organisations taking mines out of the ground, giving victims prosthetics, but there were none banning the mine. In nuclear weapons, organisations have continued their work over decades. That creates turf. There is too much concern over who is going to get the credit.

Q: Do you support the START treaty? A: I firmly support START. I hope they sign an agreement before the Nuclear Security Summit in April and the NPT meeting in May.

Q: How has Europe’s position on the renegotiation of the START talks helped or hampered its advancement? A: Part of Europe’s position is terrific. There are five countries – Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Norway – that want the U.S. to get their arsenals out of Europe. The Czech Republic and Poland are not as excited about losing this nuclear umbrella because they fear the history of the Soviet Union.

I don’t see how the U.S. or Russia, who hold most of the world’s nuclear weapons, can go to the NPT conference in May and call upon states who have already given up the weapons to increase their commitment to not having them. If I were one of those states, I would be flipping them the bird, frankly.

Q: What type of roles, if any, will non-signatories of the NPT, like India and Pakistan, play in the conference in May? A: If I’m India, I’m just going to be sitting there watching because the U.S. has demonstrated that the world is a hypocrisy by violating the NPT. The U.S. made it legitimate to sell nuclear technology to India. How can you do these things with credibility and ask countries to not do the same thing? It’s the model of the bully saying, ‘I’m the biggest guy on the block. I have the most and the biggest nukes, so you have to let me do what I want to do.’

Q: Do you feel there are double standards on Iran? A: Yes, there is a double standard, which doesn’t mean that Iran doesn’t have bad intentions. However, if I’m Iran, and I’m in that volatile region and I see Bush threaten Iraq over weapons of mass destruction and then invade to find that there are no weapons and then I see his dealings with North Korea, which has weapons, and he does nothing, what would I conclude? That I should have weapons to defend myself.

Q: How realistic are fears of an Islamic nuclear bomb? A: Fears of new nuclear weapons anywhere in the world are realistic. There are about 34 countries that have petitioned to get the technology to build nuclear power. Many are in the Middle Eastern region that we’re worried about. With nuclear technology, you can build a bomb.

Excerpt:

By Chryso D'Angelo
NEW YORK, Mar 23 2010 (IPS)

Thirteen women are murdered in “honour killings” by their own relatives every day, according to Rana Husseini, a human rights advocate and journalist who has devoted her career to fighting the barbaric and widespread practice.

Rana Husseini Credit: Courtesy of Rana Husseini

“I’m documenting the cases of women, their stories, the fact that they lived on this earth and that someone deprived them the right to live,” Husseini told IPS.

An honour killing occurs when a family feels that their female relative has tarnished their reputation, according to Husseini, author of the recently released book “Murder in the Name of Honor”.

“The person chosen by the family to carry out the murder (usually male: a brother, father, cousin, paternal uncle or husband) brutally ends their female relative’s life to cleanse the family of the ‘shame’ she brought upon them,” she writes in her book.

The Jordan Times journalist has heard stories of women around the world being killed for chewing gum, laughing at a joke in the street, and wearing makeup. According to Husseini, reports submitted to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights indicate that honour crimes occur in Jordan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, Britain, the Palestinian Territories, India, Israel, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, Yemen, Uganda and the United States, among others.

Not only did Husseini’s hard-hitting reports raise local awareness, but in 2008, she helped form the National Jordanian Committee to Eliminate so-called Crimes of Honour. Her ultimate goal is to change Jordanian law by demanding tougher punishments for the perpetrators of these crimes.

In an interview with IPS correspondent Chryso D’Angelo, Husseini spoke about the challenges of halting honour killings in her country. Excerpts follow.

Q: Has there been any progress in stopping honour killings? A: Jordan is a very good example of progress. If I look back to where I started to today, there have been tremendous changes. For example, in 2009 there was the first ever special tribunal to try men who kill in family honour. For the first time the court refused the family’s request to drop charges. The man got 15 years. This is a major change. Civil society has been active and the government is talking about changing some laws.

Q: In what way has the Jordanian government stepped in? A: In Jordan, work has been done on all levels, starting with the royal family and at the grassroots level. Queen Rania has been outspoken. Even King Hussein has been active in addressing the issue of domestic violence and women and children. When you have a leader of a country talking about this issue, it’s important – and something you don’t see in many countries.

Q: Do you see any changes in the attitudes of men? A: In the past when I lectured, men would raise their hands and say, ‘I would kill my sister; so what? She did something wrong.’ But now men are more open to being involved in talking about the issue. There is a group in Jordan which has been doing a traveling play for about five years. Some characters are men. The play involves honour killing and they stop and ask people what they think. It’s important for men to be involved.

Q: Honour killings are not solely carried out by men. For example, you wrote about an honour killing that took place in St. Louis in 1989, which recounts a mother/father team. The mother held down the daughter while the father stabbed her to death. Her crime was being too “Westernised.” What role do women play in honour killings? A: Women are usually divided into two parts. First, there are those who don’t have a say in the issue. If they stand up and speak, they might get killed themselves. That’s how they wind up as accomplices. Others really believe that the woman should be punished and that it will be a lesson to others in the family.

Q: Have you ever come across a situation in which a female intervened to help another woman? A: No, I have never seen anyone intervene.

Q: Are there any social ramifications for a man or woman who commits an honour killing? A: There is hypocrisy among the people that push others into killing. I interviewed several killers who said they were promised things like money if they committed the murder and then their families turned their backs on them.

Q: You mentioned in a PBS interview that honour killings are not a religious issue, but a cultural one. A: Unfortunately, a lot of people think these murders are related to Islam. These crimes happen in all religions. I have reported stories of women killed by family members in Jordan who were Christian. In Italy, there are men who kill their family members in the name of honour. It happens in the Hindi faith, too.

Q: Why did you write this book? A: I want it to be a credible reference and resource book for anybody who wants information on this topic. I also want to put forth solutions for people who might want to know what they can do to help.

Excerpt:

Despite numerous factors that threaten the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 – a global financial crisis, a food crisis, climate change, natural disasters – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this week that his main concern is “political will”.

Ban addressed U.N. member states and media following the release of his report, “Keeping the Promise”, on Mar. 16. The report “reviews successes, identifies obstacles, and suggests ways to accelerate progress,” according to the secretary-general.

At a meeting of the General Assembly, he warned that, “We are off course because of unmet commitments, inadequate resources and a lack of focus and accountability.”

“We do not need new pledges,” Ban said later that day at a media briefing. “If nations deliver on the financial commitments they have already made, we can achieve the goals. There is clearly a lack of political will.”

The secretary-general added that he is optimistic that the MDG Summit (formally, the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly), which will run Sep. 20-22 at United Nations headquarters in New York, will reinvigorate the commitment to meeting the goals.

“There is a need for a push,” Francesca Perucci of the U.N. Statistical Planning and Development Division, told IPS, “especially because with the financial crisis you have the sense that donors might be more careful.” The push is hard. Nine meetings are scheduled leading up to the summit. They will focus on specific MDG goals.

These include a June conference on maternal and reproductive health, a July gathering of government ministers at the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to examine gender equality, and a mid-September report of the MDG Gap Task Force, which will present data and recommendations on how to meet the 8th goal on Global Partnership, which includes international commitments on aid, trade, and debt relief.

The secretary-general strongly emphasised that these goals will not be met if the donor community doesn’t deliver on its promises of official development assistance (ODA). For example, his report notes that 154 billion dollars (in current value) was pledged at the 2005 Gleneagles G8 Summit.

However, the flow of monies has not been steady since 2005. Therefore, 35 billion dollars a year would be needed by 2015 to achieve that target.

While there is no finalised data to assess the impact of the financial crisis on fulfilling the MDG goals, the report estimates that in 2009, 55 to 99 million more people lived in extreme poverty than had been projected before the economic crisis. The numbers are staggering, given that the goal of MDG 1 (eradicate extreme poverty and hunger) was to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

In fact, the number of hungry has been rising since 1995 and the proportion of hungry people in the global population has been rising since 2004-2006. The latest figures show that in 2005, 1.4 billion people, or one quarter of the population of the developing world, lived below the international poverty line, on less than 1.25 dollars a day.

Perucci notes that the food crisis puts the poor in far more dire straits than the economic crisis.

“Looking at the most recent data, food security is one of the targets more at risk of not seeing as much progress,” she told IPS. That’s because economics are not the lone factor affecting its success.

“Food availability doesn’t just have to do with economic growth, but how food reaches developing countries,” Perucci told IPS. “Factors such as natural disasters, poor food distribution policies and lack of social safety nets are contributing to the crisis. That’s the area where the international community will have to work the most.”

Ban is not only rallying member states around the fulfillment of the MDG goals, he’s hoping to rally the world.

“The United Nations will strengthen our efforts to raise public awareness,” he said. “People everywhere must see that reaching the goals is in everyone’s common interest. The September Summit must reinvigorate a sense of moral solidarity. If we don’t, if we fall short, all the dangers of our world will grow more perilous still.”