According to the 2012 Small Arms Survey, as much as 8.5 billion dollars is spent every year on the legal trade of small arms and light weapons. Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 28 2012 (IPS)

The goal of curbing small arms proliferation appears more elusive than ever, according to a report released this morning by the independent research project Small Arms Survey.

As much as 8.5 billion dollars is spent every year on authorised international transfers of small arms and light weapons, more than twice the previous estimate of 2006, according to Small Arms Survey’s annual flagship publication, the 2012 edition of which is titled “Moving Targets”. The project, based in Geneva, has been investigating small arms and light weapons across the world for more than 13 years.

Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW), which range from handguns to landmines or hand grenades, cause many deaths and injuries across the world. The United Nations (U.N.) has been trying to reduce SALW trade for years.

“Across the world, violence carried out with small arms and light weapons undermines our efforts to promote sustainable development, protect human rights, build safer cities, improve public health, and help countries emerge from conflict,” stated U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the beginning of the survey.

“The casualties include children, the stability of entire societies, and public confidence in institutions,” Ban added.

The Small Arms Survey’s new report was released on the first day of the second review conference of the U.N. Programme of Action (PoA), at U.N. headquarters in New York.

U.N. member states agreed upon the PoA in 2001 with the goal of reducing the “human suffering caused by the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons” through “the promotion of a culture of peace”.

Yet more than a decade after the signing of the programme, the findings of the Small Arms Survey show that the PoA still has much to achieve.

The long-awaited Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which fell short of being ratified a few weeks ago at U.N. headquarters, could have been a major actor in reducing the trade in SALW. But the ATT negotiations did not reach an agreement, with countries opting for further talks and a possible General Assembly vote in October.

“(The ATT) is an ambitious undertaking and we will continue to watch it. It’s not yet a success, but we would not define it as a failure either,” Eric Berman, the managing director of Small Arms Survey, told IPS.

According to researchers, expansion in small arms trade is caused by both civilians and governments, with U.S. citizens spending more on small arms than ever and a concentrated handful of governments purchasing arms on a larger scale, mainly for armed forces involved in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Recreational hunters and other private individuals buy millions of imported rifles, shotguns and rounds of ammunition each year,” the survey said.

The 367-page long volume also presented a list of the main importers and exporters of SALW, with the United States topping both categories.

Despite the survey’s length, however, gathering data on SALW is no easy task, and the Small Arms Survey must deal with the overall lack of transparency of governments. The report pointed out that “in the past ten years, 29 countries published a national arms export report at least once; 25 of them are European states.” Of the non-European states, “only Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the U.S. have published national arms export reports.”

To address this problem, the Small Arms Survey’s experts created a transparency barometer, enabling them to evaluate each country’s willingness to share information.

“We’re still at a very low number, but the trend is upwards,” Berman told IPS. “The major exporters are improving their reporting and their data provision, and I’m optimistic that we’ll continue to gain greater bind from governments to share information,” he added.

The Small Arms Survey’s yearbook is then to be used as a resource for many, including governments and policy-makers. “It is usual for countries to use our data,” Small Arms Survey’s research director Anna Alvazzi del Frate told IPS. “It’s an instrument that helps them.”

The extensive volume broaches many topics, such as illicit small arms in war zones, Somali piracy, drug violence, guns in Latin America and the Caribbean, non-lethal firearm violence, Kazakhstan or the rise in private security companies, which all highlight the toll taken by SALW and the need to limit their number.

Despite the sheer volume of research and data collected by Small Arms Survey, however, much is left to be done to reduce SALW trade. The U.N. has made doing so a top priority, with Ban calling for an end to “the big problems caused by small arms”. With the recent failure in negotiations at the U.N. in July, however, perhaps the only certainty in the effort to curtail SALW trade is that significant challenges remain.

Two months after he sought refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy, WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange was formally granted asylum by Quito on Thursday.

Julian Assange. Credit: Espen Moe/CC BY 2.0

But with Sweden and the United States pursuing him for potential criminal charges, Assange is unlikely to make his way out of the U.K., which has threatened to break in to the embassy to arrest him.

Assange has been avoiding extradition to Sweden for months, where he is to be questioned over sex assault claims, a mere “attempt to get (him) into a jurisdiction which will then make it easier to extradite (him) to the U.S.,” he told the Sun in December.

The Ecuadorean government said that the decision was taken after the UK, Sweden and the U.S. refused to guarantee that once extradited to Sweden, Assange would not be sent to Washington to face additional charges.

The three countries “would not provide any guarantees that he would not be sent to the U.S. to be tried for political crimes,” Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) told IPS.

“So (Ecuador) had no choice under international law but to grant him asylum,” Weisbrot said.

“We believe (Assange’s) fears are legitimate and that he could face political persecution if the measures are not taken,” Ricardo Patino, Ecuador’s minister of foreign affairs, said Thursday at a press conference in Quito.

The famous hacker, once called a “hi-tech terrorist” by the Barack Obama administration, fears that he would then face other charges for having leaked top-secret information, including 400,000 documents about the Iraq war and U.S. torture of detainees.

He has thus far found refuge in the premises of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been sleeping on an air mattress since June. If he sets foot outside of the building, he will be arrested by the British police, sent to Sweden, and possibly the United States.

Thursday, applause from many of Assange’s supporters could be heard outside of the embassy as news came that Ecuador had granted diplomatic asylum to their Australian refugee.

“I am grateful to the Ecuadorean people, President Rafael Correa and his government. It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation,” Assange wrote on WikiLeaks before posting “Gracias a Ecuador y ustedes” (Thanks to Ecuador and to you) on his Twitter.

If extradited to Washington, the famous whistleblower would likely face heavy charges.

“Assange would risk the severest penalties – life imprisonment or even the death penalty – if he were tried in the U.S.,” Reporters Without Borders’ Delphine Halgand told IPS.

“The resources deployed by the U.S. authorities to track down WikiLeaks activists and supporters and obtain their personal data can only reinforce these concerns,” she said.

But while the announcement of asylum came as good news for Assange and his numerous supporters, it did not change his situation in any way, with the U.K. police now surrounding the embassy in a “menacing show of force”, according to WikiLeaks.

Should Assange attempt to leave his safe haven, he would be arrested before reaching the airport.

“We will not allow Mr. Assange safe passage out of the U.K., nor is there any legal basis for us to do so,” the British foreign secretary said in a statement released Thursday.

“The U.K. does not accept the principle of diplomatic asylum,” the statement read.

London had previously threatened to enter the Ecuadorean embassy to arrest Assange. However, such a move would blatantly infringe on the inviolability of diplomatic premises as defined under the Vienna Convention, according to Michael Ratner, a legal adviser to WikiLeaks.

“The fact that the British – and I was as shocked as anybody – said yesterday that they might invade the embassy to get their hands on Julian Assange is an incredible violation of international law that is unheard of,” he told Democracy Now.

“I mean, think about the Chinese going into the U.S. embassy to get Chen out in China… This is unheard of in law, it’s unheard of in diplomacy, and it’s an outrageous and egregious undermining of the right of a country to give asylum,” Ratner added.

Other legal experts doubt the UK would actually follow through on such threats.

“(The UK) mentioned revoking diplomatic status for the embassy… Too legally risky in my view,” Carl Gardner, a former lawyer for the British government, told IPS.

If he still refuses to surrender, Assange has two options – holing up in his hideout or trying to reach an airport via an embassy vehicle, which would very likely lead to his arrest.

“I’d be tempted to advise him to go to Sweden and defend himself if there’s a trial. I think that’s inevitable in the end. I don’t think I could offer him any hope of a way out,” Gardner told IPS.

But Gardner adds, wryly, that there’s yet another possibility: “Ecuador could name Assange its representative to the United Nations. That would make him immune from arrest while traveling to U.N. meetings around the world.”

The ozone layer if CFCs hadn't been banned. Credit: NASA

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 2 2012 (IPS)

The Montreal Protocol, a climate treaty that gathers all U.N. member countries behind the goal of protecting the ozone layer, may not be the “most successful international agreement” anymore, as former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan used to put it.

The treaty has achieved a great deal in the more than two decades it has been in force, with a 97-percent reduction in the consumption of ozone-depleting substances. However, it is now being widely criticised for worsening climate change by replacing those harmful chemicals with climate-threatening substitutes.

The total phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were widely used as refrigerants and had a high ozone depletion potential, has led to a climate protection bonus equivalent to 11 billion tonnes of CO2 reductions each year, according to the U.N. Environment Programme.

To put it in simpler terms, the Protocol had the annual environmental impact of one billion homes being completely off the electrical grid.

But this remarkable achievement is now being undermined by the chemicals that were used to replace CFCs: hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs, a group of “super” greenhouse gases. HFCs, which can be found in many products such as refrigerators and aerosols, are the fastest growing class of greenhouse gas and have an extremely high global warming potential, scientists say.

The situation is critical: without fast action to limit their growth, HFCs could annually contribute up to 20 percent as much to global warming as carbon dioxide by 2050, according to a recent press release by the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development

The U.S., Mexico, Canada and Micronesia have taken a firm stance, proposing an amendment to the Montreal Protocol during the last meeting of state parties in Bangkok last month, which addresses HFCs.

“Phasing down HFCs is essential to… limit the adverse environmental effects, including effects on the climate system, of actions taken to protect the ozone layer,” according to the text submitted at the end of July in Bangkok.

But the discussion was cut short as the proposed amendment, which would have helped attain an equivalent reduction of 100 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2050, was blocked by India, China and Brazil for the fourth year.

The three powers delayed any potential action by arguing that the phase-down of the harmful chemical should be addressed under the Kyoto Protocol, since it is a matter of global warming and not ozone depletion.

But most parties think that since the growth in HFCs is a direct consequence of the Montreal Protocol, it is also the treaty’s duty to find climate-safe alternatives.

“The legal mandate of Montreal is not limited only to phasing out ozone depleters. It includes making sure the replacement compounds are safe, including for the climate,” David Doniger, policy director for the U.S.-based National Resources Defence Council’s climate and clean air programme, told IPS.

“HFCs would not exist without the Montreal Protocol,” Clare Perry, senior campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency, told IPS.

“(The Montreal Protocol) is also the body most experienced in phasing out these types of chemicals and has all the necessary institutions and procedures to do it effectively,” Perry added.

But political manoeuvring appears to be overshadowing the initial purpose of the treaty. The dissenters might just be trying to narrow the scope of the Montreal Protocol in order to act in their own financial interests, according to Perry.

“There’s clearly a reluctance to take on binding commitments to deal with HFCs,” she told IPS.

India and China are “the precursors of HFCs, and their industries are determined to continue making massive and increasing profits from these super greenhouse gases,” she added.

The decision to block the progressive phase-down of HFCs is not in line with the recent promises made by 192 state parties, including the three blockers, during the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development that took place in Rio de Janeiro in June.

“We recognize that the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances is resulting in a rapid increase in the use and release of high global-warming potential hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) to the environment. We support a gradual phase-down in the consumption and production of hydrofluorocarbons,” the final document, which was also signed by India, China and Brazil, stated.

“Apparently their commitment to safeguard the climate from HFCs had less than a one-month half-life,” said NRDC’s Doniger.

The matter must be addressed urgently, since global warming and ozone damage are “intimately connected”, according to James G. Anderson, a scientist and lead author of a recent study published by Harvard University.

More global warming leads to more storms, and those storms will increase the risk of ozone loss from convectively injected water vapour, the study found.

But phasing down HFCs is far from impossible, as was made clear at the technical conference that took place on the weekend prior to the meeting of the Montreal Protocol state parties, and which presented the wide range of options available.

“There are many climate-friendly alternatives to HFCS in pretty much every sector… and this would be some of the most cost-effective climate mitigation available,” Perry told IPS.

Reducing consumption in HFCs would also allow world leaders to achieve the seventh Millennium Development Goal, set in 2000, which strives to “ensure environmental sustainability” by 2015 through the Montreal Protocol.
If the 25-year-old international climate treaty – the most widely ratified in U.N. history – wants to restore its reputation, action needs to be taken, Perry warned.

“(The Montreal Protocol) is widely considered to be the most successful multilateral environmental agreement, however we believe that the best is yet to come and it needs to ensure it deserves this accolade by swiftly adopting measures to phase-out out HFCs,” she told IPS.

Boys play with toy guns in a suburb of Maputo. Some 2,000 persons are killed by arms every day. Credit: UN Photo/Pernaca Sudhakaran

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2012 (IPS)

The protracted negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) with the ambitious aim of eradicating the illicit trade in conventional arms hit a deadlock Friday at United Nations as Washington, Moscow and Beijing required “more time” after six years of preparatory meetings.

The Arms Trade Treaty could have, for the first time, regulated the trade of conventional weapons in the world.

“This treaty is a key element to make people safe,” representatives of Control Arms, an NGO striving for a legally binding Arms Trade Treaty, told reporters Friday morning, a few hours before the final meeting.

“All eyes are on Washington to see if the Obama administration is ready to lead this treaty to a conclusion.”

“We have until the end of the day, the historic opportunity is here,” they added, confident and hopeful for the final day of negotiations.

But while activists had been pointing at the draft treaty’s “numerous loopholes” during the last week, the main loophole of the conference turned out to be the lack of political will from three big powers.

In a dramatic turn of events, the U.S., the world’s largest exporter of arms, refused to accept the long-awaited treaty Friday night, followed by Russia and China.

“The U.S. have had three years to sort out what they want, there were a lot of opportunities to find ways to reach consensus,” Amnesty International’s Brian Wood told reporters during Friday’s briefing.

“This statement is not ‘yes, we can’, it’s ‘yes, maybe, we’ll do it later’,” Wood added.

While 153 states have consistently voted in favour of what could have been a first-of-its-kind regulation on conventional weapons, Washington, Moscow and Beijing declared that they needed “more time”, thus postponing the finalisation of the treaty to next year.

With 2,000 persons killed by arms every day, the delay came as a disappointment for many, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“I am disappointed that the conference on the Arms Trade Treaty concluded its four-week-long session without agreement on a treaty text that would have set common standards to regulate the international trade in conventional arms,” Ban said in a statement released late Friday in London, where he was attending the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

Although activists considered the final draft to be satisfying “in spite of some loopholes”, Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian negotiator at the Arms Trade Treaty conference, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the text was too “weak” and that Moscow “could not support it in its current form”, without giving much more detail.

As for Beijing, it asked the EU to drop its arms embargo on China, which generated laughter in the conference room, and was visibly not satisfied by the refusal.

Rather than a fight for human rights, the Arms Trade Treaty Conference became a political game played by the three big powers.
The ongoing Syrian situation has had a great influence on the outcome, with Russia still selling arms to Syria and the U.S. seeking to increase its aid to the Free Syrian Army.
“We’re looking at the controlled demolition of the Assad regime,” Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, had told the New York Times a week before the end of negotiations.

“Such a move permits Russia’s weaponising of Syria’s Assad regime, American unfettered aid to the Free Syrian Army, and Chinese military assistance to North Korea and Iran,” Kathi Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project and former U.N. arms investigator, told IPS.

In addition to the complex Middle East situation, the U.S. had to deal with the anger of its biggest gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), which campaigned against a treaty that, it said, threatened the right of U.S. citizens to bear arms.

In the run-up to November’s presidential election, President Obama is clearly leery of a public spat with the association, which has more than four million members.

According to the NRA, the treaty was “wholly incompatible with the Second Amendment rights protected by (the) Constitution.”

However, it has been repeated many times during the talks that the treaty only sought to control international arms transfers and had therefore nothing to do with the Second Amendment.

“The NRA did their own lobbying and sent a message, but one that was not connected to what was happening in the conference room,” Alberto Estevez, Amnesty International’s lobbying coordinator on the arms trade treaty, told IPS.

“It was very misleading and it only helped create confusion,” Estevez added.

A U.N. arms trade treaty would not “interfere with the domestic arms trade and the way a country regulates civilian possession”, the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs had emphasised at the beginning of the month.

But Friday night, after months of campaigning, the NRA celebrated the failure of the treaty.

“This is a big victory for American gun owners, and the NRA is being widely credited for killing the U.N. ATT,” the organisation proudly declared.

The “killed” Arms Trade Treaty is now to be referred to the U.N. General Assembly’s First Committee in October, where it will be submitted to a majority vote.

The process will take a long time, Estevez warns.

“It might well take two to three years at least, and that would mean that the ATT would not enter into force until 2014 or 2015,” he told IPS.

“A key question remains whether the largest exporter of arms – the U.S. – wants to be part of the game,” Estevez added.

Civil society remains hopeful that the U.S., which holds the key to consensus, will help make the treaty a reality.

“The Obama administration’s feebleness in the face of the American gun lobby will result in 2,000 lives lost each day… but (it) still has time to turn election year adversity around by courageously supporting a strong Arms Trade Treaty outcome during the U.N. General Assembly meetings in October,” Austin told IPS.

“We won’t give up,” Amnesty International’s Estevez told IPS. “The battle still goes on.”

The Control Arms coalition demonstrated in front of the United Nations two days before the ratification of the Arms Trade Treaty, reminding delegates of the price paid every day by armed violence. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 2012 (IPS)

As heated negotiations on a global Arms Trade Treaty near their close Friday at United Nations headquarters in New York, members of civil society as well as some U.N. member states are highly disappointed by what they call the draft text’s numerous loopholes.

The ambitious and long-awaited treaty, which is to be ratified on Friday, aims to “prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade of conventional arms”.

The text is “not looking good”, according to Control Arms, a global movement that campaigns for a legally-binding Arms Trade Treaty.

After days and nights of protracted negotiations, the 193 state parties seem to have come to an agreement that falls short of high expectations.

“This text is a leaky bucket, it has too many loopholes and gaps in it,” Anna McDonald, head of arms control for Oxfam, told IPS.

Among other things, observers are calling for countries to include ammunition in the treaty, which would currently cover only a handful of conventional arms.

“At the moment, the treaty is covering some weapons but not bullets, which are literally the fuel of conflict,” McDonald said.

“A gun without a bullet is just a heavy metal stick,” she added.

The treaty is based on a consensus agreement, which means that all 193 state parties involved have to agree for any clause to be adopted, thus leading to hours-long negotiations that have sometimes ended in the middle of the night.

Most of the regions of the world that suffer from high levels of armed violence, such as Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, have clearly stated that they wanted ammunition to be included in the treaty, but the United States firmly opposes it.

The inclusion of ammunition is also backed by most U.N. Security Council members, including Germany, France and Britain.

Its absence is a “massive weakness of the treaty,” Helen Hughes, a lead researcher on military and security issues for Amnesty International, told IPS.

The U.S., which is the world’s largest arms exporter, has explained its decision not to include ammunition by arguing that the regulation would be too complicated to implement.

“It doesn’t make sense,” McDonald told IPS. “The U.S. is the government that’s holding out the strongest against the inclusion of ammunition, but it actually regulates its own ammunition exports.”

NGOs such as Amnesty International, Oxfam and Control Arms are now calling on Washington to urgently change its position.

“The U.S. must listen to the voices of African states, to the ones that are experiencing problems of armed violence and conflict,” McDonald said.

With just three months to go before the U.S. election, President Barack Obama is thought by many observers to be afraid of angering the powerful gun lobby in the United States.

“Sadly for the millions of lives at risk elsewhere in the world, U.S. politics in an election year prevents the Obama administration from taking a bold stand to champion its own model laws,” Kathi Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project and former U.N. arms investigator, told IPS.

“President Obama is a crucial decision maker and the U.S. could stand up firm in terms of ensuring that these loopholes are closed in the final day of negotiations,” Hughes added.

But the exclusion of ammunition is far from the only disappointment in the draft text, activists say.

The section of the text dealing with arms middlemen, who are the biggest suppliers of weapons to terrorists and warlords, is only one sentence and has also come under a lot of criticism.

“Each State Party shall take the appropriate measures…to control brokering,” the draft states.

That is one “weak, watered down sentence with no teeth and no requirements”, according to Austin.

“The draft treaty language appears designed to let illegal gunrunners off the hook,” she told IPS.

“That is not exactly going to make the world a safer, better place,” she added.

According to the draft, it would also be the responsibility of each government to make a risk assessment before allowing an arms transfer.

State parties would thus have to ensure that their export of arms would only contribute to peace and security, but many have criticised what they consider an “escape clause”.

“(The governments) can still decide to go ahead if they want to,” McDonald told IPS.

“There must be unambiguous rules. The text should clearly state that when there is a risk that these arms might end up in the hands of human rights abusers or warlords, then that transfer must not go ahead.

“It’s as simple as that,” McDonald said.

According to Hughes, the text should contain a practical methodology of how to make that risk assessment.

“(Amnesty International) believes that you can objectively assess arms transfer… we look forward to how this could take place,” Hughes said.

Finally, sanctions following a violation of the treaty are not mentioned in the draft text, thus failing to provide a real legally-binding agreement.

“At the moment there is no provision on the criminalization at the national level… and (Amnesty International) would want that in,” Hughes said.

The absence of such sanctions means that a government’s arms exports could be used to commit violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law as well as acts of terrorism and organised crime, thus debilitating the treaty.

One day is left to reach consensus before the Arms Trade Treaty, which was initiated at the U.N. six years ago, is ratified.

Observers are concerned that the treaty might not reduce the number of deaths and injuries which occur as a result of armed violence and conflict, should the draft be adopted in its present form.

According to Control Arms, nearly 750,000 people die from armed violence each year, and two of three live in countries at peace. A full ten percent of the world population owns small arms.

“The governments have got two days to change that text and turn it into a treaty that will really save lives and livelihoods,” McDonald told IPS. “Today is the day that they need to make these changes happen.”

Agriculture Under-Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agriculture Service Michael Scuse (left) speaks to farmers about the drought conditions being felt across the country on the Shaefer Farm in Allen County, Indiana on Jul. 19, 2012. Credit: USDA

By Coralie Tripier
NEW YORK, Jul 20 2012 (IPS)

The United States is suffering one of its most severe droughts in decades, leading to both widespread crop failures and increased public concern about the impacts of climate change.

According to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climatic Data Center, the northern hemisphere’s land and ocean average surface temperature for June was the warmest ever recorded.

The same holds true for the previous two months.

“Drought events are likely to become more frequent and intense in many parts of the world, particularly in the southwestern U.S.,” Andrew Freedman, a senior science writer for Climate Central, a climate news and research organisation, told IPS.

Failing crops

The drought, which is less extreme but geographically even more widespread than the one that led to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s – a period of severe agricultural loss in the U.S. – is now affecting more than 60 percent of the country, and 78 percent of the corn-growing regions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

“In the 18 primary corn-growing states, 30 percent of the crop is now in poor or very poor condition,” the National Drought Summary said. “In addition, fully half of the nation’s pastures and ranges are in poor or very poor condition.”

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has responded by designating more than 1,000 counties in 26 states as natural disaster areas, making affected farmers eligible for low-interest emergency loans from the Farm Service Agency (FSA).

Still, the unprecedented drought will inevitably take a heavy toll on farmers, according to John Hawkins from the Farm Bureau of Illinois, one of the most affected states.

“The loss of crops brings emotional and economic stress to farm families,” Hawkins told IPS.

“We have some counties in the most affected areas of the drought (southern Illinois) where they may not harvest a corn or soybean crop this fall if it does not rain,” Hawkins added.

With the U.S. the world’s corn producer, growing 40 percent of the world’s supply, the consequences could be very serious and would affect everyone from cultivators to consumers worldwide.

In addition to the financial losses that farmers will face, ranchers who mainly feed their cattle with corn and soybeans will also greatly suffer from the drought.

As a ripple effect, the whole economy will be affected by the extreme weather conditions.

“With fewer cattle and hogs being fed, meat prices for consumers will likely rise next year,” Hawkins added.

Rising corn and soybean prices will also greatly affect dairy producers and lead to a price hike in milk and cheese, according to the USDA.

Cows are indeed suffering from the heat and the shortage of staple food.

In Illinois, “cows that were producing ninety pounds a day are now only producing sixty or seventy pounds daily”, Jim Fraley of the Illinois Milk Producers Association in Bloomington told IPS.

“Farmers are doing all they can to keep cows cool,” Fraley added.

“There will be milk for sale,” Roger Hoskin, an agricultural economist with the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, told IPS.

“I do not expect lines at the supermarket to buy milk, but prices will likely be higher,” Hoskin concluded.

A portent of global warming

The current weather conditions have also led to other unusual events.

The United States has seen a dramatic increase in wildfires since mid-June, according to the National Drought Summary, with more than a thousand homes lost to fire since January.

In the Arctic, the ice sheet also melted more than average this June, according to a 2012 publication on the Greenland ice sheet by Jason Box, a researcher at Byrd Polar Research Center.

“It is reasonable to expect 100 per cent melt area over the ice sheet within another similar decade of warming,” Box concluded.

Many agree that the unusual heat wave is another sign of climate change, and a recent report by the NOAA concluded that, because of human-driven global warming, cold Decembers are now half as likely to occur as they were 50 years ago.

The report also focused on the state of Texas, which suffered its driest season in 2011, and concluded that heat waves are 50 times more likely to happen in the state than they were back in the 1960s.

A poll released on Jul. 16 by the University of Texas at Austin showed that the current extreme weather conditions have led to a stronger belief in global warming among U.S. citizens.

It only took four very dry months for the percentage of respondents denying climate change to fall from 22 percent to 15 percent.

Freedman believes the current situation is a product of both human-induced climate change and natural climate variability.

“It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, which are causing a large part of global warming, would be a good idea if we want to slow this process down and avoid some of the worst-case scenarios, including more severe drought events,” he told IPS.

Cooks prepare supper for about 60 people. Every resident is expected to put two hours of work into the community every week. Credit: Coralie Tripier /IPS

By Coralie Tripier
ITHACA, New York, Jul 16 2012 (IPS)

Ecovillage at Ithaca (EVI), located in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, is an intentional community of 160 people striving for greater sustainability, a better quality of life, and perhaps even a new model for urban planners the world over.

Enjoying breathtaking surroundings, residents wander around the village on pedestrian-only streets, swim in the pond, share meals in the common house, and spend a small amount of their time working together for their community.

EVI’s residents have to volunteer for two hours every week in one of the six work teams – the cooking team, the dishwashing team, the common house cleanup team, the outdoor maintenance team, the regular maintenance team, or the finance team.

“If you had a house, you would have to do that anyway, so why not do it for the broader community and make friends at the same time,” Ashley Click, a young mother and new resident at EVI, told IPS.

The ecovillage’s houses, which are smaller than the U.S. average, are grouped together, allowing 90 percent of the village’s territory to be kept pristine.

“When we densely cluster our houses on just a few acres, it allows for all this beautiful natural environment,” Liz Walker, one of EVI’s co-founders, told IPS, pointing at the green meadows surrounding her house.

The ecovillage has also proved very popular among parents and children.

“Being surrounded by so much nature has really been helpful. I know a lot about wildlife and plants – things that I wouldn’t learn at all if I lived in the city,” Ana Malina Ramanujan, 13, told IPS.

The 160 residents are divided in two co-housing neighbourhoods, First Resident Group (FROG), created in 1996, and Second Neighbourhood Group (SONG), created in 2002. An additional neighbourhood, the Third Residential Ecovillage Experience (TREE), is currently being built.

One of the ecovillage’s main goals is to achieve sustainability and a smaller ecological footprint through green building.

“It’s a different way of living on the planet, one that makes sense,” Walker said.

EVI’s houses consume 40 percent less energy and resources than similar households in the same climate zone, thanks to an efficient building strategy.

FROG and SONG both have passive solar houses that are very well insulated and use the solar heat thanks to large south-facing windows. A 50kw solar panel also provides 30 homes with 66 percent of their energy needs.

TREE will have passive houses, which boast even better insulation thanks to triple pane windows and a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV), which heats the incoming air with the warm exhaust air, allowing for 75 percent to 95 percent of the heat to be recovered.

And the ecovillage is becoming greener with each new neighbourhood.

“We all learn from each other and building new neighbourhoods allows us to use the latest technologies,” Walker explained.

In addition to being more sustainable, EVI also has all the amenities of a modern urban neighbourhood, ranging from high-speed internet to parking spots.

“We’re not being radical, so it makes it easier for people to adopt,” Walker told IPS. “We’re part of mainstream society but we’re trying to incorporate the traditional customs that make sense.”

Not only is EVI a promising model for accessible sustainability, it is also a developing model for community and sharing.

Steve Gaarder, one of EVI’s founding residents, was initially interested in the community feel of the village, but soon realised that sustainability would inevitably come with it.

“The community really does help the sustainability happening,” Gaarder told IPS, enjoying the last hours of sunlight on one of the village’s wooden benches.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that consumption has skyrocketed in the last 50 years while community has withered… They’re connected,” he added. “If you’re doing a sacrifice with others, you feel like you’re making a greater impact, it’s very encouraging.

“For example, we decided not to put full-size ovens in our houses. Individually, very few people would have made that choice, but as a group, it felt good, we were all doing it.

“Sharing is also very important: when you get rides from neighbours, you’re less likely to want another car,” Gaarder explained.

The ecovillage residents consider themselves an extended family and several gatherings such as the biweekly community meal bring them together.

“In my first two weeks of living here, I’ve made more friends than in my entire life,” Malia Becker, 13, told IPS.

The community meals only serve locally-grown organic vegetables that come from a nearby farm.

Located on EVI’s land, West Haven Farm has been a part of the ecovillage from the very beginning and feeds about 250 families.

The 10-acre organic farm has developed a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programme, in which consumers pay a portion of the farm’s expenses and receive a share of the harvest in return.

It allows the shareholders – many of whom live in the ecovillage – to enjoy organic seasonal eating and a greater connection to their food.

Every Tuesday afternoon from late-May to early-November, the farm is buzzing with customers who come get their share of greens.

“It’s lovely picking up your own vegetables! I immediately go home and start cooking, I’m inspired to use every bit of it,” Margot Schoeps, holding a bag full of greens, told IPS.

The farm also grows flowers, which the customers pick every week.

In the wooden shelter, which carries the smell of freshly baked bread, the shelves are stacked with garlic, peas, beans, and a number of other vegetables. Customers of all ages fill up their bowls with the week’s finest harvest before asking for the latest news about this year’s drought.

“The CSA model is great because our customers share the bounty as well of some of the harder times,” Aviv Hilbig-Bokaer, a college student and a part-time worker at West Haven farm, told IPS.

“This year it’s hotter and we’re losing some of the greens but they understand and take some of that responsibility.”

In addition to West Haven Farm, EVI boasts a small kitchen garden for every resident to use.

“It’s really nice to have all those amenities. There’s this wonderful connection to place and land here that many people have lost in the modern world,” Walker told IPS.

One of the first ecovillages in the world, EVI could be used as a model for a more sensible way of life, at a time when consumption is increasing.

“Time has come for ecovillages. We cannot keep living in these individual dwellings,” Schoeps told IPS.

“We want to translate the lessons that we’ve learnt from the 21 years of developing this ecovillage and translate that into mainstream development,” Walker added. “We can change the way we’re currently developing housing to a much more satisfying way of life.

“It would be healthier for people and for the planet. There’s no reason we can’t be doing it now.”

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2012 (IPS)

Why can’t we live a different way? That’s the question asked by a pioneer community of 160 trying to achieve greater sustainability and a higher quality of life.

Twenty years ago, they created Ecovillage at Ithaca (EVI), an ecological intentional community located only two miles away from the city of Ithaca in upstate New York.

EVI has proved a successful housing model and could be leading the way for the future of urban planning.

In the village, pedestrian-only streets lead to different community amenities such as the swimming pond, the kitchen garden, or the community house in which residents gather for dinner twice a week.

The community meals are comprised of locally-grown organic vegetables that come from a nearby farm.

West Haven Farm has been a part of the ecovillage from the very beginning and feeds about 250 families through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.

It allows the shareholders – many of whom live in the ecovillage – to enjoy organic seasonal eating and a greater connection to their food as they come pick their vegetables every week.

In order to keep the community running, each resident is expected to put in two hours of work a week in one of the different teams – cooking, dishwashing, cleanup, maintenance or finance.

The houses, smaller than the U.S. average, are clustered together to allow easier social interactions and to ensure that 90 percent of the land be kept wild.

“The quality of life here is off the charts,” Liz Walker, one of EVI’s co-founders, told IPS.

The village is inter-generational and many families decide to move in to what they consider a children’s paradise.

EVI is already made of two co-housing neighbourhoods and a third one is under construction.

Each new neighbourhood is using the lessons learnt from the past, allowing for the residents’ ecological footprint to keep decreasing.

EVI also has all the amenities of a modern urban neighbourhood, ranging from high-speed internet to parking spots.

“We’re not being radical, so it makes it easier for people to adopt,” Walker told IPS.

One of the first ecovillages in the world, EVI could be used as a model for a more sensible way of life.

“We can change the way we’re currently developing housing to a much more satisfying way of life.

It would be healthier for people and for the planet. There’s no reason we can’t be doing it now,” Walker told IPS.

A scene from "Call Me Kuchu". Credit: Katherine Fairfax Wright

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 4 2012 (IPS)

In Uganda, like in many sub-Saharan African countries, same-sex relationships are illegal and punishable by incarceration in prison for up to 14 years, legislation that is supported by a majority of Ugandans and influenced by the lobbying efforts of U.S. evangelical churches.

The law could soon become even more draconian under the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, also known as the “Kill the Gays” Bill, which was re-introduced in parliament in February of this year.

“There isn’t the slightest idea of when (the bill) will be voted on, if it will be voted on at all, if it will pass or if it won’t… It really is anyone’s guess,” Katherine Fairfax, one of the two filmmakers of the award-winning documentary “Call Me Kuchu”, told IPS.

The highly controversial bill was first submitted by Member of Parliament David Bahati in October 2009 and divides homosexual “crimes” into three categories: supportive homosexuality, homosexuality and aggravated homosexuality.

Not reporting a gay friend or relative to the authorities would be considered as aiding the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community and punishable by three years of imprisonment, according to the bill, while engaging in homosexual acts such as intimate touching could lead to life in prison.

One may wonder what “aggravated” homosexuality includes. According to the bill, it contains different felonies such as engaging in homosexual acts with a disabled person, a minor, or if the “offender” is HIV-positive.

“This inflammatory bill will be taken as further confirmation that it is okay to attack or even kill people perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender,” said Victor Mukasa of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

The bill is yet to be voted on, and has been delayed due to pressure from the international community, including Britain and Sweden, which are threatening to cut financial aid to Uganda should the legislation pass.

“Call Me Kuchu,” directed by Fairfax and Malika Zouhalli-Worrall, follows the fight of courageous LGBT rights activist David Kato and his friends against the rampant homophobia in Uganda. It was recently screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.

This small but influential group of Ugandan gay activists emerged in their fight against Bahati’s bill, which Kato considered to be “profoundly undemocratic”.

“The hardest work is done by activists like those in this film. They are an inspiration to me,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told journalists after a screening of the film.

The work of these activists drew a lot of attention at home and abroad, and they often made the front pages of Ugandan tabloids that carry out a “witch hunt” vilifying the gay community.

One of these tabloids was Rolling Stone magazine (no affiliation with the U.S. publication of the same name), which published a list of the nation’s 100 “top” gays and lesbians with their photos and personal information in October 2010.

The subtitle, written in flashy letters, read “Hang them!”

Asked about his magazine’s actions, Giles Muhame, the editor, told journalists, “Sometimes violence is justifiable. But we didn’t advocate for violence against David Kato. We said this man should be arrested, tried, sentenced, hanged.”

Shorty after he won a lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine for publishing the list, David Kato was murdered in his home.

So why, at a time when gay rights are advancing in many countries around the world, is the LGBT community under such attack in Uganda?

“The fact that so many states are now voicing their support for the rights of LGBT people internationally… only increases the sense of pressure on those countries that are holding out against change,” Charles Radcliffe, senior adviser on sexual orientation and gender identity in the U.N human rights office, told IPS.

“And the reaction in some cases is to dig in,” he added.

The Ugandan government is indeed digging in, aided by U.S. evangelical leaders who are turning to Africa after having lost their anti-gay battle in the U.S.

Among other things, these church leaders organise conferences in which they insist that homosexuality is a direct threat to the cohesion of African families.

Three of the most active U.S. evangelical leaders are Lou Engel, Scott Lively, and Rev. Rick Warren, who is known for having delivered the invocation at President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony.

(Obama has since come out fully for gay marriage).

“Homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right,” Warren asserted during a visit to Uganda in 2008.

Lively goes even further. “Homosexuals (are) the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities,” he writes in the preface of his book, “The Pink Swastika”.

The Western preachers espouse the idea, widely accepted in the region, that people choose homosexuality as a lifestyle.

Ugandan member of Parliament David Bahati couldn’t agree more. “It’s not an inborn orientation, it’s a behaviour learnt – and it can be unlearnt,” he claims.

But homophobia has actually been imported into Africa from the West for a long time.

“If it is the case that Western religious preachers are going to Africa today and fanning the flames of homophobia, they are part of a long and dishonourable tradition stretching back many decades,” Radcliffe told IPS.

According to him, it all began with the colonial era laws used to criminalise same-sex relationships.

Whatever the source, homophobia is now ubiquitous in Uganda and triggers different forms of violence directed against a small group.

In spite of some lawsuits won in favour of the LGBT community, such as the one against Rolling Stone magazine, it is still very dangerous for a gay person to live in Uganda.

“While there are these victories building up, the situation is still pretty much as precarious, sadly,” Zouhalli-Worrall told IPS.

And with the re-introduction of the “Kill the Gays” Bill in Parliament, it might get worse.

“Each society will find its own way forward and move at its own pace. But no society can withhold basic rights from certain individuals indefinitely,” Radcliffe told IPS.

“Change will come, the only question is how fast,” he added.

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 2012 (IPS)

“Drugs and crime threaten one of our most important goals – to ensure sustainable development around the world,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated on Jun. 26, during a General Assembly debate on drugs and crime  as a threat to development.

The same day – the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking – the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its annual World Drug Report, calling for a development-based approach to solving drug problems.

“Drugs continue to kill around 200,000 people a year, shattering families and bringing misery to thousands of other people, insecurity and the spread of HIV,” said Yury Fedotov, executive director of UNODC.

Thomas Pietschmann, drug expert at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Photo courtesy of Mr. Pietschmann

UNODC’s latest report shows that five percent of the world’s adult population are estimated to have used an illicit drug at least once in 2010.

In an interview with IPS correspondent Coralie Tripier, UNODC’s drug expert Thomas Pietschmann explained how sustainable development, moderate sanctions and enhanced security can be tools to combat drug use.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What is the link between sustainable development and the decrease in illicit drugs?

A: From all the studies that we have been carrying out, it is very clear that when you have sustainable development in a region, you also have a lesser production of illicit drugs.

A recent example of it is Thailand, where, over a period of twenty to thirty years, we completely eliminated opium cultivation by giving farmers real alternatives through investments.

Q: In order to further decrease the production of illicit drugs, are sanctions being increased?

A: Simply cutting and eradicating the fields does not solve the problem.

Eradication should only take place once farmers have already been given the chance to do alternative development. You should not start with eliminating the fields and then see farmers die because they have no steady income.

Eradication should be the last resort. Before that, you have to ensure that farmers have the opportunity to have a decent income out of another activity. You cannot increase sanctions when people are living at the margins.

Q: Is the UNODC setting different policies according to the countries?

A: Yes, and also according to the regions within these countries. For example, Afghanistan is very diverse. If you take eastern Afghanistan, the fields are very small, while in southern Afghanistan, the fields tend to be much bigger.

That’s why in the eastern part of the country, the solution must really be rural development – that is to say, going into services and basic manufacturing to ensure that farmers really have another input, because with such small lands it is pretty difficult to earn a decent income. It has to be a personalised approach.

Q: The UNODC is also stressing the importance of security in its fight against drugs. How are security and drug use related?

A: Security is a key point of the fight against illicit drugs.

In 2010 we carried out a survey, which showed that in the areas where security was low, 93 percent of the farmers produced opium, while in the areas where it was high, it was only around seven percent. You can see a massive discrepancy between those regions. There’s a definite correlation between security and production of illicit drugs.

Q: What is UNODC’s position on the medical use of marijuana?

A: Medical use of marijuana – if properly done – is and can be in line with the UNODC Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961.

But we know that in some states in the United States, so-called medical marijuana is often intended for recreational use.

There are some preconditions. First of all, the harvest of marijuana has to be bought by a national agency. This agency is then responsible for distributing it before the medical body prescribes it.

But in some cases, there is a complete misuse of medical marijuana.

Q: How do you see the situation of illicit drugs evolving in the near future?

A: We are quite optimistic about the evolution of this situation in developed countries.

A lot of factors play into this. For example, we have an aging population in those countries, and we know that drug use is high among young people, so it automatically leads to a decrease in drug consumption.

Unfortunately, we are less optimistic about developing countries, in which we see a push towards urbanisation, and urbanisation generally leads to higher levels of drug use. We see a clear shift away from developed to developing countries, and we are particularly concerned about Africa, where all the risk factors come together.

Africa is particularly vulnerable to increasing levels of drug use in the upcoming years.

Excerpt:

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2012 (IPS)

On Saturday, Jun. 9 2012, the annual Capital Pride Parade brought together hundreds of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people marching with their allies in the sunny streets of Washington DC.

“I am always amazed by the diversity of the people who attend ­ age, ethnicity, gender, colour. It truly is a rainbow,” Missy Toms, director of external affairs for Capital Pride, told IPS.

“In addition to the groups you would expect to participate in the parade, we have local and national businesses, churches, politicians, schools, families and community groups marching,” Toms added.

The event, voted DC’s best parade by the residents of the Washington DC area, benefits from the participation of dozens of volunteers who help control the situation.

On the following day, the Capital Pride Festival brought together more than 200,000 people who showed their support to the LGBT community with different concerts and events taking place in front of the Capitol.

“Capital Pride is a chance for the entire community, gay or straight, to come together and celebrate who we are as one humanity.

I look forward to the legalization of gay marriage in all fifty states, that will be a celebration,” Toms told IPS.

Coralie Tripier interviews filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering about their latest film "Invisible War".

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 2012 (IPS)

The US military is facing one of its biggest scandals, depicted in “Invisible War”, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s latest documentary. The movie collects the stories of women – and men – who, along with many others, became victims of sexual abuse while serving their country and now face post-traumatic stress disorder. The statistics are staggering: more than 20 percent of female veterans have been sexually assaulted during their service. In fact, a female soldier is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed in enemy fire. The lack of response is often as traumatising for the victims as the abuse itself. Most victims do not report the rape in fear of retaliation, and when they do, their attacker is unlikely to be punished. “Invisible War” won several awards, including the Audience Award at Sundance, and is part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival currently taking place in New York. In a interview with U.N. correspondent Coralie Tripier, filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering explain why they decided to make the movie and what must urgently be done to reform the military justice system. IPS correspondent Shari Nijman filmed the interview. “Invisible War” opens in U.S. theaters on Jun. 22. The video of the interview follows.

The success of cooperatives, values-based associations owned and managed by their own clients and hailed as an alternative business model, is highly dependent on their use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), experts say.

Boasting more than one billion global members, cooperatives have progressed significantly in the past decade, triggered by the wider availability of ICTs, such as telecommunications, computers or radio.

“Cooperatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility,” Ban Ki-moon stated at the launch of 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives (IYC), which seeks to highlight the strengths of the cooperative business model as an alternative to other models.

Cooperatives can be used to further socioeconomic development throughout the world, and ICTs can play a major role in helping them achieve that goal.

“When people understand what co-ops are, they want to do business with them,” said Carolyn Hoover, chief executive officer of DotCooperation LLC, a new top-level Internet domain designed exclusively for cooperatives.

On Jun. 6, the United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York hosted a panel discussion, “Cooperatives and the Role of Information and Communication Technologies”, led by Lila Hanitra Ratsifandrihamanana, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) liaison office, Gary Fowlie, head of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) liaison office to the U.N., and Carolyn Hoover from DotCoop.

An alternative model

The three speakers emphasised the potential of cooperatives in achieving internationally agreed-upon goals such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which fight against poverty, hunger and disease.

This business model can be efficient across a broad range of sectors, according to the panelists, ranging from food security to electricity coverage, particularly in cases the private sector does not consider sufficiently profitable.

“I grew up in a rural area in the United States,” Hoover told IPS. “There was no electricity until co-ops came in, because the private companies just thought they couldn’t make enough money.”

“A co-op-based solution is sometimes the only way to break that mold,” Hoover said.

The speakers also stressed the need for the even wider availability and affordability of ICTs in order to help unleash the potential of cooperatives. In Kenya, for example, farmers can receive funds through mobile phone-based money transfer services that they can later invest in agricultural financial transactions.

According to Ratsifandrihamanana, ICTs can enhance accountability in cooperatives, thus giving them a valuable quality that the private sector often lacks. “Co-ops serve their members better and with more transparency,” she added.

ICTs have indeed become a must for cooperatives in the recent years. “If co-ops want to participate in the future, they have to be part of the way that people are communicating,” Hoover told IPS. “No choice.”

Promoting cooperatives

The panel addressed the main challenge currently faced by cooperatives: the lack of availability and affordability of new technologies in remote areas. They called on governments to help cooperatives overcome this infrastructure challenge by extending the scope of the ICT network.

“I don’t think that the governments do enough to promote co-ops,” Hoover told IPS.

“The share of governments is important. I think that if they don’t help with the infrastructure, it cannot work,” Ratsifandrihamanana explained. “Co-ops need to be recognised on the international agenda.”

But cooperatives also have to deal with the affordability of ICTs, such as the initial cost of computerisation or the cost of website hosting.

DotCoop, which has hosted numerous cooperatives around the world since 2002, is a key player in reducing these obstacles by helping co-ops increase their Internet exposure and web site traffic in an affordable way.

The company, whose motto is “One member. One vote. One domain”, offers a First Year Free Program through which co-ops can establish their web presence at no cost before they start making profits.

“They (the co-ops) just have to hear about it,” Hoover told IPS. “DotCoop was and is an innovation.”

Increasing access to technology

Cooperatives are also benefiting from the improvement in renewable energy, which has increased the accessibility of communication technologies, such as the recently launched solar-powered mobile phone, invented by the Kenyan Habiba Rage to overcome her village’s lack of access to electricity.

“It is very difficult to own a mobile phone because of the energy it needs to keep working,” Rage told journalists. With the solar-powered phone, the problem was solved, both for her and for many cooperatives worldwide.

“Co-ops are leaders in using the Internet to promote their ethical local regional business,” Hoover told IPS.

Global attention is now focused on the upcoming 2012 International Summit of Cooperatives in Quebec in October, where more than 130 speakers will discuss the future of the world’s 750,000 cooperatives.

Kathy Bardswick, chief executive officer of The Co-operators, a Canadian insurance cooperative, called the summit “a once in a lifetime opportunity…to ensure a healthy and dynamic future for the cooperative form of business”.

At Rio+20, the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) taking place in Rio de Janeiro Jun. 20-22, cooperatives will be discussed as part of the talks on achieving a more sustainable economic model in the world.

“I think that co-ops can provide an answer to almost any particular problem that the economy has,” Hoover concluded. “They are good solutions to tough challenges.”

The high seas, crucial regions of the world’s oceans that are beyond national jurisdiction, account for 45 percent of the planet, but are today under severe threat from overfishing and pollution.

“The next big global environmental crisis that is looming upon us is the meltdown of the oceans,” warns Rémi Parmentier, spokesperson for the High Seas Alliance, a group of NGOs striving for the conservation of the high seas.

Ocean conservation is one of the seven key points of Rio+20. Credit: Sean O'Flaherty/CC By 2.5

The High Seas Alliance is preparing actively for Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development taking place Jun. 20-22 in Brazil.

The Alliance is hoping to convince governments of the importance of marine biodiversity, and the need to take decisive action in Rio.

“States wrongfully think that they have other priorities – the financial crisis, for example,” Parmentier told IPS. “But giving priority to artificial wealth, such as money and financial services, while putting aside natural wealth, that is to say all that we get from our ecosystem, is a big mistake.

“Nature, climate, biodiversity… Those are elements without which we cannot develop in a fair and sustainable way,” he said.

Among these urgent actions is the elimination of Environmentally Harmful Subsidies (EHS), through which governments keep funding polluting activities such as fossil fuel energy, overfishing and industrial agriculture, while disadvantaging green sectors, activists say.

“I’m thinking about subsidies that fund fossil energy with several billion dollars every year, or also about the one billion euro that the EU (European Union) gives to fishing every year, thus fuelling its overcapacity,” Parmentier said.

Those issues were raised at the first Earth Summit in 1992, but not enough has been done since to address them, critics say.

“It is unbelievable to think that 20 years after Rio and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, we keep funding polluting energy sources and reducing in many countries the subsidies given to renewable energy, which is actually part of the solution,” Parmentier said.

Earlier this month, Parmentier held a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York alongside spokespersons from the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and International Partners for Sustainable Agriculture.

The three speakers focused on the future launch of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which would set targets and enable progress to be measured. These SDGs would include ocean conservation, one of the seven key points of Rio+20.

“Unless there is an implementing agreement on high seas conservation, we and our governments cannot have a say on what is happening on almost half of the planet,” Parmentier said.

This “other half of the planet” is increasingly suffering from heavy pollution and overfishing, leading to the near extinction of many species: for example, 90 percent of the biggest predators, such as tuna, cod and sharks, have already disappeared or are greatly endangered, according to Ocean Sentry, a Spanish environmental NGO.

For Parmentier, the long-waited conference in Rio will be the moment to finally take urgent decisions and set mandatory deadlines.

“States have reiterated many times within the G20, the EU and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) their will to put an end to these Environmentally Harmful Subsidies, but the truth is that we’re still waiting. This summit on green energy will definitely be a chance to decide on deadlines.”

But phasing out some sectors should be accompanied by expansion of others. The High Seas Alliance strongly encourages research and growth in renewable energy.

“We shouldn’t only talk about ‘degrowth’. Yes, true, we should aim at the ‘degrowth’ of our ecological footprint and of our impact on resources, but it would be in order to attain the sustainable growth of resources that humanity and ecosystems need to survive,” Parmentier told IPS.

Environmental NGOs are hoping that Canada, Japan, the Russian Federation and the United States, four countries which are currently rejecting the Rio negotiating draft on oceans, will waive their financial interests in favour of the common good.

“The United States is under pressure of pharmaceutical lobbies at the Congress. They don’t want to share the profits they get from the exploitation of genetic resources. They balk at accepting this proposition that could be a milestone of Rio,” Parmentier said.

Protecting the high seas is not only about the oceans – it is about the rest of the world’s life-sustaining ecosystems as well.

“The next big environmental crisis will be that of the oceans, and it will lead to a food crisis for a majority of humanity. Whether or not we live close to a sea, we all depend on oceans in order to survive,” Parmentier said.

On the eve of the Rio+20 Summit in Brazil, the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report Monday ranking the world’s biggest countries on their use of renewable energy.

It shows the European Union’s clear leadership in the field, but also the significant progress made by developing countries.

Solar panel fields in Provence, France. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

The last time that world leaders met to discuss sustainable development was at the Rio+10 Earth Summit in Johannesburg a decade ago. Since then, significant changes have been made in terms of renewable energy.

“We decided to look at the progress made since 2002 and check how countries were doing,” said Jake Schmidt, international climate programme director for NRDC, a nonprofit environmental organisation.

The report shows that the world’s biggest countries have taken some steps towards a more sustainable world.

“Since 2004, new clean-energy investment in the G20 countries has grown by almost 600 percent,” the report says, but there is still much work to be done, as renewable energy only accounts for 2.6 percent of the overall energy for the G20 as a whole.

European countries get more of their electricity from wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and wave power than any other region in the world. Germany is leading the way in green energy, followed by the EU as a group and Italy, according to the NRDC.

The NRDC scorecard also shows clear gaps in terms of renewable energy among the countries of the G20. Indeed, while a substantial 10.7 percent of Germany’s energy comes from clean sources, only 2.7 percent of the United States’ energy does, and some of the world’s biggest countries such as Russia are still investing very little in renewable energy.

Some developing countries, while still playing a minor role in green energy, are increasingly investing in clean sources. China, Brazil and Turkey are leading the way for developing nations, with China showing a staggering 7,605 percent increase in clean energy investments since 2002, according to the report.

“You see a diverse list of countries with South Africa, India, China, Indonesia and a lot of others playing key roles as well as the traditional G20,” said Dan Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.

Although the results show some significant progress coming from a range of countries, it is far from enough. Under current trends, the amount of energy produced from renewable sources throughout the world should increase from about two to seven percent by 2020, a number that has to be doubled, according to the report.

“That’s what the world needs,” Schmidt said.

As countries are focusing on Rio, they are working on long-term targets, which are critical but not essential, according to Schmidt.

“What we really need at Rio is a set of targeted short-term commitments from individual countries, companies, cities, to really scale up renewable energy,” he said.

“It is more important that key actors come to Rio+20 with individual country commitments to increase the amount of renewable energy to 15 percent of total electricity by 2020,” he added.

Urgent actions are also needed to elimiate Environmentally Harmful Subsidies (EHS), through which polluting energies are funded, according to Kammen.

“While the overall investment in renewables, estimated to have been around 160 billion dollars last year, is very impressive, we must also keep in mind that the the global subsidies are estimated to be around 400 to 500 billion dollars… and that’s just for fossil fuels,” he said. “The landscape is truly far from level.”

“That’s not just a threat to the thousands of new jobs being created by the renewable energy industry, but also a threat to our health, our environment and our planet,” Schmidt added.

In order to achieve these short-term goals, the cooperation between countries must increase, according to NRDC’s experts.

“There’s always a lot of collaboration around renewable electricity, in terms of helping countries overcome technology barriers, or cost barriers, and we need to take that to the next level. We need to step up the efforts to work together,” Schmidt said.

The benefits would be substantial. “There is a very diverse set of benefits, some local benefits ranging from improvement in the local air quality, local water quality, to diversifying the energy mix and of course global benefits as well,” Kammen said.

But for these benefits to become a reality, the progress made needs to be tracked overtime and regulary published in scorecards.

“We need to make sure that commitments are followed through. We need to hold them (governments) accountable for the progress, or lack of progress,” Schmidt warned.

The Jun. 20-22 summit in Rio is widely viewed as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to gather world leaders, participants from governments, the private sector, NGOs and other groups to discuss renewable energy, one of the top priorities of the conference.

But the outcome of Rio+20 will mainly depend on the involvement of the participating states, and only six out of the G20 countries have already confirmed that their leaders would attend the meeting.

“The G20 countries are not essential, but they are major economies around the world, so whether or not their head of government comes and makes a commitment would be a marker of the success at Rio,” Schmidt explained. “It is a clear signal of the will of these countries to put the world on a more sustainable growth.”

“There’s still a lot of work to be done but the progress is quite impressive,” Kammen concluded. “The challenge is to move along.”

Police and protesters face of on Mar. 28, 2012. Credit: Socialist Canada/CC By 2.0

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 8 2012 (IPS)

The student movement that erupted in February following the announcement of a 75-percent rise in university tuition fees is now becoming a violent struggle for democracy in Quebec.

“I felt betrayed by the government. I felt like it was the end of democracy,” said Martha Stomal, a student at Université de Montréal, proudly wearing a red square pinned on her shirt – first a symbol of the student protest against the tuition hike, and now a condemnation of the provincial government.

“When I forget to wear my red square, I feel like there’s something missing,” the young woman told IPS.

In a move to raise funds for its universities, the Quebec government announced at the beginning of 2012 that there would be a 75-percent rise in tuition fees over the next five years. Needless to say, the news angered a majority of students who started protesting, supported by many teachers.

Their action has now become the longest-running and biggest student strike in Canadian history.

“I haven’t had any classes for three months,” Stomal told IPS.

The new education “reform” policy, designed to solve the problem of supposedly underfunded universities, was seen by many as abusive and unnecessary.

“The government ended up convincing itself that it was simply at the head of a big company. Big mistake there,” Christian Nadeau, a professor of political philosophy at Université de Montréal and the creator of one of the movement’s famous video clips, told IPS.

Not everyone agrees. Kristine Larivière, a student at Université Laval, approves of the five-year plan. “Everybody wants the best education possible, top-notch technology, prestigious teachers, etc. That has a cost, as everything else does in life,” Larivière told IPS.

The underlying debate is over how the budget is being spent. “I don’t think that there really is a problem of underfunding, as the government states it. Rather, we are facing a problem of bad allocation of the money available … I am convinced that a free education system could be sustainable in Quebec,” Sylvie-Anne Boutin-Panneton, vice-president of the Montreal-based student association Aellfum, told IPS.

But what really angered the Quebecois and attracted the attention of international observers was the government’s response to the peaceful student uprising: violent repression by anti-riot police, and the implementation of a new law, the controversial Bill No.78, which levies stiff financial penalties up to 125,000 dollars per student and outlaws many protests in what many view as an authoritarian bid by the government to quash dissent.

As a result, what started as a student movement soon became a popular struggle against draconian policies implemented by the provincial government, including environmental, economic and labour issues.

The protestors’ motto can be seen during demonstrations that sometimes surpass 40,000 people: “If the strike is a student one, the struggle is a popular one.”

“I think people realised that there is another society possible, and that they have the power to change it,” Stomal said. “We are not only fighting against the rise of tuition fees, but also for a democracy that prioritises our rights and not the capitalistic interests of our government.”

Critics of the government’s reaction to the protests have widened beyond the student body to include teachers, lawyers, U.N. officials and NGOs such as Amnesty International, which charged that Bill 78 violates fundamental rights.

Hervé Philippe, a teacher and researcher at Université de Montréal, published an open letter to Prime Minister Jean Charest: “Mister Prime Minister, how can I accept to see such an infringement of the basic principles of democracy by a government supposed to work towards the development of democracy?”

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, also deplored the implementation of Bill No. 78. “The recently adopted legislation unduly restricts students’ rights to freedom of association and of peaceful assembly in Quebec,” he said.

Even the Russian government of Vladimir Putin criticised the new law and expressed concern over the violence of the police force towards students, including hundreds of arrests.

The police repression has indeed been harsh. “Every time, there are people who get injured… The other day, we heard a huge blast. We could smell tear gas and people started running away. We then realised that the police had thrown a flash-bang grenade. We tried to go away, but the police were blocking every exit and they pepper-sprayed everyone,” Stomal told IPS.

“Police brutality is unfair and can only make things worse,” added Boutin-Panneton.

These incidents are documented in numerous videos posted online, but no actions have yet been taken by the government to stop escalation of the violence.

“Police violence has gone crazy, but nothing is being done to prevent it. Citizens will have trouble trusting institutions such as the government and police for many years,” Nadeau said.

“I think the government just proved that it didn’t deserve to rule anymore,” said Boutin-Panneton.

For now, the students and the government haven’t been able to establish a dialogue, and seem to have reached a deadlock that could jeopardise democracy in Quebec.