Indigenous People’s Celebration in Canada. Photo courtesy of Chrystal Tabobandung

By Randa El Ozeir
TORONTO, Sep 2 2025 (IPS)

If European colonialism had never happened in Canada, matriarchy would still have been strong in Indigenous culture. Matriarchy was the backbone of society’s structure and line of dominance in Turtle Island (North America) before the arrival of Westerners.

In practice, Indigenous women in Canada have been victims of violence and discrimination. In theory, they were supposed, along with children, to enjoy full protection, as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) states in article 22.

“Traditional knowledge would be whole and complete. Our languages, ceremonies, governance systems, planet health, communities, cosmologies, land practices, water preservation, and harvesting practices would be alive and well,” says Anishinaabe Ancestral Knowledge Keeper Kim Wheatley, “Head/Leader of the Fireflower,” the Spirit name she carries.

The female role and influence in traditional Native American culture were powerful and pivotal. Wheatley cites how women’s main duty, “like all community members, was to live in harmony with creation, a life of committed purpose and passion based on the gifts they arrived with from the spirit world. Women were hunters, foragers, medicine folks, healers, educators, leaders, artists, fishers, ceremonialists, singers, dancers, artists, and governance holders—really the societal glue on how to provide for the greater good. They were the ones who made the big long-term decisions for the communities they were responsible for.”

Anishinaabe Ancestral Knowledge Keeper Kim Wheatley.

The story of Indigenous women in Canada is considerably incompatible with what Disney World tried to twist and distort in its popular animation “Pocahontas.” Chrystal Tabobandung, Founder of RAISE Indigenous cultural awareness and competence training with Ojibwe roots, sees the “hatred of white women towards us, as if we were less. We have been kicked out of our homes. We are suffering today and being sexualized by men and social media. Historically, white women envied us because of the roles we held in our communities and our traditional ways.”

This is where the impact of colonialism has come in, right from earlier contact, and changed over time. Women in Europe were not to be seen, not to be heard. They were in the background, and they were very resentful at the fact that, here, Indigenous women had a voice, a seat at the table to make decisions regarding safety, child rearing, politics, and even where to camp.”

Socio-Economic Inequality

The effect of the forced Western social and business model has shattered too many Indigenous communities, and the shift to a Western male-dominant lifestyle has altered the whole picture.

Wheatley believes that over the last 150 years, “The foundation of species became a risk. The destruction of lands and waters through endless resource extraction, racism, misogyny, the vulgarity of political decision-making on women’s bodies, the ever-rising violence against women and girls, and the list goes on and on. We see a dramatic disparity in the socio-economic realities. Our People have vast, complex political systems, governance structures, balanced leadership models, extraordinary, vibrant trade practices, endless creativity, and intimate relationships to lands and waters. Deep moral teachings that contribute to the greater good based on long-standing visioning practices.”

While women can and do run for leadership roles, the colonial system does not support traditional governance and practices. The Indian Act is still law in Canada and is one of the recognized leading racist legal documents in the world. This Act oversees how and what a First Nation community can do within reserve confines and what happens when you leave.”

Chrystal Tabobandung, Founder of RAISE Indigenous cultural awareness.

The differences among Indigenous women vary according to their distinct nations. In Canada, there are over 630 recognized First Nations communities.

“Our nations’ women do things differently based on nation-to-nation teachings that are tied to tradition and culture as opposed to roles,” explains Tabobandung. “There are so many divergent oppressive systems that disconnect them.

They do not necessarily work together, but regarding huge social issues, like murdered and missing Indigenous women and sex trafficking, they do come together. They are active in marches and rallies. They stand up against injustices and reconnect with their tradition and their culture. The more voices that are coming out, the more people feel courageous, strong, and able to come forth with their personal experiences.”

How does lack of access to safe drinking water affect Indigenous women? According to Wheatley, “The water crisis in First Nations communities is under-recognized as a continuous assault on a basic human right. Women who live off-reserve have greater opportunities for employment, housing, and other socio-economic possibilities that simply are not available on many reserves for a wide variety of reasons. Educational facilities are far more accessible, along with social services that are integral to supporting families.”

“The proximity of travel to/from work, social gatherings, support spaces, cultural activities, educational options, and greater social interactions are much more accessible in urban areas,” continues Wheatley. “This contributes to a greater sense of well-being. In small towns, racism may not support greater opportunities, but in cities with larger populations, the odds increase in a woman’s favor.”

Reconciliation and Preserving People’s Culture

In her opinion, Wheatley sees that the Truth and Reconciliation Report was a gift to Canadians, challenging their comfort in historic amnesia and continued ignorance of cultural genocide committed by the highest leadership in this country.

“Anytime we have a voice from ‘our people’ to say how we need to look at restitution and restoration of our sovereignty, it is the right path. We do not need to be told how to heal… We need to tell the country how to support our healing. This is what the report does beautifully. It is as comprehensive as the country can digest at this time and yet… few of the ‘calls to action’ have been addressed meaningfully to date.”

Ten years have passed, yet not much has changed, Wheatley adds.

“This country has continuously operated under the fallacy of the Doctrine of Discovery and theft of land that was never theirs to take.”

The Western Eurocentric perspective has been imposed even on terminology and on what an Indigenous person uses. Tabobandung says, “Only in the past couple of generations have we empowered our children to have voices and ask questions. I grew up in a smaller town where colonialism impacted us, but we were still able to carry down our teachings and our stories. People who have been removed from their culture or have become disconnected in any way wouldn’t know these teachings.”

In British Columbia, Indigenous people are knowledgeable about their culture.

“They really project the importance of their Indigenous women,” says Wheatley. “If there is any movement for any Indigenous or Aboriginal rights to change in the court system, it will take place in precedence in British Columbia and will set that precedent for all other nations across Canada.”

Is There a Way Out?

Wheatley believes the solution between the government and Indigenous people has not been prioritized. “

Hence, Third World conditions exist as a norm in many [Indigenous] communities. To reconcile the crimes of the past in Canada, the perpetrators need to take responsibility, but that continues to be a threat to colonial intrusion and imposition on lands that are rightfully ours!”

Everyone takes Reconciliation differently.

Tabobandung heard different voices; some people are more extreme than others. On the ground, the fait accompli is that Indigenous people, Westerners, and other immigrants are practically sharing their lives on Turtle Island.

Tabobandung finds herself in the middle

“You have this Western business, social, and political model, and your model. How would you balance this? Many First Nations people have had this difficulty, especially those who come from Northern rural, remote communities. You have to know who you are and have deep roots. It is really hard to make that transition, especially in the Western Eurocentric system, where they want to get rid of us; they want to integrate us into the Westernized society so that we don’t exist anymore. Some get to a point where they find peace and balance.”

“I am Anishinaabe. I am Ojibwe. I refuse to acknowledge myself as Indigenous, First Nation, or Aboriginal,” says Tabobandung. “Our people are older than the terminologies the federal government imposed upon us. I walk softly and gently upon the earth. Culture has saved me, knowing that I am First Peoples to this land, in this territory, and knowing that a system is trying to annihilate my people, and knowing that I am still here thriving and surviving.”

This is what motivates her.

“It is why I walk with my head held high. It is why I educate myself as much as I can on anything. I paint indigenous paintings and do indigenous art to pass that knowledge down.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The OIC Group at an Aug. 12 press briefing to present their joint statement on recent developments in the Gaza Strip, following an OIC Group emergency meeting on Aug. 11 after Israel announced its plan to take complete military control of the Gaza Strip. Credit: Naomi Myint Breuer/IPS

By Naomi Myint Breuer
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 15 2025 (IPS)

The world is becoming increasingly outraged at Israel for its actions in the ongoing war against Hamas, particularly amid the recent killings of Palestinian journalists and Israel’s announcement of its plan to seize complete military control of the Gaza Strip.

The plan, which the Israeli Security Cabinet approved on August 8, includes disarming Hamas, returning all hostages, demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, implementing Israeli control of the Gaza Strip and establishing “an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority,” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s posts on X.

“The [Israel Defence Forces (IDF)] will prepare for taking control of Gaza City while distributing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population outside the combat zones,” Netanyahu posted on X.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation to the United Nations (OIC Group) released a joint statement condemning and rejecting the plan on August 12. The statement was released following an OIC Group emergency meeting on August 11.

“We consider this announcement a dangerous and unacceptable escalation, a flagrant violation of international law, and an attempt to entrench the illegal occupation and impose a fait accompli by force, in contravention of international law, international humanitarian law and relevant United Nations resolutions,” the statement said.

The Group demanded an immediate and complete end to Israel’s violence against the Gaza Strip and an end to the damages to civilians and civilian infrastructure. They also demanded that Israel permit humanitarian assistance to enter and work in the Gaza Strip at scale.

“The group reaffirms that this declared course of action by Israel constitutes a continuation of its grave violations, including killing and starvation, attempts at forced displacement, and annexation of Palestinian land, the settler terrorism, which are crimes that may amount to crimes against humanity,” the statement said.

In a statement on August 8, United Nations (UN) Human Rights Chief Volker Türk demanded the “immediate halt” of the plan. The plan, he said, conflicts with the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling that Israel must end its occupation and agree to a two-State solution and that Palestinians have the right to self-determination.

“Instead of intensifying this war, the Israeli Government should put all its efforts into saving the lives of Gaza’s civilians by allowing the full, unfettered flow of humanitarian aid,” he said.

Another major topic of discussion is the Aug. 10 targeted killing of six journalists, including four Al-Jazeera journalists, in Gaza City, which increased discussion about Israel’s human rights violations. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) reported that 238 journalists have been killed since the war began.

“The deliberate targeting of journalists by Israel in the Gaza Strip reveals how these crimes are beyond imagination, amid the inability of the int’l community & its laws to stop this tragedy,” Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani posted on X. “May God have mercy on journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qraiqea, & their colleagues.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an independent and impartial investigation into the killing.

“Journalists and media workers must be respected, they must be protected, and they must be allowed to carry out their work freely, free from fear and free from harassment,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the Secretary-General, said on August 11.

The OIC Group will be hosting a special meeting to discuss next steps following this tragedy, according to Deputy Permanent Representative of Türkiye to the UN Fikriye Asli Güven. Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the UN, said the OIC Group is also pressuring the Security Council to take action.

“This is a deliberate policy to silence the journalists, but we were all aware that the truth cannot be silenced,” Güven said.

Amid the developments in Gaza, Dr. Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine, said the OIC Group and the Security Council are observing a more unified front developing against Israel.

“There is a merging cohesion and unity and outrage of what is really happening, and they are exerting tremendous amounts of pressure in order to stop the killing, stop the military operations to have a permanent ceasefire, to force allowing humanitarian assistance to take place,” Mansour said.

This shift is also visible in the positions an increasing number of countries criticizing Israel’s plans.

The foreign ministers of Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom, as well as the High Representative of the European Union, released a joint statement on August 9 rejecting the Israeli plan for Gaza.

“The plans that the Government of Israel has announced risk violating international humanitarian law,” the statement said. “Any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law.”

The ministers urged for an end to the “terrible conflict” and for Israel to change its registration system of humanitarian organizations to allow humanitarian workers into the region.

“Their exclusion would be an egregious signal,” the statement said.

The ministers also asserted their support for a two-state solution.

Mansour praised the recent actions of European countries to pressure Israel, such as Spain’s reduction of arms sales to Israel and Germany’s arms export ban to Israel, which he called a “modest but it’s a very important step.”

He also praised Norway’s withdrawal of assets in Israel, Colombia’s withdrawal of coal trade, and Australia’s recognition of the state of Palestine. He calls these steps “practical” and a fast way to pressure Israel.

The OIC Group called upon the international community, especially the permanent members of the Security Council, to stop Israel’s policies undermining peace and violating international and international humanitarian law.

They also pushed for a two-State solution and the implementation of the Arab-Islamic reconstruction plan of the Gaza strip, a plan led by Egypt to rebuild Gaza, and participation in the upcoming reconstruction conference in Cairo.

“We affirm that a just and lasting peace can only be achieved through the implementation of the two-State solution,” the Group’s statement said.

For Mansour, a united global front will be crucial to accelerating the pace at which countries decide to take action against Israel.

“There is nothing that we can do about those who are killed, but we can do a lot about saving the lives of those who are still alive, and it is our responsibility to do everything possible in order to save their lives,” he said.

By September, Mansour said he hopes to have 100 more counties sign the New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State solution, which was created by France and Saudi Arabia at the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution in July. The conference will resume on September 22, according to Mansour. He said the New York Declaration must become the “blueprint” and “global consensus.”

“It is not the destiny of the Palestinian people to have an eternal conflict with Israel and to keep losing thousands of our children and women and our people at the hand of this war machine by Israel,” Mansour said. “It is our duty to convince everyone that there is another alternative, the alternative of immediate ceasefire.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The International Court of Justice is hearing 10 days of testimony in order to give an advisory opinion on climate change obligations. Credit: ICJ

By Umar Manzoor Shah
THE HAGUE & SRINAGAR, Dec 4 2024 (IPS)

At the International Court of Justice on Tuesday, December 4, 2024, Brazil called for climate justice, and Canada urged swift action on the world’s “greatest challenge,” while China advocated for equity and development rights. These countries are among the 98 that will make presentations during the fortnight of hearings, after which the court will give an advisory opinion.

The court’s forthcoming advisory opinion, expected in 2025, is seen as a critical step in delineating states’ responsibilities for addressing climate change and addressing the consequences of inaction.

The proceedings draw on international environmental law, human rights treaties, and multilateral agreements. On December 3, representatives from Brazil, Canada, and China presented their arguments emphasizing the urgency of collective action and climate justice.

Brazil’s Vision of Inclusivity Where No One is Left Behind

Representing Brazil, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, the nation’s Ambassador for Climate Change, highlighted Brazil’s vulnerability to climate change and its leadership in global climate governance. Figueiredo underscored Brazil’s proactive measures, including a revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that pledges to cut emissions by up to 67 percent by 2035 relative to 2005 levels.

“Brazil has consistently championed international cooperation in addressing climate challenges. Our efforts, despite socio-economic constraints, reflect a vision of inclusivity where no one is left behind,” said Figueiredo.

He emphasized Brazil’s exposure to climate-induced disasters such as severe droughts, floods, and wildfires, disproportionately affecting marginalized groups, including Indigenous communities. Advocating for climate justice, he urged global actors to consider the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDRRC), which assigns greater responsibility to historically high-emitting nations.

Legal Arguments for Climate Equity

Brazil’s legal advisor, Professor Jorge Galindo, reinforced the CBDRRC principle as a legal mechanism for ensuring fairness in climate governance. Citing precedents from the Paris Agreement and advisory opinions from international tribunals, he called for developed nations to lead by achieving net-zero emissions sooner, investing in clean technologies, and offering financial support to developing countries.

Galindo also urged the ICJ to recognize the legal value of decisions made by the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “COP decisions reflect genuine interpretations of treaty obligations and must guide the court’s opinion,” he said.

Galindo further stressed the importance of balancing climate policies with trade obligations, warning against the misuse of environmental measures as trade barriers. “Free trade and climate goals must coexist,” he added.

Canada committed to unified treaty-based approach

Canada’s representative, Louis Martel, described climate change as a profound threat, with the Arctic warming three times faster than the global average. Martel highlighted its cascading effects, including permafrost thaw, increased forest fires, and food insecurity for Indigenous communities.

Reaffirming Canada’s commitment to international climate instruments like the Paris Agreement, Martel emphasized the importance of collective and individual state responsibilities. He called attention to the global stocktake and enhanced transparency framework as essential mechanisms for ensuring accountability.

While supporting the “no harm” principle obligating states to prevent cross-border environmental harm, Martel expressed reservations about its consistent application to climate change under customary international law. He also questioned whether principles like “polluter pays” and “intergenerational equity” have achieved the status of binding legal norms.

“Canada remains committed to a unified treaty-based approach that strengthens global climate governance,” Martel said.

China Plea For Fair and Inclusive International Approach

China, represented by Ma Xinmin, advocated for equitable climate action, highlighting the principle of CBDRRC as fundamental to balancing responsibilities between developed and developing nations. Ma underscored the disproportionate vulnerabilities of developing countries and the necessity of recognizing their right to sustainable development.

China criticized unilateral measures by developed nations, such as trade restrictions targeting developing countries’ green industries, describing them as counterproductive to global climate goals. Instead, Ma urged collaboration that accounts for historical emissions and respects nations’ varied capacities to combat climate change.

“Addressing climate change involves not only emission reductions but also ensuring sustainable development and poverty eradication,” Ma argued. Highlighting China’s contributions, he reaffirmed the country’s commitment to climate action while calling for a fair and inclusive international approach.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

The executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, highlighted on Friday Dec. 16 the results of the Nagoya Protocol on access to genetic resources and fair benefit sharing at an event during COP15 in the Canadian city of Montreal. But the talks have not reached an agreement on the digital sequencing of genetic resources. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MONTREAL, Dec 16 2022 (IPS)

In addition to its nutritional properties, quinoa, an ancestral grain from the Andes, also has cosmetic uses, as stated by the resource use and benefit-sharing permit ABSCH-IRCC-PE-261033-1 awarded in February to a private individual under a 15-month commercial use contract.

The permit, issued by the Peruvian government’s National Institute for Agrarian Innovation, allows the Peruvian beneficiary to use the material in a skin regeneration cream.

But it also sets restrictions on the registration of products obtained from quinoa or the removal of its elements from the Andean nation, to prevent the risk of irregular exploitation without a fair distribution of benefits, in other words, biopiracy."The scientific community is willing to share benefits through simple mechanisms that do not unfairly burden researchers in low- and middle-income countries." -- Amber Scholz

The licensed material may have a digital representation of its genetic structure which in turn may generate new structures from which formulas or products may emerge. This is called digital sequence information (DSI), in the universe of research or commercial applications within the CBD.

Treatment of DSI forms part of the debates at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which began on Dec. 7 and is due to end on Dec. 19 at the Palais des Congrès in the Canadian city of Montreal.

The summit has brought together some 15,000 people representing the 196 States Parties to the CBD, non-governmental organizations, academia, international bodies and companies.

The focus of the debate is the Post-2020 Global Framework on Biodiversity, which consists of 22 targets in areas including financing for conservation, guidelines on digital sequencing of genetic material, degraded ecosystems, protected areas, endangered species, the role of business and gender equality.

Like most of the issues, negotiations on DSI and the sharing of resulting benefits, contained in one of the Global Framework’s four objectives and in target 13, are at a deadlock, on everything from definitions to possible sharing mechanisms.

Except for the digital twist, the issue is at the heart of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization, part of the CBD, signed in that Japanese city in 2010 and in force since 2014.

The delegations of the 196 States Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity have failed to make progress at COP15 in the negotiations on new targets for the protection of the world’s natural heritage, in the Canadian city of Montreal. In the picture, a working group reviews a proposal on the complex issue. CREDIT: IISD/ENB

Amber Scholz, a German member of the DSI Scientific Network, a group of 70 experts from 25 countries, said there is an urgent need to close the gap between the existing innovation potential and a fair benefit-sharing system so that digital sequencing benefits everyone.

“It’s been a decade now and things haven’t turned out so well. The promise of a system of innovation, open access and benefit sharing is broken,” Scholz, a researcher at the Department of Microbial Ecology and Diversity in the Leibniz Institute’s DSMZ German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, told IPS.

DSI stems from the revolution in the massive use of technological tools, which has reached biology as well, fundamental in the discovery and manufacture of molecules and drugs such as those used in vaccines against the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Aichi Biodiversity Targets, adopted in 2010 in that Japanese city during the CBD COP10, were missed by the target year, 2020, and will now be renewed and updated by the Global Framework that will emerge from Montreal.

The targets included respect for the traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities related to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, their customary use of biological resources, and the full and effective participation of indigenous and local communities in the implementation of the CBD.

Lack of clarity in the definition of DSI, challenges in the traceability of the country of origin of the sequence via digital databases, fear of loss of open access to data and different outlooks on benefit-sharing mechanisms are other aspects complicating the debate among government delegates.

Through the Action Agenda: Make a Pledge platform, organizations, companies and individuals have already made 586 voluntary commitments at COP15, whose theme is “Ecological civilization: Building a shared future for all life on earth”.

Of these, 44 deal with access and benefit sharing, while 294 address conservation and restoration of terrestrial ecosystems, 185 involve partnerships and alliances, and 155 focus on adaptation to climate change and emission reductions.

Genetic havens

Access to genetic resources for commercial or non-commercial purposes has become an issue of great concern in the countries of the global South, due to the fear of biopiracy, especially with the advent of digital sequencing, given that physical access to genetic materials is not absolutely necessary.

Although the Nagoya Protocol includes access and benefit-sharing mechanisms, digital sequencing mechanisms have generated confusion. In fact, this instrument has created a market in which lax jurisdictions have taken advantage by becoming genetic havens.

Around 2,000 gene banks operate worldwide, attracting some 15 million users. Almost two billion sequences have been registered, according to statistics from GenBank, one of the main databases in the sector and part of the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Argentina leads the list of permits for access to genetic resources in Latin America under the Protocol, with a total of 56, two of which are commercial, followed by Peru (54, four commercial) and Panama (39, one commercial). Mexico curbed access to such permits in 2019, following a scandal triggered by the registration of maize in 2016.

There are more than 100 gene banks operating in Mexico, 88 in Peru, 56 in Brazil, 47 in Argentina and 25 in Colombia.

The largest providers of genetic resources leading to publicly available DSI are the United States, China and Japan. Brazil ranks 10th among sources and users of samples, according to a study published in 2021 by Scholz and five other researchers.

The mechanisms for managing genetic information sequences have become a condition for negotiating the new post-2020 Global Framework for biodiversity, which poses a conflict between the most biodiverse countries (generally middle- and low-income) and the nations of the industrialized North.

Brazilian indigenous activist Cristiane Juliao, a leader of the Pankararu people, calls for a fair system of benefit-sharing for access to and use of genetic resources and their digital sequences at COP15, being held at the Palais des Congrès in the Canadian city of Montreal. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Indigenous people and their share

Cristiane Juliao, an indigenous woman of the Pankararu people, who is a member of the Brazilian Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, said the mechanisms adopted must favor the participation of native peoples and guarantee a fair distribution of benefits.

“We don’t look at one small element of a plant. We look at the whole context and the role of that plant. All traditional knowledge is associated with genetic heritage, because we use it in food, medicine or spiritual activities,” she told IPS at COP15.

Therefore, she said, “traceability is important, to know where the knowledge was acquired or accessed.”

In Montreal, Brazilian native organizations are seeking recognition that the digital sequencing contains information that indigenous peoples and local communities protect and that digital information must be subject to benefit-sharing. They are also demanding guarantees of free consultation and the effective participation of indigenous groups in the digital information records.

Thanks to the system based on the country’s Biodiversity Law, in effect since 2016, the Brazilian government has recorded revenues of five million dollars for permits issued.

The Working Group responsible for drafting the new Global Framework put forward a set of options for benefit-sharing measures.

They range from leaving in place the current status quo, to the integration of digital sequence information on genetic resources into national access and benefit-sharing measures, or the creation of a one percent tax on retail sales of genetic resources.

Lagging behind

There is a legal vacuum regarding this issue, because the CBD, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, in force since 2004, do not cover all of its aspects.

Scholz suggested the COP reach a decision that demonstrates the political will to establish a fair and equitable system. “The scientific community is willing to share benefits through simple mechanisms that do not unfairly burden researchers in low- and middle-income countries,” she said.

For her part, Juliao demanded a more inclusive and fairer system. “There is no clear record of indigenous peoples who have agreed to benefit sharing. It is said that some knowledge comes from native peoples, but there is no mechanism for the sharing of benefits with us.”

IPS produced this article with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

One in two First Nations children lives in conditions of poverty (First Nations people account for about half of Canada’s Indigenous population of 1.7 million). Credit: Creative Commons/Qyd

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jul 28 2022 (IPS)

Canada and its major cities consistently appear in Top 10 lists of best places in the world to live. But delve into figures about children’s lives in the northern nation known for ice hockey heroics and you see a different picture.

For example, one in five children in the North American country of 38 million people lives in conditions of poverty. That rises to one in two for First Nations children (First Nations people account for about half of Canada’s Indigenous population of 1.7 million).

Also, Canada ranks 30th among 38 of the world’s richest countries in the well-being of children and youth under age 18, according to UNICEF. “Canada’s public policies are not bold enough to turn our higher wealth into higher child well-being,” suggests UNICEF to explain the gap.

“Canada is not using its greater wealth for greater childhoods: Canada ranks 23rd in the conditions for good childhood but 30th in children’s outcomes,” adds the United Nations agency, in its 2019 report Worlds Apart, the Canadian companion to a global survey of the world’s richest countries.

One in five children in the North American country of 38 million people lives in conditions of poverty. That rises to one in two for First Nations children

UNICEF suggests that rising inequality might be reflected in the low scores for children’s well-being. “More equal societies tend to report higher overall child well-being and fewer health and social problems, such as mental illness, bullying and teenage pregnancy,” says Worlds Apart.

Activist Leila Sarangi goes a step further to explain the inequality. “Canada is still a colonized nation and that is a strategy for maintaining structure and systems that perpetuate things like poverty,” says Sarangi, National Director of Campaign2000, a non-partisan coalition of 120 organizations.

She refers to a 2016 decision of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that found the Canadian Government had discriminated against First Nations children in providing child welfare benefits. It ordered the government to pay each affected child $40,000. Earlier this month the government agreed to total compensation of $20 billion for children and caregivers affected by that discrimination.

On 23 June 2002 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child wrote that it was “deeply concerned” about “discrimination against children in marginalized and disadvantaged situations in the State party (Canada) such as the structural discrimination against children belonging to indigenous groups and children of African descent, especially with regard to their access to education, health and adequate standards of living.”

In its concluding observations of reports submitted in May, the committee recommended that Canada “put an end to structural discrimination against children belonging to indigenous groups and children of African descent and address disparities in access to services by all children.”

Sarangi says Campaign2000 hoped that the federal government budget in April would act on the government’s post-Covid-19 ‘build back rhetoric’ and provide relief to the poorest Canadians. “We really believe that big spending and big change is possible and we saw that in the pandemic, the way that the government moved really quickly to provide different kinds of support and services,” she added in a Zoom interview.

“Unfortunately the budget missed out. It talks a lot about the deficit and trying to reduce the deficit. One of the things that was really absent from that budget — there was really nothing on income security.”

Instead, poor families have fallen into even deeper poverty says Campaign2000’s 2021 report card on child and family poverty, the first time that has happened since 2012. “When the (monthly, tax-free) Canada Child Benefit was implemented in 2016 and 2017 you can see the rate of child poverty drop pretty significantly — you see a real drop in that rate of child poverty,” says Sarangi. “But in the last two years it’s stalling, and that’s because there’s not been new investment into that benefit… it is frustrating because we know that those kinds of transfers work.”

Non-profit organization Canada Without Poverty (CWP) noted that the budget mentioned poverty 4 times, compared to 90 times for its 2021 counterpart. “It is a policy choice not to invest in social programmes that will serve marginalized communities and alleviate and reduce poverty,” says National Coordinator Emilly Renaud in an email interview. “It is not about less money, it is about a lack of political will to deal with issues of poverty.

“The federal government has committed to a 50 percent poverty reduction by 2030, but there is no clear answer as to what that 50 percent will look like, and if it will look equitable,” she added.

CWP’s Just the Facts webpage lists startling statistics such as:

• Between 1980 and 2005, the average earnings among the least wealthy Canadians fell by 20%.
• People living with disabilities (both mental and physical) are twice as likely to live below the poverty line.
• Precarious employment increased by nearly 50 percent over the past two decades.

The situation won’t improve without structural change, says Campaign2000’s 2021 report card: “Dismantling systemic racism, particularly anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism, is needed to eradicate poverty and inequality. Policies meant to address higher poverty rates in marginalized communities need to be developed with the communities they target and incorporate trauma-informed principles to policymaking.”

While abortion in Canada has been legal for decades, procuring one is difficult for many. Credit: Gayatri Malhotra/Unsplash

By Juliet Morrison
Ottawa, Jul 19 2022 (IPS)

Toronto resident Miranda Knight describes her abortion experience as relatively simple. After finding out she was pregnant on a Wednesday in 2017, she booked an appointment at an available clinic and got one for the following Monday. She had the procedure that day and left the clinic by noon.

But Knight’s experience is not the reality for all. As Canada’s most populous city, Toronto has several access points to abortion. Despite abortion being legal nationwide since 1988 and officially treated like any other medical procedure, many other parts of the country do not have access points.

The United Nations has highlighted this disparity. A 2016 report from the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women encouraged the Canadian government to improve the accessibility of abortion services nationwide.

According to the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), fewer than one in five hospitals offer the procedure.

ARCC Executive Director Joyce Arthur said access could be a real struggle for those living outside cities or far from the US border. Most access points are found within less than 150 kilometers of a town, where most Canadians live.

“As soon as you’re away from the city, or up north, you often might have to travel for services, sometimes hundreds of kilometers, and even sometimes for medication. Access is pretty good in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec […], but the rest of the provinces only have one or two or three or four access points. It’s just not enough,” she said.

Abortion access differs by province partly because healthcare in Canada is a provincial responsibility. According to 2019 figures, Quebec has the highest number of access points with 49 province-wide, while Newfoundland and Labrador have four and Saskatchewan has three.

Abortion in Canada by province. The data was published August 2019 with information from the 2014 Abortion Provider Survey. Credit: Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights

Healthcare disparities among rural and urban communities are a significant issue in Canada—especially considering the country’s geography. But Arthur told IPS that unequal abortion access went beyond that.

“Canada is a really big country geographically, so other health care procedures might be hard to access, and people have to travel sometimes. But abortion is a very simple procedure. Early-first trimester abortion can be done on an outpatient basis and doesn’t really require a lot of special equipment. Why aren’t more hospitals doing it?”

Arthur believes the culprit is stigma from the anti-choice movement.

“Much of this is due to remaining abortion stigma from before it was de-criminalized. The anti-choice movement has continued to play a big role in reinforcing that stigma and instilling fear in providers. There’s still this feeling of silencing and shame, which comes from abortion stigma,” she said.

Arthur explained it was not that long ago that doctors would get shot for performing abortions in Canada. From the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, there were several instances of violence against physicians in their own homes.

“That permeates on various levels, not just at the level of the doctor or the patient, but also in government and in medical organizations who would rather just not have to deal with abortion and not have to think about it,” she said.

Disparities in access have led community organizers to step up and help those in need get care.

Shannon Hardy, a birth doula, founded Abortion Support Services Atlantic (ASSA) in 2012 after encountering issues related to abortion access across the Atlantic provinces.

“Some things came across my desk about lack of access in Prince Edward Island. And I didn’t actually know that PEI didn’t offer abortion services, like the entire island for 32 years just didn’t offer it. […] It kind of blew my mind,” she said.

People wanting to terminate their pregnancy can contact ASSA for information, peer support, transport to abortion clinics, or even financial help for travel. In these cases, Hardy told IPS that ASSA would often fundraise to pay for gas, hotels, or flights.

Support services are beneficial for those encountering stigma, Hardy said.

“When a person is facing an ill-timed or unwanted pregnancy, they can immediately feel a stigma around seeking abortion care. Who is safe to reach out to? Will people judge me? Will my doctor/medical center offer me care? My goal for creating ASSA was to have a place […] where anyone seeking abortion care could reach out and help would just be there.”

Hardy’s work has spearheaded a movement. Many other doula organizations have popped up across the country with a similar model. They also often collaborate with national abortion advocacy organizations to help people access the procedure in circumstances that require on-the-ground coordination and support.

Yet, Hardy believes that the need for organizations like ASSA point to critical access issues across the country and inaction at government levels.

“It’s been frustrating that there’s not more access. We, as a grassroots organization, are the ones responsible for getting people from one small town to access abortion instead of the healthcare system stepping in and saying, ‘you know what, we actually have the resources to offer that medical service. So, we’re just going to do that to make life easier’,” she said.

The proportion of hospitals providing abortions to the female population. Credit: Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights

Working in Alberta, one of Canada’s most socially conservative provinces, Autumn Reinhardt-Simpson is familiar with how attitudes on abortion can impact care. She founded Alberta Abortion Access Network to help those across the province in 2015.

Reinhardt-Simpson told IPS that those in rural areas face increased access issues because their care is more dependent on the “private moral concerns” of the health care professionals in their area.

This can make trying to get an abortion more complicated, she explained. Many physicians and pharmacists are either unwilling to offer reproductive health services or unaware of their legality.

In one case, Reinhardt-Simpson had to visit ten different pharmacies to find one that stocked Mifegymiso—the abortion pill that became legal in 2017.

“They were saying things like, ‘Oh well, we can’t dispense this, or this isn’t legal yet. Or well, we can’t get the medication.’ And it’s like no, no, that’s not how this works,” she said.

Alberta has only four access points for surgical abortions, all in its cities. Along with another helper, Reinhardt-Simpson services the whole of Alberta’s 661,848 km² (411, 253 mi²) and helps people access abortion services.

In her view, the stigma around abortion care is detrimental. It can even be physically harmful—particularly for those in later trimesters desperate for solutions.

“The stigma is preventing thousands of Albertans from receiving critical and routine health care. Because there are so many hoops to jump through, some people will get tired of those hoops, and they will try to do something themselves. It doesn’t usually end well. […] the stigma is physically dangerous, it’s emotionally harmful, and culturally it does us no good,” she said.

Being familiar with reproductive justice issues as a community organizer, Knight feels compelled to share her abortion story to combat stigma and normalize the procedure.

She’s currently developing a storytelling project that will feature diverse abortion experiences. Knight told IPS the project’s proceeds would go to improving access across Canada. She hopes to help to improve access for others, considering how essential the procedure was for her.

“My prevailing feeling about the whole thing was just relief. I don’t want to live in an alternate universe where I didn’t have access to abortion. My life would be very different now,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

More than 1.3 million people in Ontario, Canada, the most populous province in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, are food insecure. Credit: Ottawa Food Bank

By Juliet Morrison
Ottawa , Jul 12 2022 (IPS)

Lisa Argiropulos, a single mother of two teenage sons and a resident of Ottawa, Ontario, has been facing food insecurity since 2016, after an accident that left her with chronic pain and disabilities.

Unable to continue working, Argiropulos has been living off disability support and child benefits payments. Yet, her income is insufficient to provide for herself and her family, especially with today’s prices.

“With the prices going up, it’s astronomical. I was struggling before. Now it’s ten times worse. By the time I pay all my bills, my utilities, and any expenses, what’s left over for food is not nearly enough. It’s been really, really hard. You’re always having to look elsewhere for help, weekly, monthly,” Argiropulos said.

In Canada, the cost of food has risen 9.7 percent from April 2021 to April 2022. The high price of other necessities, like gas and housing, has also contributed to food insecurity; people have to spend more of their income on those expenses, which leaves less for food.

Food insecurity occurs when people do not have reliable access to enough nutritious food. Pre-pandemic, it affected approximately 1.3 million people in Ontario—the most populous province of one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

“That really shows how challenging it is for so many in Ontario. It is not everyone’s reality to be able to afford all your basic necessities in a month,” Amanda King, Director of Network and Government Relations at Feed Ontario, said.

Today, the total number living with food insecurity is likely to be bigger because inflation has put more people in precarious positions.

“Food insecurity is something that’s somewhat invisible. That is why it is really important to emphasize the data and statistics that we have. If you look at a classroom, you cannot immediately identify which child did not have breakfast that morning. Statistically, you know there are children in that classroom that have not had breakfast,” King said.

To get by, Argiropulos seeks additional support from her local food bank to stretch her food budget. For her, that is the Barrhaven Food Cupboard, where she’s allowed one visit a month. While she receives a package of food intended to last for seven days, it goes quickly in her family of three, with her growing sons.

Food banks are also feeling the current strain of inflation.

Usage of food banks has increased significantly in the past couple of months as more people are in need. According to CEO George Macdonald, the Barrhaven Food Cupboard has seen a usage increase of 130 percent since last year. Ottawa Food Bank CEO Rachael Wilson noted that they served 52,000 meals across their network in March. Last year, they served an average of 44,000 a month.”

Higher food and gas prices mean that it has become more expensive for food banks to operate. Before the pandemic, the Ottawa Food Bank spent 1.7 million Canadian dollars (about USD 1.31 million) annually on food. This year, Wilson told IPS they were preparing to spend over 4.5m CAD (USD 3.49m).

Though both Wilson and Macdonald were coping with the demand, they noted that further increases in food bank usage could affect their ability to serve their community.

“It’s very stressful. Knowing how we are going to get food on our shelves every day is just a day-to-day stress right now. So far, there hasn’t been an instance where we couldn’t provide the food that is needed. But I honestly don’t know how sustainable it is for us to continue to meet the needs at this level without major change,” Wilson said.

The Ottawa Food Bank, which supports 112 smaller food programs, relies primarily on charitable donations. It receives no regular funding from the provincial or federal government.

The current extent of food insecurity has prompted calls for change in how policymakers address the issue.

Government interventions on food insecurity have mostly been in helping support the operations of food banks.  Provincial relief for food insecurity during the pandemic came indirectly: over 1 billion CAD was allocated in Social Services Relief Funding (SSRF) (about USD 775m) to help municipalities and social service providers, including food banks.  ­­­­

While helpful for short-term relief, Tim Li, research coordinator at PROOF—a program from the University of Toronto working to identify policy solutions for hunger—explained that these interventions do little to address the causes of food insecurity.

“Hunger is not just about not having food. It’s about people’s financial circumstances. It’s about poverty, lack of income, and income security. We’re not seeing action that takes that approach as far as addressing income inadequacy to reduce food insecurity. It goes to show that the safety net is not as robust as we thought.”

Rather than increasing aid to food banks, PROOF advocates for income-based solutions, such as expanding social assistance and increasing the minimum wage. Such moves would require mostly provincial-level action, given the provinces are responsible for both areas.

“Our research really points to policymakers tackling minimum wage, social assistance, and all the other different policies that exist within their toolbox, whether that’s income tax, child benefits. There’s a lot that public policymakers can do. It’s just a matter of them doing it,” Li said.

More than 60 percent of people dependent on social assistance in Canada are food insecure, according to a 2018 study.

The total is presumed to be bigger today, given most social assistance programs are not indexed to inflation. This results in support payments being worth less and less each year as prices rise, potentially leading more people to slip into food insecurity.

Argiropulos is also asking for income-based solutions. Fully supporting herself and her family is simply out of reach in her current state, she told IPS.

Around a year ago, her doctor recommended she apply for a food allowance for those with dietary needs because of medical conditions. The allowance was part of Ontario’s Disability Support Program (ODSP), and Argiropulos qualified because she had type two diabetes.

She was shocked, however, upon realizing how much she was eligible to receive.

“He sent in [the paperwork], and it was only an additional 35 dollars per month for type two diabetes. I had gestational diabetes throughout both pregnancies with my children. So, I know. I’ve seen dieticians. I know how you’re supposed to eat. I know about carbohydrates. I know about all that stuff. Thirty-five dollars, it’s not even doable,” she said.

Argiropulos noted that the reality of living on social assistance and facing food insecurity needs to be emphasized.

“I worked my entire life, and I fell on bad times. And food, nobody should be denied food. We live in a country where we should not be denied food. When you are forced to rely on the system, struggling for food should not happen. It just shouldn’t.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Dr Shafi Bhuiyan with colleagues. He and his colleagues argue that COVID-19 has exposed gaps in the Canadian healthcare system.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Sep 3 2021 (IPS)

Access to quality healthcare is a basic human right, but for many, especially those in vulnerable communities, the right is not fully realized.

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed this systemic inequality and gaps in the Canadian healthcare system.

While surgical backlogs and delayed appointments may be prominent features of the healthcare crisis, the indirect impacts of Covid-19 must be considered. These include a halt in preventive programs, such as cancer screenings, declining health among Indigenous and aging people and for those with chronic illnesses, as well as worsening mental health among health care workers, to name just a few.

Canada already possesses a significant number of educated, qualified, and experienced Internationally Trained Medical Doctors (ITMDs) who can help fill gaps in the healthcare system. For example, Immigration Refugee Citizenship has reported that over 5,000 physicians came to Canada between 2015 and 2021, and this number does not include ITMDs who immigrated via a different method.

Many ITMDs possess much-needed cultural diversity, linguistic skills, and cross-cultural patient care talents. These can be utilized in the long-term care sector, for chronic disease prevention, and with Indigenous peoples and ethnic-racial groups, especially those residing in remote and rural areas across the country. Although 20% of the Canadian population lives in rural areas, only 8 percent of physicians work cfin these areas. Many ITMDs are well suited to provide quality healthcare for some of these communities.

Canada’s annual immigration intake plan is to welcome more than 400 000 immigrants per year in 2021-23, in keeping with the national plan for population growth. Based on data trends from Immigration, Refugee, Citizenship Canada (IRCC), this will likely include at least 900-1000 physicians each year. The need for diversity among physicians will continue to rise to provide culturally sensitive and quality care for all Canadians. ITMDs can provide culturally sensitive care and in-demand language skills to Canada’s increasingly diverse population.

Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC) Calls to Action were created in 2014, most healthcare calls have yet to be addressed. ITMDs can help address the long-standing shortcomings for this communities’ access to equitable healthcare and could contribute to rebuilding trust in the healthcare system.

The underutilization of immigrants’ education and qualifications has been reported to cost Canada $3 billion per year. Supporting the incorporation of internationally educated health professionals into the healthcare system would benefit Canada’s healthcare system and positively impact the economy.

Integration of internationally educated health professionals / ITMDs into the healthcare system requires a national strategy with a multi-stakeholder approach that focuses on scalable solutions. This strategy needs the engagement of governmental policymakers, regulatory bodies, employers, educational and training entities, service delivery agencies, and ITMDs themselves.

Once ITMDs have proven their expertise, they still require a bridging program to integrate their skills and expertise into the healthcare labor force. A recent survey of selected ITMDs who had participated in a career bridging program showed one-third had passed their licensing exams. These exams assess candidate’s clinical knowledge and skills to ensure they are comparable to Canadian medical graduates. Despite this achievement, another hurdle remains, to secure licensure. This is the residency program, which ranges from 3 to 5 years depending on the field of specialty.

The residency application process is complicated, but to describe it simply, medical students apply – via the Canadian Resident Matching Service, or CaRMS – for residency positions at universities across the country in one or more specialties of their choice. Not only are the total number of residency slots limited, but there are caps on the number of slots reserved for internationally trained versus Canadian medical graduates. The available slots for ITMDs are considerably smaller.

With the 2021 residency match results, data clearly illustrates the inequity i.e. a total of 2,852 Canadian medical graduates were matched. On the other hand, 410 internationally trained medical doctors were matched to residency positions. Over 90% of ITMD’s who have passed their qualifying exams cannot secure a residency due to their limited number and inequitable distribution of the residency slots.

An immediate solution is developing and delivering bridging programs, including in-class training and practicum placements, to support ITMDs’ employment in work commensurate with their skills, training, and experience, such as clinical assistant, research associate, and healthcare manager. Incorporating ITMDs into the healthcare system as licensed physicians can be further achieved via Practice Ready Assessments, increased residency opportunities, and increased post-graduate public health education and training.

Developing a clear roadmap will facilitate ITMDs’ integration into the Canadian healthcare system and foster diversity and equity in health research, management, and patient care.
There is a worldwide health crisis. If we cannot save a life despite having a huge pool of foreign-trained physicians ready to serve any time, we are neglecting untapped human resources to the detriment of our health.

The inclusion of ITMDs in the health system will benefit the healthcare system, patients, and the community and have a positive impact on society by reducing wait times and ensuring a better quality of life.

ITMDs are here, ready, willing, and qualified to serve Canadians as we work together to strengthen our healthcare system. There is no better time than NOW! Let’s work together to make healthcare more available and accessible to all Canadians so that no one is left behind.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.  
• The co-authors are Drs Bhuiyan S, Orin M, Krivova A, Fathima S, Walters J, Uzonwanne G, McGuire M, Mohammad A, Alamgir AKM, Radwan E, Tasnim N, Tazrin T, Parungao J, Saad W, Shalaby Y.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Immigrant Health Professionals have lots to offer Canadian society, but often face barriers.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Aug 27 2021 (IPS)

Albert Einstein said, “In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” The year 2020 was a year of crisis across many sectors in Canada, especially the health care sector. There was a severe strain on the health care system through long waiting lists for family physicians, specialists, and vaccination clinics, and Intensive Care Units were working at a high level of capacity.

People’s Charter for Health describes health as a reflection of a society’s commitment to equity and justice. Health equity is not complete without equity in opportunities for medical professionals from all backgrounds to practice medicine.

Canada’s healthcare system has faced many challenges, including but not limited to long waiting times, geographical disparities, an aging population, and limited access to personal doctors and specialists. The COVID-19 pandemic further brought to light the gaps in healthcare and how opening career pathways for internationally trained medical doctors on the front lines could only be beneficial.

The Canadian demographic pattern is changing through globalization and immigration policies – hence diversity matters. There are increasing numbers of internationally trained medical doctors (ITMDs) who can work in Canada’s health care system but struggle to pursue their careers after moving to Canada due to bureaucratic and other obstacles. The ITMDs can contribute to our health care system alongside Canadian graduates. They also bring culturally sensitive care and in-demand language skills to Canada’s increasingly diverse population. 

Systemic barriers exist in Canadian healthcare for immigrants; hence, inequity in the system needs to be addressed by providing culturally respectful services. ITMDs can ensure equal opportunities to contribute to health services (i.e., indigenous community, aging population, immigrants, and migrant workers).

There is a rising demand for health care talent across the globe. Canada will face increasing competition with other countries to attract such a talented and qualified workforce. Without proper pathways for ITMDs to pursue their careers in Canada, ITMDs will eventually choose to migrate to countries that would enable them to have fair and clear pathways of integration into the healthcare system that will utilize their expertise.

Systemic barriers and inequity exist, and as a result, over 13 000 immigrant doctors are not called ‘Doctor’ in Canada. Only 26.4% of the total number of physicians in Canada are internationally trained medical graduates.

However, In Ontario, hospital care is overwhelmed with an estimated backlog of almost 257,000 surgeries. Also, Canada is the 12th lowest among OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries in the number of doctors per 1000 population. This implies the need for more doctors in Canada, which can be achieved by opening more opportunities for the thousands of international medical graduates in Canada to practice medicine.

However, it can be argued that the number of doctors has increased by 1.8% from 2018, with a total of 5.2% between 2015 and 20191. Additionally, the number of international medical graduates becoming family physicians in Canada has increased from 28.7% in 2015 to 30% in 20191. Can this be interpreted as increased opportunities for internationally trained medical doctors? The answer to this question requires further exploration of opportunities and residency match processes. Internationally trained specialists with multiple years of training and expertise choose to do family medicine in Canada as the process gets extremely difficult for the specialists to do their respective courses in Canada. This is also evidenced by ITMDs being only 17% of practicing surgical specialists compared to 30% of practicing family physicians.

Furthermore, we cannot ignore that international graduates with specialty training from only certain countries are recognized to pursue Royal College Certification in their respective specialties. However, graduates with specialty training from all other countries have to undergo compulsory residency training despite years of experience in their respective fields.

A recent survey conducted in 2021 by the Internationally Trained Medical Doctors program at Ryerson University showed that 35% of the international graduates who participated in the survey have completed all necessary licensing exams but have not yet been able to secure a residency position. Likewise, 47% of immigrants with internationally obtained post-secondary health education credentials are underutilized: they are either unemployed or work in non-health occupations that require only a high school diploma. Also, the World Health Organization projects a worldwide shortfall of approximately 18 million health care workers by 2030, with certain consequences for patients, economies, and communities. This shortage may fuel global competition for skilled health workers.

Internationally educated and licensed doctors face differential access to opportunities to meet the requirements to practice medicine compared to those trained in Canada. While most immigrant doctors are required to do additional residency training here, there are very limited spaces available. In 2020, only 418 ITMDs obtained a residency position, while 2,895 medical graduates trained in Canada were matched to residency programs. At the end of the match, 56 residency positions were unfilled, 49 of which were in Family Medicine. Furthermore, of the spaces reserved for ITMDs, a majority were filled by Canadians who went abroad to study medicine. On the brighter side, however, 83% of Canadians agree that we should do more to ensure that doctors trained internationally have a fair and reasonable opportunity to practice medicine in Canada.

Hopefully, we will soon reach a stage where we, ITMDs, could look back and say that our time has finally come! Policymakers need to consider existing barriers and take steps forward in utilizing immigrants’ skills to address our society’s demands. ITMDs, let’s stay strong together–tomorrow is a new day! Diversity matters. Together, let’s act now to make our Canadian health system equity-focused and accessible to all.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.
• The co-authors are Drs Bhuiyan S, Azam S, Krivova A, Orin M, Mukoko P, Radwan E, Adelekan O, Abdulhameed M, Mehrotra M, Anuradha D, Gaby V, Tasnim N, Abolurin A, Dare A, Telchi J, Mariano K, Bukhari S.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Dr Shafi Bhuiyan is pictured here with a team of ITMDs. Foreign-trained doctors are underutilized in Canada despite shortages of trained personnel.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Aug 20 2021 (IPS)

Canada is ranked number one out of 78 countries globally, with the highest marks in social purpose indicators, emphasizing human rights, social justice, and racial equity commitment, according to a recent U.S. News & World Report survey.

The country follows the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) principles, incorporating them into research and workplace environments, and it acknowledges challenges vulnerable populations face. Adopting these principles in every aspect of people’s lives makes Canada one of the most attractive places for numerous immigrants worldwide, with more than 13 000 internationally trained medical doctors (ITMDs) calling Canada home.

Canada’s health care is based on social equity fundamentals, having universal health coverage for essential medical services free of charge. Nevertheless, in 2019, about 4.6 million Canadians claimed that they do not have regular medical practitioners to seek advice or help.

In 2020, the highest record of 10.5 weeks waiting time from a family physician referral to specialist consultation was documented, with additional 12.1 weeks interval before treatment was initiated.

The COVID-19 pandemic aggravated these issues resulting in about 16 million healthcare services backlogs in Ontario alone. These will need up to almost two years to be resolved.

At the same time, Canada possesses significantly underutilized skilled healthcare professional resources trained abroad. According to the survey conducted among recent ITMDs graduates, 35% have passed the required licensing exams, including Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination Part I (MCCQE1), the National Assessment Collaboration Objective Structured Clinical Examination (NAC OSCE). This means they are eligible to enter the residency.

Very few will secure a residency position. The residency quotes retrieved from the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) website showed that only 325 out of 3,365 (less than 10 %) spots were available for international medical graduates (IMGs) for the first iteration of the 2021 matching process.

Out of 1,358 IMGs participants, 948 (almost 70%) were unmatched this year partly due to a lack of transparency and understanding of the process rules.

Not to mention the cost associated with licensing examination, the CaRMS application process is a significant financial burden and even a barrier in many cases for the newcomers. According to Statistics Canada report, 47% of foreign-educated health professionals are either unemployed or employed in non-health-related positions that required only a high school diploma.

Nevertheless, internationally trained medical doctors play a significant role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting the vaccination clinics, working as contact tracing managers and mental health advisors.

Another issue that needs an urgent solution is physician wellbeing. A recent study in Vancouver showed that the burnout rate reaches 68% among doctors, with 63% feeling emotionally exhausted and 39% depersonalized. Moreover, 21% of them had resigned or have thoughts about leaving their career.

On top of that, the aging population required complex care, along with a growing diverse population of Canada, underserved racialized, and newcomers’ communities need a considerate strategy to encompass community-based, culturally sensitive approaches to health care.

The ITMDs is a culturally diverse group with rich experience in different fields of medicine and research. Thus, foreign-educated health care professionals are fit perfectly to engage underprivileged communities, promote health and disease prevention, and manage multiple health priorities. Hence, the integration of internationally trained health care professionals could be a turning point to solve the current and prospective issues.

Moreover, 80% of Canadians stated that they feel comfortable being cared for by doctors who obtained mainly their training outside Canada, with 83% claimed that it should be more action to ensure fairness and opportunities for IMGs to practice medicine.

The question is: Why are internationally trained medical doctors still sidelined? The action is for the government to bring Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) principles into the Canadian health care system.

Thus, a clear roadmap to integrate internationally trained healthcare professionals is necessary to address all existing challenges and strengthen Canada’s health care system. A move considered to be highly beneficial for all stakeholders (patients, physicians, ITMDs, government).

Collaboration is vital to move forward and make the ‘no one left behind ‘strategy a reality.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.   
• The co-authors are: Drs Bhuiyan S, Krivova A, Orin M, Azam S., Shalaby Y, Tasnim N, Badran H, Al-Chetachi W, Radwan E, Tazrin T, Biswas M, Min K. S, Mehrotra M, Anuradha, Quintanilla E, Begum N, Adhikary I, Fatima N

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Even with a metre of snow outside in Ottawa, Canada, a wide variety of imported apples and other fruits are available in Canadian food markets. Credit: Stephen Leahy/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
ONTARIO, Canada, Feb 8 2019 (IPS)

Canada introduced a new healthy eating food guide January 2019 and, for the first time, the meat, dairy and processed food and beverage industries were not involved. Based on the recommendations of health and nutrition experts, the guide places a new emphasis on eating plants, drinking water and cooking at home.

Health experts have long warned that Canadians don’t eat enough vegetables, fruits and whole grains.  The new guide wants to shift diets toward a high proportion of plant-based foods like legumes, beans, and tofu and less dairy, eggs, meat and fish. It also warns parents to limit children’s consumption of fruit juices and sugar-sweetened milk beverages.

“Healthy eating is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and helps prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers,” said Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, in a statement.

Canada’s new guide is amongst the best in the world says Wayne Roberts, an independent food policy analyst and writer. “It’s comparable to Brazil’s excellent guide with its emphasis on eating fresh, unprocessed food,” Roberts told IPS.

The guide goes beyond advising Canadians what foods to eat but how to eat by recommending cooking at home, eating meals together and avoiding fast food said Jennifer Reynolds of Food Secure Canada, an alliance of organisations and individuals working together to advance food security.

Canada’s new healthy eating food guide. Courtesy: Government of Canada

Canadians spent 19 billion dollars on fast food in 2017, an average of 2,200 dollars per year for a family of four.

Unicef ranked Canada 37th out of 41 rich countries when it comes to providing healthy food for kids. The long road to developing a new food guide represents a whole new direction for food in Canada, said Reynolds in an interview. Despite a powerful food industry lobby, new legislation is expected this year to limit marketing of unhealthy food and drinks to children. 

Not only is shifting to more plant-based diets good for both health and the planet, it is a golden opportunity to re-direct Canada’s export-focused, commodity agricultural system to sustainable agriculture and support rural economies while addressing food insecurity, Reynolds said.

Despite living in a wealthy country, more than one in 10 Canadians cannot afford or have access to sufficient nutritious food to maintain health researchers at the University of Toronto report.

They recommend a national food policy that brings all sectors of government together to address this long-standing issue. Such a policy is sorely needed to not only address hunger and under-nutrition but also the challenges of climate change and the decline in rural economies, said Reynolds.

A national food policy could also address the shocking amount of waste in Canada’s food system where nearly 60 percent of all food produced is wasted according to a new report The Avoidable Crisis of Food Waste.

This is the first such analysis of any countries’ food production system said Martin Gooch, CEO of  Value Chain Management International (VCMI), a company that helps industries’ lower costs and improve the efficiency of their supply chains.

“I was astonished by the amount of waste in this industry,” Gooch told IPS.

The research is a “world first” because it measures weight using “a standardised system across the whole food value chain,” and includes all food types from both land and water. It also includes primary data from across the supply chain and consulted more than 700 food industry experts.

The value of all food that is lost or wasted in Canada is a staggering 49 billion dollars, said Lori Nikkel of Second Harvest, an agency that collects surplus food and gives it away to those in need. The VCMI study found that a third of Canada’s wasted food could be “rescued” and sent to communities in need.

Waste happens at all stages of food production including produce left to rot in the fields due to labour shortages, low prices or cancelled orders. Another major issue is the food industry’s focus on producing huge volumes of food as cheaply as possible over quality said Gooch. When a company in the orchard industry switched its emphasis to quality, it resulted in reduced costs, doubled profits while total volume produced was the same or less.

The lion’s share of food waste is during food production and processing the study found. Only 14 percent of food waste is at the household level. Best-before dates are the other major cause of food waste by both consumers and retailers. Product dating practices have nothing to do with food safety. Companies can use any date they wish. There are no standards or regulations, nor were best-before dates found on most products just 10 years ago said Gooch.

Given Gooch’s knowledge of Canada’s food waste he was quite surprised to see the Food Sustainability Index rank Canada among the best in the world in preventing food waste with a score of 97.80 out of 100. “That’s incorrect, we found an astonishing amount of waste in Canada’s food system,” he said. 

The Index was drawn up by the Italian foundation Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition and the Intelligence Unit of the British magazine The Economist. The index ranked 67 countries based on three categories: food and water loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges. Canada ranked third overall, much to the surprise of everyone interviewed for this article. 

When IPS questioned the Barilla Center about food waste it said Canada ranked poorly, in fact 65th out of 67 counties with 80 kilograms (kg) of food waste per capita per year based their estimates. However, since Canada has a wide range of policies to address food waste it received a far higher final ranking on the Index. 

However, the VCMI study found that Canada’s actual per capita food waste was closer to 1,000 kg per year, per person not the estimated 80 kg. 

The third place overall ranking the Index is a result of Canada having strong policies. “While Canada does not perform particularly well in most cases on outcome metrics, the country does have strong policies to make changes, especially when compared to the United States,” Valentina Gasbarri of the Barilla Center told IPS in an email.

“We are open to discussions around what improvements could be made [to the Index],” Gasbarri said. 

Perhaps the index was weighted too much towards policy and intentions mused Roberts. “It certainly does not represent on the ground reality in Canada.” 

Seamounts are filled with a diversity of ocean life including anemones, feather stars, octopuses, lobsters and rockfishes. Credit: Ocean Exploration Trust, Northeast Pacific Seamount Expedition Partners

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Dec 5 2018 (IPS)

Despite the deep, cold waters, newly discovered undersea mountains off Canada’s west coast are home to a rich diversity of life.

“When we reached a seamount (undersea mountain), it was often like we were entering a forest, only of red tree corals and vase-shaped glass sponges,” said Robert Rangeley, Science Director, Oceana Canada.  “These areas were filled with a diversity of other animals including anemones, feather stars, octopuses, lobsters and rockfishes,” said Rangely who led the expedition in July.

Oceana, a marine conservation organisation, along with the Haida Nation, an indigenous people, the Federal government department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Ocean Networks Canada were partners in the first in-depth investigation of the recently designated Offshore Pacific Area of Interest. This is a 140,000 square kilometre region 100 to 200 kilometres west of Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia.

The waters in this region are also home to the vast majority of Canada’s known hydrothermal vents, deep-sea hot springs at the bottom of the sea floor.  As seawater meets the Earth’s molten magma it gets superheated and rises up through holes or vents in the sea floor carrying with it minerals leached from the crustal rock below forming bizarre chimney-like structures. These vents are home to strange forms of life that thrive in a toxic chemical soup where temperatures can reach 350 degrees C.

The expedition spent 16 days on the water and discovered six new seamounts with ancient and fragile coral forests and potentially new species. Even scientists who have visited seamounts on other parts of the world were blown away by the abundance and diversity of life found Rangely told IPS.

The expedition team also found lost fishing gear on some of the seamounts. This gear entangles marine life and destroys fragile and slow growing corals and sponges. Seamounts are often targeted by fishing vessels because they attract an abundance of fish. The damage wasn’t from bottom-trawling vessels that scrape along the seafloor but from long-line fishing. The Cobb seamount just outside of Canada’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) has been destroyed by fishing he said.

Canada is working to create a new marine protected area (MPA) for most of the 140,000 sq km Offshore Pacific Area of Interest. Credit: Ocean Exploration Trust, Northeast Pacific Seamount Expedition Partners

Seamounts need protection to provide refuge for marine life and Oceana wants to see all of Canada’s seamounts closed to bottom contact fishing Rangely said. Fishing can still continue away from seamounts, and will benefit from the closures. When seamounts are protected from fishing or resource extraction, it increases the quantities of fish outside the area in what’s known as a ‘spillover effect’.

Canada is working to create a new marine protected area (MPA) for most of the 140,000 sq km Offshore Pacific Area of Interest. Half the region would be closed to fishing to protect seamounts and hydrothermal vents. The new MPA may be officially in place in 2020 to help Canada get close to its United Nations Convention of Biodiversity commitment of protecting 10 percent of its marine and coastal areas by 2020. Canada had protected less than one percent by 2017. However, the current government is rapidly ramping up the number of protected areas but conservationists say these protections are too weak and allow fishing or resource extraction.

For example a near 50,000 square kilometre marine refuge east of Newfoundland on Canada’s Atlantic coast is off limits to fishing was just opened to allow drilling for oil and gas.

Canada is also scrambling to manage its fish stocks that have seen years of steady decline. Just a third of the nearly 200 stocks are considered healthy, according to a 2018 audit report by Oceana. Canada is a major fish and seafood exporter, with exports reaching C$6.9 billion in 2017.

After a decade of deep cutbacks by a previous government, Canada’s fisheries department under the Trudeau government is struggling to catch up. Most of the 26 critically endangered stocks do not have rebuilding plans in place the Oceana report found.

Last week the Canadian government announced $107.4 million over five years for rebuilding and assessments of fish stocks across Canada.

In a statement Oceana Canada’s Executive Director, Josh Laughren called this a critical investment addressing the urgent challenge of rebuilding depleted fisheries and rebuilding abundance.

• The first global Sustainable Blue Economy Conference took place in Nairobi, Kenya from Nov. 26 to 28 and was co-hosted with Canada and Japan. Participants from 150 countries around the world gathered to learn how to build a blue economy.

A traditional dancer at the Manito Ahbee Festival, a gathering that celebrates Indigenous culture and heritage to unify, educate and inspire. Credit: Travel Manitoba/cc by 2.0

By Rose Delaney
LONDON, Nov 6 2016 (IPS)

The history of Canada’s indigenous population has been, for the most part, kept in the shadows.  According to leading expert on indigenous justice Lisa Monchalin, the consequences of colonialism and dispossession on native communities have been “glossed over”, unacknowledged and dismissed by the “settled” population.

At the launch of her new book “The Colonial Problem: An Indigenous Perspective on Crime and Injustice in Canada” earlier this month at University College London, Monchalin emphasised the impact colonial legacies have left on indigenous peoples in modern-day Canada.

During colonial times, she explained, the native population was compelled to become dependent on a foreign system which paid little heed to their own distinct culture and customs. European settlers suppressed the rights of the indigenous groups, rapidly establishing a European hierarchical structure which considered them nothing more than an “Indian problem”.

The colonial solution to the Indigenous “problem” was nothing short of deadly. As a direct result of European settlement, the native population became a vanishing race with an estimated 80 to 90 percent dying from diseases brought from Europe. In the 1700s, blankets infected with smallpox were distributed as a means of eradicating Indigenous peoples.

Those who did not die of disease were forcefully displaced. Many were pushed onto smaller parcels of land, obliged to culturally assimilate and abandon their traditions or left to die off in territories with few resources.

In many ways, Monchalin said, “colonisation can also be drawn back to the prevalence of violence against indigenous communities through the centuries, including acts of gender-based violence”.

Before colonisation, traditional native societies prided themselves on being matriarchal, honouring and valuing the “sacred” nature of women within their community. Women were granted a strong voice through positions of leadership and power and there was an equitable division of labor. “Acts of sexual violence were a rarity before European contact,” Monchalin said.

Under the European system of governance, native women were forcibly dispossessed of their agency. They could no longer be considered valiant leaders, rather, their colonisers wanted to enforce the message that they were little more than subordinates to the male members of the community. Under colonial rule, only men were accepted to speak on behalf of their communities.

The colonisers began to formulate the image of the native woman as an “exotic other”.  They referred to indigenous women as “squaws”, the female version of a savage. They described them as having “no human face, lustful and immoral”, Monchalin explained.

These ingrained colonial perspectives not only converted the native female identity into a sexualised commodity, it also led to the widespread sexual objectification of native women, with acts of sexual violence committed justified by the fact that these women were “human in form only”.

The subordination and oppression of native women rooted in colonial times is still prevalent today. Sexualized and romanticized constructions of the “erotic” indigenous women have resulted in widespread reports of sexual harassment and violations across the country.

“In Canada, 87 percent of indigenous women will experience physical violence in her lifetime. One in three of these women will be raped,” she said.

Indigenous women continue to be victimized by the persisting structures of a dehumanizing colonial system which stripped them of their agency and considered them “lesser being”. This came to the fore in 2014 when 1,181 cases of missing native women between 1980-2012 were made public. The crisis was largely dismissed and a truth inquiry only established last year. Police brutality conducted against indigenous women has also been reported across the country.

Many believe that the historical legacy of Euro-centric suppression contributes to the ongoing issues of injustice and inequality demonstrated towards indigenous peoples. In 1873, one of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) main objective was to address the “indigenous problem”, the goal being the “silent surrender” of the native people.

This led to the creation of “residential schools”, government-funded schools responsible for educating aboriginal children in Canada. The Canadian government developed a policy called “aggressive assimilation”. They believed that a church-run, industrial boarding school was the best way to prepare them for life in mainstream society and ultimately, abandon their “savage” traditions.

However, this government initiative took a turn for the worse. Native children were subjected to violence and abuse. Sexual abuse was found to reach epidemic levels within the schools and some children were even reported to have been used for “nutritional experiments”. After over a century of “state-sponsored violence”, the last residential school closed in 1996.

The need to suppress, silence and condemn a people based on their ethnicity has led to state-induced violence and mistreatment of native peoples by state authority to the present day. Systemic issues of racism and discrimination “legitimize” acts of police brutality and unjust incarceration of indigenous peoples. In fact, there’s a clear Indigenous overrepresentation in the Canadian prison system, with roughly 4.3 percent of the total population incarcerated.

The legacy of colonial injustice persists today for aboriginal peoples in Canada subjected to abuse, violence, and prejudice daily. Seven generations of residential school victims, deep-rooted female exploitation, state-induced violence, and unlawful incarceration, amongst a host of other atrocities, has led to a build-up of intergenerational trauma within indigenous communities across the country, she said.

However, Canada’s federal government has begun to address the widespread neglect and failed policies felt by past generations of indigenous people.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has publicly declared his commitment to beginning a new prosperous relationship between Canada and its indigenous people. “No relationship is more important to me and to Canada than the one with First Nations, the Métis Nation, and Inuit,” he said at the assembly of First Nations in December 2015.

Canada plans to invest 8.4 billion dollars over five years, beginning in 2016–17, to improve the socio-economic conditions of Indigenous peoples and their communities and bring about transformational change.

“Through education, awareness raising and a willingness to confront and question the violent past, the people of Canada can finally celebrate Indigenous identity and ultimately, reconstruct their rich traditions that were forcibly broken down under colonialism,” Monchalin concluded.

The one-day summit on ‘Global Leadership in the Arctic – Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (GLACIER) held in Anchorage, Alaska on Aug. 31 failed to make commitments to serious action to fight the negative impacts of global warming. Credit: Leehi Yona/IPS

By Leehi Yona
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sep 1 2015 (IPS)

After a one-day summit in the U.S. Arctic’s biggest city, leaders from the world’s northern countries acknowledged that climate change is seriously disrupting the Arctic ecosystem, yet left without committing themselves to serious action to fight the negative impacts of global warming.

The Aug. 31 summit on ‘Global Leadership in the Arctic – Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (GLACIER)’, was organised by the U.S. State Department and attended by dignitaries from 20 countries, including the eight Arctic nations – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and United States.

Political leaders like U.S. President Barack Obama, who urged Arctic nations to take bolder action as the summit ended, came out with strong words, but stakeholders from civil society and scientific groups said the outcome came short of the tangible action needed.“This statement (from the one-day GLACIER Arctic summit] unfortunately fails to fully acknowledge one of the grave threats to the Arctic and to the planet – the extraction and burning of fossil fuels” – Ellie Johnston, World Climate Project Manager at Climate Interactive

The summit attracted the attention of environmental and indigenous groups, which criticised Obama’s reputation as a climate leader in the face of allowing offshore oil drilling in the Arctic.

Numerous protests and acts of non-violent civil disobedience in recent months have attempted to block oil company Shell from drilling; the company is currently active off the Alaskan coast.

“The recent approval of Shell’s Arctic oil drilling plans is a prime example of the disparity between President Obama’s strong rhetoric and increasing action on climate change and his administration’s fossil fuel extraction policies,” said David Turnbull, Campaigns Director for Oil Change International.

All participating countries signed a joint statement on climate change and its impact on the Arctic, after the initial reluctance of Canada and Russia, which eventually added their names.

“We take seriously warnings by scientists: temperatures in the Arctic are increasing at more than twice the average global rate,” the statement read, before going on to describe the wide range of impacts felt by Arctic communities’ landscapes, culture and well-being.

“As change continues at an unprecedented rate in the Arctic – increasing the stresses on communities and ecosystems in already harsh environments – we are committed more than ever to protecting both terrestrial and marine areas in this unique region, and our shared planet, for generations to come.”

However, the statement lacked concrete commitments, even on crucial topics like fossil fuel exploration in the Arctic, leaving climate experts with the feeling that it could have been more ambitious or have offered more specific, tangible commitments on the part of countries.

“I appreciate the rhetoric and depth of acknowledgement of the climate crisis,” the World Climate Project Manager at Climate Interactive, Ellie Johnston, told IPS. “Yet this statement unfortunately fails to fully acknowledge one of the grave threats to the Arctic and to the planet – the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.”

“This is particularly relevant as nations and companies jockey for access to drilling in our historically icy Arctic seas which have now become more accessible because of warming,” she said. “Drilling for fossil fuels leads to more warming, which leads to more drilling. This is one feedback loop we can stop.”

Oil and gas companies were encouraged – but not required –to voluntarily take on more stringent policies and join the Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Oil and Gas Methane Partnership, an initiative to help companies reduce their emissions of methane and other short-lived climate pollutants.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry addressed participants – members from indigenous communities, government representatives, scientists, and non-governmental organizations – at the opening of the summit. “The Arctic is in many ways a thermostat,” he said. “We already see [it] having a profound impact on the rest of the planet.”

Kerry also attempted to drum up action ahead of the COP21 United Nations climate change negotiations in Paris this December, urging governments to “try to come up with a truly ambitious and truly global climate agreement.”

He added that the Paris conference “is not the end of the road […] Our hope is that everyone can leave this conference today with a heightened sense of urgency and a better understanding of our collective responsibility to do everything we can to deal with the harmful impacts of climate change.”

In a closing address to summit participants, President Obama repeatedly said “we are not doing enough.” He outlined the stark impacts of a future with business-as-usual climate change: thawing permafrost, forest fires and dangerous feedback loops. “We will condemn our children to a planet beyond their capacity to repair … any leader willing to take a gamble on a future like that is not fit to lead,” he stated.

However, neither Kerry nor Obama acknowledged, as many environmental groups have pointed out, that the United States’ current greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitment falls nearly halfway short of what the country must do in order to stay within the Paris conference goal of a 2^oC warming limit.

While participants emphasised engagement from affected communities, the summit itself did not manifest engagement with those communities: less than one-third of the panellists and presenters were either indigenous or female, and only one woman of colour was present.

“It would have been nice to hear more from indigenous women or women of colour,” Princess Daazrhaii, member of the Gwich’in Nation and strong advocate for the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, told IPS. “The Arctic is more diverse than what I felt like was represented at the conference.”

“As life-givers and as mothers, many of us nurse our children. We know for a fact that women in the Arctic are more susceptible to the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that are bound to the air we breathe. Violence against women is another issue that I feel gets exacerbated when there are threats to our ecosystem.”

All individuals talked to appreciated the conference’s emphasis on climate change as a significant problem, yet all of them also expressed a desire for the United States – and governments around the world – to do more.

“[Climate change] is what brings human beings together,” Daazrhaii said. “We’re all in this together. And we have to work on this together.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

Excerpt:

Cloud from an atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States at Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands, in November 1952. Photo credit: US Government

By Ramesh Jaura
HIROSHIMA, Aug 28 2015 (IPS)

A three-day landmark U.N. Conference on Disarmament Issues has ended here – one day ahead of the International Day Against Nuclear Tests – stressing the need for ushering in a world free of nuclear weapons, but without a consensus on how to move towards that goal.

The Aug. 26-28 conference, organised by the Bangkok-based United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD) in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of Japan and the city and Prefecture of Hiroshima, was attended by more than 80 government officials and experts, also from beyond the region.

It was the twenty-fifth annual meeting of its kind held in Japan, which acquired a particular importance against the backdrop of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the founding of the United Nations.“In order to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, it is extremely important for political leaders, young people and others worldwide to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and see for themselves the reality of atomic bombings. Through this, I am convinced that we will be able to share our aspirations for a world free of nuclear weapons” – Fumio Kishida, Japanese Foreign Minister

Summing up the deliberations, UNRCPD Director Yuriy Kryvonos said the discussions on “the opportunities and challenges in nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation” had been “candid and dynamic”.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference from Apr. 27 to May 22 at the U.N. headquarters drew the focus in presentations and panel discussions.

Ambassador Taous Feroukhi of Algeria, who presided over the NPT Review Conference, explained at length why the gathering had failed to agree on a universally acceptable draft final text, despite a far-reaching consensus on a wide range of crucial issues: refusal of the United States, Britain and Canada to accept the proposal for convening a conference by Mar. 1, 2016, for a Middle East Zone Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

Addressing the issue, Japan’s Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida joined several government officials and experts in expressing his regrets that the draft final document was not adopted due to the issue of WMDs.

Kishida noted that the failure to establish a new Action Plan at the Review Conference had led to a debate over the viability of the NPT. “However,” he added, “I would like to make one thing crystal clear. The NPT regime has played an extremely important role for peace and stability in the international community; a role that remains unchanged even today.”

The Hiroshima conference not only discussed divergent views on measures to preserve the effective implementation of the NPT, but also the role of the yet-to-be finalised Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in achieving the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons, humanitarian consequences of the use of atomic weapons, and the significance of nuclear weapon free zones (NWFZs) for strengthening the non-proliferation regime and nuclear disarmament.

Speakers attached particular attention to the increasing role of local municipalities, civil society and nuclear disarmament education, including testimonies from ‘hibakusha’ (survivors of atomic bombings mostly in their 80s and above) in consolidating common understanding of the threat posed by nuclear weapons for people from all countries around the world regardless whether or not their governments possess nuclear weapons.

UNRCPD Director Kryvonos said the Hiroshima conference had given “a good start for searching new fresh ideas on how we should move towards our goal – protecting our planet from a risk of using nuclear weapons.”

Hiroshima Prefecture Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki, the city’s Mayor Karzumi Matsui – son of a ‘hibakusha’ father and president of the Mayors for Peace organisation comprising 6,779 cities in 161 countries and regions – as well as his counterpart from Nagasaki, Tomihisa Taue, pleaded for strengthening a concerted campaign for a nuclear free world. Taue is also the president of the National Council of Japan’s Nuclear-Free Local Authorities.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki city leaders welcomed suggestions for a nuclear disarmament summit next year in Hiroshima, which they said would lend added thrust to awareness raising for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Though foreign ministry officials refused to identify themselves publicly with the proposal, Japan’s Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, who hails from Hiroshima, emphasised the need for nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear weapon states to “work together in steadily advancing practical and concrete measures in order to make real progress in nuclear disarmament.”

Kishida said that Japan will submit a “new draft resolution on the total elimination of nuclear weapons” to the forthcoming meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Such a resolution, he said, was “appropriate to the 70th year since the atomic bombings and could serve as guidelines for the international community for the next five years, on the basis of the Review Conference”.

The next NPT Review Conference is expected to be held in 2020.

Mayors for Peace has launched a 2020 Vision Campaign as the main vehicle for advancing their agenda – a nuclear-weapon-free world by the year 2020.

The campaign was initiated on a provisional basis by the Executive Cities of Mayors for Peace at their meeting in Manchester, Britain, in October 2003. It was launched under the name ‘Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons’ in November of that year at the 2nd Citizens Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons held in Nagasaki, Japan.

In August 2005, the World Conference endorsed continuation of the campaign under the title of the ‘2020 Vision Campaign’.

Foreign Minister Kishida expressed the views of the inhabitants of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he pointed out in a message to the UNRCPD conference: “… the reality of atomic bombings is far from being sufficiently understood worldwide.”

He added: “In order to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, it is extremely important for political leaders, young people and others worldwide to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and see for themselves the reality of atomic bombings. Through this, I am convinced that we will be able to share our aspirations for a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

The recent destruction of this 2,000-year-old temple – the temple of Baal-Shamin in Palmyra, Syria – is yet another grim example of how the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) uses conventional weapons to further its agenda – but what has fuelled the growing IS firepower? Photo credit: Bernard Gagnon/CC BY-SA 3.0

By Marek Marczynski
CANCUN, Mexico, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

The recent explosions that apparently destroyed a 2,000-year-old temple in the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria were yet another grim example of how the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) uses conventional weapons to further its agenda.

But what has fuelled the growing IS firepower? The answer lies in recent history – arms flows to the Middle East dating back as far as the 1970s have played a role.

Marek Marczynski

After taking control of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014, IS fighters paraded a windfall of mainly U.S.-manufactured weapons and military vehicles which had been sold or given to the Iraqi armed forces.

At the end of last year, Conflict Armament Research published an analysis of ammunition used by IS in northern Iraq and Syria. The 1,730 cartridges surveyed had been manufactured in 21 different countries, with more than 80 percent from China, the former Soviet Union, the United States, Russia and Serbia.

More recent research commissioned by Amnesty International also found that while IS has some ammunition produced as recently as 2014, a large percentage of the arms they are using are Soviet/Warsaw Pact-era small arms and light weapons, armoured vehicles and artillery dating back to the 1970s and 80s.

Scenarios like these give military strategists and foreign policy buffs sleepless nights. But for many civilians in war-ravaged Iraq and Syria, they are part of a real-life nightmare. These arms, now captured by or illicitly traded to IS and other armed groups, have facilitated summary killings, enforced disappearances, rape and torture, and other serious human rights abuses amid a conflict that has forced millions to become internally displaced or to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.“It is a damning indictment of the poorly regulated global arms trade that weapons and munitions licensed by governments for export can so easily fall into the hands of human rights abusers … But world leaders have yet to learn their lesson”

It is a damning indictment of the poorly regulated global arms trade that weapons and munitions licensed by governments for export can so easily fall into the hands of human rights abusers.

What is even worse is that this is a case of history repeating itself. But world leaders have yet to learn their lesson.

For many, the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq drove home the dangers of an international arms trade lacking in adequate checks and balances.

When the dust settled after the conflict that ensued when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s powerful armed forces invaded neighbouring Kuwait, it was revealed that his country was awash with arms supplied by all five Permanent Members of the U.N. Security Council.

Perversely, several of them had also armed Iran in the previous decade, fuelling an eight-year war with Iraq that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Now, the same states are once more pouring weapons into the region, often with wholly inadequate protections against diversion and illicit traffic.

This week, those states are among more than 100 countries represented in Cancún, Mexico, for the first Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which entered into force last December. This Aug. 24-27 meeting is crucial because it is due to lay down firm rules and procedures for the treaty’s implementation.

The participation of civil society in this and future ATT conferences is important to prevent potentially life-threatening decisions to take place out of the public sight. Transparency of the ATT reporting process, among other measures, will need to be front and centre, as it will certainly mean the difference between having meaningful checks and balances that can end up saving lives or a weakened treaty that gathers dust as states carry on business as usual in the massive conventional arms trade.

A trade shrouded in secrecy and worth tens of billions of dollars, it claims upwards of half a million lives and countless injuries every year, while putting millions more at risk of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations.

The ATT includes a number of robust rules to stop the flow of arms to countries when it is known they would be used for further atrocities. 

The treaty has swiftly won widespread support from the international community, including five of the top 10 arms exporters – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The United States, by far the largest arms producer and exporter, is among 58 additional countries that have signed but not yet ratified the treaty. However, other major arms producers like China, Canada and Russia have so far resisted signing or ratifying.

One of the ATT’s objectives is “to prevent and eradicate the illicit trade in conventional arms and prevent their diversion”, so governments have a responsibility to take measures to prevent situations where their arms deals lead to human rights abuses.

Having rigorous controls in place will help ensure that states can no longer simply open the floodgates of arms into a country in conflict or whose government routinely uses arms to repress peoples’ human rights.

The more states get on board the treaty, and the more robust and transparent the checks and balances are, the more it will bring about change in the murky waters of the international arms trade. It will force governments to be more discerning about who they do business with.

The international community has so far failed the people of Syria and Iraq, but the ATT provides governments with a historic opportunity to take a critical step towards protecting civilians from such horrors in the future. They should grab this opportunity with both hands.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Daya Thussu
LONDON, Jul 1 2015 (IPS)

As the leaders of the BRICS five meet in the Russian city of Ufa for their annual summit Jul. 8–10, their agenda is likely to be dominated by economic and security concerns, triggered by the continuing economic crisis in the European Union and the security situation in the Middle East.

The seventh annual summit of the large emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – also takes place with a background of escalating tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine and the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), as well as the growing economic power of Asia, in particular, China.

Daya Thussu

Nearly a decade and a half has passed since the BRIC acronym was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, a Goldman Sachs executive, now a minister in David Cameron’s U.K. government, to refer to the four fast-growing emerging markets. South Africa was added in 2011, on China’s request, to expand BRIC to BRICS.

Although in operation as a formal group since 2006, and holding annual summits since 2009, the BRICS countries have escaped much comment in international media, partly because of the different political systems and socio-cultural norms, as well as stages of development, within this group of large and diverse nations.

The emergence of such groupings coincides with the relative economic decline of the West.

This has created the opportunity for emerging powers, such as China and India, to participate in global governance structures hitherto dominated by the United States and its Western allies.

That the centre of economic gravity is shifting away from the West is acknowledged in the view of the U.S. Administration of Barack Obama that the ‘pivot’ of U.S. foreign policy is moving to Asia.“The major countries of the global South have shown impressive economic growth in recent decades … [it is predicted that] by 2020 the combined economic output of China, India and Brazil will surpass the aggregated production of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy”

And there is evidence of this shift. In the Fortune 500 ranking, the number of transnational corporations based in Brazil, Russia, India and China has grown from 27 in 2005 to more than 100 in 2015. China’s Huawei, a telecommunications equipment firm, is the world’s largest holder of international patents; Brazil’s Petrobras is the fourth largest oil company in the world, while the Tata group became the first Indian conglomerate to reach 100 billion dollars in revenues.

Since 2006, China has been the largest holder of foreign currency reserves, estimated in 2015 to be more than 3.8 trillion dollars. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China’s gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed that of the United States in 2014, making it the world’s largest economy in purchasing-power parity terms.

More broadly, the major countries of the global South have shown impressive economic growth in recent decades, prompting the United Nations Development Programme to proclaim The Rise of the South (the title of its 2013 Human Development Report), which predicts that by 2020 the combined economic output of China, India and Brazil will surpass the aggregated production of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.

Though the individual relationships between BRICS countries and the United States differ markedly (Russia and China being generally anti-Washington while Brazil and South Africa relatively close to the United States and India moving from its traditional non-aligned position to a ‘multi-aligned’ one), the group was conceived as an alternative to American power and is the only major group of nations not to include the United States or any other G-7 nation.

Nevertheless, none of the five member nations are eager for confrontation with the United States – with the possible exception of Russia – the country with which they have their most important relationship. Indeed, China is one of the largest investors in the United States, while India, Brazil and South Africa demonstrate democratic affinities with the West: India’s IT industry is particularly dependent on its close ties with the United States and Europe.

Although the idea of BRIC was initiated in Russia, it is China that has emerged as the driving force behind this grouping. British author Martin Jacques has noted in his international bestseller When China Rules the World, that China operates “both within and outside the existing international system while at the same time, in effect, sponsoring a new China-centric international system which will exist alongside the present system and probably slowly begin to usurp it.”

One manifestation of this change is the establishment of a BRICS bank (the ‘New Development Bank’) to fund developmental projects, potentially to rival the Western-dominated Bretton Woods institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF. Headquartered in Shanghai, China has made the largest contribution to setting it up and is likely that the bank will further enhance China’s domination of the BRICS group.

Beyond BRICS, Beijing has also established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which already has 57 members, including Australia, Germany and Britain, and in which China will hold over 25 percent of voting rights. Two other BRICS nations – India and Russia – are the AIIB’s second and third largest shareholders.

Such changes have an impact on the media scene as well. As part of China’s ‘going out’ strategy, billions of dollars have been earmarked for external communication, including the expansion of Chinese broadcasting networks such as CCTV News and Xinhua’s English-language TV, CNC World.

Russia has also raised its international profile by entering the English-language news world in 2005 with the launch of the Russia Today (now called RT) network, which, apart from English, also broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in Spanish and Arabic.

However, as a new book Mapping BRICS Media – which I co-edited with Kaarle Nordenstreng of the University of Tampere, Finland – shows, there is very little intra-BRICS media exchange and most of the BRICS nations continue to receive international news largely from Anglo-American media.

The growing economic cooperation between Moscow and Beijing – most notably in the 2014 multi-billion dollar gas deal – indicates a new Sino-Russian economic equation outside Western control.

Two key U.S.-led trade agreements being negotiated – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and both excluding the BRICS nations – are partly a reaction to the perceived competition from nations such as China.

For its part, China appears to have used the BRICS grouping to allay fears that it is rising ‘with the rest’ and therefore less threatening to Western hegemony.

The BRICS summit takes place jointly with Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of State Council meeting. The only other time that BRICS and the SCO combined their summits was also in Russia – in Ekaterinburg in 2009.

Apart from two BRICS members, China and Russia, the SCO includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. SCO has not expanded its membership since it was set up in 2001. India has an ‘observer’ status within SCO, though there is talk that it might be granted full membership at the Ufa summit.

Were that to happen, the ‘pivot’ would have moved a few notches further towards Asia.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Is the G7 commitment to an energy transition that aims to gradually phase out fossil fuel emissions this century to avoid the worst of climate change just hot air? Credit: CC BY-SA 2.5

By Lucy Cadena
LONDON, Jun 11 2015 (IPS)

One of the promises made by the leaders of the world’s seven richest nations when they met at Schloss Elmau in Germany earlier this week was an energy transition over the next decades, aiming to gradually phase out fossil fuel emissions this century to avoid the worst of climate change.

Let us be clear: a target of zero fossil fuels by 2100 puts us on track for warming on an unmanageable scale. The only commitment made by the G7 this week was a commitment to climate chaos.

Putting our faith in as-yet-underdeveloped technology fixes such as ‘carbon capture and storage’ and ‘geo-engineering’ to save us in the next 85 years, while the solutions to the climate crisis – renewable technology and community energy systems – exist here and now, is senseless.“The only way to avoid the worst of climate change is to act now, with urgency and ambition. Not by 2100, nor 2050. We need real commitment to real solutions – and the best place the G7 can start is by taking its money – public money – out of dirty energy”

The only way to avoid the worst of climate change is to act now, with urgency and ambition. Not by 2100, nor 2050. We need real commitment to real solutions – and the best place the G7 can start is by taking its money – public money – out of dirty energy.

While the G7 gathered on Jun. 7 and 8, this was the message from people from around the world, who are calling for a ban on all new dirty energy projects and an end to the financing of dirty energy.

The G7’s role in upholding the current dirty energy system is not limited to the subsidies they pour into fossil fuels daily.

G7 countries also directly finance – and profit from – dirty energy projects, particularly in the global South, and in regions where poverty and limited energy access devastate families.

These include projects affecting communities deeply reliant on clean air, water, and land that is polluted and stolen from them, projects among populations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and projects where people face harassment and human rights violations for speaking out.

France

Last week, France, host of the 30 November-11 December 2015 Paris climate summit – the U.N. gathering to set the agenda for global climate commitments in the next decades – announced that two of the summit’s key sponsors will be EDF and ENGIE (formerly GDF-Suez).

The French state holds 84 percent and 33.3 percent of shares in these companies respectively. Both are involved in the construction of several very controversial, polluting projects across the world.

EDF is currently planning the destructive Mphanda Nkuwa mega-dam on the Zambezi River in Mozambique, in the face of fierce opposition from local communities and environmental organisations.

A letter from civil society reminds French President François Hollande that these and other projects place EDF and ENGIE among the top 50 companies that contribute the most to global climate change.

With 46 coal-fired power plants between them, EDF and ENGIE are responsible for emitting 151 million tonnes of CO₂ a year – which amounts to about half the total of France’s overall emissions.

Italy

The Italian state owns a considerable number of shares – almost one-third – in oil and gas company ENI. According to a recent report by Amnesty International, last year alone ENI reported 349 oil spills in the Niger Delta from its own operations.

The figure is remarkable – almost unbelievable. Each spill triggers a human and ecological crisis. The scale of the devastation and ENI’s failure to safeguard communities and ecosystems begs the question: is this sheer incompetence, recklessness, or simply utter indifference to the welfare of local communities?

Japan

Japan, the next offender on the G7 list, is the number one public financier of coal plants globally among the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

Japan has 24 coal-powered projects either under construction or planned, many of them in Indonesia, Vietnam and India, where the more vulnerable local populations live under the cloud of plants’ toxic emissions.

Emissions of deadly sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from coal plants are currently highest in Indonesia, where the planned Batang coal power plant is set to become the largest ever Japanese-financed plant in Southeast Asia.

United States

A report by Oil Change International indicates that the United States government alone provides 5.1 billion dollars in national subsidies to fossil fuel exploration each year – that’s 5.1 billion dollars into seeking out new sources of civilisation-destroying energy sources.

Canada

Likewise, Canada’s expanding oil sector (caused by the growth in dirty tar sands production, known as ‘the biggest industrial project on Earth’) continues to reap the benefits of massive national subsidies.

United Kingdom

The U.K. government spent 300 times more supporting dirty energy overseas than it contributed towards renewable energy projects during its last term.

The 2012-2013 annual report of UK Export Finance, the country’s export credit agency, announced spending on projects such as a 147 million pounds (228 million dollars) guarantee to support oil and gas exploration by Petrobras in Brazil and 15 million pounds (23 million dollars) in guarantees to a loan for a gas power project in the Philippines.

Domestically, the government is prioritising drilling for new oil and gas, which will require huge subsidies. Hailing carbon-emitting gas as a ‘bridge fuel’ towards a cleaner energy system, the government is delaying investment in renewables to push fracking onto a population that vehemently opposes the dash for gas.

Germany

Meanwhile, Germany – the host of the G7 meeting – has been much lauded for its ‘Energiewende’ (‘Energy Revolution’), with a rapidly increasing use of renewable energy compensating for its nuclear phase-out in recent years.

However, German euros still make their way into the dirty energy machine – through sizeable tax exemptions afforded to fossil fuel producers’ exploration activities – allowing such companies to go further and dig deeper to uncover more carbon that needs to stay in the ground.

G7 Must Catch Up

The G7 countries have done the most to cause climate change. According to the Climate Equity Reference Calculator, they are responsible for 70 percent of historical carbon emissions, while hosting only 10 percent of the global population.

A commitment to a phase-out of fossil fuels in eight decades’ time is not a commitment. It is an easy promise for a politician, who probably will not even be in power in the next decade, to make. It is an easy promise for a rich nation, whose citizens are not the most vulnerable, to make.

G7 societies have grown rich by exploiting the human and natural world. They owe an enormous ‘climate debt’ to developing nations – yet they can barely scrape together the money they promised to the developing world via the Green Climate Fund.

Whether it’s an oil spill in Nigeria, a mega-dam in Mozambique or a coal plant in Java, the sources of our publicly-owned dirty energy are always sites of ecological and social devastation.

Access to energy is a right, but it should not come at the cost of other people’s rights – to clean air and drinking water, to land and food sovereignty, and to sustainable societies.

The international movement for climate justice is building, and will keep up pressure on governments to take money out of dirty energy and reinvest it in democratic renewable solutions that benefit everyone.

The global shift towards a just energy transformation has long been under way. Now, it’s snowballing. People from around the world are showing the way and implementing community-owned renewable energy solutions.

There is a hunger for change, despite continued inaction from governments. G7 leaders, take note: you are trailing far behind and have a lot of catching up to do!

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

United States Secretary of State John Kerry addresses the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on April 27. The United States, along with the UK, and Canada, rejected the draft agreement. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 23 2015 (IPS)

After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies.

“The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS.“This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for leadership or action is futile." -- Ray Acheson

She said it contained no meaningful progress on nuclear disarmament and even rolled back some previous commitments.

But, according to several diplomats, there was one country that emerged victorious: Israel, the only nuclear-armed Middle Eastern nation, which has never fully supported a long outstanding proposal for an international conference for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

As the Review Conference dragged towards midnight Friday, there were three countries – the United States, UK, and Canada (whose current government has been described as “more pro-Israel than Israel itself”) – that said they cannot accept the draft agreement, contained in the Final Document, on convening of the proposed conference by March 1, 2016.

As Acheson put it: “It is perhaps ironic, then, that three of these states prevented the adoption of this outcome document on behalf of Israel, a country with nuclear weapons, that is not even party to the NPT.”

The Review Conference president’s claim that the NPT belongs to all its states parties has never rung more hollow, she added.

Joseph Gerson, disarmament coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) told IPS the United States was primarily responsible, as in the 2005 review conference, for the failure of this year’s critically important NPT Review Conference.

“The United States and Israel, that is, even if Israel is one of the very few nations that has yet to sign onto the NPT,” he pointed out.

Rather than blame Israel, he said, the U.S., Britain and Canada are blaming the victim, charging that Egypt wrecked the conference with its demands that the Review Conference’s final declaration reiterate the call for creation of a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone.

But, the tail was once again wagging the dog, said Gerson, who is also the AFSC’s director of Peace and Economic Security Programme.

He said that Reuters news agency reported on Thursday, the day prior to the conclusion of the NPT Review Conference, that the United States sent “a senior U.S. official” to Israel “to discuss the possibility of a compromise” on the draft text of the Review Conference’s final document.

“Israeli apparently refused, and (U.S. President) Barack Obama’s ostensible commitments to a nuclear weapons-free world melted in the face of Israeli intransigence,” said Gerson.

John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, told IPS the problem with NPT Review Conference commitments on disarmament made over the last 20 years is not so much that they have not been strong enough. Rather the problem is that they have not been implemented by the NPT nuclear weapon states.

Coming into the 2015 Review Conference, he said, many non-nuclear weapon states were focused on mechanisms and processes to ensure implementation.

In this vein, the draft, but not adopted Final Document, recommended that the General Assembly establish an open-ended working group to “identify and elaborate” effective disarmament measures, including legal agreements for the achievement and maintenance of a nuclear weapons free world.

Regardless of the lack of an NPT outcome, this initiative can and should be pushed at the next General Assembly session on disarmament and international security, this coming fall, said Burroughs, who is also executive director of the U.N. Office of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA).

Acheson told IPS that 107 states— the majority of the world’s countries (and of NPT states parties)—have endorsed a Humanitarian Pledge, committing to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.

The outcome from the 2015 NPT Review Conference is the Humanitarian Pledge, she added.

The states endorsing the Pledge now and after this Conference must use it as the basis for a new process to develop a legally-binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons.

“This process should begin without delay, even without the participation of the nuclear-armed states. The 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has already been identified as the appropriate milestone for this process to commence.”

Acheson also said a treaty banning nuclear weapons remains the most feasible course of action for states committed to disarmament.

“This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for leadership or action is futile,” she said.

This context requires determined action to stigmatise, prohibit, and eliminate nuclear weapons.

“Those who reject nuclear weapons must have the courage of their convictions to move ahead without the nuclear-armed states, to take back ground from the violent few who purport to run the world, and build a new reality of human security and global justice,” Acheson declared.

Gerson told IPS the greater tragedy is that the failure of the Review Conference further undermines the credibility of the NPT, increasing the dangers of nuclear weapons proliferation and doing nothing to stanch new nuclear arms races as the nuclear powers “modernize” their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems for the 21st century continues apace.

He said the failure of the Review Conference increases the dangers of nuclear catastrophe and the likelihood of nuclear winter.

The U.S. veto illustrates the central importance of breaking the silos of single issue popular movements if the people’s power needed to move governments – especially the United States – is to be built.

Had there been more unity between the U.S. nuclear disarmament movement and forces pressing for a just Israeli-Palestinian peace in recent decades, the outcome of the Review Conference could have been different, noted Gerson.

“If we are to prevail, nuclear disarmament movements must make common cause with movements for peace, justice and environmental sustainability.”

Despite commitments made in 1995, when the NPT was indefinitely extended and in subsequent Review Conferences, and reiterated in the 2000 and 2010 Review Conference final documents to work for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, Obama was unwilling to say “No” to Israel and “Yes” to an important step to reducing the dangers of nuclear war, said Gerson.

“As we have been reminded by the Conferences on the Human Consequences of Nuclear War held in Norway, Mexico and Austria, between the nuclear threats made by all of the nuclear powers and their histories of nuclear weapons accidents and miscalculations, that we are alive today is more a function of luck than of policy decisions.”

The failure of Review Conference is thus much more than a lost opportunity, it brings us closer to nuclear cataclysms, he declared.

Burroughs told IPS debate in the Review Conference revealed deep divisions over whether the nuclear weapon states have met their commitments to de-alert, reduce, and eliminate their arsenals and whether modernisation of nuclear arsenals is compatible with achieving disarmament.

The nuclear weapon states stonewalled on these matters.

If the nuclear weapons states displayed a business as usual attitude, the approach of non-nuclear weapon states was characterised by a sense of urgency, illustrated by the fact that by the end of the Conference over 100 states had signed the “Humanitarian Pledge” put forward by Austria.

It commits signatories to efforts to “stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons in light of their unacceptable humanitarian consequences”.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Filipinos march along the streets of the Makati Business District, demanding the immediate re-exportation of the 50 Canadian container vans filled with hazardous wastes currently festering in Manila’s port. Credit: Courtesy Diana Mendoza

By Diana Mendoza
MANILA, Mar 15 2015 (IPS)

Filipino Catholic priest and activist Reverend Father Robert Reyes, dubbed by media as the “running priest”, joined a protest of environmental and public health activists last week by running along the streets of the Makati Business District, the Philippines’ financial capital, to urge the government to immediately re-export the 50 Canadian containers filled with hazardous wastes that have been in the Port of Manila for 600 days now.

Along with the groups BAN Toxics, Ecowaste Coalition and Greenpeace, Reyes staged BasuRUN, a name derived from the Filipino word ‘basura’, which means trash or waste.

“We need to send a clear signal to the rest of the world that the Philippines is not a dumping ground for Canada’s [or any other country’s] toxic waste.” -- Antonio La Vina, dean of the Ateneo School of Government
“These toxic wastes are the worst forms of expressing friendship between our two countries,” said the politically active and socially conscious Reyes.

Although praised by activists but criticised by the Filipino Catholic bishops, Reyes’ latest run, which ended across the Canadian Embassy located in the financial district, added another voice to the call for Canada to take responsibility for its “overstaying” toxic shipment in the Philippines.

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is an embarrassment to the civic-minded and environmentally conscious Canadians,” said Reyes. “We know this is not the real Canada. We urge Prime Minister Harper to take immediate action. Take back your illegal waste shipment now,” he stressed.

In June 2013, the Philippine Bureau of Customs (BOC) seized 50 container vans carrying various hazardous household waste and toxic materials imported from Canada, with the consignee Chronic Plastics, Inc., declaring the shipment as “assorted scrap plastic materials for recycling”.

When questioned by activists, Canada said that it does not have any legal capacity to compel the Canada-based private corporation to re-export the shipment.

Richard Gutierrez, executive director of BAN Toxics, told IPS the shipment should be re-exported in accordance with the Basel Convention, an international treaty signed in 1982 with 182 parties as of 2015 that regulates toxic waste shipments.

The Basel Convention prohibits illegal toxic waste trade and requires the exporting country, in this case Canada, to take back illegally seized shipments and pay the costs for the return.

Both Canada and the Philippines are parties to the Basel Convention, but Canada has yet to respond to calls for the re-exportation of the shipment under its obligation under international law.

“Canada’s refusal to take back the illegal shipment is a blatant violation of its obligation under Basel,” Gutierrez added. “Toxic waste trade is also not simply an issue of trade or business among private individuals or companies. At its very core is the respect for human dignity. It is about protecting the right to life and health. Dumping of toxic waste is anathema to human rights.”

He said the importation also violates a number of local laws such as the Administrative Order 28 (Interim Guidelines for the Importation of Recyclable Materials Containing Hazardous Substances) of the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.

BAN Toxics said the Philippine government is spending at least 144,000 pesos (about 3,000 dollars) a day for the loss of income from storage space and an additional 87 million pesos (about 1.9 million dollars) in demurrage costs to the ship’s owners.

Other activist groups in the struggle include Mother Earth Foundation, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, and ‘Ang Nars’, a party-list group of Filipino nurses who staged protests last year.

Harmful to health, environment, dignity

Abigail Aguilar, toxics campaigner for Greenpeace, expressed shock that the waste is still festering in a Filipino port after nearly two years.

“How the Canadian government finds the dignity to let this linger on for more than 600 days is despicable and sickening. It is best that it takes it back and not let the Filipinos suffer. [That] is the moral thing to do,” Aguilar told IPS.

Baskut Tuncak, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights and toxic wastes, has called out to rich countries to respect human rights by ceasing the export of garbage and toxic wastes to poorer countries.

“The international transfer of toxic wastes to developing countries has repeatedly violated the human rights of people who are often in most vulnerable situations, and contravened the principles of equality and non-discrimination,” the rapporteur said earlier this year.

Tuncak said that without the correct precautions, the transfer of toxic waste is harmful to the environment and to the health of human beings, adding, “Unbridled toxic waste trade often takes place to exploit differences in the cost of labour and enforcement of laws including environmental protection.”

A 2010 study published by the U.S.-government supported scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) revealed that chemical pollutants from toxic waste sites in India, the Philippines, and Indonesia “put over eight million persons at risk [of] disease, disability, and early deaths from exposure to industrial contaminants in 2010, creating a loss of 828,722 years of good health,” identified in the study as disability-adjusted life years.

The study said that the wastes in question contained an assortment of “toxic metals such as mercury, lead, and cadmium.”

A 2014 study by Ban Toxics and the Ateneo de Manila University School of Government said toxic wastes from other countries have exposed Filipinos to a number of health and environmental risks, such as hazardous e-waste and medical and clinic garbage that include a toxic brew of mercury, lead, cadmium, Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) and Polybrominated Biphenyls (PBBs).

Antonio La Vina, dean of the Ateneo School of Government, said, “We need to send a clear signal to the rest of the world that the Philippines is not a dumping ground for Canada’s [or any other country’s] toxic waste.”

He said the Canadian waste is but a symptom of a bigger problem, namely: as long as the Philippines dodges ratification of the Basel Ban Amendment, which prohibits the importation of hazardous waste from developed to lesser developed countries, it will continue to be viewed and treated as a dumping ground.

The shipment currently sitting in Manila’s port was initially described as recyclable material, but Greenpeace reports that the containers are also holding hospital waste, used adult diapers, and sanitary napkins.

Leachate from these containers, or liquid that has percolated through a solid, threaten the surrounding environment, posing great risk to human health in the area. Manila currently has a population of 1.6 million people.

An open petition on Change.org urging the Canadian government to assume full responsibility of the waste shipment already has 25,000 signatures and expects more.

According to the U.N. Commodity Trade Statistics database (UN Comtrade), 4.7 million tons of hazardous waste were shipped by developed to lesser developed countries between 1998 and 2008.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Representatives from a coalition of over 30 environmental and progressive groups delivered more than 800,000 messages to Democratic Senator Harry Reid and Republican Senator Mitch McConnell in 2012 urging them to block attempts to resurrect the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Credit: 350.org/cc by 2.0

By Kitty Stapp
NEW YORK, Feb 12 2015 (IPS)

With battle lines sharpening over the stalled Keystone XL pipeline, a new analysis details the intense industry lobbying of both houses of the U.S. Congress since 2013 – to the tune of 58.8 million dollars by five refinery companies alone.

According to MapLight, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organisation that reveals money’s influence on politics, the oil and gas industry gave, on average, 13 times more money to members of the House of Representatives who voted “yes” (43,375 dollars) on the bill called H.R. 3 than those who voted against it (3,610 dollars)."Another climate denier-controlled House vote in favour of oil isn't a surprise, and the Democrats who voted with them of course are oil-funded politicians too." -- Kyle Ash of Greenpeace

The bill would allow TransCanada to build the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline without a presidential permit or additional environmental review. It passed the House on Wednesday with a vote of 270-152.

The U.S. Senate approved a virtually identical measure last month.

“How can we truly trust legislators to vote in the public interest when they are dependent on industry campaign funding to get elected?” Pamela Behrsin of MapLight told IPS. “Our broken money and politics system forces lawmakers into a conflict of interest between lawmakers’ voters and their donors.”

She noted that Rep. Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota and the sponsor of the legislation, received 222,400 dollars from the oil and gas industry, the ninth most among members of the House voting on H.R. 3.

Figures for the Senate were comparable, with the oil and gas industry giving, on average, 10 times more money to senators who supported the measure (236,544 dollars). The Senate sponsor, John Hoeven – also a Republican from North Dakota – received 275,998 dollars.

“Big Oil thinks it can buy votes in DC, and unfortunately the Keystone vote shows that is still possible in the halls of Congress,” David Turnbull of Oil Change International, a nonprofit working to promote a shift away from fossil fuels, told IPS.

“But what’s more important is that Big Oil can’t buy the American people, who are standing up to the industry’s bullying in Washington and demanding the president reject the pipeline and take bold action to move us off fossil fuels and towards a safer climate future.”

President Barack Obama has 10 days to decide on a veto. Since the 1,179-mile pipeline crosses national borders, Obama needs to issue a permit declaring the pipeline serves the “national interest” in order for it to be approved. The new legislation would circumvent such approval.

The pipeline has united every prominent U.S. environmental group in opposition, and even prompted the venerable Sierra Club to suspend its 120-year ban on civil disobedience. The group’s executive director, Michael Brune, was arrested in front of the White House during a protest against Keystone in February 2013, and there have been massive rallies against it since then.

Studies have shown that burning the heavy oil the pipeline would carry would emit more than 181 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide each year – equal to the emissions of nearly 38 million cars or 51 coal-fired power plants.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that two-thirds of proven fossil fuel reserves need to be kept in the ground in order to have a 50 percent chance of staying below the two-degree threshold of warming that could avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

Kyle Ash of Greenpeace told IPS that since the House had already passed the companion of the Senate bill, normally each chamber would reconcile their respective bills in conference, especially since both chambers are now controlled by the Republicans.

Instead, the full House went ahead and voted on the Senate version without making any changes, “apparently because GOP leaders fear that House Republican conferees will be too crazy”.

“As the Senate votes on climate amendments like Hoeven and Schatz also demonstrated, that the House voted on S.1 (the Senate version of the bill) ironically may be a sign that at least the crassest of congressional fossil fuel love is no longer in vogue,” he said.

“Another climate denier-controlled House vote in favour of oil isn’t a surprise, and the Democrats who voted with them of course are oil-funded politicians too.”

Indeed, MapLight found that the oil and gas industry gave, on average, 3.2 times more money to Democratic Senators voting for S.1 (73,279 dollars) compared to Democratic and Independent Senators voting against it (22,882 dollars).

The industry gave, on average, five times more money to Democratic Representatives voting “yes” (18,199 dollars) on H.R. 3 compared to Democratic and Independent Representatives voting “no” (3,610 dollars).

“We’ve done quite a bit of work on the massive amount of money members of Congress receive from the industry,” Turnbull said. “Indeed, it’s unfortunately not a surprise.”

The pipeline would carry petroleum from Canada’s oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast, and MapLight notes that some of Keystone XL’s strongest supporters are the Gulf Coast refinery companies that have expanded their facilities and would benefit from Canadian oil that will flow through the pipeline.

Valero, ExxonMobil, Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66, and Motiva Enterprises (a company owned by Shell and the Saudi Arabian state oil company Saudi Aramco) constitute the five companies with the most refinery capacity along the Gulf Coast, the group says.

Together, the five companies control 45 percent of the refining capacity in the U.S., and all have been reported as possible customers of the pipeline.

“The vote in Congress on Keystone XL is a desperate distraction by an oil-soaked Congress. The president has said numerous times that he will veto the bill, and he’s right to do so,” Turnbull said.

“As the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] recently laid out, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline clearly fails the president’s own climate test, and should be rejected. The president has all the information he needs to reject the pipeline and we hope he does so as soon as possible, so we can all move on to building the clean energy economy rather than catering to the whims of Big Oil.”

A Washington Post/ABC News poll last month found 34 percent of respondents wanted the pipeline built now, while 61 percent said the environmental impact reviews – including by the State Department and the heads of eight other government agencies – should continue.

“The House is expediting this bill getting to the president so they can gloat about how Congress loves oil and he doesn’t – despite the Obama administration going out of its way to expand oil drilling on public lands,” Ash said.

“However, the KXL pipeline may have died when the president agreed with New York Times reporter Tom Friedman last June that growing fossil fuel supply is bad for the climate (‘we can’t burn it all’). I believe he will do as he said and veto this bill.”

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

Children exposed to mining industry pollution in Peru. The debate on mining is raging throughout Latin America. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Leila Lemghalef
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2015 (IPS)

A recent case study on Canadian mining abuses in Latin America has woven one more thread of justice into the tapestry of international law.

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) has found five Canadian mining companies and the Canadian government responsible for human rights violations in Latin America, including labour rights violations, environmental destruction, the denial of indigenous self-determination rights, criminalisation of dissent and targeted assassinations."The battle for international justice is absolutely the same as the battle for internal democracy." -- Judge Gianni Tognoni

Gianni Tognoni was one of eight judges in the decision, and has been secretary general of the PPT since its inception in 1979.

In an interview with IPS, he spoke about how the PPT’s claims have previously become part of the international debate.

“And in the experience of the Tribunal, that has been happening in different ways,” he said.

Out of many examples, he cited the case of child slave labour in the apparel industry, which was denounced by the tribunal, and which was “taken up in order to strengthen the controls and the monitoring by NGOs of the conditions that were there”.

The big panorama, he said, shows that “whatever could be done is being done… in order to integrate the tribunal with other forces… in order to formulate in juridically solid terms the claims”.

International processes are rarely rapid, he said, articulating that the judgement on the former Yugoslavia would “appear to be more a kind of judgement on the memory, the same is true for Rwanda”.

He contrasted that to the immediate effectiveness of economic treaties, and also brought up the well-known clash between human rights and transnational corporations, and the latter’s attitude of impunity.

“It’s not possible to have a global society which is progressively responding only to the economic criteria and the economic indicator,” he summed up.

Formally, Canada is expected to uphold the same rights abroad as at home, in accordance with the Maastricht Principle under which public powers are supposed to monitor non-state actors.

“But they simply fail to do that,” Tognoni said.

The 86-page ruling reports that 75 per cent of mining companies worldwide are based in Canada, and that Canadian companies with estimated investments of over 50 billion dollars in Latin America’s mining sector represent 50-70 per cent of mining activities in that region.

“And the verdict in Canada is clearly showing Canada outside is favouring the violation of fundamental human rights,” Tognoni said.

The PPT on the session on Canadian mining delivered the guilty verdict in Montreal on Dec. 10, 2014 – Human Rights Day – in an ongoing investigation until 2016.

So far, it has made recommendations to the Canadian government, the mining companies in question, as well as international agencies and bodies including 22 divisions of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Access to justice is a long-term effort

The PPT’s efforts are long-term ones.

“It is clear that it is important to organize the movement of opposition in order to give a strong also juridical support to the political and social arguments so that it would be clear that the battle for international justice is absolutely the same as the battle for internal democracy. Because the two things are more and more linked.  There are no more countries which are independent from the international scene,” Tognoni said.

PPT sessions “serve to add to that body of work to demonstrate that there is a crying need for instruments that will provide access to justice”, co-organiser of the PPT session on Canadian Mining in Latin America, Daniel Cayley-Daoust, told IPS.

“The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal is not an enforcement kind of initiative, where it does not having legal standing in a concrete way,” he said, explaining that it serves to support for affected communities and to document abuses committed, “in the sense of broadening that debate… to increase the pressure and to add that as kind of further proof to what the abuses are, that are permitted.”

A priority of the PPT is to add “more voice and credibility to something that has been largely ignored by the people who kind of have the power to make the changes”, said Cayley-Daoust.

In 2011, the U.N. Human Rights Council established a Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises.

Cayley-Daoust expressed concern that the U.N. has come under corporate influence over the last three to four decades, specifically because of its closer relations with corporations.

Rolando Gómez, spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Council, told IPS corporations are not immunised.

“There’s not one human rights issue within any setting – a corporation, a city, a country, a community – that would escape the attention of the council,” he said.

“We have seen positive trends of corporations, large and small, taking those issues to heart,” he said.

As for the challenge of political effects – “I think what we’ve been seeing is states are recognising more and more that we have to depoliticise the discussions,” he told IPS.

He emphasised that “the Human Rights Council is not merely about the resolutions adopted, but it’s about the follow-up, the action, it’s about the fact that there’s a setting here in Geneva where issues which often don’t get heard are heard.”

“The extent to which NGOs are active here is unique,” he told IPS, mentioning the participation of human rights victims and civil society, in delivering statements, sitting in on negotiations, and informing discussion going on in the formal setting.

As for whether talk translates into action… that depends on the issue as well as the willingness of states and decision-makers on the ground, said Gómez.

“Justice takes a long time,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, United States, Jan 27 2015 (IPS)

At the same time as the United States, Canada and the European Union announced a set of new sanctions against Russia in mid-December last year, Ukraine received 350 million dollars in U.S. military aid, coming on top of a one billion dollar aid package approved by the U.S. Congress in March 2014. 

Western governments’ further involvement in the Ukraine conflict signals their confidence in the cabinet appointed by the new government earlier in December 2014. This new government is unique given that three of its most important ministries were granted to foreign-born individuals who received Ukrainian citizenship just hours before their appointment.

Frédéric Mousseau

The Ministry of Finance went to Natalie Jaresko, a U.S.-born and educated businesswoman who has been working in Ukraine since the mid-1990s, overseeing a private equity fund established by the U.S. government to invest in the country. Jaresko is also the CEO of Horizon Capital, an investment firm that administers various Western investments in the country.

As unusual as it may seem, this appointment is consistent with what looks more like a takeover of the Ukrainian economy by Western interests. In two reports – The Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture and Walking on the West Side: The World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict – the Oakland Institute has documented this takeover, particularly in the agricultural sector.

A major factor in the crisis that led to deadly protests and eventually to president Viktor Yanukovych’s removal from office in February 2014 was his rejection of a European Union (EU) Association agreement aimed at expanding trade and integrating Ukraine with the
EU – an agreement that was tied to a 17 billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

After the president’s departure and the installation of a pro-Western government, the IMF initiated a reform programme that was a condition of its loan with the goal of increasing private investment in the country.“The manoeuvring for control over the country’s [Ukraine’s] agricultural system is a pivotal factor in the struggle that has been taking place over the last year in the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War”

The package of measures includes reforming the public provision of water and energy, and, more important, attempts to address what the World Bank identified as the “structural roots” of the current economic crisis in Ukraine, notably the high cost of doing business in the country.

The Ukrainian agricultural sector has been a prime target for foreign private investment and is logically seen by the IMF and World Bank as a priority sector for reform. Both institutions praise the new government’s readiness to follow their advice.

For example, the foreign-driven agricultural reform roadmap provided to Ukraine includes facilitating the acquisition of agricultural land, cutting food and plant regulations and controls, and reducing corporate taxes and custom duties.

The stakes around Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector – the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat – could not be higher. Ukraine is known for its ample fields of rich black soil, and the country boasts more than 32 million hectares of fertile, arable land – the equivalent of one-third of the entire arable land in the European Union.

The manoeuvring for control over the country’s agricultural system is a pivotal factor in the struggle that has been taking place over the last year in the greatest East-West confrontation since the Cold War.

The presence of foreign corporations in Ukrainian agriculture is growing quickly, with more than 1.6 million hectares signed over to foreign companies for agricultural purposes in recent years. While Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont have been in Ukraine for quite some time, their investments in the country have grown significantly over the past few years.

Cargill is involved in the sale of pesticides, seeds and fertilisers and has recently expanded its agricultural investments to include grain storage, animal nutrition and a stake in UkrLandFarming, the largest agribusiness in the country.

Similarly, Monsanto has been in Ukraine for years but has doubled the size of its team over the last three years. In March 2014, just weeks after Yanukovych was deposed, the company invested 140 million dollars in building a new seed plant in Ukraine.

DuPont has also expanded its investments and announced in June 2013 that it too would be investing in a new seed plant in the country.

Western corporations have not just taken control of certain profitable agribusinesses and agricultural activities, they have now initiated a vertical integration of the agricultural sector and extended their grip on infrastructure and shipping.

For instance, Cargill now owns at least four grain elevators and two sunflower seed processing plants used for the production of sunflower oil. In December 2013, the company bought a “25% +1 share” in a grain terminal at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk with a capacity of 3.5 million tons of grain per year. 

All aspects of Ukraine’s agricultural supply chain – from the production of seeds and other agricultural inputs to the actual shipment of commodities out of the country – are thus increasingly controlled by Western firms.

European institutions and the U.S. government have actively promoted this expansion. It started with the push for a change of government at a time when president Yanukovych was seen as pro-Russian interests. This was further pushed, starting in February 2014, through the promotion of a “pro-business” reform agenda, as described by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker when she met with Prime Minister Arsenly Yatsenyuk in October 2014.

The European Union and the United States are working hand in hand in the takeover of Ukrainian agriculture. Although Ukraine does not allow the production of genetically modified (GM) crops, the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, which ignited the conflict that ousted Yanukovych, includes a clause (Article 404) that commits both parties to cooperate to “extend the use of biotechnologies” within the country.

This clause is surprising given that most European consumers reject GM crops. However, it creates an opening to bring GM products into Europe, an opportunity sought after by large agro-seed companies such as Monsanto.

Opening up Ukraine to the cultivation of GM crops would go against the will of European citizens, and it is unclear how the change would benefit Ukrainians.

It is similarly unclear how Ukrainians will benefit from this wave of foreign investment in their agriculture, and what impact these investments will have on the seven million local farmers.

Once they eventually look away from the conflict in the Eastern “pro-Russian” part of the country, Ukrainians may wonder what remains of their country’s ability to control its food supply and manage the economy to their own benefit.

As for U.S. and European citizens, will they eventually awaken from the headlines and grand rhetoric about Russian aggression and human rights abuses and question their governments’ involvement in the Ukraine conflict? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Young protesters at the U.N. climate talks in Lima, Peru highlight out-of-touch North American energy policies. Credit: Adopt a Negotiator.

By Leehi Yona
LIMA, Dec 13 2014 (IPS)

While U.S. and Canadian officials delivered speeches about how the world needs to step up to their responsibilities at the U.N. climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, activists from North America demanded clear answers back home on their governments’ relationships with fossil fuel corporations, as well as the future of several major oil projects across the continent.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Thursday about the role each country should play on tackling climate change and referred to the U.S.-China agreement announced in November. The agreement, which pledged unforeseen emissions reductions for both countries, has been lauded by many countries as a progressive step forward at the U.N. negotiations.“Under Stephen Harper, Canada has no climate policy beyond public relations.” -- Canadian MP Elizabeth May

However, civil society delegates have expressed concern over the disconnect between the messaging the United States has been taking in Lima, and its domestic fossil fuel reliance.

This international discourse collides with Washington’s hesitance to repeal the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed project that would transport over 800,000 barrels of bitumen a day from the Alberta tar sands to Texas oil refineries.

“The best way the U.S. can support progress in the U.N. Climate Talks is to start at home by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline now,” said Dyanna Jaye, a U.S. youth delegate attending the conference with SustainUS.

TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline has been stalled in political procedures since 2011. Once considered to be a done deal, the project has grown to be a bone of contention among environmental groups, who have mobilised to put pressure on President Barack Obama to reject it.

Having been presented as a bill to Congress numerous times, it most recently passed a House of Representatives vote but failed in the Senate by only one vote on Nov. 5.

Youth have taken a leading role on been pushing for Kerry to reject Keystone XL, shining a spotlight on the influence of the fossil fuel industry in hindering progress.

Following Kerry’s speech to the U.N. on Thursday, Jaye and other U.S. and Canadian youth activists organised an action in protest of proposed pipelines through the two countries.

Calling for the industry to be kicked out of the negotiations, youth have highlighted that a successful deal in Lima would necessitate a phasing out of fossil fuel use to zero production by 2050, as stated in a World Wildlife Fund report.

“Dirty fossil fuel projects like Keystone XL clearly fail the climate test,” Evan Weber, executive director of US Climate Plan, told IPS. “We’ll be drawing the line on any new fossil fuel infrastructure and calling for investment in renewable energy solutions.”

Protesters emphasised the need for domestic action at home in order for there to be any progress at the United Nations

The United States, however, isn’t the only country whose domestic issues directly contradict their statements here at COP20. The Canadian government has been criticised for their lack of domestic ambition and their close relationship with fossil fuel companies at this conference.

At the talks, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq stated on Dec. 9 that Canada is “confident [they] can achieve a climate agreement” at these talks, “however it will require courage and common sense.”

While the government has attempted to portray itself as a climate leader in these negotiations, members of civil society have pointed out discrepancies between the emissions goals they are promising and the emissions trajectory the country is actually on track to produce.

“Under Stephen Harper, Canada has no climate policy beyond public relations,” said Elizabeth May, a Canadian Member of Parliament and leader of the Canadian Green Party attending COP 20.

“The zeal to exploit fossil fuels has led to the evisceration of ‎environmental laws. We have distorted our economy in the interests of exporting bitumen,” she told IPS.

Canada has once again entered into the non-governmental spotlight at U.N. climate negotiations. On Tuesday, uproar ensued when Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that any regulation of the oil and gas industry would be “crazy” considering the industry’s current financial state.

On the conference’s last day, Canada was also awarded a Fossil of the Day, a daily non-prize awarded by civil society during the Climate Talks to the most regressive country, for its consistent meddling with and lack of participation in the U.N. process.

“As members of civil society, we’ve seen Canadian negotiators prioritise fossil fuel companies over public interest time and time again in Lima,” Catherine Gauthier of ENvironnement JEUnesse, a Québec youth environmental organisation, told IPS.

Both countries have come under scrutiny for their promotion of climate action on the international level while promoting tar sands expansion and shale gas fracking projects at home. Shale gas has particularly been promoted by both governments as a bridge fuel to help wean societies off fossil fuels with the goal of increasing renewable energy sources.

“The use of fracking as a bridge fuel is the biggest lie the American public has ever been fed,” Emily Williams of the California Student Sustainability Coalition told IPS. “It poisons our health and our communities, and destroys our environment. It cannot be part of the climate solution as it starves the renewable energy revolution of the investment it needs.”

Both Canada and the United States have been active in calling for swift action on the international level when it comes to climate change. The U.N. negotiations are currently running over time in Lima as countries work towards a compromise agreement.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Governments continue to subsidise exploration for fossil fuels despite pledges to support the transition to clean energy. Credit: Flickr/Leszek Kozlowski

By Shelagh Whitley
LONDON, Nov 11 2014 (IPS)

Just a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave its starkest warning yet that the vast majority of existing oil, gas and coal reserves need to be kept in the ground, a new report reveals that governments are flagrantly ignoring these warnings and continuing to subsidise exploration for fossil fuels.

The report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Oil Change International (OCI) shows that G20 governments are propping up fossil fuel exploration to the tune of 88 billion dollars every year through national subsidies, investment by state owned enterprise and public finance.

Shelagh Whitley, Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI)

And this is only a small part of total government support to producing and consuming fossil fuels, which is estimated at 775 billion dollars a year.

The G20 continues to provide these subsidies – mostly hidden from public view – in spite of repeated pledges to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, address climate change, and support the transition to clean energy.

The subsidies provided to exploration by the G20 alone are almost equivalent to total global support for clean energy (101 billion dollars), tilting the playing field towards oil, gas and coal.

The report also shows that G20 governments spend more than double what the top 20 private companies are spending to look for new oil, gas and coal reserves. This suggests that companies depend on public support for their exploration activities.“Fossil fuel exploration subsidies are fuelling dangerous climate change; this support is increasingly uneconomic; and oil, gas and coal will not address the energy needs of the poorest and most vulnerable”

As finding fossil fuels gets more risky, expensive and energy intensive, and the prices of oil, gas and coal continue to fall, companies are only likely to become more dependent on tax payers’ money to continue exploration.  This was also demonstrated by the recent request by the United Kingdom’s oil and gas industry for further tax breaks to address rising operating costs in the North Sea.

Some will claim that although these subsidies are uneconomic, exceptions can be made. After all, the arguments go, we need fossil fuels to provide energy access – and we can keep burning oil, gas and coal if we just use carbon capture and storage.

This simply isn’t true. Doing so will drive dangerous climate change, with the impacts falling first on the most vulnerable people in the poorest countries and regions.

First, when it comes to energy access, it is actually through clean energy that we will be able to provide heat and electricity to the poorest.

According to the International Energy Agency, most new investment needs to be in distributed energy, including in mini-grid and off-grid options that most often rely on renewable energy sources. If G20 governments redirected 49 billion dollars a year – just over half of what they currently provide in support to fossil fuel exploration – we could achieve universal energy access as soon as 2030.

Second, there has only been very limited application of carbon capture technology so far.

The first and only full-scale ‘commercial’ carbon capture and storage project, launched this year in Canada, relies on government subsidies and sells the captured carbon to the oil industry, which uses it to extract even more fossil fuels. It is not a sustainable model.

In short: fossil fuel exploration subsidies are fuelling dangerous climate change; this support is increasingly uneconomic; and oil, gas and coal will not address the energy needs of the poorest and most vulnerable.

The G20 countries have the resources to support a transition to clean energy. They can set an example for the world by shifting national subsidies, investment by state-owned enterprise and public finance away from fossil fuels and toward renewables and efficiency.

G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane this week must recognise this and make good on their existing pledges. Immediately phasing out fossil fuel exploration subsidies would be the right place to start.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The Canadian government is failing either to investigate or to hold the country’s massive extractives sector accountable for rights abuses committed in Latin American countries, according to petitioners who testified here Tuesday before an international tribunal.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also heard concerns that the Canadian government is not making the country’s legal system available to victims of these abuses.“Far too often, extractive companies have double-standards in how they behave at home versus abroad.” -- Alex Blair of Oxfam America

“Canada has been committed to a voluntary framework of corporate social responsibility, but this does not provide any remedy for people who have been harmed by Canadian mining operations,” Jen Moore, the coordinator of the Latin America programme at MiningWatch Canada, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“We’re looking for access to the courts but also for the Canadian state to take preventive measures to avoid these problems in the first place – for instance, an independent office that would have the power to investigate allegations of abuse in other countries.”

Moore and others who testified before the commission formally submitted a report detailing the concerns of almost 30 NGOs. Civil society groups have been pushing the Canadian government to ensure greater accountability for this activity for years, Moore says, and that work has been buttressed by similar recommendations from both a parliamentary commission, in 2005, and the United Nations.

“Nothing new has taken place over the past decade … The Canadian government has refused to implement the recommendations,” Moore says.

“The state’s response to date has been to firmly reinforce this voluntary framework that doesn’t work – and that’s what we heard from them again during this hearing. There was no substantial response to the fact that there are all sorts of cases falling through the cracks.”

Canada, which has one of the largest mining sectors in the world, is estimated to have some 1,500 projects in Latin America – more than 40 percent of the mining companies operating in the region. According to the new report, and these overseas operations receive “a high degree” of active support from the Canadian government.

“We’re aware of a great deal of conflict,” Shin Imai, a lawyer with the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, a Canadian civil society initiative, said Tuesday. “Our preliminary count shows that at least 50 people have been killed and some 300 wounded in connection with mining conflicts involving Canadian companies in recent years, for which there has been little to no accountability.”

These allegations include deaths, injuries, rapes and other abuses attributed to security personnel working for Canadian mining companies. They also include policy-related problems related to long-term environmental damage, illegal community displacement and subverting democratic processes.

Home state accountability

The Washington-based IACHR, a part of the 35-member Organisation of American States (OAS), is one of the world’s oldest multilateral rights bodies, and has looked at concerns around Canadian mining in Latin America before.

Yet this week’s hearing marked the first time the commission has waded into the highly contentious issue of “home state” accountability – that is, whether companies can be prosecuted at home for their actions abroad.

“This hearing was cutting-edge. Although the IACHR has been one of the most important allies of human rights violations’ victims in Latin America, it’s a little bit prudent when it faces new topics or new legal challenges,” Katya Salazar, executive director of the Due Process of Law Foundation, a Washington-based legal advocacy group, told IPS.

“And talking about the responsibility for the home country of corporations working in Latin America is a very new challenge. So we’re very happy to see how the commission’s understanding and concern about these topics have evolved.”
Home state accountability has become progressively more vexed as industries and supply chains have quickly globalised. Today, companies based in rich countries, with relatively stronger legal systems, are increasingly operating in developing countries, often under weaker regulatory regimes.

The extractives sector has been a key example of this, and over the past two decades it has experienced one of the highest levels of conflict with local communities of any industry. For advocates, part of the problem is a current vagueness around the issue of the “extraterritorial” reach of domestic law.

“Far too often, extractive companies have double-standards in how they behave at home versus abroad,” Alex Blair, a press officer with the extractives programme at Oxfam America, a humanitarian and advocacy group, told IPS. “They think they can take advantage of weaknesses in local laws, oversight and institutions to operate however they want in developing countries.”

Blair notes a growing trend of local and indigenous communities going abroad to hold foreign companies accountable. Yet these efforts remain extraordinarily complex and costly, even as legal avenues in many Western countries continue to be constricted.

Transcending the legalistic

At this week’s hearing, the Canadian government maintained that it was on firm legal ground, stating that it has “one of the world’s strongest legal and regulatory frameworks towards its extractives industries”.

In 2009, Canada formulated a voluntary corporate responsibility strategy for the country’s international extractives sector. The country also has two non-judicial mechanisms that can hear grievances arising from overseas extractives projects, though neither of these can investigate allegations, issue rulings or impose punitive measures.

These actions notwithstanding, the Canadian response to the petitioners concerns was to argue that local grievances should be heard in local court and that, in most cases, Canada is not legally obligated to pursue accountability for companies’ activities overseas.

“With respect to these corporations’ activities outside Canada, the fact of their incorporation within Canada is clearly not a sufficient connection to Canada to engage Canada’s obligations under the American Declaration,” Dana Cryderman, Canada’s alternate permanent representative to the OAS, told the commission, referring to the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, the document that underpins the IACHR’s work.

Cryderman continued: “[H]ost countries in Latin America offer domestic legal and regulatory avenues through which the claims being referenced by the requesters can and should be addressed.”

Yet this rationale clearly frustrated some of the IACHR’s commissioners, including the body’s current president, Rose-Marie Antoine.

“Despite the assurances of Canada there’s good policy, we at the commission continue to see a number of very, very serious human rights violations occurring in the region as a result of certain countries, and Canada being one of the main ones … so we’re seeing the deficiencies of those policies,” Antoine said following the Canadian delegation’s presentation.

“On the one hand, Canada says, ‘Yes, we are responsible and wish to promote human rights.’ But on the other hand, it’s a hands-off approach … We have to move beyond the legalistic if we’re really concerned about human rights.”

Antoine noted the commission was currently working on a report on the impact of natural resources extraction on indigenous communities. She announced, for the first time, that the report would include a chapter on what she referred to as the “very ticklish issue of extraterritoriality”.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

Mining tar sands oil at Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Credit: Chris Arsenault/IPS

By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Oct 6 2014 (IPS)

Canada’s tar sands oil boom may be in jeopardy and it appears the ruling Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper does not have any plan B in its ambition to remake this resource-rich country into “an energy superpower.”

“This is one of the sectors that creates some of the most jobs, not just in the oil patch, but around the country in terms of manufacturing and support services, and this government will continue to do everything to promote the Canadian energy sector,” Harper told reporters in December 2011.“The game changer in all of this is that the world’s governments are supposed to negotiate a new agreement to constrain fossil fuel emissions for 2015. [And] Canada may be forced kicking and screaming to stay within reasonable limits." -- economist Marc Lee

But now, in the fall of 2014, Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert blames a hardnosed approach in Ottawa which she suggests jeopardised what might have garnered greater political support for its energy strategy from Canadians.

“It is playing out in the courts, in the provinces and in public opinion, with the Harper government almost always on the losing side of the argument,” she wrote in a Sep. 27 column.

Hebert was referring to efforts by the Harper government to loosen environment assessment rules, speeding up pipeline projects by gutting scientific research funding to investigate the climate change impact of fossil fuel emissions (including tar sands oil) on domestic regions like the Canadian Arctic, and to question the loyalty of environmental NGOs.

“While the majority of Canadian voters support the development of Canada’s energy potential, most continue to expect their governments to act as honest brokers in the search for a balance between the economy and the environment,” she added.

All the major pipeline projects designed to carry tar sands crude oil, which is extracted from the bitumen tar underneath the boreal forest and wetlands of northern Alberta, to markets in the U.S. and Asia (the later via British Columbia’s Pacific coast) are experiencing delays due to local and vocal opposition.

These projects are all slated to be built by either Enbridge or TransCanada Pipeline, both major Canadian pipeline construction companies.

“Right now there are 2.2 million barrels per day of capacity, production from the tar sands. And the federal and provincial governments have jointly handed out permits to take that to five million barrels per day. That is a huge increase, even if they never approve another project, which they will, and the limiting factor in all of this is pipelines,” says Keith Stewart, climate change and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada.

Despite occasional prodding from the Harper government, U.S. President Barack Obama appears loath to make a quick decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico because of stiff opposition from environmentalists, including some who are his supporters.

Keith Stewart notes that the Conservatives face the prospect of losing parliamentary seats in the vote-rich Pacific coast province of British Columbia in the national federal election in 2015 because of concerns about potential oil spills from either of the two planned pipelines in the pristine wilderness environment.

Northern Gateway, which has received formal regulatory approval coupled with 209 conditions, would travel across various First Nations indigenous territories in the BC interior to the coastal port of Kitimat. Supertankers would then load up the tar sands oil and navigate the narrow waters of the Douglas Channel for the open sea.

Many commentators, including Stewart, are doubtful that the project will ever get built because of the legal challenges from the First Nations, whose lands claims were given further reinforcement in recent Canadian court decisions.

The second project, by Kinder Morgan, is an extension of an existing pipeline in British Columbia that would slice through both wealthy suburban communities in the province’s lower mainland and First Nations territory.

Then there is Energy East, which is currently at an earlier stage of regulatory approval than the other two pipeline projects. It would transmit Alberta tar sands crude oil from the west to eastern Canada, which currently imports foreign oil, and is supported to various degrees by all the three major federal political parties.

But its route through Quebec has also ignited opposition because of climate change concerns. This is a province that prides itself on being green due to its reliance almost exclusively on hydroelectric power, “resulting in very low greenhouse emissions per capita,” adds Stewart.

“There is not a lot in [Energy East] for Quebec. It is all risk and low reward. You are taking the risk of spills into the St. Lawrence River and into the drinking water,” he notes.

Meanwhile, Jim Stanford, an economist with the UNIFOR union, warns of a boom-bust syndrome that is intrinsic to resource commodity investment. He says that tar sands oil is no exception to the trend.

Stanford points to the slide downward in the world price of oil from the 100-dollar a barrel level – the minimum required by energy producers to justify ploughing money into the expensive extraction process of applying chemicals, water and machinery to dig the bitumen out of the ground.

“Commodity prices go up and they always come down. And getting excited in a period of relatively high prices usually ends in tears [among the investors] when the prices come back down the other way,” Stanford says.

Another economist, the Vancouver-based Marc Lee, observes that the Harper government is keen to extract as much tar sands oil as possible over a short period of time before renewable energies like solar and wind, with fewer consequences for the warming of the planet, come on stream at more affordable pricing.

“The game changer in all of this is that the world’s governments are supposed to negotiate a new agreement to constrain fossil fuel emissions for 2015. [And] Canada may be forced kicking and screaming to stay within reasonable limits,” says Lee.

Looming over all of this is Canada’s historical dependence on the development and export of raw resource staples, starting with trade in fur and fish from the New World to Europe under French and British colonisation in the 1500 and 1600s, says Mel Watkins, a retired University of Toronto political economist and the author of various books and articles on what he and others call the “staples theory,” to explain this country’s evolution.

Other important resources for Canada have been lumber, minerals and petroleum. Watkins speaks favourably of the wheat boom which began in the 1890s and provided, he recounts, positive spinoffs for the Canadian prairies, including the spread of family farms, expansion of agricultural, railway construction and settling of new communities and towns.

But often, says Watkins, resource-dependent countries – including Canada, Australia and nations in Latin America – get “addicted” to resource exports to the point where other parts of their economies fail to receive the full benefits of the commodity. He calls it “the staple trap.”

Watkins explains how the energy companies in Canada rely on foreign-made machinery to extract the tar sands oil and that once dug up the crude is invariably refined outside Canada.

Furthermore, continues Watkins, the tar sands boom has helped to raise the value of the Canadian dollar and thus upped the price of domestically manufactured products in a competitive world market.

Finally, resource-dependent countries like Canada “are too deferential” when it comes to the multinational energy companies paying sufficient royalties and taxes back to the government, adds Watkins, “which [could] can then be used to seed diversified, greener, development.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Canada has been leading the world in forest loss since 2000, accounting for 21 percent of global forest loss. Credit: Crustmania/ CC by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 5 2014 (IPS)

The world’s last remaining forest wilderness is rapidly being lost – and much of this is taking place in Canada, not in Brazil or Indonesia where deforestation has so far made the headlines.

A new satellite study reveals that since 2000 more than 104 million hectares of forests – an area three times the size of Germany – have been destroyed or degraded.Since 2000 more than 104 million hectares of forests – an area three times the size of Germany – have been destroyed or degraded

“Every four seconds, an area of the size of a football (soccer) field is lost,” said Christoph Thies of Greenpeace International.

The extent of this forest loss, which is clearly visible in satellite images taken in 2000 and 2013, is “absolutely appalling” and has a global impact, Thies told IPS, because forests play a crucial in regulating the climate.

The current level of deforestation is putting more CO₂ into the atmosphere than all the world’s cars, trucks, ships and planes together, he said, adding that “governments must take urgent action” to protect intact forests by creating more protected areas, strengthening the rights of forest communities and other measures, including convincing lumber, furniture manufacturers and others to refuse to use products from virgin forests.

Greenpeace is one of several partners in the Intact Forest Landscapes initiative, along with the University of Maryland, World Resources Institute and WWF-Russia among others, that uses satellite imagery technology to determine the location and extent of the world’s last large undisturbed forests.

The new study found that half of forest loss from deforestation and degradation occurred in just three countries: Canada, Russia and Brazil. These countries are also home to about 65 percent of world’s remaining forest wilderness.

However, despite all the media attention on deforestation in the Amazon forest and the forests of Indonesia, it is Canada that has been leading the world in forest loss since 2000, accounting for 21 percent of global forest loss. By contrast, the much-better known deforestation in Indonesia has accounted for only four percent.

Brazil’s Amazon forest – 2000. Credit: Courtesy of Global Forest Watch

Brazil’s Amazon forest – 2013. Credit: Courtesy of Global Forest Watch

Massive increases in oil sands and shale gas developments, as well as logging and road building, are the major cause of Canada’s forest loss, said Peter Lee of Global Forest Watch Canada, an independent Canadian NGO.

A big increase in forest fires is another cause of forest loss. Climate change has rapidly warmed northern Canada, drying out the boreal forests and bogs and making them more vulnerable to fires.

In Canada’s northern Alberta’s oil sands region, more than 12.5 million hectares of forest have been crisscrossed by roads, pipelines, power transmission lines and other infrastructure, Lee told IPS.

Canada’s oil sands and shale gas developments are expected to double and possibly triple in the next decade and “there’s little interest at the federal or provincial political level in conserving intact forest landscapes,” Lee added.

The world’s last remaining large undisturbed forests are where most of the planet’s remaining wild animals, birds, plants and other species live, Nigel Sizer, Global Director of the Forest Programme at the World Resources Institute, told a press conference.

Animals like Siberian tigers, orangutans and woodland caribou require large areas of forest wilderness, Sizer noted, and “losing these top species leads to a decline of entire forest ecosystems in subtle ways that are hard to measure.”

While forests can re-grow, this takes many decades, and in northern forests more than 100 years. However, if species go extinct or there are too few individuals left, it will take longer for a full forest ecosystem to recover – if ever.

Trees, plants and all the creatures that make up a healthy forest ecosystem provide humanity with a range of vital services including storing and cleaning water, cleaning air, soaking up CO₂ and producing oxygen, as well as being sources of food and wood. These ‘free’ services are often irreplaceable and generally worth far more than the value of lumber or when converted to cattle pasture, said Sizer.

In just 13 years, South America’s Paraguay converted an incredible 78 percent of its remaining forest wilderness mainly into large-scale soybean farms and rough pasture, the study found. Satellite images and maps on the new Global Forest Watch website offer see-it-with-your-own eyes images of Paraguay’s forests vanishing over time.

The images and data collected for the study are accessible via various tools on the website. They reveal that 25 percent of Europe’s largest remaining forest, located 900 km north of Moscow, has been chopped down to feed industrial logging operations. In the Congo, home of the world’s second largest tropical forest, 17 percent has been lost to logging, mining and road building. The Global Forest Watch website also shows details of huge areas of Congo forest licensed for future logging.

Deforestation starts with road building, often linked to logging and extractive industries, said Thies. In some countries, like Brazil and Paraguay, the prime reason is conversion to large-scale agriculture, usually for crops that will be exported.

The new data could help companies with sustainability commitments in determining which areas to avoid when sourcing commodities like timber, palm oil, beef and soy. Market-led efforts need to gain further support given the lax governance and enforcement in many of these forest regions, Thies said.

He called on the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – a voluntary certification programme that sets standards for forest management – to “also play a stronger role” and to improve those standards in order to better protect wilderness forests.

Without urgent action to curb deforestation, it is doubtful that any large-scale wild forest will remain by the end of this century, concluded Sizer.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

A group of developing countries brought a tectonic shift at the World Trade Organization on Friday by turning the tables against the industrialised countries, when they offered a positive trade agenda to expeditiously arrive at a permanent solution for food security and other development issues, before adopting the protocol of amendment of the contested Trade Facilitation Agreement.

Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and India inflicted a huge blow on the dominant actors in global trade by refusing to join consensus on the protocol required for full implementation of the TFA that is being pushed through the WTO with carrots and sticks.

“This is unimaginable, that New Delhi would decide the fate of decisions at the WTO, which has been a preserve of the United States and the European Union for the last 50 years,” said a trade envoy from a Western country.The mismatch, in terms of progress, between the TFA on one side, and lack of credible movement in agriculture and development on the other, especially in arriving at a permanent solution for public stockholding programmes, has come into the open at various meeting in Africa and elsewhere

Only seven months ago, the industrialised countries were triumphant at the WTO’s ninth ministerial meeting in Bali, Indonesia, after having succeeded in clinching the TFA. At one go, that agreement would harmonise customs procedures in the developing world on a par with the industrialised countries. It would offer enhanced market access for companies in the rich and leading developing countries such as China, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.

According to former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, the TFA would cut tariffs in developing countries by 10 percent

The developing and poor countries, in return, were offered half-baked outcomes in the Bali package on agriculture and development, including an interim mechanism for public stockholding for food security with a promise of a permanent solution in four years, an agreement on general services in agriculture, transparency-related improvements in what are called tariff rate quota administration provisions, and most trade-distorting farm export subsidies and export credits.

The poorest countries, as part of the “development” dossier, secured a set of best endeavour promises concerning preferential rules of origin for exporting to industrialised countries, preferential treatment to services and services suppliers of least developed countries, duty-free and quota-free market access for least-developed countries, and a final monitoring mechanism for special and differential treatment flexibilities.

The TFA has witnessed perceptible progress since the Bali meeting, while other issues raised by developing and poor countries have taken a back seat at the WTO.  The mismatch, in terms of progress, between the TFA on one side, and lack of credible movement in agriculture and development on the other, especially in arriving at a permanent solution for public stockholding programmes, has come into the open at various meeting in Africa and elsewhere.

“Even seven months after Bali, we do not have the required confidence and trust that there will be constructive engagement on issues that impact the livelihood of a very significant part of the global population,” Indian Ambassador Anjali Prasadtold WTO’s General Council, which is the organisation’s highest decision-making body, during the ministerial meetings, on Friday.

Prasad said “the Trade Facilitation Agreement must be implemented on as part of a single undertaking including the permanent solution on food security.” Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela took the same stand as India that all issues in the Bali package have to be implemented on the same and equal footing.

“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed in the Bali package,” India’s trade minister Nirmala Sitaraman told the Financial Times last Friday.

Against this backdrop, India finally pulled the plug at the General Council meeting by saying that “the adoption of the trade facilitation protocol be postponed until a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security is found.”

Without the protocol, it is difficult to undertake rapid liberalisation of customs procedures as set out in the TFA.  Effectively, the Indian stand has put paid to an early adoption of the trade facilitation protocol.

“Today, we are extremely discouraged that a small handful of Members in this organization [WTO] are ready to walk away from their commitments at Bali, to kill the Bali agreement, to kill the power of that good faith and goodwill we all shared, to flip the lights in this building back to dark,” Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Michael Punke lamented at the General Council meeting.

Trade envoys from Japan, the European Union and a group of 25 industrialised and developing countries slammed India for its move to oppose the TFA until all other issues, particularly, the permanent solution on food security, are resolved.

“But the TFA cannot be divorced from the other issues, including food security, which need to be converted into a binding agreements on a priority basis,” India’s former trade envoy Ambassador Jayant Dasgupta told IPS Saturday.

Dasgupta, who played a major role in providing the rationale for exempting public distribution programmes for food security from WTO disciplines, offered several reasons why food security must trump over the hard core mercantile trade agenda embodying the TFA.

First, he said, ” the debate on food security exposed the insensitivity of trade negotiators of some major industrialised countries (pushed by seven or eight transnational corporations that dominate global food trade) to address food security issues, arising out of static interpretations of trade rules framed many decades ago, when such problems were not conceived.”

Second, the objections raised by the United States, Canada and Australia in addressing food security  are unacceptable because they do not want to concede that there has been more than 650 percent inflation in India since 1986-88.

The WTO agreement on agriculture uses the references prices of 1986-88 for determining domestic support commitments. “Any economist worth his salt would be aghast at the idea that the calculation of subsidies should take place without reference to the current market prices but to market prices which existed twenty six to twenty eight years,” the former Indian trade official argued.

Third, the problem of public procurement and stockholding for food security purposes is resorted to by not only India, but China, Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Nigeria, Kenya and many other developing countries.

“Because of the way the agreement on agriculture provisions is worded, most of these developing countries could be held to be in violation of the WTO rules,” said Dasgupta, pointing out that “India is articulating not only its own problems but also those of other developing countries.”

And fourth, “by seeking to push India into a corner on this extremely sensitive issue for many developing countries, the United States and its handful of supporters are seriously jeopardising the credibility of the WTO in terms of latter’s ability to correct its mistakes and to be sensitive to the needs of a majority of its developing members.”

Fatema,15, sits on the bed at her home in Khulna, Bangladesh, in April 2014. Fatema was saved from being married a few weeks earlier. Local child protection committee members stopped the marriage with the help of law enforcement agencies. Credit: UNICEF

By A. D. McKenzie
LONDON, Jul 23 2014 (IPS)

Heightening their campaign to eradicate violence against women and girls, United Nations agencies and civil groups have called for increased action to end child marriage and female genital mutilation.

At the first Girl Summit in London Wednesday, hosted by the U.K. government and UNICEF, delegates said they wanted to send a strong message that there should be “zero tolerance” for these practices.

“Millions of young girls around the world are in danger of female genital mutilation and child marriage – and of losing their childhoods forever to these harmful practices,” Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection, told IPS.“Millions of young girls around the world are in danger of female genital mutilation and child marriage – and of losing their childhoods forever to these harmful practices” – Susan Bissell, UNICEF's Chief of Child Protection

“FGM is an excruciatingly painful and terrifying ordeal for young girls. The physical effects can last a lifetime, resulting in horrific infections, difficulty passing urine, infertility and even death.”

Bissell said that when a young girl is married “it tends to mark the end of her education and she’s more likely to have children when she’s still a child herself – with a much higher risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth”.

“Without firm and accelerated action now, hundreds of millions more girls will suffer permanent damage,” she added in an e-mail interview.

At the summit, the United Kingdom announced an FGM prevention programme, launched by the government’s Department of Health and the National Health Service (NHS) England. Backed by 1.4 million pounds, the programme is designed to improve the way in which the NHS tackles female genital mutilation and “clarify the role of health professionals which is to ‘care, protect, prevent’,” the government said.

According to British Prime Minister David Cameron, some 130,000 people are affected by FGM in the United Kingdom, with “60,000 girls under the age of 15 potentially at risk”, even though the practice is outlawed in the country.

The prevention programme will now make it mandatory for all “acute hospitals” to report the number of patients with FGM to the Department of Health on a monthly basis, as of September of this year.

U.N. officials said that the Girl Summit was a significant development because it marked the importance of the issues addressed.

“International leaders came together in one place and said enough is enough,” Bissell said.

While it is difficult to measure the impact of intensified campaigns on the reductions in child marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting over the past few years, the United Nations and other organisations have noted that the numbers of girls affected are in fact decreasing.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the percentage of women married before age 18 has dropped by about half, from 34 percent to 18 percent over the last three decades, UNICEF says.

In South Asia, the decline has been especially marked for marriages involving girls under age 15, dropping from 32 percent to 17 percent.

“The marriage of girls under age 18, however, is still commonplace,” Bissell told IPS.

“In Indonesia and Morocco, the risk of marrying before age 18 is less than half of what it was three decades ago. In Ethiopia, women aged 20 to 24 are marrying about three years later than their counterparts three decades ago,” she added.

Regarding female genital mutilation/cutting, Kenya and Tanzania have seen rates drop to one-third of their levels three decades ago through a combination of community activism and legislation, while in the Central African Republic, Iraq, Liberia and Nigeria, prevalence of FGM has dropped by as much as half, Bissell said.

However, officials stressed that with population growth, it is possible that progress in reducing child marriage will remain flat unless the commitments made at the Girl Summit are acted upon. Flat progress “isn’t good enough”, Bissell told IPS.

Recently released U.N. figures show that, despite the declines, child marriage is widespread, with more than 700 million women alive today who were married as children. UNICEF says that some 250 million women were married before the age of 15.

The highest percentage of these women can be found in South Asia, followed by East Asia and the Pacific which is home to 25 percent of girls and women married before the age of 18, UNICEF says.

Statistics also indicate that girls who marry before they turn 18 are less likely to remain in school and more likely to experience domestic violence. In addition, teenage mothers are more at risk from complications in pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s; some 70,000 adolescent girls die every year because of such complications, according to the United Nations.

The statistics on female genital mutilation are also cause for international concern, with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) saying that about 125 million girls and women have been subjected to the practice, which can lead to haemorrhage, infection, physical dysfunction, obstructed labour and death.

According to UNFPA, female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage are human rights violations that both help to perpetuate girls’ low status by impairing their health and long-term development.

UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin told IPS that a number of states have adopted legislation against female genital mutilation/cutting but that some perpetrators are still operating with “impunity”.

Participating in the London summit, Osotimehin said that certain governments were facing challenges within their own countries because of long-held cultural beliefs, but like Bissell, he said that the picture is not completely bleak, because civil society and grassroots organisations are amplifying their campaigns.

“Our message for girls who are affected by these practices is that they have support – moral, psychological, physical and emotional support,” he told IPS. “We also want to send a message that those who are affected should advocate to try and stop these practices.”

Meanwhile, U.N. officials said it was significant that the summit saw commitment from the African Union and the deputy prime Minister of Ethiopia, as well as from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.K. Department for International Development (DfID). The Government of Canada and several other financial supporters also made commitments.

For the executive director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the pledges show support for the message of “zero tolerance” of child marriage and FGM that her organisation wishes to send. They are also a strong signal that the practices can be ended in a generation, she told IPS.

Mining tar sands oil at Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada. Credit: Chris Arsenault/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 17 2014 (IPS)

Newly publicised internal documents suggest that U.S. negotiators are working to permanently block a landmark regulatory proposal in the European Union aimed at addressing climate change, and instead to force European countries to import particularly dirty forms of oil.

Environmentalists, working off of documents released through open government requests, say U.S. trade representatives are responding to frustrations voiced by the oil and gas industry here. This week, U.S. and E.U. officials are in Brussels for the sixth round of talks towards what would be the world’s largest free-trade area, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).“These documents show that the U.S. is simply not interested in an open, transparent [negotiation] process.” -- Bill Waren

“These documents show that the U.S. is simply not interested in an open, transparent [negotiation] process,” Bill Waren, a senior trade analyst with Friends of the Earth U.S., a watchdog group, told IPS. “Rather, U.S. representatives have been lobbying on the [E.U. regulatory proposal] in a way that reflects the interests of Chevron, ExxonMobil and others.”

The oil industry has repeatedly expressed concern over the European Union’s potential tightening of regulations around transport fuel emissions, first proposed in 2009 for what’s known as the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD). Yet according to a report released Thursday by Friends of the Earth Europe, the sector now appears to have convinced the U.S. government to work to permanently block the implementation of this standard.

Current negotiating texts for the TTIP talks are unavailable. But critics say the negotiations are forcing open the massive E.U market for a particularly heavy form of petroleum known as tar sands oil, significant deposits of which are in the Canadian province of Alberta.

“Since the adoption of the revised Fuel Quality Directive in 2009, the international oil companies … petroleum refiners, the Cana­dian government and the Albertan provincial government have spent enormous resources and used aggressive lobbying tactics to delay and weaken the implementation proposal,” the new report, which is being supported by a half-dozen environmental groups, states.

“The oil industry and the Canadian government … are afraid that the FQD could set a precedent by recognising and labelling tar sands as highly polluting and inspire similar legislation elsewhere.”

Safeguarding investments

At issue is the mechanism by which the European Union would determine the greenhouse gas emissions of various types of oil and gas. As part of Europe’s broader climate pledges, the FQD was revised to reduce the emissions of transport fuels by six percent by the end of the decade.

In 2011, the E.U. proposed that tar sands and other unconventional oils be formally characterised as having higher greenhouse gas “intensity” than conventional oil, given that they require more energy to produce – 23 percent higher, according to a study for the European Commission.

Yet tar sands have received massive interest from oil majors in recent years. Some 150 billion dollars were invested in Canadian tar sands between 2001 and 2012, according to Friends of the Earth, a figure expected to grow to nearly 200 billion dollars through 2022.

“Major oil investors want to immediately move as much tar sands oil as possible to Europe,” Waren says. “Over the longer term, they want to get the investments that will allow them to develop the infrastructure necessary to ship that exceptionally dirty fossil fuel to Europe.”

Many investors likely assumed the Canadian tar sands oil would have a ready market in the United States. But not only is the U.S. economy reducing its dependence on oil – particularly imports – but the trans-national transport of Canadian tar sands oils has become a major political flashpoint here, and remains uncertain.

So, last year, oil lobbyists here began to push U.S. trade representatives to use the nascent TTIP talks to safeguard the E.U. market for unconventional oils.

“[I]f the EU approves the proposed amendment to the FQD … it would adversely affect the U.S.-EU relationship, potentially eliminating a $32 billion-a-year flow of trade,” David Friedman, a vice-president with American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a major trade association, wrote in a May 2013 letter to the top U.S. trade official.

Now, according to an internal European Commission e-mail uncovered by Friends of the Earth Europe and outlined in the new report, U.S. trade representatives appear to be echoing this analysis.

“[T]he US Mission informed us formally that the US authorities have concerns about the transparency and process, as well as substantive concerns about the existing proposal (the singling out of two crudes – Canada and Venezuela,” the letter, said to be from October 2013, reportedly states.

Canada and Venezuela have the world’s largest deposits of tar sands oil.

The letter also notes that the U.S. negotiators would prefer a “system of averaging out the crudes”, meaning that all forms of oil would simply receive one median score regarding their emissions intensity. This would effectively lift any E.U. bar on unconventional oils – and, according to the Friends of the Earth analysis, add an additional 19 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

‘Threatening’ climate policies

The new revelations come just a week after the leaking of a TTIP paper on E.U. energy policy, which would push the United States to abolish restrictions and automatically approve crude oil exports to the European Union. The document offered a rare glimpse into notoriously secret talks.

“We strongly oppose attempts by the E.U. to use this trade agreement, negotiated behind closed doors, to secure automatic access to U.S. oil and gas,” Ilana Solomon, director of the Responsible Trade Program at the Sierra Club, a conservation and watchdog group, told IPS. “I think there’s strong support for continued restrictions on this issue among both the public and policymakers, due to the implications for both energy security and the climate.”

The new disclosures have indeed caught the attention of the U.S. Congress. Last week, 11 lawmakers renewed a line of questioning from last year about Washington’s influence on E.U. tar sands policy.

“We reiterate that actions pressuring the EU to alter its FQD would be inconsistent with the goals expressed in President Obama’s Climate Action Plan,” the lawmakers wrote to the U.S. trade representative, Michael Froman, “and we remain concerned that trade and investment rules may be being used to undermine or threaten important climate policies of other nations.”

Yet such concerns may already be too late.

Last month, media reports suggested that the European Commission is now considering a proposal to go with the U.S.-pushed “averaging” approach to its fuel-emissions calculation. The same week, Europe’s first shipment of tar sands oil – 570,000 barrels from Canada – reportedly arrived on Spanish shores.

Mining tar sands oil at Fort McMurray. Credit: Chris Arsenault/IPS

By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Mar 17 2014 (IPS)

Job cuts totalling 1,000 announced at Environment Canada’s climate change division this month means there will be even fewer government scientists onboard to monitor the impact of the extraction, development and transportation of crude oil from the carbon-intensive oil sands in Alberta.

The oil sands are a major source of fossil fuel emissions which are heating areas of the planet, including the Arctic.“These audits are clearly designed to intimidate and disrupt their work." -- Dennis Howlett

Ironically, this same department, just weeks earlier, produced new research confirming that toxic chemicals from oil sands tailing ponds covering 176 square kilometres in northern Alberta are leaching into the local groundwater and seeping into the Athabasca River.

But two experts on Canadian environmental policy say they expect fewer such studies to be financed by a Conservative government in Ottawa focused on the development of the Alberta oil sands.

“This government is taking out specific forms of [research] capacity and those are the kind of things we need to have if we are ever going to tackle climate change,” said John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada.

“[With] any government that comes into power in the future, it’s going to take them two or three years to get the staff, to review what they have to do,” he told IPS.

Picking up the investigative slack but without the same amount of resources are the environmental NGOs such as the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute, said Mark Winfield, a professor in the faculty of environmental studies at Toronto’s York University.

“These functions of NGOs in the public policy process have become even more important as the capacity to provide evidence-based analysis — contrary to what the current government wants to hear — continues to be diminished in Ottawa,” Winfield said in a recent blog post.

He points for instance to a report by the Pembina Institute that offers evidence of  a “significant increase” in fossil fuel emissions if a proposed west-east pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick carrying crude oil from the oil sands is built.

Both Suzuki and Pembina are among several leading environmental organisations that have charitable status under Canadian tax regulation and thus are able to provide tax receipts for Canadians donating money for research into climate change, oil and gas development and other pollution issues.

However, since the 2011 federal election when Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative party won a parliamentary majority, these same NGOs have faced the prospect of losing their charitable status for allegedly straying past the legal 10 percent budget limit for  political activity.

The federal government’s rhetoric heated up when natural resources Minister Joe Oliver in early 2012 warned publicly of “radical” environmentalists “threaten[ing] to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda,” with their opposition to proposed oil pipeline projects.

Oliver stated then that these same groups rely on funding from “foreign special interest groups.”

Mark Winfield worries that CRA is raising “profound issues about the rights of Canadians,” by its actions.

The scorecards that NGOs introduce at election time to compare the positions of the various political parties on specific environmental issues including climate change may represent a crossing of the fine line between research and political advocacy, said Philippe Brideau, a spokesperson for the Canada Revenue Agency.

“In general, the CRA would likely consider a charity that rates political parties to be carrying on a partisan political activity.”

University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman is not adverse to some restrictions, although he is uncomfortable with some of the government’s rhetoric directed towards the NGOs.

“I think it is perfectly okay to publish data. But I am not sure it is proper to get tax money and get up and say ‘the Conservatives are killing the environment,’” he told IPS.

At the same time, Wiseman said he is not sure that Canadian organisations taking foreign money is necessarily illegal or even a bad thing.

“If there is some group that arises and wants to build democracy in the Ukraine, we want to give them some money. It could be illegal according to Ukrainian law. I suspect it is not illegal here.”

Recently revealed internal documents indicate that the Canada Revenue Agency is investing 12 million dollars (U.S.), more than then the 7.2 million previously announced, in an ongoing multi-year audit until 2017 of environmental NGOs with legal charity status.

CBC TV recently reported that CRA is investigating the following environmental charities — David Suzuki Foundation, Tides Canada, West Coast Environmental Law, The Pembina Foundation, Environmental Defence, Equiterre and the Ecology Action Centre — for possibly exceeding the allowable 10 percent for political activity.

John Bennett at the Sierra Club, which is not being currently audited, said the political restrictions were never an issue for the NGOs until the Harper government came along and unleashed the CRA.

“There are things that groups have been doing for years and years and are now being told those are not qualified activities,” he explained.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has made vague allegations about ties between NGOs and organised crime. Credit: Joey Coleman/cc by 2.0

Environmental NGOs, for instance, have historically worked with corporations within an industry like forestry to establish a sector-based code of conduct that respects the land, water, flora and fauna during any resource extraction activity.

Now, under a “retroactive” interpretation of political activity for charities by the CRA, that kind of consultation is being disallowed, said Bennett.

“This is the kind of activity which we thought was very positive, so trying to say that we can’t do that anymore is a way to get us out of the business of being an influence for change in society,” he said.

Philippe Brideau at the CRA counters that the issue of a code of conduct is not as clear-cut with regards to consultation.  “It depends on whether the actual activity fits the definition of political activity,” he said.

But Dennis Howlett, executive director for Canadians for Tax Fairness, argues that the Harper government is using the CRA to conduct a political “witch-hunt,” against NGOs daring to criticise public policy.

He notes that a similar form of “intimidation” of ongoing auditing is also occurring with organisations focused on international development.

“These audits are clearly designed to intimidate and disrupt their work, so instead of going in and auditing and saying, ‘no everything’s fine,’ they keep the audit open, and they don’t conclude the audit. They don’t come to any resolution; they just keep the charities hanging… I know of audits that have been going on for a year.”

Furthermore, Howlett points to the reported staff cuts at the Canada Revenue Agency over a three-year period totaling close to 3,000, plus another approximately 100 jobs lost in the units assigned to investigate overseas tax evasion and aggressive tax planning, and finally the disbanding of a special unit devoted to organised crime.

“These would be the more experienced trained auditors, forensic accountants, people with a fair high level of education and training and experience,” Howlett told IPS.

“CRA has lost a lot of key staff and their ability to investigate both individuals using tax havens to hide their money, as well as corporations who are shifting profit through tax havens to reduce their product and their tax bill.”

Brideau counters that the CRA “takes its commitment to detecting and addressing non-compliance with Canada’s tax laws seriously.” He denies that any auditors have been cut in his department.

“Reductions in staff are limited to individuals performing programme or corporate support functions,” he told IPS.