As governments of 195 countries approved the COP20 final document in Lima in the early hours of Dec. 14, activists protested about the watered-down results of climate negotiations outside the venue where they met. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
LIMA, Dec 14 2014 (IPS)

After a 25-hour extension, delegates from 195 countries reached agreement on a “bare minimum” of measures to combat climate change, and postponed big decisions on a new treaty until the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21), to be held in a year’s time in Paris.

After 13 days of debates, COP 20, the meeting of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), failed to resolve key issues such as the monitoring of each country’s commitment to emissions reductions, recognition of loss and damage caused by climate alterations and immediate actions, representatives of observer organisations told IPS.

The agreed document was the third draft to be debated. The Lima Call for Climate Action, as it is known, stipulates that countries must propose national greenhouse gas emission reduction targets by October 2015.

It also “urges” developed countries to “provide and mobilise financial support for ambitious mitigation and adaptation actions” to countries affected by climate change, and “invites” them to pledge financial contributions alongside their emissions reduction targets. This exhortation was a weak response to the demands of countries that are most vulnerable to global warming, and it avoided complete disaster.

But observers complained that the Lima Call pays little attention to the most vulnerable populations, like farmers, coastal communities, indigenous people, women and the poorest sectors of societies.

“There were a number of trade-offs between developed and developing countries, and the rest of the text has become significantly weaker in terms of the rules for next year and how to bring climate change action and ambitions next year,” Sven Harmeling, the climate change advocacy coordinator for Care International, told IPS. “That has been most unfortunate,” he said.

The 2015 negotiations will be affected, as “they are building up more pressure on Paris. The bigger issues have been pushed forward and haven’t been addressed here,” he said.

Harmeling recognised that an agreement has been reached, although it is insufficient. “We have something, but the legal status of the text is still unclear,” he said. If there is really a “spirit of Lima” and not just a consensus due to exhaustion, it will begin to emerge in February in Geneva, at the next climate meeting, he predicted.

The countries of the South voted in favour of the text at around 01:30 on Sunday Dec. 14, but organisations like Oxfam, the Climate Action Network and Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) were very critical of the result. The Lima negotiations “have done nothing to prevent catastrophic climate change,” according to FoEI. “What countries need now is financing of climate action and what we need is urgent action now, because we need our emissions to peak before 2020 if we are to stay on a safe path.” -- Tasneem Essop

More than 3,000 delegates met Dec. 1-13 for the complex UNFCCC process, with the ultimate goal of averting global warming to levels that would endanger life on Earth.
Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who chaired the COP 20, extended the meeting in order to build bridges between industrialised countries, the largest carbon emitters, who wanted less financial pressure, and developing countries who sought less control over their own reductions.

“Although we seem to be on opposite sides, we are in fact on the same side, because there is only one planet,” said Pulgar-Vidal at the close of the COP.

The specific mandate in Lima was to prepare a draft for a new, binding climate treaty, to be consolidated during 2015 and signed in Paris. Methodological discussions and fierce debates about financing, deadlines and loss and damage prevented a more ambitious consensus.

“What countries need now is financing of climate action and what we need is urgent action now, because we need our emissions to peak before 2020 if we are to stay on a safe path,” Tasneem Essop, climate coordinator for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told IPS.

“We need to protect the rights of climate impacted communities,” she said. The defencelessness of the most vulnerable people on the planet is what makes action a matter of urgency.

However, the Lima agreement contains few references to mechanisms for countries to use to reduce their emissions between 2015 and 2020, when the new treaty replacing the Kyoto Protocol is due to come into force.

These actions need to start immediately, said Essop, as later measures may be ineffective. “What governments seem to be thinking is that they can do everything in the future, post 2020, when the science is clear that we have to peak before that,” she told IPS.

Unless action is taken, year by year extreme climate, drought and low agricultural yields will be harder on those communities, which bear the least responsibility for climate change. Essop believes that governments are waiting for the negotiations in Paris, when there were urgent decisions to be taken in Lima.

Among the loose ends that will need to be tied in the French capital between Nov. 30 and Dec. 11, 2015, are the balance to be struck between mitigation and adaptation in the new global climate treaty, and how it will be financed.

“If we hadn’t come to the decision we have taken (the Lima Call for Climate Action), thing would be more difficult in Paris, but as we know there are still many things to be decided bewteen here and December 2015, in orden to resolve pending issues,” Laurent Fabius, the French Foreign Minister, said in the closing plenary session.

The goal of the agreement is for global temperature to increase no more than two degrees Celsius by 2100, in order to preserve planetary stability. Reduction of fossil fuel use is essential to achieve this.

Mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage are the pillars of the new treaty. The last two issues are vital for countries and populations disproportionately impacted by climate change, but faded from the agenda in Lima.

“It’s disastrous and it doesn’t meet our expectations at all. We wanted to see a template clearly emerging from Lima, leading to a much more ambitious deal,” said Harjeet Singh, manager for climate change and resilience for the international organisation ActionAid.

“What we are seeing here is a continuous pushback from developed countries on anything related to adaptation or loss and damage,” he told IPS.

These are thorny issues because they require financial commitments from rich countries. The Green Climate Fund, set up to counter climate change in developing countries, has only received 10.2 billion dollars by this month, only one-tenth of the amount promised by industrialised nations.

The Lima Call for Climate Action did determine the format for Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), for each country to present its emissions reduction targets.

However, the final agreement eliminated mechanisms for analysing the appropriateness and adequacy of the targets that were contained in earlier drafts.

Negotiators feel that the sum of the national contributions will succeed in halting global warming, but observers are concerned that the lack of regulation will prevent adequate monitoring of whether emissions reductions on the planet are sufficient.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Valerie Dee

Members of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance staging a demonstration at the Climate Change Conference in Lima. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
LIMA, Dec 10 2014 (IPS)

The post-2015 global climate change agreement should be flexible and fully resourced or else condemn Africa to another cycle of poverty resulting from the adverse effects of climate change.

Echoing this view, African delegates and civil society groups at the ongoing (Dec. 1-12) U.N. Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, said that some of the continent’s demands were being relegated, yet they are crucial for the post-2015 period.

Azeb Girma, an environmental activist from Ethiopia, told IPS that he was disappointed with the way the negotiations were proceeding.  “We thought to have a pathway to Paris [venue for the next climate change conference in 2015] but Africa is cheated. Africa is demanding adaptation but this has been pushed away. The discussions are leading nowhere,” said Girma.

Some of the negotiators claimed that developed countries were backtracking on some of the positions earlier agreed to at the Durban Climate Change Conference in 2011.

Dr Tom Okurut, Executive Director of Uganda’s National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), told IPS that in Durban parties had agreed that adaptation was supposed to be part of the post-2015 climate deal but some developed countries were not willing to commit themselves in the draft texts."We have a mandate from science, from our people, from the continent of Africa, and from the United Nations itself to push for enhanced global climate action to cut [greenhouse gas] GHG emissions as well as strengthen adaptation; this remains a priority for us" – Nagmeldin El Hassan, Chair of the African Group at the Climate Change Conference in Lima

“We need a legally binding agreement that binds all parties to whatever has been agreed to, unlike the current protocol where parties can opt out of the process. Right now, everything is voluntary and that is why we are not getting very big output here,” said Okurut.

Since the beginning of the Lima conference, the African Group has been pushing for a multilateral rules-based system with a comprehensive outcome aimed at halting the growing threat of climate change to the African continent.

“We have a mandate from science, from our people, from the continent of Africa, and from the United Nations itself to push for enhanced global climate action to cut [greenhouse gas] GHG emissions as well as strengthen adaptation; this remains a priority for us,” said Nagmeldin El Hassan, Chair of the African Group while addressing a group of African journalist covering the conference.

Among the more thorny debates in this round of talks is the scope and format of country pledges or ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDCS). Some parties, especially the African Group and most of the least developed countries (LDCs), want the focus to be on both mitigation and adaptation, while those in developed countries want the focus only on mitigation.

Earlier in the week, several African environmental groups under their umbrella group, the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), held a demonstration at the convention centre urging ministers and other negotiators to back the African position on INDCS.

“We call on all parties to take seriously their responsibility to agree on deep emission cuts and avoid further climate crisis. Time is running out while the negotiations are moving at a very slow pace,” said Nicholas Ndhola, an activist from Zimbabwe.

“We urge and demand all parties, especially the developed countries, to agree on the scope of INDCs to include all elements and not only mitigation which tends to ignore differentiated commitments towards finance, adaptation, technology transfer, means of implementation and capacity-building,”he added.

John Bideri from Rwanda told IPS that the developed countries were seemingly determined to ensure that issues about adaptation and technology transfer are not adequately agreed and defined as the parties agree on framework for the next agreement to be hammered out in Paris in 2015.

Seyini Nafo, spokesperson of the African Group at the Climate Change Conference in Lima and member of the UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

“It is time to come up with an equitable deal. Lima may be the last chance for us to make a breakthrough and end a standoff that has prevented adequate climate action for decades. Please stand with the poor, stand with the vulnerable,” urged Bideri.

The INDCs bring together elements of a bottom-up system – to be put forward by all countries in their contributions in the context of their national priorities, circumstances and capabilities – with the aim of reducing global emissions enough to limit average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.

According to the London-based CARE International, there is a need to set clear guidelines on the scope and format of INDCs.

“At the moment we run the risk of having to compare apples with oranges – if we don’t clearly define what countries must include in their national climate commitments towards the new agreement due in Paris next year, then it will be extremely difficult to understand how much progress is being made to curb climate change,” said Sven Harmeling, CARE International’s climate change advocacy coordinator.

However,in a statement in Lima,Miguel Arias Canete, the European Union’s Commissioner for Energy and Climate Action, said that “the European Union and other developed countries must take into account the concerns of developing countries that want more adaptation, finance and technology sharing elements, but it should be in a mechanism or process outside of the INDCs.”

He added that “countries’ intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) should be exclusively devoted to mitigation.”

While Africa has been pushing for adaptation as part of the post-2015 agreement, it is not about to give up the demand for mitigation in areas of sustainable land and forest management, especially carbon finance, under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme.

Dr Ephraim Kamuntu, Uganda’s Water and Environment Minister, speaking at a REDD+ post 2015 discussion organised by the Peruvian government, said that parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been slow in implementing the Warsaw REDD+ Framework.

“We would want our colleagues in developed countries to agree on REDD+ result-based financing. This is a very key issue for us in Africa. We affirm the need to integrate the REDD+ into the overall structure of the 2015 agreement for durable and effective climate change governance,” said Kamuntu.

Critical among Africa’s demands is fulfilment of the financial pledges for climate financing.  At the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, developed countries pledged to scale up climate funding to 100 billion dollars a year from private and public sources by 2020. For the African Group, fulfilling this could make money available for a post-2015 poverty eradication agenda.

Some developed countries, such as Norway and Australia among others, have announced contributions to the Green Climate Fund, bringing the fund to close the 10 billion dollar mark.

Seyni Nafo, African Group spokesperson and a member of the UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance, told IPS that much more funding was needed.

“Recent pledges to the Green Climate Fund are a small first step, but funding around 2.4 billion dollars per year is not close to the actual need, and is a far cry from the 100 billion dollars pledged for 2020. Lima should provide a clear roadmap for how finance contributions will increase step-by-step up to 2020,” he said.

The European Union has agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030. The United States and China have announced commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a bilateral agreement, sending a strong signal for implementation of an international climate treaty in 2015.

Seyni Nafo said the recent announcements by the European Union, United States and China of their 2030 emission targets were to be commended for proactivity but fall well short of what science requires.

He challenged the European Union and the United States to match stronger mitigation targets with intended contributions on finance, adaptation, technology transfer and capacity-building in accordance with their obligations under international law.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Marvin Nafee, an Iraqi Christian who fled to Jordan to escape the Islamic State, prays for “the safe Mosul from ten years ago where everyone co-existed peacefully”. Credit: Areej Abuqudairi/IPS

By Areej Abuqudairi
AMMAN, Oct 31 2014 (IPS)

Watching videos and pictures on social media of the advance of the Islamic State (IS) inside Syria made it all seem far from reality to Iraqi Marvin Nafee.

“We did not believe it,” said the 27-year-old, “it seemed so imaginary.”

Only months later, his home city Mosul fell to the IS in two hours and he and thousands of Christians had to flee. Marvin made his way to Jordan, along with his father, mother and two brothers. “The Middle East is no longer safe for us. As Christians we have been suffering since 2003 and always feared persecution” – a 60-year-old Iraqi refugee

“There is nothing like peace and safety,” he told IPS from the Latin Church in Marka neighbourhood in Amman, which he has been calling home for the past two months.

In July, the IS  issued an order telling Christians living in Mosul to either convert to Islam, pay tax, or give up their belongings and leave the city. Failure to do so would result in a death penalty, “as a last resort”.

“Mosul is empty of Christians now. Everyone we know has left, except for a group of elderly in a care centre who were forced to convert to Islam,” Marvin said.

Since August, thousands of Iraqis have been streaming to Jordan through Erbil.

Caritas spokesperson Dana Shahin told IPS that 4,000 Iraqi Christians have approached the Caritas office in Jordan since August, and 2000 of them have been placed in churches.

Churches in the capital and the northern cities of Zarqa and Salt have been turned into temporary refugee camps, with families living in the yards and hallways.

In Maraka’s Latin Church, around 85 people share a 7×3 metre room. Children, elderly, men and women sleep on the floor with extra mattresses dividing the room to give them privacy. They use the cafeteria facilities to prepare meals using food items donated by Caritas.

“It was generous of Jordan to offer what it can, but this is not an ideal living situation for anyone,” says a 53-year-old woman, who gave her name as Um George.

Having been stripped of all of their possessions by the IS, most of them arrived in Jordan penniless and carrying little more than what they were wearing. “They [IS] searched everyone, including children, for money,” said Marvin’s 25-year-old brother Ihab. “We gave it all to them for the sake of safety,” he added.

The Islamic Charity Centre Society has provided pre-fabricated caravans to be used by families in the yards of churches, and a few families have been relocated to rental apartments shared by more than one family. Caritas provides basic shelter, food, medical treatment, and clothes. But a durable solution for these families is yet to be found.

“We are still evaluating their needs. Most of these families have fled with almost nothing,” said Andrew Harper, representative of the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Jordan. His organisation registered an average of 120 new Iraqis every day in August and September, with more than 60 percent citing fear of IS as their reason for fleeing Iraq.

Around 11,000 Iraqis have registered with UNHCR this year, bringing the total number of Iraqis in Jordan to 37,067.

Jordan has been home to thousands of Iraqi refugees since 2003, and many of these live in dire conditions, struggling to make ends meet as aid funds dry up.  

“Iraqi refugees remain on the margin of donors and institutions,” says Eman Ismaeel, manager of the Iraqi refugee programme at CARE International in Amman.

Unable to work legally, Iraqi families live in the poorest neighbourhoods of East Amman and Zarqa city. They struggle to pay rent and send their children to school.

The new influx of Iraqi refugees has introduced a new challenge for aid agencies operating in resource-poor Jordan, which is already home to more than 618,500 Syrian refugees.

“We have more refugees than we have ever had since the Second World War, but resources are dire,” said Harper. “We are challenged every day, but we hope to get through with international support,” he added.

Most of the newly-arrived Iraqi refugees interviewed by IPS said that they want to be resettled in Western countries. “The Middle East is no longer safe for us,” said 60-year-old Hanna (who declined to give her last name). “As Christians we have been suffering since 2003 and always feared persecution,” she added, noting that she and her daughters had been covering their hair to “avoid harassment”.

But resettlement “in reality is a long process and is based on vulnerability criteria,” said Harper, and thousands of Iraqis in Jordan have been waiting to be resettled in Jordan for years.

Back in Marka, Marvin points to a picture of his house back in Mosul stamped in red with “Property of the Islamic State” and the Arabic letter Nfor Nasara (Christians). A Muslim friend who is still in Mosul sent him the picture. More bad news followed from his friend, who emailed to say that Marvin’s house had been taken over by IS members.

Although he has lost hope that one day he and his family will be able see a glimpse of Iraq again, Marvin still has faith that prayers can bring peace back. “We always pray for the safe Mosul from ten years ago where everyone co-existed peacefully.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

A pregnant woman waits in line for a medical check-up. Health indicators for women on Sri Lanka’s tea estates are lower than the national average. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
COLOMBO, Sep 23 2014 (IPS)

A mud path winds its up way uphill, offering views on either side of row after row of dense bushes and eventually giving way to a cluster of humble homes, surrounded by ragged, playful children.

Their mothers either look far too young, barely adults themselves, or old beyond their years, weathered by decades of backbreaking labour on the enormous tea estates of Sri Lanka.

Rani* is a 65-year-old mother of six, working eight-hour shifts on an estate in Sri Lanka’s Central Province. Her white hair, a hunched back and fallen teeth make her appear about 15 years older than she is, a result of many decades spent toiling under the hot sun.

She tells IPS that after her fifth child, overwhelmed with the number of mouths she had to feed, she visited the local hospital to have her tubes tied, but gave birth to a son five years later.

“If women are the primary breadwinners among the estate population, generating the bulk of household revenue in a sector that is feeding the national economy, then maternal health should be a priority." -- Mythri Jegathesan, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Santa Clara University in California
Though she is exhausted at the end of the day, and plagued by the aches and pains that signal the coming of old age, she is determined to keep her job, so her children can go to school.

“I work in the estates so that they won’t have to,” she says with a hopeful smile.

Her story is poignant, but not unique among workers in Sri Lanka’s vast tea sector, comprised of some 450 plantations spread across the country.

Women account for over 60 percent of the workforce of abut 250,000 people, all of them descendants of indentured servants brought from India by the British over a century ago to pluck the lucrative leaves.

But while Sri Lankan tea itself is of the highest quality, raking in some 1.4 billion dollars in export earnings in 2012 according to the Ministry of Plantation Industries, the health of the labourers, especially the women, leaves a lot to be desired.

Priyanka Jayawardena, research officer for the Colombo-based Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, tells IPS that “deep-rooted socio-economic factors” have led to health indicators among women and children on plantations that are consistently lower than the national average.

The national malnutrition rate for reproductive-age mothers, for instance, is 16 percent, rising to 33 percent for female estate workers. And while 16 percent of newborn babies nationwide have low birth weight, on estates that number rises significantly, to one in every three newborns.

A higher prevalence of poverty on estates partly accounts for these discrepancies in health, with 61 percent of households on estates falling into the lowest socio-economic group (20 percent of wealth quintile), compared to eight percent and 20 percent respectively for urban and rural households.

Other experts say that cultural differences also play a role, since estate populations, and especially tea workers, have been relatively isolated from broader society.

“Many women are uneducated, and tend to be careless about their own health, and the health of their children,” a field worker with the Centre for Social Concern (CSC), an NGO based in the Nuwara Eliya district in central Sri Lanka, tells IPS.

“They have a very taxing job and so spend less time thinking about food and nutrition,” she states.

In fact, as Jayawardena points out, only 15 percent of under-five children on estates have a daily intake of animal protein, compared to 40-50 percent among rural and urban populations.

The same is true for daily consumption of yellow vegetables and fruits, as well as infant cereals – in both cases the average intake among children on estates is 40 percent, compared to 60 percent in rural and urban areas.

Breastfeeding patterns are also inadequate, with just 63 percent of estate workers engaging in exclusive breastfeeding for the first four months of a child’s life, compared to 77 percent in urban areas and 86 percent in rural areas, according to research conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies.

The situation is made worse by the demands of the industry. Since many women are daily wage labourers, earning approximately 687 rupees (just over five dollars) each day, few can afford to take the required maternity leave.

But even when alternatives are provided by the estate management, experts say, a lack of awareness and education leaves children without proper attention and care.

Jayawardena tells IPS that almost half of all women on estates drop out of school after the primary level, compared to a national dropout rate of 15 percent. Literacy levels are low, and so even awareness campaigns often fail to reach the targeted audience.

Many female estate workers are daily wage labourers, earning approximately 687 rupees (just over five dollars) each day. Credit: Anja Leidel/CC-BY-SA-2.0

“Women on the estates do not believe they have many options in life beyond working on the plantations,” the CSC field officer says.

“Most are extremely poor, and from childhood they are exposed to very little – there are hardly any playgrounds, libraries, gathering places or social activities on the estates. So they tend to get married early and become mothers at a very young age.”

Though the national average for teenage pregnancies stands at roughly 6.4 percent, it shoots up to ten percent among estate workers, resulting in a cycle in which malnourished mothers give birth to unhealthy babies, who will also likely become mothers at a young age.

“If women are the primary breadwinners among the estate population, generating the bulk of household revenue in a sector that is feeding the national economy, then maternal health should be a priority,” Mythri Jegathesan, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Santa Clara University in California, tells IPS.

“Any form of agricultural labour is hard on the body, and many of the estate workers in Sri Lanka work until they are seven or eight months pregnant. They need to be acknowledged, and more attention given to their wellbeing and health,” she adds.

Several NGOs and civil society organisations have been working diligently alongside the government and the private sector to boost women’s health outcomes.

According to Chaaminda Jayasinghe, senior project manager of the plantation programme for CARE International-Sri Lanka, the situation is changing positively.

The emergence of the Community Development Forum (CDF) introduced by CARE in selected tea estates is providing space and a successful model for inclusive development for estate communities, he tells IPS.

This has already resulted in better living conditions and health outcomes among estate communities while mainstreaming plantation communities into the larger society.

*Not her real name.

This story originally appeared in a special edition TerraViva, ‘ICPD@20: Tracking Progress, Exploring Potential for Post-2015’, published with the support of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. The contents are the independent work of reporters and authors.

It is common to find young people working in factories in Rangoon. Credit: Mon Mon Myat/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jun 12 2014 (IPS)

U.S. companies newly operating in Myanmar have until the end of the month to file official reports detailing the actions they’ve taken to ensure that their investments comply with safeguards around land, human rights and other concerns.

Such ‘due diligence’ reporting was a key compromise between activists and the U.S. government after Washington lifted sanctions on U.S. investments in Myanmar (formerly Burma) in mid-2012. Yet rights advocates here who have looked at the first round of disclosures are warning that most companies are failing to file strong reports while some are refusing to engage in the process at all.

“Responsible U.S. investment has the potential to further the U.S. policy goal to support ‘the establishment of a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic state that respects human rights and the rule of law’,” notes the U.S. Campaign for Burma, a prominent watchdog group here, in its first-ever analysis of the new reporting.

“[…] Burma doesn’t yet have the infrastructure necessary for protections. We’re very concerned that the labour market is going to be worse in Burma than in other places.” -- Jennifer Quigley, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma.
The group says its findings are meant to encourage investors “to make forthright disclosures, manage risks, commit to responsible stewardship and transparency, and engage with civil society.”

Of the nine reports by six companies that have been filed with the U.S. State Department thus far, the U.S. Campaign for Burma says only a one, from Coca-Cola, is satisfactorily thorough. Coca-Cola told IPS in a statement that when it re-entered the Myanmar market in mid-2013 after more than 60 years, it undertook the longest and most in-depth due diligence process in the company’s history.

“From the very outset of our re-entry into Myanmar, Coca-Cola went to great lengths to integrate respect for human rights into all of our business activities,” Rehan Khan, the general manager of Coca-Cola Myanmar, said in the statement. “We hope these efforts contribute to an industry-wide culture in Myanmar of ethical and responsible business development.”

Other U.S. investors do not yet appear to have gone to such lengths. The U.S. Campaign for Burma rates two companies, Western Union and Clipper Holdings, as “questionable” based on their reporting, while three others – Capital Group Companies, Hercules Offshore and Crowley Marine Services – are described as “irresponsible”.

The two questionable companies are criticised for filing incomplete information, while Hercules and Crowley are no longer operating in Myanmar and didn’t file at all. Capital Group, meanwhile, filed a report suggesting that the requirement does not cover its “passive” investments in Burmese companies, though activists say no such exemption exists.

“The whole [reporting] process seems to be quite a mess,” Jennifer Quigley, the U.S. Campaign for Burma’s executive director, told IPS. “It’s very frustrating how many companies are trying to skate by with the absolute minimum amount of disclosure – or to disregard this responsibility entirely.”

Spirit of the law

The due diligence reporting requirement came about following debate over how the United States would lift its ban on U.S. investment in Myanmar, which at the time was seen by officials as tentatively opening up following a half-century of military rule.

Rights advocates urged the administration of President Barack Obama not to allow U.S. investments in certain sectors – in particular in extractives and large-scale agriculture – due to concerns over longstanding abuses.

In the end the government decided that no sector would be off limits, but rather that companies would be required to file annual reports on their efforts to ensure that international standards were being applied around their investments.

Investors are thus required to file such a report six months after new investments reach 500,000 dollars, or following any investment in the oil and gas sector. Thereafter, annual reports are due at the beginning of July.

From a watchdog’s perspective, however, a key gap has remained in this policy: the extent to which corporate policies would be extended to local business partners. Foreign companies, after all, are required to partner with local partners, many of whom have longstanding ties to the military, yet Quigley says the reporting on this issue has been vague.

“The U.S. administration has only stated that the ‘spirit of the law’ is supposed to extend to complete transparency around naming Burmese partners,” she notes. “But from these reports it appears that companies are not complying with that spirit.”

Just three of the six companies have named local partners, and each of these identities has raised concerns among rights groups.

Meanwhile, several prominent U.S. companies that have recently re-engaged in Myanmar – including Ford, GE, Halliburton and PepsiCo – have so far failed to file due diligence reporting at all. While the companies claim the requirement doesn’t cover their actions, the U.S. Campaign for Burma disputes this.

GE told IPS it hasn’t yet reached the 500,000-dollar investment threshold, though other companies were unable to offer a response by deadline. The U.S. Treasury would ultimately levy penalties for any such delinquency, but a Treasury spokesperson declined to comment.

New labour floor

The reporting deadline is arriving just as Gap Inc., the clothing company, has announced that it would be moving some of its operations to Yangon factories, becoming the first U.S retailer to do so. At the U.S. Embassy in Yangon on Monday, U.S. officials stated that the company would be partnering with USAID, Washington’s main foreign aid agency, as well as CARE International, a humanitarian group, to invest in Myanmar’s “social and economic growth”.

“Through partnerships, such as this one today, we are working together to ensure that communities benefit from an economy re-entering the international marketplace,” Chris Milligan, the director of USAID’s Myanmar mission, said at the event, according to a release. “Through this effort and other initiatives, we are encouraging responsible investment to improve the welfare of all people of this country.”

Yet Gap has also indicated its potential interest in a contentious economic zone outside of Yangon known as Thilawa. Co-funded by the Japanese government, Thilawa is the farthest along of multiple SEZs currently being planned by the Myanmar government.

The project has already run into significant concerns around plans for the relocation of thousands of people.

“We really need to get this right the first time around, because the biggest concern we’re hearing is that Burma is going to be the new ‘labour floor’,” Quigley says.

“Yet the international community won’t realise it, because Burma doesn’t yet have the infrastructure necessary for protections. We’re very concerned that the labour market is going to be worse in Burma than in other places.”

END

Dunwaa Soayare, 45, shows her savings book that tracks her weekly contributions to the Asong-taaba Women’s Group, a cooperative in Denugu, Upper East Region, northern Ghana. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
DENUGU, Ghana, Feb 28 2014 (IPS)

Dunwaa Soayare, 45, a smallholder farmer, widow and mother of five had the sort of economic profile that meant she was denied access to credit from Ghana’s mainstream banking institutions.

She had no collateral, no bank account and found it impossible to provide three meals a day for her children, let alone ensure that they stayed in school.

But after joining the Asong-taaba Women’s Group, a cooperative in Denugu, Upper East Region, northern Ghana, her life has changed dramatically. Not only has she been able to provide for her family by moving them from their mud hut into the brick house she built, she’s also been able to provide tertiary education for children and has seen two of them qualify as teachers.  “This is a small project with a big impact…even though we are poor we can save." -- Solomon Atinga, programme manager of the Presbyterian Agricultural Station at Garu Tempane

“Aside from taking care of my children’s education I have expanded my farming from half a hectare to two hectares. I now cultivate one hectare of maize, half a hectare of millet as well as half a hectare of groundnut,” she told IPS.

Soayare explained that from one hectare of land she harvests 15  bags of 84 kilograms each, which she sells for 70,000 Ghana Cedis (380 dollars) – a huge sum.

The group, which started in 2008, raised 5,000 dollars at the end of 2013 from the weekly contribution of its 25 members – almost all smallholder farmers and the breadwinners in their families.

Every Monday, the women meet under a shea tree and pay their contributions of between 50 cents to five dollars. They are allowed to apply for a loan, which many use to fund alternative businesses if their crops fail.

For Soayare it’s meant that she and her family are no longer vulnerable during the lean season. In Upper East Region the rainy season usually starts in May and ends in October. However, changes in the weather pattern now mean that the rains fall much later.

So when the rains don’t come, instead of suffering through a crop failure, Soayare borrows money from the group and makes soap and buys vegetables for resale.

“I don’t know what I would have done without this savings initiative,” Soayare said.

But Asong-taaba is one of 500 groups in the district that involve almost 12,000 people, mostly women, scattered across the Garu Tempane district in Upper East Region. These cooperatives were started under a Care International project called Enhanced Savings and Credit Association for Poverty Eradication.

Soayare and these thousands of women are living better lives thanks to the savings cooperatives.

A Ghana Statistics Services 2011 survey shows that 31 percent of households in Ghana are headed by women. Regional director of the National Population Council, Zangbalum-Bomahe Amadu, said that due to polygamous practices in northern Ghana some men refuse to take care of their children, often leaving the burden to the women.

“The situation becomes bad if the man dies…most women, who are mostly illiterate in the rural areas strive to take care of almost all the needs of their children,” he told IPS.

Musah Abubakari, deputy coordinating director of Garu Tempane district, told IPS that the cooperatives have helped reduce poverty among many families in the area.

“Most of them are engaged in different forms of economic activities. Many of them are concerned about the education of their children, so school enrolment has also increased in the last three years,” he said.

Collins Kyei Boafoh, an outreach specialist at the Agricultural Cooperative Development International/Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (ACDI/VOCA), told IPS that the village savings and loans concept played a critical role in the livelihoods of women and was also a climate change adaptation measure.

“It is an open secret that for the past five years the savannah belt of Ghana, consisting of Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions, continue to experience low rains and long drought periods. This is not supportive of farming, which employs about 80 percent of people in the region,” he explained.

Boafoh said the women’s cooperatives are now using their funds to venture into other activities like petty trading to supplement their incomes.

“After the short farming periods, the women gather their monies in the form of community savings and offer themselves petty loans for trading, aggregation and processing. This gives them a sustained income and job security,” he said.

Boafoh suggested that the initiative must be adopted, modernised and expanded by the government as a poverty-reduction initiative in the four poorest regions in the country namely Northern, Upper East, Upper West and Central Regions.

Solomon Atinga is programme manager of the Presbyterian Agricultural Station at Garu Tempane – another Care International cooperative.

He said the initiative, which extends to about 100 communities in the district, has had a positive impact on the lives of women here. They are able to take care of their children and support their extended family members.

“In fact the living standard of the women and their families has improved tremendously,” he added.

“This is a small project with a big impact…even though we are poor, we can save. The least amount a group usually raises at the end of the year is 2,000 dollars,” he said.