High glaciers such as this one in the Tian Shan mountains in Kazakhstan are said to be safe from global warming. But talk of agreements to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming appears to be fading at COP, replaced by proposals to turn to the private sector for loans to support adaptation to climate change. Credit: Christopher Pala/IPS.

By Mantoe Phakathi
WARSAW, Nov 15 2013 (IPS)

As deliberations continue in earnest at the 19th United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Warsaw, negotiators from the Global South welcome a focus on financing adaptation – but reject a new emphasis on a role for the private sector.

Climate negotiations have now dragged on for almost 20 years. Talk of “fair, ambitious and binding” agreements to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming appears to be fading, to be replaced by proposals to turn to the private sector for loans and investment to support adaptation to climate change at what has been dubbed the “Corporate COP  (Conference of Parties)”.

Tosi Mpamu-Mpamu, a negotiator for the Democratic Republic of Congo and a former chair of the African Group of negotiators, sees an alarming change emerging in the approach to funding the response to climate change.

At the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, developed states pledged 30 billion dollars of new aid for climate finance for the developing world between 2010 and 2012, and a further 100 billion by 2020.

“Developed countries are now shifting the responsibility to provide funding to the private sector, a dangerous trend to these negotiations,” said Mpamu-Mpamu.

Other negotiators share Mpamu-Mpamu’s concerns over the role transnational corporations are assuming at the conference.

“At a three-day conference prior to this COP, businesses spent two days explaining how they could make money out of climate change,” said Rene Orellana, head of Bolivia’s delegation.

And, said Pascone Sabido from the Corporate Europe Observatory, the corporations assuming prominence at the COP are also the biggest emitters of carbon. He criticised the U.N. for accepting sponsorship for COP19 from major polluters like steel giant ArcelorMittal and the Polish Energy Group (PGE), saying these companies were influencing the negotiations.

“You wouldn’t ask Marlboro to sponsor a summit on lung cancer, so why is it acceptable for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change?” he said.

Rachel Tansey, a freelance writer and researcher on environmental and economic justice issues, says big business wants to see climate finance – public funding – directed towards projects that corporations can profit from. And the governments of the developed countries are listening.

“[Transport and energy giant] Alstom is lobbying for so-called “clean” coal, controversial technologies that allow them to continue profiting from burning fossil fuels, like carbon capture and storage, and for more nuclear power,” said Tansey.

But COP19 president Marcin Kolorec said there was nothing wrong with inviting the private sector to participate in parallel meetings at the conference. He said industries have been given a chance to take part in the same way that non-governmental organisations are, adding that such dialogues have been a feature of the talks since the COPs started.

“We have to be transparent and inclusive,” he told reporters, adding that the Warsaw talks were a build-up to a possible global agreement in 2015 in the French capital, Paris.

He said industries were given a chance to participate at the COP just like non-governmental organisations, adding that such dialogues have been part of the COP since it started.

He said there is no chance that industry will influence COP decisions because they are not part of the formal negotiations.

Swaziland’s Emmanuel Dlamini, the chair of the Africa Group of negotiators, said that despite some risks, bringing business on board is not such a bad idea.

“For developed states to come up with the finance, they need to mobilise the business sector,” Dlamini told IPS.

He echoed the COP president in underlining that business is not taking part in the actual negotiations. “But,” he said, “there is the danger of the private sector influencing decisions through proposals they sell to their governments which could be brought into the COP negotiations.”

For Dlamini, the main challenge is to clearly define climate finance. Since the Copenhagen conference, he said, a lot of aid to developing countries has been classified as climate assistance.

“Yes, there has been money flowing, but to what extent is it climate finance?” wondered Dlamini.

In Swaziland, for instance, he said, money coming from the European Union’s Official Development Assistance for poverty alleviation is now considered climate finance.

“We need a reliable fund for climate change like the GCF,” said Dlamini.

Meena Raman, from the observer group Third World Network, says completing the setting up of the Green Climate Fund would be helpful because it is a grant fund that will directly benefit poor countries. Presently headquartered in South Korea, with operational funding of just seven million dollars, the Green Climate Fund does not as yet have a cent for projects.

“That’s where developing countries are saying the 100 billion dollars should go to, a matter still under discussion,” said Raman.

Saddled with a long list of woes brought on by an economic crisis, debt-stricken Greece now finds itself tackling a different kind of austerity than the one implemented by its European creditors: this time it is press freedom, not public budgets, on the chopping block.

Journalists claim their working environment is deteriorating so rapidly that Greece will soon top the list of European countries with the worst press freedom indicators.

Already the country meets all the negative criteria included in a resolution on media freedom passed by the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament last Thursday.

The resolution focuses heavily on the protection of independent journalists and media outlets, both of which have watched their freedom wane rapidly over the last five years.

According to the 2013 Press Freedom Index, issued by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (known by its French acronym RSF), Greece dropped 14 places – down to 84^th – on a list of 179 countries, which the organisation termed “a disturbingly dramatic fall”.

At the beginning of the economic crisis in 2009 Greece was ranked 35^th on the index – its plunge represents the most dramatic deterioration among European countries.

In addition to frequent intimidation of reporters, the rights group noted, “The social and professional environment for journalists, who are exposed to public condemnation and violence from both extremist groups and the police, is disastrous.”

The New Year opened on a bad note for reporters here: the night of Jan. 10 saw home-made bombs lobbed into the residences of five journalists working for mainstream private TV channels and public media.

The attacks were allegedly the work of left-wing radicals who regarded the journalists as “pawns” in the corrupt relationship between media moguls and corporate interests that unquestioningly support the ruling authorities as well as the actions of the Troika, the three European institutions responsible for implementing what many Greeks see as a devastating austerity plan.

But though such incidents represent a worsening of the environment for journalists, the issue of press freedom here is not a new one.

Even before the financial crash hit Greece, capitulation of the majority of mainstream media to elite interests had become a thorn in the sides of citizens and independent media practitioners.

As a 2006 U.S. Embassy cable, made public last year by the whistleblower website Wikileaks, explained, “The private media outlets in Athens are owned by a small group of people who have made or inherited fortunes in shipping, banking, telecommunications, sports, oil, insurance, etc. and who are or have been related by blood, marriage, or adultery to political and government officials and/or other media and business magnates”.

All major private TV channels in the country are corporate-owned. Most major publications and radio stations also have direct links to private corporations.

Reports indicate that 500 to 600 journalists are currently, or have been, on government payrolls.

Independent journalists hounded

For the past year the few existing independent investigative journalists in the country have experienced severe aggression from government authorities, as well as a host of other difficulties including death threats, stalking and defamation and denouncement by a domestic media that experts say is increasingly submissive to corporate agendas.

Just one example of the hostile environment journalists are forced to operate in came earlier this year, when UNFOLLOW magazine published a cover story on oil smuggling involving Aegean Oil, a major private multinational company, and Hellenic Petroleum, a private-public energy conglomerate.

The story explained how the companies buy oil at reduced tax rates and channel it back into the market at the normal price; the exposé also contained two reports by the 7^th Piraeus Customs Authority, detailing the practice.

The day after the story’s publication, Lefteris Charalabopoulos, the reporter in charge of the investigation, received a phone call at the magazine’s office from a person going by the name of Dimitris Melissanidis, head of Aegean Oil.

The reporter told IPS the entrepreneur initially threatened legal measures against the magazine, then went on to issue a stream of invective, shouting, “Screw you and the authorities. You will not be able to sleep. You will not be able to go out, I’ll be your nightmare. Fear of me will haunt you. They will come to your house and blow you up in your sleep.”

When Charalabopoulos answered back, the caller warned, “I want you to tell me that with a gun to your head.”

Though a spokesperson for the company subsequently denied that such a phone call had taken place, Charalabopoulos told IPS, “When the number of the call was traced back it was easily identified as a number registered with the central offices of Aegean Oil.”

“I have no doubts about the identity of the person I spoke with on the phone,” he said, adding that almost all mainstream media ignored this incident of blatant intimidation.

When the centre-left opposition group, Syriza, brought the issue to the Greek parliament, Makis Voridis – a popular MP with the ruling New Democracy Party – made dismissive remarks about a “superfluous opposition that annoys parliamentary proceedings with legally insignificant issues like an intimidation case between two private entities.”

In another example of the government’s unfriendly stance towards independent media, Kwstas Vaxevanis, a popular investigative journalist, was brought to trial last November when his magazine ‘Hot Doc’ published a copy of the hitherto unseen Lagarde List.

The document contained over 2,000 accounts of possible tax evasion by individuals or mirror companies, amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.

The argument that Vaxevanis had violated the “privacy” of those on the list fell apart, but when the acquitted journalist walked out of the courthouse, he was greeted only by a flock of major international media – the domestic mainstream stayed far away from the case.

Despite international denunciation of the whole issue, Vaxevanis is now pending re-trial.

“In Greece the law is abused by politicians and media practitioners who try to protect their tycoon patrons against anyone who dares to speak up against them,” Vaxevanis told IPS. “During the …dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974), press freedom was targeted in the name of national interests.

“Today, press freedom is (jeopardised) by manipulation of the law. Unfortunately this country is governed today by a closed group of professional politicians, businessmen and celebrity journalists,” he added.

Meanwhile, experts say intimidation is also spreading.

Nikolas Leodopoulos, a Thomson Reuters reporter involved in investigating major banking scandals, is regularly pictured by news outlets with ties to elite and corporate agendas as a “fake reporter” or as a suspect of “criminal deeds”.

The last four years have witnessed at least three attacks on journalists by security and police personnel that caused serious harm.

Many less serious attacks, as well as widespread intimidation by radical leftists or neo-Nazis, are regularly reported during strikes and riots.

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Over a month has passed since the United Nations summit on sustainable development concluded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but the world still appears to be unaware of one of the most important statements made during the conference that drew some 50,000 delegates from all over the world.

Louise Kantrow, permanent representative of the International Chamber of Commerce, received thunderous applause when she told her audience on Jun. 19 that “businesses are taking the lead” in global negotiations on climate change and sustainable development.

For many observers, Kantrow’s blunt words highlighted just how strong of a grip private multinational companies have upon supposedly democratic processes.

In a statement aptly titled ‘Reclaim the U.N. from corporate capture’, the environmental organisation Friends of the Earth (FoE) complained that, “There are … real concerns about the increasing influence of major corporations and business lobby groups within the U.N.”

The report went on to detail the extraordinary level of businesses’ influence over the positions of national governments in multilateral negotiations.

“Business representatives dominate certain U.N. discussion spaces and some U.N. bodies; business groups are given a privileged advisory role; U.N. officials move back and forth (from) the private sector; and – last but not least – U.N. agencies are increasingly financially dependent on the private sector.”

One blatant example of this “corporate capture” of the U.N. is the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell, which, thanks to senior executive representatives in several corporate lobbying groups, was omnipresent during the Rio+20 negotiations.

Shell sent delegates to the discussions and round tables of the above-mentioned International Chamber of Commerce, the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association, the U.N. Global Compact, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the International Emissions Trading Association.

Yet, according to Paul de Clerck, campaign coordinator at FoE, “More than one year has passed since the U.N. presented its report on Shell’s pollution of Ogoniland (Nigeria). But we are still waiting for a comprehensive plan from Shell to clean up its mess.”

The first step recommended by the U.N. was the establishment of a one billion-dollar emergency fund to clean up the region.

“So far, Shell has committed to nothing, despite its participation in all kind of environmental and sustainable development debates,” Clerck told IPS.

“It is not acceptable that companies like Shell should be in the driving seat of processes for sustainable development,” Nnimmo Bassey, of FoE International, told IPS. “That is a recipe for disaster for our planet and peoples. Corporate polluters should not (be drafting) laws, they should face the laws.”

But the U.N. is not the only international institution threatened by the influence of multinational businesses.

Tightly woven groups of professional go-betweens and loyal supporters of multinationals who have passed through the revolving doors that link governments and private corporations are now facing growing scrutiny from civil society activists.

In Europe, the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, is facing a formal inquiry by the European Union (EU) ombudsman because of his membership in a well-known international banking lobby group.

On Jul. 24, the ombudsman’s office announced that it was launching the investigation following allegations that Draghi’s membership in the so-called Group of 30 “is incompatible with the independence, reputation and integrity of the ECB”.

The EU has been the subject of multiple complaints, because, according to civil society groups, many of its agencies allow a revolving door to admit and dispatch senior executives who bring corporate agendas to democratic fora.

One of the leading critics of this policy, the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), a multinational and public policy watchdog group, claims that many “senior European decision-makers leave office and go straight into lobby jobs, or (alternately) lobbyists join the EU institutions.”

In such cases, Olivier Hoedeman of CEO told IPS, “The risk of significant conflicts of interest is great, undermining democratic, public-interest decision making.”

According to Hoedeman, CEO “is working with the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation to challenge the revolving door and to demand that it is effectively regulated”.

CEO was the first group to complain about Draghi’s membership in the Group of 30, whose members include heavy-hitters in the international banking sector like William C. Dudley, former managing director at Goldman Sachs and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

European activists and analysts have been growing more anxious about the influence of private investment banks on public financial policies, especially as the European sovereign debt continues to spiral out of control.

As CEO put it, “Given the euro crisis, the huge bailout operations of big banks, and the on-going debate on how to regulate banks in the light of the financial crisis, it should be obvious that safeguards are needed to ensure that the President of the European Central Bank remains independent.”

CEO argues that Draghi’s participation “in a closed, club-like structure with representatives from big international private banks could damage the integrity and reputation of the ECB.”

Indeed, Goldman Sachs’ links to numerous present officials at ministries of finance and other state agencies in Europe are extraordinary and worrisome. In a recent debate in Berlin, sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, director of the prestigious Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, denounced what he called “the diarchy in financial capitalism.”

Streeck said that European democratic states are presently suffering under the dictatorship of the deregulated financial markets, controlled by corporations like Goldman Sachs, while at the same time, most of their institutions are led by former executives of those very same corporations.

A salient example of Streeck’s thesis is the current, non-elected Italian head of government Mario Monti, who was the international adviser to Goldman Sachs from 2005 until 2011. In Goldman Sachs’ own words, Monti’s mission was to provide advice “on European business and major public policy initiatives worldwide.”

Given that Goldman Sachs and similar investment banks are pivotal in managing the sovereign debt of numerous European countries, it seems almost absurd that they are simultaneously preparing speculation schemes against the solvency of those very same states.

Following the announcement that the EU ombudsman had launched an official investigation into Draghi’s professional past, CEO has urged him to step down as president of the ECB.

In a letter addressed to Draghi, the group wrote, “Any president of the ECB has to make it absolutely clear that he or she is not under the influence of the financial lobby at any time. In particular at this dramatic point in the history of the EU, with the euro crisis and an ailing banking sector – recipient of trillions of euros in aid – it is completely unacceptable if doubt can be cast on the independence of the Bank’s president from the financial lobby.”

(END)