South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies speaking at the World Economic Forum. Credit: World Economic Forum/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By John Fraser
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 12 2013 (IPS)

As the five members of the BRICS group of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – tighten ranks and seek to expand their global influence, the inevitable trade spats have begun.

A decision last month by South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies to pursue a general tariff increase on chicken imports in response to concerns that Brazil is “dumping” the product could also hit Argentina, a leading trade expert here has warned.

Duane Newman, director of the Johannesburg-based Cova Advisory, explained that Argentina and Brazil, both of which export significant quantities of chicken to South Africa, are the main countries without free trade agreements with Pretoria to protect them from the planned tariff hike.

“There could be some unintended consequences from Minister Davies’ decision not to target just Brazil with anti-dumping duties, but to raise the tariffs,” explained Newman.

Report reveals systematic ‘dumping’

An investigation of the chicken trade between the two countries from 2008 to 2010, conducted by the International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC), confirmed allegations that Brazil was dumping whole chickens and boneless cuts of chicken on the South African market.

The ITAC’s findings made a strong case for Pretoria to slap ‘anti-dumping’ duties on the South American nation.

According to the ITAC’s report, anti-dumping duties can be imposed when there is a price difference between sales in a producer’s own market and prices charged on exports, when there is material injury to producers in the importing country and when there is a causal link between the imports and the damage.

Duane Newman, director of the Johannesburg-based Cova Advisory. Credit: John Fraser/IPS

The report found that with regard to whole chickens, price undercutting by Brazil caused material injury to South African producers, a loss of market share and a loss of potential growth.

Similarly for boneless chicken cuts, the report found evidence of price undercutting, suppression of South African producers’ ability to increase their prices, and a drop in sales volume, output, market share and growth.

The investigtion found that between 2008 and 2010 whole chickens from Brazil accounted for 36 percent to 44 percent of South African imports, while boneless cuts took between 94 percent and 97 percent of the South African import market.

According to Francois Dubbelman of the specialist trade consultancy F.C Dubbelman & Associates, who acts as advisor to the South African Poultry Association, “At that stage Brazil was the largest exporter to the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) of these chicken products, causing SACU producers injury.”

“Thus the industry received no relief against the unfair trade from Brazil for at least five years – although ITAC found there had been dumping and material injury,” he added.

South Africa’s response

In January 2012, South Africa slapped provisional payments of between six and 62 percent on chicken imports from Brazil but failed to take the next step of imposing targeted anti-dumping duties on Brazil, shifting instead to a general imposition of higher tariffs on all chicken imports.

Newman called the decision a “rare” one, adding, “It will be interesting to understand the detailed reasons for the minister’s decision as it seems as if he is disagreeing with ITAC.”

Newman noted that the increase in general duties on chicken to up to 82 percent from the current 27 percent “will impact all imports of chicken, apart from (trading partners) with which South Africa has a preferential trade agreement like the European Union (EU), the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).”

He said the countries that would be caught by the tariff increases include Brazil, Argentina and some Asian nations. There are existing anti-dumping duties against chicken imports from the United States into South Africa.

Some experts believe that Davies’ decision came in response to Brazil’s June 2012 complaint to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) about the provisional payments imposed by South Africa.

Had Davies opted to convert those provisional payments into anti-dumping duties, experts say, Brazil would have pursued its challenge through the WTO.

But Dubbelman dismissed this theory, arguing, “Countries go on a regular basis to the WTO with disputes. Brazil is known to follow that avenue on a regular basis, whether it has a foot to stand on or not.”

A more likley explanation, he said, is that Davies’ decision to spare Brazil from individual anti-dumping duties – announced in a letter to the ITAC on Dec. 21 –  was a strategic one, in keeping with the two countries’ joint membership in BRICS.

According to Dubbelman, Davies justified his actions on the basis of increased chicken imports from several countries, claiming that South African producers require a comprehensive response to deal with the intensified competition.

But South Africa’s shadow Trade and Industry Minister Wilmot James told the Business Day newspaper of Johannesburg that Minister Davies’ chosen strategy will not do enough to support South African chicken farmers.

“Instead of fighting the Brazilians for dumping chicken in our local and highly competitive market, Mr. Davies chose the soft and blunt option of hiding behind general tariffs without providing compelling factual reasons for his actions,” according to James.

Dubbelman warned that the real challenges facing South African poultry producers will remain unless some action can be taken against the EU.

He predicted that Davies will not impose as high a duty as the 82 percent that is currently allowed under international trade rules.

While some options cannot be pursued because of the trade agreement between Brussels and Pretoria, he added, there are provisions for so-called safeguard measures to be imposed on chicken imports from Europe, and he urged the minister to explore this possibility.

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Santo Antônio hydropower station under construction, October 2010. Credit:Mario Osava/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Dec 13 2012 (IPS)

As governments struggle to find ways out of the persistent global financial crisis, Brazil’s development model offers an alternative path to recovery and growth, according to some economists and politicians.

“Brazil provides hope for African as well as European nations because Brazil has shown that you can succeed at globalisation by opting resolutely not only for growth but also for a better distribution of wealth,” Togolese economist Kako Nubukpo told IPS.

The former head of economic analysis and research for the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) was in Paris to participate in a two-day ‘Forum for Social Progress’ that took place here this week, headed by Brazil’s ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, current president Dilma Rousseff and French president François Hollande.

Focusing on how to ‘choose growth’ and ‘exit the crisis’, the forum was also a space for progressive experts to call for a new kind of global governance that “puts people first” and ensures environmental sustainability.

“Brazil has shown us that the challenge is to take people’s aspirations into account as much as possible, because with enlightened leadership we can win in the development process,” Nubukpo said.

“In Africa today we have the impression that our leaders are more accountable to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank than to their own people.”

Nubukpo and other participants praised the “usefulness” of the forum, but Lula himself said he was tired of meetings held simply to discuss the crisis. In a passionate speech, he called on governments to find the courage to adopt “obvious” solutions, especially regarding the poor.

“If a ruler cannot offer democracy, dignity and hope to his people, what do we need governments for?” he asked.

Describing how he embarked on plans to make Brazil a respected player on the world stage, Lula described policies that have been both lauded and criticised. His administration notably instituted the ‘bolsa familia’ (family grant) programme, a national system of cash transfers for poor families to assist them in keeping their children in school.

The government also set up a ‘pro-uni’ (pro-university) programme in which low-income students receive scholarships for university, with the aim of providing the country with more skilled workers.

Some critics say that the measures have had unintended consequences, such as families sending children to school just to get the funds, but Lula defended the policies.

“I had the conviction that it was necessary to do something different than what had been done (before) in Brazil,” he said at the forum, which was co-hosted by the French Jean-Jaurès Foundation and by the Instituto Lula, an organisation Lula founded after leaving the presidency in 2011.

“We decided to pay the bolsa familia through bank branches, (using) magnetic cards that were given to the women in each household (not to the men, who could go out and spend the money on beer) and…this was a revolution for building bank accounts for low-income brackets,” he added.

One of Instituto Lula’s goals is to “bring Brazil and Africa closer together” and to “improve Brazil’s integration with Latin America” – two objectives that the former president said would change the global status quo.

“It’s necessary to build new paradigms so that we can discuss trade issues and not be locked in the traditional gaze of looking to the United States or the European Union to solve our problems for us,” he said.

According to Lula, if industrialised countries did more for Africa, they would also reap benefits in the future. “Why doesn’t the developed world, which is facing a consumption problem, extend long-term funding to African countries at lower interest rates so that Africa can develop their own industries and agriculture?” he asked.

He said that the ocean between Latin America and Africa should be seen as a conduit for, rather than a barrier to, trade.

African anti-poverty activist Bruno Ondo Mintsa, president of the Association Printemps du Quart-Monde, told IPS that the “Brazilian miracle” was a source of motivation for Africans.

For Africa, which has immense natural wealth but continues to be plagued by abject poverty, “Brazil shows that the problem is one of democracy, of governance and wealth distribution,” Mintsa said. “It’s scandalous that such a rich continent as Africa should have people living in such poverty.”

For some European socialists, Brazil exemplifies a middle way between what French president Hollande called the “outright rejection of globalisation and the gullible acceptance of even its (most) extreme consequences”.

“Although we’re looking for growth, we know all too well that the kind of growth we had before the crisis is no longer sustainable,” Hollande told participants at the forum.

The solution will not be found by looking back, he added. Instead, “We have to create a new era.”

According to Hollande, the priorities have to be growth, jobs for young people, energy transition and fighting inequality. He is all too familiar with the perils of ignoring these key areas – French unemployment rose to 10.3 percent in the third quarter of this year, the highest in 13 years, and youth unemployment is close to 25 percent.

On Tuesday, just as the Forum for Social Progress began, the French government’s own National Conference for the Fight Against Poverty drew to a close with the announcement of an ambitious two-billion-euro plan for moving forward.

The roadmap includes increasing income support, extending free national healthcare, creating emergency housing and providing an allocation of funds for unemployed young people aged 18 to 25. Some opposition politicians criticised the plan as a handout, but activists said it was time real political attention was given to the poor.

“France can learn a lot from Brazil,” retired French medical doctor and professor Alain Goguel told IPS. “We prop up the banks with trillions, but re-launching the economy by helping the poor is an original idea. It should be imitated if it works.”

(END)

The Brazilian government of Dilma Rousseff is taking firm steps towards stronger relations with Africa, such as the creation of a special fund to finance development projects together with multilateral lenders like the World Bank.

South America’s giant is keen on establishing a strategic association with Africa, and the tool for doing that is its powerful national development bank, the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), which will work in conjunction with the multilateral African Development Bank (AfDB).

“There is a 40-billion-dollar shortfall in financing for a spate of 50 projects, which means the African Development Bank will have to scale up its capital and its activities,” said BNDES president Luciano Coutinho. He added that not only public bodies need to be involved in this cooperation, but also private banks in the capital markets.

The alliance was announced at an Apr. 3 seminar on “Investing in Africa: Opportunities, Challenges and Instruments for Economic Cooperation”, organised by the BNDES in Rio de Janeiro, which drew delegates from development institutions, business leaders, and personalities like former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011).

André Esteves, the president of the private Brazilian bank BTG Pactual, also announced the launch of a one-billion-dollar risk capital fund for investment in Africa.

“This will be the biggest private sector contribution for investment in that continent, and a show of the (Brazilian) business community’s affinity with the government strategy,” he said.

Makhtar Diop, World Bank vice president for Africa, listed some of the enormous challenges in Africa: integrating the continent in terms of transportation, ports, railways, and telecommunications; managing natural resources like water; energy development; and the struggle for food security.

To boost the continent’s competitiveness in the global market and address the infrastructure deficit, Africa needs at least 68 billion dollars in investment up to 2020, according to the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA).

The World Bank particularly supports PIDA, a joint initiative of the African Union Commission (AUC), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and the AfDB.

“We are working together to grow the programme, which is a window of opportunities for the poorest countries,” Diop said.

AfDB director Alex Rugamba explained to IPS that “PIDA covers the sectors of transport, energy, water resources and information and communication technologies (ICTs).”

“It was designed for a period of 30 years, because without infrastructure we will not be able to reach the goal for the continent of six percent economic growth,” he added.

Rugamba said the programme must be given priority, in order to maintain steady growth over the next few decades. Forty billion dollars in investment will be needed in the energy sector alone, he added.

Brazil’s exports to Africa climbed from 2.4 billion dollars in 2002 to 12.2 billion dollars in 2011, while total trade – exports and imports – soared from 4.3 billion dollars to 27.6 billion dollars in the same period.

Diop and Rugamba both said that Brazil would play an important role in boosting investment in infrastructure in Africa.

“Brazil has experience in the process of harnessing water resources,” said Diop. “It has been a pioneer in clean energy from this source, with large dams already operating and under construction, and it has an excellent track record in mining and oil production.”

Africa is a new market, said Maria das Graças Foster, the CEO of Brazil’s oil giant Petrobras, who noted that the company is active in Angola, Namibia, Libya and Nigeria.

She pointed out that “important oil reserves have been found in Ghana and Uganda, while production now stands at 58,000 barrels a day in Nigeria, and at 2,000 barrels in Angola.”

Murilo Ferreira, the CEO of Brazilian mining firm Vale, stressed that the company has 7.7 billion dollars in investments in nine African countries, in copper, coal, iron ore and nickel mines.

Ferreira also said 900 kilometres of railways and a deep-water port are being built in Mozambique.

“It’s a long-term vision, and we want to achieve environmentally sustainable and socially responsible ways of doing things,” he said.

“We need to increase dialogue with local society, because we don’t want to come across as imperialists,” he added. “We are willing to address the demands of each population (in the countries) where we are active, because we aren’t perfect, and sometimes we make mistakes. It’s necessary to be humble enough to admit one’s errors.”

Former president Lula praised his country’s efforts in forging closer ties and cooperation with the economies of Africa. This is “a moment that requires audacity, to build a new Africa,” he said.

“Peace, democracy, growth and distribution of wealth are Africa’s watchwords for the 21st century. This is a time for unity and solidarity. Today there is a wealth of opportunities to be exploited by Brazilians, other South Americans, and Africans.”

Lula said “Africa cannot be looked at like it used to be seen, as a simple supplier of minerals and gas…We have to find African partners. We don’t want hegemony; we want strategic alliances.”

On her first visit to Brazil, the United Nations humanitarian affairs chief Valerie Amos stressed the need to take advantage of this country’s experience in disaster response and the fight against poverty.

Valerie Amos Credit: World Economic Forum/CC BY-SA 2.0

“I am particularly interested in how best to share Brazil’s experience in disaster preparedness and food security with other countries in the region and around the world,” said U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Amos.

Amos met Monday Apr. 2 with Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota, Defence Minister Celso Amorim, and Minister for National Integration Fernando Bezerra. She then flew to Rio de Janeiro to meet with other officials and with representatives of the private sector and NGOs, to discuss U.N. efforts in the country and opportunities for strengthening coordination in humanitarian aid.

Conor Foley, a consultant on humanitarian aid and human rights, stressed Brazil’s role in the world as an emerging economic power, and the growing influence it has achieved in international debates and aid programmes.

In Africa, for example, there are now more Brazilian than British diplomats, said the Irish expert who lives in Brasilia.

The financial aid provided by Brazil has increased threefold in the last seven years, and South America’s giant now supplies aid to 65 countries, Foley told IPS.

He said Brazil has also accumulated considerable experience in the design of humanitarian aid projects, and in dealing with floods and other natural disasters. In addition, it has a number of doctors who specialise in treating gunshot wounds.

Williams Gonçalves, an expert in international relations at the Rio de Janeiro State University, said Brazil has built up know-how in providing humanitarian aid in extreme situations, as it has demonstrated in Haiti.

“The work carried out by Brazilians in that Caribbean nation and in Africa has drawn everyone’s attention, and has given this country the credentials to provide high-quality, disinterested humanitarian aid,” he told IPS.

In the area of food security, Brazil is currently supporting the development of agriculture through anti-poverty programmes in a number of African countries, based on its own experience in domestic programmes like the “Bolsa Familia” (Family Grant), implemented by the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) and continued by President Dilma Rousseff, both of whom belong to the left-wing Workers Party.

Foley pointed to Brazil’s “internal experience involving the implementation of large-scale cash transfer programmes and the more recent ‘pacification’ of the favelas (shantytowns) of Rio de Janeiro, which are also an example for the world.”

To strengthen international humanitarian aid mechanisms, the Brazilian government proposed the creation of software to administer information and connect countries in need of aid with donors.

At the 5TH Regional Meeting on Enhancing International Humanitarian Partnerships, held Mar. 28-30 in Panama City, Brazil’s representatives proposed developing this virtual tool over the internet, to help manage large international emergency aid plans.

Gerard Gómez, the head of the regional office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who accompanied Amos’ delegation, said the communication between what is needed and what is received is very important when international humanitarian aid is involved.

Gonçalves said the initiative is not “merely a suggestion” but a concrete contribution, taking into account the fact that “Brazil has stood out as an important actor in the field of aid and cooperation since the government of Lula.”

“Different government agencies have been active abroad, which means Brazil’s technicians have accumulated experience in this field and are in a good position to propose new ways of operating and new approaches to problems in different areas,” he said.

Syria on the immediate agenda

Syria is one of the top priorities in the U.N.’s humanitarian assistance efforts. Amos said around one million people in that country are in need of aid.

After expressing concern about getting medical treatment to the population and support to the children, she said the U.N.’s proposals have not been accepted by the Syrian government.

Although the Red Crescent has trained some 10,000 volunteers across the country to help in relief efforts, the big challenge, Amos said, is to be able to bring together more people to provide aid, and to engage in dialogue with the Syrian government in the nearest possible future.

The experts consulted by IPS agreed that Brazil could play an important role in helping to bring about a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria.

“Brazil has strong experience in participating in U.N. peacekeeping missions, which gives credibility to its expressions in favour of dialogue between the parties in conflict, and it has demonstrated its skill in brokering agreements,” said Gonçalves, who stressed this country’s defence of respect for national sovereignty.

The academic pointed out that “Brazil has already been acting in this scenario along with India and South Africa, implementing important humanitarian aid programmes.”

“Since it does not have a colonial past, it is not a military power with expansionist ambitions, and it has a cultural tradition of inclusion and religious tolerance, this country has a positive image in that region,” he said.

For those reasons, Foley concurs that Brazil, although it does not have a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, could make a diplomatic effort to make humanitarian interventions in Syria and in other parts of the world more coherent.

Trade ministers of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa – say that at the G20 trade ministerial summit later this month in Mexico they will try to ensure that attempts by industrialised countries to frame a new trade agenda do not drown development-led trade liberalisation and the World Trade Organization talks.

The G20 is not representative of the WTO because the poorest countries have no say in setting the trade agenda. Credit: Kim Cloete/IPS

The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) was launched by the WTO almost 11 years ago to correct the historical imbalances and asymmetries in the global trading system. It was designed to enable poorer countries to integrate into the system.

“This is a most dangerous move by the industrialised countries which are determined to undermine the independence and multilateral character of the WTO, where a large majority of countries are asking for developmental flexibilities for implementing liberal trade commitments,” said a trade envoy, referring to the agenda for the meeting.

“The G20 is not representative of the WTO because the poorest countries and countries in Africa, except for South Africa, have no say in setting the trade agenda,” the envoy said.

The G20 bloc of major and emerging economies is made up of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union.

Clearly, the rich countries have overwhelming influence in setting the agenda at the G20 meetings, the envoy said.

“The draft agenda for the meeting is basically asking trade ministers to agree on creating a super-body headed by the chiefs of the WTO and OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to oversee all the review and monitoring functions,” the envoy argued.

Therefore, the presence of the BRICS ministers is so essential and important, lest the trade agenda be radically altered for the next 10 years, said sources familiar with the BRICS ministers meeting.

During their meeting in New Delhi last week, the BRICS ministers discussed the draft G20 agenda issued by Mexico, and not yet made publicly available, the South African trade minister said.

Significantly, the draft agenda is silent on the Doha trade talks.

It aims to take decisions on core trade issues without first discussing them at the WTO, which is now grappling with new approaches to accelerate the DDA talks.

“We strongly believe that the process has to be multilateral and the central focus has to be on the Doha single undertaking,” said Davies, emphasising the importance of transparency and inclusiveness.

“Attempts to reshape the architecture without concluding the Doha talks are not correct,” Davies said, suggesting that the BRICS countries are ready to take small steps to reinvigorate the Doha trade negotiations. The minister insisted that agriculture is at the heart of the DDA and that precious little is done to address the continued trade-distorting subsidies of the industrialised countries.

It is important to accord primacy to the Doha multilateral trade negotiations by discussing issues first at the WTO, Davies argued.

The draft agenda for what is going to be the first G20 trade ministerial meeting of its kind – beginning on Apr. 19 – sets the stage for preparing a “New Trade Narrative.”

The five-page agenda obtained by IPS, which remains confidential, squarely addresses the trade interests of the rich countries, under subheadings such as “better understanding global value chains to better regulate trade” and “services, trade finance and trade facilitation are essential to oil global value chains.”

Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD, known as the rich-country think tank, and Pascal Lamy, the WTO director general, will provide the justification for pursuing this new agenda to the G20 trade ministers.

The heads of the OECD and the WTO have been working in tandem for some time now to change the manner in which global trade is measured and assessed in a neoliberal framework away from a development perspective, say analysts.

But developing countries and the least-developed countries have opposed the framework advanced by the OECD and WTO Secretariats on market-led trade reforms.

In addition, the G20 ministers will discuss “trade, growth, and jobs.” The themes for discussion include “trade as a source of growth,” “trade as a source of jobs,” and “the imperative to keep markets open and to keep opening markets.”

Up until now, trade negotiations, including the very setting of the trade agenda for any negotiations, have been based on a give-and-take framework. But for the first time, Mexico is asking ministers to move away “from this setting in which many trade discussions happen” to identify “the links between trade and job creation and (to improve) trade statistics that consider global chains and value addition.”

Mexico also wants ministers to focus on “the major forces and challenges facing their economies, including protectionist pressures, and what alternative policies are there to deal with them, other than trade instruments.”

“Reading the draft agenda, one gets the feeling that there is a hidden language, which shows basically the interest of developed countries and not of developing countries,” said Isabel Mazzei, a former Oxfam International trade policy advisor.

Speaking in her private capacity to IPS, she asked: “What does it really mean ‘to change the trade narrative’- does it mean to ‘move the goal posts’?”

“The Doha Round is about development, agriculture, elimination of subsidies, policy space….and now it looks like this narrative is obsolete as there is no mention of agriculture or subsidy elimination,” she said. “Many developing countries still have a big portion of their labour force coming from the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

“Clearly the G20 draft agenda is a concerted attempt to bring the issues and concerns of rich countries from the back door,” she concluded.

Over the last decade, China has become Brazil’s main trading partner and source of foreign investment. But this apparent lifeline at a time of global crisis could actually aggravate longstanding problems faced by Latin America’s biggest economy.

Pipelines that transport grains from the Suape port in Northeast Brazil. In the background, Brazil's largest flour mill, owned by Bunge. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

In 2009, China displaced the United States as Brazil’s top trading partner. Just two years later, bilateral trade had climbed to 77 billion dollars a year, with an 11.5 billion dollar surplus in Brazil’s favour.

The director of the Brazil-China chamber of commerce and industry (CCIBC), Kevin Tang, said this was “a huge leap” from 2000, when trade between the two countries amounted to just 2.5 billion dollars.

The Asian giant has also begun to invest heavily in Brazil, as it has in Chile and other countries of Latin America as well.

A study by the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (APEX-Brasil) points to even higher levels of investment than the official statistics show.

According to Brazil’s central bank, foreign direct investment from China totalled three billion dollars between 2005 and 2011. But unofficial figures compiled by APEX-Brasil indicate that investment in productive sectors amounted to nearly 17 billion dollars between 2009 and 2011, counting funds channelled through Hong Kong and other indirect routes.

With respect to both imports and investment, China is driven by the same interest that has led it to increase its presence in other regions: with a population of 1.3 billion people – the world’s largest – it has a growing hunger for raw materials and is seeking to guarantee basic supplies while minimising dependence on imports from any single country.

The study by APEX-Brasil, “The Internationalisation of the Chinese Economy; the Scale of Direct Investment”, says that Chinese investment, which “began to intensify in the post-global financial crisis period,” has been concentrated in natural resource-intensive industries like oil and steel.

The global financial crisis that broke out in 2008 did not curtail that process. On the contrary, “it could be suggested that the crisis has created an opportunity to acquire depreciated assets,” says the study, which was published this month.

Most of China’s investments in Brazil “are aimed at establishing export supplies to China of commodities of which we are large producers, such as soy, iron ore and oil,” Rodrigo Branco, an economist at the Centre for Foreign Trade Studies Foundation (FUNCEX), told IPS.

China’s strategy to obtain the commodities it needs is four-pronged, Branco said. In the first place, it involves signing contracts and terms of commitment with Brazilian suppliers, to lock in specific quantities of exports within certain timeframes.

In second place is the creation of Chinese-Brazilian joint ventures to produce certain goods; third, the purchase of or merger with Brazilian firms by Chinese companies; and fourth, the acquisition of property and land, to produce mainly agricultural commodities.

“The chief focus of (China’s) investment in Brazil is still to obtain regular supplies of commodities, to cover growing demand,” Branco said.

Besides raw materials, there are other areas of interest to China, such as the automobile industry. Chinese carmakers are building factories in Brazil to help supply this country’s fast-growing market for cars.

But “that is not the main focus of Chinese investment,” the expert stressed.

The CCIBC’s Tang told the federal government-owned news agency Agência Brasil that Brazil’s exports to China are led by iron ore (45 percent of this country’s sales in 2011); soy (25 percent); oil (11 percent); and food.

Tang did not rule out growing Chinese interest in other sectors, like energy, where it has already started to invest. The aim in those areas is to improve conditions and lower export costs, Augusto José de Castro, vice president of Brazil’s Foreign Trade Association (AEB), told IPS.

De Castro also referred to the increase in loans to the region by China’s state banks, which have totalled 75 billion dollars since 2005, at a time when credit sources have been drying up because of the global financial crisis and due to more specific credit access difficulties faced by countries like Argentina, Venezuela and Ecuador.

“We are unfortunately highly dependent on China,” de Castro said.

“China’s monthly trade deficit has increased,” de Castro said at a recent conference organised by the Getulio Vargas Foundation. “This is a new development that no one expected. The Chinese can curb that deficit or stimulate their exports. And if that happens, they will displace exporter countries like Brazil.”

He said the only way to turn the situation around is to negotiate with China to get it to import manufactured Brazilian goods, rather than just raw materials.

“It is clear that if we stay on the current track, integration with China will deepen Latin America’s dependence on the old agro-export structure,” Adhemar Mineiro, an economist with the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Research (DIEESE), told IPS.

According to Mineiro, who is an adviser to the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), with the exception of a few differences, trade with China replicates the model of commercial relations with Europe and Japan: Brazil as an exporter of agricultural, mineral and energy commodities and an importer of manufactured and industrial goods.

“If the growth in ties with China continues to follow this pattern, it will mean even heavier dependence,” he warned.

In general, the governments of Latin America should seek alternatives in order to avoid “accentuating the current pattern of economic relations with China,” he said.

“In Latin America, the commodity export model has historically meant the concentration of income, wealth and power in a few hands, which runs counter to the search for ways to deepen democracy and improve the distribution of wealth in the region,” Mineiro said.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) issued a similar warning in 2010.

China’s presence is also felt in the gradual introduction of its currency, the yuan, by means of loans. This could have an influence on the regional economy, depending on the volume of business done in that currency, the economist said.

But “the issue is that it further reduces Brazil’s economic power in negotiating with the Chinese, at a time when various industrial sectors have faced difficulties in competition with Chinese products,” such as footwear, textiles, clothing and electronic components, he said.

Branco warned about the future risk of fixing quantities of sales to China, given the possibility of changes in the external scenario that affect the volatility of prices.

“If that happens, there could be a change in interest in maintaining contracts and in the focus of investments, which would affect the multiplier effect of those investments on the Brazilian economy,” he said.

The problem, the FUNCEX economist said, is that Chinese investments cannot be expected by themselves to shift the focus of exports to products with greater added value.

“If commodities are profitable, there will logically be an interest in investing in them, among both foreign investors and Brazilians,” he said.

In order to grow its industrial exports, Brazil must improve internal conditions.

The APEX-Brasil report also notes that China’s strategic focus on countries rich in natural resources is the same in Latin America as in other developing regions, such as Africa and the Middle East.

Trade between Latin America and China grew from 12 billion dollars in 2000 to 188 billion dollars in 2011.

Brazil and South Africa have experienced a widespread contraction of their manufacturing industries, with the latter suffering massive unemployment as well, thanks to the rampant volatility and misalignment of dominant global currencies like the dollar, trade experts from the two countries say.

South Africa's unstable exchange rate made exports uncompetitive. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

“Brazilian industry is at the receiving end of exchange rate appreciation and 2011 saw a negative growth in the manufacturing sector with textiles, leather, chemicals, rubber, and electrical industries, among others, having been adversely affected,” said Josue Gomes da Silva, the chief executive of the Brazilian company, Coteminas. He was speaking at a closed-door seminar at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Mar. 27.

“Four hundred thousand small businesses closed down in South Africa over the last three years, resulting in unemployment of about 23 to 34 percent due to the unstable exchange rate that made South African exports uncompetitive,” said Stewart Robert Jennings, chief executive of South Africa’s PG Group.

“The South African Rand has strengthened during the last three to four years and is now the most volatile currency,” he said, suggesting that the Brazilian Real and Rand are at their highest appreciation values against the greenback.

Da Silva and Jennings offered a detailed account of the creeping “deindustrialisation” in their respective countries at a closed-door seminar convened by the WTO’s Working Group on Trade, Debt, and Finance.

The two-day seminar, which concluded on Mar. 28, is an outcome of a sustained campaign by Brazil over the last year to persuade members of the WTO to discuss the role played by volatile exchange rates in international trade.

However, several industrialised countries, as well as China, were reluctant to address the issue of exchange rates at the WTO, saying it is part of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) agenda. “The seminar is an attempt to give shape to a reality, away from abstract concepts,” Brazil’s trade envoy Ambassador Roberto Azevedo told IPS.

While representatives from the private and public sectors and academia were invited to discuss the role exchange rates played in trade, journalists were barred from the seminar at the insistence of Canada and the United States.

Though there was no consensus on the factors influencing the misalignment of currencies, which imply that there is a gap between a country’s real exchange rate and its equilibrium level, there was general recognition that a problem exists and is playing an adverse role in different countries.

While currencies in big developing countries appreciated significantly over the last few years, in other countries, currencies depreciated or were maintained at a steady peg to the dollar despite favourable macro-economic fundamentals.

The Real is overvalued by 42 percent, while South Africa’s Rand has appreciated in double-digit percentage terms against the dollar. The Indian Rupee also initially appreciated by five percent against the dollar from 2008 to 2009. However, it has recently depreciated sharply due to the country’s burgeoning current account deficit.

Consequently, Brazil and South Africa witnessed a sharp drop in their exports of manufactured goods, while imports from other countries shot up alarmingly. “Brazil has dropped to 14th place in machinery and equipment exports, while imports doubled because of exchange rate overvaluation,” said da Silva.

Meanwhile, the policy flexibility of South Africa, Brazil and India, as reflected by the Wiggle Room Index constructed by The Economist, is not high. The three countries are ranked 65th, 79th and 82nd, respectively.

Against this backdrop, WTO director general Pascal Lamy issued a nuanced statement on Mar. 27 on the exchange rate volatility and its various effects on traders. He said international trade needs exchange rate stability.

“Trade measures cannot correct policy imbalances elsewhere, and be an answer to non-trade policy concerns…. Tit-for-tat measures would be a recipe for protectionist crossfire,” Lamy cautioned.

All these issues, Lamy said, “require a mix of cooperation in the macro-financial field and proper domestic policies which lie outside the remit of the WTO.”

The director general exhorted participants to make sure that the “WTO system does not crumble under the weight of excessive expectations.”

In contrast, a senior official of the U.S. administration, which is providing credit at close to zero percent to its banks and industry since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, complained that China had kept the Yuan nearly unchanged despite a growing current account surplus and bulging foreign exchange reserves.

“A strong consensus now exists on the importance of promoting market-determined exchange rate systems, enhancing flexibility to reflect underlying economic fundamentals, avoiding persistent exchange rate misalignments and refraining from competitive currency devaluation,” said Mark Sobel, the U.S. Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy.

China responded saying that those countries adopting unconventional monetary policy have contributed to the currency volatility and misalignment by adding liquidity to financial markets.

“Exchange rate volatility was intensified by the monetary policy of major currency issuers – the U.S.,” Ruogu Li, president of China’s Exim Bank, told the participants.

“Both developed and developing members have fallen victim to major currency issuers,” the Chinese banker said, according to sources present at the meeting. “For every iPhone sold in the U.S., Chinese workers and companies get less than two percent, while the rest of the profits go to the American companies.”

The seminar has underscored the need to acknowledge the problem.

“If countries agree that misalignments are a given in the current international economic and trade processes, it is important to discuss the trade-related aspects of the problem at the WTO,” said Azevedo.

At their summit in the Indian capital on Thursday, leaders of the coalition known as BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – made several noteworthy decisions that experts say hint at the converging of economic and political interests of a disparate regional bloc.

China’s trade minister Chen Deming opposed sanctions against Iran when rising oil prices were hitting BRICS. Credit: World Economic Forum/CC-BY-SA-2.0

Though the leaders chose to defer the long-awaited announcement of a ‘South-South Bank’ to next year’s meet, or beyond, the ‘Delhi Declaration‘ produced at the end of the summit said BRICS finance ministers have been directed to “examine the feasibility and viability of such an initiative, set up a joint working group for further study, and report back to us (heads of state) by the next Summit (in South Africa).”

“Creating such a ‘BRICS Bank’ involves complex issues, such as the medium of transfer of credit,” said Vivan Sharan, associate fellow at the prestigious Observer Research Foundation (ORF), which hosted a BRICS academic forum of experts and scholars from member countries in New Delhi from Mar. 4 – 6.

“But there are no roadblocks ahead and it is an idea whose time has come,” Sharan told IPS. “While the plan now is to supplement rather than supplant the existing global financial structure, there is clearly the ambition to go ahead.”

For now though, according to Sharan, citizens of the bloc, who account for nearly half the world’s population, can be content with the knowledge that by June there will be a BRICS Exchange Alliance in place, allowing trading options using local currency.

“Investors will soon be able to invest in each other’s progress and there will be greater liquidity, better market-determined integration and the possibility of extending credit in local (currencies),” Sharan said. “Two BRICS countries are among the top five in purchasing power parity terms and four are in the top 10.”

BRICS’ frustration with the policies of the wealthy G7 countries – France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States, and Canada – was palpable at the meeting of the new bloc’s trade ministers on Wednesday with Brazil’s Fernando Pimentel leading complaints of the G7’s tardiness in meeting reforms promised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Pimentel’s concerns were reflected in the Declaration, which said: “The build-up of sovereign debt and concerns over medium to long-term fiscal adjustment in advanced countries are creating an uncertain environment for global growth.”

Further, the Declaration charged that “excessive liquidity from the aggressive policy actions taken by central banks to stabilise their domestic economies have been spilling over into emerging market economies, fostering excessive volatility in capital flows and commodity prices.”

But the toughest statements came over the sanctions imposed on Iran and the situation in the Middle East. “We respect the United Nations (Security Council) resolution but at the same time it does not forbid countries to engage in trade in essential commodities and what is required for human good,” said India’s Anand Sharma at a joint press conference of trade ministers.

China’s trade minister Chen Deming declared that his country could not be expected to follow unilateral sanctions against Iran at a time of rising crude prices that were adversely affecting the BRICS countries and the global economy.

BRICS leaders said in the Declaration they were agreed that the “period of transformation taking place in the Middle East and North Africa should not be used as a pretext to delay resolution of lasting conflicts but rather it should serve as an incentive to settle them, in particular the Arab-Israeli conflict.” “This is indeed a bold declaration coming from a group that is seen as disparate and one known to have divergent interests,” said Pushpesh Pant, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of International Studies. “Earlier there were flip-flops over issues in the Middle East.”

Pant said it was still left to be seen how BRICS members will be able to carry out any of their articulations. “China has internal problems, Russia looks increasingly European, Brazil cannot shake off its Latin American moorings and India has serious problems in dealing with its neighbours.” “Will membership in BRICS encourage China to support India’s candidature for a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council is a question that looms up,” said Pant. “Another is the sometimes conflicting interests of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (that includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.)”

The Declaration said: “China and Russia reiterate the importance they attach to the status of Brazil, India and South Africa in international affairs and support their aspiration to play a greater role in the U.N.”

According to Sharan the strength of the Delhi Summit lies in the Delhi Action Plan (DAP), released along with the Declaration on Thursday, calling for meetings of BRICS foreign ministers on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, and of its finance ministers around the G20 meetings.

There will also be, according to the DAP, meetings of finance ministers and fiscal authorities around those organised by the World Bank and IMF, including stand-alone meetings.

“All this means is that, in spite of the ifs and buts, we can expect more of the kind of coordination seen at the Security Council during the year 2011 and that there is a better chance for multilateral approaches when it comes to global peace and security,” said Pant.

By Fabiana Frayssinet and - -
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 22 2012 (IPS)

Opinions are divided in Brazil over the prosecution of U.S. oil giant Chevron for two oil spills. While some argue that the legal action is an over-reaction triggered by nationalism, others say it is necessary to show that Brazil is serious about protecting the environment.

The public prosecutor’s office filed criminal charges this week against Chevron for the November oil spill that dumped 2,400 barrels of crude and for a smaller leak in March, both of which occurred at the Frade field, 370 km off the coast of Rio de Janeiro

Chevron says the second spill at the well, located at a depth of 1,200 metres in the Campos basin, involved just five litres. But experts say that much more oil was leaked, and that the oil slick is one square kilometre in size, near the first leak.

“What matters is not the size of the spill,” said the Rio de Janeiro state environment secretary Carlos Minc, comparing it with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, where some four million barrels were dumped.

“What does have to be taken into account is that (the Chevron executives) did not have the equipment necessary to contain it, that they concealed information, and that there was imprudence,” Minc told foreign correspondents, after he was asked whether the government was over-reacting.

And according to the inquiry, the second leak is apparently a consequence of the first.

Because of the cracks in the rock in the seabed, oil is likely to continue to leak, say reports by the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) and the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, two federal oversight agencies.

Chevron and the Transocean drill-rig operator “have installed a prolonged-effect pollution bomb,” said the prosecutor who filed the charges Wednesday, Eduardo Santos de Oliveira.

Under Brazil’s environmental crimes law, he is seeking prison sentences for 17 Chevron and Transocean executives – most of whom are foreigners, including George Buck, head of Chevron in Brazil.

The executives face sentences of between five and 31 years, and are barred from leaving the country.

In addition, the company is being sued for 11 billion dollars in damages.

“If they say that by enforcing the environmental law, I am exaggerating, then I am,” said Santos de Oliveira, who added that the entire Frade field could be affected.

“Our messages is: you are welcome, you will not be persecuted or discriminated against,” Minc said, stressing that it is not the government’s intention to scare off foreign oil companies interested in investing in Brazil.

“But you have to take precautions, use the best technology, and be transparent. And if a mistake is committed, know that we will be rigorous,” he added, referring to the need to set an example in the area of environmental protection, especially as Brazil is about to host the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, in June.

Minc said the Atlantic Ocean, where more than 90 percent of the country’s oil production is concentrated, is Brazil’s “blue Amazon”.

But Adriano Pires, head of the energy consulting firm Brazilian Infrastructure Centre, said the government was over-reacting, and questioned the pressing of charges before the full results of the investigation were in.

“If the U.S. government had had the same level of reaction to the Gulf of Mexico accident, the president of BP would have had to be sentenced to life in prison,” Pires said in an interview with IPS.

He also said that when it comes to oil, “politics and nationalism take precedence over technical questions, in Brazil.”

After it was founded in 1953, the state-run Petrobras had a monopoly in the oil industry. It was not until 1997 that, under the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003), foreign oil companies were allowed to take part in exploration and production.

Brazil’s left-wing President Dilma Rousseff said that foreign oil companies operating in Brazil must know that the country’s safety regulations will be enforced.

Edison Lobao, the minister of mines and energy, pointed out that Petrobras is subject to the same rules as the rest of the companies, and must “respond” if it violates them.

He also said foreign capital “is welcome, but it has to respect our laws.”

Meanwhile, in a statement, Chevron said “There is no technical or factual evidence demonstrating any wilful or negligent conduct by Chevron or its employees associated with the incident. We have sought to perform our operations in full compliance with Brazilian laws and industry practices and to comply with all applicable licenses and authorisations.”

It also said the second leak was not linked to the first, because the oil has different characteristics. It stated that the first was caused by “unexpected pressure” encountered when drilling, while no drilling was taking place at the time of the second spill.

A lawyer for Chevron, Nilo Batista, denied that the company is going to pull out of Brazil, and said it had merely suspended production at the Frade field as a preventive measure.

But he said the case had been blown out of proportion, and that there was “a slightly xenophobic tone that has surprised me.”

Another lawyer for the company, Oscar Graça Couto, stressed that the oil leak caused no harm to human health and no measurable harm to the fauna and flora.

“No whales, dolphins, turtles or birds were hurt, let alone killed. In fact not even one sardine perished,” he said at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro.

Excerpt:

India’s generic pharmaceutical industry meets 70 percent of domestic demand and exports 11 billion dollars worth of generic drugs annually. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Mar 19 2012 (IPS)

By allowing a generic manufacturer to produce a patented cancer drug at a fraction of its current cost, India has declared that it is not about to abandon its role as the ‘pharmacy of the world’s poor’.

In a path-breaking move on Mar. 9, India’s patent office invoked compulsory licensing (CL) provisions under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules to allow generic drug manufacturer Natco Pharma to produce and sell ‘Nexavar’ in India, a drug developed by the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer to treat liver and kidney cancer.

CL allows generic manufacturers to produce a patented drug or use a patented process when denied by the patentee. It is an important ‘flexibility’ clause in the WTO agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), but one that countries capable of manufacturing generics are still putting to test.

The issue has aligned non-government organisations (NGOs) and the manufacturers of generic drugs with those governments prepared to take on powerful pharmaceutical multi-national corporations (MNCs) that sell drugs worth more than 800 billion dollars annually.

“India always had CL provisions, even in its original 1970 patent laws. In 2005, when amendments were made to make WTO laws consistent, CLs were retained and this was a major achievement (of the Doha declaration of 2001),” Sachin Chaturvedi, senior fellow at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries, a think-tank of India’s ministry of external affairs, told IPS.

“More generic drug manufacturers in India are sure to come forward now and seek licenses to cheaply manufacture drugs and make them accessible to the poor,” said Meera Shiva, chairperson of the Health Action International – Asia Pacific, an NGO dealing with public health issues.

Shiva told IPS that the cost of treatment with Nexavar – the trade name for sorafenib tosylate – is expected to drop by nearly 97 percent, from 5,500 dollars for a month’s treatment per person to about 175 dollars, once production of a generic version by Natco Pharma begins.

“This will bring relief to more than a million people suffering from liver and kidney cancer and extend their lives by several years,” said Shiva. “It brings hope in a country where government surveys have shown that 65 percent of the 1.1 billion population fall into debt as result of ‘out-of-pocket’ healthcare spending.”

India’s patent office ruled that “the mandate of the law is not to just supply the drug in the market, but to make it available in a manner such that (a) substantial portion of the public is able to reap the benefits of the invention. If the terms are unreasonable, such as high cost, availability is meaningless.”

Shiva said what is significant is the realisation that avenues exist within the WTO for governments to intervene on behalf of their people and ensure access to medicines in the face of attempts by pharmaceutical MNCs to keep profit margins high.

Indian Move a Victory for IBSA

Volunteers for the humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) in Brazil and South Africa – countries that have benefited from the Indian generics industry – hailed the Indian move.

“In 2007, the Brazilian government issued a CL for the drug Efavirenz, used to treat AIDS, after declaring it of public interest,” said Felipe de Carvalho, project officer with MSF’s Access Campaign in Brazil.

“Right after the issuance of the CL for Efavirenz, while local production was being developed, Brazil bought generic versions from Indian generic producers,” de Carvalho said. “In 2007 alone, the purchase of cheaper versions of Efavirenz represented savings of 30 million dollars.

“So, if the use of CL in India is expanded and allows for exportation, countries like Brazil can benefit from the resulting generic production, as happened in the case of Efavirenz,” de Carvalho told IPS.

When the Brazilian government issued the CL for Efavirenz, the country became the target of intense denouncement by pharmaceutical companies and developed country governments, de Carvalho said.

“The decision in India is important to reinforce developing countries’ right to use TRIPS flexibilities.”

India’s CL has brought on a storm of protests from pharmaceutical MNCs. In a published statement Ranjit Shahani, who heads the Switzerland-based Novartis in India, warns that the move will “work to the detriment of patients through the negative impact they (CLs) will have on future investment in innovative pharmaceuticals.”

However, Shiva debunked this claim that investments in research and development for drugs come solely from excessive profits generated by the pharmaceutical industry. “The fact is, there is publicly- funded research and often big pharma benefits from that too.”

Catherine Tomlinson, senior researcher at the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, said it was “heartening to see India’s ongoing resistance against pressure from developed countries to not use the TRIPS provisions to protect health and we hope it will serve as a positive example for our own government.

“For activists in South Africa, it is distressing that our government continues to bow to pressure not to use CL provisions, despite the country facing numerous health emergencies and many critical medicines remaining unavailable to the majority of the population,” Tomlinson told IPS.

Leena Menghaney, a lawyer who works for MSF’s Access Campaign in New Delhi, said India’s patent laws had many advantages. “CLs can be issued to generic producers if patented drugs are unavailable or unaffordable, or if countries that lack production capacity order drugs from India.

“In fact compulsory licensing, under Indian law, is not reserved for emergencies – this is another myth spread by the MNCs,” Menghaney said.

Between 1970 and 2005, India did not recognise patents for medicines, allowing the growth, in that period, of a large and powerful generic pharmaceutical industry that takes care of 70 percent of domestic demand and also exports 11 billion dollars worth of generic drugs annually.

Excerpt:

By Ravi Kanth Devarakonda and - -
GENEVA, Mar 17 2012 (IPS)

India, Brazil, and South Africa, the international grouping for promoting international cooperation among the three countries known as IBSA, along with China and several other developing countries, have denounced the ongoing attempts to craft an exclusive, plurilateral agreement to liberalise trade in services without concluding the multilateral trade negotiations of the World Trade Organization.

IBSA has denounced the ongoing attempts to craft an exclusive, plurilateral agreement to liberalise trade in services. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS

In sharp contrast, the proposed plurilateral agreement for services, which aims to seek WTO commitments for the 16 countries part of the initiative, will turn the clock back for providing the much-promised developmental gains from the poorest and developing countries.

Ahead of the current turmoil in global trade negotiations, the IBSA trade ministers warned that that “plurilateral initiatives go against the fundamental principles of transparency, inclusiveness, and multilateralism.”

The 16 countries, the United States, countries from the European Union, Japan, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taipei, Pakistan, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile, call themselves the real good friends (RGF) of liberalisation of trade in services.

The RGF coalition will hold their third brainstorming session on Mar. 21 to prepare the ground for a plurilateral services agreement outside the WTO. Though the contours of the form and substance of the proposed agreement are not clear yet, the coalition appears determined to achieve an outcome based on the highest common denominator, say trade envoys from the coalition.

The IBSA countries have not adopted any formal position on the ongoing plurilateral initiative of the RGF coalition. But trade envoys from the respective countries spoke against the dangers it would pose to the multilateral negotiations in general, and the Doha trade negotiations in particular.

“We don’t think that plurilateral initiatives will comply with the requirement of transparency and inclusiveness, which is the basis for any multilateral process,” Brazil’s trade envoy to the WTO, Ambassador Roberto Azevedo, told IPS. “Brazil doesn’t believe it is a building block for the resumption of multilateral negotiations and on the contrary it would make that even more difficult.”

Brazil, said Azevedo, “is perfectly willing to negotiate multilateral market access in services as long as others are willing to negotiate market access in agriculture which is at the heart of the WTO’s Doha trade negotiations.”

The plurilateral route for an agreement on services will undermine the “balance” in the Doha trade negotiations, said Ambassador Jayant Dasgupta, India’s trade envoy. South Africa’s trade envoy Ambassador Faizel Ismail expressed concern that a plurilateral agreement will undermine the much- promised “developmental” outcome in the Doha trade negotiations.

Even the EU, which is taking an active part in the current RGF plurilateral initiative remains uncomfortable. “Our line is that we should not take initiatives that undermine the WTO because the WTO is very important for trade,” the EU’s trade commissioner Karel de Gucht said on Mar. 12.

Under the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which governs global trade in services, any group of countries can strive for economic integration by seeking higher and deeper services commitments among themselves.

Until now, there was no attempt by any group of countries to craft an exclusive plurilateral services free trade agreement among a select group of countries within the WTO since its establishment in 1995.

In the past there were open-ended plurilateral agreements such as the WTO’s Information Technology Agreement involving liberalisation of trade in various electronic goods, and the telecom services agreement.

The ongoing exploratory talks among the 16 countries are taking place at a time when the WTO members have not been able to conclude the much-promised Doha negotiations, which were started in 2001.

A continued stalemate in negotiations between a large majority of countries seeking a palatable outcome and one major industrialised country making “maximalist” demands has put paid to an early conclusion, said trade diplomats.

As opposed to multilateral negotiations in which all members have an equal say, at least on the paper, the plurilateral process involves closed-door negotiations among select-members. The U.S. and other major industrialised countries, however, reckon that it is difficult to negotiate with 153 countries as it would involve a grand bargain of compromises.

“We live in a consensus based-organisation and what that means is that 153 members have to approve on everything and what that means in practice is the least common denominator,” the U.S. trade envoy to the WTO, Ambassador Michael Punke, told a seminar organised by the European Centre for Political Economy in Brussels.

He said “we should look at the services plurilateral as a different, fundamentally different way, of approaching the agreement.” Punke argued that the RGF group would provide the ideal ground for accomplishing an outcome based on “highest common denominator” since most of them are engaged in significant liberalisation of trade in services.

However, developing countries remain opposed to the assault on the multilateral framework. “The greater the number of participants, it would be difficult to reach a common agreement but it would provide greater benefits,” said Azevedo. “In short, a modest outcome with a larger number of participants should lead to more attractive and meaningful outcome.”

Excerpt:

Mediterranean coralline algae has a strong, adverse reaction to ocean acidification. Credit: David Luquet/IPS

By Bari Bates
BRUSSELS, Mar 12 2012 (IPS)

Our oceans face a grim outlook in the coming decades. Ocean acidification, loss of marine biodiversity, climate change, pollution and over-exploitation of resources all point to the urgent need for a new paradigm on caring for the earth’s oceans—”business as usual” is simply not an option anymore, experts say.

The extreme rate of acidification – the term used to describe the decrease in ocean pH levels caused by man-made CO2 emissions – has happened before, Carol Turley of Plymouth Marine Laboratory said, a claim that might have been comforting if she hadn’t been referring to the time when dinosaurs died out.

This is a “huge environmental crisis,” she told attendees at an information session at European Parliament this month, addressing challenges and solutions for the world’s oceans months ahead of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, slated to be held in Brazil in June.

Turley joked that she’s often called the “acid queen” because of her bleak message, though the plight of more than 70 percent of the earth’s surface is not in the least bit humorous.

Each year, the ocean absorbs roughly 26 percent of total CO2 emissions, which have increased by 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1750, according to the International Ocean Acidification Reference User Group.

Ocean acidification affects marine life with calcium carbonate skeletons and shells, making them sensitive to even small changes in acidity. Acidification also reduces the availability of calcium for plankton and shelled species, which constitute the base of the entire marine food chain, creating a disastrous domino affect that could wipe out entire ecosystems.

“[The] earth system is truly under the influence of man,” said Wendy Watson-Wright, assistant director general and executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The oceans could be 150 percent more acidic by 2100, she added. This means drastic decreases in yields from fisheries, and mass extinction of marine life.

The world is currently losing natural resources at a rate humans haven’t even begun to describe, she said.

Changing public opinion

Sadly, rallying the public behind the necessity of ocean preservation has proved difficult.

Global attention has largely been focused on the economy, particularly on the latest bout of economic chaos in the United States and Europe.

“Our greatest challenge is to convince citizens that environmental targets (don’t go) against economic progress,” European Union Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Maria Damanaki, stressed.

For some, it’s a problem of “out of sight, out of mind,” said Watson-Wright, arguing that people disregard oceans as a priority since they live on land. But even landlocked countries have a great stake in ocean sustainability, she stressed.

With Rio+20, designed to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, only a few months away, it is past time to discuss solutions.

Raphaël Billé, program director for biodiversity and adaptation at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), called for stronger language on environmental goals, in order to improve political momentum in the priority themes articulated by the conference organisers.

He noted that Rio+20 is less than concrete in terms of political agreements, but is an opportunity to assess progress and renew political commitments, in the hopes of paving the way for hard decisions later.

Can Rio+20 be a game changer?

Rio+20 will feature oceans as one of seven themes, which also include food, energy, cities, water, and disasters.

Since the first meeting in Rio 20 years ago, there has been some progress on protections for the oceans, according to UNESCO, which includes decisions made within the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, agreed upon during the Earth Summit in 2002.

Plans for the world’s oceans at Rio+20 are outlined as ten proposals under four main objectives, according to UNESCO’s IOC: taking concrete action to reduce stressors and restore the structure and function of marine ecosystems; support for a “Blue-Green” economy; moving toward policy, legal and institutional reforms; and supporting marine research and monitoring, evaluation, and technology.

The concerns over our planet’s oceans are not new, IDDRI pointed out in an article submitted to the U.N. in early November 2011; most of these problems have been recognised for decades, and, according to the article, “The only way forward is to recognise the overall failure of oceanic governance, to study the successes at hand, and to develop strategies that seriously take both into account.”

The article also mentioned the conflicts between oceanic governance and resistance to make it more sustainable, especially when costs begin to add up.

Though various experts have expressed doubt that the meeting in Rio will yield sufficient results for the planet, activists and scientists alike are turning up the heat on conference attendees to leverage political power at the gathering to make tough, lasting decisions that might give the oceans and their essential ecologies a shot at survival.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet and - -
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

China is looking to Latin America to experiment with the yuan, or renminbi, to replace the dollar, taking advantage of the growth in Chinese trade and investment in this region. But because the volume is still insignificant, it is not yet clear what impact the currency will have on economies in the region.

China is expanding loans to Latin America using the yuan instead of the dollar. Credit: Kit Gillet/IPS

“This change was mainly due to the need to guarantee steady supplies of commodities, and also because of the instability of the industrialised economies,” which have been hit hardest by the crisis, added Branco, with the Foreign Trade Studies Centre Foundation (FUNCEX).

China, which joined the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 2008, has seen a 16-fold increase in its trade with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean over the last decade, to a total of 188 billion dollars a year in 2011.

Trade with Brazil alone climbed to 77 billion dollars last year, 37.5 percent up from 2010.

China is now Brazil’s largest investor and trading partner.

“The Asian giant is financing infrastructure in the region to expand its production and thus guarantee its sources of raw materials, while trying to cut the prices of imports,” the director of Brazil’s Foreign Trade Association (AEB), José Augusto de Castro, told IPS.

This influence is seen, for example, in loans to countries like Venezuela, with which it has a strategic relationship, in the words of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, China’s policy banks are seeking to expand their loans to Latin American countries that are suppliers of key food and mineral commodities using the yuan instead of the dollar, as part of a strategy to promote use of the Chinese currency in international trade.

The Export-Import Bank of China (China Exim Bank) is in negotiations with the IDB to set up a fund that would provide one billion dollars worth of yuan to finance infrastructure projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The two institutions signed an agreement in September under which the China Exim Bank committed itself to offer up to 200 million dollars to finance trade between China and Latin America. Part of that funding will be in yuan.

China’s decision to strengthen the IDB also shows its priority interest in beefing up infrastructure in Latin America, de Castro said.

Branco said “the most important aspect of this is the change in stance on the part of the Chinese government, which previously did not want to internationalise the yuan because its possible volatility would leave the country hostage to the external economic situation.”

Unknown effects

“The effect on Latin America’s economies of an internationalised yuan is not yet clear. We will have no way to gauge the impact until there is a market in place in which the currency is being freely traded,” the economist added.

Branco pointed out that China has shown interest in this region in three ways: through the direct purchase of minerals and crops from countries with comparative advantages, like Brazil, Argentina and Chile; through mergers or the creation of binational companies; and by means of loans and capital, with credit lines in yuan, to finance imports and infrastructure.

“The increase in trade in yuan has the aim of diversifying risk with respect to the dollar and the euro, given the volatility of the latter two,” Branco said.

“Furthermore, the increased international use of the Chinese currency is designed to complement the implementation of a new currency, which is already being traded in important markets like Hong Kong,” he added.

But de Castro does not believe the new loans in yuan will have an effect on the region’s trade or monetary policies in the short term, because political conditions would have to be different in China in order for the yuan to become an international currency.

“China has a closed system,” he said. “We all know the government adjusts the exchange rate according to its interests. It would have to build up international credibility in order for its currency to become convertible in practice and not just theory.”

Mauricio Claverí, an economist with the Argentine consultancy Abeceb, said that in order to analyse the eventual effects of the introduction of the yuan in regional trade, it is necessary to look at what happened in the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

“With respect to trade in local currencies between Argentina and Brazil, only a very small portion, between two and 2.5 percent of trade, is done in local currencies,” he said. “But large firms continue using the dollar.”

Argentina and Brazil were even considering bringing Uruguay and Chile – an associate member – into the initiative, but they refrained from doing so, and “the system never took off, because companies are very attached to the dollar,” the expert told IPS.

But the possible expansion of the yuan in Latin America raises other doubts. For example, what would the Chinese currency be used for?

Branco said the yuan would initially be used in future trade deals with China itself. “The currency could be used as a guarantee for contracts when the euro or the dollar are more volatile, as in recent times,” he said.

But the accumulation of reserves in yuan, he said, would only occur later, after the consolidation of a global financial market in that currency.

De Castro warned that “because the yuan is not a convertible currency, it would have difficulties being traded in the domestic market.”

In the case of Brazil, the Central Bank would have to absorb the yuan and later try to place them on the international market, which implies a financial risk, he said.

A report published this month by Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based centre for policy analysis, exchange, and communication on Western Hemisphere affairs, says China extended 37 billion dollars in credit to Latin America in 2010 – more than the loans from the World Bank, IDB, and United States Export-Import Bank combined.

More than 90 percent of that total went to Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador, especially to finance the purchase of commodities and towards Chinese companies that have investments in those countries.

Countries like Venezuela and Ecuador, which have a harder time obtaining multilateral loans, have particularly benefited from this assistance.

In the context of a 20-year strategic plan, China has loaned Venezuela more than 40 billion dollars since 2007, when a China-Venezuela fund was established, for four billion dollars. The fund, which has been renewed several times, finances investment in infrastructure and social programmes, for which precise figures are unavailable.

And in 2010, a 20 billion dollar credit line was negotiated, half of which is in dollars and half in yuan, mainly to buy goods and services from China.

The Chinese oil companies CNPC and CNOOC also made several billion dollars available to Venezuela’s state-run oil giant, PDVSA, for oil industry projects.

China’s investments in Venezuela have ranged from oil production to railways, infrastructure works, construction of housing, and car, motorcycle and mobile phone assembly plants.

* With reporting by Marcela Valente in Buenos Aires and Humberto Márquez in Caracas.

Excerpt:

Suape Industrial Port Complex in the Northeast is in a process of constant expansion. Credit:Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 4 2012 (IPS)

In 2011, Brazil’s economy grew by less than half the 7.5 percent it attained in 2010. However, this result would be miraculous in any other country with the barriers to productivity and competitiveness that prevail in Brazil.

The base interest rate of 11 percent is the highest in the world in real terms, and the tax burden amounts to 35 percent of GDP, much higher than in the rest of Latin America and closer to that of European states, but without providing a similar level of social welfare.

Moreover, the enormous bureaucratic apparatus is a hindrance to business, and costs are also raised by the precarious transport infrastructure and the high price of energy, contradicting the official discourse on modest electricity costs based mainly on hydroelectric power.

To add to the difficulties in the international marketplace, the local currency, the real, has been in recent years the most overvalued with respect to the dollar. Consequently, the exports of several industries have fallen and imports have increased.

Manufacturers are issuing warnings about “premature deindustrialisation” because of the exchange rate imbalance, which is being accentuated now that Brazil is becoming an oil exporter, thanks to huge deep water reserves in the Atlantic ocean.

Luiz Aubert Neto, head of the Brazilian Machinery and Equipment Association (ABIMAQ), said that in 2005, 60 percent of the machinery sold on the domestic market was made in Brazil, compared to just 40 percent today. The sector’s exports fell by 27.7 percent between 2008 and 2010, while imports rose by 14 percent.

A “currency exchange war” is under way, Finance Minister Guido Mántega said just over a year ago. Some countries are devaluing their currency to boost their competitiveness, a matter that should be addressed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), he said at the time.

Faced with pressure from manufacturers and evidence that Brazilian exports are increasingly made up of agricultural and mineral commodities, the government has been adopting protectionist measures, such as requiring that at least 65 percent of auto parts be of national origin for the vehicles to qualify for tax breaks.

But in spite of all the disadvantages, Brazil is one of the countries attracting most foreign investment, and it has just been recognised by the British Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) as the sixth largest global economy, displacing the UK.

As one of the emerging powers grouped in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), this South American country does not really stand out for its GDP growth, which averaged four percent a year between 2003 and 2010 during former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s two terms of office.

This indicator is close to the world average for the period, and has been outstripped by several other South American countries. But the interest of investors, economists and international authorities in Brazil is explained by the size of its internal market of 192 million people, and the level of economic development already achieved.

In some areas of the country, like the Northeast and the Amazonian state of Rondônia, it is practically a joke to speak of deindustrialisation. By contrast, industrialisation there is proceeding full-tilt, although in the old-fashioned way, driven by oil and metallurgy rather than electronics or new technologies.

In the arid, impoverished Northeast, construction of oil refineries, steel mills and shipyards – closely linked to ports designed as industrial and logistics complexes – is driving economic growth at a rate above the national average.

Inadequate infrastructure diminishes competitiveness but also acts as a galvanising factor, especially for the construction industry. Roads, railways, ports and bridges are being built, enlarged or repaired in every region of Brazil, along with social housing.

The number of projects has brought to a head the need for skilled labour, and there is a consensus that poor quality education is an additional hindrance to development and competitiveness.

Among the 65 countries assessed by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Brazil is always near the bottom of the ranking, especially in mathematics.

In order to meet demand, federal and state governments are rushing to provide technical schools, and companies are themselves undertaking training of local workers to work on infrastructure projects.

The Santo Antônio hydroelectric complex on the Madeira river in the Amazon region is being built with over 80 percent local labour, according to the consortium responsible for the project, and two-thirds of the workers on the Belo Monte complex on the northern Xingu river, on which work is just beginning, are local people.

“Now education is progressing, because there is a demand for it,” said Fernando Freire, head of the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, a Ministry of Education social science research institute in Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco which is industrialising at the fastest rate in the country.

But economists say Brazil has another Achilles’ heel: the lack of technological innovation. Although it has recently expanded its scientific production, as measured by published academic papers, in terms of patents the country is far behind others at a similar stage of development.

There is much that can be said about the inconsistencies of the Brazilian economy, especially in some sectors being buffeted by competition from Chinese products. Nevertheless, Brazil is now close to what economists call full employment.

Unemployment fell to 5.2 percent in November, the lowest figure since 2002 when the statistics institute adopted its present methodology. All the indicators point to a reduction in inequality, and migration from poor regions like the Northeast to more developed areas like the southern state of São Paulo has ceased.

The economy is growing in spite of the hurdles, and the positive social and political effects are deeply felt, although GDP growth may not be as spectacular as that of China or some South American countries like Peru, where president Alan García left office in July 2011 with a low approval rating, in spite of the country’s high rate of economic growth.

In contrast, President Dilma Rousseff has an astronomical approval rating, as did former president Lula.

The fall in world tobacco consumption, especially in industrialised nations, is a sign of the urgent need for producer countries like Brazil, China, India and the United States to offer their farmers alternatives to growing tobacco.

Graphic picture-based health warnings on cigarette packs can help prevent youngsters from starting to smoke. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS

Tobacco industry statistics for 2011 show that China is the world leader in tobacco production with 2.4 million tonnes, and Brazil is the runner-up, with 867,000 tonnes.

Some 200,000 small-scale family farms, located mainly in the south and northeast of the country, produce 95 percent of Brazil’s tobacco.

President Dilma Rousseff signed a tobacco control law Dec. 15 which increases taxes on tobacco, sets minimum prices for cigarettes, bans smoking in all public spaces and enclosed workplaces, and forbids advertising at points of sale.

Brazil, with its 192 million people, may thus become the most populous country to declare itself smoke-free, said the U.S.-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

“Brazil is the largest country to have adopted an anti-tobacco law,” activist Patricia Sosa, in charge of Latin American programmes for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told IPS.

“Every year, exposure to secondhand smoke causes over 600,000 premature deaths, and passive smokers who are exposed to it at home or at work have a 30 percent higher risk of developing lung cancer,” she said.

The new law bans advertising on cigarette packs and only permits the display of products with health warning messages that cover at least 30 percent of the front of the packets. This regulation will come into effect Jan. 1, 2016.

Taxes on cigarettes were increased by 300 percent, which will raise the consumer price by 20 percent in 2012, and by 55 percent in three years’ time.

But in the view of the Brazilian civil society organisation Aliança de Controle do Tabagismo (ACT – Alliance for the Control of Tobacco Use), the tobacco industry remains extremely lucrative.

Around 90 percent of the tobacco produced in Brazil is exported, and tobacco production in the country is fairly high, although the prevalence of smoking has declined over the last two decades, ACT deputy director Mônica Andreis told IPS.

“The tobacco industry argues that the new measures will bring economic chaos to the country. But many family farmers who depend solely on this crop to survive are exposed to difficult labour conditions, and they get sick from having direct contact with tobacco leaf chemicals,” she said.

Working on tobacco plantations creates health problems associated with intensive use of toxic agricultural chemicals, as well as green tobacco sickness (GTS), a form of nicotine poisoning caused by absorption of nicotine through the skin as a result of handling wet tobacco leaves.

“Many of the tobacco farmers have already said they would prefer to diversify or switch crops,” Andreis said.

The ministry of agricultural development announced that during 2011 it invested six million dollars in technical support and agricultural extension services for approximately 10,000 family farmers who wish to diversify away from growing tobacco.

The funds have been used principally for families in the seven tobacco-growing states: Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia and Paraiba in the northeast, and Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná in the south.

In one year’s time, the government plans to increase to 50,000 the number of families receiving aid from the National Programme to Support Product Diversification in Tobacco-Growing Areas, created in 2005.

According to the authorities, this programme is part of one of the country’s largest inter-ministerial initiatives, created to meet the guidelines of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which came into force in 2005 and was ratified by Brazil that same year.

The programme facilitates access by tobacco farmers to funding and technology with the aim of converting or diversifying from tobacco growing.

Sixty-five current projects to diversify away from tobacco cultivation on family farms include raising chickens or dairy cattle, fish farming, and fruit and vegetable production. Over the last six years, 14 million dollars have been spent on services for 80,000 tobacco-farming families.

According to a study published by the Association of Tobacco Growers of Southern Brazil, out of nearly 187,000 families who grow tobacco, 47,000 have no land of their own and work as sharecroppers. And 80 percent of the 140,000 farms are less than 20 hectares in size.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the first international public health treaty, has 174 states party at present and guides the implementation of public policies for combating smoking, regarded by the WHO as a non-communicable global epidemic.

Although the number of smokers in Brazil has been dropping for the past 20 years, there are still nearly 25 million people aged over 15 who smoke, Andreis said.

The typical Brazilian smoker is male and aged between 45 and 64 – this group accounts for nearly 22 percent of tobacco consumers. The majority of smokers are people living in rural areas, less educated and with the lowest family income per person, according to a survey by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and the National Cancer Institute (INCA).

“Among people who had received less than one year of education, or none, 41 percent started smoking before they were 15 years old; and the proportion of students who had tried cigarettes in 2009 was almost 25 percent,” Andreis said.

Latin America has a distinguished record for applying the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Ten countries have already adopted tough restrictions on advertising, publicity and sponsorship by tobacco companies. Five countries have imposed taxes of 70 percent or more on the price of cigarettes, and seven have introduced compulsory health warnings that cover at least 30 percent of the packs.

Uruguay was the first country in the region to enact tough anti-tobacco laws. In the small South American country, health warnings and graphic images cover 80 percent of cigarette packets.

Excerpt:

Emerging economies China, South Africa and Brazil have indicated their openness to legally-binding carbon emission reduction targets from 2020 during the United Nations climate change summit in Durban, South Africa.

Emerging economies face developmental challenges but are also significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

Climate experts say the three countries’ willingness to consider legally binding commitments, even if they will not take immediate effect, was potentially “a great step” to unlock one of the big political issues of this year’s climate change talks.

Only India continues to refuse to commit.

The European Union (EU) proposed a “roadmap” last week, which stipulates that all major economies, including emerging countries like South Africa, Brazil, India and China, generally called the BASIC group – and not only industrialised nations as currently under the Kyoto Protocol – will be subject to legally binding carbon emission targets.

BASIC countries all face developmental challenges but are at the same time significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Major emerging economies and other developing nations already emit more than half of current carbon emissions. Within the next 20 years, they are projected to account for two- thirds.

The 194-nation climate talks, which will wrap up on Dec. 9, are abuzz with speculation on the prospect of emerging economies agreeing on the proposed roadmap.

In a move that surprised many after a tough week of negotiations that brought to the fore deep rifts between different countries’ demands and expectations, China announced for the first time it would accept a legally-binding climate deal after 2020, when current voluntary pledges will run out. After first insisting the demands of the EU roadmap were “too much,” China now seems open to finding a middle ground, especially with Europe.

“But there are pre-conditions,” said China’s top climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua. “A second Kyoto commitment period is a must for rich nations. After (the second period has ended), we need to review what has been done. Based on this assessment can we start negotiating what we shall agree after 2020.”

China laid out five conditions under which it would consider a legally-binding carbon reduction deal. Apart from a second commitment period of carbon-reduction pledges by industrialised nations under the Kyoto Protocol, they include hundreds of billions of dollars in short- and long-term climate financing for developing countries.

China also wants to see the Green Climate Fund signed off during the summit and demands the implementation of a range of agreements outlined at the 2009 Copenhagen summit, which were integrated into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at last year’s climate gathering in Cancun. These include initiatives for technology transfer, adaptation to climate change and new rules for verifying that carbon-cutting promises are kept.

South Africa and Brazil – two countries most vulnerable to the adverse effects of global warming, especially with regards to agriculture and biodiversity – have also shown interest in the roadmap.

South Africa’s Minister of Environment Edna Molewa said the EU roadmap was “seen favourably”, but noted that South Africa would, like China, want to place “conditionalities” on any binding agreements.

“We would like to work towards a legally binding outcome. As South Africa, we’re of the opinion that the seriousness with which we will deal with the level of contributions that South Africa can make in the global arena is understood in the context of articles 4.1 and 2 of the UNFCCC,” confirmed South Africa’s second negotiator Xolisa Ngwadla.

UNFCCC article 4.1 refers to “common and differentiated responsibilities” depending on the gross domestic product (GDP) of each country, while article 2 refers to the stabilisation of greenhouse gas emissions at a level that allows ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner – a point important for countries that heavily feel the effects of climate change.

“Our future commitments will also depend on finance, technology transfers and capacity building,” Ngwadla added.

Contrary to South Africa, Brazil said it is not placing any conditions on committing itself to an internationally legally binding instrument to reduce carbon emissions as long as such a treaty helped the fight against climate change based on scientific studies.

“We could agree already today on an internationally legally binding instrument, but not on any. It has to be robust, respond to what science is telling us is needed and therefore something that will make a difference in the fight against climate change,” explained Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, head of Brazil’s delegation. “We would not adapt a legally binding instrument for the sake of it.”

Currently, Brazil has set voluntary carbon reduction targets, which have been passed into national law. Figueiredo said he is aware this commitment will have to increase over time: “We understand that this regime will have to evolve over time. We think voluntary actions alone usually don’t add up to the level of international response that science tells us is needed. We are willing to play our part in the future evolution of the international fight against climate change.”

As part of the Group of 77 and China negotiating bloc, a group of 132 developing countries, Brazil is pushing for the adoption for a second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol before the end of the climate change summit on Dec 9. The country is also lobbying for a sign off of a fully functional Green Climate Fund, which will have short-term and long-term financing mechanisms so that developing nations can adapt to climate change.

Delegates from BASIC countries have repeatedly noted that South-South cooperation is important to them, not only economically but also with regards to decisions made during the climate change summit, and have indicated that they would support each other’s positions.

India, however, the fourth member of the BASIC group, does not seem to fall into line. It has repeatedly expressed its opposition to the EU roadmap, as it is not willing to consider signing a legally binding agreement to cut carbon emissions.

India said it felt implementing its voluntary target of reducing the emission intensity of its GDP growth by 20 percent to 25 percent by 2020, compared to 2005, was sufficient. Having one of the smallest per-capita-carbon footprints in the world, tougher targets weren’t necessary, said India’s lead negotiator J.M. Mauskar: “We are not a major emitter.”

India was only willing to negotiate “mutual reassurances”, he said. “In terms of the Cancun pledges, developing countries’ voluntary pledges by 2020 amount to more mitigation in absolute terms than that of developed countries,” Mauskar further explained, insisting that rich nations, not developing countries and emerging economies must ramp up their commitments.

India has criticised industrialised nations, especially the United States, for not making firm commitments to cutting green house gas emissions. “We are deeply concerned that there has been hardly any progress in achieving a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol,” said Mauskar.

Russia, a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, which belongs with South Africa, China, Brazil and India to the BRICS economic bloc, has blankly refused to consider a second commitment period.

Tract of rainforest cleared by burning in the state of Acre, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By - - and Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 28 2011 (IPS)

With no meaningful proposals, and in the face of internal setbacks and an adverse international context, Brazil is largely unprepared to assume the leadership role expected of an environmental power at the Durban climate change conference.

Tract of rainforest cleared by burning in the state of Acre, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

But the Brazilian government appears to be “relinquishing a more active role,” judging by the “tepid” paper released on Oct. 27 as its contribution to negotiations at Rio+20, said Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, executive secretary of the Brazilian Climate Change Forum, which brings together government and civil society to jointly formulate public policies.

Environmentalists suspect that the government is avoiding bolder proposals to ensure the attendance of the largest possible number of heads of state and government, especially from the industrialised countries, at next year’s meeting in Rio.

But this is a “mistaken tactic” because the world’s leaders would not be coming to Rio for a pleasant chat, and would instead be challenged and drawn to participate by stronger, more controversial proposals, said Pinguelli, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and expert on energy issues, in an interview with Tierramérica.

For Rubens Born, assistant coordinator of Vitae Civilis, a non-governmental organisation active in climate change negotiations, “the success of Rio+20 will depend on the progress made at COP 17,” the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 17), taking place Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 in the eastern South African city of Durban.

But Brazil is saddled by internal contradictions that could “tarnish” its image and hold it back from making bolder proposals, Born told Tierramérica.

The Brazilian Congress appears set to approve a reform of the 1965 Forest Code that would relax environmental protection requirements, which could spur deforestation and undermine the reduced rates of deforestation achieved in recent years.

Brazil is also gearing up to become a major oil producer thanks to the reserves discovered beneath a thick layer of salt more than 5,000 metres underwater in the Atlantic Ocean, which will mean an increasingly “dirty” energy mix, noted Maureen Santos, a specialist in international negotiations at the Brazilian Federation of Agencies for Social and Educational Assistance (FASE).

With a “developmentalist” economic policy based on large energy and logistics infrastructure projects, agricultural expansion in the country’s most important biomes – the rainforests of the Amazon and tropical savannahs of the Cerrado region – and growing exports of raw materials, Brazil’s legitimacy as an environmental power is facing serious challenges.

Home to an enviable wealth of natural resources and vast reserves of biodiversity, fresh water and rainforests, Brazil also boasts the world’s most highly renewable energy mix and greatest agricultural potential. All of this has positioned it as a key actor in international environmental negotiations.

In fact, this country of 192 million inhabitants has spearheaded climate change debate even before the 1992 Earth Summit. Basic concepts such as the differentiated responsibilities for climate change based on the historic greenhouse gas emissions of different countries and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) originated here.

At COP 15 in Copenhagen, Brazil also made a major impact through a voluntary commitment to reduce its projected greenhouse gas emissions up to 2020 by between 36 and 39 percent, in addition to the stirring speech delivered by then president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), who pledged assistance to poorer countries.

But Brazil’s current policies contradict these promises, say environmentalists. The reform of the Forest Code would pose a serious threat to the goal of reducing Amazon deforestation by 80 percent, and there has been no word of Brazilian contributions to the Green Climate Fund created to assist poorer countries.

In the meantime, Brazil has distanced itself from Latin America when it comes to climate issues and is instead coordinating joint positions within the framework of the BASIC countries (which it comprises alongside South Africa, India and China) and the Group of 77 developing countries, or G77, commented Santos.

This means that environmental concerns are not being duly addressed in South American integration processes, she said.

Rio+20 can serve as a “wonderful opportunity” to promote greater unity in a region that contrasts sharply with the “disastrous times” facing the rest of the world, marked by a shift to the right, a return to neoliberalism and the subjugation of democracy to the economy to save bankers from bankruptcy, commented Pinguelli.

The world is on the “brink of fascism” as the current situation calls to mind the crisis set off in 1929 which culminated in a world war, which would now be “unlikely because of nuclear weaponry, that demon that hinders wars,” said the professor and nuclear physicist.

This international context serves to “suffocate” climate change debate, he added.

But the economic crisis does not signify a lack of resources to help poor countries with climate change mitigation and adaptation, stressed Born. In 2009 alone, worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels totaled 312,000 million dollars, according to the latest United Nations Human Development Report, he noted.

However, the threat of a recession in the wealthy nations does not benefit the goal of providing billions of dollars in assistance to the developing countries for climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.

The key question in Durban is the survival of the Kyoto Protocol, the only international instrument that establishes binding targets for mitigation. If it is allowed to elapse in 2012, this would effectively mean the dismantling of the entire architecture developed under the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

As the current chair of the G77, Brazil is spearheading the fight for a second period of commitments under the protocol, although this appears to be an impossible goal in Durban.

Negotiator Luis Alberto Figueiredo from the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, however, says that while discussions are heated, an agreement is possible.

Between total collapse and the ideal agreement – new targets for a second period – the most likely outcome is the approval of an extension of the protocol for two or three years, to provide more time for negotiations that are currently facing highly unfavorable conditions, said Morrow Gaines, an international negotiations specialist at Vitae Civilis.

COP 17 does not have the power to bring an end to this international agreement on its own, and various mechanisms depend on the Kyoto Protocol, such as the CDM and the carbon market, which has become a consolidated global industry, he argued.

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet and - -
SALVADOR, Brazil, Nov 11 2011 (IPS)

Representatives of the Brazilian federal and municipal governments and of indigenous, black and riverbank communities and other groups that make the population of this country so diverse assumed a commitment to fight for “the human right to an adequate diet.”

Benedita Nascimento in Brazil's eastern Amazon jungle is one of the family farmers who guarantee food security in this country. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The meeting, which drew 2,000 delegates, including some 400 guests from other nations, discussed Brazil’s successes and pending challenges in the field of food security.

The conference’s conclusions are directed towards different audiences, according to Renato Maluf, president of the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security (CONSEA), made up of representatives of government and civil society.

The targets of the message include “those involved in social mobilisations, the government at all three levels – federal, provincial and municipal – and even those who know nothing at all about the right to food…We are also addressing the world at large,” Maluf said at the closing of the conference.

The declaration states that the planet’s seven billion people have “a right to an adequate and healthy diet every day, and to protection against hunger and other forms of food and nutritional insecurity.”

It also calls for a strengthening of the agencies involved in that struggle, like the United Nations and the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

Brazil’s Ministry of Social Development and Fight Against Hunger, which presented the declaration in conjunction with CONSEA, said through spokespersons that the behaviour of corporations, monoculture farming with the intensive use of pesticides and fertilisers, and the use of transgenic crops “have obvious effects” in terms of the loss of food sovereignty and contribute to obesity and other chronic health problems.

“It is indispensable to come up with policies that gradually reduce the use of agro-toxins and immediately eliminate the use of the ones that have already been banned in other countries, which pose a serious threat to human health and the environment,” the Ministry added.

Brazil is considered the world leader in pesticide use: Brazilians consume an average of 5.2 litres of agrochemicals each per year, according to reports presented at this week’s conference.

The declaration also highlights the strategic role of family agriculture in achieving food security, along with the sustainable use of natural resources. In addition, it identifies food security and sovereignty as a cornerstone of socioeconomic development.

According to official statistics, family farms account for 75 percent of the labour power in the Brazilian countryside, and produce 70 percent of the beans, 87 percent of the cassava and 58 percent of the milk consumed in Brazil. In practice, it is family farming that guarantees food security in this country of 192 million people.

During the Conference, which had the backing of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a Centre of Excellence Against Hunger was launched with the support of the World Food Programme (WFP) to share this country’s positive experiences in the fight against hunger with other developing nations.

One of Brazil’s central achievements is the Zero Hunger programme, implemented by the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) and continued by his successor, President Dilma Rousseff, who both belong to the leftwing Workers Party.

The programme, which forms part of the country’s broad anti-poverty efforts, has combined emergency assistance with job creation and family income support policies, and has led to a 61 percent reduction in child malnutrition.

Another key initiative, the school meals programme, feeds 47 million children a day while fomenting family agriculture, as by law 30 percent of the food served in the meals must be bought from local family farmers.

“Countries have a right to food and development, and if we have discovered a formula that has worked in Brazil, why can’t it work in other countries that are in a similar situation…adapted to their reality,” the Foreign Ministry’s coordinator of international action against hunger, Milton Rondó Filho, told IPS.

“We’re talking about a virtuous circle of local development, which we hope can be replicated in other countries,” he said.

A success that FAO director-general elect José Graziano da Silva attributed, in an interview with IPS, to the “decisive” participation of the state.

“If President Lula had not had the political will to get the entire public apparatus involved in its implementation, we would still be in the phase of doing charity, in the fight against hunger,” said Graziano, a former minister of food security and the fight against hunger in Brazil under Lula.

But Graziano also stressed the popular support for the programme and the participation of the private sector – such as the country’s supermarket chains – which he said played a “vital” role in the success of the efforts against hunger. That participation was highlighted during this week’s conference in Salvador.

The final declaration was approved in a plenary session by all of the 1,626 Brazilian delegates at the conference, who had been elected in more than 3,000 municipalities by a total of 75,000 voters.

Like Graziano, Maluf says this cooperation and involvement has been crucial to the strong performance of programmes like Zero Hunger.

“All of us are in favour of strengthening the role of the state, but we understand that poverty cannot be defeated without the participation of everyone,” Maluf told IPS.

This participation is as varied as the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity represented at the conference.

Many of the traditional communities that elected and sent delegates have specific names, such as “quilombos” (black communities originally established by runaway African slaves); “babassu coconut quebradeiras” or breakers (women who gather and break the fruit of the babassu palm tree); ribeirinhos (riverbank-dwellers); “fathers and mothers of candomblé” (the priests of candomblé, an African-Brazilian religion), and small-scale fishers.

A doctor who was a delegate from Pernambuco in the Northeast asked to address the conference to request that the speciality of nutritionist be incorporated in the public health system, while a peasant farmer from the central state of Tocantins demanded enforcement in his state of the law stipulating that one-third of government food purchases be from family farms.

Another delegate called for the modernisation of the tanks being built in the rainwater collection programme in the semi-arid Northeast.

“Brazilian society is still highly authoritarian and conservative, with a very stingy elite that has a history of social inequality – one of the worst levels of inequality in the world,” said Maluf.

“What these programmes have done, besides their specific positive impact, was to revive the debate on social policy in Brazil, which was dormant,” he added.

Despite the strides made, there are still pending challenges in the fight against hunger in South America’s giant. Although some 48.7 million Brazilians have been pulled out of poverty since 2003 according to a study by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, around 16 million still live on less than 41 dollars a month.

These people, the poorest of the poor, are the targets of the Brazil Without Misery programme launched by Rousseff, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty by 2014.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet and - -
SALVADOR, Brazil, Nov 9 2011 (IPS)

Fighting malnutrition is not just about putting food on everyone’s table every day, according to Brazil’s Fourth National Conference on Food and Nutrition Security, meeting in the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia.

Dinner is served. Credit: Claudius/IPS

Organised by the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security (CONSEA), which works at federal, state and municipal government levels and with civil society organisations, the conference motto is “Adequate and Healthy Food: A Right of All.”

“It’s time to analyse the progress made and tackle the new challenges,” said Renato Maluf, the head of CONSEA, who called on the 2,000 Brazilian conference participants to sign “an overarching agreement for food sovereignty and security and for promoting the human right to adequate nutrition.”

During former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s eight years in office (2003-2011), programmes to transfer income to poor families and combat hunger helped raise over 20 million people out of poverty and reduce child malnutrition by 61 percent in this country of 192 million people.

Other initiatives, like the school meals programme which reaches 47 million children and teenagers, 30 percent of the food for which is purchased from local family farms, have stimulated local economies and improved other health and education indicators.

“These are no longer just affirmative action policies. No one doubts Brazil’s commitment to fighting hunger and to the development of the country,” said José Graziano da Silva, director-general elect of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), who was one of the architects of these policies at the beginning of the Lula administration.

Brazil’s experience equips it to make “contributions to social technology” in the wider world, he said.

But Maluf admitted to IPS that, while there has been “a significant reduction in absolute hunger,” there is still some evidence of insufficient food intake, especially among the most vulnerable groups like indigenous people and “quilombola” communities, made up of the descendants of escaped African slaves.

Indigenous Guaraní delegate Delisso Santos Martins, from the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, told IPS that food and nutrition problems in his community are aggravated by the loss of their ancestral lands. “We have no land to farm, and buying in food from outside is expensive,” he complained.

Maluf also spoke about the nutritional quality of the food that people eat.

“Our analysis is moving towards less emphasis on overall hunger, and more on specific nutritional deficiencies caused by the lack of certain nutritional components or micronutrients needed in the diet, like vitamins or trace elements,” he said.

Lawyer Leonardo Ribas, a food security adviser in the southern state of Rio de Janeiro, mentioned a qualitative research study commissioned by the Ministry of Social Development and the Fight Against Hunger, which found micronutrient deficiencies among beneficiaries of the Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) programme, a cash transfer programme for poor families conditional on regular school attendance and health check-ups.

“The results indicated that as income has increased, beneficiaries’ access to food has improved, but some families continue to experience food insecurity,” Ribas told IPS.

One explanation, among others, is that “the foods they were able to buy were more highly processed and industrialised, and therefore insecure from the nutritional point of view,” he said.

In Ribas’ view it is necessary to stimulate production of locally abundant foods that are adapted to local customs, such as wild fruit, which would also promote access to more nutritious and cheaper food.

This conference is the first of its kind organised by the government of President Dilma Rousseff, who, like Lula, belongs to the leftwing Workers’ Party (PT). Rousseff launched the “Brazil Without Poverty” programme, which aims to reach 16 million people who are still living in extreme poverty.

But anti-poverty efforts date back to before the PT came to power. Since the First Conference on Food and Nutrition Security was held in 1994, three important goals have been achieved thanks to joint action by governments and civil society in CONSEA, according to Social Development Minister Tereza Campello.

The first was to place the fight against hunger squarely at the centre of the government agenda; the second was to boost small-scale family farming, which supplies food to the most vulnerable population and improves the rural economy; and the third was to build “an effective alternative for a new model of economic development that guarantees the social inclusion of millions of Brazilians,” said Campello.

The CONSEA conference is attempting to establish a National Food Security System in every state, and is also addressing the issue of the country’s heavy use of toxic agrochemicals.

Brazil, a major agricultural producer, uses more herbicides, fungicides and pesticides than any other country in the world.

“We cannot have family farming alongside agribusiness. We can’t have quality foods when the food contains toxic pesticides,” said small farmer Alayde de Souza, who works as a babassu breaker, opening up the coconuts from babassu palms, in the northern state of Maranhão.

The conference will also discuss production of transgenic grains, and obesity, “a serious nutritional problem in Brazil that is already a public health issue, especially among the poor,” said Maluf.

According to the health ministry, 49 percent of Brazilians are overweight and 16 percent are obese.

Other groups at the conference will address global issues, such as the soaring price of food, which also affects Brazil. “We cannot eradicate extreme poverty with rising food prices,” Maluf concluded.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet and - -
SALVADOR, Brazil, Nov 8 2011 (IPS)

The Brazilian government is extending its fight against hunger to the world stage, by inaugurating a Centre of Excellence Against Hunger to transmit its positive experiences to other developing countries with the help of United Nations agencies.

Giant papayas grown with the help of an underground reservoir in Laginhas, Pernambuco, in Brazil's arid Northeast. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The centre has already established partnerships between the WFP and Brazil, Mozambique, East Timor and Haiti.

“We are working together to develop technical cooperation capacities in African, Latin American and Asian countries, so that they can learn about Brazil’s experience in combating hunger, and eventually develop their own national school meal programmes and anti-poverty policies,” the head of the centre, Daniel Balabán, told IPS.

The Centre of Excellence Against Hunger, created to enable capacity development of national governments in the areas of school lunches, nutrition, and food security, will receive financial, technological and operational resources from Brazilian bodies and from the United Nations.

The goal, according to ABC’s Farani, is “to disseminate good practices in the field of school feeding,” taking advantage of WFP and Brazilian experience in the design, management and expansion of sustainable school meal programmes, as well as to support existing initiatives.

“Brazil has a wealth of experience that can be shared with governments eager to learn how they achieved that success and adapt it to their own countries,” said Sheeran at the launch ceremony in Salvador, the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia. “The Centre will provide a unique South-South bridge to food security.”

The harsh reality is that one in seven people in the world go hungry every day. “When people are hungry, they only have three options – they revolt, they migrate or they die,” Sheeran said at the Fourth National Conference on Food and Nutrition Security, being held Nov. 7-10 in Salvador.

But Brazil has created a fourth option, which is to fight hunger and give children hope for the future, she said.

Brazil’s Zero Hunger programme, which dates from 2003 and combines emergency assistance with job creation and family income support policies, is a recognised success in the field.

The programme, implemented by the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) and continued by his successor, President Dilma Rousseff, achieved a 61 percent reduction in child malnutrition, an eight-fold increase in credit for small farmers and a 15 percent fall in rural poverty, according to Graziano da Silva, one of the architects of the plan.

In tandem with the broader anti-poverty Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) programme, which transfers cash to poor households on condition that the children attend school and keep up-to-date on vaccinations and health check-ups, Zero Hunger helped lift some 28 million people out of poverty in this country of 192 million.

The Centre of Excellence will focus on one of the Zero Hunger initiatives: the school meals programme, which in Brazil delivers three meals a day to 47 million children and teenagers, and is regarded as a global model.

The Centre’s strategy will also be linked to small-scale family agriculture and local food purchasing, “combined in such a way as to feed the children and stimulate local production,” said Farani.

“The idea for the centre arose because of the high demand for Brazilian cooperation in this field,” the Foreign Ministry’s coordinator of international action against hunger, Milton Rondó Filho, told IPS.

“What we did with the school meals programme was to try to develop a sort of virtuous circle. The first concern was the children’s nutrition; better nutrition leads to greater learning ability, and more learning ability together with purchasing food locally promotes local development,” he said.

By law, 30 percent of the food served in school meals must be bought from family farmers in the same local area as the school.

The initiative will also have an impact on gender equality. Rondó Filho mentioned that in western Pakistan, illiteracy among girls is as high as 97 percent.

“The U.N. says that if we introduce school meals, no one will keep girls at home, and they will be sent to school,” he said.

“We’re not trying to convert schools into restaurants; the programme improves not only nutrition but also school attendance and learning ability. And purchasing products in the local area is a huge driver of local development,” he stressed.

Bahia Governor Jaques Wagner, hosting the inaugural ceremony, said that in his state school meals power the local economy, “the corner store, the street markets, and the large produce markets, because it’s a bottom-up income generation scheme.”

The nutritional Centre of Excellence is not intended to reproduce the Brazilian strategy, but to adapt it to the geographical, cultural and ethnic characteristics of the different countries, Mozambique’s vice minister of education, Augusto Jone Luis, said at the launch.

In Mozambique, a country of over 20 million people in southeast Africa where the school meals programme reaches six million schoolchildren and is expected to expand with the help of the centre, success is based on “school nutrition with an educational twist,” said Luis.

Over 2,000 Brazilian participants and 100 international guests are attending the Fourth National Conference on Food and Nutrition Security, where authorities and civil society organisations are assessing progress towards ensuring the right to food, enshrined in Brazil’s constitution last year.

But the country still has pending challenges. Sixteen million people – the participants in the “Brazil Without Poverty” plan initiated by President Rousseff – live on less than 41 dollars a month. And adequate nutrition standards have not yet been met.

This week’s conference, organised by the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security, will address these problems, as well as other worrisome issues, such as the rise of obesity, soil degradation, climate change and toxic agrochemicals.

Excerpt:

News that the government of South Africa was inspired by Brazil’s health system in setting up its own universal coverage scheme might meet with scepticism in this South American country.

Pediatrics waiting room at the Albert Schweitzer hospital in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Agência Brasil Marcello Casal Jr/EBr

Sociologist Walkiria Dutra de Oliveira was one of the many Brazilians who had a negative opinion of the country’s public healthcare system. But she was in for a surprise when she visited a public health clinic in a middle-class neighbourhood in São Paulo.

Oliveira, who had been diagnosed with diabetes eight years earlier and was facing financial problems, decided to seek free insulin from the public health system.

The “prompt, efficient” attention she was given completely changed the image she had of the Sistema Único de Saúde or Single Health System (SUS), which was shaped during the 1980s when the system was restructured to make healthcare a universal right.

Besides insulin, Oliveira was given free medication for her hypothyroidism, she told IPS.

But Dr. Nivaldo Gomes, who has worked in public hospitals and clinics since the 1970s, told IPS that “although there have been some problems in implementation, the idea is excellent and legitimate.”

The government is fighting a battle in parliament to create new sources of financing for the SUS, but in Gomes’ view, “the problems are due to political and administrative issues, not a shortage of money.”

There is a lack of political will to fully implement the principles underlying the SUS, said Gomes and his colleague, Dr. Dilene do Nascimento, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), Brazil’s leading biomedical research institute.

Despite the tragedies caused by medical mistakes and malpractice, the overcrowded hospitals, and the frequent complaints about the system, the SUS has improved health coverage in this country of 192 million people, Nascimento said.

The SUS made it possible to provide everyone with healthcare, while reducing the chaos in the health sector, which was governed in the past by piecemeal policies, she said.

The aim, said Gomes, was to coordinate three levels of public administration – municipal, state and national – that “did not communicate in the past, in the health sector.”

In addition, the SUS was to create a tiered health system with a broad network of primary healthcare clinics at the neighbourhood level and in poor areas on the outskirts of cities, which would refer more serious cases to hospitals and specialist clinics.

The primary health clinics were to relieve the overburdened hospitals.

The new system is based on the concept of democratising health as “a right of all and a duty of the state,” which was incorporated in the 1988 constitution, Nascimento said.

Corruption, aggravated by insufficient inspections, has contributed to the poor execution of the SUS, which is, however, a “universal, tiered, decentralised system with social oversight that can be successfully replicated in any country,” she added.

Primary healthcare system to be adopted in South Africa

The authorities in South Africa want to “borrow” from the SUS primary healthcare system, which “is excellent, far more advanced than us, much more equitable and much more focused on prevention,” South Africa’s minister of health, Pakishe Aaron Motsoaledi, told IPS.

He said the South African government was also interested in replicating Brazil’s network of breast milk banks, which collect and distribute donated breast milk to newborn babies whose mothers cannot supply the milk to meet their needs.

The minister, interviewed during the World Conference on Social Determinants of Health, held Oct. 19-21 in Brazil, also said “we want to eliminate, and not just treat, malaria, and with HIV/AIDS we have got to universalise treatment, just like in Brazil.”

The two governments are drafting a memorandum of understanding for cooperation in health, to be signed in February 2012.

Basic but complex

In Brazil, the lack of health education means people with simple flu symptoms or small injuries continue to go to the large hospitals, which should ideally only receive serious cases referred by the network of primary healthcare givers or by clinics and smaller hospitals.

The SUS was the result of broad debates led in the 1970s and 1980s by specialists in public and collective health, and the new plan awakened “great enthusiasm” in the medical community, Gomes said.

At the time, social security financing of public health was failing, and the system favoured formal sector employment, in a country where a large proportion of the workforce is active in the informal economy.

But the middle and upper classes have opted for private health plans and health insurance providers, Nascimento said.

The private providers are costly, and their political weight undermines the SUS, she said. Moreover, the people who can afford private healthcare still turn to the public system when they need more expensive or complex surgeries or treatment, she added.

That happened, for example, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the mid-1980s – although Brazil adopted a policy of making free anti-retroviral drugs universally available because the country’s pharmaceutical industry was interested, Nascimento said.

But the system’s response to the AIDS epidemic was a SUS success story that should be repeated in the case of other diseases, she added.

Small is beautiful

In order for the system to function more effectively, the primary health network, admired by Minister Motsoaledi, must be expanded, with more clinics and family doctors.

The SUS functions well in smaller towns and cities, where municipal governments make sure it operates properly, said Nascimento.

She said she saw this in the years she worked in São José dos Campos in the southern state of São Paulo, when it was still a medium-sized city.

The problems caused by the shortages of hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, which used to have an excellent network of hospitals, are explained by the influx of patients from the rest of the metropolitan region of 12 million people, Gomes said.

The collapse of the city’s hospital network was predicted 30 years ago, due to pressure from the growing population, if smaller hospitals were not built in Rio’s suburbs and satellite cities, he said.

And that is just what happened, Gomes said, adding that proper implementation of the SUS along its guiding principles would put an end to the problem.

* With reporting by Fabíola Ortiz.

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 20 2011 (IPS)

Brazil is keen to take part in the international effort to expand access to medicines and to produce its own drugs, and will start by becoming the world supplier of medicines to treat Chagas disease.

The announcement was made by Health Minister Alexandre Padilha at the World Conference on Social Determinants of Health, which opened Tuesday Oct. 19 in Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil plans to double its production of medicines to treat Chagas disease, in response to requests from multilateral aid organisations.

This South American country “will take on the commitment of guaranteeing worldwide production of medicines for Chagas disease. This is possible only because of our strategy of partnerships with public and private laboratories,” the health minister said.

Brazil already manufactures 1.2 million tablets a year of the medicine, according to estimates by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO).

“We were about to fill all the demand, but now we will increase production by 113 percent and also deliver 225,000 tablets to Médecins Sans Frontières, who made an urgent request,” Padilha said.

Production of benznidazole, the drug in question, will reach 3.4 million tablets by the end of this year.

In 2008, Brazil became the world’s only producer of the medicine, when the state LAFEPE laboratory in the northeastern state of Pernambuco purchased stocks of ingredients from Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, which ceased to manufacture it.

Chagas disease is a potentially fatal infectious, fever-inducing disease caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, a parasite transmitted by direct contact with the faeces of the blood-sucking “vinchuca” bug, its carrier.

In Brazil, insect transmission has virtually been eliminated, but cases of chronic infection still abound.

Chagas disease occurs mainly in Latin America. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), close to eight million people are infected in the 21 countries where the disease is endemic, half as many people as were infected in 1990.

Access to medicines is a key aspect of the right to health, Padilha said. “Partnership with domestic industry is essential to maintain the Unified Health System (SUS), which is publicly funded and offers universal care,” he said.

According to Padilha, Brazil has made progress over the past 23 years since the SUS was created, offering free health services to the entire population.

“But we still need to improve the quality of care, and increase accountability and control over public health resources. The nearly 40 percent decline in tuberculosis cases over the last 10 years has only been possible because of poverty reduction,” said the minister, referring to the 36 million Brazilians who have been lifted out of poverty in that period.

However, Brazil today is still an extremely unequal country, and access to health services reflects this reality.

One way of ensuring equity in access to treatment is to expand the production of medicines.

The minister took the opportunity to announce that a regulatory system will be implemented for the registration and production of biotech drugs for treating cancer and a number of infectious diseases.

“The idea is to have clearer rules, so that industries here in Brazil can produce these medicines,” Padilha said.

The National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) in Brazil has approved two compendiums of rules for biotech products, which represent a new frontier in medicines.

According to Padilha, the measure is an important stimulus for national production of biotechnological pharmaceuticals, which will bring down prices and expand treatment and care of the population by the SUS.

Only one percent of the medicines used by SUS are the products of biotechnology. However, that small proportion uses up 34 percent of the SUS budget.

But “these products are a new frontier for safer and more effective treatments,” Padilha said.

“In recent Health Ministry negotiations for the purchase of cancer medicines, we managed to cut the cost by almost half. When we start to produce them here in Brazil, we will bring down the price even further,” he said.

The World Conference on Social Determinants of Health, organised by the WHO, is the largest to be held outside WHO headquarters in Geneva in the last 30 years.

Until Friday Oct. 21, representatives from more than 80 countries will be analysing strategies to combat social inequality, which has serious health consequences for their populations.

At the end of the meeting, the Rio Declaration will be adopted, formalising the political commitment of signatory countries to widen access to health services.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said Brazil was the most appropriate country for hosting this conference, because it has overcome many barriers that blocked universal access to public services.

Chan warned that without good access to social services, job opportunities, health, education, water, drainage and adequate housing, there would be growing inequality within and between countries.

Faced with the serious effects of the global financial crisis, the WHO wants governments to commit themselves not to cut spending on health.

The director-general said the mistakes of the 1970s should be avoided, referring to the multiple oil, food and financial crises, which resulted in a decline in investment in social services, health and education.

In 2008, when the financial crisis broke out, the WHO called on the relevant ministries to recognise the importance of counter-cyclical social investment.

Excerpt:

By Kanya D'Almeida
WASHINGTON, Sep 25 2011 (IPS)

Headlines this week have been saturated with protests against unaffordable food, unfair taxes and unsustainable austerity measures, with one distinct difference setting these stories apart from countless others in recent history.

The people demanding reform are no longer marginalised Asians, Africans and Latin Americans, but poor, working class Europeans.

As citizens of Western Europe – particularly in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, or PIGS – flood the streets of their once-stable countries demanding an end to cuts in public education, health care, youth programmes and housing subsidies, the big question at the annual fall convergence of the Bretton Woods Institutions is, “Who will solve the impending crisis in Europe?” Rana Foroohar wrote in Time Magazine last month, “While the crisis appears to be Europe’s problem, if it results in a break-up of the euro zone or a growth-dampening series of costly bailouts, it will reverberate from Beijing to Boston and back.”

“Europe is the largest trading partner of… China. If they stop buying our stuff, everyone suffers. Meanwhile, a dissolution of the union would make nations from Asia to Latin America that hold the Euro as a reserve currency much weaker,” she added.

Small wonder then the world’s leading emerging markets– Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, or BRICS – took centre-stage at the World Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington this week, discussing everything from possible investment in troubled euro zone sovereign bonds to domestic job creation.

The BRICS possess a combined 4.3 trillion dollars in hard cash reserves, with China holding three-quarters of the kitty, much of it in Euros.

Following the “Lehman Crash” and ensuing financial crisis in 2008, the BRIC countries experienced the fastest rebound, with India and Latin America springing back to life with surprising resilience to the shock waves.

The result has been a shifting of the power relations within the economic arena increasingly towards emerging economies, which will likely account for 60 percent of global economic growth by 2014.

A communiqué issued following a meeting of BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors Thursday expressed a stern warning to the developed world to “adopt responsible macroeconomic and financial policies, avoid creating excessive global liquidity and undertake structural reforms to lift growth”.

Given the fact that nearly every euro zone country has flouted the three-percent annual budget deficit limit and the 60-percent debt-to- GDP ratio, the BRICS’s concern appears to be well founded.

“The BRICS are open to consider, if necessary, providing support through the IMF or other IFI (international financial institution) in order to address the present challenges to global financial stability, depending on individual country circumstances,” the communiqué stated, though it steered clear of hard numbers or blueprints for such actions.

“What everyone has to realise is that we, as a cluster of nations, face an enormous demand for resources at home, particularly in the realm of (poverty reduction),” D. Subbarao, governor of India’s Reserve Bank, told the press on Thursday.

“This causes an incredible amount of tension between allocating money to multilateral institutions for the sake of global stability and meeting stability at home,” he added.

In fact, the Bank’s release Wednesday of a report calling for more and better jobs in South Asia predicted that the region, home to half a billion poor people, will have to generate 1.2 million jobs every month over the next 20 years, equivalent to about 40 percent of the increase in the global labour force, in order to ward off extreme poverty and unemployment.

“Most of us are democracies, so we are constrained by democratic processes of when and how much is given to the (global pool) of monetary reserves,” Subbarao added at the press conference, a likely reference to China as one of the only economic players capable of acting outside of the will of the majority of its people.

Numerous economists have echoed this view, tempering the media speculation that the BRICS will “save the day”.

“When people talk about the BRICS, they really mean China, and to a lesser extent India and Brazil,” Omar Dahi, professor of development economics at Hampshire College, told IPS.

“However, while (these countries) have the clout to be heard on international policy as well as to refuse the impositions of the Quad (the United States, the European Union, Canada and Japan), they do not yet have the ability to reshape international economic policy and certainly not to pull Europe or the U.S. out of its slump.”

“The BRICS are not thinking or speaking in unison,” Susan Schadler, a visiting fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and former deputy director of the IMF’s European Department, told IPS.

“I would not look to a large contribution to financing from the BRICS soon. A token contribution is all that is likely in the immediate future. What would be the incentive for the BRICS to expose themselves on a significant scale to the risk inherent in the European situation, when the high saving countries of Europe (such as Germany) are worried about their (own) exposure?” she asked.

Stubborn Inequalities

The dominant view of South-South cooperation indicates that a “shifting of the power relations” will somehow end the legacy of economic hegemony by now waning superpowers.

But discussions between the BRICS this week threw that assumption into question.

Chinese national economist Luo Xiaopeng said earlier this week, “After so many years of humiliation (from Europe), they (are now) kneeling down to beg from us and you cannot underestimate the satisfaction and joy that Chinese politicians derive (from this).”

“If the euro zone collapses because of the (PIGS), it would result in a global financial crisis,” said Yukon Huang, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, adding that China was unlikely to lend a hand until Europe came up with a solid solution on its own.

“China is not going to put its money into a situation where there are enormous risks and only downsides,” Huang added.

Projections like this suggest that “whatever country or group of countries holds significant shares of global wealth will be driven to preserve their wealth and place in the global economy,” Schadler told IPS.

“I doubt that from the point of view of creating a more equal opportunity for the most and least wealthy countries of the world, having former colonies or developing countries in the driver’s seat will make much difference. The ways in which China has pursued its self interests in establishing its interests in commodity producing countries and resisting calls for ending global imbalances perfectly (encapsulates) this,” she added.

“While increased south-south integration, trade, and foreign direct investment have reduced reliance on Northern markets, it has also led to rising inequalities within the global South as well as tensions between rising powers – China’s presence in Africa is an example of benefits and drawbacks of this cooperation,” Dahi told IPS.

“More broadly, we are witnessing a worldwide crisis of capitalism, and the type of global economy that will emerge is still not clear,” he added.

Excerpt:

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 22 2011 (IPS)

African countries are increasingly taking up Brazil’s offer of training in the art of diplomacy, seeing it as a partner that could help them set up or improve their own foreign service institutes.

“Each request is analysed separately to assess the viability of offering support and cooperation in that field to the interested country,” Georges Lamazière, director general of the Rio Branco Institute, in charge of selecting and training Brazilian diplomats, told IPS.

“Every year we offer scholarships to 15 foreign students to go to Brasilia, most of whom come from Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa,” said Lamazière.

Another recent initiative is the Course for African Diplomats offered by the foreign ministry’s Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation.

The second edition of the course, running Sep. 12-23 in Rio de Janeiro, is currently attended by delegates from 12 African countries: Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

According to the foreign ministry, the aim is to bolster South-South cooperation and the exchange of experiences in the course, where lectures are given by experts from Brazil as well as the different African nations.

Isabel Patrícia Ribeiro, third secretary of bilateral cooperation in the Africa department of Angola’s foreign ministry, told IPS “It is always good to seek experience in diplomacy for our country. Today Brazil and Angola are cooperating in different fields, like education, civil construction and post-war infrastructure.”

The young diplomat, the only representative of Angola – and of Portuguese-speaking Africa – in the course, lived in Brazil for eight years, where she earned a graduate degree in international relations. In her view, there are no barriers to bilateral cooperation, nor is Brazil acting in an imperialist fashion.

“A country that has gone through wars needs partners; I don’t see it as an invasion. Angola has to show openness in order to develop,” she added, referring to Angola’s 1961-1974 war of independence from Portugal and 1975-2002 civil war.

Bernard Kaporo Legoti, a member of the Brazil department in South Africa’s foreign ministry, said the course offered by Brazil was, ironically, a good place to meet diplomats from different parts of Africa and learn about the situations in their countries, which vary widely.

“This is now the opportunity to be closer and sit down and talk about other issues that we consider debatable to enhance our relations as Africans,” Legoti added.

Furthermore, he said, Brazil and South Africa – as members of the IBSA forum, along with India – could gain a deeper mutual understanding of the challenges facing South Africa in areas like the economy, health and agriculture.

“We are having problems with HIV/AIDS, maybe Brazil will share how to get out information to improve” the distribution of medicines, he said.

“We also know that Brazil has done a lot of initiatives to reduce poverty,” which he said his country could learn from as well.

With regard to the three IBSA nations, he said “I see cordial relations; it is a balanced relationship…There is no hegemony.”

Brazil has the second largest black population of any country in the world, after Nigeria, with half of the population of 192 million considering themselves “black” or “brown” in the census.

And Brazil has relations with every country in Africa, where it has 37 embassies.

Nineteen of the embassies have been opened in the last eight years, during the two terms of former left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), whose government put a new priority on relations with that region.

“No Brazilian president had ever made so many trips to Africa as Lula: he visited more than 25 countries,” the head of the Brazilian foreign ministry’s Africa department, Nedilson Ricardo Jorge, told IPS. “Those high-level visits opened doors.”

And in that same period, 28 African leaders visited Brazil.

These ties involve cooperation marked by reciprocity, “in accordance with the demands and needs of the country that is receiving it,” instead of the “uni-directional” nature of the flow of North-South aid, he said.

“South-South cooperation also brings fruits for Brazil and is based on solidarity and mutual interest. The technical areas in which Brazil is making the most progress are the ones in which there is cooperation with other countries,” he said.

“We have visions that differ greatly from those of certain countries on how to help others develop. We do not believe it is by means of military operations, sanctions, embargoes or other kinds of pressure. It is by means of integration, not isolation,” Jorge said.

Brazil itself has recently tackled or overcome problems similar to those faced today by the nations of Africa. “There is a more natural dialogue; that is one important difference. The fact that we do not use military force has a major influence,” he said.

And Africa is offering promising opportunities.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), of the 10 countries set to show the highest average annual GDP growth rates from here to 2015, seven are in Africa: Ethiopia (8.1 percent), Mozambique (7.7 percent), Tanzania (7.2), Democratic Republic of the Congo (7.0), Ghana (7.0), Zambia (6.9) and Nigeria (6.8 percent).

However, there are still obstacles standing in the way of Brazil’s insertion in Africa, Jorge said.

The main hurdle is limited connectivity, “the air and sea connections. Without more air routes, we are really reaching the limits of expansion” of exchange and trade, he said.

More than 70 percent of international flights out of Africa go to Europe, while a mere 0.4 percent go to Brazil.

Excerpt:

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 20 2011 (IPS)

The world’s newest nation, South Sudan, is seeking support from Brazil – the first country in the world to recognise the new nation – in learning the art of diplomacy and defusing tensions and persistent conflicts.

Brazil could be a "trusted partner" in South Sudan's negotiations with Sudan, says James Padiet Angok. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Brazil could be a “trusted partner” to help the new country negotiate with Sudan to the north and learn “how to conduct diplomacy,” said James Padiet Angok, in charge of relations with South America in South Sudan’s recently created Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

“Until now people don’t know that Brazil was the first country that established diplomatic relations with South Sudan, on the first day of our independence,” Angok said when he sat down with IPS for an interview during the Second Course for African Diplomats offered Sep. 12-23 by Brazil’s Foreign Ministry in Rio de Janeiro.

Representatives from Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe are taking part in the course.

Q: How is the construction of the new country’s foreign policy going? A: Since the time of our independence on the 9th of July, we have started to sit down to try to design our foreign policy and also to determine in which countries we can open our embassies.

We are doing it in three phases: first, the countries where we will start this year, where the mission of South Sudan already had offices, about 21 countries. We started with the most representative such as the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa. Unfortunately we didn’t have any in South America, we only had offices in Europe, North America and Africa. Now we are just sending our ambassadors and diplomats to those offices that are already established.

The second phase is to add more embassies (up to a total of) 36; Brazil will be one of them, starting next year, 2012.

Then we will add more embassies in Europe, Asia and Africa. In Europe: in Switzerland, Holland and France; in Asia: in India, China, Malaysia, Japan and probably Indonesia.

Q: You are taking part in the Second Course for African Diplomats organised by Brazil’s Foreign Ministry in Rio de Janeiro. Why were you interested? What do you think Brazil can offer the countries of Africa? A: Three of us came to this course, one to give a lecture. We want to show Brazil our background, how we came to be an independent country. We are here…to learn from Brazil how they conduct their diplomacy, in which areas we can really cooperate with them. This course is very important for us.

One of the important things we can learn from Brazil is diplomacy in party politics; Brazil has succeeded in that. We want also to learn from Brazil the practical part of diplomacy, especially war and peace, in order to resolve problems using diplomacy rather than violence.

Q: Do you believe Brazil can help with your country’s diplomacy and foreign policy? A: We are trying to establish our diplomatic institute, we want to learn from Brazil how they translate their values in the training programme and then train their diplomats to lead Brazilian diplomacy in a professional way.

We are establishing a new institute, and we discovered that Brazil was one of the best when it comes to the practice of diplomacy, because Brazil manages the interests of the political parties (under the umbrella of) national diplomacy, it doesn’t take sides with any political party, and that is exactly what we want. So if there is any change of government or regime it doesn’t affect the diplomacy, which continues.

Q: Why learn from a developing country rather than looking for support from rich nations? A: We see Brazil as a developing country and the development gap between us and Brazil is not so wide. At least Brazil is humble towards us, we can learn from Brazil more than from the advanced countries who are sometimes very proud. We find Brazil very welcoming, especially to African countries.

Until now people don’t know that Brazil was the first country that established diplomatic relations with South Sudan, on the first day of our independence. This is very significant.

Q: You don’t see Brazil’s interest, and that of its companies, in Africa as an invasion or a kind of neo-imperialism? A: Brazil is totally different, it is a welcoming country and it doesn’t meddle in the affairs of other countries, it doesn’t dictate to other countries and doesn’t impose democracy by force.

These are some of the things that have attracted us to Brazil, the hospitality and the non-interference in the affairs of other countries. Brazil can only advise, they tell how they have done things, but they will not force you to do things, and this is the spirit we want really for us.

Q: Five decades of war before South Sudan became independent cost the lives of two million people. And the country is still facing internal tensions and conflicts. A: Nation building is a challenge. Sudan has been struggling to build a nation in this violent struggle it couldn’t resolve by diplomatic means. The result was separation, but the separation didn’t solve things, the internal problems remain both in the North and the South.

(We think we can find solutions by learning) the way of diplomacy from Brazil. We don’t need to rush into violence when there are differences. Yes we have a lot of tribal (conflicts over land distribution and) oil reserves. A lot of factors can easily draw us into violence, but the best way is how we can learn to resolve by dialogue and negotiation. So the challenges are still great for us; unity of our people is still very difficult.

We have 61 ethnic groups with 61 languages. We believe that in the new generation coming in the future we are going to overcome (the difficulties this poses). Ten years from now, the new generation which was not really involved in the war and violence will resolve differences in a more diplomatic manner. The generation we have now is traumatised because of the long wars.

Q: Independence was officially declared, but the borders between the North and the South have not been demarcated. How will this problem be worked out? Do you advocate “soft borders”, because of the movements of nomadic tribes? A: This border issue is one of the crucial post-independence issues pending between us and the North. The border with Sudan – about 2,000 km – is the longest border we have. It is a bit tricky because of the aspect of oil along the border, and also the tribal afflictions. When a country divides, if you don’t determine the borders, you won’t know which oil belongs (to which side). The soft border is tricky and it needs negotiation…to divide this oil in a fair manner.

If we just leave it like that without negotiation it can create conflicts. This is what we can learn from Brazil, how to negotiate this, and where Brazil could be of great help to us. We know Brazil doesn’t take sides easily.

We have this issue of the tribes which is connected to the days of the struggle. We have tribes on the border who have been struggling with the people of South Sudan against the regime in Khartoum (the capital of Sudan). But when we divided, by definition they belong to the North – but they feel uneasy and more identified with us in the South.

According to statistics from 2010, the population is 8.5 million in South Sudan, and in (the disputed territory of) Abyei we have like 600,000. The Abyei people originally are Dinka from the South, but by the CPA’s (2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement) definition of the borders they belong to the North.

Now they were given the referendum to decide, but the referendum didn’t take place because it was difficult to determine who really should vote and that’s why we see violence in Abyei.

Regarding the (state of) Blue Nile, they have what they call popular consultation. Within the CPA they are supposed to have a popular consultation done in the parliament, an elected parliament, to determine whether the CPA has given them good peace dividends or not, and if it has not, they can recommend what more can be done.

This didn’t take place so far (because of) the complications with the census. They didn’t accept the census, the people of Blue Nile and (the state of) Southern Kordofan rejected the census because they think it’s not their numbers.

So the census has to be redone and this delayed the popular consultations. Now it is apparent this issue becomes a bit critical because they think they belong to us in the South more than to the North. So now where do they belong to is the dilemma which they have.

This will need a lot of diplomacy, those are people who have had guns for more than 20 years. How do you tell them just to go home and lay down their arms. It is becoming difficult and results in violence, bombing and fighting.

Q: Is there a risk of a new civil war? A: Yes, the risk is real, but we in the South must control this risk because if we decide to respond today there will be war. But we decided that it is not time for us in the South to get involved in a war, there is no time for us to venture into the affairs of Sudan. We think that these issues should be resolved by diplomacy, not by war.

Q: What is the situation with regard to bringing basic services to the population? A: We have a big challenge in terms of food security. We don’t produce enough, so we import from Uganda, Kenya and Sudan itself, but these days Sudan has closed its border, so it is very difficult…there is no trade between us and Sudan now.

Most of the oil is in the South but the pipeline goes from the South to the refineries in the North. We decided that we should not close off the oil flow, trade is closed but the pipeline is still working because if we closed it we would have a problem in our budget, 99 percent of which comes from oil. So if the oil (flow is shut down), our budget drops to zero. We are thinking we can negotiate and have trade agreements so they can reopen and we get our food.

The oil goes from us in the South to the North to be refined, but we don’t get fuel from the North, so we get it from Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya. And in Juba (the capital of South Sudan) we are having a crisis regarding fuel.

So far we are still depending on our neighbours. We think the North is an important neighbour for us and we need to negotiate. We think Brazil can help to negotiate and could be a trusted partner who could mediate in a neutral manner. This is the best way to do it.

*/Attention editors: This story corrects and expands the interviewee’s response in paragraphs 31 to 35 in the article moved earlier on Sep. 20, 2011./

Excerpt:

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 15 2011 (IPS)

Wilson Nicolas, from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was the first African refugee to find his way to Brazil’s Amazon jungle region, and seems to have started a trend.

Family of Congolese refugees in Brazil. Credit: UNHCR/L.F.Godinho

According to United Nations figures, since 2010 some 30 refugees from Africa who have requested asylum from the Brazilian government are living in Amazon jungle states. The asylum-seekers are from Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Nigeria and Sierra Leone in West Africa, Kenya in East Africa, Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, and the DRC.

Nicolas came to São Paulo in late 2009, following a contact who had offered him a job when he escaped from the DRC. From there he continued on to Boa Vista, capital of the state of Roraima in the extreme north, where he found himself on his own, and discovered that it had been an empty promise.

With assistance he made it to Manaus, capital of the northern state of Amazonas and the largest city in the Amazon, and with the help of the Pastoral do Migrante, a Catholic organisation that serves migrants and refugees, he filed an application for asylum with the Federal Police and the Brazilian National Committee for Refugees (CONARE).

His request was accepted in February and he became the first African refugee living in Brazil’s rainforest.

“We are now seeing a new kind of refugee in the Amazon,” Luiz Fernando Godinho, spokesman for the local office of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), told IPS. “This region, which generally receives more people from South America, like Colombians and Bolivians, has started to see an influx from Africa.

“It is a small and unobtrusive change, but we started noticing it two years ago,” he added.

Over the telephone, Nicolas told IPS in short, clipped sentences that he left the DRC “because of the war. Even after the (2003) peace agreement, there were areas in conflict. In the place where I was, there was a fight between two rival tribes who lived in the area.”

In 2009, Nicolas had been sent as a geological specialist by the government to the northern city of Dongo, near the Ubangi border river in the province of Équateur, to organise the distribution of land and food.

“When we got there, we tried to bring about reconciliation among the tribes, but a war over land distribution broke out,” he said. The conflict quickly escalated, involving heavily armed groups, and Nicolas was accused of being a government spy.

The violence between the Boba and Lobala clans spread throughout Équateur, and more than 100,000 people fled to neighbouring countries, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“We escaped to the jungle,” he said. “I walked for days and weeks, my feet were all swollen. There were so many people fleeing, children and mothers with babies.”

That particular conflict was just one of a string of wars in the DRC, where four to five million people have been killed since the mid-1990s.

The wars in several countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa have taken the form of ethnic clashes and genocide, but have roots in the multiple international interests vying for strategic control over huge mineral deposits.

While he was hiding in the forest near the border with the Congo Republic, Nicolas lost the notion of time. And he has not seen his family again – his wife, children and siblings – although he receives small amounts of money from them, to help him survive.

Nicolas speaks several languages: Lingala – a Bantu language spoken in northwestern DRC – French, Swahili, English and Portuguese. But the word “saudade” (longing or nostalgia in Portuguese) takes on new meaning for him when he talks about how much he misses his loved ones.

“I have suffered so much from being separated from my family,” he says. But he has no means of travelling, and nothing to offer them in Manaus.

He lives on borrowed money and on what he manages to earn teaching French. And he takes advantage of any temporary work he can find. But since he does not have his diplomas, to validate his university studies in Brazil, he cannot find work in his area of expertise: geoinformatics and remote detection.

“I hope to find a job and gain stability in my life,” he says.

Brazil’s Amazon jungle region is now home to 140 refugees, mainly from Bolivia, and another 700 asylum-seekers of different nationalities who are waiting for a response from the government on their applications. The process takes up to six months.

This country of 192 million people has no quotas for refugees, of which it receives relatively few. According to the country’s law on refugees, passed in 1997, entering the country with false documents does not disqualify a foreign national from applying for asylum.

Most of the roughly 4,500 refugees in Brazil are in the southeast, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo – the main ports of entry – and in the state of Rio Grande do Sul and the interior of the state of São Paulo.

Sixty four percent of the total – 2,841 – are from Africa. The largest groups are from Angola (1,686), Colombia (634), DRC (462), Liberia (258) and Iraq (203), according to Conare, which is made up of representatives of several ministries, civil society organisations and the UNHCR as an observer.

Nicolas does not plan to go back. “My country has to be at peace and safe, in order for me to return. Today I am a refugee and I’m going to stay in Brazil. Life is always a battle, and you have to struggle hard to survive.”

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 13 2011 (IPS)

At a time when the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti has once again been drawing attention for alleged abuses, Brazilians have begun to ask themselves whether their first experience in leading such a force has brought them more headaches than prestige.

When he was named defence minister in early August, Celso Amorim said one of his chief focuses would be to “reformulate” Brazil’s participation in the peacekeeping operation in Haiti. The scandal involving alleged sexual assault of an 18-year-old Haitian man by Uruguayan peacekeeping troops had not yet broken out.

Brazil heads the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), where it has the largest contingent of troops: 1,280, followed by Uruguay’s 1,136.

On Thursday, Sept. 8, the foreign and defence ministers of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) countries meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay adopted the position expressed earlier by Amorim, when he said the peacekeeping forces could not stay in Haiti forever, but that an irresponsible withdrawal was not a possibility either.

In a proposal to the U.N. Security Council, UNASUR will recommend the gradual reduction of troops until reaching the number present in the Caribbean island nation before the January 2010 earthquake.

The Security Council is set to reach a decision on the issue on Oct. 15.

MINUSTAH grew from 9,000 to 12,200 troops after the devastating quake: 8,700 military forces and 3,500 police from a number of countries in South America and around the world.

Brazil assumed leadership of the mission that replaced, on Jun. 1, 2004, the U.S.-led multinational provisional force, in the midst of an explosive social situation after the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The decision by the government of then president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) was aimed at “demonstrating the country’s military capacity, in its campaign for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council,” according to historian Marcelo Carreiro at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

“It had to prove itself capable of providing security on its own continent,” said Carreiro, an expert on international relations and national security and defence.

In an interview with IPS, the academic also cited a domestic reason for taking part in the mission in Haiti: the military leadership’s aim to train its troops to take part in maintaining law and order: “basically, to turn the defence forces into support for internal law enforcement.

“The operating conditions in Haiti would allow troops to be trained in urban settings very similar to the areas that would be the scenario of future military operations in Brazil – the favelas (shantytowns) – using guerrilla tactics, and would enable them to gain an in-depth familiarity with the particularities of the terrain.”

William Goncalves, an international relations analyst at the Rio de Janeiro State University, said the goal was “to demonstrate Brazil’s new foreign policy focus,” which he described as “a willingness to provide support to all of its neighbours, especially the weakest and most defenceless.”

Another analyst, Clovis Brigagao, concurs with Carreiro that “it was a kind of gambit” in Brazil’s bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Brazil needed to show that it deserved that seat, said Brigagao, director of the Centre of Studies on the Americas and coordinator of the Group of Analysis on International Conflict Prevention (GAPCon) at the Cándido Mendes University in Rio de Janeiro.

“Brazil assumed the military command of the mission to demonstrate to the international community that it had shifted away from its position of non-intervention in the affairs of another state,” and that it was acting on the basis of “the concept of solidarity,” Brigagao told IPS.

A kind of intervention that does not convince everyone, and that makes some uncomfortable.

The case of the assault on the local teenager by Uruguayan troops, apparently captured on a cellphone video, came on top of reports of underage sex – more than 100 Sri Lankan troops were sent home in 2007 due to accusations of sex with minors – mistreatment and excesses by members of MINUSTAH, and allegations that the peacekeeping mission was responsible for the cholera epidemic that has killed more than 6,000 Haitians.

Studies have shown that the genomes of the Haitian cholera strain are virtually identical to those found in Nepal at the time peacekeepers from that country were posted in Haiti in 2010.

“The presence of Brazilian troops in Haiti is unsustainable,” Joao Pedro Stédile, a leader of Brazil’s MST landless movement and of the international peasant movement Via Campesina, told IPS. “The military is merely playing a policing role.”

“The armed forces are only supposed to protect national sovereignty, in their own country,” he added, in a viewed shared by many social movements in Brazil.

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), said Brazil was unintentionally playing into the hands of the U.S. government, which he said was the “main force” behind the toppling of Aristide.

“(Brazil) didn’t realise that what the United States was doing in Haiti was exactly what they did in Venezuela in 2002. They just organised a coup against a democratically elected government,” Weisbrot told IPS.

Carreiro questioned why MINUSTAH stayed in Haiti after fulfiling its goal of guaranteeing a minimum level of security for the transition to a new government. In fact, two elections have been held since the peacekeeping mission began, in 2005 and 2011.

“If MINUSTAH’s objective was to guarantee the conditions for elections to be held, and disarm the gangs, why is it still operating today? The local population is understandably seeing the mission more and more like an international occupation force,” he said.

The analyst believes MINUSTAH’s biggest mistake was “its starting point,” given that Aristide “never said he had resigned.”

“The string of developments that led to a power vacuum and the establishment of a transitional government were never completely clarified. That means MINUSTAH may well have backed a coup or external interference,” he said.

But Tullo Vigevani, a professor of international relations at São Paulo State University, said MINUSTAH had not failed but had achieved “possible results” in the midst of “an extremely slow” post-quake economic and social reconstruction process.

Among other achievements, he mentioned “the relative alleviation of the humanitarian crisis” and “a certain reduction in crime levels.”

Vigevani said Haiti “still has no state; it’s a non-state.”

Above and beyond their different assessments of the mission, the analysts agreed that Brazil’s military participation in the mission should be wound down, while channels of civilian humanitarian cooperation are strengthened.

“What the government and the people of Brazil should do is support economic and social development projects,” said Stédile.

Brigagao said: “The goals for which Brazil decided to participate in Haiti – creating security – have already been achieved, relatively speaking.

“What are needed now are other things, which are not necessarily military, but civilian development-oriented goals, such as creating infrastructure, like roads,” he added.

Goncalves said the success of a mission depends to a large extent on how fast it is completed. “When the presence of foreign military troops is extended in time, regardless of how good things are going, problems start to appear.

“In view of this, and also taking into account that at some point the Haitians themselves will have to assume complete responsibility for the future of their country, it’s clear that it’s time to start arranging the withdrawal; but that shouldn’t mean that Brazil will stop providing the assistance it planned to offer the country,” he said.

Apart from MINUSTAH, Brazil has participated in social and development projects in Haiti, as part of another aim of its foreign policy: South-South cooperation.

*With additional reporting from Elizabeth Whitman at the United Nations in New York.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 5 2011 (IPS)

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is starting to gain support for a war on corruption that she is quietly waging.

Dilma Rousseff greets beneficiaries of a government social programme. Credit: Roberto Stuckert Filho/PR - president's office of Brazil

But in the eight months she has been in office dozens of top-level officials, including her chief of staff, the agriculture and transportation ministers and the undersecretary of tourism, from the PT as well as allied parties, have been removed from their posts on charges of corruption.

This has earned Rousseff a reputation she may not want – a champion of the cause against corruption – and support from the streets she did not ask for, but which may come in handy.

“This is not Ancient Rome,” Rousseff retorted when the press asked about the many heads that were rolling in her cabinet. “This ranking to keep track of resignations is not appropriate for government,” she said.

Rousseff’s reluctance to acknowledge her fight against corruption has nothing to do with modesty; it stems from her attempt to preserve the delicate balance of power among the forces allied to the PT in Congress.

In the lower house, the PT is the party with the largest number of representatives – 86 out of a total of 513. And in the Senate, with 14 of the 81 seats, it is the second largest party, after the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), which holds 20.

These numbers mean the PT does not have a simple majority in either house and must rely on the support of the representatives of the 15 allied parties, which are widely diverse ideologically speaking.

So far, since the ministry “clean up” began – triggered by accusations that range from illicit enrichment to diversion of funds and administrative irregularities – the government has lost one of its allies, the Republican Party.

And within the ranks of the PMDB, the largest party in the governing coalition, discontent has grown to the point of threatening to block the measures necessary to pass the budget, at a time in which cutting public spending is crucial.

For political analyst Maurício Santoro, of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, it is not clear just how far the president is willing to go to fight corruption, or even if “she’s doing anything more than just reacting to accusations.”

But, whether intentionally or unintentionally, Rousseff is certainly “doing more than any other president” before her on this front, Santoro told IPS.

And Santoro is not the only one who thinks so. This month 22 senators formed the Inter-Party Front for Combating Corruption and Impunity precisely with the goal of ensuring parliamentary support for Rousseff, as a way of countering possible defections.

The government is being “blackmailed,” said Senator Pedro Simón, a PMDB politician who acts independently and is one of the founders of the Front, which has already begun coordinating strategies with organisations such as the Brazilian bar association and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The senator called on all parties to “reflect on” the situation and urged the president to choose her ministers among candidates who are “qualified and have an honest background.”

In the opinion of the Front, Rousseff is on the right track and should continue removing any officials implicated in scandals, even if it means going against members of her own party, as in the case of former chief of staff Antonio Palocci, whose massive increase in wealth aroused suspicion.

“We made our support for President Dilma clear. If necessary, she can count on us to bring the Brazilian people out on the streets to back any measures she proposes to fight corruption,” said one of the Front members, Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, of the opposition leftwing Socialism and Freedom Party.

People are already mobilising on their own. A number of anti-corruption groups have emerged on the Facebook social networking site and are rapidly expanding. The group “Everyone Against Corruption,” for example, has received support from over 19,000 people for a public demonstration scheduled for Sept. 20 in Rio de Janeiro.

“I don’t support any political group or party in particular, but I do have this uncontrollable urge to put a STOP to this shameless corruption,” the group announces in Facebook. “I’m Brazilian and Carioca (from Rio de Janeiro) and I’m not going to stand for it anymore.”

The movement urges demonstrators to come to the march in green and yellow, the colours of the Brazilian flag.

According to former congressman Fernando Gabeira of the opposition Green Party (PV), all the government has done so far is remove a few ministers from office in response to accusations in the media.

“The government has simply reacted to an anti-corruption campaign, but it hasn’t yet led its own campaign against corruption,” Gabeira told IPS.

“There are powerful forces within the government that don’t want this anti-corruption movement to prosper,” he said in allusion to allied parties and politicians who “have been driven by the prospect of power and wealth.”

The PV leader is not optimistic.

“President Dilma seems to be torn between not aggravating her allies – some of whom are compromised by corruption – and satisfying the needs of the people, especially now that we face a global economic crisis,” Gabeira said.

In his view, the PT’s main goal is to keep up the strong levels of economic growth and continue forging ahead with the redistribution of wealth, and in that context, corruption is seen as merely “collateral damage.”

Gabeira compared Brazil with India, where strong anti-corruption movements are emerging, and said Brazil needs the same thing.

“We’ve realised that corruption is keeping Brazil and India from reaching their full potential in the world economy,” he said.

A study by the Federation of Industries of Sao Paulo found that every year Brazil loses 1.38 to 2.3 percent of GDP to corruption.

The March 2010 study estimated that the lost revenue – some 26 to 43 billion dollars – could cover the cost of sending 16.4 million new students to public school, supplying electricity to 24.6 million people or building sewer systems for 23.3 million households.

Excerpt:

Studies by the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Academic Forum on food security issues in the three countries suggest that providing food access works best when backed by cash transfers.

A paper on food security brought out by the UNDP’s Brasilia-based International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), under the Forum, shows that despite the great strides in food production made by India people in this country are just not eating enough.

Citing indices of the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and International Food Policy Research Institution, the paper shows that India needs to improve on poverty, hunger, nutrient intake and per capita consumption.

Ramesh Chand, director of New Delhi-based National Centre for Agricultural Economics, who was involved in preparing the paper, said the Indian situation calls for a mix of food distribution and cash transfers.

Chand told IPS that India’s decline in cereal production since 1995 is a cause for concern.

“Either we ensure access to nutrition through livestock foods, production of which has increased, or we address the decline in cereal intake by the poor,” says Chand. “Since the markets can’t support this huge intake, I feel a mix of cash and grains is necessary,” explains Chand.

India’s main tool for access to food, besides a mid-day school meal scheme, is its vast targeted public distribution system (TPDS), the world’s largest food distribution mechanism benefiting 160 million families.

Food subsidies in the 2010 – 2011 annual budget saw 14 billion dollars allocated to meet the difference between the actual cost of foodgrains and sale prices fixed under welfare schemes including the TDPS and also to maintain buffers stocks of wheat and rice.

The TPDS, however, is acknowledged, even by the government, to have huge infrastructural and systemic flaws, with significant numbers of the poor being excluded from its subsidy ambit.

P.V. Satheesh, founder of the Deccan Development Society, a voluntary agency which has successfully shown that indigenous grains are an infallible method of addressing overall food security, suggests introducing locally grown millets into India’s PDS.

Currently, the transportation of rice and wheat to all parts of the country in the PDS is expensive, and deterring the production of nutritious millets. Production of white, polished rice is also environmentally destructive, being water and chemical-intensive agriculture.

“Millets address food, health, fodder and livelihoods by being cultivable almost everywhere,” Satheesh explained to IPS.

Brazil-style cash transfers, suggested by the IBSA Academic Forum, are currently controversial in India, with the new Food Security Bill, tabled to be passed in parliament in the coming weeks, recommending it as one of several measures.

A group of research scholars, including prominent development economist Jean Dreze, wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, In July, opposing cash transfers as an alternative to the PDS.

“We urge you to ensure that the National Food Security Act includes the strongest possible safeguards against a hasty transition from food entitlements to cash transfers”, the letter requested the prime minister.

“Cash transfers will be a disaster; Brazil’s position is not the same as that of India,” Satheesh told IPS.

As per FAO’s Hunger Map 2010, undernourishment actually increased in India, from 20 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2007, whereas it dropped from 11 percent to six percent in Brazil during the same period. It has remained consistently very low (under five percent) in South Africa.

Brazil’s food security measures are an integrated mix of its zero hunger strategy of over 20 programmes in strengthening access to food, family agriculture and income generation.

One significant strategy has been Brazil’s Food Acquisition Programme (PAA), a system of public procurement and distribution under which food was bought from 138,000 farmers in 2009, and donated to 13 million people. Its budget in 2009 was 300 million dollars.

But Brazil’s proven strongpoint has been its Bolsa Familia (PBF) programme of conditional cash transfers launched in 2003, using over eight billion dollars to reach 12 million households in 2010.

PBF gives monthly cash payments to pre-defined poor families provided they fulfill education and health stipulations, basically related to pre- and postnatal care, school attendance and immunization.

The IBSA paper suggests India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee, ensuring work for pay for rural households, as a feature worth emulating.

In South Africa, as per its General Household Survey 2009, 20 percent of households have inadequate or severely inadequate access to food.

“The largest expenditure is on social welfare programmes, grants and cash transfers which assist in providing people money with which to buy food,” said Josee Koch, contributor to a 2011 policy document by the Wahenga Institute on public support for food security in India, Brazil and South Africa.

“The social grants are critical,” Koch says. “If you look at an analysis of what poor households spend on food, it’s between 50 to 70 percent of income that goes towards food. With rising food prices, there is little chance that this proportion will drop.”

There is debate in South Africa over the sustainability of grants, with concerns raised over the large number of recipients against the size of the workforce whose taxes must support them.

In contrast, Brazil’s Interministerial Chamber on Food and National Security and the National Council of Food and Nutritional Security, both at high political levels, have been significantly effective in a co-ordinated effort at all the related indices to food security.

India, says the IBSA paper, can in turn offer its experience in consolidating a rights-based approach to food security.

Indian civil society’s Right to Food Campaign has used the courts to guarantee basic entitlements.

*With reporting by Terna Gyuse in Cape Town

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 29 2011 (IPS)

A scientific alliance in which developing countries are playing a key role has taken on the challenge of producing paediatric AIDS drugs, an area that is no longer a priority for pharmaceutical companies because mother-to-child transmission of HIV has virtually been eliminated in the industrialised world.

HIV-positive children in Muhanga, a village in Rwanda. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

The programme will focus exclusively on developing child-adapted formulations for children under three, the most neglected segment in terms of availability of ARVs. The DNDi hopes to have new paediatric-specific medicines available between 2014 and 2016.

DNDi Executive Director Dr. Bernard Pécoul told IPS from Geneva that because mother-to-child HIV transmission has practically been eliminated in developed countries due to effective prevention, “there is little incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop children’s formulas” of ARVs.

The great majority of children living with HIV are in poor or developing countries, and their families cannot afford costly medications, added the head of the DNDi, which was created in 2003 by public-sector research organisations from four developing countries and France; Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF); and the UNDP/World Bank/WHO’s Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, which acts as a permanent observer.

The public sector institutions are the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation from Brazil, the Indian Council for Medical Research, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the Ministry of Health of Malaysia, and France’s Pasteur Institute.

Of the more than 2.5 million children under the age of 15 currently living with HIV around the world, 92 percent are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to WHO (World Health Organization).

But only 28 percent of the children in urgent need of ARVs have access to the treatment, says UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS).

Without treatment, one-third of them die in the first year of life, half of them before the age of two, and 80 percent before the age of five.

Although WHO recommends immediate treatment for children under two, the safety and correct dosing of key ARVs have not been established in very young children, Pécoul said.

“This is where DNDi can play a crucial role,” Leena Menghaney, a lawyer working with MSF in India, told IPS.

In India, a country of 1.1 billion people, 403,567 adults and 25,071 children were living with HIV as of June.

“DNDi’s entry into the field of paediatric drug development was after an R&D needs assessment which showed how children living with HIV/AIDS are a neglected population. In addition, in the developing world, patents on AIDS medicines are hampering the creation of paediatric versions,” she added.

Menghaney described children living with HIV/AIDS as an “afterthought” for pharmaceutical companies.

To illustrate the problem, Pécoul cited the use, in poor areas, of a fixed-dose combination of stavudine (d4T), lamivudine (3TC) and nevirapine (NVP).

The first, d4T, is no longer preferred due to its toxicity, and NVP is not recommended in children who were exposed to it in the womb, during treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission, since the virus could have developed resistance to the medication.

The director of DNDi also cited other problems, like the “unpalatable taste” of many ARVs, which make it difficult for caregivers to administer them to young children.

Determining and administering weight-adjusted doses of liquid ARVs for children is a complex task

Another difficulty faced by doctors is managing interactions between anti-tuberculosis medications and ARVs.

Tuberculosis and HIV co-infection rates are high in Africa – up to 80 percent in some countries – and tuberculosis is one of the main causes of death among children and adults living with HIV, said Pécoul.

These problems are all too familiar to Janice Wanja, a nurse at Afya Clinic in the heart of the Dandora slum on the east side of Nairobi.

There are other challenges in Kenya too. For instance, the stigma surrounding HIV in that country has meant that a majority of parents and guardians of HIV-positive children have not told them their status.

“Most children are not told their status. This makes them take their medication less seriously,” Wanja explained.

The WHO indicates that “informing older children of their diagnosis of HIV improves adherence” to antiretroviral treatment.

Government statistics estimate that of the 1.4 million people living with HIV in Kenya, a country of 41 million people, 180,000 are children. But only 40,000 – a mere 22 percent – have access to ARVs.

And 90 percent of HIV infections in children in Kenya are from mother-to-child transmission.

Another challenge in treating HIV-positive children is malnutrition, a problem that has gotten worse in recent months in Kenya and other countries facing drought and food shortages in East Africa.

“For children who are malnourished, the nutrition status may discourage the health care worker from providing drugs to the child,” Dr. Lucy Matu from the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation explained to IPS.

In Brazil, another of the DNDi partner countries, which has a population of 192 million, a total of 592,914 cases of full-blown AIDS were reported between 1980 and June 2010. In 2009, 38,538 new cases were reported.

The number of HIV/AIDS cases among children under five dropped 50 percent in a decade, from 954 in 1999 to 468 in 2010.

An estimated 0.4 percent of pregnant women in Brazil are living with HIV, and an average of 12,456 newborns are exposed to the virus every year. But thanks to prevention measures, only 6.8 percent of them are infected with HIV, according to the latest epidemiological bulletin, which cites figures dating back to 2004.

And the authorities report that in areas where all mother-to-child transmission prevention measures were followed, the rate fell to just two percent in 2009.

The DNDi programme is working to come up with a new first-line paediatric HIV therapy that is easy to administer and better tolerated by children than current drugs, as well as heat stable (important for tropical climates), easily dispersible, and dosed once daily or less.

It must also carry minimal risk for developing resistance and be suitable for infants and very young children, with minimum requirements for weight adjustments. Finally, any new formulations must be compatible with anti-tuberculosis drugs, and, importantly, affordable.

The DNDi has already developed medication for neglected diseases like sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, Chagas’ disease and malaria.

* With reporting by Miriam Gathigah in Nairobi and Ranjit Devraj in New Delhi.

Excerpt:

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 29 2011 (IPS)

The boom in exports from South America’s Mercosur trade bloc is due not only to commodities sold to China and other large emerging economies, but also to industrial goods bound for other Latin American and Caribbean markets.

This is one of the conclusions reached by a study titled “Salto exportador del Mercosur en 2003-2008. Más allá del boom de las materias primas” (Mercosur’s Export Leap 2003-2008: Beyond the Commodities Boom), by Romina Gayá and Kathia Michalczewsky of the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL), a unit of the Inter-American Development Bank.

The study investigates less well-known aspects of the growth in exports, characterised overall by large volumes of primary products exported to emerging economies like China, India and Russia.

“Contrary to general belief, the success of Mercosur’s exports – measured at constant prices – was more than a commodity boom,” the report emphasises. “In fact, medium technology products also contributed to the export leap.”

The authors added that the internal market within the Mercosur bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, as well as the rest of the region, was key to understanding the dynamic growth of exports.

“The Latin American market made medium technology products the stars of the bloc’s recent export surge,” the study says, although it points out that there were differences between the Mercosur countries.

Over the period studied, Argentina was the Mercosur country with the highest proportion of industrial exports, while Paraguay had the lowest proportion. In an interview with IPS, Gayá and Michalczewsky said that commodity exports from the bloc were “highly dynamic,” but some manufactured goods had also driven foreign sales, and had contributed significant export volumes.

Gayá said, “the medium technology products sector made the highest proportional contribution to the increase in export volume in Argentina and Brazil, accounting for 55.3 and 35.5 percent, respectively, of export expansion in those countries.”

That sector in Brazil and Argentina, the largest Mercosur member countries, includes mainly the automobile industry, including vehicles and parts, as well as other products like piping, plastics, synthetic fibres, paint and fertilisers.

As for Uruguay, one-fifth of the small country’s total exports between 2003 and 2008 were contributed by rising production of technological goods, especially plastics and fibres, Gayá said.

In the authors’ view, the growth of export goods with higher added value and technological content reflected increased demand within Mercosur itself and from other countries in the region.

“Latin America and the Caribbean account for over 40 percent of the growth in export volume originating from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, while for Paraguay the regional market accounted for nearly two-thirds of export growth,” the report says.

According to the study, exports from the Mercosur bloc grew by an annual average of 21 percent between 2003 and 2008, a much higher rate than the 8.7 percent annual growth posted between 1960 and 2002.

The INTAL researchers attributed this robust growth to increased global demand and rising prices, as well as export buoyancy.

The expansion has not been limited to soybeans or crude oil. “The spectacular rise in prices led to the surge in exports being attributed to the commodity boom, but in fact there are other aspects of interest than are implied by the commodities sector alone,” Michalczewsky said.

She emphasised that exports of manufactured goods also increased, “and the point to note here, aside from prices, was the growth in volume” of this category, which was one of the most dynamic sectors.

The experts pointed out that, in the case of Brazil, export performance varied over the period studied. The surge in exports for the industrial sector in Latin America’s giant was most marked between 2003 and 2005, and growth has slowed since.

Michalczewsky said that among other factors, since 2006 the appreciation of the Brazilian real, the national currency, against the dollar has had a negative impact on exports of manufactured goods.

Appreciation of the real diminished the competitiveness abroad of labour-intensive Brazilian industrial products, particularly in competition with China and other countries with lower wages in dollar terms.

The growth in Brazil’s commodity exports was accompanied by major productive investments in agriculture, oil and fuels, and by expansion of the domestic market, Michalczewsky said.

Increased internal demand, due to the higher buying power of the population, absorbed a large proportion of manufactured goods, and led to a reduction of goods available for export, the authors said.

On this point, Gayá and Michalczewsky concurred that the new “Plano Brasil Maior” (Bigger Brazil Plan), recently launched by the leftwing government of President Dilma Rousseff, could correct the lack of stimulus for exports and create new foreign trade opportunities for the country’s industrial sector.

Finally, the researchers outlined challenges and risks for Mercosur’s export trade. While they applauded the way the region overcame the impact of the global financial crisis originated in the United States in 2008, and the fall in prices that followed, they pointed to potential future problems.

China’s import substitution policy may lead it to reduce foreign purchases, and the free trade agreements entered into by countries of the region might also affect markets for the Mercosur bloc’s industrial goods.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Aug 25 2011 (IPS)

Armed with a smile, Don Marut exposes the pitfalls of Western aid to developing countries. At a conference here, the Indonesian recalled the story of how 40 electric-train carriages were sent from Germany to his country for a journey to nowhere.

The second-hand carriages, it turned out, were unsuited for Indonesia’s network of narrow-gauge tracks.

Purchased from Germany under a “tied aid” scheme in 2004 the rolling-stock, built for broad-gauge rails, lies rusting in a corner of Jakarta’s railway station, though it was part of a World Bank-backed railway efficiency project.

Marut has other stories to fault “tied aid”, “a euphemism for the stringent conditions that developing nations have to accept in order to receive a ‘development’ loan from a Western country.

“We have received a warship and sea patrol boats from the West that cannot be used in our waters,” adds the executive director of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID), a Jakatra-based umbrella group of non-governmental organisations that plays watchdog roles.

Such strings under the guise of a ‘development’ agreement have been a regular ruse for richer nations to “use aid to relocate unused technology,” Marut explained, after addressing the conference on aid and development.

“This cannot go on. We are supporting the aid business that is driven by the need for job security among donor agencies,” Marut said.

Marut’s arguments have long been voiced by activists across developing Asia, but countries that have monopolised development aid cannot now afford to ignore them.

Analysts say the arrival of non-Western players like China, and increasingly India, offering millions of dollars in official development assistance (ODA) with no strings attached, is transforming the aid industry.

Consequently, countries like Sri Lanka in South Asia, and Cambodia, Laos and Burma in Southeast Asia, do not have Western doors to knock on, cap in hand; they have these new ODA players to turn to.

Little wonder why a conference in Busan – South Korea’s second largest metropolis – later this year is creating a buzz among activists and analysts of development aid trends.

They regard the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF), from Nov. 29 to Dec.1, as a watershed for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a largely Western, rich-man’s club that has shaped the politics of development aid for decades.

“The OECD’s legitimacy is being challenged by the new donors, especially China and India in Asia, and Brazil in Latin America,” says Antonio Tujan, international director of IBON International, a Manila- based network of grassroots groups drawn from the global south.

“The global economic crisis has added to the OECD’s woes, challenging its existence,” Tujan said.

OECD knows that “developing countries can go to China if they don’t want to accept the traditional aid conditions,” Tujan told IPS. “The Busan meeting will be an OECD-led process but it will mark the crossroads of the changing development landscape.”

The South-South ODA includes China’s contribution of 2.5 billion dollars in 2009 and India’s 547 million dollars in 2008, against the total world aid package of 140 billion dollars in 2009.

However, figures monitored by New York University’s Wagner School of Chinese aid, estimates China’s contribution to be much larger at 27.5 billion dollars in 2006 and 25 billion dollars in 2007.

The university’s figures are based on media reports, but are corroborated by ‘South-South Cooperation: A Challenge to the Aid System’, a publication by IBON, which speaks of a “dramatic increase in Chinese aid and related investments” amounting to 27.5 billion dollars in 2006 and 25 billion dollars in 2007.

“There appears to be consensus that Chinese aid is substantial and increasing in recent years,” the IBON publication says.

Africa remains the main target of Chinese largesse, with the continent receiving over 45 percent of Beijing’s assistance. India has divided its assistance between South Asian nations like Bhutan and Afghanistan and African nations such as Sudan and Ethiopia.

China’s contribution of aid, development assistance and trade in Cambodia, a country still struggling to develop after a 1991 peace accord ended two decades of conflict and genocide, illustrates the speed with which the South-South development cooperation trend is eroding the monopoly of Western donors.

Beijing pumped in 850 million dollars for 14 dam and infrastructure deals in 2008, a dramatic increase from the 45 million dollars it invested in Cambodia in 2003.

Such financial backing has emboldened Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, as also the leaders of other Asian and African countries receiving Chinese help, which comes with few strings attached. Hun Sen now stares down the World Bank and traditional OECD donor countries that insist on conditions like better governance.

“China and India have entered this field with foreign policy and strategic interests in mind,” Kavaljit Singh, director of the Public Interest Research Centre, a New Delhi-based think tank, told IPS. “China wants to get natural resources in return for infrastructure investments, while India wants to secure geo- political returns – a greater voice in the international community.”

Yet, neither Beijing nor New Delhi has revealed what role they intend playing at the Busan meeting, where the South Korean government is under pressure from the OECD countries to have the two Asian giants fall in line with the OECD-led development aid model.

“This is one of the most important political agendas happening behind the scene,” Anselmo Lee, a ranking member of the Korea Civil Society Forum on International Development Cooperation, told IPS.

“They (OECD) want India and China and Brazil because they are aware of their diminishing legitimacy and influence globally,” he added. “The OECD doesn’t feel comfortable with the competition from the South.”

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 19 2011 (IPS)

As one of the world’s emerging economic powerhouses, Brazil is vigourously pursuing one of the key economic objectives on the U.N.’s development agenda: South-South Cooperation.

The Brazilian Cooperation Agency is currently participating in scores of economic projects, mostly in the agricultural sector, in over 80 developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.

The projects range from livestock and fisheries to horticulture and food production.

Brazil is supporting the development of an experimental cotton station in Mali, a rice station in Senegal, a vocational training centre and food security programme in East Timor and soybean production in Cuba.

Additionally, it is providing technical expertise and assistance in the development of agricultural technology in Haiti, a vocational training centre in Paraguay and the creation and consolidation of the Institute of Agriculture and Livestock in Bolivia.

In 2010 alone, Brazil signed 21 international agreements with just one single regional organisation, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), along with bilateral agreements with Jamaica, Guyana, Suriname and Haiti.

The six Brazilian ministries involved in South-South cooperation initiatives are the ministries of rural development; social development and the fight against hunger; fishery and acquaculture; environment; agriculture, livestock and supply; and external relations.

Brazil’s role, however, has also taken added importance as one of three partners, along with India and South Africa, in one of the most vibrant coalition of developing nations: IBSA

In an interview with IPS, Ambassador Gilberto Moura, director of the Department of Inter-Regional Mechanisms, said IBSA’s identity is strongly committed to promoting development not only within its members, but also in the developing world as a whole.

The IBSA Forum, he said, supports developing nations through the IBSA Facility Fund for Alleviation of Poverty and Hunger.

The fund was inaugurated by the three IBSA heads of state and government during the U.N. General Assembly sessions back in September 2003.

Moura said each of the IBSA countries donates one million dollars annually to the Fund, and these resources are used to implement cooperation projects for developing countries, especially least developed countries (LDCs) and countries that are recovering from conflicts.

These initiatives, he pointed out, conform to some of the principles of South-South Cooperation, including strengthening of national capacities, participation of national stakeholders, as well as the promotion of national ownership of enterprises and their sustainability.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a strong supporter of South-South Cooperation, says developing countries that pool know-how, exchange ideas and coordinate plans can attain much greater gains than they ever would on their own.

He says South-South Cooperation is a vital component of the world’s response to fight hunger and poverty worldwide.

The administrator of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark, who signed an agreement last year reinforcing her agency’s activities in Brazil, points out that UNDP is “committed to facilitating South-South cooperation, and looks forward to working more closely with Brazil in programme countries around the world”.

The IBSA projects funded by the three countries include a sports complex in Ramallah Palestine; a solid waste collection project in Haiti; and the refurbishment of two geographically isolated local health units in Cape Verde.

Moura told IPS the Fund has concluded four projects (in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti and Palestine); runs four projects (Burundi, Cape Verde, Cambodia and Guinea-Bissau); and has seven to be initiated (two in Guinea-Bissau, one in Laos, two in Palestine, one in Sierra Leone and one in Vietnam).

Other projects are being analysed and will be approved in a timely fashion, including those for Sudan, South Sudan and East-Timor, he added.

Asked about the specific areas covered under the IBSA umbrella, Moura said that all activities within IBSA demand active engagement of the three member countries.

Currently, the informal and rotational Secretariat, which coordinates meetings, is under the responsibility of South Africa, which will host the next presidential summit in October, near Durban.

Prior to the summit, Brazil will host an IBSA seminar on Information Society in Rio de Janeiro from Sep. 1-2. Civil society fora usually meet in parallel to the summits.

To date, seven civil society meetings have been held: the Women’s Forum, Editor’s Forum, Academic Forum, Parliamentary Forum, Small Business Forum, Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO) Forum, and Local Governance Forum.

Asked about the specific areas of cooperation, Moura said these fields are being developed through 16 existing Working Groups (WG).

They cover different areas: revenue administration, public administration, agriculture, tourism, human settlements, science and technology, trade, culture, defence, social development, education, energy, environment, health, information society and transport.

The actions of these WGs enhance the exchange of experiences and the development of common initiatives, Moura said.

In the field of science and technology, IBSA has undertaken a programme, titled IBSAOCEAN, involving scientists from all three countries.

“They are also working on an IBSA Satellite,” he added.

In trade, there has been steady collaboration with the Federal Revenue Services to facilitate commercial exchanges through the institution of a safe and secure trade lane for authorised economic operators.

Efforts to normalise trade rules are being undertaken under the umbrella of the WG on Trade.

In the field of health, he said, the IBSA delegations to the World Health Organisation have been working jointly on a large spectrum of resolutions.

Excerpt:

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 4 2011 (IPS)

Default, insolvency, fiscal irresponsibility, debt crisis and similar terms form part of the vocabulary used to describe countries in the developing South in the 1980s and 1990s. A decade later, the world seems to have turned upside down.

U.S. debt crisis impacts depreciation of the dollar. Credit: P. Williams - Creative Commons Licence

A meeting of economy ministers in Lima Thursday and Friday and another scheduled for Aug. 12 in Buenos Aires, where the ministers will be joined by central bank presidents, are being held to discuss the coordination of policies among the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to deal with the knock-on effects of the crisis still lingering in the developed world.

There is talk about working together to mitigate the impact. But the developing world does not have financial power, nor does it have anything like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to impose the adoption of fiscal adjustment policies or to “aid” the rich countries, like what occurred when it was the poor countries that were insolvent.

The crisis today is universal, very different from the recessions suffered by some countries as a result of contagion from the “Mexican”, “Argentine”, “Asian” or “Turkish” crises of the 1990s.

With the recently decided budget cuts in the United States, a condition set by the Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling, in order to head off default, and the increasing stagnation in Europe, the impact is global, with recession or slowdowns everywhere.

Fernando Cardim, a retired Federal University of Rio de Janeiro professor, told IPS that Brazil, one of the emerging economies, is not likely to suffer much in the short term as a result of the U.S. deficit reduction package agreed on Sunday Jul. 31, which he called “a disaster, politically.” But he added that prospects for the future “are dim.”

The long-term effects are “unpredictable,” but the tendency is for things to get worse, since “the right wing in the United States could demand more and more,” such as further fiscal tightening, while Europe’s crisis could spread to other countries, he said during a break at a meeting of economists.

In the case of Brazil, the effects on trade of reduced demand from the United States would be less harmful than in the past, when that country was the chief market for Brazil’s exports, absorbing one-quarter of the country’s sales abroad. By last year, that share had shrunk to 9.5 percent, while China’s share had risen to 15.2 percent.

While Brazil has diversified its export markets, its trade deficit with the United States climbed to 7.7 billion dollars last year – due to imports of 27 billion dollars – after the country had chalked up a surplus of 9.9 billion dollars in 2006.

The losses in the U.S. market are not just quantitative but qualitative as well, because Brazil mainly exports manufactured goods to that country, while China almost exclusively buys commodities from Brazil, such as iron ore, soy and oil.

The increasing concentration of exports in mineral and agricultural commodities, a phenomenon that goes hand in hand with the process of “de-industrialisation,” is a problem facing Brazil that could be aggravated by the economic troubles in the United States and Europe.

Besides the trade surplus it achieves thanks to high commodity prices, Brazil is likely to attract greater financial flows, leading to a further overvaluation of the local currency and thus to a reduction of the weight of industry in the national economy, a loss of exports, and an increase in imports of industrial goods.

For that reason the government has cut taxes and labour costs to benefit industries that employ large numbers of workers, like the textile and footwear sectors, and the car industry – in this latter case on the condition that it increase investment in technological innovations and purchases of domestically-manufactured parts.

It has also worked to curb the influx of speculative capital by means of various short-term measures that have so far failed to curtail the overvaluation of the real, which now stands at 1.57 against the dollar, compared to 2.34 in late 2005.

But broader-reaching measures are needed to stem these flows, which do not leave loopholes like the ones adopted up to now, said Cardim, because of the possibility of a sudden bout of capital flight “that would generate panic and inflation.”

A worsening of the crisis in Europe, for example, could prompt a rapid repatriation of capital, he pointed out.

With regard to coordinated action on the part of the countries of South America, Cardim was sceptical. Interests in the region are too diverse, he noted, saying it might be more effective to agree on certain responses to the crisis with other emerging countries, like India or South Africa.

In Argentina, the impact of the U.S. fiscal tightening will likely be a result of slower global economic growth and the subsequent drop in demand, according to Enrique Aschieri with the International Society for Development.

Argentina is much less vulnerable today after running up a trade surplus in the last eight years, he told IPS. The United States is now the fourth biggest importer of goods from Argentina, after Brazil, China and Chile, in that order.

“If the crisis affects us because we can export less, like what happened in 2009, we still have a large margin for inward growth,” he said, stressing the importance of the domestic market as an alternative for warding off the effects of the crisis in the industrialised world.

But in his assessment, the U.S. debt ceiling dispute, which thrust the world into unprecedented uncertainty, “is not a real economic problem, but a political issue,” because “the United States has no problem putting a ceiling on its debt, since it becomes indebted in the same currency with which it pays,” said Aschieri.

“The underlying issue,” he said, “is a coalition that has no problem exacerbating the inequality that has been growing in the United States over the last 30 years,” he said.

Although it does not form part of the 12-member UNASUR, Mexico was invited to the ministerial meeting in Lima. The country has a unique position in Latin America, as it belongs to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which made it the chief victim of the 2008 financial crisis that broke out in the United States.

Mexico is already suffering from the weakness of the economic recovery in the United States and Europe, especially “in trade and national manufacturing based on U.S. demand, like the auto industry, agriculture, and maquila manufacturing (export assembly plants),” independent analyst Edgar Amador told IPS.

The government says the key to dealing with the situation lies in strengthening the domestic market. Moreover, Mexico has 132 billion dollars in foreign reserves, and has been the largest buyer of gold this year to date, according to the IMF.

“An unsettling outlook,” is how Carlos Ibarra, an economist at the private Universidad de las Américas in the southern Mexican state of Puebla, describes the fact that Mexico “has failed to maintain a fast pace of growth” after freeing up trade and “significantly increasing exports of manufactured goods” as a proportion of GDP.

In Ibarra’s view, it is feasible to coordinate regional policies to stem the impact of the crisis from the North, but their effects would be marginal, especially for countries like Mexico, “because of the enormous dependence on the United States.”

UNASUR is made up of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela and includes nearly 400 million people, accounting for just under 70 percent of the population of Latin America.

* With reporting by Marcela Valente (Buenos Aires) and Emilio Godoy (Mexico City).

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 22 2011 (IPS)

Community organisations say the major infrastructure works for the 2014 football World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil do not reflect the spirit of the social legacy promised by the government and business community, which project 68 billion dollars in economic benefits from the first event alone.

Favela next to middle-class neighbourhood, seen from Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Creative Commons

Several social organisations created the national “World Cup and Olympics People’s Committee”, to which Rocha belongs, to exercise oversight over the infrastructure works for the mega-events and defend poor families who have been evicted to make room for stadiums, roads and other infrastructure.

“We want information and guarantees of participation in the projects,” said Rocha, a community organiser from one of the 750 favelas or shanty towns which are home to 1.5 million of the six million people in Rio proper (Greater Rio has a population of 11 million).

“We want to know ahead of time where we are to be resettled, and we want the right to prior, fair indemnification,” said Rocha.

Amnesty International has denounced compulsory evictions of poor families squatting on land designated for infrastructure for the sports events.

Rocha complained that the public does not have access to information about the infrastructure and transportation projects, which makes it difficult to establish the number of people to be evicted in the different neighbourhood. But the People’s Committee estimates that some 20,000 families will be affected by public works like stadium construction, highways and the upgrading of the port.

In a hearing before the attorney general’s office of the state of Rio de Janeiro, the affected families mentioned the problems caused by the construction of the Transoeste highway, an expressway that will link neighbourhoods in the western zone of Rio, and the Transcarioca, which will link the north zone of the city to the international airport on the west side.

According to Rocha and other critics, the major engineering projects will only benefit a few neighbourhoods, companies and social groups, and not the majority of the population.

The community organiser argues that what the people of Rio need are efficient mass transit systems and sports facilities that are accessible to all, especially the poor.

The People’s Committee complains that the evictions have failed to respect the city law that guarantees relocation to nearby areas, in order to “respect the history and experiences of families that have lived for years in a certain neighbourhood.”

Furthermore, “the indemnification payments are ridiculous, too small to allow the favela dwellers to purchase decent housing elsewhere,” Rocha said.

She also protested “violence committed by the city government against the communities.” A municipal committee was set up this month to investigate complaints of human rights violations resulting from the evictions and infrastructure works.

The city government’s secretary of public works, Jorge Bittar, admitted that there have been problems, but said that once they are overcome, the Olympic Games and World Cup will offer “an opportunity to show that the city can improve from the social, environmental and urbanisation standpoints, addressing the needs of the poor.”

That is the oft-repeated official line, and numbers are trotted out to support it.

The Sports Ministry projects 68 billion dollars in benefits for Brazil from the World Cup, a figure that includes investment in public and private infrastructure works, a rise in consumption, and growth of the services sector.

It also estimates that the football championship, including the preparations for it in the 12 host cities, will lead to a rise in tax revenues, generating an additional 29 billion dollars in direct taxes and 10 billion dollars in indirect taxes.

In addition, some 600,000 foreign tourists are expected to visit Brazil for the World Cup, bringing the country an additional two billion dollars. And the tournament will create an estimated 332,000 direct and permanent jobs and 381,000 temporary jobs in 2014.

“No one would push so hard to host a World Cup or Olympic Games or spend so much money on upgrading if the aim wasn’t the most important thing: leaving a social legacy,” Rio de Janeiro state secretary of sports and tourism Marcia Lins recently told a group of businesspeople.

Lins was speaking at one of a series of meetings being held in the state on the World Cup and the Olympics, organised by the Service of Support to Micro and Small Companies (SEBRAE), which has a programme to help this economic sector take advantage of the opportunities offered by the two events.

SEBRAE president Luiz Barreto told IPS that this is a great chance for a sector that accounts for 20 percent of GDP and 50 percent of all workers who have a work card – the Carteira de Trabalho e Previdência Social, which affords them full benefits – in this country of 191 million people.

And with the growth in industries like civil construction and tourism, “that proportion could grow to 23, 24 or 25 percent of GDP over the next few years,” Barreto said, citing a study by the independent Getulio Vargas Foundation.

“We are working hard on relations between the public and private sectors, in terms of both large and small companies, in order to have the best possible World Cup, in and outside the stadiums,” he said.

Famous around the globe for his performance in the world’s leading stadiums, former football forward José Roberto Gama de Oliveira, better known as Bebeto, who is now a Rio de Janeiro state deputy or lawmaker for the Democratic Labour Party, also wants to participate in the process.

“Deputado Bebeto”, as he is popularly known now, was behind the creation of a state legislative committee to monitor the economic, environmental and social effects of the World Cup, Olympics and 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, which will also be held in Brazil.

“Football was my life,” Bebeto told IPS. “I am very familiar with the difficulties these events will pose,” said the veteran forward, who sported Brazil’s yellow and green jersey in three World Cups and two Olympic Games.

“Everyone will have their eyes on Rio de Janeiro and we have to do things right,” he stressed.

Bebeto wants to make sure that the transportation system created for the sports events takes into account the real needs of the people of Rio.

“Football is in our blood. And now that we will host a World Cup and will be playing in our own country, we have an opportunity to show that we can do things right, not only on the field,” he added.

To do this, Rocha said, the priority must be put on transparency in spending, and on incorporating the social dimension.

And for this, she argued, Brazil has to learn from experiences like the 2007 Pan American Games, held in Rio. At that time, the city government evicted many local residents from the Canal do Anil favela, with “the argument that the homes were irregular constructions along a river bank,” she recalled.

“The Pan American Village was built next to the community, with public funds. Today, those apartments are in ruins, and are uninhabitable,” she said.

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