Many Syrian cities have been reduced to piles of rubble, as a civil war that is now well into its fifth year shows no signs of abating. Desperate refugees are fleeing to Europe to escape the fighting. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 3 2015 (IPS)

As the migration crisis in Europe continues to grow and government response remains slow, European citizens have taken it upon themselves to act by opening up their homes to those in need.

In a Facebook group entitled ‘Dear Eygló Harðar – Syria is Calling’, over 15,000 Icelanders have signed an open letter calling on their government to “open the gates” for more Syrian refugees.

The open letter, initiated by author and professor Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir on Aug. 30, addresses Iceland’s Minister of Welfare Eygló Harðar and calls on the government to reconsider capping the number of refugees at a mere 50.

The week-long campaign, which ends on Sep. 4, aims to gather information about available assistance and to create pressure on the government to increase its quota.

“Refugees are our […] best friends, our next soul mate, the drummer in our children’s band, our next colleague, Miss Iceland 2022, the carpenter who finally fixes our bathroom, the chef in the cafeteria, the fireman, the hacker and the television host. People who we’ll never be able to say to: ‘Your life is worth less than mine’,” the open letter states.

Many have posted their own open letters, offering their homes, food, and general support to refugees, to enable them to integrate into Icelandic society.

One Icelander posted on the group: “I’m a single mother with a six-year-old son […] we can take a child in need. I’m a teacher and would teach the child to speak, read and write Icelandic and adjust to Icelandic society. We have clothes, a bed, toys, and everything a child needs. I would of course pay for the airplane ticket.”

The open letter has sparked more people around the world to express words of support and to offer their homes to those in need.

One mother of a 19-month-old baby from Argentina wrote in the group: “I want you to know that I would like to help in any way I can, even if it is looking at the possibility of hosting some boy or girl in my house […]. I don’t have a comfortable financial position, but I can provide what is necessary and a lot of love.”

Similar efforts to house refugees have begun in other parts of Europe.

Refugees Welcome, a German initiative, matches refugees from around the world with host citizens offering private accommodation.

Once hosts sign up to offer their homes, Refugees Welcome works with local refugee organizations to reach out to find a “suitable” match.

Though only Germany and Austrian residents can currently be hosts, over 780 people have already signed up to help and more than 134 refugees from Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria have been matched with families in the two countries.

Refugees Welcome also stated that the initiative has been picked up and may be expanded to the United States and Australia.

“We are convinced that refugees should not be stigmatized and excluded by being housed in mass accommodations. Instead, we should offer them a warm welcome,” says Refugees Welcome on its website.

European Union’s border agency Frontex revealed that in July 2015 alone, over 100,000 people migrated into Europe. Germany has stated that it expects up to 800,000 asylum seekers by the end of the year.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Phil Harris   

Excerpt:

Two fin whaling boats in Reykjavik harbour, shortly before heading out to sea. Credit: Lowana Veal/IPS

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, Aug 18 2014 (IPS)

Although fin whaling by Icelanders has encountered increasing opposition over the last year, Icelandic whaling boats headed off to sea again in mid-June for the first hunt of the summer and by August 14 had killed 80 fin whales.

The story of what then happens to the whales once they have been taken back to Iceland is part mystery and part an economic balancing act between the country’s economic interests and its international image.

As soon as the whales are landed in Iceland, work begins on dismembering the whales. But does the meat get sold and where? How much money does it bring in for the Icelandic economy? And are the costs involved more than the revenue?

All of the whale meat is sent to Japan, but Hvalur hf, the only Icelandic company that hunts fin whales, has encountered a great deal of resistance in transporting it there and has had to resort to commissioning a ship to take the meat directly from Iceland to Japan, undoubtedly leading to extra costs.“The story of what happens to the whales once they have been taken back to Iceland is part mystery and part an economic balancing act between the country’s economic interests and its international image”

IPS was unable to find out the fate of the fin meat sent to Japan earlier this year. Two months after arriving at its final destination, a Japanese source, who did not want to be named, told IPS: “My colleague told me that the whale blubber is still in the cold storage of Osaka customs.” The Japanese embassy in Reykjavik acknowledges that there is at least some sale of fin whale meat, but actual figures do not seem to be available.

Earlier this year, a group of North American animal rights and environmental groups started to pressure North American companies to stop buying fish from Icelandic fishing company HB Grandi because of its links with Hvalur hf. Almost immediately, the Canadian/U.S. company High Liner Foods said it would no longer buy fish from HB Grandi and a number of other companies followed suit, including the U.S. health food chain Whole Foods.

The campaigners also called on U.S. President Barack Obama to invoke the Pelly Amendment, which allows the President to embargo any and all fisheries products from countries operating in a way that undermines a conservation treaty – in this case, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.

Obama decided to invoke the Amendment, and has already implemented one albeit diplomatic rather than economic action, which was not to invite Iceland to the large international “Our Ocean” conference hosted by the United States in June.

Besides the well-known Pelly Agreement, there is also the Packwood-Magnuson Amendment of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which allows the President to block foreign fleets from access to U.S. fisheries if their country is deemed to have diminished the effectiveness of an international conservation programme.

In 1984, Iceland and the United States signed an agreement whereby Iceland would obtain fishing permits in U.S. waters if it agreed to stop whaling. Due to various complications, although Iceland stopped whaling for 20 years in 1986, it did not start fishing in U.S. waters until December 1989 and then only caught a few tonnes of fish.

In spring this year, Social Democrat MP Sigridur Ingibjorg Ingadottir and seven other Icelandic opposition MPs tabled a parliamentary resolution calling for an investigation into the economic and trade repercussions for Iceland of whaling.

There was not enough time to discuss the matter in the last parliamentary session that ended mid-May, but Ingadottir is currently revising and updating the proposal with a view to submitting it early in the next parliamentary session, which starts in September.

“There are two main aspects to the proposal. One concerns the economic and trade interests of the country and the second Iceland’s image on an international scale,” she told IPS.

According to a report published in 2010, “In the years 1973-1985, when Hvalur hf pursued whaling of large cetaceans, whale processing usually stood for about 0.07 percent of GNP. The contribution of whaling itself to GNP is not known.” Minke whaling is not included in these figures.

Ingadottir, who trained as an economist, says that this figure is very low. “At that time, whaling was an industry and pursued systematically. Since then, a range of other large industries and commercial enterprises have sprung up, so the figure is likely to be lower,” she notes.

Gunnar Haraldsson, Director of the University of Iceland’s Institute of Economic Studies and one of the authors of the 2010 report, told IPS: “The problem is that no official figures exist on the returns of whale watching and various other parameters, thus there is a need to collect this sort of data specifically. It is therefore necessary to carry out a new study if we want to know what the national gains (and costs) actually are.”

Whale watching has blossomed over the last few years and at least 13 companies run whale-watching trips from various places around Iceland. Between 2012 and 2013, the number of whale watchers increased by 45,000, and the total number is now around 200,000 annually.

Three MPS had also called for an inquiry into whaling in the autumn of 2012. This was supposed to cover overall benefits to the economy, including economic interests, animal welfare issues and international obligations. A committee was set up to look into the organisation and grounds for whaling, but this petered out.

“The committee has not actually been dissolved, but it hasn’t met since the new government took over (in May 2013],” Asta Einarsdottir from the Ministry of Industries and Innovation told IPS. When asked why the committee had not met, Einarsdottir replied: “The Minister has not had a chance to meet with the Chair of the committee, despite repeated requests.”

Einarsdottir said that the committee was quite large and included representatives from the whale-watching and conservation sectors as well as from the whaling industry and various ministries.

Meanwhile, Icelandic lamb has also been affected by the whaling dispute. Over the last few years, Icelandic lamb has been exported to the United States and sold in the Whole Foods chain of shops under the banner of “Icelandic lamb”.

Last year, however, the chain decided not to brand the lamb as Icelandic because Iceland’s whaling activities had given Iceland a bad name. The expected increase in sales did not occur, and considerable pressure had to be applied to persuade them to keep selling the meat at all.

Ingadottir is forthright in her opinions. “Are they damaging our interests? Are they protecting a narrow group of interests rather than the national interest? What are we actually protecting with this whaling?” she asks, adding: “Iceland has to come up with very good reasons for pursuing whaling in order to continue doing it.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Although most of Iceland already uses renewable energy for its heating and electricity, a handful of places are still reliant on oil. But, at least on Grimsey island in the north, this could change in the future.

Grimsey has a population of 90 and currently uses about 200,000 litres of oil annually for district heating and electricity. Located 40 km off the northern mainland, it would be difficult and expensive to provide these essential needs via a pipeline.

A number of alternative solutions have been suggested over the years and one of these involves the use of wind energy. One of the researchers involved in the project, Daniel Chade from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, described how the scheme would work.

“Initially, wind turbines could be placed on Grimsey, which would support diesel electricity generation. Subsequently, a hydrogen storage system could be added to increase efficiency of the system. At this stage of the project development, around 90 percent of energy should be produced from renewables,” he said.“In general, the wind-hydrogen system is also adaptable for other remote communities. For example, all northern parts of the globe are characterised by an excellent wind potential” – Daniel Chade, researcher at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland

While Chade believes that it is not a good idea to stop using diesel generators completely because it would not be very cost effective, he said: “However, in the future, oil prices will probably rise and renewable technology costs will decrease. Then I believe application of a 100 percent renewable energy system without a diesel generator should be feasible.”

Can the technique be used elsewhere in the world? Yes, said Chade, adding: “In general, the wind-hydrogen system is also adaptable for other remote communities. For example, all northern parts of the globe are characterised by an excellent wind potential.” He noted that that in Alaska, for example, there are around 200 places where diesel generators are used and in Canada about 300 remote locations rely on diesel generators.

“In some of them,” Chade added, “energy prices are higher than on Grimsey so, from an economic perspective, application of wind turbines with hydrogen energy storage should also be feasible there.”

Batteries are often used to store excess energy, but these only have a storage capacity of a few days. Hydrogen, however, can store energy for weeks or months.

“Nowadays, most of the available storage technologies are suitable for a maximum of a few days storage. In the case of hydrogen it can be stored over months, which is advantageous for Grimsey due to the seasonal wind variations. For example, some of the hydrogen produced during winter months from excess electricity might be used during summer when the wind potential is much lower,” Chade told IPS.

The above scenario only deals with electricity production, not district heating. Hydrogen can, in fact, be used for district heating as well, but more research needs to be done on the heating needs of Grimsey islanders before this is developed further.

Woodchips, however, are an option for district heating in Grimsey, which Runar Isleifsson from the Icelandic Forestry Commission is investigating.

“We have investigated whether it is practical and technically feasible to use wood pellets or woodchips to heat residential and industrial premises in Grimsey,” he told IPS.

“One of the main provisos is to use waste heat from the diesel plants that produce electricity for the island. These provide around 40 percent of what is needed. According to our calculations, this should be feasible and pricewise is very competitive with heating using traditional electricity (produced using hydropower) which is not available on Grimsey,” Isleifsson explained.

“Woodchips appear to be more practical than wood pellets,” he added.

Asked whether he thought that the wind energy system could be used in conjunction with woodchips, Chade said: “I think that he [Isleifsson] has a good idea. However, I believe that the heat from diesel generators that he proposes using might be substituted by the heat which would be generated by a wind turbine/hydrogen system. In such a case, his idea could be implemented together with our system.”

Meanwhile, in the capital Reykjavik, engineers from the EFLA company, the National Energy Authority and Iceland Drilling have been looking into the use of heat pumps to heat buildings in “cold” areas elsewhere in Iceland.

They say that up to four times as much energy can be produced from a given heat source, even in what might normally be considered unfavourable conditions.

For instance, even if it is cold outside, “absolute zero” – the point where no heat energy remains in a substance – is -273 °C, so a temperature of 0 °C will still contain considerable energy. Coupled with the use of special liquids which will boil at 0 °C, energy can be amassed from the outside air and used for domestic heating.

The energy produced is more than that needed for operation of the heat pump.

Heat pumps are of course not a new invention, but they have not seen much use in Iceland and it is difficult to predict how much energy they will produce because conditions in Iceland vary from place to place.

Lake Thingvallavatn, Iceland. Credit: Lowana Veal/IPS

This is what mechanical engineer Heimir Hjartarson has tried to clarify. He and his colleagues have looked at different places where heat pumps could be used.

“We at EFLA have collaborated in pilot projects where a water-to-water heat-pump system has been installed in a summerhouse close by Lake Thingvallavatn and also an air-to-water heat pump on the Snaefellsnes peninsula in West Iceland. The findings from these projects were that the electric energy for heating could be reduced to nearly 25 percent of what it was before installation,” Hjartarson explained.

A heat pump is now used to heat the swimming pool, school and sports complex in the town of Kirkjubaejarklaustur in South Iceland. These had been heated using waste heat from a waste incinerator, but the incinerator was closed down in December 2012 due to excess levels of dioxin and other pollutants. Use of the heat pumps has cut the cost of heating the pool with hydropower-produced electricity by two-thirds.

Gudmundur Ingi Ingason, Chair of the District Council for the Kirkjubaejarklaustur area, says that the heat pumps have worked very well. “We had already started using two heat pumps in the community centre, which were very effective, so we decided to buy some for the swimming pool as well after the incinerator was closed down. These are air-to-water heat pumps which take air from the atmosphere to heat the pool – like a fridge, but in reverse,” he explains.

According to Hjartarson, heat pumps are actually very suitable for heating swimming pools when no geothermal energy is available, because the heat obtained from each kilowatt is multiplied. “We have been looking into a system in which you only need to heat up water by about 2 °C [before it is pumped out into the pool again], which is very suitable for heat pump systems,” he concluded.

Workers start to dismember a fin whale at the whaling station in Hvalfjordur, about 45 km north of Reykjavik. Credit: Lowana Veal/IPS.

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, Apr 14 2014 (IPS)

Posters with the words “Do you know who caught your seafood?” are now appearing on buses, trains and other venues in Boston. They are part of a campaign organised by a coalition of U.S. environmental groups called Whales Need Us, to draw attention to the links between Icelandic whalers and fish sold in the U.S.

A picture of a whale appears on the poster, together with the name of the website where those interested can find more information.“The campaign has contacted retailers, wholesalers and the food service industry across the U.S. to let them know that American consumers do not want to buy seafood from whalers."

The groups decided to focus on Boston because the launch of the campaign mid-March coincided with the opening of the North American Seafood Expo at the Boston Convention Centre.  Supporters picketed the stall of HB Grandi, one of Iceland’s largest fishing companies, asking onlookers to stop trading with the company because of its links with whaling.

The expo is the largest seafood trade event in North America.

At the start of the protest, fish consumers were requested to ask their local food retailers and restaurants to verify that their seafood products did not come from a source linked to Icelandic whaling.

“The campaign has contacted retailers, wholesalers and the food service industry across the U.S. to let them know that American consumers do not want to buy seafood from whalers, and asking for their help,” says Susan Millward, executive director of the Animal Welfare Institute, one of the organisations behind the Whales Need Us campaign.

On Mar. 18, the last day of the three-day expo, Canadian-U.S. seafood company High Liner Foods (HLF) announced it would discontinue trading with HB Grandi because of its whaling connections. It had been trading with the Icelandic company since October 2013.

Since the end of the expo, U.S. companies Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market have severed ties with Rhode Island-based Legacy Seafoods, another company that imports substantial quantities of fish from HB Grandi.

HLF say they do not have any existing contracts outstanding with HB Grandi, and are committed not to enter into any new contracts with them until they have fully divested their involvement and interest in whaling.

“Even though HLF’s policy is strict on not doing business with suppliers directly involved in whaling, it has nothing to do with individuals or shareholders of HB Grandi. We have no control over the ownership of privately or publicly owned companies in HLF’s supplier base,” Elvar Einarsson from High Liner’s procurement division tells IPS.

At the end of 2011, High Liner bought Icelandic Group’s U.S. and Asian operations. Icelandic Group also agreed to a seven-year licensing agreement with HLF for the use of the Icelandic Seafood brand in North American countries until 2018.

“For HLF the marketing and sales of seafood from Iceland under the brand Icelandic Seafood is an important part of our business. There will be no change on HLF’s procurement from its other Icelandic suppliers and hopefully HB Grandi’s circumstances will change so they will be able to become one of HLF’s suppliers again,” says Einarsson.

Last September, Kristjan Loftsson from the whaling company Hvalur increased his family’s shares in HB Grandi from 10.2 percent to 14.9 percent. On the HB Grandi website, Loftsson is listed as chairman of the board.

At the time, there was obviously some concern over the repercussions that this could have. The fishing website Undercurrent reported “an Icelandic industry player” as saying: “Hvalur is Iceland’s only whaling company, and it’s increasingly a controversial activity. It’s obviously a risk to a company selling wild fish that their ownership is closely connected to whaling.”

Vilhjalmur Vilhjalmsson, CEO for HB Grandi, has stated publicly that he will not speak to the press on the company’s trade with High Liner Foods. In a short press release issued by his company, he is quoted as saying: “We agree with the government’s policy on sensible utilisation of natural resources and have nothing to do with what operations individual shareholders choose to practise or not practise.”

But Millward emphasises that they are not trying to attack Icelandic fisheries as such. “The campaign is in no way meant as an attack on Iceland’s economy and is geared only at those companies linked to the Hvalur whaling company,” she says.

In 2011, President Barack Obama issued diplomatic sanctions on Iceland as part of the Pelly Amendment. The Whales Need Us coalition has once again made use of this.

“The campaign has also urged the public to contact President Obama, and ask that he take targeted action against Icelandic companies connected to whaling by invoking the Pelly Amendment, a tool promulgated by the U.S. Congress as a means of compelling compliance with international conservation treaties,” Millward told IPS.

To an extent, this policy worked. Obama has said that he would invoke the Pelly Amendment and instigate a number of measures aimed at Iceland. But once again, these measures appear to be diplomatic rather than trade sanctions, although they are more extensive than before.

Coincidentally, Icelandic Social Democratic MP Sigridur Ingibjorg Ingadottir has just put forward a parliamentary proposal that calls for an investigation into the economic and trade repercussions for Iceland of whaling.

“The investigation will take into account both minke whales and fin whales,” she told IPS. “Are we prepared to sacrifice more for less, when there is growing opposition to whaling and Iceland is catching more whales than are deemed sustainable by the IWC [International Whaling Commission]?”

The IWC says that the annual sustainable catch for fin whales in the North Atlantic is 46, whereas Iceland has set a quota of 154.

Meanwhile, Loftsson and other Hvalur employees are becoming increasingly sensitive to outside criticism and have now removed the company phone numbers from ja.is, the Internet listing of Icelandic phone numbers.

Women gather at a rally in Reykjavik to mark victory for their rights, but remain more vulnerable than men to the economic crisis. Credit: Lowana Veal/IPS.

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, Nov 17 2013 (IPS)

Women in Iceland have been more badly affected by the economic collapse in 2008 than their male counterparts, both in terms of physical and mental health, studies show.

In one study carried out this year on people interviewed both before and after the financial crash, unemployed women, female students and women not active in the labour market showed particularly high stress levels in the year following the crash, along with women nearing retirement age (67 in Iceland) and non-skilled women.

“Most research on people who have experienced economic setbacks has been directed at men, and yes, those who have studied both sexes have found that men are more affected than women. Our results of the effects of the economic collapse are unusual, i.e. the effect on mental health appears to be primarily on women,” Unnur Anna Valdimarsdottir from the Centre of Public Health Sciences (CPHS) at the University of Iceland tells IPS.“Stressful events have been shown to have, if anything, more effect on heart diseases of women than men, and it is possible that different stressors could be gender-specific."

“Women have been more affected by the economic collapse and subsequent recession in Iceland than has been publicized, or seen in other countries,” says Chris McClure, a PhD student at CPHS.

“Most research to date indicates men being affected the most. However, what has occurred in Iceland is unique and may be an indication of a number of factors, including the high psychological burden of Icelandic women to maintain the household, their employment, their relationships, and their families.”

McClure points out that so far very few media releases have highlighted the negative consequences of the collapse in Iceland. Instead, most have focused on the resilience of the population.

“Statements like these, during times of austerity measures, can cause negative effects on the population moving forward,” he says.

Vulnerable groups are more prone to stress, say the authors. For instance, women over 60 might have experienced greater job insecurity or the prospect of their pensions or life savings disappearing, as well as the uncertainty of finding work if they are made redundant.

With non-skilled workers, the prospect of being in an occupation in which they are easily disposable or lacking credentials to get another job could have led to increased stress.

Previously, research studies on the relationship between unemployment and psychological outcomes had generally focused on men, but in some of these the societies studied were those in which men were the typical breadwinners for the family.

This is not the case for Iceland. With one of the highest employment rates among the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of 30 wealthy countries, women in Iceland represent almost 80 percent of the workforce, almost the same as men (85 percent).

Financial and occupational losses during the weeks around the financial collapse represented a great threat to family security, and this may have affected women differently to men. The authors attribute this as one of the reasons for the difference.

But it is not just stress-related diseases that affect women more than men in Iceland. In the week that the banks fell, the number of women who visited the cardiac emergency department of the national university hospital, Landspitali, shot up by 40 percent, while the number of women who were diagnosed with heart-related diseases increased by 80 percent.

Valdimarsdottir is one of the people who have looked into this. “Stressful events have been shown to have, if anything, more effect on heart diseases of women than men, and it is possible that different stressors could be gender-specific,” she says.

“For instance, there is a stress-related condition called stress cardiomyopathy (broken heart syndrome) which is virtually only found in women. But this is non-fatal and usually lasts only a few days,” she points out.

She and her colleagues at CPHS are also looking at trends surrounding birth outcomes, as well as suicide attempts and more long-term health outcomes in both sexes which could conceivably be related to the crash.

The only men who were recorded with increased stress were those who were married or in the middle-income bracket. Women in the middle-income bracket also experienced increased stress, though not as much as young women. In both cases this could largely be due to the steep rise in mortgage payments that came straight after the bank crash.

McClure also says that in Iceland the prevalence of smoking is higher in women than men. “Our findings point to a strong link between smoking cessation and stress levels. Moreover, we found that women, compared to men, were much less likely to quit smoking following the collapse, which is linked to their stress levels.”

Figures from the Directorate of Health show that the number of abortions has risen since the bank crash. However, Hildur Bjork Sigbjornsdottir, who compiled the figures, told IPS that it is impossible for her to pinpoint the reasons for these, as often there is more than one reason for the decision. “Usually, though, it’s a combination of various social factors.”

From left, Jan Hartke of the Clinton Foundation, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, Peter Williams, managing director of Light & Power Holdings Ltd., Barbados, and Gunnar Gunnarsson of Reykjavik Geothermal. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, Nov 12 2013 (IPS)

Weary of sky-high electricity prices, St. Vincent is following in the footsteps of another, decidedly un-tropical island nearly 4,000 miles away in its quest to harness clean geothermal power.

A contingent of Icelandic scientists is here until December, investigating the mountainous nation’s geothermal potential, estimated at 890 megawatts."In North Windward where I grew up and still spend most of my time, I remember how much we yearned for electricity when most of the country was brightly lit."-- local resident Rochelle Baptiste

The source is the island’s La Soufrière volcano, which has erupted three times since 1902. There is a steaming resurgent dome in the crater and numerous hot springs in river valleys on the western side of the volcano. Of additional interest are three striking features near Wallibou Beach, in an area locally known as “Hot Waters,” and a circular feature near Morgans Wood near Trinity Falls.

“They will go into the Soufrière mountains, doing some surface exploration work. This is like hiking, just scientists walking around with some measuring devices and measuring resistivity of the earth, of the volcano, and by doing that, they will get an indication if there is a possible resource in the area,” Gunnar Orn Gunnarsson, chief operating officer of Reykjavik Geothermal, told IPS.

“We are confident that there is but first we have to do measurements to be able to confirm that,” said Gunnarsson, whose own nation relies on geothermal for about a quarter of all electricity generation.

Funding for the 50-million-dollar project is coming from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines government, Barbados Light & Power Holdings and Reykjavik Geothermal.

Scientists rank St. Vincent fourth on a list of countries in the Lesser Antilles with geothermal energy potential, behind Guadeloupe, St. Lucia and Dominica. Nevis, Saba, St. Kitts, Grenada, Martinique, Montserrat and Statia complete the list of the top 11 countries.

Dominica recently launched its own geothermal project with the construction of a small power plant for domestic consumption and a bigger plant of up to 100 megawatts of electricity for export to the neighbouring French Islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

Geothermal “is a matter of great interest, not only to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but the Caribbean, to the neighbouring countries such as St. Lucia and Barbados,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told IPS, adding that the project would be a “potentially game changing initiative.”

“The fuel cost savings to be had with geothermal, I’m told, will be in the region of 16 million to 20 million dollars. That’s a significant amount given the cost of the fuel.”

St. Vincent currently produces just over five megawatts of electricity from its three hydropower stations. The peak demand for electricity is between 20-21 megawatts. With the addition of a geothermal plant, the island is looking to produce an additional 10 megawatts to bring total production to 15 megawatts.

“When [former] President [Bill] Clinton first started this idea about reaching out to islands, he knew the price of electricity and specifically told me the electricity cost in almost every island in the Caribbean, so obviously he had put some time into looking at this and was concerned about it,” Jan Hartke, global director of the Clinton Climate Initiative Clean Energy Project, told IPS.

“How can families get along with the kinds of electricity costs that you have? How can businesses thrive? How can the islands take the kind of social and economic and environmental leadership roles that it wants and should do when you have these kinds of burdens on your electricity prices?”

Prime Minister Gonsalves also sees it as a major development opportunity. “As our energy costs come down, you can expect more hotels to come. You can expect factories which don’t want to set up here because of the high cost of electricity, and as you get more tourists there are other knock-on effects,” he said.

“More restaurants will be built and opened with a comfortable eating environment for clients, because running an air conditioning unit on an ongoing basis at 40 cents per kilowatt hour, it could eat up all of your profits,” he told IPS.

The Caribbean is one of the regions most prone to natural disasters resulting from climate change and officials are hoping that geothermal energy is the answer to their mounting climate change concerns.

Hartke said the climate issue and its effect on Caribbean countries was also of particular concern to the Clinton foundation.

“There is no set of countries that are more vulnerable than the small island developing states,” he told IPS. “Mrs. Clinton has been interested in the islands for a long time. She was at the Organisation of American States (OAS) four years ago specifically talking about the concerns and needs of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”

Officials have already commenced public education exercises for residents of North Windward in the northeast of the island and Chateaubelair in the northwest, the two communities closest to the volcano which occupies most of the northern third of the country.

“It is very important to keep the people informed since those areas are going to be directly affected in terms of exploration and production,” Gonsalves said.

Local resident Rochelle Baptiste welcomed the government-led initiative to seek cheaper energy through geothermal exploration. Like most Vincentians, she is eagerly awaiting the end result.

“In this harsh economic climate it is important that action be taken to lessen the impact on citizens,” she told IPS.

“High energy cost is an issue that our citizens have been struggling with over the years which in some respect has been hampering social and economic development as persons are just not able to meet the cost on their monthly electricity bills compounded with other bills.

“In North Windward where I grew up and still spend most of my time, I remember how much we yearned for electricity when most of the country was brightly lit. When it came, we were elated but it came with a price which residents are still struggling to pay for. Each month you can hear the cry as neighbours complain to neighbours about the high cost of electricity, as they ponder how they are going to meet the payment,” Baptiste added.

Hydro plants on the Lower Thjorsa, above, could potentially provide energy for a new aluminium smelter. Credit: Lowana Veal/IPS

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, Jun 9 2013 (IPS)

The new Icelandic government was only a day old when it announced in mid-May that it would do all it could to push ahead with the Helguvik aluminium smelter. Construction for the smelter began in in 2008 but since then has met with a variety of problems, mostly energy-related.

Critics of the project say that too many aspects of the project still remain unresolved and allege that the rush to build the smelter is a corporate tactic to draw Iceland’s government into developing infrastructure that it will be forced to continue supporting, to the detriment of the country’s protected areas.

Environmental concerns, meanwhile, were nearly inconspicuous during election campaigns, and on May 1, a few days after election results were announced, a Green March tagged along behind the trade unions’ march to remind political parties that the election had been won on a platform of cutting taxes and slashing home loans rather than on building new aluminium smelters.

The Green March focused on environmental issues and specifically the fact that the new government had no mandate to build more aluminium plants – which consume large quantities of energy and produce pollutants such as carbon dioxide and perfluorocarbons – or power plants.

Yet the day before the April 27 elections, Michael Bless, the head of Century Aluminium, which owns the plant, said he was optimistic a new government would ensure that development of the Helguvik plant could continue in earnest.

The governmental agreement issued two weeks ago by the winning Independence Party (IP) and Progressive Party (PP) emphasised that conservation and utilisation could proceed hand-in-hand.

The environment section began, “Clean renewable energy…offers great marketing opportunities that could lay the base for increased exports and a stronger image of the country.”

As Iceland’s geothermal and hydro energy is seen as renewable, a previous environment minister, Siv Fridleiksdottir, justified building the Karahnjukar dam and Fjardaal aluminium plant by saying that building energy-sucking aluminium plants in Iceland, where the energy is clean and renewable, was preferable to building them where they would run on dirty energy.

Energy blocks

The new minister for industry, Ragnheidur Elin Arnadottir, comes from the constituency which houses the partly built Helguvik smelter. It also has the highest unemployment rate in the country, and the municipality sees the smelter as a potential source of employment. She is keen for the project to go ahead.

Arnadottir told IPS that she is looking into possible incentives from the government side to facilitate the project, including possible state aid for various aspects of infrastructure such as road building and harbour expansion.

But the main stumbling block is still the lack of energy needed to fuel the plant and the price that Century Aluminium is willing to pay for the electricity, especially with the current global price of aluminium at rock-bottom.

Until a few years ago, aluminium companies in Iceland paid very little for electricity, as they consumed so much electricity and their operation was considered good for the economy.

But times have changed, and now energy companies are demanding higher prices for the electricity they produce.

The environmental impact assessment for Helguvik assumed a total capacity of 250,000 tonnes of aluminium produced annually, although ideally Century would like the smelter to produce 360,000 tonnes to be more cost-effective.

Energy for the plant was supposed to be provided by the regional heating company HS Orka and capital city-based Orkuveita Reykjavikur (OR) and sourced from geothermal plants, none of which have been built yet.

New pollution regulations for hydrogen sulphide (H2S), which is produced by geothermal plants, will also mean that at least one of these plants cannot be built until H2S emissions can be contained.

Despite these plans, Ketill Sigurjonsson, an energy specialist from the energy consultancy firm Askja Energy Partners, says that geothermal plants will probably be too expensive for an aluminium smelter.

“There may be some options in low cost hydropower, but it is still unclear if these will be enough to provide a full-sized aluminium smelter with sufficient electricity,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Icelandic government approved the Master Plan for Hydro and Geothermal Resources, which categorises all potential hydro and geothermal power plants into three categories: utilisation, meaning the plant faces no obstacles for development; pending, meaning more research is needed; or protection, meaning development is not allowed.

But in late May, Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, the minister for fisheries, agriculture and the environment, announced that he had ordered a review of the plan, with the aim of moving some of the plants from the pending category, such as the hydro plants in the Lower Thjorsa River, into the utilisation group.

These plants could potentially provide energy for Helguvik or other large-scale industrial projects, such as a silicon factory. But Johannsson’s statement has caused unrest amongst environmentalists, some of whom have campaigned to save the Lower Thjorsa from development.

Tactical moves?

Arni Finnsson, from the Iceland Nature Conservation Association, has strong views on the matter. “Century Aluminium has conducted its business in a totally irresponsible manner with regard to a new smelter in Helguvik,” he said.

“Without having secured any energy at all for a new aluminium smelter…it started building the smelter, apparently in order to put pressure on politicians who are sensitive to high unemployment rates, for them to deliver the energy,” Finnsson told IPS.

“To build a smelter of 250-360,000 tonnes a year would require major destruction of valuable nature areas,” he added, pointing out that both local and national energy companies would have to draw on energy from several projects that had not yet been designed or planned.

“Century Aluminium’s plan is to start the smelter with some 180,000 tonnes a year and then force the Icelandic government to provide more energy against a threat of decommissioning the plant,” he explained.

“Iceland would have to build power plants in areas which are currently protected or have been slated for protection,” he concluded.

Healthy soil looks dark, crumbly, and porous, and is home to worms and other organisms. It feels soft, moist, and friable, and allows plant roots to grow unimpeded. Credit: Colette Kessler, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

By Stephen Leahy
REYKJAVÍK, Iceland, May 31 2013 (IPS)

Soil is becoming endangered.This reality needs to be part of our collective awareness in order to feed nine billion people by 2050, say experts meeting here in Reykjavík.

And a big part of reversing soil decline is carbon, the same element that is overheating the planet."Soils are like a bank account. You should only draw out what you put in." -- Rattan Lal of Ohio State University

“Keeping and putting carbon in its rightful place” needs to be the mantra for humanity if we want to continue to eat, drink and combat global warming, concluded 200 researchers from more than 30 countries.

“There is no life without soil,” said Anne Glover, chief scientific advisor to the European Commission.

“While soil is invisible to most people it provides an estimated 1.5 to 13 trillion dollars in ecosystem services annually,” Glover said at the Soil Carbon Sequestration conference that ended this week.

The dirt beneath our feet is a nearly magical world filled with tiny, wondrous creatures. A mere handful of soil might contain a half million different species including ants, earthworms, fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms. Soil provides nearly all of our food – only one percent of our calories come from the oceans, she said.

Soil also gives life to all of the world’s plants that supply us with much of our oxygen, another important ecosystem service. Soil cleans water, keeps contaminants out of streams and lakes, and prevents flooding. Soil can also absorb huge amounts of carbon, second only to the oceans.

“It takes half a millennia to build two centimetres of living soil and only seconds to destroy it,” Glover said.

Each year, 12 million hectares of land, where 20 million tonnes of grain could have been grown, are lost to land degradation. In the past 40 years, 30 percent of the planet’s arable (food-producing) land has become unproductive due to erosion. Unless this trend is reversed soon, feeding the world’s growing population will be impossible.

The world will likely need “60 percent more food calories in 2050 than in 2006”, according to a new paper released May 30 by the World Resources Institute. Reaching this goal while maintaining economic growth and environmental sustainability is one of the most important global challenges of our time, it concludes.

Urban development is a growing factor in loss of arable lands. One million city dwellers occupy 40,000 hectares of land on average, said Rattan Lal of Ohio State University.

Plowing, removal of crop residues after harvest, and overgrazing all leave soil naked and vulnerable to wind and rain, resulting in gradual, often unnoticed erosion of soil. This is like tire wear on your car – unless given the attention and respect it deserves, catastrophe is only a matter of time.

Erosion also puts carbon into the air where it contributes to climate change. But with good agricultural practices like using seed drills instead of plows, planting cover crops and leaving crop residues, soils can go from a carbon source to a carbon solution, he said.

“Soil can be a safe place where huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere could be sequestered,” Lal told IPS.

When a plant grows it takes CO2 out the atmosphere and releases oxygen. The more of a crop – maize, soy or vegetable – that remains after harvest, the more carbon is returned to the soil. This carbon is mainly found in humus – the rich organic material from decay of plant material. Soil needs to contain just 1.5 percent carbon to be healthy and resilient – more capable of withstanding drought and other harsh conditions.

“Healthy soils equals healthy crops, healthy livestock and healthy people,” Lal said.

However, most soils suffer from 30 to 60 percent loss in soil carbon. “Soils are like a bank account. You should only draw out what you put in. Soils are badly overdrawn in most places.”

Farmers and pastoralists (ranchers) could do “miracles” in keeping carbon in the soil and helping to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and feed the world if they were properly supported, Lal said.

The world’s 3.4 billion ha of rangeland and pastures has the potential to sequester or absorb up to 10 percent of the annual carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels and cement production, estimates Ólafur Arnalds, a soil scientist at the Agricultural University of Iceland.

Eliminating overgrazing and using other pasture management techniques will reduce the number of animals on the land in the short term but it is better for the long term health of grazing lands. While these practises can help with climate change, there many other good reasons to adopt them, Arnalds told IPS.

That view is echoed by many here since determining exactly how much carbon a farm field or pasture can absorb from the atmosphere is highly variable and difficult to determine.

Proper land management can help with climate change but in no way does it reduce the need to make major reductions in fossil fuel use, said Guðmundur Halldórsson, a research co-ordinator at the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland, co-host of the conference.

And using farmland or pastures as a ‘carbon sponges’ will lead to all sorts of problems, Halldórsson told IPS.

“The real key is adopt practices that enhance soil health to improve food productivity,” he said.

That approach is much more likely to help in improve local livelihoods, protect water resources, improve biodiversity,  reduce erosion and help put carbon back into the ground where it belongs, he said.

“Iceland overexploited its lands, trying to squeeze more out of the land than it could handle. We call it ‘killing the milk cow’. We can no longer live off the land as we once did.”

Situated in the North Atlantic, the windy island was once mostly covered by forests, lush meadows and wetlands when the first settlers arrived nearly 1,000 years ago. By the late 1800s, 96 percent of the forest was gone and half the grasslands destroyed by overgrazing. Iceland became one the world’s poorest countries, its people starved and its landscape remains Europe’s largest desert.

Of necessity, Iceland pioneered techniques to halt land degradation and in restoration. And for more than 100 years the Soil Conservation Service has struggled but the gains are small and very slow in coming. Today at least half of the former forests and grasslands are mostly bare and subject to severe erosion by the strong winds.

“We’re still fighting overgrazing here,” Halldórsson said.

Iceland relies far less on agriculture now and the harsh lessons of poor land management of the past are irrelevant to the 90 percent of Icelanders who now live in urban areas.

“The public isn’t supporting land restoration. We’ve forgotten that land is the foundation of life,” Halldórsson said.

Three members of Iceland's Pirate Party, Jon Thor Olafsson, Birgitta Jonsdottir and Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, in front of the Althingi parliament building. Credit: Lowana Veal/IPS.

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, May 6 2013 (IPS)

With an unprecedented number of political parties contesting Iceland’s latest elections, Icelanders are discovering that if they are passionate about a particular issue, they need simply to find like-minded people and establish a political party.

Iceland’s population is just under 323,000. Yet fifteen parties took part in the latest elections on Apr. 27 for a total of 63 seats. Part of the reason for the increase in political parties was a growing discontent with the “Big Four” parties.

These include the ruling Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Left-Green Party, which together had imposed cuts in public spending due to demands from the International Monetary Fund. There are also the Progressive Party (PP) and Independence Party (IP), widely regarded as responsible for the financial crash in 2008 and frequently accused of filibustering during the last parliamentary session.

Four of the new parties contested only a few constituencies. Activist Sturla Jonsson, for instance, created the Sturla Jonsson party to support people who were in danger of losing their homes or vehicles and to inform them of how they could use Icelandic legislation to fight the authorities.

Another, Birgitta Jonsdottir, decided to start a Pirate Party in the spirit of the international Pirate Party movement, which emphasises transparency in government dealings and finances. The risk paid off, and three members were elected – the first time the Pirate Party has won seats in a national election.

Jonsdottir was elected to the Althingi, Iceland’s parliament, in 2009, following demonstrations in January of that year that brought down the right-wing government in power at the time and seen as responsible for the crash.

Another new party, Bright Future, gained six seats. This party likens itself to the liberal European Green parties.

Little environmental progress            

Despite gains by these parties, generally more progressive, one area in Iceland that is still likely to suffer following the 2013 elections is the environment.

The largest parties in the new Althingi are still those responsible for the development of the Karahnjukar power plant and associated Alcoa aluminium smelter prior to the bank crash in October 2008.

In a recent survey carried out by Gallup for the conservation organisation Landvernd, 51.3 percent of respondents said they were against the construction of new aluminium plants. Only 30.9 percent were in favour.

The head of Century Aluminium, Michael Bless, said last week that he was optimistic a new government would ensure that development of the proposed aluminium plant at Helguvik in southwest Iceland could continue in earnest.

This plant was originally scheduled to begin operating in 2010 but has suffered a number of setbacks, mostly to do with the provision of power.

It is also unlikely that the new Althingi will spare the ecologically sensitive Lake Myvatn in north Iceland and will instead continue to develop the nearby Bjarnarflag geothermal plant, which will damage the lake and flora and fauna within and around it.  It could cause health problems for those living nearby.

The question of EU membership

With the Social Democratic Party, the main party that had pushed for accession to the European Union, suffering a resounding defeat in the elections, the future of EU negotiations is uncertain.

However, opinion polls show repeatedly that while Icelanders generally feel that Iceland is better off outside of the EU, the majority of the population want negotiations to continue and to be given the opportunity to vote on the matter in a public referendum.

The right-wing Independence Party voted at its last national meeting to halt EU negotiations completely, but some candidates have publicly stated that they feel this decision goes too far.

“We should have a referendum to find out whether or not Icelanders want to continue EU negotiations,” says Valgerdur Gunnarsdottir, one of the new Althingi members for the IP, emphasising that this is her personal view.

The other large party, the centre-right Progressive Party, is also against continuing EU negotiations, although it says that a referendum should be carried out before halting them.

PP members have been given the role of forming a ruling coalition and have publicly stated that they will not back down from their election promise of using funds recovered from hedge funds and other foreign creditors to slash mortgage debts by 20 percent.

They are currently undergoing formal discussions with the IP to reach this goal, but if this task proves too difficult, they will talk to other parties instead.

Critics have said that the measures proposed by the PP and IP would lead to another crisis in the Icelandic economy.

Thorvaldur Gylfason, a university economics professor and founder of the Democratic Watch party, one of the new parties in the recent election, criticised the IP during a television interview on the eve of the elections. He fervently hoped that the PP and IP would not be in a position to privatise the banks once again.

He later told IPS, “There is no way that the Independence Party and Progressive Party can stand by their promises, especially if they are carried out at the same time.”

Before the election, critics had pointed out that these parties’ promises would benefit only the wealthy. Others are concerned about how the environment will fare.

The Green March at the end of the May 1 trade union demonstration aimed at reminding new politicians that election campaigns were mostly centred on reducing home loans and cutting taxes and that no authority was given to build new power plants with ensuing environmental destruction.

Still others worry whether the new constitution written by Gylfason and 24 others two years ago will be passed. Before the Althingi dissolved prior to elections, ten weekly demonstrations were held to pressure the body to pass the constitution.

These demonstrations were initiated by Hordur Torfason, instigator of the protests that brought down the Icelandic government in January 2009.

Asked whether he envisioned these protests continuing, Torfason told IPS, “Various options are in the pipeline and will come to light in due course.”

The new parliament will have two fewer women in its ranks, bringing the proportion of women down from 42.8 percent to 39.7 percent.

Scientists with ICESCAPE, a multi-year NASA shipborne project, investigate Arctic sea ice and melt ponds in the Chukchi Sea in July 2010. Credit: NASA/Kathryn Hansen

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

With climate change rapidly opening up new opportunities for shipping and resource extraction across the once permanently frozen Arctic, the United States and other northern countries are being compelled to re-examine their policies, both national and collective, towards this region of growing geostrategic importance.

Last week, the president of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, was in Washington to announce the launch of a new group called the Arctic Circle, which would include all counties and entities interested in greater involvement in Arctic-related decision-making.“We have steadily seen what we considered ‘our Arctic’ becoming the ‘global Arctic’.” -- Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson

On Monday, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, proposed a series of reforms to U.S. Arctic policy.

“U.S. Arctic policy must respond to the economic, environmental, security, and geopolitical concerns that confront the region,” the report states.

“It is now time for the Obama administration to enhance U.S. Arctic policy by updating and prioritizing national security … improving interagency cooperation, enhancing U.S. international and public diplomacy related to the Arctic, and increasing the focus of senior U.S. officials.”

The report warns that these activities must begin immediately “if the U.S. is to prepare for and fully maximize its chairmanship of the Arctic Council beginning in 2015.” It also suggests appointing an “Arctic envoy” with the rank of an ambassador.

Currently, Arctic-related international policymaking is made through a consensus organisation called the Arctic Council. Made up of countries with territory in the region, this includes the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, as well as observer nations.

However, turning new U.S. policy – or that of any other country – toward the Arctic will be complex. Here in Washington, for instance, as many as six White House groups are currently involved in Arctic issues, with calls for streamlining of this process already being made.

“I believe there are three issues that should be guiding U.S. policy towards the Arctic,” Peter Troedsson, a captain in the U.S. Coast Guard and a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“First, is an enduring presence and an awareness of Arctic activity. Second, we need to promote the safe use of the Arctic. And lastly, we need to be able to work with other institutions and nations toward developing governance and best practices for the area.”

But beyond the Arctic Council, “We also have the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the United States has signed but has yet to ratify,” Troedsson said.

“In two years the U.S. is going to take over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, so we’re going to be in a position where we are chairing this eight-nation group and we’re going to be the only ones who haven’t signed on to the Law of the Sea. This will seriously damage our credibility.”

Although numerous U.S. political and military officials have urged the country to ratify the Law of the Sea – including, most recently, late last year – conservative members of the U.S. Congress have continually stymied the effort, suggesting that doing so would be akin to ceding U.S. sovereignty.

The “outsiders”

The melting of the Arctic Sea ice, and the opening of new shipping routes linking Asia to America and Europe, will bring along with it geopolitical considerations that have rarely existed. Already, China is preparing for a world in which it would be the world’s most important trading country, and the Arctic could be a key component of its evolving vision.

“We have steadily seen what we considered ‘our Arctic’, becoming the ‘global Arctic’,” President Grimsson said last week. “Now, countries from faraway places want to have a seat at the Arctic table … They want to discuss not if but when they would acquire a seat on the Arctic Council. This serves as a wake-up call for all the countries located [near] the Arctic.”

During the most recent Arctic Council discussions, in 2012, several Asian states that have no Arctic territory expressed their interest in the organisation.

“If they can send their ships through the Arctic Sea routes, they can shorten this distance by more that 40 percent,” President Grimsson said. “In fact, China is already building ships for this purpose, and Singapore is exploring the potential for an Arctic harbour.”

China has already conducted five Arctic expeditions since 2000, and has established a research station. India followed with the establishment of its own Arctic research station in 2007, while the South Korean government is becoming increasingly active in looking at possible Arctic ventures.

Currently there are two primary sea routes across the Arctic. The first runs north of Canada, while the second, known as the Northern Sea Route, runs from the Bering Strait to the Barents Sea.

This second one, which is currently open only in the summer, condenses the traditional route by about 2,500 nautical miles, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel costs. The opening of this route would radically alter the transport of goods from Asian industrial hubs to Western consumer markets.

One fear relates to the future role these “newcomers” might have on the region as it is brought within their strategic spheres of interest, and whether this could result in a greater military presence. While the driving forces of these new interests is economic, geopolitical jostling of has already forced the Arctic Council countries to begin debating the “correct” role for these new entrants.

Iceland has welcomed China’s application to join the council, for instance, but it has expressed concerns that the European Union would try to impose a ban on whale hunting, which Iceland has long defended as a cultural tradition. Russia, meanwhile, has welcomed the E.U.’s attempt to become part of the council, but remains suspicious of letting in China.

Environmental responsibility remains another major concern. Increased economic development – including natural resource extraction– could bring with it, for instance, increased possibility of an oil spill that could devastate the pristine Arctic environment for decades.

International and United States Geographical Survey (USGS) research has indicated that the Arctic seabed holds up to 160 billion barrels of petroleum, located at a relatively shallow depth of 500 feet. Less conclusive projects based on preliminary soil samples have also speculated that the Arctic seabed holds substantial mineral and metal deposits.

“There’s already a lot of industrial infrastructure built up there, but there is very little oil-spill response planning,” CFR’s Troedsson says.

“You can imagine it’s going to take a long time to get that kind of response equipment [needed] anywhere in the Arctic, so that challenge can be added to the challenge of how you clean up oil in water that’s close to zero degrees or frozen. No matter how good a response plan is, if any significant incident takes place, the damage would be immense and the public will not be happy.”

Trafficked persons in Iceland often live in cramped living conditions and work up to 16 hours a day. Credit: Sunbeam photos/CC-BY-2.0

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, Dec 27 2012 (IPS)

For 18 months, a Chinese immigrant named Xing Haiou slept on a massage table in a windowless room in Reykjavik after completing his 12-hour workday.

Brought to Iceland by his distant relative, Lina Jia, Haiou received no wages between June 2002 and December 2003, although Jia paid his parents a monthly pittance for “borrowing” their son to work in her massage parlour.

Xing Haiou eventually accused Jia of non-payment of salary, and received a sum equivalent to 18 months’ work at minimum wage, including overtime.

At the time, he was not formally recognised as a victim of trafficking and forced labour. Today, authorities in Iceland are making a concerted effort to broaded the definition of those terms to better protect victims and survivors.

According to one source, who spoke to IPS under strict condition of anonymity, three questions can determine whether or not human trafficking has occurred: what was actually being done to the person, what methods were used, and what was the purpose of it?

The Icelandic police’s guidelines for trafficking are largely derived from the Norwegian ‘Guide to Identification of Possible Victims of Trafficking’.

These guidelines also seek to correct three common misconceptions of trafficking: that if the person did not take opportunities to escape, he or she is not being coerced; that individuals cannot be said to be victims of trafficking if their current living conditions are better than their previous ones; and that for a specific case to be termed trafficking, the person or group of individuals concerned must have crossed over a national border.

“If people use a definition of trafficking that is too limited, we are excluding most of the victims.  Basically, if a person’s vulnerable situation is being exploited, then it’s trafficking,” according to Margret Steinarsdottir from the Icelandic Human Rights Centre (ICEHR).

“If people come to Iceland of their own free will, even if they know they will be entering a situation in which they will be exploited, they could still be called victims of trafficking,” she added.

Her opinion reflects the framework of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which was adopted in Warsaw in 2005.

Steinarsdottir, a lawyer, has worked with numerous people she says could be classified as victims of trafficking. Contrary to popular opinion, not all victims of trafficking are ensnared in the sex trade, nor are the victims always women.

In Iceland, she says that forced labour is prevalent in sectors like construction and agriculture, while a large number of trafficked persons end up as au pairs in private houses.

Restaurants also conceal a large number of forced labourers, mostly from Eastern European countries, who sometimes work up to 16 hours a day.

According to Steinarsdottir, many people mistakenly believe that trafficking is masterminded by groups of gangsters, when in fact many cases involve individuals who are lured by false promises of stable employment.

Sun Fulan, a young Chinese woman, was promised an “eight-hour workday doing light household chores, with Sundays off”.

Instead, she ended up working 14 to 15 hours a day delivering newspapers and leaflets, working in a massage salon and helping to renovate three properties owned by Lina Jia, the same woman who brought Xing Haiou to this country.

Despite the long hours, which also included housework, Fulan received only a fraction of her promised salary. Finally, in February this year, she wrote to the authorities in Iceland and China, informing them of her plight.

Steinarsdottir has also talked to immigrant women who got married in Iceland and were then forced by their husbands to work as prostitutes. In many cases, the men take away the women’s earnings and threaten to send them back to their home country if they complain.

This situation too, she claimed, can be classified as trafficking.

Steinunn Gydu- og Gudjonsdottir, who manages the newly established ‘Kristinarhus’, a refuge for women victims of prostitution or trafficking, has also dealt with a case of forced labour.

“It wasn‘t clear whether the woman had been brought to Iceland only for forced labour or also for prostitution, but all the typical signs were there: she didn‘t have her passport, all of her earnings were taken away from her, and she was threatened,” Gydu- og Gudjonsdottir told IPS.

Asked how authorities deal with cases of forced labour, which primarily occur around the capital, Reykjavik, Asgeir Karlsson from the Icelandic National Commissioner of Police, told IPS, “We normally send people to the trade unions, but otherwise the local (police) branch in the person’s vicinity deals with such cases.”

“I have not heard of any cases of forced labour this year, and cases do not seem to pop up as often as before the bank crash in 2008,” according to Steinarsdottir.

“But that may be because the people concerned are scared of coming forward and complaining, fearing that they will not be able to get another job,” she concluded.

(END)

The Associated Whistle-blowing Press (AWP) seeks to provide impartial news based on wikileaks' raw data. Credit: Bradley Manning Support Network/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, Sep 24 2012 (IPS)

With the imprisonment of Bradley Manning and detainment of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks is effectively on hold. But that does not mean that leaks and whistleblowing activities have stopped.

GlobaLeaks lists a large number of leak sites, which are active to different degrees. Soon The Associated Whistleblowing Press (AWP) will be added to the list.

“One of the main motivations for the AWP is to unite journalists around the world and bring stories to light,” says Brazilian journalist Pedro Noel, one of the main people behind the initiative. “WikiLeaks used to analyse and report on the files they released, but they don’t do that any more.”

Noel perceived a gap in the whistleblowing community, between raw data – documents that conclude wrongdoing – and newsmaking in an impartial way, free of political and economic agendas. He decided that a new platform was needed.

“If the data does not get explained and treated in a way that people can understand, there’s no point in releasing it.”

Noel is currently based in Reykjavik, where he is setting up an office, and building links worldwide. He and his colleagues intend to launch the new whistleblowing site in the last week of September.

Noel was once a volunteer with WikiLeaks, so he knows how the system there works. He says there a number of differences between the AWP and WikiLeaks.

“First, there are structural differences. We’ll have a decentralised framework. With AWP, editors and staff will swap positions: we don’t want to have an ‘icon’. We’ll work with journalists and activists in different centres, and all the working groups will have their own platforms to receive documents and the like,” he tells IPS.

On the other hand, “WikiLeaks all goes through one website, which is in English only. Also, WikiLeaks publishes files of global interest, especially those related to the U.S. AWP wants to correct wrongdoings on a local basis and thus help local communities.”

Noel says it is important to have teams working in different countries and in different languages. “We want to emphasise the local scale as well as the international.

“Another important difference is that WikiLeaks gives exclusivity on the files it discloses, such as to the British newspaper The Guardian and others in the release of Cablegate.” Cablegate refers to the release of U.S. diplomatic cables that had been sent from its consulates and embassies around the world.

“AWP is building a team of researchers and analysts who will themselves publish stories, using local websites.” The main website will have links to the local websites, which will come online when the site is launched.

Anonymity is ensured as AWP uses open-source GlobaLeaks technology, which is specifically designed for whistleblowing, and is accessed with the TOR browser –that builds in anonymity. This means that AWP will not be able to trace the sender of the files. In addition, AWP encourages encryption of email.

AWP will keep a leaked document offline until they have determined it is genuine. Although the sender cannot be traced, Noel is optimistic that this should not be a problem.

“Electronic information tells a lot about the source. A photo gives certain electronic information, and the same goes for a scanned document. It is also possible to see whether a scanned document is genuine or whether it is composed of several different documents,” Noel says.

Iceland may seem a strange place to house a whistleblowing service, but Noel says one of the main reasons for the decision is the Iceland Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) parliamentary resolution that was passed unanimously in 2010 by the Icelandic Althingi (parliament) with the aim of giving safe space to whistleblowers and investigative journalists.

The resolution also wants the Althingi to introduce a new legislative regime to protect and strengthen freedom of expression, allowing Iceland to become an international transparency haven.

Initiated by activist and parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, the IMMI resolution pulls together the best sections of transparency legislation from all over the world. To become law, it now has to be put through the legislative process. This has suffered some setbacks, but is progressing slowly.

Various drawbacks have come to light. One is that various specialists have pointed out that Internet security is substantially inadequate in Iceland. Will this have an effect on AWP?

Smari McCarthy is the director of IMMI and sits on the steering committee that has been set up to investigate issues that need to be looked into in greater depth concerning the implementation of IMMI. He says that the security considerations are real but are being dealt with.

“This year, a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) was established in Iceland to serve as a coordination and incident management centre for Icelandic network security issues. In addition, the foreign ministry of Iceland has appointed a national security committee, consisting of members of parliament, to whom I testified a month ago on issues regarding network and information security in Iceland.”

At the moment, McCarthy says “it cannot be said that the situation in Iceland is markedly worse than in most European countries.”

The existence of IMMI is instrumental in the setting up of AWP in Iceland, Noel says, “but we have the same relationship with them as with any other individual or media initiative based in Iceland.”

By the time the political climate in Iceland was ripe for the Cutlery Revolution, Hörður Torfason was already well practiced at stirring things up.

Hörður Torfason. Iceland’s new constitution will be the “battle of the winter to come”, he says. Credit: Courtesy of Hörður Torfason

“I’ve been doing this all my life,” he told IPS in an interview.

In 1975, Torfason stepped forward as the first openly gay man in Iceland, to much public discontent. After escaping an attempt on his life, Torfason moved to Copenhagen where he lived in exile for many years. However, he continued to fight for gay rights from abroad using his art to spread the message.

“The role of the artist, to me, is to defy the misuse of power in our society, and I’ve been doing that all my life,” said Torfason.

Based out of Copenhagen, he returned to Iceland every year, touring and giving concerts in support of gay rights, and he founded the Icelandic Gay Organisation Samtökin 78 in 1978. Gradually, public sentiment changed and he was able to move back to Iceland in 1991, where he has lived ever since.

“It takes years to change a society, but also it has brought forward a lot of people who are quite capable, intelligent people,” said Torfason.

Today, gay people in Iceland enjoy equal rights.

In July 2008, he found himself on the activist stage again fighting for the rights of Paul Oudor Ramses, a young man from Kenya who was denied political asylum in Iceland along with his wife and son. With the aid of Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Torfason protested the parliament’s decision and in late August, Ramses was granted the asylum he had sought. Now he and his family are Icelandic citizens.

“If we give up and leave it to the politicians, nothing will change,” said Torfason.

The act that Torfason is most acknowledged for is perhaps leading Iceland’s Cutlery Revolution. On Oct. 11, 2008, only five days after the financial crash, Hörður Torfason planted himself outside the parliament building in Reykjavik and started putting questions to the people who passed by.

Every day for a week he stood in the same spot and asked the people two questions. The first, do you know what has happened in this country? The second, do you have any ideas about what we can do about it?

“Everybody was in shock. The people were not very clear on what was happening,” said Torfason.

By gauging opinion on the streets, Torfason devised three demands which reflected the people’s immediate wishes: the government should resign, the board of the financial supervisorial authority should resign, and the board of the national bank should resign.

“Always, I read out the three demands and I asked people, ‘Is this what you want?’ and the people said ‘Yes,’ by thousands and thousands,” said Torfason.

He began to organise protests, which were held at the same time every week outside the parliament building.

“I asked peopled to help me, and especially I concentrated on getting in contact with young people who are clever with the internet to spread the message, and that succeeded,” said Torfason.

Just after Christmas, Torfason organised everyone to surround the parliament building on the day the MPs came back from holidays.

“I was expecting, I don’t know, 3,000. It turned out to be something we had never, never seen before. There were thousands and thousands and thousands, day after day.”

The protest continued for five days, with the largest turnout on the last day. The day after that, the first minister resigned, and on Monday, the government resigned, taking with it the board of the financial supervisory authority. In another month, the board of the national bank would resign, meeting the third and final demand of the protestors.

“To me and I think most people I talk to, if we hadn’t had the Cutlery Revolution, the far right-wing party would still be in power,” he observed.

The latest development has been a constitution written by the people of Iceland themselves. Any Icelandic citizen could run to be considered for a position at the drafting table. Furthermore, everyone in the country could monitor the writing of the new constitution and submit suggestions via Facebook and Twitter. A referendum to ratify the constitution will be held Oct. 10.

“Things will not change unless we get a new constitution,” Tolfason said. “It’s still going to be the battle of the winter to come, I think.”

Torfason has received numerous awards for his enduring efforts as a human rights activist, including The Tupilak, from the Swedish Gay Organisation for outstanding contribution in the gay rights field in 1995 and 2009, and the Icelandic Social Democratic Party for his courage, bravery and honesty in human right struggles in 2003.

While securing donations for part of his trips and projects, much funding for Torfason’s activism comes from his own pocket, and demands most of his time and attention.

“My aim is not to go into politics or make money out of it… This is a kind of duty on the part of my society. I’m ready to do the work.”

The Hellisheidi geothermal power plant in Iceland that may provide energy to Britain. Credit: Lowana Veal/IPS.

By Lowana Veal
REYKJAVIK, Jun 5 2012 (IPS)

With rising energy prices and stringent requirements for producing a higher proportion of energy from renewable sources in the near future, long-distance electricity cables are increasingly thought of as a viable option for providing electricity.

The cables, or interconnectors to give them their proper name, transmit energy by way of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) rather than the conventional Alternating Current (AC). For long-distance connections, HVDC cables are highly energy efficient, losing only 2-3 percent of power over 1,000 km.

Now, UK Energy Minister Charles Hendry is undergoing discussions with Iceland’s state-owned energy company, Landsvirkjun, on the possibility of setting up an underwater cable between the two countries to provide Britain with renewable energy from Iceland.

The energy would come from existing geothermal and hydroelectric power plants, although if the two pilot windmills which are scheduled to be installed later this year prove successful, wind power could also potentially be used to power the interconnector.

Landsvirkjun has in fact been exploring the possibility of setting up an underwater cable with Europe since the early 1990s or even before, but the cost has always been thought of as prohibitive although the initiative was always known to be technically feasible.

The cables would lie at a depth of about 1000 m while the distance between the two countries is around 1,200 km. Other interconnectors exist that are longer or deeper, but none are both as deep and as long as the proposed cable linking the UK with Iceland.

What is the next step? “The government has set up a committee to look at the economic benefits for Iceland,” says Magnus Bjarnason from Landsvirkjun.

Asked whether more power plants would need to be built to power the interconnector, Bjarnason replies: “Technological advances have enabled energy distribution to become more efficient. In all such systems, there has to be enough excess capacity to deal with power failures or other emergencies.

“It all boils down to reducing waste in the system,” he concluded.

Some Icelanders are wary of the proposed interconnector, though. At a recent gathering of conservation organisations, participants said that environmental impacts had not been considered at all. The forum concluded that investigating such impacts should be prioritised and information should be made available before other components of the matter are looked at.

“The proposed cables would put pressure on building more power plants, both hydro and geothermal, for exporting energy. These are often located in sensitive wilderness areas which we want to protect.

“In addition, the Icelandic power transmission system would need much bigger transmission lines with associated visual and other environmental impacts to connect to the undersea cables,” explains Gudmundur Ingi Gudbrandsson from Landvernd environmental association.

Gudbrandsson also points out that little has been done to investigate the environmental impact of windmills in Iceland.

Interconnectors are not a new discovery. Britain already has undersea interconnectors that link to the Netherlands and France, and interconnectors that will link the UK with Belgium, Norway and Denmark are being considered. Hydropower will be used in the Norwegian case, but wind power will provide energy from Denmark.

The German-led Desertec venture aims to harness renewable energy from deserts and transport it via HVDC to areas in need. It is an ambitious project and has already started up initiatives in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, although the foundation says that deserts can be utilised anywhere.

Concentrated solar power (CSP) will be the main source of energy for Desertec projects, but wind and other technologies will also be used. In Morocco, a 500 MW CSP complex composed of 12 square kilometres of parabolic solar panels is being built in Ouarzazate.

Most of the energy will probably be used by Morocco itself, but the excess will be exported to Spain via an undersea interconnector. The first 160 MW is expected to go online in 2014.

In Tunisia, the TuNur solar project will supply energy to Italy via an undersea interconnector by 2016, while in Egypt a huge wind farm will be set up at Gulf of el Zayt on the Red Sea and a solar and natural gas plant is already producing electricity from Kuraymat, about 100 km south of Cairo. But like the Moroccan case, it is the locals who get first use of the energy.

In Europe, a project similar to Desertec has just been announced. Called Norstec, it consists of 20 companies in the energy business which will make use of the North Sea’s renewable resources, mainly offshore wind. The interconnector that might lie between the UK and Denmark would be part of this grid. Further details will be discussed at the Renewable UK conference on global offshore wind this month.

With the help of interconnectors, renewable energy targets for 2020 and 2050 could become a reality.

What do academics in the field think? “In general I think these interconnectors are a good idea, enabling renewable electricity surpluses and deficits to be balanced out over a very wide area and reducing the need for backup/storage,” says Godfrey Boyle, renewable energy professor at the UK’s Open University.

His colleague Dave Elliott concurs. “Overall I’m in favour, as long as it doesn’t let governments off the hook on green energy projects nationally and doesn’t exploit host and supply countries,” he says. (End)