On Wednesday, the United States intelligence community unveiled a first-ever assessment of global water-security issues.

The assessment predicts that water in shared basins will increasingly be used as political leverage. Credit: UN Photo/Ky Chung

According to one of the assessment’s lead authors, Major General Richard Engel, water-stressed countries, being forced to focus on pressing internal issues, are increasingly unable to support U.S. policies and strategic interests.

While the assessment does not foresee water being a main instigator of state-to-state violence or state failure in the next decade, beyond that “water in shared basins will increasingly be used as leverage.” In addition, “water shortages and pollution probably will harm the economic performance of important (U.S.) trading partners.”

The Global Water Security assessment is the result of a request made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011. Clinton has previously stated that water and sanitation constitute the two most basic of development priorities.

The end result of the intelligence community’s research is not a comprehensive global look at the issue. Rather, it focuses on seven river basins between the Nile and the Mekong for which there is a “clear intersection of risks of availability and U.S. strategic interests”, according to Casimir Yost, the director of the Strategic Futures Group at the National Intelligence Council, which authored the report.

At the public launch of the assessment, Engel admitted, “The intelligence community went into this project reluctantly. When we looked into it, however, we realised that this was a top-level national security issue.”

For the United States, he suggested, one of the opportunities in the coming decades will be to make available to the rest of the world the country’s expertise in water management.

Indeed, doing so has increasingly become a U.S. priority. The assessment comes on the heels of the creation, in March, of the U.S. Water Partnership, a public-private body likewise devoted to mobilising U.S. water-related knowledge.

There is general agreement that the U.S. does have a role to play in, for instance, providing and fostering scientific understanding on global water-related issues, particularly as water-related issues could become increasingly politicised in the future, leaving the data open to manipulation.

Still, there is disagreement about how exactly the United States should engage beyond this role.

Some suggest that the United States needs to get its own house in order before feeling confident in offering too much advice to the rest of the world.

“In the U.S., we have very serious concerns about how we have managed out own river systems,” says Alexandra Cousteau, a filmmaker and advocate associated with National Geographic.

“The U.S. has indeed made significant contributions in these issues in the past,” says Ellen Laipson, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a think tank here in Washington.

“But now we have to think global: we have to remember that we’re here to solve the problem, not to accrue influence. We have to make sure that these discussions are not limited to Washington.”

Laipson notes that the U.S. government has long had a tendency to be overly reliant on a world vision that focuses on national governments.

“It’s tricky to write this (assessment) within the U.S. government,” she says, “because officials tend to overlook local-level administration as well as supranational bodies.”

According to both Laipson and Cousteau, supranational bodies – such as those made up of governments and stakeholders from throughout a river basin – have proven to be particularly adept at making decisions that balance national security interests with those of local livelihoods and rights.

Cousteau focuses particular emphasis on lower-level bodies.

“Oftentimes, we don’t give enough credit or support to local communities who are coming up with solutions to water-related problems,” she says. “Collectively, these groups are having an impact on water-security issues in their countries – and they can have an even larger impact if they are empowered.”

She also warns that the new intelligence community assessment puts too little concern on the degradation of rivers as systems, including the ecologies and human communities that depend on the health of the system overall.

“It’s these systems, these wetlands, that act as buffers for many of the larger security issues that we’re discussing,” she says. “These river systems mean prosperity for many people.”

Interestingly, history bears out such a view. Despite the omnipresent importance of freshwater systems through the centuries, the historical record suggests that water issues – including water scarcity – have more often than not been grounds for cooperation rather than conflict, including in the modern age.

In a seminal 1998 paper, researcher Aaron T. Wolf wrote that during the 20th century “only seven minor skirmishes” took place, and “no war has ever been fought over water. In contrast, 145 water-related treaties were signed in the same period.”

“These patterns suggest that the more valuable lesson of international water is as a resources whose characteristics tend to induce cooperation, and incite violence only in the exception.”

With U.S. federal funding sources for renewable energy sources already drying up, coupled with a newfound antipathy towards “green” issues issue here in Washington, some are suggesting that China could offer an important opportunity for the future of renewables in the United States and around the world.

A wind farm outside Tianjin. China is the world's leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels. Credit: Mitch Moxley/IPS

While the U.S. and China have been vying for the top spot in spending on green technologies in recent years, China looks set to make massive gains – or at least spend massive amounts of money – in the near future.

The Chinese surpassed the U.S. in wind turbine deployment in 2009. By 2020, the country is supposed to have more solar energy-related infrastructure than the rest of the world combined.

As part of its latest five-year development plan, Beijing has also defined a list of seven strategic emerging industries to receive “special treatment” adding up to some 1.7 billion dollars in government investment. According to Allen, six of those seven areas deal with energy issues.

Allen’s presentation came a day after a high-level British government official made a similar announcement, urging the British private sector to use China as an “incubator” for the development of new green technologies.

“There are big opportunities to partner with Chinese companies and pioneer new technologies in the Chinese market,” John Ashton, the U.K. government’s special representative on climate change, said on his return from an official trip to China. “That will cost you less and get your prices down … faster than it would elsewhere.”

U.S. companies are facing a similar spectrum of concerns. While the United States continues to lead globally in terms of coming up with new innovations in renewable energy, the issue of how to proceed beyond that phase has become increasingly problematic.

According to a study released in late April by the Brookings Institution, state-backed support for the U.S. clean energy sector is set to drop by 75 percent, from 44.3 billion dollars in 2009 to just 11 billion dollars.

While much of this defunding is coming from government programmes that are scheduled to sunset in coming months, in the lead-up to the 2012 U.S. presidential elections green tech has become highly politicised.

In particular, the issue of “wasted” government spending has been strongly linked to funding for renewable energy, making it almost impossible to assume that significant U.S. government support for the sector will be continuing.

While none of this sounds a death knell for renewables in the U.S. in the long term, the uncertainty is making investors highly skittish about dealing with the sector for the time being. In turn, that’s gumming up the pipeline for new and potentially important innovations.

“U.S. companies have inventions that they can’t get off the shelves – they can’t deploy them here, they can’t get financing for demonstration projects,” says Joanna Lewis, an assistant professor of science, technology and international affairs at Georgetown University here in Washington.

“Whereas in China, often they can get these projects built in a short amount of time, get them up and running, and allow investors to get a sense of how viable they are. Then, they can bring that technology back to the U.S. or other markets.”

Lewis, speaking along with Allen and others at a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars here, highlighted the examples of LP Amina, and engineering company, and several car manufacturers, which she said have successfully used this model.

“I think there’s a lot of merit in the idea of the United States working with China to test out technologies and approaches that for whatever reason have the potential to work better or faster in China but that would benefit the U.S. economy,” Nigel Purvis, a visiting senior associate with the Center for Global Development here, told IPS.

“The key, of course, is ensuring that such programmes do in fact benefit U.S. companies and workers, and working out strong intellectual property arrangements is essential.”

Indeed, there are notable and well-documented obstacles to any attempt by foreign entities to invest in China, over and above the tricky politics. As Purvis notes but in a view held by many, the issue of intellectual property remains one of the most sensitive.

According to Craig Allen, many of the investment regulations in place in China today appear to constitute “a mechanism that the Chinese government uses to facilitate the transfer of technology” to its own state-owned entities.

Such chicanery has turned some entrepreneurs off completely. “I don’t think American companies can work in China,” says Jigar Shah, president of the coalition for Affordable Solar Energy. “I find the whole notion of American companies working in China in a way that is in any way meaningful to be ridiculous.”

Shah notes that there is tremendous and growing opportunity in many countries in Africa, as well as India and Brazil. “All of these places are safe to do business,” Shah says. “There’s just no need to work with China.”

Still, other observers note the possibility of achieving a studied balance.

“I am very bullish on ‘co-opetition’ between the U.S. (or Europe) and China in the clean tech space, but we can’t be naive about it,” Peter Adriaens, a professor of engineering and of entrepreneurial strategy in the Business School at the University of Michigan, told IPS.

“Western companies have to not just look at ‘the huge market’ – a simplistic view – but clearly understand China’s long-term strategy to make considered decisions,” Adriaens continues. “Not doing so has already shown to negatively impact the value of East-West partnerships.”

By Peter Richards
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados , May 7 2012 (IPS)

By the time small island developing states (SIDS) arrive at the Rio+20 conference in Brazil in June, they will have worked hard to co-ordinate their message to the rest of the world about the importance of sustainable development for their countries.

In a two-day conference, SIDS Achieving Sustainable Energy for All, that began today in Barbados, these countries are preparing for the conference to ensure that their needs do not go overlooked in June.

Freundel Stuart, prime minister of Barbados, said the country believes it is crucial for the Rio+20 conference to not only recognise the structural vulnerabilities of SIDS but also “offer a model to assist us in realising our sustainable development aspirations and create the institutional platform that would enable us to participate in innovative partnerships both regionally and internationally in this process”.

In turn, islands in the African, Caribbean and Pacific must press the international community to honour previous commitments related to SIDS, he added. “It is also essential that SIDS obtain the requisite resources to make renewable energy resources accessible and affordable,” he told the delegates to the United Nations-sponsored conference.

Stuard called the Rio+20 conference a golden opportunity for the SIDS to speak as one and convey the urgency of fully embracing sustainable development and united around a common agenda to ensure its realisation.

“We must use these meetings in Barbados to prepare ourselves for what will be a battle to articulate, promote and defend our interests, to the benefit of our people, and indeed of the planet. The time for talking is over. The time for concrete and concerted action is upon us,” Prime Minister Stuart said.

The United Nations (U.N.) Conference on Sustainable Development, commonly known as the Rio+20 conference, is a follow- up to the historic 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also held in Brazil.

Finding “political entry points”

In the meantime, the SIDS conference, first held in Barbados in 1994, is underway.

Its participants are discussing a number of initiatives, including ensuring affordable and reliable access to modern energy services in SIDS by 2030; energy access, governance and poverty in SIDS; and the role of energy access in relation to economic development.

Stuart told delegates from various SIDS including the Cook Islands, Tuvala and Nauru that the meeting’s proposed outcome document will address the fundamental concerns of SIDS on issues of conservation and sustainable management, or “blue economy”, even though they are not currently reflected in the draft document.

He emphasised that “plans are being developed for a coordinated approach to renewable energy” at the wider Caribbean level, citing an “abundant endowment of renewable energy resources”.

Stuart said that an honest assessment of the international community’s track record on sustainable development leads to the conclusion that while the concept is part of the international lexicon, it remains too amorphous to be properly implemented.

“Sustainable development is still seen fundamentally as an environmental issue while development, as economic growth, continues to be the dominant paradigm,” he explained. As a result, “it has not been able to find the political entry points to make real progress.”

“The concept of sustainable development must therefore be incorporated into the mainstream national and international economic policy debates.”

Uniquely vulnerable states

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, in a message to the conference, said that the diverse group of countries is united by special vulnerabilities, from climate change and increased risk from disaster, to restricted markets and high conventional energy costs that can hinder development.

“Small island developing states need to free themselves from dependence on fossil fuel imports and transform their energy sectors to encompass modern efficient, clean and renewable sources of energy,” he said, noting that “sustainable development is not possible without sustainable energy”.

“Sustainable energy for all can drive economic growth. It can lift people from poverty, strengthen social equity and protect our environment,” Ban said, adding that “sustainable energy must figure prominently in the outcome” of Rio+20.

It was a theme reiterated by Michelle Gyles-McDonnough, the U.N. resident coordinator and U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative in Barbados.

“Sustainable energy for all is an idea whose time has come,” she said, adding that discussion at Rio+20 has the ability to “(give) birth to a new energy paradigm to propel the development process across SIDS and the rest of the developing world” and “achieve full realisation of the Barbados Programme of Action for SIDA”, which was the result of the 1994 conference in Barbados.

Stuart said that in reviewing how fully policies in that programme have been implemented, a “fair amount of work remains undone, especially regarding the integration of sustainability principles into mainstream economic policies”.

Stuart acknowledged that the global economic crisis and the volatility and high levels of international oil prices over the last three years have “seriously weakened the three pillars of sustainable development – the society, the economy and the environment”.

But he countered these disadvantages by noting that “at the same time, advances in technologies for harnessing renewable energy, and the capacity to increase energy intensities, have made it possible for us to believe that there can be a future for the world beyond the use of fossil fuels”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While Aung San Suu Kyi enjoys iconic status in Myanmar (also known as Burma), women remain invisible in this country steeped in Buddhist tradition and emerging from decades of military rule.

“Her (Suu Kyi’s) image suggests that there is space for women,” Ma Thida, a surgeon who is also a director of the ‘Myanmar Independent’ weekly newspaper published from Yangon (also Rangoon), tells IPS. “She is a great example for all Burmese women.”

Ma Thida was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment in 1993 on charges of “endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations and distributing unlawful literature.” She was released after five years in the notorious Insein prison.

“Today, the overall situation seems better compared to two or three years ago, but it’s far from ideal,” says Ma Thida, one of thousands of women who have contributed to bringing about changes towards democracy in Burma.

According to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, an independent non-profit founded by former political prisoners living in exile and based out of the border town of Mae Sot in Thailand, there are 18 females among the 473 political prisoners in Myanmar.

On paper, women suffer no discrimination with restrictions on civil liberties applying equally to all, regardless of gender.

Myanmar has ratified the international convention on elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW), but the 2008 constitution does not quite conform to it.

For example, in appointing or assigning duties to civil services personnel the constitution prescribes that there be no discrimination “based on race, birth, religion, and sex”, but it also says that “nothing shall prevent appointment of men to the positions that are suitable for men only.”

“At the moment we cannot still talk or discuss freely about gender discrimination or gender equality,” says a female rights activist who prefers not to be named because of her involvement in the campaign against the construction of the Myitsone dam on the Irrawaddy River.

The controversial hydroelectric project, developed jointly by Myanmar’s power ministry, the privately-owned Asia World Company of Burma and China Power Investment Corporation, was suspended by Myanmar authorities last year, following protests.

“That controversial decision to suspend construction, which was welcomed by environment groups, was the result of protests held mostly by women,” the activist said.

“When Burmese official media reported the decision to suspend construction the women seemed to have disappeared because they were asked to sit on the ground while the cameras focused on government officials,” she said. “The presence of women in our society is extensive but we are still invisible.”

The same paradox extends through Myanmar’s political life in which women have been struggling behind the lines for years and are happy to take a back seat when it comes to leadership roles.

“Sometimes it’s not so easy to raise these kinds of issues even within women’s groups as the majority of women think that their role is within the family and that their role in society cannot change,” says Mon Mon Myat, a writer and women’s rights activist.

“In a male-dominated, Theravada Buddhist society there are many cultural barriers that limit women’s behaviour and functioning,” Mon Mon Myat told IPS.

“Female journalists, for example, cannot take pictures or videos of the audience, because they are not allowed to go up to vantage positions because as women they cannot stay above men or Buddhist monks,” explained Mon Mon Myat.

That cultural barrier contrasts sharply with the images of Suu Kyi waving or talking to people from a balcony at her house or at a party office.

Suu Kyi, according to Mon Mon Myat, is an exception because she is the daughter of Gen. Aung San, a venerated national hero closely associated with Myanmar’s independence movement.

In fact, Suu Kyi takes care to prefix her father’s name to hers, although the custom in Myanmar is for women to use their own given names through life without taking on the name of father or husband.

“Though she is a woman, Suu Kyi is a symbol of peace and democracy in our country. That is why we can see big crowds of monks and men strongly showing their support for her,” Mon Mon Myat said.

“The outlook of the country has to change if this country is going to be democratic, but for that there has to be more freedom in the media first,” says ‘Vic’, a 24-year-old writer who goes by that pen name.

Women activists and journalists who dared oppose the junta paid a heavy price with many of them systematically tortured, raped or killed by troops fighting a long war against ethnic militias in the Shan, Kachin and Karen states.

In 2002, the Shan Women’s Action Network denounced the systematic use of rape by the Burmese military in a report where some found the courage to speak out about their own experiences.

“It is still not possible to talk freely about rape cases committed by Burmese soldiers on ethnic women in remote areas,” said Mon Mon Myat.

In many cases, she said, women do not think of rape as gender discrimination but as a problem “of fate in a society that frowns on the weaker sex wearing inappropriate dress or going to inappropriate places.”

“In Myanmar, families may prefer to be silent about a rape, making it difficult for the victim to seek justice in the courts,” said Mon Mon Myat.

Women inside and outside Myanmar have been able to network through the Women’s League of Burma, an organisation of women drawn from 13 different ethnic groups that is “working for the advancement of the status of women towards a peaceful and just society.”

“Changing mindsets, especially among mid-level administrators and ordinary people is essential,” says Grace Swe Zin Htaik, a former actress who devotes herself to campaigning for health and gender issues. “It will take a long time before we achieve gender equality in Burma,” she told IPS.

Though poorly represented in legislative bodies and government positions, women like Mon Mon Myat draw hope for the future from the fact that females slightly outnumber males in Myanmar’s population, presently estimated at 55 million.

There is also the memory of better times before British colonial rule (1824–1948) when Myanmar followed a matriarchal system and women held rights to own property and hold high office.

It’s a deal that’s been more than 15 years in the making and the unmaking. The United States and Japan have been struggling since the 1990s to transform the U.S. military presence on the island of Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan.

In preparation for this week’s visit of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to Washington, the two sides rolled out the latest attempt to resolve what has grown into a major sticking point in alliance relations.

According to the most recent deal, 9,000 U.S. Marines will leave Okinawa, thus fulfilling a longstanding U.S. promise to reduce the overall military footprint on the island. Half of that number will go to expanded facilities on Guam while the remainder will rotate through other bases in the region, including Australia, the Philippines, and Hawaii.

Japan will cover a little more than three billion dollars out of the estimated 8.6-billion-dollar cost of the Guam transfer.

“These adjustments are necessary to realize a U.S. force posture in the Asia-Pacific region that is more geographically distributed, operationally resilient, and politically sustainable,” according to a joint statement issued by Washington and Tokyo.

The deal confirms an earlier decision to separate two key components of the Pacific realignment, namely the transfer of some Marines away from Okinawa and the construction of a replacement facility to house the Marines that remain behind.

The current location of the Marines, the Futenma air base in Ginowan City, is both outdated and, because of the city’s growth over the years, increasingly hazardous for the surrounding civilian population.

“The decision to decouple finding a Futenma replacement from the move of Marines to Guam and elsewhere has relieved some of the pent-up pressure in the U.S.-Japan alliance,” observes Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Programme at the Center for a New American Security.

“Building a second runway at Camp Schwab is still unlikely to happen anytime soon, if ever, but the alliance can now move forward with more closely integrating U.S. and Japan Self-Defense Forces.”

Steve Clemons, long-time Japan observer and editor-at-large at The Atlantic, characterises the agreement as a case of the Japanese no. “They say, ‘it is very difficult,’ but they don’t actually say no,” he says. “This agreement allows the Japanese no to happen without Japan explicitly saying no to its strategic partner.”

The transfer of the Marines has considerable support on Okinawa and Japan more generally. It has, however, generated concerns in the U.S. Congress, particularly over costs. At the end of 2011, Congress removed all the funding connected to the Guam transfer in the 2012 military spending bill, pending completion of an independent review.

Key critics of the process of Pacific realignment – including John McCain, Carl Levin and Jim Webb – remain sceptical of the latest agreement since the review has not yet been completed.

Also sceptical are anti-base activists in the places where the Marine presence will increase.

“Hawaii does not need more military,” says Koohan Paik, a media professor at Kauai Community College.

“There are already 161 military installations in Hawaii, which have resulted in hundreds of sites contaminated with PCBs, trichloroethylene, jet fuel and diesel, mercury, lead, radioactive Cobalt 60, unexploded ordnance, perchlorate, and depleted uranium. And they call this security? The only ‘security’ this brings is economic security to military contractors.”

The second part of the deal, the construction of a replacement facility for Futenma, remains as challenging as before. Okinawans have consistently opposed the construction of a new facility on the island. Although only one percent of Japan’s total landmass, Okinawa already houses nearly 75 percent of the entire U.S. base presence.

Polls indicate that at least 80 percent of Okinawans oppose relocating the facility on their island. In Henoko, where the government in Tokyo has proposed to expand the existing Camp Schwab to accommodate the Marines from Futenma, activists have maintained a sit-in protest since 1996. They have argued that the new construction would, among other things, compromise an already endangered species of dugong, a large sea mammal.

Okinawans have not been enthusiastic about any of the other options that would keep the Marines on the island, including the expansion of the existing Air Force base at Kadena. According to Clemons, the Kadena option also runs up against inter-service rivalry, with the Marines and the Air Force unwilling to make the necessary compromises to share the space.

“We’re going to have a low-yield ulcer that will continue indefinitely,” observes Clemons. “We’ll burn through another 10 years with Henoko not built until finally a future presidential administration will pull the plug.”

The latest U.S.-Japan deal comes at a time of considerable uncertainty regarding military spending. The Pentagon is under pressure to reduce costs in order to meet new spending limits dictated by concerns over rising national debt.

However, the Barack Obama administration’s “Pacific pivot”, announced last year, is difficult to achieve on the cheap. U.S. allies are concerned that they will have to shoulder an increasing amount of the costs of this realignment. Included in this bill will be the cost of upgrading the Futenma facility while Tokyo and Washington debate the base’s future.

“There are serious and legitimate questions about the strategic underpinnings of the dispersal of U.S. forces in small numbers to disparate territories,” says Cronin. “There are also contradictory trends between trying to preserve a strong military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and the real trend lines in spending on serious naval and air forces.”

Female teachers have transformed primary education in rural Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, May 1 2012 (IPS)

Bangladesh continues to score good grades in achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of gender parity in education by 2015, with the trend of more girls than boys attending primary school accelerating this year.

Early estimates for the accounting year that ended March show an enrolment ratio of 52:48 favouring girls, which is consistent with the trend since 2010 when girls overtook boys in primary school enrolment.

“Eliminating gender disparity in primary education by Bangladesh, recognised worldwide, is the result of strong political commitment,” A.K.M. Abdul Awal Mojumder, secretary, ministry of primary and mass education (MoPME), told IPS.

Hiring female teachers, involving non-government organisations (NGOs), and paying out cash subsidies are among interventions that helped turn around the situation of a decade ago when schooling for girls was unthinkable in parts of Bangladesh because of social and religious barriers.

Since 2000, the MoPME has been implementing a policy of hiring women as primary school teachers, and currently 90 percent of the 182,000 teachers in Bangladesh’s 37,500 primary schools are female. Also, 95 percent of school management committees are headed by women.

“Classrooms run by female teachers created an environment for girls to attend schools,” said Aziz-ur-Rashid, headmaster of a primary school in Niphamari district. “The retention rate increased remarkably as a result.”

The primary education stipend project (PESP), funded by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Norwegian government, was aimed at increasing enrolment, attendance, retention and performance of primary school-aged children from poor families.

PESP money is deposited directly into individual bank accounts every six months. The monthly stipend varies from Taka 25 (three cents) for a student of class VI to Taka 60 (seven cents) for a class X student.

In addition, every candidate appearing for secondary school certificate final examination is entitled to six dollars to cover examination fees.

Wherever state-run institutions could not take up the challenge of enrolling and retaining girls in school, NGOs stepped in to help the children in the ‘dropped out, left out or missed out’ categories, especially in the remote, hilly or wetland areas.

“There is tremendous enthusiasm among rural children to attend classes, some riding boats to attend classes,” says Humayun Kabir Selim, director of Palli Bikash Kendra, an NGO that operates 10 primary schools in the vast wetland areas of Mithamoin in Kishoreganj district.

With NGOs roped in, the net enrolment rate increased from 73.3 percent in 1992 to 94 percent by 2011. Dropout rates, one of the main concerns, also declined from 38 percent in 1994 to about 30 percent in 2011.

NGO-run schools have good instructional material, trained and motivated teachers and, most importantly, the flexibility to conform to the needs and capacities of the community. NGO-run primary schools often operate out of one-room houses made available by grateful local communities.

“The flexibility makes for better attendance as children do not have to walk distances as is the case with many state-run primary schools,” said Waheeda Mahmud, a primary school teacher with a local NGO in the Nachol sub-district in Chaipainawabganj district.

“Parents feel safer when the school is located around the corner. They also consider female teachers to have more patience,” said Samsun Nahar Lina, who heads ‘Shakkor’ an NGO that runs several free primary schools in Rangpur district, 370 km from Dhaka.

Ten-year-old Aireen Akhtar was ‘left out’ until two years ago when determined advocacy persuaded her parents to send her to a nearby NGO-run school in the Charpara village of Mithamoin sub-district, about 130 km from Dhaka.

Says Aireen, a shy but confident pupil in a class of 12 girls and seven boys: “Every day we learn something new. It’s fun. There is no fixed timetable for classes and there is no homework.”

There are several non-formal primary education (NFPE) systems in Bangladesh but the one devised by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), reputed to be the world’s biggest NGO, is popular with people involved in primary education.

BRAC began implementing NFPE in 1985 with its one-classroom schools and selecting and training female teachers from the local community.

Shafiqul Islam, head of BRAC’s education programme, told IPS: “A lot of children come from poor rural families and are into income-generating activities.

“The rigidity and inflexibility of the formal education system had put education beyond the reach of these children… flexible school timings are key to our success.”

Since 1985, BRAC has set up 38,000 non-formal schools in 470 sub-districts. Over 1.2 million children (70 percent of them girls) attend BRAC schools, forming the largest private school chain in the world.

Rasheda K. Choudhury, executive director of the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), told IPS: “Bangladesh’s achievements in promoting gender equality are largely due to initiatives launched by NGOs which believe in flexible academic calendars.”

CAMPE, a coalition of more than 1,300 NGOs, works to achieve MDG 2 and MDG 3 by implementing quality education through advocacy and capacity building. These are part of the eight goals defined by the United Nations to be met by 2015.

While MDG 2 demands that all children complete a full course of primary schooling by that year, MDG 3 calls for the elimination of gender disparity in primary, secondary and tertiary education.

There are now 16,539,363 students studying in 81,000 primary schools in Bangladesh, including those run by NGOs, communities and madrassas (religious schools).

Stefan Priesner, country director of United Nations Development Programme in Bangladesh, told IPS: “In general, progress has been sound. Indeed, on many MDGs, including expanding education, Bangladesh has either exceeded or is well on track to achieve the goal by 2015.”

Indonesia’s keen interest in becoming the newest member of BRICS – a bloc of emerging-market nations comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – has sparked off a round of debate on the future and efficacy of South-South groupings.

István Tarrósy, assistant professor of political science at the Department of Political Studies at the University of Pécs and managing director of the Africa Research Centre in Pécs, Hungary, said that Indonesia’s development statistics make the country a shoe-in for membership: it is the largest economy in southeast Asia and is a demographic giant with a population of 248 million people, making it the fourth most populous country in the world, ahead of even Brazil and Russia.

It also has an active labour force of 117 million people, as of 2011.

Indonesia has long been recognised as a leading actor in the developing world, most notably for its active role within the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ever since it hosted the Bandung Conference in 1955.

“Its voice has always been decisive in any issue connected with the then Third World, today, the Global South. In terms of South-South cooperation, and in light of a redefined system of North-South dialogue within a gradually more multi-polar world, Indonesia has its place among the top categories of states influencing how our transnational global world develops,” Tarrósy told IPS.

Furthermore, given the country’s “pragmatic foreign policy practices and long-term cooperation with countries of the region and beyond, Indonesia could strengthen the common voice of emerging economies via BRICS. With the potential entrance of Indonesia, BRICS would then need to redefine, or rather refine its status as (possibly) one of the most important inter-regional groupings of countries of the global South,” he added.

Another significant issue is the investment sector, on which developing or emerging economies rely heavily. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Indonesia, and Indonesian FDI flown into other, less strong economies across southeast Asia and beyond, could be further encouraged by BRICS membership, which would facilitate better trans-regional cooperation.

For instance, it could pave the way for increased “South-South cooperation in Africa, with a more substantial Indonesian role in project generation and financing. In addition to China’s and India’s growing presence and involvement in the African continent, Indonesia could play (a bigger role), particularly if we (acknowledge) the growing amount of official development assistance (ODA) emerging economies have granted Africa,” according to Tarrósy.

Indonesia is one of Asia’s leading economic powerhouses; with last year’s economic growth recorded at 6.5 percent, the country is poised to overtake Russia in the regional economic race, said John Mashaka, financial analyst at Wells Fargo Capital Markets.

He told IPS that Indonesia recorded exports worth 204 billion dollars in 2011. Compared to its European counterparts like Greece, Italy and Spain, which are still floundering in the economic slush of the 2008 crash, Indonesia’s credit ratings shot up and the country’s economic outlook remains favorable.

Its domestic market is huge and the current economic boom can be attributed to its political stability and sound economic and monetary policies, which have attracted consistent FDI.

“In short, Indonesia is an economic power to be (reckoned) with and its decision to join the BRICS could have a huge impact in terms of the body’s credibility. Indonesian membership will definitely solidify BRICS’ capital composition, and also bring on board extraordinary fiscal capability,” Mashaka told IPS.

BRICS versus IBSA?

Thomas Lawo, executive director of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) in Bonn, Germany, doubts that BRICS will be a major game-changer in global geopolitics in an increasingly multi-polar world, mostly because of its members’ divergent economic trends and political interests.

On the one hand, Russia is set to re-emerge as a strong global power with a dominant role in central and western Asia, along with India and China.

“But India needs to sort out its internal rifts and neighbourhood problems first, while China is becoming a strong force to reckon with in Asia, Africa and Europe. China is definitely the (primary) growth-engine of Asia and is stepping up its influence in the global economy (armed) with military strength to match its ambitions,” Lawo said.

Indonesia, on the other hand, is more comfortably clustered with South Africa and Brazil as a regional power and an economic anchor-country for the southeast Asian region, but lesser on a wider global scale.

Another possibility is the re-emergence of a politically stronger ASEAN, now that Burma (Myanmar) is opening up to its neighbours. In this context, the MIST countries – Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand – will become more relevant, if they can overcome their internal problems and play the regional integration card.

Alexandra A. Arkhangelskaya, head of the Centre for Information and International Relations at the Institute for African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to IPS that after the admission of South Africa, BRICS will likely be expanded to include Indonesia, Turkey, Australia, Nigeria and Mexico.

If this happens, she stressed, BRICS will be pushed to clearly articulate its specific identity in the international arena.

The rise of BRICS as regional bloc also raises the question of whether its role is very different from that of IBSA, the same group minus China and Russia.

BRICS has certainly attracted a lot of attention and it is widely accepted that the bloc will try to achieve certain broad economic reforms as well as attempt to restructure the Western-dominated global financial architecture.

Still, Arkhangelskaya believes that the extent to which IBSA will be forced to live in the former’s shadow will very much depend on South Africa, which is currently “sitting on two chairs”, as well as China’s role in BRICS and the world economy.

Experts fear that IBSA will be forced to dissolve in the light of BRICS’ expansion.

Some analysts still argue that IBSA and BRICS represent the old clash of India versus China; others believe it is more likely that the groups will find themselves on very different tiers of the South-South multilateral cake.

Although there is some overlap in core issues, the fact remains that the BRICS countries are more focused on economy, while IBSA is concerned with promoting democratic values and other causes common to the three countries, and has a distinct personality of its own.

Thus, IBSA can remain an instrumental and practical mechanism of the three countries representing three different continents, sharing their interests and strengthening their economic cooperation to further the interests of the South.

Under the banner of South-South cooperation, Argentina is seeking to consolidate its ties with Africa, starting with countries that are enjoying dynamic economic growth, such as Angola and Mozambique.

“Since 2005, we have been trying to forge stronger ties with Africa, where there are countries posting significant economic growth,” Diego Boriosi, the head of the Argentine Horizontal Cooperation Fund (FO-AR), told IPS.

The FO-AR operates under the Foreign Ministry’s office for international cooperation. In March, Boriosi accompanied Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman on his trip to Angola and Mozambique, ahead of President Cristina Fernández’s visit to Angola, scheduled for May.

Timerman, who was received by the presidents of both southern African countries, stressed that the first official visit by an Argentine foreign minister to either nation reflected “a change in paradigm, and a new approach to the world.”

Boriosi explained that, due to historical reasons, until a few years ago, the countries of Africa had much stronger relations with their former colonial rulers (France, Britain and Portugal) than with other countries. But now, he said, they are more willing to forge ties with Latin America.

And the interest is mutual. In an interview with IPS, international relations expert Javier Surasky, a professor at the National University of La Plata, pointed out that Brazil has already launched “a successful process of strengthening relations with Portuguese-speaking Africa.”

That strategy was given a major boost by former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), who made 10 trips to Africa, visiting over 20 countries. And he maintained his role in relations with Africa even after handing over the reins to his successor, Dilma Rousseff.

These new ties played a key role in the designation of the first Latin American to head the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): José Graziano da Silva of Brazil, who upon assuming the post early this year, promised to put a priority on fighting hunger in Africa.

Brazil’s aim is “to lead the Portuguese-speaking world – which it has already managed to do, pushing aside Portugal,” remarked Surasky, a specialist on South-South cooperation.

Boriosi said Argentina “shares the interest” in closer relations with Africa. But he clarified that the links it is seeking “are not as intense as what Brazil has achieved, due to cultural reasons.”

The idea is to make Argentina a player in international cooperation “at a global level,” he added.

Traditionally, South-South cooperation in Argentina has involved other countries in this region. And while that continues to be the central focus, the policy of mutual aid has now expanded to include Africa and Southeast Asia, Boriosi said.

New projects are taking shape in China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia, in areas as diverse as agriculture, trade, strengthening governance and human rights.

In this new scenario, the sporadic aid projects carried out in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s have begun to take on growing importance, and, above all, are now accompanied by an interest in cross-cultural understanding and a closer relationship in general.

The Foreign Ministry “is generating the opportunity for ties, marking the agenda, sowing the seed,” Boriosi said.

Later, if necessary, “a new boost is given” to the relationship, with a trip like the one headed by the foreign minister.

The visit to Angola was largely focused on trade. Timerman was accompanied by some 300 representatives of the business community, and areas of cooperation in economic development were identified.

In the case of Mozambique, technical bodies from Argentina that can provide advice and assistance to their counterparts in the southern African country, such as the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, also reached out.

In addition, other ministries, with or without financial support from the FO-AR, are consolidating their own ties. For example, the Defence Ministry has made contacts with South Africa, and the Agriculture Ministry with South Africa and Kenya.

Boriosi said Argentina’s development aid is also targeting countries in the Maghreb region of North Africa, and Nigeria, where work is under way with the World Health Organisation, in technical training for campaigns against poliomyelitis.

Surasky said “the closer ties with Africa form part of an Argentine foreign policy that seeks to strengthen relations with other countries of the (developing) South, a position that last year enabled it to hold the presidency of the Group of 77,” currently made up of 130 members, including China.

South-South cooperation was one of the cornerstones of the action programme that Argentina presented to win the rotating presidency of the G-77, which since 1964 has represented the interests of the developing world in United Nations forums.

Argentina’s focus on Africa and Asia arises from “the government’s interest in consolidating power, from the South,” Surasky said.

“No less important is that it is a reaction to Brazil’s foreign policy,” he added.

The expert also mentioned the need to expand markets in the face of the retraction of industrialised countries, because of the global economic crisis. “The markets of the wealthier countries in Africa are extremely attractive to some Argentine companies,” he said.

Nevertheless, Surasky expressed scepticism with respect to what will happen in the long term. “Although Argentina today clearly plans to seek closer ties with Africa, my doubt is what will happen in time with a foreign policy that, in recent decades, has been characterised by discontinuity.”

Water privatisation has been proven not to help the poor, yet a quarter of all World Bank funding goes directly to corporations and the private sector, bypassing both governments and its own standards and transparency requirements in order to do so, says a new report released Monday.

People in many developing countries often lack access to clean water, but the approach to remedy this problem has shifted in recent years to rely more on the private sector. Yet, as this new report and several other watchdog groups have shown, the change has been more harmful than helpful.

Corporate Accountability International, the U.S.-based non-governmental organisation that published the report, has called on the World Bank to stop funding the private water sector and start redirecting its money to public and democratically accountable institutions.

The release of the report, entitled “Shutting the Spigot on Private Water: Case for the World Bank to Divest”, coincides with the start of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund‘s 2012 Spring Meetings.

The World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has spent 1.4 billion dollars on private water corporations since 1993, according to the report.

As of January 2013, that investment will increase to 1 billion dollars per year. The report also says that the IFC is attracting 14 to 18 dollars of follow-up private investment for every 1 dollar it directly invests.

This money helps explain why the World Bank and the IFC continue to fund private water corporations, even though roughly one third of all private water contracts signed between 2000 and 2010 have failed or are in distress – four times the failure rate of comparable infrastructure projects in the electric and transportation sectors, according to CAI.

“A tremendous failure”

“Rather than focusing on guaranteeing access to clean and affordable water, the World Bank has promoted measures that will cost consumers more money for water,” says a 2010 report from the NGO Food and Water Watch.

The high cost can also be defined in human terms. That same report pointed out how poor water quality and sanitation bring about gastrointestinal diseases and parasites that are “the leading cause of illness and death throughout the developing world”.

CAI also criticises several different conflicts of interest, such as the World Bank’s ownership of water corporations while simultaneously presenting itself as an impartial advisor. Ultimately, “the World Bank has been the engine behind this corporate takeover of water systems and services,” its website states.

The World Bank encourages countries to either privatise their water systems or modify pre-existing public ones with a focus on profit, says CAI. As a result, the World Bank paves the way to further privatisation. It also pushes for infrastructures that offer advantages to “large corporate users over individuals and communities”.

“In the midst of a world water crisis, the World Bank is squandering resources needed to save millions of lives,” said Kelle Louaillier, executive director of CAI. “Its charter is to aid those in the greatest need, but its financial stake in private water corporations is creating perverse incentives which undermine the bank’s own mission.”

According to CAI, funding the privatisation of water hurts the world’s poorest and can also have negative effects on water access and human rights, such as in Manila, Philippines.

Here, the World Bank not only advised the government, but it also helped design the privatisation of water there.

“Years later, many residents still don’t have water, and affordability problems have gone through the roof,” Shayda Naficy, CAI’s water expert, said.

“The IFC is calling it a success, which it has been for its investors. But it’s been a tremendous failure from the perspective of everyday residents and the right to water.”

A World Bank spokesperson told IPS that the report misrepresented the World Bank’s role and did not elaborate. “IFC’s financing and advisory services have provided clean water and sanitation to over 20 million people as of 2011,” the spokesperson said.

World Bank reform?

Given that the bank is expected to vote on a new president this year – current president Robert Zoellick will step down in June – Louaillier suggested, “With a change at the top comes an opportunity for the bank to change course as it has before.”

One year ago, Zoellick declared that the world needs a “new geopolitics for a multi-polar economy, where all are fairly represented in associations for the many, not clubs for the few”.

In his view, the 2009 global financial crisis marked the definitive end of longstanding paradigms of the global economy and development. As a result, categorisations such as first or third world, donor or recipient, leader or led, “no longer fit”. Yet the reforms considered by the bank itself do not represent the same ideas.

Three candidates are on the list of Zoellick’s possible successors, with two of them non-U.S. candidates.

One is Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the other former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo.

Whilst both have been raking in high-profile endorsements, the United States is claiming its right to nominate the new World Bank president, who has always been a U.S. citizen.

The candidate of the United States is the South Korean-born Jim Yong Kim, who is currently president of Dartmouth University and former head of the HIV/AIDS department at the World Health Organisation.

Long Southeast Asia’s black sheep, Myanmar is enjoying an image change following its landmark Apr. 1 by-elections. Tongues are now wagging about the region’s new beacon of hope for democratic change.

The just concluded summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Cambodian capital revealed hints of the new image of Myanmar (also known as Burma) as it embraces political reform after 50 years of military dictatorships.

Activists and opposition politicians point to the landslide victory of Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party as a sign of openness – absent in ASEAN countries such as Laos, Vietnam and Brunei and under siege in Cambodia and Singapore.

“In Cambodia, we are already taking Burma as a good example of a democratic feature: justice will prevail,” Mu Sochua, parliamentarian from the country’s opposition Sam Rainsy party, told IPS. “If Burma can do it, why not Cambodia?”

“In Vietnam, freedoms and human rights are not even discussed in the country as it is considered treason,” she added. “When I was in Singapore as a guest of the opposition Democrat party that has no seats in parliament, the meeting was cancelled and the organisers continue to be questioned even two years later.”

Others expect Myanmar’s small steps towards democracy to reverberate across ASEAN, whose other members include Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.

“The reform in Myanmar will not be limited to its borders but holds out the possibility of spilling over across the rest of ASEAN,” says Yuyun Wahyuningrum, senior advisor at Indonesia’s non-governmental organisation, Coalition for International Human Rights Advocacy (HRWG), who attended the regional summit on Apr. 3 – 4 in Phnom Penh.

“More people in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and even Singapore are talking of this possibility,” she told IPS from HRWG’s office in Jakarta. “I am looking forward to this moment in the sub-region.”

But there are other implications from the democratic dividend that Myanmar’s President Thein Sein is enjoying after his one-year old quasi-civilian government held the by-elections, where the NLD party of Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi, won 43 of the 45 seats contested.

In easing the pressure off a reforming Mynamar, ASEAN will lay open the democratic deficits of its other members who have not been exposed for their harsh treatment of opposition figures, of suppressing the media or refusing the rights of political and civil liberties.

“For many years the non-democratic countries in ASEAN had been hiding in a very comfortable place behind Myanmar, evading international criticism,” reveals Yuyun. “Now I think they will begin to panic since they will soon be exposed for their human rights record and practices.”

“Eyes will move to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the rest,” she added. “Until 2010 Vietnam spoke on behalf of Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and itself, especially when Myanmar faced criticisms.”

ASEAN’s attempt to improve its image through an intergovernmental human rights commission and drafting an ASEAN human rights declaration will add heat on these countries, says Sinapan Samydorai, director of Think Centre, a Singaporean think tank. “They will be exposed to more critical reviews in terms of civil and political rights.

“Lack of freedom of expression and association, corruption and the abuse of political power and the lack of the rule of law will place Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in an awkward corner,” Samydorai told IPS. “Civil society groups in Cambodia and in other ASEAN countries have begun to express this view.”

The singling out of Myanmar as an embarrassment began in 2001, four years after it joined a bloc that has two communist-ruled countries, Vietnam and Laos, and an absolute monarchy, Brunei. ASEAN also has one-party authoritarian states such as Cambodia and Singapore.

Malaysia and Thailand have democratic credentials that are under a cloud, leaving Indonesia and the Philippines as the only ASEAN members with claims to being robust democracies.

ASEAN summits typically end with a statement on the political situation in Myanmar, under ‘Regional and International Issues’. ASEAN summits, with the United States as dialogue partner, were under pressure to get the junta in Myanmar to ease its iron grip on power.

Myanmar as a diplomatic embarrassment even precipitated tension within the bloc as governments talked of “constructive engagement” and “flexible engagement” to shield their regional neighbour from Western criticism.

“ASEAN has now reached a stage where it is not possible to defend a member when that member is not making any attempt to cooperate or to help itself,” a visibly frustrated former Malaysian foreign minister Seyed Hamid Albar said in 2006. And in 2007, ASEAN expressed “revulsion” at the brutal crackdown on protesting Buddhist monks in Myanmar’s cities.

“It is easy to find black sheep in this region,” says Pavin Chachavalponpun, associate professor at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, in Japan. “As much as ASEAN liked to support political developments in Burma, it was content to see the global attention being paid only to Burma all along.

“This way they could get away with certain behaviours that potentially undermined democracy,” the academic told IPS. “Thailand I think is a country that could also be exposed, because the 2006 coup weakened democratic institutions by the concentration of royal power.”

Relations between the United States and Latin America have “grown more distant” in importance part due to the latter’s persistent disagreement with U.S. policies on immigration, drugs, and Cuba, according to a new report released here Wednesday on the eve of this year’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.

“The United States must regain credibility in the region by dealing seriously with an unfinished agenda of problems, including immigration, drugs, and Cuba – that stands in the way of a real partnership,” according to Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue (IAD).

The 20-page report, entitled “Remaking the Relationship”, described current inter-American relations as “generally cordial but lack(ing) in vigor and purpose”. It suggested that Washington, in particular, has failed to fully come to terms with Latin America’s strong economic and political progress over the past two decades.

It also concluded that the two sides “need to do more to exploit the enormous untapped opportunities of their relationship in economics, trade, and energy”, as well as to work more closely together on global and regional problems.

“They need to breathe new life and vigor into hemispheric relations,” it stressed.

“If the United States and Latin America do not make the effort now, the chance may slip away,” the report warned. “The most likely scenario then would be marked by a continued drift in their relationship, further deterioration of hemispheric-wide institutions, a reduced ability and willingness to deal with a range of common problems, and a spate of missed opportunities for more robust growth and greater social equity.”

Coming on the eve of the Cartagena Summit, where many of these same issues are expected to claim centre-stage, the report represents as much of a consensus of elite opinion in both Americas as can be found.

Washington’s 40-year-old drug war and its impacts on the region will be major agenda item as a result of an unprecedented push by Latin American leaders to use the forum to discuss alternative strategies that could reduce the level of violence associated with drug trafficking.

Most of IAD’s members endorsed the report; there was only one partial dissent – by a former Latin America aide in the George H.W. Bush administration who objected to the report’s suggestion that legalisation of some drugs or decriminalisation could offer viable alternative solutions to dealing with illicit drug trafficking and the violence associated with it in many Latin American countries.

Founded 30 years ago, IAD’s membership includes 100 prominent figures divided roughly evenly between U.S. nationals, including one former president (Jimmy Carter) and numerous former cabinet officials and lawmakers from both Democratic and Republican administrations, on the one hand, and leading personalities from Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin Americans, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Ricardo Lagos, and Ernesto Zedillo, and nine other former Latin American presidents, on the other.

IAD is co-chaired by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills.

In addition to leading politicians, members also include important business figures, heads of civil society organisations (CSOs), academics, and former top managers of multilateral or hemispheric organisations, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations, the Organisation of American States (OAS), and the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), among others.

Latin America’s recent advances in reducing poverty and inequality, consolidating democratic practices, and establishing promising new ties with countries like China and India contrasts favourably, according to the report, with Washington’s travails resulting from its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis, growing inequality and political gridlock.

As a result, “(m)ost countries of the (Latin American) region view the United States as less and less relevant to their needs – and with declining capacity to propose and carry out strategies to deal with the issues that most concern them,” it said.

Moreover, Washington’s failure to deal effectively with three longstanding irritants to inter-American relations – immigration, drug policy, and Cuba – has hardly helped, the report noted.

The report noted that Washington’s failure to achieve meaningful immigration reform – the result, to a great extent, of its increasingly divisive politics – “is breeding resentment across the region, nowhere more so than in …Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.”

Recent signs that immigration from Mexico, in particular, has levelled off should, according to the report, offer an opportunity for U.S. policy makers to revise their views.

On drugs, the report called it “critical” that Washington respond to growing calls by Latin American leaders, most recently by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, and Guatemala’s new president, Otto Perez, to consider alternative strategies, such as regulated legalisation of marijuana and decriminalisation of mere possession of certain drugs.

The report endorsed similar conclusions reached by the 2009 Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which was chaired by Cardoso, Zedillo, and former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria.

It said these alternatives, as well as staunching “the flow of dangerous arms southward from the United States” by drug cartels and enhanced U.S. support for national efforts at rehabilitating and re- integrating criminals and other migrants repatriated by Washington to their home countries, should serve as a “starting point for an honest U.S.-Latin American dialogue on the drug question”.

On Cuba, the only country whose head of state, at Washington’s insistence, has not been invited to Cartegena, the report asserted that Washington’s 50-year-old embargo “has not worked and, in fact, may have been counter-productive, prolonging Cuba’s repressive rule rather than ending it.”

Washington, it said, “needs to do far more to dismantle its severe, outdated constraints on normalized relations with Cuba,” while its “authoritarian regime” should be urged by its Latin and Caribbean neighbours to institute democratic reform.

On the more positive side, the report said “expanded trade, investment and energy cooperation offer the greatest promise for robust U.S.-Latin American relations” and that “intensive economic engagement by the United States may be the best foundation for wider partnerships across many issues as well as the best way to energize currently listless U.S. relations with the region.”

While the U.S. share of the Latin American market has diminished in recent years, its exports – now greater in value than its exports to Europe – have been growing “at an impressive pace”.

The report noted that the ratification of long-pending free trade accords with Colombia and Panama offer a good start, but that Washington should also seek a “broader framework for U.S. economic relations with Latin America,” despite the failure of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) to gain any traction.

The growing global influence of Latin America, particularly Brazil and Mexico, also calls for greater cooperation and consultation with the region’s leaders on global issues, including nuclear non- proliferation and climate change, according to the report.

It also commended Washington for its accommodation of new regional institutions, such as UNASUR, that currently exclude the U.S., but also suggested the two sides also focus in reforming the hemisphere’s oldest regional grouping, the Organisation of American States, particularly given its importance in establishing democratic norms.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Syria on the immediate agenda

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Industrialised countries have mounted an unprecedented campaign to stop the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development from providing policy advice to the poorest countries in Africa and across the globe.

Industrialised countries have voiced their unhappiness with theUNCTAD's policy advice to developing nations. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

As UNCTAD attempts to secure a new mandate at its ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, from Apr. 21 to 26, industrialised countries have voiced their unhappiness with the agency’s policy advice to developing nations.

According to trade officials from developing countries, industrialised countries believe that the agency’s advice on finance, environment, food security, intellectual property rights and development clashes with their market-driven liberal agenda.

“Developed countries do not want UNCTAD to enter into finance on the grounds that it is an area that only the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank must handle,” said Lesotho’s ambassador to the U.N. and World Trade Organization (WTO), Dr. Anthony Mothae Maruping. He is also chair of the UNCTAD negotiating committee in charge of the draft text for the upcoming meeting. Maruping said that he was working to bridge the differences between the industrialised countries, led by the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.), and the G77 and China – the coalition of developing countries.

The draft text on the agency’s mandate for the next four years outlines its research and policy advice on subjects including the current economic recession, exchange rate misalignments, the volatility and financialisation of commodity markets, special and differential treatment for developing countries, regional financial and monetary cooperation, and the need for the reform of the international financial and economic architecture. In his report for the Doha meeting, UNCTAD Secretary-General Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi calls for a paradigmatic shift to development-oriented growth that would bring about sustainable and inclusive economic and social change in the world’s least-developed countries (LDCs).

“The combination of macroeconomic austerity, rapid liberalisation, privatisation, and deregulation not only failed to produce a supply-side revolution but, instead, set the region (Africa) back economically; productivity growth stalled in most sectors, and the informal economy had grown rapidly since the onset of the international debt crisis in the early 1980s,” Panitchpakdi said in the report.

He argued that the time has come for moving away from finance-driven globalisation, which has characterised the dominant pattern of international economic relations based on a one-size-fits-all policy agenda. He said this has had a destructive impact on all countries, particularly on least- developed ones.

However, the aftershocks of the global economic crisis of 2008 continue to reverberate across the world in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Greece, and Portugal.

It is little wonder that, despite this, industrialised countries led by the U.S. and the EU are stubbornly pressing ahead with their failed boom-and-bust policies, say analysts.

Against this backdrop, UNCTAD’s meeting in Doha has assumed considerable importance in setting out a new agenda.

“It comes at a time when global economic governance is under close scrutiny, with growing concerns about the health of the multilateral agenda,” said Richard Kozul-Wright, the head of UNCTAD’s Unit on Economic Cooperation and Integration among Developing Countries.

He was referring to the controversial plurilateral negotiating effort among select industralised countries for a free trade agreement on services at the Doha multilateral trade negotiations.

A plurilateral agreement allows member countries to voluntarily agree to new rules. In contrast, in a multilateral agreement all members have to be in agreement.

“The stalled Doha Round, the slow pace of climate discussions and the failure of the international community to pre-empt recurrent food crises have added to the growing concerns about multilateralism,” he told IPS.

UNCTAD was the first multilateral body, since its inception in 1964, to point out the dangers of an unsustainable housing bubble and the unsustainable public and private debt of industrialised countries. Its 1997 report cautioned against the downside risks of finance-driven globalisation.

The U.N. agency also cautioned against the demands made on developing countries during the Doha negotiations to reduce the tariffs on their industrial goods to almost zero.

“UNCTAD’s work in all areas is commendable,” said Dr. Matern Yakobo Christian Lumbanga, Tanzania’s ambassador to the U.N. and WTO. “UNCTAD’s assistance in different policy areas is vital for LDCs and it has rightly advised us not to depend on one or two areas of exports or raw materials.” He said that LDCs in Africa have come to realise the benefits of diversification, as advocated by UNCTAD.

The upcoming UNCTAD meeting is going to address the specific concerns of the LDCs, and will focus on durable economic changes such as “broadening the variety and sophistication of goods and services produced so that LDCs are less vulnerable to external shocks,” said Kozul-Wright. “This is the most pressing of the rebalancing challenges, which must include an emphasis on job creation, social protection and environmental sustainability if the opportunities provided by a more open global economy are to improve the lives of many rather than the favoured few,” he said.

Japan’s plan to resume official development assistance (ODA) to Myanmar, announced this week, is problematic for a country faced with a dauntingly large disaster recovery budget for areas hit by the earthquake and tsunami last year.

But proponents of renewing ODA to Myanmar (also known as Burma) argue that the move is important for Japan, a country that seeks to boost its diplomatic clout in the world through development funding.

In an editorial in December 2011, the ‘Nikkei’, Japan’s leading financial daily, criticised the nation’s falling aid budget – Japan has slipped to sixth place from being topmost international donor in the 1990s – pointing out that ODA has traditionally earned the country international respect and economic growth.

The editorial said that “the resumption of foreign aid for Myanmar is expected to further promote democratisation of the southeastern country as well as to help Japanese firms establish a foothold in that market.”

The contrasting viewpoint, however, questions the prudence of hiking ODA against Japan’s own economic problems – growth for the past decade hovers at less than two percent of gross national product.

Critics point to the looming expenditure, estimated to be over 222 billion dollars to rebuild damaged infrastructure and business in the earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern coastal areas, as a key national priority.

Indeed, former prime minister Naoto Kan had declared after the Mar. 11 disaster last year that Japan will be cutting its foreign aid budget of around five billion dollars further to help fund a supplementary budget for reconstruction.

Japan has been slashing its ODA budget for the past 14 years to cope with increasing public expenditure to meet the needs of an ageing population, reducing fiscal debt and a high value yen that is encouraging Japanese companies to move to cheaper manufacturing sites abroad.

Prof. Kei Nemoto, expert on Myanmar and Southeast Asia, contends that domestic pressures will mean Japan will pledge ODA to Myanmar on a piecemeal basis rather than go ahead with large new commitments.

“Taking a decision to extend aid to Myanmar is an extension of Japanese diplomacy that is closely aligned with Western policies that support the democratic process in the country by investing in its economic development,” said Nemoto who teaches at the Sophia University in Tokyo.

“Yet, Japanese support will be cautious given its own domestic restraints,” Nemoto added.

Japan is planning to announce a restart of yen loans to Myanmar when its civilian leader, President Thein Sein, visits Tokyo later this month to attend the Japan-Mekong Summit.

Under review also is the cancelling or partial waiver of Myanmar’s debt of 5.8 billion dollar development loan extended for projects before aid – both loans and grants – was frozen in 2003.

Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba, commenting on the latest election results in Myanmar, said Japan is committed to backing democracy and national reconciliation based on political and economic reforms now enacted in the country.

Gemba praised the victory of the National League for Democracy, led by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in the by-elections held over the weekend.

Analyst Toshihiro Kudo at the Institute of Developing Economies, a quasi-government think-tank, forecasts a fast developing bilateral relationship between Japan and Myanmar that will focus on promoting economic ties.

“Cooperation with Myanmar is important for Japan that is attracted to the country’s natural resources and young labour that can support Japanese companies that are investing abroad,” he opined.

On the democratic and human rights front, Kudo explained that Japan will be supporting more reforms but, in keeping with its traditional stance of pushing for compromise politics, will prefer to wait for results rather than take a hardline approach.

“In contrast to the Western push for human rights improvements, Tokyo’s diplomacy with conflict-ridden countries follows a more carrot approach with promises of rewards for democratic steps,” he said.

A step in this direction is Tokyo’s plan to provide funds to set up a Japan friendship centre in Yangon that will serve as a platform to promote technological and cultural cooperation.

Experts view the new structure, to be established later this year, as setting the stage to include educational projects to foster the modernisation and globalisation of the isolated country.

The gentler approach, according to Nemoto, will serve Japan to regain its presence in Southeast Asia, a thrust that is needed against the growing influence of China during the past decade.

Grassroots organisations based in Tokyo that have worked long on environment destruction in Myanmar and human rights violations among its ethnic minorities hope that the resumption of Japanese aid will be linked to development that respects people.

Yuki Akimoto, expert on Myanmar at Mekong Watch, a Japanese non-governmental organisation that works to prevent negative environmental and social impacts of development in the region points to stoppage of Japanese aid for hydro-electricity projects in keeping with the international aid embargo.

“We assume Japanese yen loans will be earmarked to revisit the construction of the (Salween) dam, a project that will be monitored closely by us,” she said.

European civil society organisations continue to demand that international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund apply the same standards of transparency and accountability to their internal affairs that they demand for governments across the world.

These demands are being made just ahead of the spring meetings the IFIs will hold later this month in Washington D.C., and refer in particular to the nomination of a new president for the World Bank.

“The election of the new president of the Bank is typical of the lack of transparency and democracy that reigns in the international financial institutions,” Peter Chowla, an economist working for the Bretton Woods project (BWP), told IPS.

The BWP, a London-based international coalition of economists and anti-globalisation activists, focuses its work on the IFIs, to challenge their power, open policy space, and promote alternative approaches.

Traditionally, the U.S. government and the European Union share the leading positions at the IFIs. While the U.S. government occupies the coveted presidency of the World Bank with a candidate of its own, the EU places one European technocrat at the helm of the IMF – no fair election process precedes either of these appointments.

Last year, the French government obtained the backing of European governments to name former French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, despite vociferous opposition from developing countries.

This year, U.S. president Barack Obama has nominated Korean-born physician Jim Yong Kim to become the Bank’s next president.

Although there are two alternative candidates for the position, the present Nigerian minister of finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and her former Colombian counterpart José Antonio Ocampo, it is taken as given that Kim’s candidacy will obtain the support of European countries, and that he will be elected during the bank’s board hearings scheduled to take place in Washington from Apr. 9-11.

It is expected that the confirmation of Kim as new president will be announced on Apr. 11.

Chowla recalled that such “opaque processes” of nomination were conceived more than 60 years ago, when the IFIs were founded, and no longer fit into “the present global economic and political structures.”

But disagreements between European civil society organisations and the IFIs go beyond nomination procedures, and include the institutions’ policy recommendations for governments about management of climate change financial facilities.

Jeroen Kwakkenbos, policy and advocacy officer at the European Network on Debt and Development, told IPS that the World Bank had “neither a mandate nor the qualifications” to participate in the management of the future Green Climate Fund, which is supposed to administrate future financial resources for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, or of REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries).

“We urge the IFIs to remain outside the management of these facilities,” Kwakkenbos told IPS. “Such entities should be managed under democratic principles – that is, one country, one vote, following representation of stake holders in the boards of the organisations.”

Chowla stressed that the main problem with the IFIs is that these institutions continue to apply the neoliberal doctrine that characterised them throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

“These characteristics are deregulation, privatisation, and bilateral free trade agreements between industrialised and emerging countries,” Chowla pointed out. “Four years after the global financial crisis broke out, there are no tangible signs of new regulation of financial flows.”

Chowla specifically mentioned the financial flows to emerging countries, which have triggered important dislocations of exchange rates, leading to what some economists have dubbed “the currency war”.

“(A)symmetry in the recovery of developing countries and the recessions in Europe after the crisis have led to major and unstable short term capital flows to developing countries,” Chowla stated.

These flows have proved to be significantly destabilising, causing sharp appreciation of currencies of emergent developing countries such as Brazil.

Chowla said that the IMF analysis of this destabilising monetary phenomenon on emerging countries is flawed, because it is either based on econometric exercises relying on highly uncertain variables, or on the Fund’s own policy recommendations, which the authorities have not yet even agreed with.

Furthermore, the Bank and the Fund have helped to impose austerity programmes upon European countries already suffering deep economic downturns, regardless of the dramatic social consequences of cuts in public spending and social welfare, Chowla said.

Chowla also mentioned the support the World Bank continues to offer for privatisation programmes across the world.

“In Romania,” he said, “the Bank is the main force behind the planned highly controversial privatisation of the local health system, opposed by unions and civil society groups.”

Other groups, such as the Europe Corporate Observatory, raise similar complaints against the Bank and the IMF, for supporting free trade agreements (FTAs) with developing countries, which obviously damage local public health initiatives and food provision.

The most salient case is the European FTA with India, slated to come into force this year, which would force the Indian pharmaceutical industry to cease producing inexpensive generic medications to treat contagious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, which most of the developing world is dependent on as a cheap alternative to patented drugs.

When Europe signed an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the Caribbean Forum countries in 2008, the intention was to boost trade and services between the two regions.

But four years later, the Caribbean, particularly the private sector, is failing to take full advantage of many benefits of the deal, according to a new report by the Guyana-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat EPA Implementation Unit.

The unit just completed a review of the legal framework governing investment flows between CARIFORUM, which includes the 15-member CARICOM grouping and the Dominican Republic, and the EU to evaluate their consistency with commitments in international agreements.

“Having a better appreciation of the realities in states is crucial to making decisions to ensure that the benefits to be derived under the agreement are obtained,” said the unit’s trade in services and investment specialist, S.H. Allyson Francis.

But while some of the unit’s findings were encouraging, they were tempered by stark assessments with respect to the EPA.

“Of note, the report underscored that there is little awareness of EPA/foreign direct investment (FDI) tied advantages among the private sector in CARIFORUM states and within the EU,” the report said.

Speaking at the second CARIFORUM-EU Business Forum here on Thursday, the head of the European Union delegation to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Valeriano Diaz, said he was surprised that the private sector in the region was not yet in a position to take full advantage of the EPA.

“Let me state clearly that ownership of the EPA in the Caribbean does not belong to the European Union; it is the purview of regional governments. They have to ensure that the legislative and other frameworks are in place so that the private sector, entrepreneurs and others can reap the benefits which the EPA offers,” Diaz said.

He said the private sector also has to get on board “instead of passively standing on the sidelines.

“It is perplexing, to say the least, when I hear via the media some businesspersons lamenting that they do not know much about the EPA. We live in the information age and given the time since the signature of the agreement, this kind of defeatist attitude is difficult to understand.

“Businesspeople who are interested in penetrating extra-regional markets should be aware of what legislation needs to be in place in their countries so that they can lobby government to have such legislation enacted in a timely manner.

“They need also to know the necessary requirements which will assist them in accessing elements of the EPA, which are beneficial to their enterprise,” Diaz added.

But at least one regional private sector grouping has shown its commitment to take advantage of the accord.

The Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce has just completed a two-week trade mission to Europe as a follow up to an earlier study done “to ascertain the reasons hindering the private sector from trading under the EPA”.

The study revealed that there was a deficiency in awareness of the EPA and its provisions as well as little knowledge of the EU markets. It recommended that the Chamber undertake more sector-specific trade missions to Europe with the aim of seeking strategic partnerships for the business community and obtaining market intelligence.

At the end of the Mar. 7 trade mission, the Trinidad and Tobago private sector said that initial feedback indicates “there are approximately 41 business leads with which local companies will have immediate following up, and the Chamber will take an active role in also following up with these companies so that we can measure the tangible benefits of this mission.”

It said that throughout the trade mission it promoted Trinidad and Tobago as a gateway to the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America.

“No doubt, we are quite a small economy compared to the markets that we visited and while we hold incredible natural advantages – geographic location, natural resources, climate and environment – we must continue to seek ways to enhance our competitiveness and productivity in order to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the EPA.”

Ironically, even though the EPA agreement was signed in 2008, the Trinidad and Tobago parliament has not ratified the accord. The private sector group here said it was urging the government “to push the laying of the bill on the Parliamentary agenda”.

Earlier this week, the European Union provided more than 100 million dollars to CARICOM that the regional bloc’s Secretary General Irwin La Rocque said came at a time when regional governments were determined to ensure that integration delivers tangible results to Caribbean people.

Europe is providing 8.6 million euros (11.4 million dollars) to support economic integration and trade by the sub-regional Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), as well as 28 million euro (37.2 million dollars) for the CARICOM integration process.

In addition, funds are being provided for an EPA Capacity Building Programme, intended to assist in developing capacity and allow CARIFORUM countries to take full advantage of the EPA provisions and honour their commitments.

La Rocque said that the 46.5 million euro (61.9-million-dollar) programme will provide support for fiscal reform and adjustment; for sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures and for technical barriers to trade as well as for services through Caribbean Export and for the regional rum industry through the West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers Association (WIRSPA).

La Rocque said he also hoped that the proposed changes in EU development policy will not diminish traditional support provided by the EU to CARIFORUM and its member states, adding “the region looks forward to negotiating with the EU a substantial Regional Indicative Programme under the 11th EDF (European Development Fund)”.

Head of delegation of the European Union to Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Ambassador Robert Kopecký, said the funds are “a testimony of the EU’s continued commitments to support the Caribbean region in the dynamic process of regional integration and signal another milestone in the longstanding relation between the Caribbean Forum of ACP States and the European Union.

“The path to full integration is a long and dynamic process, not deprived of obstacles. The European Union was not made all at once, or according to a single plan but rather it has been built through concrete achievements which created solidarity. As such the EU has been supporting the integration steps of CARICOM along this process,” he added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Kalinga Seneviratne and - -
SINGAPORE, Mar 20 2012 (IPS)

A routine announcement by the government of this city-state entitling foreign, female domestic workers to a day off each week has sent their affluent employers into a tizzy.

Filipina maids catch a moment together while taking their employers' children and the dogs out. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS.

“I had a Filipina maid who found a Bangladeshi boyfriend and got pregnant. I had to send her back home after just seven months and pay for her airfare,” complains Elsie Wong, a businesswoman. “I almost lost my 4,000 dollar bond,” Wong told IPS.

Singapore’s foreign domestic worker (FDW) contracts stipulate that once the hired help gets pregnant she must be deported, with the employer paying her airfare.

Wong was spared having to forfeit the security bond since the ministry of manpower (MOM) has clarified that since January 2010 the employer’s liability has been limited.

“The ministry does not forfeit employer’s security bonds if FDWs violate their own work permit conditions, for instance, if they moonlight or get pregnant,” said Farah Abdul Rahim, director of corporate relations at the MOM, in a letter to the Straits Times, responding to employers’ concerns.

“If you allow your teenage children to have boyfriends or girlfriends, how can you demand that an adult in your employ should not?” argues John Gee, former president of ‘TWC2’, a voluntary agency that has campaigned since 2003 for a weekly day off for FDWs.

“This is totally unacceptable and this is an attitude that has to change,” says Gee. Starting Jan. 1, 2013 Singaporean employers will either conform to the new law or be liable to pay a fine of 4,000 dollars or spend six months in jail.

“Maids are human beings too. They need a day off like other workers,” says Papias Banados, who has worked in Singapore for over 10 years as a FDW and recently wrote a book of short stories on OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker) experience titled ‘The Path of Remittance’.

“There are many OFWs working here in restaurants, offices and as sales assistants and they get a day off. They have boyfriends and parties. So, why should a maid be treated differently?”

Employers and recruitment agents also argue that giving a weekly day off will inconvenience families with small children, invalids or elders.

Singapore, ranked third in Forbes annual richest country list released last month, has a per capita income of nearly 56,700 dollars and employs some 206,000 FDWs in a population of four million.

Most of these women come from impoverished families in the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar (or Burma) and Cambodia. They often work seven days a week and between 10 to 16 hours a day, earning between 250 to 400 dollars a month.

Social workers and rights groups have campaigned for over 10 years to get the Singapore government to legislate for a compulsory day off per week for these domestic workers.

Singapore is among a handful of Asian countries that do not have law providing a day off for domestic workers and these include Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.

Bridget Tan, president of the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME), notes that Singapore is now a step closer towards full recognition of domestic workers’ rights on par with other foreign workers.

“The lack of adequate protection has made live-in domestic work a highly stressful occupation and many women in such situations find it difficult to cope with the social isolation and demands of the job,” she argues.

She pointed to the case of an underage Indonesian maid, Vitria Depsi Wahyuno, murdering her elderly employer because she was unable to cope with the latter’s demands and verbal abuse. Wahyuno was sentenced to ten years in jail for the crime on Mar. 7.

“The mandatory day off decision is significant,” says Moe Thuzar, lead researcher at the ASEAN Studies Centre at the National University of Singapore. “It recognises the importance of the domestic worker’s physical, mental and emotional well-being.”

But, Tan warns, the role of recruitment agents needs more scrutiny, especially because the new law allows employers to pay the equivalent of a day’s wage in lieu of a day off, which would come to about 15 dollars.

“The bargaining power of a migrant worker is weak because many of them are indebted to the recruitment agents from the moment they arrive in Singapore.”

“Employers also have the unilateral right to cancel a work permit and terminate her employment without justification,” she notes. “As a result, workers who wish to claim their right to a weekly day off may end up losing their jobs instead.”

Of late, Singapore has been facing a severe shortage of FDWs because many Indonesians and Filipinos, who form the bulk of the FDWs here, now prefer to go to Taiwan and Hong Kong where the wages are higher and working conditions better.

Gee thinks the cost of placement needs to be regulated, pay levels raised and a system of part-time domestic work introduced to encourage locals.

“It could be attractive to locals who cannot take on full-time jobs and also to employers would not have to provide accommodation and may find it cheaper to pay a daily worker to come in, say for two hours a day,” Gee said.

Excerpt:

By Patricia Grogg and - -
HAVANA, Mar 19 2012 (IPS)

Excessive delays by the Cuban government in evaluating foreign aid projects for their compatibility with the country’s economic planning policies have created uncertainty for aid organisations, which have sometimes even been forced to return funds to donors due to missed deadlines.

“A lot of money is being lost simply because of bureaucracy,” an economist who asked to remain anonymous told IPS.

Representatives from several nongovernmental organisations with offices in Cuba told IPS that the most serious aspect of this problem is that many of these projects are related to food security.

“We’ve been in an impasse for the last three years, where we don’t know exactly what role or part will be given to cooperation,” said Pepe Murillo of the Mundubat Foundation, a Spanish NGO that has been working in Cuba in the areas of agriculture and rural development since 1996.

A project by Mundubat and Japan to improve drinking water and sanitation services in the municipality of Isla de la Juventud, a small island off the southwest coast of the main island, has benefited almost 80,000 people in its capital, Nueva Gerona, and in the surrounding countryside since 2011.

Within the process that the Cuban government calls the “updating” of the country’s economic model, all foreign aid received by Cuba must be included in the “national economic plan,” to ensure that it is in line with economic planning goals.

The “economic and social policy guidelines of the party and the revolution”, Cuba’s road map for modernising its economy, also state that it is necessary to “perfect and complement the legal and regulatory framework” for aid that is given and received.

Foreign aid has been regulated to date by Resolution 50, passed in 2008, which modified Resolution 15 of 2006, regarding the “Norms for economic collaboration that Cuba receives”. These regulations primarily spell out the obligations and duties of NGOs and other organisations involved in cooperation.

In 2009, the ministry for foreign investment and economic cooperation was merged with the ministry of foreign trade, which since then has overseen this sector. Some NGOs that operate in Cuba say it was like starting over, with new experts, working methods and assumptions.

“Trade relations have been thrown together with cooperation with civil society organisations from the European Union (EU) and countries from other regions that are here based on solidarity, which has nothing to do with foreign trade,” said Eva Fernández, of the Spanish NGO Acsur Las Segovias.

In addition, the economic plan has become a straitjacket that is keeping projects from meeting deadlines. First they must be approved by the ministry of foreign trade, and then by the ministry of economy and planning – a slow-moving, complicated process.

“We have projects that have been waiting for two years for a decision on whether or not they will be included in the economic plan,” said Paola Larghi, of the International Committee for the Development of the Peoples, a European NGO based in Italy that has been working in Cuba for 20 years.

In her opinion, the process lacks clarity and transparency, and the excessive delays in decision-making are having a major impact on NGOs with respect to planning and their donors. “Because of this, cooperation funds are being sent back, for projects that could not be implemented,” Murillo said.

Elio Perón, a consultant with the Dutch organisation Hivos, the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation, said the philosophy of including aid projects in the economic plan is aimed at improving efficiency. “That is the Bible, full of good intentions,” he remarked.

In his opinion, the problem is the result of administrative changes that the country is trying to introduce, which “unfortunately” have not found the best channel. “It is a question of putting new concepts into practice; as I see it, it is an administrative problem, not a political position,” he said.

On that point, NGO representatives agreed that the political stance toward them that existed in the 1990s has been replaced by a “technocratic and bureaucratic” approach, which is especially affecting projects related to food production.

“That sector, which the government of Raúl Castro has made a national priority, is the one that is experiencing the greatest difficulties at this time. We have pointed out that contradiction, but the response (from officials) is always the same: if it is not in the ‘guidelines’ or the economic plan, it does not go forward,” Murillo said.

Sources with the EU delegation in Havana told IPS that a dozen European NGOs currently have aid projects in Cuba. In addition, the EU subsidises plans implemented by European “non-state actors” that do not necessarily have offices on the island.

The NGOs arrived in Cuba during the height of the 1990s economic crisis, to provide aid and show solidarity with the Cuban people. “Those were times when people were predicting the collapse of socialism here,” Perón recalled.

In the opinion of the Hivos consultant, the authorities do not seem to have realised that a reduction in aid from NGOs translates into decreased political potential, solidarity and international influence. “The most intelligent thing would be to especially support these organisations that are in solidarity with Cuba,” he said.

Excerpt:

Coastal erosion in Carriacou, Grenada. Credit: Peter Richards/IPS

By Peter Richards
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Mar 16 2012 (IPS)

Failure to adapt to climate change will derail the development aspirations of the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom), researchers warn, siphoning off an average of five percent of 2004 gross domestic product regionwide by 2025.

The predicted costs could rise to as much as 75 percent by 2100 for smaller nations, says the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC).

Meeting in Suriname last week, Caricom leaders acknowledged the severity of the threat, adopting a common strategy dubbed the “Implementation Plan for the Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilient to Climate Change”.

The problem now is how to pay for it.

The CCCCC, which drafted the plan at Caricom’s request, noted that “these concerns will require both adaptation and mitigation actions, which will necessitate significant and sustained investment of resources” that Caribbean countries will be unable to raise on their own.

“These climate challenges are compounded by the fact that Caricom states are relatively small, have an exceptionally high level of external debt – in some instances above 100 percent of GDP – and depend heavily on expensive imported fuel,” Dr. Kenrick Leslie, CCCCC’s executive director, told IPS.

He noted that fuel prices “reached 147 dollars per barrel in 2008, with 21 percent of GDP, or four times the food import bill of four billion dollars, being expended on this product in 2010.

“This means that Caricom states do not have the necessary resources to implement adaptation programmes,” he said, adding “given the scale of these costs, (it) will mean that the economies of the Caricom states are in perpetual recession.”

Leslie said that socioeconomic development and adaptation measures, such as replanting of mangroves, better land use planning, and building coastal defence structures against rising sea levels are closely intertwined.

“Adaptation is increasingly described as climate resilient development or development under a hostile climate. It is the ability of states to withstand the vagaries of a changing climate, or even if impacted negatively, how quickly they are able to response and rebound,” he said.

Leslie added “how quickly Grenada was able to rebuild and return to some semblance of normalcy after Hurricanes Ivan and Emily (in 2004 and 2011) was a reflection of her resilient development.”

The regional framework plan provides a road map for Caribbean action on climate change over the period 2011 to 2021.

“It is a live document and will be subject to review and possible revision biannually to ensure that it continues to reflect the priorities for the Caribbean region in responding to climate variability and climate change,” Leslie said.

When they adopted the “Liliendaal Declaration” at their summit in Guyana in 2009, regional leaders made a number of declarations on climate change and the environment which they felt could only be delivered by transformational change.

These include long-term stabilisation of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations to limit warming below 1.5 degrees C of pre- industrial levels; and the need for financial support to Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to enhance their capacities to respond to the challenges brought on by climate change and to access the technologies that will be required to undertake needed mitigation actions and to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change.

In the declaration, the regional leaders “expressed grave concern” that their efforts to promote sustainable development and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were under severe threat from the devastating effects of climate change, extreme weather events and sea level rise.

“Dangerous climate change is already occurring in all SIDS regions including the Caribbean, requiring urgent, ambitious and decisive action by Caricom states and by the international community,” it said.

The regional framework is guided by five strategic elements and some 20 goals designed to significantly increase the resilience of the Caribbean social, economic and environmental systems.

They include mainstreaming climate change adaptation strategies into the sustainable development agendas of Caricom states, promoting the implementation of specific adaptation measures to address key vulnerabilities in the region as well as promote actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through fossil fuel reduction and conservation, and switching to renewable and cleaner energy sources.

The strategies also seek to encourage action to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems in Caricom countries to the impacts of a changing climate and promoting action to derive social, economic, and environmental benefits through the prudent management of standing forests.

The plan acknowledges that building a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy is an integral element of the wider sustainable development agenda and that addressing climate change without addressing the existing underlying sustainable development and growth challenges faced by the region will not deliver resilience.

So far, a Memorandum of Understanding and Joint Concept Note has been signed with Norway to deliver financial resources of up to 250 million dollars by 2015 to commence and partially support the implementation of the strategy.

But greater financial and technical assistance will be required.

“Caricom countries now have an opportunity to attract climate change finance to support their initiatives to build the resilience of their economies and achieve low-carbon climate resilient development through initiatives such as the Fast Start Funds under the Copenhagen Accord,” the document says.

In the main, the plan is being financed through development partners’ support, including a combined 11.4 million dollars from the Barbados- based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the Global Climate Change Alliance (GCAA) of the 10th European Development Fund (EDF) and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN).

Eight million dollars were also acquired at the recently concluded VII UK/Caribbean Forum in Grenada for early implementation of priority actions identified in the plan.

Leslie said that the implementation plan will work within the ambit of individual countries’ plans, programmes and projects, “thus allowing for greater synergies, sustainability and ownership by the countries of Caricom.

“In this way, it is working with governments to ensure that climate change and climate variability are integrated within countries development plans and programmes and becomes a part of the national budgetary cycle,” he said indicating that the “Three-Ones” approach will be utilised in executing the plan.

The essential feature of that approach “is that it works with the organisations that are already in place utilising existing resources more effectively.

“This model was adopted as it was successfully used in the Pan Caribbean Partnership (PANCAP) to deliver transformational change with limited resources (as it relates to the HIV/AIDS epidemic). Over the 10-year period of the programme, the PANCAP has been declared an international best practice example by the United Nations,” Leslie added.

Excerpt:

By Walter García and Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 16 2012 (IPS)

The United Nations, which is hosting a major international summit on the global environment in Brazil in late June, points out that while the world’s oceans account for 70 percent of the earth’s surface, only one percent of this area is protected.

Sam Koo Credit: Courtesy of Sam Koo

“Sixty percent of major marine ecosystems (are) either damaged or over-exploited…having negative effects on mangroves and coral reefs,” the world body warns.

The growing degradation of the oceans, including overfishing, pollution and loss of biodiversity, will be high on the agenda of the Rio+20 summit of world leaders Jun. 20-22, a follow-up to the historic 1992 Earth Summit in the Brazilian capital.

Touching on many related issues will be Expo 2012, scheduled to take place May 12 through Aug. 12 in South Korea’s coastal city of Yeosu, which will focus on the protection of the world’s oceans and coastlines.

Titled “The Living Ocean and Coast: Diversity of Resources and Sustainable Development”, Expo 2012 will also shed light on the advances in technology concerning the ocean and coastlines – and ways to resolve the challenges facing these great resources.

Ambassador Sam Koo, commissioner general of Expo 2012, told IPS, “Oceans indeed are the new frontier for international cooperation, and man’s harmonious coexistence with the marine environment is of utmost importance if countries are to work together internationally to preserve the planet.”

A former senior official of the United Nations and president of the Seoul Tourism Organisation, Koo is an ex-newspaperman with a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York.

In an interview with IPS U.N. Bureau Chief Thalif Deen, Koo said a total of some 106 countries and 27 international organisations are expected to participate in the 2012 Yeosu Expo, as it is known in Korea.

South Korea is expecting more than 10 million people to visit the Expo, including half a million foreigners, mostly from China.

Koo described Expo “as by far the biggest event in Korea this year.”

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How important is Expo against the backdrop of the continued environmental degradation of the oceans and the coasts? A: The Expo will play a crucial role simply because so many visitors will carry away an indelible message that urgent policy changes are needed to care for our oceans. The Yeosu Declaration, which aims to strengthen developing countries’ capacities in dealing with the marine-related challenges, is expected to be signed by most countries present at the World Expo.

Key topics in the declaration will be understanding the value of the seas and coasts; restoration of the marine ecosystem and biological resources being damaged; sustainable use and preservation of the marine environment and resources; promotion of knowledge and fact- based understanding about climate change.

Other topics in the proposed declaration include achieving an increase in the use of marine resources based on the “green growth” principle; focusing on achieving sustainable development without harming or misusing natural resources; participation of citizens in pursuing marine cooperation; and international cooperation to use the seas as a space for co-existence of mankind.

Q: How can the Expo help resolve some of these issues? How can the oceans become new frontiers for international cooperation? A: The Expo is a platform for communicating an important message to people often difficult to reach. In educating visitors on what they can do to help preserve our planet, the Expo hopefully will contribute to new ways of thinking. Lectures and demonstrations at a variety of pavilions will address the Expo’s themes.

Q: Since the Law of the Sea is primarily the creation of the United Nations, what role will the U.N. play in the Yeosu Expo? A: The Law of the Sea defines the rights and responsibilities nations have in their use of the world’s oceans, thereby establishing guidelines for businesses, environment and the management of marine resources.

The United Nations will be at the World Expo with a 1.400-m2 pavilion. Through the combined efforts of 24 U.N. agencies, the pavilion will demonstrate the U.N.’s work and efforts related to oceans and coasts. The pavilion will show visitors in an entertaining way their choices to influence our planet’s most important recourses and how they can help ensure the sustainability of our oceans and coasts.

Q: What are the primary themes and main goals of the Yeosu Expo? A: The main theme has been split up into three sub-themes.

Development and preservation of the ocean and coast. This sub-theme aims to inspire a new level of cooperation in the international community to combat climate change and create an environment where development and preservation find a better balance.

New resources technology. Illustrated will be the progress and future prospects of marine technology, a new growth driver for the advancement of humankind.

Creative maritime activities. The relationship between the oceans and humankind through culture and art will be explored. Additionally it promotes the new ideals of people and societies living in harmony with the ocean.

In addition, the Yeosu Expo will be an important forum for public education on these diverse topics. This is an effort to create programmes that will change the way we look at responsible development of the oceans. We are sure visitors will return home impressed and better informed.

Q: In seeking international commitments on the oceans, what key outcomes from the Expo do you expect? What are the next steps after the Expo? A: As mentioned, most participating countries are thought to sign the Yeosu Declaration, which aims to strengthen developing countries’ capacity to deal with the changing marine environment. After the declaration has been signed, the Yeosu Project will come into force.

This project is the practical element that translates the spirit of the Yeosu Declaration and Expo theme into action. These actions include assistance to developing countries in the form of education and training programmes and sharing of knowledge between nations.

At the end of the Expo, part of the facilities will remain for ocean research and marine-related organisations. In this way, the Expo will continue to play a role in keeping our seas healthy for generations to come.

Excerpt:

By Peter Richards and - -
PARAMARIBO, Suriname, Mar 12 2012 (IPS)

More than a decade of efforts to promote closer socioeconomic cooperation among the 15 nations of the Caribbean Community are threatened by stagnant funding and a grim global financial situation, experts warned here.

St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas conceded that the world in which Caricom was born "is no more". Credit: UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz

But while the report, titled “Turning around Caricom: Proposals to restructure the Secretariat”, warned of a grim future, the end of summit communiqué took the “firm view that the integration movement has continued to make great strides ever since the signing of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas” which governs the integration movement in 2001.

St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas conceded that the world in which Caricom was born “is no more” and that geopolitical, socioeconomic, and other global stresses have caused “our operational landscape to be ever-changing, and our problem-solving challenges ever more complex.

“Caricom, therefore, must continue to adapt and re-invent itself – never in terms of our undergirding values, purpose, and principles, of course – but certainly in terms of how we function, how we operate, the extent to which we are, or are not, efficient, effective, relevant with a sharper focus on being more results oriented.”

He warned that “Caricom must position itself to become more meaningfully engaged, though not subsumed, into other regional groupings.”

There are specific reasons behind Douglas’s concerns. The global economic crisis has hit the region hard, particularly as it impacts funding from traditional donors like the European Union.

The Caribbean Single Market and Economy, considered Caricom’s flagship project, is a key area where progress has been slow.

The report said that if Caricom, now observing its 38th year, and other regional institutions continue to struggle for funds, they could collapse in another four to five years.

The operating budget of the Guyana-based Caricom Secretariat has remained stagnant at just under 20 million dollars for the past four years, despite inflation and an increasing workload of international travel, commissioned studies and other tasks.

Requests for additional funding have been denied as member governments blame harsh economic times, the report noted, adding that many member countries are highly indebted and struggling to meet domestic and international commitments.

For example, Belize, the Central American Caricom member state, is the 13th most indebted country in the world and faces a schedule of rising interest rates over the next 12 months.

Ratings agencies Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poors downgraded the country’s foreign-currency sovereign rating deeper into “junk” status after Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who was not present at the summit here because of the general election in his country, said his first act after his re-election would be to renegotiate the terms of Belize’s so-called superbond, which makes up half the country’s debt and 40 percent of gross domestic product.

Suriname’s President Desi Bouterse, who has assumed the chairmanship of the 15-member regional grouping, said that the in-depth analysis of Caricom institutions “must lead us to a better way of doing things, a faster response to false starts and wrong directions”.

He acknowledges that the reform is a “tall order” even though “knowing the problem can only be a first step.

“Friends, we have to face the fact that we as elected officials often use the shortage of financial means as an easy way out, when we choose to refrain from implementing programmes of a sustainable nature,” he told his colleagues.

“The problem is, and has always been, with implementation,” prominent University of the West Indies (UWI) academic, Professor Norman Girvan, previously told IPS. “CARICOM decisions do not have the force of law, and there is no real machinery to ensure implementation.”

“And at the root of this is the reluctance of member states to share their insular sovereignty with the community of all regional states acting collectively,” added Girvan, a former secretary general of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).

Caricom’s new secretary general, Irwin LaRocque, vowed that “the decisions that will be made …on the recommendations” will provide him with the basis for addressing the challenges faced by the Secretariat in its efforts to fulfil the role and function that regional leaders themselves envisage.

“I have no doubt that changes will flow from the recommendations of that report and we must all be prepared to welcome those changes. Change will have to be managed; it will not be easy; it will definitely require a new mindset; a new way of doing things,” he said,, recalling a similar statement he made last month, adding “today I will add to that, a new culture must be injected into the organisation that I lead.

“Given the magnitude of the task, a change facilitator is necessary to assist in giving the focussed attention it deserves. It is an urgent prerequisite and should figure among the most immediate and pressing priorities as we go forward,” he said.

La Rocque has argued that the Secretariat must become “more strategic in its approach to its tasks and its advice” to the other organs and institutions within Caricom, adding that the “challenge in delivering this transformation is in determining how we will get it done.

“The buck, as it were, starts here,” a confident La Rocque added.

Veteran Caribbean journalist Rickey Singh wrote that while the central message of the Suriname summit “is an assurance that the long recognised and recommended overall of the Secretariat should soon get underway”, there is indeed a caveat.

“It may involve a long route, at least another five years, for a new ‘strategic plan’ which embodies management reform and implementation processes, to unfold with the intention of arresting current pessimism and cynicism about the future of the 38-year-old economic integration movement”.

The outline of the five-year strategic plan will be considered by the regional leaders when they meet in St. Lucia for their annual summit in July.

Excerpt:

By Danilo Valladares and - -
GUATEMALA CITY, Mar 9 2012 (IPS)

Central America, a narrow tropical isthmus flanked by the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, suffered 259 extreme weather-related events between 1930 and 2009, while the cumulative effects of innumerable smaller-scale events have not even been recorded.

An association of small farmers in Guatemala sells natural, organic products like honey, jam and shampoo. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

The regional economy itself, based on monoculture and dependent on fossil fuels, exacerbates the problem.

Hit hard by drought, floods and hurricanes, which have worsened with global warming, the seven countries of Central America, with their combined population of 47 million people, have been forced to try something different and are turning towards sustainable development.

“We have a saw mill, an agroforestry plantation, and are developing productive projects like fish farming and the raising of egg-laying chickens,” Nubia Sosa, manager of the Integral Forestry Association of San Andrés Petén in northern Guatemala, told IPS.

Since 1999, the association has had a concession from the government’s National Council of Protected Areas to manage some 52,000 hectares of forest in the Maya Biosphere, where its members have been able to make a sustainable living.

“It is very important to have alternatives that combine both economic and environmental aspects,” Sosa said. Her association won the 2011 Sasakawa Prize awarded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to initiatives that conserve biodiversity while fighting poverty.

Central America and the rest of the countries bathed by the Caribbean Sea share a natural vulnerability, which has been aggravated by climate change. The last natural disaster to hit the region was tropical depression 12E, which affected some 2.6 million people in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua in October 2011.

Infrastructure and crop losses amounted to nearly two billion dollars, according to ECLAC.

And the region had not yet even recovered from the devastation caused by hurricanes Mitch in 1998, Stan in 2005, and Agatha in 2010. In addition, it was hit by heavy drought in 2009, especially Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The scarcity and high prices of grains and vegetables, the damages to infrastructure and the productive sector, and soaring prices for oil imports have forced the region to begin to look into sustainable alternatives.

“To cope with this global crisis, it is essential to integrate responsible economic development, environmentally-friendly practices by farmers and businesses, and the use of cleaner, eco-efficient tools of production,” Mauricio Chacón, with the Sustainable Economic Development Programme in Central America, told IPS.

This initiative, financed by the state-owned German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), has drawn up a Central American catalogue of “green businesses” that will be placed on-line to provide companies with information on new markets, business opportunities, credit and other aspects.

These businesses are an important source of environmentally-friendly production in industries like organic food, renewable energy and sustainable tourism, Chacón said.

One of the fastest-growing areas is renewable energies, with a variety of wind, solar and hydropower projects launched by alliances between the public and private sectors and international donors.

In Guatemala, for example, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration signed a contract with a private bank in February to administer a 30 million dollar line of credit to finance projects to develop and generate renewable energies.

At a regional level, the countries have also implemented initiatives to protect agricultural production, such as the Regional Programme of Research and Innovation for Value Chains, which is working on the production of tomatoes, manioc, potatoes and avocados.

The aim is to boost availability of foodstuffs, which have been hit hard by weather events and aggravated because the diet in rural areas, where poverty is concentrated, is based on monoculture corn production.

The programme is carried out by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) and financed with 7.6 million dollars from the European Union.

Mario Ardón with the non-governmental Association of Advisers for Sustainable, Ecological and Humane Agriculture told IPS that if the region does not seek alternative forms of production, the future will be one of “social, economic and food crises.”

With respect to the impact of climate change, the outlook is anything but promising for Central America.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at the current rate, the accumulated cost of global warming from here to 2100 could reach 73 billion dollars, equivalent to 54 percent of the region’s combined GDP for 2008, according to the report Economics of Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean, published by ECLAC in late 2010.

In that scenario, the temperature would rise between 3.6 and 4.7 degrees, depending on the country, with an average decline in rainfall of 28 percent.

“For that reason, our strategy is focused on small-holder family farming, in order to produce food year-round, make use of biomass, and preserve moisture in the soil, all of which makes it the key alternative with respect to climate change,” Ardón said.

Big business is also taking part in the effort.

Daniel García with Guatemala’s Chamber of Industry told IPS that they are working in two phases: achieving compliance with environmental and energy efficiency standards and working on a policy of cleaner production.

The business sector is also exploring the field of renewable energy, “to make industries more competitive and less dependent on fossil fuels,” he said.

“We are very dependent on our traditional energy sources and monoculture farming, but we have to take measures to fight climate change,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Patricia Grogg and - -
HAVANA, Mar 2 2012 (IPS)

Subject to the double impact of the global economic crisis and climate change, the Caribbean island nations are in need of adaptation strategies in which international cooperation and citizen participation play key roles, says Cuban expert Ramón Pichs.

Ramón Pichs, deputy director Centre for the Study of the World Economy. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Q: What are the main environmental challenges faced by Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean region? A: There are a number of common challenges, including a propensity for extreme events such as hurricanes, drought, water stress, pollution, loss of biodiversity and rising sea levels, which seriously endanger the lowest-lying coastal areas.

We also should take into account that Caribbean island states especially are extraordinarily dependent on the large markets of industrialised countries. Generally, they are food and oil importers, and they have been very much affected by the sharp increase in prices for these strategic products.

Most of these islands make a living from tourism, with facilities that are preferably near the shore and that endure the impact of hurricanes and flooding, especially if they are in low-lying areas.

We should also mention the bleaching of coral reefs, an important Caribbean resource that is being harmed by the impact of high temperatures.

Q: In that context, what joint adaptation strategies are the most advisable? A: A number of actions are underway. For example, capacities are being created for responding to many of these climate phenomena that tend to be increasingly intense and devastating. Cuba has given important support to national response teams, not just in the Caribbean, but also in Central and South America.

We need to keep working in those areas. We should also include initiatives that are being carried out as part of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America bloc, which seek to bolster sectors like education and health, both of them strategic for sustainable social development and adaptation to climate change.

Moreover, there is a need for adaptation actions in other key areas, such as agriculture, tourism, water supply and the protection of coastlines and human settlements.

Early warning systems are very important, and Cuba’s experience in this realm can be very useful; that is, a strategy for responding to extreme events such as hurricanes, where the integration of a country’s main institutions is essential.

Q: What should be taken into account when designing these adaptation programmes? A: There are three levels of analysis: national efforts, regional integration and international cooperation. In the first case, a lot of work and progress are needed to integrate the economic, social and environmental aspects as part of strategies for sustainable development.

In this sense, for decision makers, it would be fundamental to chart socioeconomic and environmental scenarios in different circumstances, with the goal of using that as a basis for designing the policy options that would be most convenient according to the priorities and interests of those countries.

When I refer to scenarios, I am not talking about making predictions, but about thinking about the possible trajectories of what could happen, and depending on that, deciding to act in one direction or another.

These national efforts would necessarily have to be complemented with processes of sub-regional integration, such as the Caribbean Community, CARICOM, and regional processes, via the recently-created Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

Q: You mentioned international cooperation as a third element. What is its role? A: It is a key element of strategies for responding to global environmental challenges, especially when taking into account the large gaps in equality that exist in today’s world. However, that collaboration must, in the first place, take into account the priorities and interests of sustainable development in recipient countries.

Secondly, it should be directed at creating endogenous capacities in countries that receive this cooperation; that is, when the cooperation is withdrawn, the conditions should be created for those projects to be sustainable. Lastly, the aid provided should contribute to integrating national efforts, instead of fragmenting them.

Q: What are the responsibilities of civil society and its organisations, especially in concrete projects for adapting to climate change? A: Any project for adapting to climate change or other environmental challenges will be more successful when the communities where they are carried out have an adequate level of awareness about the problems they face. Citizen participation is fundamental in this process.

A number of elements interact in this capacity for response, including financial, technological and human resources; institutional networks; government and political will, and the presence of social organisations as active subjects in these processes.

Excerpt:

By Fabiana Frayssinet and - -
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

The Brazilian government is stepping up South-South aid, to strengthen the South American giant’s status as a donor country and its international clout. It now provides assistance to 65 countries, and its financial aid has grown threefold in the last seven years.

Itamaraty Palace (Brazil’s foreign ministry), homebase for the country’s South-South development aid strategy. Credit: Public domain

The United Nations announced in late February that Brazil would provide 2.37 million dollars for a local food purchasing programme, to benefit small farmers and vulnerable populations in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Senegal.

The project, carried out by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), will thus draw on the expertise accumulated by Brazil in its own food purchasing programme, known by its Portuguese acronym, PAA.

The PAA buys agricultural products from small farmers and distributes them to vulnerable groups, including children and adolescents through school feeding programmes. Besides fighting hunger, it is aimed at strengthening local food production.

The PAA is a cornerstone of the country’s Zero Hunger strategy, launched by the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) and continued by his successor, President Dilma Rousseff, both of whom are moderate leftists who belong to the Workers’ Party.

The programme, in conjunction with other anti-poverty policies, has helped reduce malnutrition by 25 percent and pulled 24 million people out of extreme poverty, according to Lula administration statistics.

“This is a way to help other governments develop policies of support for family farmers, who in this country are responsible for the production of 60 percent of the food consumed,” Marco Farani, director of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), told IPS.

The PAA “works very well, and keeps farmers in the countryside, caring for their small plots of land and making them their source of subsistence and livelihood,” said Farani, whose agency operates under the foreign ministry.

The project is based on cooperation between FAO and the WFP in the production and supply of seeds and fertiliser, and the organisation of the purchase and distribution of food, among other aspects.

Since January, FAO has been headed by José Graziano da Silva, from Brazil.

In an interview with IPS in December, Graziano said he would bring to the U.N. organisation his experience as one of the architects of the Zero Hunger programme, in areas like the strengthening of local markets to produce higher quality food, reduce food waste, and lower costs.

Now, in association with organisations like the United Nations or in bilateral aid, Brazil wants to extend throughout the developing South its own successful initiatives like the PAA.

This new cooperation and development aid strategy has been taking shape since 2005, when Brazil, now the world’s sixth largest economy, earmarked 158 million dollars for foreign aid. That amount rose to nearly 363 million dollars in 2009 and to an estimated 400 million dollars in 2010, according to preliminary figures from the ABC.

Meanwhile, Brazil plans to dedicate 125 million dollars to technical cooperation over the next three years, more than double what this country will itself receive in international aid in that period.

“Today we are active in more than 65 countries, while three or four years ago we were only active in the Portuguese-language countries of Africa. We currently have cooperation projects in 38 African nations, and in Latin America,” Farani said.

The countries of Latin America receive 45 percent of Brazil’s foreign aid. The rest is distributed among other areas of the developing South, mainly through bilateral channels, but also through the U.N., as in the case of the new local food purchasing fund for the five African countries.

Brazil is now one of the WFP’s 10 largest donor countries.

The difference, Farani said, is that “in our South-South cooperation, we do not impose closed models or solutions. We recognise the experience of the other countries, while sharing our own expertise.”

Brazil has thus established a kind of manual of principles to guide international aid.

“In first place, we are a developing country, which is why our attitude towards the challenge of development is one of humility, because development is still a challenge for Brazil,” Farani said.

“Besides, we have similar realities and challenges” as developing countries, and “we approach things from the idea that it is possible to overcome those challenges, while the attitude of a country from the industrialised North is ‘we are going to help to keep things from getting even worse’,” he said.

Mauricio Santoro, an analyst at the independent Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, mentioned political reasons as well for Brazil’s strategy of becoming a donor country.

Brazil hopes to win a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and wants greater decision-making power in multilateral bodies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation.

“The political objective is to increase Brazil’s influence in other developing countries, particularly in Latin America and Africa. It’s part of the consolidation of Brazil’s international leadership vis-à-vis nations of the so-called global South,” he said.

But Santoro said there is a difference with respect to traditional donors that use aid as an instrument to establish a presence in new markets.

Brazilian companies, like the state-run oil company Petrobras and private construction and mining firms, are increasingly operating throughout Latin America and in other regions as well.

“The focus is more on politics than on the economy,” he told IPS. “Cooperation is not necessarily stronger with large commercial partners.”

“But it works as a kind of buffer for tension in countries like Bolivia, Paraguay or Mozambique, where there is a heavy presence of Brazilian companies,” he said.

Another difference, Santoro said, is that Brazil’s foreign aid does not come with strings attached, and generally promotes projects that put a priority on developing human resources, by means of training of public employees, for example.

It is the age-old concept of “teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish,” he summed up.

Excerpt:

By Judith Scherr
BERKELEY, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

The world reacted swiftly to Haiti’s catastrophic 7.0 earthquake in 2010. The United States shipped in 20,000 troops, some to perform lifesaving medical procedures, others to protect aid workers from earthquake victims deemed dangerous. Movie stars, criminals and other prospective parents rushed to adopt motherless Haitian babies.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and missionaries tripped over each other to distribute aid, from used shoes and bibles, to food and water. Televangelist Pat Robertson grabbed headlines, blaming the quake on Haiti’s “pact to the devil” – referencing Voodoo, Haiti’s traditional religion.

The only ones absent from media reports, it seemed, were Haitians, except as tragic victims.

A new book, Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the Earthquake [Kumarian Press, 288 pages], sets the record straight. The compilation of more than 40 articles is edited by Mark Schuller, assistant professor at City University of New York and the State University of Haiti, and Latin American specialist Pablo Morales.

“One of the things we really felt was important was to get Haitian voices out there,” Schuller told IPS in a phone interview from New York. Half of the articles are written by Haitian activists, scholars and journalists, he pointed out.

To tell the story of the temblor that killed more than 300,000 and displaced 1.5 million, Schuller and Morales include information on the history that has left the island-nation particularly vulnerable.

“Understanding the disaster means understanding not only the tectonic fault lines running beneath Haiti, but also the deep economic, political, social, and historical cleavages within and surrounding the country,” the editors write.

A history of intrusion

Haiti has been pummelled by external forces since its birth 200 years ago. Soon after Haitians threw off the yoke of France, the former colonizer led an embargo against the young black republic, forcing Haiti to promise France the equivalent of 21 billion U.S. dollars for the loss of land and slaves. The debt wasn’t paid off until 1947.

Several articles explore international financial institutions’ neoliberal policies that led to overcrowding in Port au Prince and thus the large number of deaths and injuries from the earthquake.

In one, Alex Dupuy, chair of African American studies at Wesleyan University, cites World Bank and International Monetary Fund support for urban assembly factories, which brought peasants to the cities.

The international lenders further damaged the rural economy by imposing tariff reductions on agricultural products. Haiti’s markets had to compete with subsidized U.S. rice, “undercutting local production of the nation’s staple crop and dismantling the rural economy”, writes anthropologist Anthony Olivers-Smith.

A major theme throughout Tectonic Shifts is the negative role of NGOs, present in large numbers even before the earthquake.

In 1994, when President Bill Clinton brought President Jean Bertrand Aristide – Haiti’s first democratically elected president – back to Haiti after a coup d’état, the U.S. Congress bolstered NGOs’ presence. It refused to give aid directly to the Haitian government and instead filtered funds through NGOs, strengthening them and weakening the public sector.

The number of NGOs multiplied after the earthquake and included, according to Yolette Etienne, Oxfam America Haiti program director, “the full range of humanitarians, ranging from the most specialised organizations to amateur groups and even criminals on the lookout to exploit all forms of human misery”.

After the earthquake, the United Nations (U.N.) established “clusters” through which NGOs addressed issues of sanitation, water, food and housing.

But Haitians were largely excluded, as Melinda Miles of Transafrica writes. “By holding nearly all of its meetings within the confines of the [U.N.] base and refusing to offer Creole translation, Haitians… were effectively kept out of the process.”

Haitians are also kept out of relief contracts. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) studied USAID contracts worth 200 million dollars and concluded that just 2.5 percent went to Haitian companies.

Militarisation in Haiti

A number of articles underscore the destructive role of the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH. After the United States flew Aristide into involuntary exile in 2004, Marines policed the country for several months and were replaced by MINUSTAH.

After the earthquake, the U.N. added more than 3,000 troops and police to the force, bringing the total to around 13,000.

U.N. military personnel have been accused of acting like an occupying force, murdering and sexually abusing Haitians and bringing cholera to the country. “To many, MINUSTAH’s primary role is to keep Haiti as a leta restavèk, a child domestic worker serving foreign interests,” write Tectonic Shifts editors.

The U.S. earthquake response was also militarised. Charles Vorbe, political science professor at the State University of Haiti, recalls media images depicting the “degrading nature” of giving aid. “U.S. soldiers perched in an army helicopter in full flight, tossing sacks of food overboard on earthquake victims, who, on the ground, come running from everywhere and fight among themselves to collect whatever they can.”

The military’s preoccupation with security is incompatible with the “respect for the dignity… of the beneficiaries,” Vorbe writes.

Meanwhile, about 600,000 Haitians still live in squalid camps, often lacking water and sanitation. Many face eviction. (The 600,000 doesn’t include evicted survivors living on the streets or in red- tagged houses.)

Legal complications

Mario Joseph, human rights attorney with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, writes that claims to land titles are unclear. “It is uncertain whether the alleged landowners who attempt to evict [Internally Displaced People] …really have legal rights to the land,” he explains.

“Because those purporting to own the land usually come from Haiti’s tiny but powerful elite, their word itself is generally feared among IDPs.”

In a Skype interview from Port au Prince, Joseph told IPS that the debate around land ownership avoids the central issue: international law and U.N. guidelines prohibit eviction of IDPs. “But the U.N. doesn’t apply this in Haiti,” Joseph said.

Still, the problem isn’t just with the U.N.

“The NGOs and the Haitian government, too, don’t… respect the rights of the Haitian people,” Joseph added, contending that because the international community put the president into power, government allegiance is to foreign interests and the wealthy elite, not to the Haitian masses.

To that end, Tectonic Shifts includes several articles about international interference with presidential elections that excluded a dozen political parties including Aristide’s party, Lavalas, the largest and most popular party.

“The international community is complicit with the rich people in Haiti to gut the rights of Haitians,” Joseph said, noting that he’s successfully trained camp leaders to organize others to effectively stand up for their right not to be evicted.

Tectonic Shifts includes hopeful articles about grassroots groups pressuring the government for change, but none address the future of Lavalas or the impact of Aristide’s return to Haiti one year ago. IPS asked Schuller about the omission.

“As a political party, Lavalas is factionalized,” he said, underscoring that, as a foreigner, it was not his place to comment on internal politics. He said the editors attempted to be balanced and non- partisan in the choice of articles.

“Maybe work is being done internally – they’re not out [in demonstrations] in big numbers; they’re not making a political statement,” he added.

Creole and French translations of the book will be published later this year, which means Tectonic Shifts can be used as an educational and organizing tool by grassroots activists and human rights workers, Schuller said.

“I see hope in the [grassroots] movements, despite the many challenges.”

Excerpt:

By Peter Richards
CASTRIES, St Lucia, Feb 28 2012 (IPS)

As developing countries urgently seek new sources of financing to cope with problems linked to climate change, delegates from the nine-nation Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) met here last week to evaluate potential funds and outline a more concrete vision of what is required for the subregion.

“The workshop sought to raise awareness and share experiences on instruments and best practices related to financing adaptation and sustainable energy, and to generate feedback on planned future action and partnerships,” Keith Nichols, head of the Sustainable Development Division at the St. Lucia-based OECS Secretariat, told IPS.

Supported by the World Bank, it explored carbon financing opportunities to enhance the ability of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as those of the OECS to respond to challenges like sea level rise and coastal erosion.

“The pursuit of a green growth agenda which promotes co-benefits in climate adaptation and mitigation, and which supports scaling-up of renewable energy and other economic resilience-building programmes, served as the vision on which this workshop was initiated,” Nichols added.

Delegates discussed case studies on sustainable land management for climate variability and climate change; adaptation challenges in the coastal and marine sectors; climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the OECS; as well as an adaptation finance case study from the Pacific region.

The OECS comprises Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands.

Chrispin D’Auvergne, chief sustainable development officer for St. Lucia, believes that as a grouping, the OECS can better negotiate access to global climate funding – for which there is plenty of competition among developing nations.

“Recently there was an international fund launched, the Green Climate Fund, but I believe there will be a lot of demand on that fund. There is also an existing Adaptation Fund, but again I think the demand for that fund will outstrip the supply,” he said.

Approved at a U.N. conference in South Africa, the Green Climate Fund is supposed to raise 100 billion dollars a year from rich nations by 2020 for climate adaptation in poorer countries.

“There is also bilateral and multilateral sources available through the international development banks for countries interested,” D’Auvergne said.

“There is loan financing. But for many developing countries, the argument is that we are not the cause of this, so ideally we are not supposed to be borrowing money to finance climate change adaptation needs,” he added.

D’Auvergne argues that “one of the things we have to do as Small Island States is press these developed countries to live up to those pledges and some of them have started doing so.

“But also for our part we really have to try to crystallise exactly what we are seeking in relation to climate change funding, because it’s one thing to go out and say we need funding to adapt to climate change, but it’s another thing to say ‘I have put together a package of what we need’ and say to our bilateral and multilateral sources ‘this is it’, but if it is a generic request we are less likely to receive assistance,” he said.

There was a general consensus that the approach to climate resilience and low carbon development should be embedded into national/sectoral, regional and private sector development plans, and that there is need for additional investment in capacity and public education so that communities shift from “understanding” the key issues to “ownership”.

The main obstacles remain the lack of needed financing, the absence and inaccessibility of data, human resources and mapping capabilities, and a lack of political will and cooperation amongst stakeholders.

Nichols said that among the recommendations outlined to deal with financing climate change adaptation and sustainable energy were the need to link climate change adaptation with disaster risk management and to engage the private sector, particularly insurance companies.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), as envisioned under the now- expired Kyoto Protocol, in which richer countries pay poorer countries to reduce emissions on their behalf, is one possible solution.

But the workshop noted that while the CDM has established credibility as a market mechanism in terms of size, value and types of participants, “it has limitations for sustainable development and GHG (greenhouse gases) reductions in small island states”.

Serious doubts have also been raised about whether many of the CDM projects meet the requirement that they be “additional” – in other words, that the net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is greater than the cuts that would occur anyway without the initiative.

Other instruments, such as Green NAMA bonds (short for Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions) and the Green Climate Fund, which encourage upfront financing for low carbon development objectives, are also promising to encourage private sector participation.

The workshop was the second initiative by OECS this month on environmental issues.

The first dealt with efforts to strenthen the management framework for ocean resources so as “to ensure their maximum contribution to economic development goals of OECS member states”.

The St. Lucia-based grouping said that the sustainable development of ocean resources represents a key aspect of the economic development of the OECS region, in conformity with best international practices, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other related instruments.

“OECS states see a need to consider the possibilities for other resources within OECS waters such as the implications of the recently endorsed CARICOM Common Fisheries Policy, marine transportation tourism, and the exploration for petroleum products.

“The current OECS ocean governance programme is geared towards enabling the OECS Secretariat to create an institutional framework for regional cooperation in trans-boundary oceans management; strengthening national and regional capacities for the development and implementation of ocean law and policy within the framework of sub-regional cooperation,” the Secretariat added.

*This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Excerpt:

If the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had 1.28 billion dollars it could help 97 million people around the world.

UNICEF's funding shortfall could leave millions of children like these searching for a living in garbage. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

It could relieve five million drought-affected children in Ethiopia, give 360,000 children in Kenya access to quality education and treat 16,000 children for acute malnutrition in Madagascar. It could provide 2.2 million Somalis with safe drinking water and give a million children in the Republic of South Sudan basic health care.

And those figures are for Eastern and Southern Africa alone, just two regions of the world that UNICEF aims to reach.

Sadly, the U.N. agency secured less than 50 percent of its funding in 2011, suggesting that it will meet only half its expected goals this year.

Each January UNICEF releases its Humanitarian Action for Children report, which identifies children around the world in the most acute need of aid as a result of humanitarian emergencies – be they “natural disasters, human conflicts or chronic crises.”

The report is rife with pictures of children clinging perilously to survival; high-resolution images depict the protruding ribcages of malnourished boys and girls and the harsh realities of whole populations that are slowly starving to death.

Everything about the report is a desperate call for help. But help comes at a price, which, in this case, is a high one.

Released this year on Jan. 27, the appeal – 80 pages long and spanning 25 countries across seven regions – called for 1.28 billion dollars in aid, and breaks each country’s needs into categories such as nutrition, health, water sanitation and hygiene, education, child protection, HIV/AIDS and others.

UNICEF initially appealed for 1.4 billion dollars to be dispersed among 38 countries but revised its request mid-year to account for unprecedented crises like the famine in the Horn of Africa, among other disasters.

According to the report, 44 percent of funding for 2011 was funneled into the Horn of Africa, for which UNICEF activated its highest level of emergency response.

Meanwhile, other countries present new and equally dire needs. For example, UNICEF has appealed for more than 289.1 million dollars for Somalia in 2012, the largest funding requirement for a single country. The organisation has also called for 143.9 million dollars for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and 98.1 million dollars for Sudan.

The report adds that, as of October 2011, UNICEF had only received 48 percent of its projected needs, amounting to 854.7 million dollars, for all its humanitarian activities. Final numbers for the entire year are expected to be higher, but only moderately so.

For UNICEF, this means making heart-breaking decisions about which children to provide with life- saving services.

“Sadly, we never really (manage) to respond to all of the humans that are in need,” Marika Hofmeister, an emergency specialist at UNICEF told IPS.

Though a depleted resource pool is a setback for any organisation, a dearth of funding for UNICEF will have particularly severe repercussions, some bordering on disastrous for at-risk populations.

For example, South Sudan received just 36 percent of its projected needs last year, leaving its goal of providing 500,000 people with clean drinking water only partially met. Over 130,000 were excluded from planned supply since many water schemes could neither be rehabilitated nor constructed on the agency’s limited budget.

Meanwhile, armed with just 18 percent of its expected funding for the region, UNICEF’s plan to provide 75,000 children in the Philippines with schools supplies that had been lost or damaged due to floods failed woefully, leaving over 50,000 students without supplies.

Madagascar, Uganda, Congo, Iraq and Iraqi refugees, and Tajikistan were among several countries that received less than 10 percent of their planned funding, according to an October 2011 report.

Despite funding shortfalls, UNICEF reported helping millions of people worldwide during 2011, including providing de-worming, vitamin A supplementation and vaccinations for more than 36 million children; treating 1.2 million children for acute malnutrition; providing nutritional support for 19 million women and children; providing access to sanitation and hygiene facilities and safe drinking water for 16 million people and providing access to improved education for four million children.

Funding for UNICEF runs in two parallel streams, one of which contributes to development and programming for the achievement of long-term goals, while the other focuses on humanitarian action. Country offices have some “wiggle room” to divert funds from one stream to another, depending on specific needs.

Hofmeister explained this allows for flexibility in the event of an emergency.

“The import part is to strike the balance between huge emergencies that draw media attention… and the “silent emergencies” that very rarely hit the media and go unfunded for years and years,” Hofmeister said.

However, UNICEF’s efforts are not universally applauded.

In a Jan. 18 report entitled, “A Dangerous Delay“, Oxfam and Save the Children argue that governments, the U.N., NGOs and private donors need to change their approach to drought situations by “managing the risks, not the crisis.”

Referencing the famine in the Horn of Africa, the report claims, “It is clear that the opportunity to avert a crisis was missed.”

Oxfam and Save the Children further noted that the drought and subsequent famine, which has impacted 13 million people, displayed clear warning signs that indicated an impending crisis, including clues from measured rainfall and weather conditions linked to La Niña.

“If an early response had saved even a small proportion of these lives, then thousands of children, women and men would still be alive,” the report stated.

Hofmeister refuted the claim, asserting that unexpected disasters often lay waste to even the best laid plans.

UNICEF’s Global Support section in the funding requirements for 2012 – appealing for 21.9 million dollars – aims to scaffold a degree of preparation against such uncertainties by maintaining a reserve pool of funds that is not earmarked for a particular country or cause, but can be drawn upon for severely under-funded areas.

But this measure, too, is contingent on fund-raising. Last year, Global Support obtained only three percent of projected total funds.

As of October 2011, UNICEF’s 10 largest donors had contributed 74 percent of total donations, according to the report. The European Commission stood as the largest contributor, with 115.8 million dollars, followed by the government of the United States at 98.2 million dollars, the Japanese government with 97.4 million dollars and the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund with 97.1 million dollars.

Hofmeister said that UNICEF is encouraging donors to increase or maintain their commitments, in order to protect the basic rights of women and children.

“We are aiming for 100 percent funding, (which is) the only way we can achieve the results that we have planned,” Hofmeister stressed.

The rise of emerging economies in Latin America is an opportunity to improve strategies for fighting neglected illnesses and increase the region’s contribution to the global struggle against them, says the regional director of an organisation devoted to this purpose.

“Our region is going through a major transformation in economic and social terms,” said Eric Stobbaerts, the Latin America director of the independent Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), mentioning the progress that has been made in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Mexico.

Advantage should be taken of this positive change to “redefine the way these diseases have been addressed in the past,” he said. Several of them are endemic in the region, like Chagas disease and visceral leishmaniasis or kala azar.

These maladies are classed as “neglected” because they are not researched by large international pharmaceutical laboratories that regard them as “poor-country diseases”, without much profit incentive to develop drugs against them.

The rise of the emerging economies on the world scene “means more resources are available for development, industrial production and innovation in the fight against forgotten tropical diseases,” he said.

Stobbaerts talked to IPS after a meeting on “Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases” held in London Jan. 30 and organised in support of “Accelerating work to overcome the global impact of neglected tropical diseases – A roadmap for implementation,” released the same day by the World Health Organisation (WHO) which intends to eradicate 10 of the diseases this decade.

A DNDi communiqué after the London meeting celebrated global achievements in this field, but called for gaps in research and development to be filled, so that better diagnostic methods and new medicines are created before 2020.

A non-profit research and development NGO, DNDi has worked since 2003 developing medicines and treatments for neglected diseases.

It concentrates especially on illnesses with high mortality rates: African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), helminthic (parasitic worm) infections and infantile HIV/AIDS, as well as Chagas disease and leishmaniasis.

Stobbaerts emphasised that Latin America has traditionally been a highly endemic region with vast reservoirs of the neglected diseases, so there is “excellent technical and scientific knowledge” in the region.

“But there are still enormous needs in the face of the number and variety of diseases neglected because of market laws, and a great many patients are still without treatment,” he said.

Among DNDi’s partners in Latin America are the Brazilian Fiocruz Foundation and state laboratories like Farmanguinhos and Lafepe. Outside the region, notable partners include the Institut Pasteur in France and Médécins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

The partnerships have allowed DNDi to enter into agreements with the private sector and academic institutions for current projects in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia.

Worldwide, six treatments have been developed for malaria, sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis. A children’s medicine for Chagas disease, paediatric benznidazole, was developed in Latin America.

“Political support at all stages of research and development has been vital for these achievements,” Stobbaerts said. However, “we know that efforts to develop pharmaceuticals alone, are inadequate.

“Regulations, distribution and health systems are all essential for the success of innovation. There are many barriers that can cause a new drug to be left on the shelf,” he said.

The number of people in Latin America who – often without knowing it – are infected or carriers of the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi which causes Chagas disease is over eight million, he said, taking this case as an example.

Chagas disease especially affects Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico and Paraguay, and causes some 12,000 deaths a year, although the real number of fatalities may be much higher because “there is clearly under-reporting,” Stobbaerts said.

The lack of adequate diagnostic methods for Chagas disease is another problem. “There is an urgent need for a reliable diagnostic test to institute successful treatment,” he said.

“Without it, treatment is applied in the dark, without knowledge of the patient’s parasite status over the long term. This requires intensive medical monitoring which is costly for the primary and secondary health services,” he said.

“The challenge is to produce diagnostic tests that are applicable in the field, often in remote and isolated places. They must be easy for local health personnel to use and manage; and they must be cheap, because public health budgets are limited,” he stressed.

At the London meeting, DNDi highlighted, among other key aspects for the battle against neglected diseases, the promotion of innovation; open exchange of knowledge and research; and the creation of public- private institutional partnerships for the development of effective drugs.

It was said at the meeting that in Latin America, activists from civil society to the most advanced levels of science have worked to demand open minds and pragmatic solutions in international forums like the World Health Assembly (the decision-making body of the WHO) or the Group of 20 (a forum of the largest industrialised and emerging economies).

In Stobbaerts’ view, “the region is set on an encouraging course.

“Universities are mobilising their resources, opening their libraries and laboratories on a non-profit basis; the private pharmaceutical sector is showing signs of greater interest in issues of social responsibility; and there is a wind of private philanthropy that may show more interest in health issues,” he added.

From the point of view of the DNDi, regional platforms for clinical research into specific diseases that bring together researchers, doctors, regulators, national controllers and ideally, patients themselves “are vital to ensure that our work is based on patients’ needs,” Stobbaerts said, and he mentioned the Chagas Clinical Research Platform (CCRP), founded in 2009, that includes a large number of Latin American partners.

The DNDi indicated that it is essential to guarantee the participation and leadership of endemic countries, in order to respond to patients’ needs, and to secure sustainable and diversified funding to expand development and research.

“Our region has a two-fold interest here: to lead at the global level, contributing new ideas, and to overcome health emergencies that are being suffered locally,” Stobbaerts said.

“The daily task is to stimulate reflection and break down the unfounded belief that little or nothing can be done,” he concluded.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s visit to Cuba served to further strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries, leverage the South American giant’s investments in the Caribbean island, and deepen political ties.

On Feb. 1, Rousseff travelled to Haiti, where she was set to meet with government officials to discuss a number of issues, including migration and the reconstruction efforts underway since the devastating January 2010 earthquake. Brazil and Cuba are backing the establishment of a healthcare system in that impoverished Caribbean nation.

Brazil’s first woman president arrived in Havana on Jan. 30, where she held talks with her Cuban counterpart Raúl Castro, paid a visit to his brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro -who she said she felt “immensely honoured” to meet – and toured a logistics hub being developed with Brazilian investment in the port of Mariel, some 50 kilometres west of Havana.

According to official press accounts, during her stay in the capital she signed several agreements with Cuba, but no details of their content were released. In her only statements to the press, on Jan. 31, Rousseff defined her country’s cooperation with Cuba as a contribution to economic development in the current state of affairs.

The Cuban government is implementing a number of reforms under what it calls “updating the economic model,” which includes opening up to private initiatives such as self-employment and non-state managed business ventures, in particular in the services sector, and the granting of productive lands to individuals.

In what was her first trip to Cuba, Rousseff judged as wrong “a blockade that denies a people access to food,” in reference to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, and said her government would be granting 350 million dollars in credit for food purchases from Brazil.

“We also agreed to finance the purchase of equipment, machinery, small tractors, and harvesters, with a 200 million (dollar) credit to boost food production in Cuba,” Rousseff said, and insisted on a partnership between the two nations that will help the island’s development and ensure better living conditions for its people.

Accompanied by Raúl Castro, Rousseff toured the industrial development works in Mariel that are led by a Brazilian company and which include a major renovation of the port and all the infrastructure necessary to receive ships of up to 15-metre drafts.

The works are expected to turn Mariel into a development hub, with the port operating as the main receiving point for future trade activities, linked to the tapping of what is thought to be a major oilfield within Cuba’s exclusive economic zone in Gulf of Mexico waters.

The works, valued at some 900 million dollars, of which Brazil contributes a little over 600 million, are part of a significant medium and long-term development planned by Cuba, which includes expanding the Cienfuegos oil refinery to bring production up from the current 65,000 barrels to 150,000.

Located 254 kilometres southwest of Havana, Cienfuegos has attracted oil investments from Venezuela and China. Plans there include the construction of a liquefied gas plant and a 320-kilometre gas pipeline.

Another area mentioned by Rousseff as a target for Brazil’s contribution is the medical and pharmaceutical industries, where both countries have already been working together for some time.

Cuba “as a country and a people excels in biotechnology and medical sciences, and Brazil benefits from” cooperation in these fields, she said.

According to Brazilian sources, in 2011, bilateral trade between the two countries hit a record 642 million dollars, 31 percent higher than in 2010, making Brazil Cuba’s fifth largest commercial partner, after Venezuela, China, Canada, and Spain.

Rousseff is the first Latin American head of state to visit President Castro this year, following the establishment of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) in December 2010.

“The press did not give much importance (to the Celac founding summit), but to me it was one of the most important ever,” the Brazilian president said.

For Castro, the main advantage of Celac is its independence from the United States. It also consolidates “the concept of a united and sovereign region, committed to a common destiny,” Raúl Castro said.

Celac groups 33 nations from Latin America and the Caribbean, with a combined population of 580 million people.

On the issue of human rights, Rousseff avoided criticising the island, as some opposition sectors hoped she would do, and opted instead for a conceptual approach.

“I am willing to discuss human rights from a multilateral perspective; it is a commitment of all civilised people,” she said.

The state of human rights needs to be improved everywhere in the world, she said. “Human rights are not a stone to be thrown from one side to the other.”

Regarding Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez’ request for support in obtaining an exit visa to travel to Brazil for a film festival, Rousseff said her country had granted her an entry visa and “the rest is not up to the Brazilian government.”

A landmark concert featuring artistes from eight of the ten South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) took place here on Jan. 21, in an effort to build a regional community through the common language of music.

A landmark ASEAN concert in Laos on Jan. 21 2012 featured performers from eight of the bloc’s ten member countries Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

Still, the performers and the organisers of the event agree unilaterally that regional governments need to play a major role in promoting this shared culture through dedicated national efforts.

“Laos took the initiative in organising this first ASEAN concert and we hope other member countries will take turns hosting the event every year,” Khamphanh Phonthongsy, the Lao representative on the cultural sub-committee of ASEAN’s committee of culture and information (COCI) told IPS.

Organized by the Lao ministry of information, culture and tourism, the concert featured representatives from Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei, Philippines, Malaysia, Laos and Cambodia. Singapore and Myanmar were the only countries that did not send performers.

Each country artist sang two songs, one in their own language and one in English.

Though there was no live orchestra, most of the musical numbers were accompanied by dancers adorned in their traditional dress, which added extra colour to an already vibrant evening.

“All the dancers were local,” explained Phonthongsy. “ASEAN performers sent us DVDs of their dance routines and we trained Laotian dancers to perform them.”

The singers and dancers only rehearsed once together the day before the concert. The smooth movement of the Laotian dancers on stage proved that there are deep similarities between the musical cultures of the regions.

“I used to search YouTube for ASEAN music but now I can experience it for myself. I (was) so excited to be part of this first ASEAN concert and think we need to do more,” said Laotian pop star Tee Oudalai.

Vietnamese pop star Lo Ngoc Hau agrees. She said that TV channels in her country do not air musical programmes from other countries in the region. “I have to listen to CDs (to find out about ASEAN music),” she lamented.

The Lao national television network ran a live broadcast of the two-and-a-half-hour concert from the national cultural hall in Vietiane and beamed the show to 20 other countries via satellite feed.

Sadly, the Lao organisers told IPS, no other member country took up the feed to broadcast it on their local channels.

Filipino artist Jan Pablo argues that the common denominator for most ASEAN countries is agriculture, a theme that runs through many of the region’s traditional folk songs. Though most of the performers sang in different languages, Pablo believes this common theme could be exploited to bond the region together via musical exchange.

“We can influence people though music,” he told IPS. “But we need more publicity and promotion. Government radio stations must help in this, since we cannot expect commercial radio to make us popular.”

The concert reflected the rich diversity of ASEAN music, featuring numerous items that could potentially become cultural hits in the region.

Speaking to IPS after the concert, Brunei pop star Putri Noriza said that the audience seemed excited by the songs “because they came for a cultural exchange.”

However, she isn’t sure the time is ripe for introducing the Malay dangdut or joget rhythms – popular dance forms with beats as infectious as Indian bhangra or Latin America’s lambada – as a form of dance music for the region, even though Indonesian singer Indri Tribuana received an encore for her dangdut performance.

“Some say that they don’t like it, but when they hear it for the first time they change their minds,” noted Tribuana. “I chose dangdut because it represents my country and most Indonesians love it.”

Pablo argues that the domination of Anglo-American recording companies in the region has made it very difficult for someone singing in their local language to make it big in the region.

Even within the Philippines, he complained, most commercial broadcasters prefer English music because they believe it will generate the most revenue.

“If you want to become popular singing original Filipino music you have to do it through the pubs and the underground (music scene) – not commercially,” he stressed.

The omnipresence of Western music in the region was a primary reason for organisers’ stipulation that each artist performs one of their two songs in English.

But though this is the official language of communications within the regional bloc, few of the performers were fluent in it. Despite memorizing English songs using CDs, these performances paled in comparison to the numbers done in a local language.

ASEAN has set 2015 as the date for integrating the ten nations into one community, but often music and culture take a backseat while business people and politicians discuss trade and economic integration.

The COCI was set up in 1979 with the aim of promoting regional integration through cultural exchanges. It acts through national committees, which usually function under their respective information or cultural ministries.

However, prior attempts to unify the region through music, like the ASEAN Golden Voice Festival pioneered by Vietnam in 2008 or Thailand’s 2009 ASEAN concert in honour of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 60th anniversary of coronation, did not make it onto COCI’s official ASEAN calendar.

Khamphou Phiasakha, secretary for ASEAN COCI said that he was awaiting approval of next year’s concert from the committee of permanent representatives to ASEAN at their meeting in Thailand later this year.

Ignacia Matute looks back nostalgically on the days when the hills around her home in northwestern Nicaragua were blanketed in green, and she woke every morning to the sounds of birds singing in the treetops and the rushing waters of the nearly Coco River.

Local residents continue to use water from the depleted Coco River, despite the signs prohibiting it. Credit: Courtesy of UNOPS

Her present day surroundings are a far cry from this idyllic memory: the river is severely depleted and its waters are dangerously polluted along some stretches of its original course, while the forests have been decimated by fires and years of indiscriminate logging to supply furniture manufacturers and provide firewood for local homes.

But the future holds new promise for Matute, deputy mayor of Ocotal, the capital of the department of Nueva Segovia. She and the other residents of her community have learned that it is possible to restore the river to its former levels through responsible and integrated management of the watershed area along the border with Honduras.

Matute is participating in a binational project for the recovery and sustainable use of natural resources and the waterways that feed the Coco River, the longest in Central America, which winds along the border between Nicaragua and Honduras.

The river flows northeast along a stretch of 822 km until flowing into the Caribbean Sea, and forms a natural border between the two countries

The project, “Strengthening local capacities for integrated management of water resources from the Coco River Basin between Honduras and Nicaragua”, is being implemented by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) with funding from the European Union, in collaboration with local government authorities, civil society organizations, national authorities and other UN agencies.

Based in the area around the upper middle stretch of the river basin, specifically in the municipalities that make up Nueva Segovia in Nicaragua and El Paraíso in Honduras, the project is aimed at teaching local communities and authorities how to best cultivate and manage this watershed area, subjected to uncontrolled depredation over the last two decades.

The coordinator of the project in Nicaragua, Lucio Rossini, told Tierramérica that it also included a review of the laws governing natural resources in both countries, in order to develop cross-border environmental arrangements which, after three years of studies and analysis, culminated in a series of binational and local programs.

“We have nine watershed management plans underway, which will cover an area of approximately 5,200 sq km, where around 170,000 people live,” he reported.

Through the investment of 1.7 million dollars, the project’s objectives include ensuring the supply of drinking water and its use for food production, the conservation of forests, the sustainable use of natural resources, the production of renewable energy, and the development of tourism activities, Rossini added.

The project has been underway since April 2009, with the support of the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Environment Programme, Giusseppe Mancinelli, the UNOPS deputy regional director in Panama for Latin America and the Caribbean, told Tierramérica.

For his part, Nazario Espósito, a representative of UNOPS-Nicaragua, highlighted the fact that the project will help the two countries adopt initiatives for the achievement of environmental targets and objectives established at UN summits and conferences with relation to water resources and coastal areas.

“Our goals are environmental sustainability and adaptation to climate change in the region, and improvement of the socioeconomic conditions and quality of life of the 1,200 families living in the upper and lower micro-basins of the Coco River, in the two countries involved,” Espósito told Tierramérica.

The severe deterioration of the Coco River and the surrounding area is partially the result of the conditions of extreme poverty faced by local communities, said Domingo Rivas, a specialist in watershed and soil management at the National Agrarian University of Nicaragua, who carried out the socio-environmental diagnostic assessment for the project.

“There is a sufficient amount of water despite a decrease in the river’s flow due to the effects of deforestation, but in some of its sources there is a high level of fecal coliform contamination because of a lack of adequate hygienic conditions and education among the local population,” he explained to Tierramérica.

His study confirmed the degradation of natural resources in large stretches of the river basin, a lack of planning and integrated resource management, water pollution, soil erosion, and deforestation of pine and broadleaf forests.

Rivas noted that the average income of the population in the region ranges between 600 and 800 dollars annually per family.

Socioeconomic conditions are alarming in the department of Nueva Segovia: 78 percent of its inhabitants live below the poverty line, 50 percent have no access to safe drinking water, and 27 percent are illiterate, according to the executive director of the Association of Municipalities of Nueva Segovia, Oscar Mendoza Bustamante.

“These statistics help explain the degradation of natural resources,” he commented to Tierramérica.

For Matute, although the dream of seeing the river of her childhood restored to its former splendor is perhaps not fully realistic, there is still good reason to feel enthusiastic about the project.

“The most important thing about this effort is the struggle for the good use and protection of the river, because without water, all of our activities would come to a standstill,” she observed.

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

Six countries that share the Mekong River are being drawn into a development turf war, exposing initiatives by the United States government and its Asian allies – Japan and South Korea – to contain China’s growing influence in the region.

Unquiet looms up as the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) celebrates the 20th anniversary of its flagship Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) development programme, which, since its launch in 1992 has attracted close to 14 billion dollars in investments.

The Manila-based international financial institution hopes that its new ‘Strategic Framework for 2012-2022’ will broaden the sub-regional benefits under the GMS for Burma (or Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, China’s Yunnan province and the Guangxi autonomous region.

“The Chinese government values the GMS programme. It is another way for the central government to strengthen its multilateral engagement in the region,” Yushu Feng, senior economist for regional cooperation at the AsDB, said at a recent media workshop for journalists from the region. “China will be hosting the GMS ministerial meeting this year.”

It is a sentiment shared in a commentary in the English language ‘China Daily’ newspaper to mark the “golden development” during the first 20 years of the GMS, where over 220 projects in the areas of transport, energy, telecommunication, environment, agriculture and tourism were launched on terrain once divided by wars,

“These initiatives have brought real benefits to the people in the area and contributed significantly to local economic growth and poverty reduction, paving the way for a prosperous, integrated and harmonious sub-region,” the paper remarked as the AsDB readies a new ten-year development blueprint.

Regional affinity through the Mekong has been pivotal for China’s deepening ties with the larger, more politically and economically significant regional bloc – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that includes Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, in addition to the GMS countries.

But, there are other international players on the block and they include the U.S. government’s Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI), the Japan-Mekong Partnership Programme and the South Korea-Mekong development cooperation.

For development analysts monitoring progress in the Mekong region, these new initiatives do more than challenge the monopoly enjoyed by the AsDB through its GMS programme. They have geopolitical implications since China has been excluded from a seat at the table.

“Japan’s growing development role in the Mekong region since 2007 was an independent initiative of the Japanese foreign ministry,” says Toshiyuki Doi, senior advisor to Mekong Watch, a Japanese non-governmental organisation. “Their main focus was on China – to exclude China.”

“The foreign ministry was nervous about China becoming bigger and bigger in the region,” he explained to IPS. “They had to cook up something to get involved to check China’s increasing influence.”

While Japan pledged to put in close to 6.5 billion dollars in development assistance from 2009-2012 to strengthen trade and infrastructure from the eastern to the western end of the region, South Korea made an entry in October last year with a development blueprint aimed at reviving railway transport in the Mekong.

Warming ties with Washington have earned Burma entry into the U.S. government’s LMI. During her December visit to the Southeast Asian nation, U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton invited Burma to join the LMI, which has set its sights on environment, health, education and infrastructure development through annual assistance worth over 220 million dollars.

Such competition has raised concerns about an inevitable clash of interests. “We are witnessing power play and there is a danger of overlapping agendas,” says Ruth Banmonyong, director at the Centre for Logistics Research at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. “The interest of the Mekong countries should be a priority in these efforts to counterbalance China.”

“It is okay to have all these various initiatives, but the problem is coordination,” the Mekong logistics specialist told IPS. “We don’t want to see duplication.”

Even senior government figures prefer cooperation than competition. “We think that partnerships between the Mekong sub-region and bigger countries would help,” Thai foreign minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul told IPS. “I don’t think there should be competition… the sub-region needs help.”

Standing to gain from cooperation are 60 million people living in the lower basin of the Mekong, which begins its 4,660 km- long journey from the Tibetan plateau, snakes through Yunnan province and Burma, before touching Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before emptying out into the South China Sea off southern Vietnam.

Economic cooperation under GMS has seen the gross domestic product in the sub-region hit an annual average of nearly eight percent, “while real per capita incomes more than tripled between 1993 and 2010,” states the regional bank.

But geopolitics is not the only reason that sets the new Mekong initiatives apart from the older venture of the AsDB. Even the projects approved by the new development partners reveal an aid culture different from the GMS.

“The AsDB is seen as an honest broker and its agenda is the agenda of the GMS countries,” remarks Yushu, the bank’s economist. “But when Japan comes in, it is with Japan’s agenda, and when the U.S. comes in, it is with the U.S. agenda.”

A long-awaited report by a U.N. high-level panel on global sustainability recommends several far-reaching proposals, including the establishment of new institutions and the creation of global indicators, aimed at protecting the world’s environment and strengthening the U.N.’s sustainable development strategy.

The proposals include a new “ever-green revolution” to double productivity and reduce resource use; a Sustainable Development Index to measure environmental progress; a Global Sustainable Development Council to replace the current Commission on Sustainable Development, and a Global Fund for Education.

The panel also calls for a regular Global Sustainable Development Outlook report that integrates knowledge across different sectors and the establishment of a science advisory board or a U.N. scientific advisor.

The 56 recommendations will go before the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20, scheduled to take place in Brazil in June this year.

Speaking at the launch of the new report, on the margins of the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa Monday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the recommendations had added importance because “I have made sustainable development my number one priority for my second (five-year) term in office.”

“Both science and economics tell us our current path is unsustainable,” he warned.

Ecosystems are under stress. Economies are faltering. The human appetite for resources keeps growing, he added.

“We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet,” he said.

Sustainable development offers our best chance to change course, Ban declared.

The 22-member panel, co-chaired by South African President Jacob Zuma and Finnish President Tarja Halonen, was set up in August 2010, and includes current and former heads of state, government ministers, and representatives of the private sector and civil society.

Zuma told reporters that with the possibility of the world slipping further into recession, policymakers are hungry for ideas that can help them to navigate these difficult times.

“Our report makes clear that sustainable development is more important than ever given the multiple crises now enveloping the world,” he said.

Halonen emphasised the importance of placing people at the centre of achieving sustainable development.

“Eradication of poverty and improving equity must remain priorities for the world community,” she added.

Titled “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing”, the report is being described as “a new blueprint for sustainable development and low-carbon prosperity”.

The proposals made by the panel are aimed at progress primarily in three key sectors: empowering people to make sustainable choices; working towards and sustainable economy; and strengthening institutional governance to support sustainable development.

Among its recommendations are proposals for ensuring that women have full and equal access to and control over productive resources through the equal right to own property and the right to inherit, and equal access to credit, financial and extension services along the entire value chain.

“Governments and non-governmental entities should promote the concept of sustainable development and sustainable consumption, and these should be integrated into curricula of primary and secondary education.”

The report also calls on governments to work with appropriate stakeholders to provide citizens, especially those in remote areas, with access to technologies, including universal telecommunications and broadband networks, by 2025.

As international sustainable development policy is fragmented and, in particular, the environmental pillar is weak, the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) should be strengthened.

The secretary-general has been called upon to “expedite the development of a sustainable development strategy for the U.N. system in order to contribute to coherence, better define responsibilities among U.N. bodies, reduce overlap and duplication and improve accountability for implementation.”

This strategy should be reviewed by all relevant U.N. bodies and governing boards, with a special effort being made to forge a unified view among countries common to all boards and processes.