The OIC Group at an Aug. 12 press briefing to present their joint statement on recent developments in the Gaza Strip, following an OIC Group emergency meeting on Aug. 11 after Israel announced its plan to take complete military control of the Gaza Strip. Credit: Naomi Myint Breuer/IPS

By Naomi Myint Breuer
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 15 2025 (IPS)

The world is becoming increasingly outraged at Israel for its actions in the ongoing war against Hamas, particularly amid the recent killings of Palestinian journalists and Israel’s announcement of its plan to seize complete military control of the Gaza Strip.

The plan, which the Israeli Security Cabinet approved on August 8, includes disarming Hamas, returning all hostages, demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, implementing Israeli control of the Gaza Strip and establishing “an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority,” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s posts on X.

“The [Israel Defence Forces (IDF)] will prepare for taking control of Gaza City while distributing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population outside the combat zones,” Netanyahu posted on X.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation to the United Nations (OIC Group) released a joint statement condemning and rejecting the plan on August 12. The statement was released following an OIC Group emergency meeting on August 11.

“We consider this announcement a dangerous and unacceptable escalation, a flagrant violation of international law, and an attempt to entrench the illegal occupation and impose a fait accompli by force, in contravention of international law, international humanitarian law and relevant United Nations resolutions,” the statement said.

The Group demanded an immediate and complete end to Israel’s violence against the Gaza Strip and an end to the damages to civilians and civilian infrastructure. They also demanded that Israel permit humanitarian assistance to enter and work in the Gaza Strip at scale.

“The group reaffirms that this declared course of action by Israel constitutes a continuation of its grave violations, including killing and starvation, attempts at forced displacement, and annexation of Palestinian land, the settler terrorism, which are crimes that may amount to crimes against humanity,” the statement said.

In a statement on August 8, United Nations (UN) Human Rights Chief Volker Türk demanded the “immediate halt” of the plan. The plan, he said, conflicts with the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling that Israel must end its occupation and agree to a two-State solution and that Palestinians have the right to self-determination.

“Instead of intensifying this war, the Israeli Government should put all its efforts into saving the lives of Gaza’s civilians by allowing the full, unfettered flow of humanitarian aid,” he said.

Another major topic of discussion is the Aug. 10 targeted killing of six journalists, including four Al-Jazeera journalists, in Gaza City, which increased discussion about Israel’s human rights violations. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) reported that 238 journalists have been killed since the war began.

“The deliberate targeting of journalists by Israel in the Gaza Strip reveals how these crimes are beyond imagination, amid the inability of the int’l community & its laws to stop this tragedy,” Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani posted on X. “May God have mercy on journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qraiqea, & their colleagues.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an independent and impartial investigation into the killing.

“Journalists and media workers must be respected, they must be protected, and they must be allowed to carry out their work freely, free from fear and free from harassment,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the Secretary-General, said on August 11.

The OIC Group will be hosting a special meeting to discuss next steps following this tragedy, according to Deputy Permanent Representative of Türkiye to the UN Fikriye Asli Güven. Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the UN, said the OIC Group is also pressuring the Security Council to take action.

“This is a deliberate policy to silence the journalists, but we were all aware that the truth cannot be silenced,” Güven said.

Amid the developments in Gaza, Dr. Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine, said the OIC Group and the Security Council are observing a more unified front developing against Israel.

“There is a merging cohesion and unity and outrage of what is really happening, and they are exerting tremendous amounts of pressure in order to stop the killing, stop the military operations to have a permanent ceasefire, to force allowing humanitarian assistance to take place,” Mansour said.

This shift is also visible in the positions an increasing number of countries criticizing Israel’s plans.

The foreign ministers of Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom, as well as the High Representative of the European Union, released a joint statement on August 9 rejecting the Israeli plan for Gaza.

“The plans that the Government of Israel has announced risk violating international humanitarian law,” the statement said. “Any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law.”

The ministers urged for an end to the “terrible conflict” and for Israel to change its registration system of humanitarian organizations to allow humanitarian workers into the region.

“Their exclusion would be an egregious signal,” the statement said.

The ministers also asserted their support for a two-state solution.

Mansour praised the recent actions of European countries to pressure Israel, such as Spain’s reduction of arms sales to Israel and Germany’s arms export ban to Israel, which he called a “modest but it’s a very important step.”

He also praised Norway’s withdrawal of assets in Israel, Colombia’s withdrawal of coal trade, and Australia’s recognition of the state of Palestine. He calls these steps “practical” and a fast way to pressure Israel.

The OIC Group called upon the international community, especially the permanent members of the Security Council, to stop Israel’s policies undermining peace and violating international and international humanitarian law.

They also pushed for a two-State solution and the implementation of the Arab-Islamic reconstruction plan of the Gaza strip, a plan led by Egypt to rebuild Gaza, and participation in the upcoming reconstruction conference in Cairo.

“We affirm that a just and lasting peace can only be achieved through the implementation of the two-State solution,” the Group’s statement said.

For Mansour, a united global front will be crucial to accelerating the pace at which countries decide to take action against Israel.

“There is nothing that we can do about those who are killed, but we can do a lot about saving the lives of those who are still alive, and it is our responsibility to do everything possible in order to save their lives,” he said.

By September, Mansour said he hopes to have 100 more counties sign the New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State solution, which was created by France and Saudi Arabia at the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution in July. The conference will resume on September 22, according to Mansour. He said the New York Declaration must become the “blueprint” and “global consensus.”

“It is not the destiny of the Palestinian people to have an eternal conflict with Israel and to keep losing thousands of our children and women and our people at the hand of this war machine by Israel,” Mansour said. “It is our duty to convince everyone that there is another alternative, the alternative of immediate ceasefire.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations, Ambassador Mona Juul, is also president of the U.N.Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Courtesy: Monica Hellman/Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 5 2020 (IPS)

Ambassador Mona Juul started her role as the Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations in January 2019, and is also the president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 

Prior to joining as the Permanent Representative, Juul had an extensive career where she played key roles in major foreign diplomacy efforts. Soon after starting her career in 1986, she was a part of the Cabinet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs team from 1992 to 1993 that worked on secret negotiations between Israel and Palestine Liberation Organisation that culminated in the 1993 Oslo Accords. 

With a Master’s degree in political science from University of Oslo, Juul went on to embrace numerous other roles including the Special Advisor, Ambassador and Middle East Coordinator in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In July 2019, just within a few months of joining as the Permanent Representative to the U.N., she also became the president of ECOSOC. 

Her role in Norway’s foreign relations, as well as in diplomacy efforts in the Middle East is one that is of inspiration to anyone who dreams of being in the field — more so for women. We caught up with Ambassador Juul on her journey: 

Inter Press Service (IPS): As the U.N. Permanent Representative for Norway, what is your key message for this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD)?

Mona Juul (MJ): My message to women and men, girls and boys is to speak up in favor of women and girls, and protect those who defend their rights. 

IPS: As president of ECOSOC, you have expressed your concern about “a new generation of global inequalities – fuelled by climate change, technological change” – can you share how these inequalities affect women specifically? And how do we address that?

MJ: Norway fights for women’s rights and opportunities every day. In the U.N. and all over the world, we are continuously working to increase girl’s access to education, to decide over their own bodies and to have fundamental human rights. Norway is a consistent partner for women’s rights. We will keep our promise to work tirelessly to promote gender equality for all.

IPS: As the U.N. Permanent Representative as well as president of ECOSOC, what does this year’s IWD theme #EachforEqual mean to you?

MJ: We must place gender equality at the heart of our work. The rights of women and gender equality remains a reform priority and a cross-cutting issue for me as president of ECOSOC. This year, we celebrate 25 years of championing women’s rights since we adopted the Beijing Platform for Action. It is a vision of a more prosperous, peaceful and fair world, that is better for women and men, girls and boys. Women’s participation is a prerequisite and a key factor for economic growth.

IPS: What is your message to young women who would like to one day work in this field? 

MJ: Stand up against inequalities. Fight for what you believe in. Each one of us can make a difference. Today and every day, I am reminded of Nelson Mandela’s words: ‘The best weapon is to sit down and talk’. I hope that if we all followed that advice, we would each be equal.

Excerpt:

A view of salmon cages in the Pacific Ocean in Chile. In recent decades, salmon farming has become an important industry in Chile, but the impact on the environment and people's health has been questioned. Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Casado

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 10 2018 (IPS)

Questioned for its environmental and health impacts in Chile, where it is one of the country’s main economic activities, salmon farming is preparing to expand in Argentina from Norway, the world’s largest farmed salmon producer.
The news has triggered a strong reaction from civil society organisations.

“Argentina today has the advantage that it can refer to Chile’s experience, which has been extremely negative,” attorney Alex Muñoz, director for Latin America of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas programme, told IPS from Santiago, Chile.

“In Chile we have suffered the serious impacts of the activity carried out by both local and Norwegian companies. Salmon is native to the northern hemisphere and there is very clear scientific evidence that farming this species is not sustainable in the southern hemisphere,” added the environmental law specialist.

Muñoz is one of the authors of a highly critical report on the Argentine project presented by 23 Argentine and international organisations – such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Oceana and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) – grouped in the Forum for the Conservation of the Patagonian Sea and Areas of Influence."The effects of an industry that stretches 2,000 km along the Chilean coast have never been studied in-depth. Chemicals of all kinds are used to prevent disease and organic matter, food and fecal matter from salmon are dumped into the ecosystem.” -- Max Bello

The Forum is a network formed in 2004 to promote the care of the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina and of the Pacific Ocean in Chile.

It was the visit to Argentina in March by King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway, who met with President Mauricio Macri, which gave impetus to the initiative.

It would imply the introduction for the first time of an exotic species in the Argentinean sea, since this South American country has only up to now introduced fish in lakes and rivers.

On that occasion, Innovation Norway, a state-owned company and a national development bank that promotes Norwegian investment around the world, signed a cooperation agreement with the Argentine Agribusiness Ministry to study the implementation of “sustainable aquaculture” programmes in this South American nation.

Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic animals or plants in all types of water environments in controlled conditions. In the case of salmon in Argentina, feasibility studies are being carried out in the extreme south of Patagonia, off the Argentine coasts of Tierra del Fuego, the southern territory shared with Chile.

IPS’s questions about the project were not answered by the agriculture authorities of Tierra del Fuego province or by the Agribusiness Ministry, which on Sept. 3 was demoted to a secretariat as part of austerity measures aimed at cutting public spending in the midst of the country’s economic collapse.

Salmon seen in the Chilean sea. Broken cages sometimes cause hundreds of thousands of fish to end up in open sea, generating negative impacts on native species. Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Casado

In March, the then minister Luis Etchevere stated that “our relations with Norway will allow us to benefit from that country’s more than 50 years of experience” in aquaculture, and added that “Tierra del Fuego can be a pioneer in development within Argentina.”

Norway, which has both wild and farmed salmon, is the world’s largest producer of this species that is consumed around the world for its taste and nutritional value.

In Chile, salmon farming in sea cages began more than 30 years ago on the island of Chiloé, about 1,100 south of Santiago, in the Los Lagos Region, and from there it grew and spread throughout Patagonia, to the Aysen and Magallanes Regions.

Today salmon is one of Chile’s main export products. Official figures indicate that the sector is expanding, since in 2017 exports amounted to 4.1 billion dollars, 20 percent up from the previous year.

Last year, salmon accounted for more than six percent of the country’s total exports.

According to Chile’s Salmon Industry Association, this year will be even better and sales to 75 international markets will generate more than five billion dollars.

According to the business chamber, the activity generates more than 70,000 direct and indirect jobs.

But “no amount of economic growth justifies the destruction of Patagonian ecosystems,” Max Bello, a Chilean natural resources specialist who has been working for 15 years in marine conservation organisations, told IPS from Santiago.

Starfish seen in the seabed of the Beagle Channel, in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, where the Argentine government is promoting the development of salmon farming. The so-called Patagonian Sea is considered one of the most productive oceanic areas in the southern hemisphere. Credit: Courtesy of Beagle Secrets of the Sea

Bello added: “The effects of an industry that stretches 2,000 km along the Chilean coast have never been studied in-depth. Chemicals of all kinds are used to prevent disease and organic matter, food and fecal matter from salmon are dumped into the ecosystem.”

“Salmon farming has spread in a brutal manner in recent years, affecting not only natural resources but also culture, as it has displaced other activities,” Bello said.

In Argentina, a country whoses population of 44 million mostly eats beef, fish are mostly for export.

In 2017, according to official figures, 706,000 tons of seafood were sold abroad, worth 1.9 billion dollars. The main products are shrimp and squid, both native. In the domestic market, 341,000 tons of seafood was consumed last year.

The report presented by the Forum for the Conservation of the Patagonian Sea and Areas of Influence states that, besides the heavy use of antibiotics, the main problem posed by salmon farming is the frequent escape from the sea cages of fish that end up being an exotic species.

In fact, in July, during a storm, four of the five cages of a salmon farm owned by the Norwegian company Marine Harvest in Calbuco, near the city of Puerto Montt, broke and 650,000 salmon ended up in the sea.

“According to the law, the company has to recover at least 10 percent of the fish, because otherwise environmental damage is assumed,” biologist Flavia Liberona, executive director of the Chilean environmental foundation Terram, told IPS.

Regarding the use of chemical products, Liberona explained from Santiago that “because they are not in their environment, salmon in Chile are highly prone to diseases, which is why they use more antibiotics than in Norway.”

“In 2008 there was a major crisis in the industry due to the spread of a virus, which caused the loss of thousands of jobs,” she said.

Biologist Alexandra Sapoznikow, coordinator of the Forum for the Conservation of the Patagonian Sea and Areas of Influence, said “this activity has frequent crises and we are concerned that it is seen as a possibility for economic development. Tierra del Fuego receives tourists who are looking for nature, which is this province’s opportunity.”

Speaking to IPS from the Patagonian city of Puerto Madryn, Sapoznikow, who teaches Natural Resources Management at Argentina’s National University of Patagonia, added that the introduction of salmon farming would also come into conflict with the project that civil society organisations have been working on with the Argentine government to create marine protected areas in the South Atlantic.

In November 2017, the government sent to Congress a bill for the creation of two marine protected areas near Tierra del Fuego, which would extend the total conservation area from the current 28,000 square km to 155,000.

The initiative, however, has not yet begun to be discussed, while the Ministry of Environment – which drafted it jointly with the National Parks Administration – was demoted on Sept. 3 to a secretariat.

By Jan Lundius
Helsinki, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

The year 2015 was a sad one for journalists around the world, with approximately 60 journalists killed, more than 200 imprisoned and more than 400 exiled.

In many countries, people speaking up against abuse and violations have a rational fear for their lives and wellbeing. To address this issue, UNESCO and the Government of Finland will co-host a conference on journalists´ safety the week of International Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2016.

The choice of Finland to organize such an event is no mere coincidence. When Reporters Without Borders presented its World Press Freedom Index for 2015, Finland topped the list for the fifth year in a row. And Finland´s government has taken its commitment further by making transparency and information an institutional concern, for example by making broadband access a legal right and easing the way for citizens to participate in the legislative process through online means.

Is freedom of speech determined by culture? And, if so, did cultural forces help mold the Finnish government´s liberal attitude toward press freedom?
Often when rulers silence the media they do it in the name of security or preserving national culture or unity. So is freedom of speech determined by culture? And, if so, did cultural forces help mold the Finnish government´s liberal attitude toward press freedom?

Until 1809, Finland was part of Sweden, a country that in 1766 was the first nation in the world to abolish censorship and guarantee freedom of the press. But after subsequent conquest by the Russian Empire, growing Russian patriotism demanded a closer integration of Finland and, by the end of the 19th century, harsh censorship of the press was introduced. This and other measures, including Russian promotion of the Finnish language as a way to sever the country’s longstanding cultural ties with Sweden, fueled an already growing Finnish nationalism.

When the Russian tsar abdicated in 1917, the Finnish legislature declared independence, leading to a civil war between the country’s “Reds”, led by Social Democrats, and “Whites”, led by the conservatives in the Senate. Thirty-six thousand out of a population of 3 million died. The Reds executed 1,650 civilians, while the triumphant Whites executed approximately 9,000. The war resulted in an official ban on Communism, censorship of the socialist press and an increasing integration to the Western world economy. The new constitution established that the country would be bi-lingual, with both Finnish and Swedish taught in schools and at universities.

During World War II, harsh press censorship was introduced – this time by the Finnish government itself – as the country fought two wars against the Soviet Union and the subsequently fought to drive out its former German allies in those conflicts.

The development of the current Finnish freedom of speech probably has to be considered in relation to this arduous history, particularly the difficult aftermath of the wars with the Soviet Union and, through all of it, the Finnish people´s struggle to maintain their freedom and unique character as a nation.

Today, Finland has a lively press and a thriving culture production in both languages, even if Finnish people with Swedish as a mother tongue constitute only about 5 per cent of a population of 5.4 million. Even in the Internet Age, Finns remain avid newspaper readers, ranking first in the EU with almost 500 copies sold per day per 1, 000 inhabitants, surpassed only by Japan and Norway.

During the Cold War years, Finland’s efforts to cope with is proximity to Soviet Russia had grave repercussions on freedom of speech in the country. Due to Soviet pressure, some books were withdrawn from public libraries and Finnish publishers avoided literature that could cause Soviet displeasure. For example, the Finnish translation of Solzhenitsyn´s The Gulag Archipelago was published in Sweden. On several occasions, Moscow restricted Finnish politics and vetoed its participation in the Marshall Plan.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to Finland’s expanded participation in Western political and economic structures. Finland joined the EU in 1994 and the euro was introduced in 1999. Restrictions on the media were relaxed and today, probably in reaction to its previous experiences with censorship, Finland is widely recognized having the most extensive press freedom of any country.

However, the rise of anti-immigrant political sentiment, as evidenced by the rise of the Finns´ Party, has cast a pall over popular media. Now the country’s second largest party after success in this year’s elections, the Finns´ Party combines left-wing economic policies with conservative social values, as well as a heavy dose of xenophobia, euro scepticism and Islamophobia, leading it to attract nationalistic fringe groups that are vociferous in public media.

One example is the group Suomen Sisu, which has an openly crude racial approach, disguised as “ethnopluralism,” an ideology stating that ethnic groups have to be kept separated and that Swedish speaking Finns’ influence on politics and culture has to be limited and that immigration has to be radically restricted, or even halted completely.

Finland´s most popular web site Homma is spreading this message, which also accuses Finnish media of being left-leaning and eroding Finnish national pride. The Finns’ Party´s leader, Timo Soini, is currently the country´s foreign minister and vice prime minister. While the party occasionally reacts harshly to criticism in media it states that it honors freedom of the press. Even when Soini was recently was attacked by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, he stated that it was quite OK since it was an expression of the press freedom.

Nevertheless, with Finland now scheduled to host an international conference on press freedom, we should be watchful of the dangers to free expression that lurk in uninhibited nationalism and xenophobia. Nordic people often take their excellent record in human rights for granted and, in so doing, dismiss these dangers. Let’s hope that the May conference will serve as a reminder to us all that freedom of the press and of expression is something that has to be jealously guarded and vigorously protected through thick and thin.

(End)

Excerpt:

Coastal communities in the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific Islands are already threatened by climate change with rising seas and stronger storm surges. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, Jan 1 2016 (IPS)

Women leaders in the Pacific Islands have acclaimed the agreement on reducing global warming achieved at the United Nations (COP21) Climate Change conference in Paris as an unprecedented moment of world solidarity on an issue which has been marked to date by division between the developing and industrialized world. But for Pacific small island developing states, which name climate change as the single greatest threat to their survival, it will only be a success if inspirational words are followed by real action.

“It’s a huge step forward and I don’t think it would have been possible without the voices of indigenous Pacific Islanders banding together and demanding action and justice…. I am very optimistic about the future,” Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, climate activist and poet from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, who attended the historic meeting, told IPS.

Intense negotiations and compromise between the interests of 195 countries, plus the European Union, which make up the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the climate change convention, marked its 21st meeting in Paris last month.

Dame Meg Taylor, Secretary General of the regional Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS), said that “while not all the issues identified by Pacific Island countries were included in the final outcome and agreement, there were substantive advances with recognition of the importance of pursuing efforts to limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the inclusion of loss and damage as a separate element in the agreement and simplified and scaled up access to climate change finance.”

Claire Anterea of the Kiribati Climate Action Network in the small Central Pacific atoll nation of around 110,000 people added that the outcome was “good, but not perfect,” highlighting that the new temperature goal and call to boost climate finance were particularly important.

The World Meteorological Organisation predicted this year will be the hottest on record with average global temperatures expected to reach 1 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial age. Meanwhile Pacific Island countries are bracing for further rising temperatures, sea levels, ocean acidification and coral bleaching this century. Maximum sea level rise in many island states could reach more than 0.6 metres, reports the Pacific Climate Change Science Program.

Due to rising seas in the Marshall Islands “a simple high tide results in waves flooding and crashing through sea walls built of cement and rocks and completely destroying homes. The salt from the flooding also destroys our crops and food,” Jetnil-Kijiner said..

In the best case scenario, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea could experience a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, but under high emissions this might soar to 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2090.

Global warming could result in yields of sweet potato, a common staple crop, declining by more than 50 per cent in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands by 2050, estimates the Asian Development Bank. The burden of crop losses will fall on the shoulders of Pacific Islands’ women who are primarily responsible in communities for growing fresh produce, producing food and fetching water.

Pacific Islanders led a campaign in Paris this year to recognize a new temperature rise threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. This is critical, they argued, to stem future climate shocks and mitigate forced displacement as islands become increasingly uninhabitable due to loss of food, water and land.

And in a sign of shifting views in the industrialized world, Pacific Islanders were joined in their campaigning on this issue by numerous developed and developing nations in a ‘Coalition of High Ambition’ which emerged during the second week of COP21. Solidarity was demonstrated by, amongst others, Mexico, Brazil, Norway, Germany, the European Union and United States.

The final Paris agreement which seeks to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius and ‘pursue efforts’ to further reduce it by another 0.5 degree was a win for the coalition.

“1.5 degrees Celsius wasn’t even on the table before the conference began, so hearing it first announced that it even made it into the text made me cry with relief. That being said, the vague wording definitely has me worried and I know it’ll take a continued push from all of us to actually reach 1.5,” Jetnil-Kijiner said.

This will not decrease the immense challenges the region already faces in adapting to extreme weather, which cannot be met by small island economies without access to international climate finance. This year island leaders called for the international community to honour its pledge to raise 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 to fund adaptation in developing countries, an objective first conceived in Copenhagen in 2009. Assessments since then of how much has been raised vary, but the World Bank claimed in April there was a serious shortfall of 70 billion dollars.

Taylor believes “there is a positive outlook for climate financing post-2020 with Article 9 of the Paris Agreement identifying that, for Small Island Developing States, financing needs to be public and grant-based resources for adaptation.” There has been debate about whether finance mechanisms, such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF), should issue free grants or concessional loans.

Anterea emphasised that, to be effective, funding “needs to reach grassroots people through a simple processing method.”

Recognition of loss and damage caused by extreme weather and natural disasters in the final pact was also a milestone, the PIFS Secretary General added, even though it does not provide for vulnerable nations to claim liability or compensation from big polluters.

“The legal right of countries to test the liabilities of other Parties using other avenues has not been diminished by this decision,” she said.

But the greatest hope is being invested in the binding commitment by nations to set emission reduction targets and be subject to a process of long term monitoring and review, a move which would accelerate the global transition toward renewable energy and make the burning of fossil fuels, the greatest driver of greenhouse gas emissions, increasingly unviable.

“We need the five-year review as a crucial step to keeping countries’ governments accountable to our targets and goals,” Jetnil-Kijiner emphasised. If nations are not emboldened to better their goals every time, the planet may continue toward a devastating temperature increase of 2.7 degrees Celsius or more, experts conclude.

The most pressing question, after the euphoria of the global accord demonstrated in Paris has died down, is how will these lofty promises be implemented? Pacific Islanders are depending on it.

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By Tine Sundtoft and Christian Friis Bach
GENEVA, Dec 2 2015 (IPS)

Arctic temperatures have increased twice as much as the global average in the past 100 years. Recent photos show that thousands of walruses normally resting on sea ice between dives to find food have been forced to crowd ashore because of extreme sea ice melt in Alaska. Such photos have once again reminded us that it is high time we take serious action on climate change if we want to save the Arctic.

Tine Sundtoft is the Minister of Climate and Environment of Norway.

Christian Friis Bach is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

Calling Arctic countries our homes, we are both particularly concerned about Arctic ecosystems and their extreme vulnerability to climate change. As a result of diminishing sea ice and snow cover, entire habitats are being lost, threatening unique species, such as the iconic polar bears and walruses, as well as the traditional livelihoods of indigenous peoples.

Not only CO2 and other greenhouse gases, but also some air pollutants have impacts on climate change in the Arctic, such as black carbon, a component of particulate matter which is produced by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels or wood. Also known as a short-lived climate pollutant, black carbon has a particular relevance in the Arctic, as it absorbs sunlight and thus increases melting when it is deposited on ice and snow.

A changing climate, however, does not affect the Arctic only; it is felt all around the world. When the reflectivity of the Arctic surface is reduced, resulting in further warming and melting of ice, it has an escalating effect on sea levels and temperature increase also on a global scale.

We are the last generation with the ability to stop climate change and save the Arctic. If we fail, it will be a historic mistake. But we have to act fast. This is why, in the run-up to COP 21, the Climate Change Summit in Paris, we have been drawing attention to the benefits of addressing climate change and air pollution in a more integrated way.

While poor air quality and climate change are different phenomena, they are closely linked. Burning of fossil fuels is the major source common to both air pollutants and greenhouse gases. Thus, many actions taken to reduce emissions from these sources will help improve air quality and address climate change at the same time.

Climate change and air pollution are posing an increasing risk to our collective security, prosperity and well-being. WHO reports that in 2012 around 7 million people died across the globe as a result of air pollution exposure, confirming that air pollution is now the world’s single largest environmental health risk.

While the effects of air pollution are mostly being observed at the local level, a large volume of air pollutants are transported across borders and even continents. This is particularly true in the Arctic, where around 50 % of the emissions of black carbon are coming from Europe. Hence, joining efforts internationally to reduce emissions is critical to save the Arctic.

A number of actions are already being taken. Through the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, which sets emission targets for a number of key air pollutants, UNECE also contributes to climate change mitigation. This pioneering treaty, signed to solve the problem of acid rain in Northern Europe in the 1970s, now has 51 Parties, including all the countries of the Arctic. Thanks to the collective efforts of these countries, emissions of key air pollutants have been reduced by 40 to 70 per cent since 1990 in Europe and by up to 40 per cent in North America.

In 2012, Parties broke new ground in amending the Gothenburg Protocol, which is now the first legally binding agreement containing obligations to reduce short-lived climate pollutants, notably fine particulate matter (PM2.5), including black carbon emissions. The Gothenburg Protocol is thus an example of how air and climate pollutants can be tackled in a more integrated way.

The Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that addresses issues faced by the eight Arctic countries and the indigenous peoples that live there, has taken a leading role in providing updates on the rapid climate changes in the Arctic and its consequences for our societies and the environment, locally and globally.

We call on all countries to step up their efforts and make sure that COP 21 will deliver a strong agreement. We also call on Governments to ratify and implement the Gothenburg Protocol and consider further initiatives to tackle air pollution and climate change in a more integrated way. Let us act now to both tackle climate change and save the Arctic!

(End)

Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Phil Harris   

Excerpt:

In Guyana the coastal belt is protected by seawall barriers that have existed since the Dutch occupation of the country, keeping the coastline as in tact as possible. Credit: Desmond Wilson/IPS

By Desmond Brown
Jun 25 2015 (IPS)

Guyana’s new president, David Granger, sits down with IPS correspondent Desmond Brown to talk about how his country is preparing for climate change – and hoping to avert the worst before it happens.

Nearly 90 per cent of Guyana’s population lives on a narrow coastline strip a half to one metre below sea level. That coastal belt is protected by seawall barriers that have existed since the Dutch occupation of the country. In recent times, however, severe storms have toppled these defences, resulting in significant flooding, a danger scientists predict may become more frequent.

The government is now spending six million dollars annually on drainage and irrigation and requires some 100 million dollars to adapt its drainage infrastructure to deal with the effects of climate change.

Mister Granger what would you say are the primary challenges for Guyana as a result of climate change?

David Granger: There are several challenges, Guyana has various, it’s not an island as you know, it’s part of the continental landmass, but we have varying ecological and geographical zones, for example on the coastline which is low and flat the climate is actually slightly different to the inland, the forested mountainous areas, rain-heavy, part of the Amazonian rain-forest, and deeper south, closer to Brazil, we have a completely different terrain landscape of savannah grassland and the savannahs have a long wet season which is now taking place and a long dry season. On the coastline we have a long dry season and a long wet season and a short dry season and a short wet season, but in the savannahs we only have one long dry season and a long wet season and sometimes in the long wet seasons there’s flooding.

President David Granger of Guyana knows how important mitigating climate change is and the need to protect his country’s shores. Credit: Desmond Wilson/IPS

So when we speak of climate change we are speaking of very complex geographical phenomena, it is not just one, although we don’t have the experience of damages of hurricanes or volcanoes or quakes, we do have very complex weather patterns, up to a month ago there was a drought and now there’s a flood, sometimes we can move from one extreme to the next. So these factors are complicated by the exploitation of some of our resources for example timber. And as you know we are part of the Amazonian rainforest and to the extent that we cut down our trees, it could lead to all sorts of environmental problems, desertification and to the extent that there’s mining that could lead to the contamination of our rivers. So these are other matters that concern us because with the changing climate it means that eventually temperatures could become higher and hotter and life as we know it less comfortable. We need the trees. The trees are the lungs of the earth so we need to be careful that we do not damage our forests, so those are some of the main challenges those are some of the main concerns.

IPS: What then would be your administration’s policy on this the issue of climate change?

DG: Well of course we have to plan a policy or we have to chart a course that protects our citizens and traditionally as far as coastal zone management is concerned we have had to build sea defenses and build proper drainage and irrigation works, otherwise our people would be flooded up. We had a terrible flood exactly 10 years ago and this is the tenth anniversary of 2005 and in many of the communities on the coast we lost billions of dollars because of the flood so we have to protect our people from that type of catastrophe. We just have to continue what we’ve been doing traditionally, building sea walls, but we also have to implement plans to prevent the excessive cutting down of all trees and of course re-forestation to plant back areas that have been mined-out in the mining areas or the trees that have been cut down in the forested areas.

IPS: What kind of strategies and action plans would you say are needed to deal with the effects of climate change in Guyana?

DG: First of all it’s coastal-zone management, as you know much of the coastline of Guyana is below the level of the ocean at tide watermark, and as the oceans rise there is evidence that the entire coastal zone is under threat, as you drive along the coast you’d see that the Dutch had to establish concrete walls, sea walls and from time to time those walls are damaged by the fierce tides, the waves of the Atlantic they come crumbling the skids so that’s very expensive to maintain and that’s the ever-present threat, sea-level rising towards sea defenses, accompanying that of course is drainage when the water comes on the land it has to be removed, the most efficient way of removing it is with mechanical drainage, using pumps and that too is a great challenge because it’s a very expensive job and then the accessories for the surplus water on the land we have to use mechanical means to remove it. Apart from that Guyana has always been susceptible to variations in climate.

IPS: On the issue of funding most countries in the region say they don’t have the funds necessary to adapt to climate change, what’s the situation for Guyana?

DG: Well we’ve been a beneficiary of some grants from Norway and we are aware of this problem, it is not a new problem as I said it’s something that has existed from time immemorial. We’ve always had the cycle of droughts and floods just like other countries in the Caribbean and have to prepare for hurricanes, we just have to prepare for climate change, so I don’t regard this as something we should be alarmed about. The big expenditure will come if we ever have to move from the coastline and go for the inland which is higher, most of the inland territory maybe 50km from here so most of the territory is higher and the sort of doomsday scenario is that you may have to abandon some part of the coastline and that would be a tremendous cost, that would be something that we don’t want to contemplate. But you can never tell when a catastrophe could strike but I would say that as part of our policy which we’ve already announced that profits and revenues from extractive industries, gold, timber, diamonds, bauxite would be used in something called the “Sovereign Wealth Fund” so that our children don’t have face the ravages of poverty. What I’m saying is something that we have to include in our calculations in our budgets but I mention the Sovereign Wealth Fund and I mention we must start putting aside money in order to prepare for any form of catastrophe, we can’t depend on handouts all the time, but yes if we had to move it would be a tremendous cost. If we had a flood it will be at a tremendous cost and even drought is a tremendous cost.

(End)

By Fredrik S. Heffermehl
OSLO, Jun 24 2015 (IPS)

When he died at the age of 80 on Jun. 18 in Oslo, Fredrik Fasting Torgersen had divided Norway for 56 years and the “Torgersen case” had attracted international interest in forensic science circles, among them the U.S.-based Innocence Project.

The case has a lot to tell us about evaluation of evidence, and how to avoid wrongful convictions.

At 24, Torgersen was convicted as the murderer of a 16-year-old woman found brutally killed in a basement in the house where she lived. He served 16 years in jail, but always insisted on his innocence and enjoyed a wealth of support.

Fredrik S. Heffermehl

Norway’s chief prosecutor (Riksadvokaten) and the judiciary have time and again turned down appeals for a reversal, but they are increasingly alone in their view; criticism from scientists, authors and the general public has grown steadily.

Torgersen had a prior record with the police when, just after midnight on Dec. 6, 1957, he was arrested in the centre of Oslo, suspected of having stolen a bicycle. During interrogation, the police station received a report of a young woman found dead in the same area. The police immediately suspected Torgersen and, in the coming weeks and months, collected everything that could appear to prove their theory.

The police were so convinced of his guilt that obvious exculpatory evidence, such as the lack of blood splatter on Torgersen´s clothing, was ignored.

Today, it is generally recognised that police must not focus on one suspect too early, and that material deemed “uninteresting” by the police must be made available to defence attorneys and the court.

Yet, the aspect of the case that seems to call for a revolution, in no way limited to Norway, has to do with evaluation of evidence. Courts lack training essential for assessing probabilities correctly.“Judges (and defence attorneys) must be trained in basic scientific methodology, logics and elementary statistical principles. Only then will they be able to unmask apparently impressive expert testimony not underpinned by empirical research on the real world and its variations”

At the original trial of Torgersen in 1958, the prosecutor presented three forms of technical evidence and a series of experts who told the court that unique aspects of this evidence (a bite mark, traces of faeces, and some spruce needles) amounted to total probability, indisputable proof, that Torgersen had been at the crime scene and left a bite mark on the breast of the murdered woman. The court relied on “likenesses” as conclusive evidence against him.

It applies all over the world – courts fail to see the difference between similarities and probabilities.

A bite mark tells that the killer had teeth, meaning it could be anyone. Unique traits are needed. When a dentist testifying against Torgersen told the court that the teeth had met “edge-to-edge” and that this clearly pointed to Torgersen, the defence attorney asked: “How unusual, one in two, in ten, in fifty, or one in a thousand?” The dentist could not tell, but the court did not understand what was at issue.

If the court had understood, this type of question would have been asked not only once, but again and again in the case, in all other cases in all courts, everywhere. Likeness in itself tells nothing. To draw conclusions about probability and uniqueness, one always needs to know normal frequencies.

This was the key discovery made in 2001 by the Oslo professor of criminal law, Ståle Eskeland, who, after 20 years on the case, leads a very broad effort for reversal of the Torgersen conviction.

Eskeland has explained this elementary rule of conclusions theory to the courts repeatedly, but they seem unable to grasp it. Courts have continually upheld the Torgersen conviction without even the smallest comment on the probability argument.

In a recent debate, a leading defender of Torgersen, Professor Per Brandtzæg, Norway´s most internationally quoted scientist, supported Eskeland. In a rebuttal, the former director of the Norwegian Courts Administration, Tor Langbach, insisted that the courts are critical, they ask questions.

He seems to miss the point. Not only must the courts ask the experts questions, says a professor of law in Oslo, Leif Petter Olaussen, they must ask the right questions.

To do so, judges (and defence attorneys) must be trained in basic scientific methodology, logics and elementary statistical principles. Only then will they be able to unmask apparently impressive expert testimony not underpinned by empirical research on the real world and its variations. 

Olaussen refers to an example of the horrific consequence of not asking the right question. Ten years ago a court found an employee in a kindergarten guilty of sexual abuse. Some rumours had circulated (children are fanciful) and, based on testimony from two doctors about unusual red marks around the vaginas of the small girls, the court concluded that improper conduct had occurred. Someone must have done it, and the most likely was Mr. NN (!), who was then whisked off to jail.

The court should have inquired about the research basis for calling red marks unusual. There was no such research at the time, only ten years later. Red marks are normal. The judgment was reversed.

Torgersen died in peace, he felt acquitted by both public and experts and knew that a solid group would continue to take his case forward. Just one week before he died, a new request for reversal was submitted by two heavyweight attorneys, Cato Schiøtz and Pål W. Lorentzen.

After 64 years, the file is enormous, but the case is still very simple – the lawyers found no valid evidence against Torgersen, but a whole lot that exculpates him.

One day, Norway and the world will thank Torgersen for a lifelong effort in the service of justice. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Demonstrators protesting at the Business & Climate Summit in Paris, May 20. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, May 21 2015 (IPS)

When it comes to climate change, business as usual is simply “not an option”.

That was the view of Eldar Saetre, CEO of Norwegian multinational Statoil, as international industry leaders met in Paris for a two-day Business & Climate Summit, six months ahead of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21 ) that will also be held in the French capital.

Subtitled “Working together to build a better economy”, the May 20-21 summit brought together some 2,000 representatives of some of the world’s largest retail and energy concerns, including  companies that NGOs have criticized as being among the worst environmental offenders.

At the end, business leaders proclaimed that they wanted “a global climate deal that achieves net zero emissions” and that they wanted to see this happen at COP 21.

Throughout the conference, participants stressed that businesses will have to change, not only to protect the environment, but for their own survival. “Taking climate action simply makes good business sense. However, business solutions on climate are not being scaled up fast enough,” declared the summit organizers.

They pledged to lead the “global transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient economy.”

Saetre, for example, said his company wanted to achieve “low-carbon oil and gas production” and that it had embarked on renewables in the form of offshore wind energy. But he said that fossil fuels would still be needed in the future, alongside the various forms of renewable energy.

Acknowledging the widespread scepticism about multinational companies’ commitment, business leaders said that they could not “go it alone”, and called for support from governments as well as consumers.

Mike Barry, Director of Sustainable Business at British retailer Marks & Spencer, told IPS in an interview that global commitment was important in the drive to transform industry to have more environmentally friendly practices.

“Collective action can bring about real change,” he said. “We’re here today because we believe that climate change is happening and it’s going to have a significant impact on our business in the future and our success.

“Our customers would expect us to take the lead on this, and we want governments to take this seriously as well in the run-up to COP 21 [the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11].”

He said that Marks & Spencer and other companies in a network called the Consumer Goods Forum wanted to “stand shoulder to shoulder with government to say ‘this matters and we’re here to help’.”

But government consensus on how to address climate change has proved difficult, and even French President Francois Hollande, who opened the summit, conceded that it would require a miracle for a real agreement to be reached at COP 21.

“We must have a consensus. It’s already not easy in our own countries, so with 196 countries, a miracle is needed,” he said at the Business & Climate Summit, expressing the conviction, however, that agreement will be reached through negotiation and “responsibility”.

Hollande and other officials said the involvement of businesses was essential, and France, with its huge oil and electricity companies, evidently has a big role to play.

However, demonstrators outside the summit, held at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), slammed big business.

“These multinationals (and the banks that finance their activities) are in fact directly at the origin of climate change,” read a statement from organisations including Les Amis de la Terre (Friends of the Earth, France) and the civil disobedience group J.E.D.I. for Climate.

Saying that it was ironic to have fossil-fuel companies represented at the summit, the groups asked: “Can one imagine for a second that the tobacco industry would be associated with policies to combat smoking aimed at ending the production of cigarettes? No, that would be the best way to ensure that the world continued to chain-smoke.”

The protesters added that if Hollande and his ministers wanted to show a real commitment to the environment, they should make it clear that “the climate is not a business”.

“The fight against climate change is not the business of fossil-fuel multinationals: they belong to our past,” the groups said in a joint release, handed out on the street.

At the summit, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said that businesses should not be “demonised” and she called for collaboration rather than confrontation.

“We all start with a carbon footprint,” she said. “It is not a question of demonising anyone but realizing that we’re all here … This is not about confrontation. This is about collaboration. If you’re thinking about confrontation, forget it. Because we’re not going to get there.”

The summit – co-hosted by Entreprises Pour l’Environnement, an association of some 40 French and large international companies, and UN Global Compact France, a policy initiative for businesses – also addressed the vulnerability of island states in the face of climate change.

Tony de Brum, the Marshall Islands’ Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that island states in the Pacific and elsewhere had an interest in keeping pressure on carbon emitters because their populations’ survival was at stake.

Angel Gurría, Secretary General of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), also highlighted the threat to vulnerable countries, saying that for them, climate change is not about protecting the environment for future generations, but “it’s about how long the water will take to overcome the land.”

Gurría said that greater reductions in carbon emissions were required than has so far been proposed by states, and he stressed that countries over time needed to “develop a pathway to net zero emissions globally” by the second half of the century.

“Governments at COP 21 need to send a clear directional signal that will drive action for decades to come,” he said. “We are on a collision course with nature, and unless we seize this opportunity, we face an increasing risk of severe, pervasive and irreversible climate impact.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

“Poor and rural communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. It is them – who did the least to create this problem – who are suffering the most from it”. Photo credit: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

By Dipti Bhatnagar and Susann Scherbarth
BRUSSELS/MAPUTO, Apr 1 2015 (IPS)

World governments expect to agree to a new global treaty to combat climate change in Paris in December. As the catastrophic impacts of climate change become more evident, so too escalates the urgency to act.

Mar. 31 should have marked a major milestone on the road to Paris, yet only a handful of countries acted on it. Unfortunately, the few plans that were announced before that date show that our leaders lack the ambition to do what it takes to tackle the climate crisis.

National plans for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will most likely form the basis of the Paris agreement. These plans – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – are meant to indicate a government’s self-stated commitment to solve the global climate crisis through domestic emission reductions as well as through support for the poorest and most vulnerable countries.“People on the frontline of climate impacts are burning while governments fiddle. People are paying and will pay for the devastation of climate change with their lives, livelihoods, wellbeing, communities and culture”

This architecture will result in an agreement that is weaker than each country being legally mandated to reduce emissions based on their fair share, determined through science and equity.

Yet, even with this architecture, the idea was that national governments would declare these plans by the end of March so that they could then be scrutinised.

Only six pledges had been received by the United Nations by the deadline – from the European Union, the United States, Norway, Mexico, Russia and Switzerland. These nations, with the notable exception of Mexico, are among the worst historical carbon emitters, yet these pledges do not reflect that immense historical responsibility and do not show any real willingness to address the scale of the climate crisis.

The commitments are well below what science and climate justice principles tell us is urgently needed to avoid hitting climate tipping points. The European Union announced target to cut emissions by ”at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030” is merely re-hashed from last year’s announcement.

The United States has cobbled together a plan for a meagre reduction of 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels, by 2025. If these insignificant pledges are an indication of what is to come, we are on track to a world which will be 4-6°C warmer on average. To put this into context, the climate impacts we are facing today are the consequence of a planet which is only 0.8°C warmer than it was.

So far, none of these countries’ announcements would contribute their ‘fair share’ according to science and equity. All parties are capable of much greater ambition, and it is high time to bring it to the table.

The deadlines that matter most are not set by governments, but by our planet and its natural boundaries, which have already been stretched considerably by the impacts of the climate crisis, for instance by the lethal and extreme weather events from Vanuatu to the Balkans to the Sahel.

Climate change is already happening now, bringing more floods, storms, droughts, rising seas and more devastating typhoons and hurricanes.

The mockery made of this latest Mar. 31 deadline is just another revelation of our governments’ inaction – under the influence of powerful polluting corporations – in the face of impending disaster.

People on the frontline of climate impacts are burning while governments fiddle. People are paying and will pay for the devastation of climate change with their lives, livelihoods, wellbeing, communities and culture.

Poor and rural communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. It is them – who did the least to create this problem – who are suffering the most from it.

We need a just and drastic transformation of our societies, our energy and food systems, and our economies. Proven and workable alternatives exist and are already being implemented.

Key decisions about our energy systems are made regularly, and will of course be made long after the Paris summit. Take for instance U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring planet-wrecking tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

A decision is expected soon and a rejection of the pipeline project would send a strong signal that our long-term future is not founded on the exploitation and burning of more and more fossil fuels.

European Union governments announced their INDCs back in February with their new ‘Energy Union’ vision for meeting the region’s energy needs. The bloc has recognised the need to reduce energy consumption and help citizens take control of clean, local renewable sources. But these moves towards the good must not be negated with new investments in the bad – new gas pipelines are also on the menu.

Throughout 2015, Friends of the Earth International and others will be bringing more and more people together to fight against the power of the polluters and make sure politicians hear the voices of the voiceless and take real action.

In the run-up to Paris, and along the road beyond, we, together with thousands of others, will be promoting the wealth of real solutions and proven ideas that are already delivering transformation around the world.

We will be on the streets throughout 2015, in 2016, and as long as it takes to realise community-owned renewable energy solutions that benefit ordinary people, not multinational corporations.

The Paris deadline will come and go, like others before. But the energy transformation is under way and, whatever our governments will pledge or not pledge at the climate summit in Paris, the transformation will not be stopped.

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* Dipti Bhatnagar is Climate Justice & Energy Co-coordinator for Friends of the Earth International, based in Maputo.

* Susann Scherbarth is Climate Justice & Energy Campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, based in Brussels.

Excerpt:

Indian coal workers. India announced in November last year that it plans to double coal production to a whopping 1 billion tonnes per annum before the end of this decade, a feat that is going to be highly improbable to pull off. Photo credit: Jaipal Singh/EPA

By Chaitanya Kumar
NEW DELHI, Mar 18 2015 (IPS)

India’s Government under Narendra Modi is in overdrive mode to please businesses and investments in the country. The much aggrandised ‘Make in India’ campaign launched in September 2014 is a clarion call for spurring investments into manufacturing and services in India and all eyes have turned to the power sector which is expected to undergo dramatic shifts.

Piyush Goyal, India’s power minister, announced in November last year that he plans to double coal production in India to a whopping 1 billion tonnes per annum before the end of this decade, a feat that is going to be highly improbable to pull off.

In an effort to enhance production, the Indian government has started a process of auctioning coal blocks, which were de-allocated by the country’s Supreme Court as a result of the coal scam that hit the country in 2012 (and resulted in notional losses of 30 billion dollars to India’s exchequer).

With domestic miners already having shown an aggressive interest in bidding at the first auction last month, a total of 204 coal blocks are set to be auctioned over the next 12 months. The first 32 auctioned blocks have yielded more than 35 billion dollars, exceeding the nominal losses from the coal scam.“[Indian] Prime Minister Modi has made it clear that he does not intend to give into … pressure [to take further action on climate change and rethink its energy options] from any nation but he also cannot afford the ignominy of being singled out as a country that is blocking progressive climate action in Paris”

Coupled with the auctions is the disinvestment of Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s largest coal mining company. A 10 percent stake sale in early February resulted in a mixed bag response. Another state owned firm, LIC India, lapped up 50 percent of the stocks alongside a couple of international investment funds and a few Indian firms. The move generated 3.6 billion dollars in revenues for the government.

The auctions and the disinvestment of CIL can provide short-term reprieve to India’s energy and fiscal deficit woes, but there are four reasons why investors and the government should be really wary of investing in coal for the long run (10-15 years). The following are the first two.

Unburnable carbon

The reality that a large proportion of coal and other fossil fuels should be left in the ground is rapidly becoming clear to big business and governments around the world. By signing on to a global agreement that pledges to limit the rise in the earth’s surface temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, India along with other major carbon emitters have effectively signalled the imminent decline in the use of fossil fuels in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

To achieve this much needed and agreed upon limit on temperature rise, 82 percent of known global coal reserves should remain unextracted. This roughly translates into 66 percent of known coal reserves in India and China that should be left in the ground, according to a study published in the reputed journal Nature.

These stranded assets, or unburnable carbon, is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific body that informs climate policy around the world, also highlighted in its recent report on climate change mitigation.

This new reality is unravelling quicker than expected and gaining credence from the most unlikely of places. Even the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has faced consistent criticism in underplaying the role of renewable energy in favour of nuclear and fossil fuels, stated recently that “no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2 degrees C goal”.

IEA’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol warned that “we need to change our way of consuming energy within the next three or four years,” because, otherwise, “in 2017, all of the emissions that allow us to stay under 2°C will be locked in.”

Coal is fast losing the rug under its feet. Nick Nuttall, the spokesman for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said of divestment: “We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of ‘burn what you like, when you like’ cannot continue.

This proposition will be contested fiercely by the Indian government as much as by any fossil fuel company, but as nations – under pressure – prepare to deliver a strong global climate agreement at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris in December, long-term investments in coal in this rapidly growing economy will stand on very thin ice.

Even U.S. President Barack Obama’s statements during his recent visit to India suggest diplomatic pressure on India to take further action on climate change and rethink its energy options for the immediate future.

Prime Minister Modi has made it clear that he does not intend to give into such pressure from any nation but he also cannot afford the ignominy of being singled out as a country that is blocking progressive climate action in Paris.

Thermal coal reaches retirement age – it’s time for renewable energy

A new report from Goldman Sachs starts with this gem of a sentence:  “Just as a worker celebrating their 65th birthday can settle into a more sedate lifestyle while they look back on past achievements, we argue that thermal coal has reached its retirement age.”

The latest data reveal that coal consumption is declining in many parts of the world, including across Europe as a whole, the United States and now, surprisingly, even China registered a small but historic decline in its coal consumption last year. The retirement of dirty coal plants in developed economies is set to cement this trend in the coming few years.

The most recent blow comes from the world’s largest sovereign fund, as Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), worth 850 billion dollars, announced that it had dumped 40 major coal mining companies from its portfolio on environmental and climate grounds.

Besides the climate concern, economics is increasingly in favour of alternative sources of energy, such as wind and solar.

In 2014, we saw a precipitous drop in the cost of solar energy in India. Bidding prices came down as low as 6.5 rupees a unit, a 61 percent drop over the last three years, compared with the average unit price of conventional energy like coal at around 5.5 rupees a unit.

Coupled with dramatic drops in costs of solar equipment such as panels, alongside operational, capital and maintenance costs, the path is clearly open for solar to achieve grid parity by 2017.

Meanwhile, onshore wind has in fact become the cheapest way to generate electricity in the world, laying the claims of cheap coal to rest. A report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental research organisation, has laid bare the facts.

According to the report, the levelised cost of energy or LCOE (that is, all costs considered except externalities like subsidies or environmental impacts) for solar and wind already makes them highly competitive with fossil fuel-based electricity.

The oft cited issues of high capital costs and intermittency notwithstanding, prices of small-scale residential rooftop solar systems also dropped in the range of 40-65 percent between 2008 and 2014 in Europe and the United States.

What does this mean for coal in India? If the above numbers are any measure of the future of the energy sector, heavy investments in coal beyond this decade would be economic suicide.

Coal plants once established have a lifetime of at least 30 years and given the market volatility for coal, owing to rising costs of mining and uncertain fuel supply agreements, greater prices for end consumers is inevitable.

Many pundits in India appreciate this reality and the government has given the right indicators on its pursuit of renewable energy. With a target of 165 GW, India has set an ambitious goal of adding 60 percent to its total current capacity from just solar and wind by 2022.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

“The darker side of green” – plantation at Bukaleba, Uganda. Credit: Kristen Lyons

By Kristen Lyons
BRISBANE, Dec 8 2014 (IPS)

Norwegians know something of life in a climate change world. Migratory birds arrive earlier in spring, trees come into leaf before previously expected, and palsa mires (wetlands) are being lost as permafrost thaws.

Norwegians are currently waiting while geologists try to predict if, and when, Mount Mannen might collapse, destroying homes in its path, after torrential rain in the region.

Kristen Lyons

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this will be just the beginning for Norway – and the rest of the world – unless urgent and immediate action is taken to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

While reducing our dependence on the dirty fossil fuel industries is widely lauded as representing the fastest and most effective strategy to reduce our global emissions, much of the world’s attention – including that of many governments and industry – has been captured by the promise of carbon trade markets.

There are hopes that pricing and selling carbon just might be the magic bullet to solve the crisis, while at the same time generating lucrative returns for investors.

Carbon markets are being established on the assumption that if the ‘right’ price is placed on carbon, private companies and their financial backers will be driven to invest in so-called ‘green’ projects that capture and store carbon, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the world’s atmosphere.“Expecting some of the poorest of the poor to carry the social and ecological burdens of monoculture plantation forestry projects for carbon offset is both socially unjust, and ecologically just does not add up”

Carbon markets are championed by those who believe that carbon emissions taking place in one part of the world can be offset by their capture or sequestration in another. Plantation forestry is a key sector in the carbon market, with many projects established in some of the poorest parts of the world, based on the assumption that they will confer benefits to the environment and the local people.

But does all the hype about carbon markets really stack up?

Research on the Norwegian company Green Resources – engaged in plantation forestry and carbon offset on the African continent – raises many questions about who benefits from the carbon market projects. In-depth research over two years in Uganda, where Green Resources has licence to over 11,000 hectares of land, demonstrates how local communities are the losers of such projects.

A recent report, The Darker Side of Green: Plantation Forestry and Carbon Violence in Uganda,  published by the Oakland Institute, contributes to the critical conversation about the role of carbon markets in addressing climate change.

The report identifies profound adverse livelihood impacts associated with Green Resources’ activities, including loss of land and heightened food insecurity, as well as destruction of sites of cultural significance. It also demonstrates the failure of Green Resources to engage in meaningful community engagement with affected villages, so as to deliver positive community development outcomes.

Yet this REDD [Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation] type project (referring to any project that involves forestry carbon credits), and the audit mechanisms to which it must comply, fail to detect and/or challenge the impacts of Green Resources’ activities.

Nor do they detect the extent to which environmental problems – including land clearing for animal grazing and crop cultivation – may simply be relocated from inside licence areas to other, often ecologically sensitive landscapes.

Importantly too, carbon market audits fail to consider the carbon capture enabled by local agro-ecological and organic farming systems, on which most subsistence and peasant farmers rely.

We are faced with a number of options in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, something we all know is urgently needed. Despite the promise by many that the magic of climate markets will solve the current climate crisis, the findings presented in the report discard this fairy dust, shining a light on the structural violence and inequities on which carbon markets are built.

Expecting some of the poorest of the poor to carry the social and ecological burdens of monoculture plantation forestry projects for carbon offset is both socially unjust, and ecologically just does not add up. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Trucks transport logs out of Riau, Sumatra, which has the highest deforestation rate in Indonesia. Credit: Sandra Siagian/IPS

By Sandra Siagian
JAKARTA, Jul 2 2014 (IPS)

As the world’s third-largest democracy heads to the polls next week to elect a new president, environmental activists remain sceptical of the candidates’ commitment to tackle climate change.

Over four televised debates, Indonesia’s presidential contenders – Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, Jakarta’s current governor, and Prabowo Subianto, a former general – have so far discussed their plans to shape the economy, boost international affairs, manage human capital and ensure clean governance.

“We must remember that decreasing emissions was a promise [made by] the current government, so whoever becomes president must respect the policy and follow through with it." -- Bustar Maitar, head of the Indonesian forest campaign at Greenpeace International
The environment is one of the last topics to be addressed in the final debate this Saturday ahead of the crucial Jul. 9 presidential election.

“I think because they [the candidates] don’t see Indonesia as a developed country, reducing emissions [is] not a priority for them,” explained Yuyun Indradi, a forest campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia-Indonesia, adding that a strong statement addressing environmental issues from either candidate could possibly convince swing voters.

He believes the issue of emissions reductions contradicts both candidates’ stated focus on economic growth as a priority for the next government.

But Farhan Helmy, manager of the Indonesia Climate Change Center (ICCC), does not see the issues as mutually exclusive. In an interview with IPS, he asserted that a green economy should be a platform for any party wishing to promote quality economic growth.

“So of course I would like to see the candidates make their environment policies the bigger picture,” he said. “My hope is that whoever leads the country will understand that we are not alone in terms of global efforts and we cannot work alone.”

In 2009, Indonesia’s outgoing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions in the archipelago by 26 percent by 2020 – the equivalent of up to 767 million tons of carbon dioxide.

And last year, Yudhoyono extended a 2011 moratorium, which barred new logging and palm-oil plantation permits under a one-billion-dollar deal with Norway.

This moratorium, according to Bustar Maitar, head of the Indonesian forest campaign at Greenpeace International, will be the incoming government’s first real test.

It remains to be seen whether the new government will proceed with “business as usual, or move forward to give total protection to the forests,” he told IPS, insisting that protecting Indonesia’s forests is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“We must remember that decreasing emissions was a promise [made by] the current government, so whoever becomes president must respect the policy and follow through with it,” he added.

Designed to address Indonesia’s dubious title as the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after the United States and China, the Norwegian deal made its funding conditional on Indonesia adopting the United nations-backed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme.

So far, the country’s track record is poor. According to a study published this past Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, Indonesia has outstripped Brazil to become the country with the world’s highest rate of deforestation, even though its rainforests amount to only a quarter of Brazil’s Amazon.

Conflicting data for the past decade suggests that Indonesia lost roughly 310,00 hectares of forest a year between 2000 and 2005, a number that increased to 690,000 hectares per annum between 2006 and 2010.

But researchers say that a million more hectares may have been cleared in the last 12 years than official statistics imply. According to Belinda Arunarwati Margono, one of the paper’s lead authors, Indonesia likely lost 840,000 hectares of its primary forest in 2012, putting it far ahead of Brazil, which felled about 460,000 hectares that same year.

In light of this, the new government has its work cut out for it. According to Norway’s ambassador to Indonesia, Stig Traavik, 95 percent of the three-phase billion-dollar deal will be available to the incoming government, should it choose to prioritise the issue.

“I have talked to both candidates about it,” Traavik told IPS. “Both clearly understand the issue. Both want to protect the remaining forest and both are interested in replanting.”

Currently, Indonesia is home to the world’s third largest stretch of tropical rainforest, after Brazil’s Amazon and the Congo.

Traavik said that while he has been happy with Indonesia’s progress to date, he would have “loved to see things move faster”.

“We changed our government last October and one of the first things that was said was that our commitment to cooperate with Indonesia stands. And we hope and expect that the incoming government here will do the same thing,” he concluded.

Taking the necessary steps to curb deforestation, however, will not be easy. Zenzi Suhadi, a campaigner with the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), told IPS that the incoming government will need to do two things: stop the expansion of palm-oil plantations and mining, and conduct ecological restoration of forest areas as a crucial step in reviewing and changing permits for palm oil plantations.

WALHI data through 2012 showed that a full 56 million hectares of forest had been damaged by just four sectors – logging, tree plantation, mining and palm oil.

“An environment policy is important to address as it will affect many voters, especially those who have been victims of ecological disasters,” Suhadi told IPS.

Suhadi said that the “fundamental issues would be resolved” when the next government addresses five points: managing people’s lands rights, enforcing environment and forestry laws, the resulting loss of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), the loss of valuable biodiversity at multiple levels and the risk of environmental degradation.

This week, a green campaign aimed at boosting conversation among the key stakeholders across four issues – climate change, forestry, energy and cities – was launched by ICCC, Matsushita Gobel Foundation and Indonesia’s Council on Climate Change (DNPI).

Helmy, ICCC’s manager, told IPS that the initiative, “Presiden4Green”, will include public surveys across 10 cities to find out what kind of commitment the public wants from the candidates regarding environmental issues.

“We would like this campaign to go even beyond the presidential election,” explained Helmy, adding that it could run until January 2015.

“There will be continuous efforts to engage the major stakeholders in three stages – before the election, after the election and after the new government’s first 100 days in office.”

(END)

By Fredrik S. Heffermehl
OSLO, Dec 9 2013 (Columnist Service)

A March 2012 decision by the Swedish authority supervising foundations is a ticking box of dynamite under the Nobel Peace Prize. Even presented in an official, open document, the decision has not reached the general public and become the news story it actually is.

The order implies that the decision to award the 2013 Nobel to the bureaucrats enforcing the ban on chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), is illegal.

It is true, as the citation of OPCW mentions, that disarmament was important to Alfred Nobel. But why is it the secretive committee’s best-kept secret that Nobel´s will included a recipe for a weapons-free world?

Nobel did not believe in civilising war, reducing a weapon here and an army there; he was quite specific when, in his 1895 will, he described a prize for “the champions of peace” seeking to abolish all weapons in all nations, as an alternative to militarism and military forces. With terms like the “brotherhood of [disarmed] nations,” he used language that anyone familiar with the history of the peace movement will recognise.

Fredrik S. Heffermehl

Even though its secretary is a historian, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chooses to ignore that the kind of recipients Nobel had in mind were the Austrian baroness Bertha von Suttner, author of the bestseller “Lay Down Your Arms”, and her political friends.

In the last years of his life Nobel joined Suttner´s Society of Friends of Peace and gave substantial financial support to this Austrian society and the (still existing) International Peace Bureau, and – very important to understanding his purpose in setting up a peace prize – promised Suttner to “do something great” for her movement.

My book, “The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted”, (available in English, Chinese, Finnish, Swedish and Spanish) contains solid documentation of Nobel´s actual intentions, and shows that the Norwegian Parliament has misused the task Nobel entrusted to it: to appoint a five-member committee of persons devoted to Nobel´s peace plan.

For years, Norwegian politicians have used the prize to pursue their own ideas and purposes. Last year´s prize that went to the European Union, the 2009 prize for U.S. President Barack Obama, the 2010 prize for Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, the 2011 prize for Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – almost all of the prizes awarded in the last two decades have failed to respect Nobel´s will.

Instead of appointing a committee dedicated to the peace ideas described in the will Parliament is, with few exceptions, using the coveted seats as a bonus to reward retired parliamentarians. In Norway attitudes have shifted away from Nobel’s aims. Politicians strongly loyal to the U.S. and NATO are obviously unsuited to manage a prize for peace by disarmament, and the members ought to resign.

After six years I have to state that my conclusions are indisputable – and they have not in fact been disputed. But it is of little consequence. Norwegian politicians behave as if they were above the law and feel confident that the courts, as well as public authorities and the media, will let them get away with their mischief.

This is clearly illustrated by the fate of a complaint I lodged with the Swedish authority that supervises foundations. The Norwegian politicians did not like the idea of being scrutinised and told the Swedish authorities to back off, since “the Nobel Committee is independent and shall take orders from no one.”

The Swedish authority responded that this view was clearly incorrect, and in its order placed the Norwegian peace prize committee under Swedish control. It further expected the Swedish Nobel Foundation to supervise in order to ensure that its Norwegian subsidiary complied with the will. A sensational decision, in my view, that so far has not received any public attention.

My research makes it clear that the Norwegian awarders have never spent much time brooding over what Nobel must have intended. The description of the mandate in the will has been entirely forgotten. The secrets of the private diaries of Gunnar Jahn, a former committee chair (serving from 1942 to 1966), a unique and most revealing crack in the tight secrecy surrounding the committee´s work, confirm this.

Entries in the diaries, published for the first time in my book, show that all of Jahn´s attempts to remind the committee of Nobel and of the purpose of the prize fell flat, and that, despite a couple of threats to resign, Jahn put up with this for 24 years.

A 2001 article by the powerful committee secretary, Geir Lundestad, confirms that the committee feels full freedom to develop its own prize and even make its own definition of “peace” – obviously unaware of the legal obligation to check Nobel´s own description of who should be recipients of his prize!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has many opportunities that permit unopposed dissemination of a falsified version of Nobel´s visionary prize. When challenged to debate the purpose in public, in the media, they do not respond or they refuse to offer honest arguments; it is either silence or nonsense.

One can only conclude that the Norwegian awarders (Parliament and the Nobel Committee) are adamantly unwilling to respect the law and Nobel´s intentions.

This experience affects my impression of Scandinavian democracy, of its media, public debate, and the integrity of our public authorities and the rule of law. It is a paradox of sorts that these are the very values that the Nobel Committee chair, Thorbjørn Jagland, has the primary responsibility for promoting in Europe as the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

The Norwegian government, always happy with the misuse of Nobel´s prize, is now seeking a new term for Jagland in the Council of Europe. When approached in the campaign for reelection, member countries should ask Jagland two vital questions.

First, does he acknowledge that by law a will is a binding legal instrument?

Second, what does he think about Nobel and does he understand that he intended his prize to support a new system of international relations, one without national armies?

They are not likely to hear expressions of regret. Whether Jagland continues to refuse to respond, or gives untrue answers, the member countries should draw their own conclusions.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Guyana has 12.2 million hectares of state forest. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

Guyana is engaged in a balancing act to save its rainforest, regarded as a living treasure, from the destructive activities of miners digging their way to another kind of treasure buried beneath this fragile ecosystem.

Natural Resources Minister Robert Persaud warns that the country stands to lose about 20 million dollars from the forest conservation fund because it has lost more of the Amazon, mainly to gold and diamond mining."We are fighting for our land rights, we are fighting for our indigenous rights, we are fighting for respect." -- Amerindian leader John Alfred

In November 2010, Guyana and Norway established a partnership that is the second biggest Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) interim agreement in the world. Norway committed to giving Guyana up to 250 million dollars by 2015 for avoided deforestation and degradation.

Guyana met the performance requirements for two consecutive years, earning approximately 70 million dollars which has been transferred by Norway into the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF).

But the preliminary third national report on deforestation did not contain good news.

“We’ve had a change in terms of deforestation rate, the level of 0.079 [percent], and this rate of change is higher than the previous year which was 0.054 percent,” Persaud told IPS.

“But if we look at the total area, it is just a mere 3,600 hectares in a 12.2 million hectares of state forest estate,” he added.

In percentage terms, Guyana has breached the agreement with Norway because it has increased from 0.054 percent in the Year Two assessment to 0.079 in Year Three, which is above the agreed threshold of 0.070.

The report will be finalised by independent auditors for Durham University and Norway by Nov. 30.

The funds earned by Guyana under the agreement with Norway are directed towards low carbon development strategy (LCDS) projects that have a transformational effect on the national and local economy, as well as supporting Guyana’s efforts to adapt to climate change and to increase resilience to future climate change.

However, some native Guyanese feel marginalised by the deal.

“The land, our resources, and keeping the environment healthy for our people and our children are key issues for us,” Laura George, a representative the Amerindian People’s Association, told IPS.

“One of the things we told them is that you need to consult with communities. Government should not pressure our Toshaos [Amerindian village leaders] into endorsing projects that we do not understand, that we have not fully understood,” she said of the agreement with Norway.

John Alfred, a former Toshaos from Region 9, told IPS that for many years their rights have been infringed with the destruction of the forest.

“There are many issues in our villages, in the regions. We are fighting for our land rights, we are fighting for our indigenous rights, we are fighting for respect,” he said.

Despite the latest report, Persaud told IPS Guyana “continues to be the country with one of the lowest rates of deforestation within South America.”

He conceded that 94 percent of the changes stem from mining activity, but said it was conducted “with the knowledge of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), working with legitimate miners, fulfilling their own economic activity while following the national guidelines or laws as well as our regulations in this regard.”

Patrick Harding, the president of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Mining Association (GGDMA), argues that it’s a numbers game.

“We stand maybe to lose about 40 percent of the Norway funds or about 25 million dollars,” he told IPS. “The mining industry, including bauxite, will give the government foreign exchange of about one billion dollars. We have an industry that is providing jobs for tens of thousands of Guyanese.”

He insisted that the GGDMA is also concerned about deforestation. “Our motto is mining with the environment in mind and we are very careful about the environment. We encourage our members to follow the guidelines of the Environmental Act and the Mining Regulations.”

In 2012 the mining industry declared 413,600 ounces of gold and this year its commitment is over 461,000 ounces.

“Of course we are concerned about the environment but you cannot have development without some additional disturbance,” Harding said.

Former Guyanese president Bharrat Jagdeo has been championing the cause of developing countries in the fight against climate change, highlighting the role that the country’s forests play in absorbing carbon emissions.

In 2009, under Jagdeo’s leadership, Guyana’s Low-Carbon Development Strategy, commonly known as the LCDS, was developed.

Under the programme, the country receives payment for forest ecosystem services. These funds are used to direct economic activities onto an environmentally-friendly, low-carbon trajectory for its growth and development.

Guyana’s LCDS has received widespread national support and international acclaim.

By Johan Galtung
VERSONNEX, France, Oct 24 2013 (IPS)

Nobody has brought this simple message to the world like the Perdana Global Peace Foundation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As the leader, Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s fourth prime minister, says: “Peace for us simply means the absence of war. We must never be deflected from this simple objective”.

So they organise compelling exhibitions and conferences to highlight the atrocities and horrors of war, starting with World War I, often in cooperation with the Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta University in Indonesia.

A very clear message from the Southeastern part of the world to the Northwestern part: Stop It! All your rules of war add up to its legitimation: wars get ever worse as measured by the percentage of non-combatant, civilian casualties – from about 10 percent in World War I to 90 percent in the Vietnam war and other wars at the end of the 20th century. They dare refer to crimes as “unintended consequences” or “collateral damage”.

Johan Galtung

Take Norway, a “peace nation”, as an example, not the United States and Israel with their concept of being chosen, and their exceptionalism. See what Norway does against the spirit of U.N. Security Council resolution 1973 aimed at protecting civilians, promoting a cease-fire and mediating a political solution in Libya. And against U.N. Charter Article 2 outlawing the use of war.

According to testimony given by pilots to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, 25 percent of the bombing was planned with targets selected in advance. The rest were chosen by the pilots who, 40,000 feet up, decided that buildings, roads and people they saw were targets: “We were told to fly into an enormous area the size of Southern Norway and search for targets ourselves. We were used to clearance from somebody on the ground, but did not get it.”

But they did get regime change. Norway obeyed orders, doing its part.

This is criminal activity, like mass murderers gone amok shooting wildly, killing whatever moves. Who ordered it? The Labour Party prime minister, foreign minister and defence minister in a “red-green” (meaning brown) coalition. Who did it? The pilots.

According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, the latter cannot claim they only followed orders; and according to the Tokyo Tribunal the former cannot claim that they were unaware of what happened. It is the duty of the pilots to assess the legality of what happens, and of the politicians to know what happens.

The case is now being made at the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, the International Criminal Court (where Norway does not enjoy U.S. protection), and the Norwegian Constitutional Court.

They will encounter incomprehension in Norway: We, the perfect ones? Crimes?

But we must globalise crimes against humanity – a crime committed somewhere is a crime committed everywhere, like in the case of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

A criminal can in the future be arrested in any state in the world, extradited or tried where he is arrested. The Mother of parliaments in London showed the way as it also did for the war in Syria; a solvable crisis.

This would limit their freedom of travel as it already does for some top U.S. and Israeli politicians. But beyond that there is another approach: excommunicating such states from the inter-state system and the U.N., breaking or downgrading bilateral diplomatic relations.

Trade is not the issue; state legitimacy, unless that state itself takes action indicting the “warlords”, is. The present system gives a U.S. president the right almost single-handedly to press the nuclear button.

Where does this madness come from? From the Westphalia 1648 “peace” giving states the right to declare war?

That does not explain the concentration of the “right” to engage in mass murder at the top of the state pyramid.

The Abrahamic god kills massively – more in the Torah and the Bible than in the Qur’an; to be a King Dei gratia, by the grace of god, bestows the same right on kings, transferred to their successors – the presidents and prime ministers.

Not strange that we find most belligerence in the West. Democracy or not, it does not matter. The “grace of god” was transferred to the people, in vox populi vox Dei, leading to the grotesque idea that democracies have more of a mandate to kill. As if democracy was about killing and not about the non-violent transfer of power and resolution of conflicts. The exact opposite of, and the remedies, to war and killing.

We are moving in this direction. As inter-state war become more rare, wars will stand out as exceptional, illegitimate, and illegal under the U.N. Charter.

The old laws of nations applied to inter-state wars, but that distinction loses its significance as the world evolves. R2P – “responsibility to protect” (which authorises military intervention as a last resort) – kills in the territory of other states, unlike self-defence by defensive military in one’s own.

Could ulterior motives be behind the dubious idea of killing people to save people? Have all other means really been used? Not diplomats trained in promoting the interests of their own nation, but massive non-violent invasion from the outside as a buffer, protecting some while impeding others?

Deep mediation applied to all parties to the conflict, not only two chosen to fit the Abrahamic search for God vs Satan, translated into People vs Hitler and his likes; readily issuing Hitler-certificates?

Not strange if patriarchy and patriotism are yielding to parity and globalism. The Fifth Commandment, Thou shalt not kill, was for in-group only. But today we are ever more one big in-group.

Using states to kill makes the killers outlaws. Criminals. Stop it.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

On a sunny day at the end of August, the popular Karl Johans pedestrian street in Oslo pulsed with folk music as three young women and a man played stringed instruments and belted out English and Norwegian lyrics.

A few steps away, in front of brightly coloured pavilions, other young people handed out red roses, helium-filled balloons, cups of freshly-made popcorn, and even bottles of water.

“Here’s a drink for you. It’s from the best party – the Labour Party,” said a blonde-haired activist handing a plastic bottle to a passer-by.

Anyone not familiar with Norwegian election campaigns might have been forgiven for thinking a fun-fair was being held. But behind the bantering and smiles, political tension is high as Norway gears up for parliamentary elections Sep. 9.

Immigration is a key issue in the vote. Surveys suggest that the Conservative Party will win the elections while “populist” groups such as the anti-immigration Progress Party might gain enough votes to be part of a coalition government.

Despite its relative success in keeping the economy of oil-rich Norway healthy during the global financial crisis, the current Labour-Socialist government is expected to be voted out of office. This is mainly because the population wants a change after eight years of the same rule, but also because many say the party is seen as being too fond of spending public funds.

The Progress Party, Norway’s third-biggest political group, has campaigned for tougher immigration and asylum policies and has pledged to implement stricter regulations for family reunification. It wants to reduce the number of immigrants from outside the European Union, although Norway itself is not a member of the 28-member bloc. “Those seeking asylum who are being persecuted in their home country - of course we are going to take care of them. But we want closer cooperation with the United Nations system and try to have them organise more of the refugee and asylum work." -- Ketil Solvik-Olsen, the Progress Party spokesman

“We are stricter on immigration than the other parties,” says Ketil Solvik-Olsen, the Progress Party spokesman for finance issues and an up-and-coming politician likely to become a minister if his party does well in the election.

“We should still be open and welcome people that can contribute to the workforce, that have special skills,” he told foreign journalists at a press briefing in Oslo. “At the same time we want a stricter policy for people seeking asylum.”

To be seen as government material, the party has tried to soften its radical image and distance itself from past member Anders Behring Breivik, who carried out bomb and gun attacks in 2011, killing 77 people, including teenagers. Breivik had been taken off the party’s membership list in 2006, according to reports from his trial.

Solvik-Olsen said that Breivik’s association with the party hurt it two years ago, but that things have changed in 2013. “Today … people see that his ideas have nothing to do with our party. He said that himself during his trial that he was very disappointed that we did not follow up on his ideas. He found no soil for his ideas to grow in the party,” Solvik-Olsen told reporters.

Still, the party’s popularity has declined from a high of almost 23 percent of the polls in 2009 to between 15 and 20 percent at present, depending on which survey one believes. Party officials insist that the figures are favourable for them.

“The opinion polls look really good,” Solvik-Olsen said. “The Conservative Party and the Liberal Party are gaining; the Socialists and Labour Party are losing.”

The Progress Party says it wants a stable government, even if a ruling coalition will eventually comprise four parties. “We have to stop quarrelling,” Solvik-Olsen said.

But given the party’s background and position on immigration, the more “mainstream” conservative parties might find it hard to co-habit with them.

The conservatives recognise that Norway needs foreign workers, even if they support limiting immigration. The country’s smaller parties, including the radical-left Red Party and the ecology Green Party say they want a fair asylum policy, with special focus on the rights of children.

Norway’s statistics bureau states that immigrants currently account for 12 percent of the country’s population of 5.07 million. In the capital Oslo, immigrants form 30.4 percent of the city’s population, the bureau says.

But official figures also reveal that the number of asylum seekers dropped to 9,800 last year from 17,200 in 2011, mainly because of stricter policies since 2008.

Nationalists say asylum seekers are attracted by Norway’s generous welfare system. According to Solvik-Olsen, “many of those who come to seek asylum are not going to be part of the labour force” because they come from countries where they “don’t have the skills.”

“Those seeking asylum who are being persecuted in their home country – of course we are going to take care of them. But we want closer cooperation with the United Nations system and try to have them organise more of the refugee and asylum work. Maybe they could help them closer to home, or better organise who gets sent to which country,” he added.

He said that the reason the Progress Party was strict is that “there is an over-representation in the statistics of people coming here, seeking asylum, but who then end up in the bad environment in downtown Oslo. This means to us that maybe they are not asylum seekers after all but looking for a different place to make money.”

The election results will determine whether such attitudes prevail, but a “lot of change has already taken place” over the last 30 years regarding asylum seekers in Norway, says the Norwegian Organisation for Asylum Seekers.

“The authorities have more expertise and knowledge about the conditions of asylum seekers today than previously. However, asylum seekers are still a vulnerable group. Norway and other European countries continue to pursue a restrictive asylum policy which consequently increases the tendency of refugees being sent back to the home countries persecuting them,” the group says.

Anti-poverty campaigners are celebrating the Norwegian government’s release of an external audit of all outstanding public debts it is owed by developing countries, the first time any country has undertaken such a process.

The investigation, by the international financial services company Deloitte, was conducted on aid packages offered by the Norwegian government to developing countries since the 1970s. Auditors were tasked with studying whether the deals, mostly concessional trade agreements, complied with past and present national guidelines as well as with newly established international principles.“The Norwegians clearly wanted to put out a test case that could be taken seriously." -- Eric LeCompte of Jubilee USA

The audit marks the first concrete use of what are known as the Principles on Promoting Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing, established by a United Nations working group in April 2012 and still in the process of being rolled out. The Norwegian government has been a key supporter of the process of creating the principles, under the auspices of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“This is really about setting a good example – as the first lending country to conduct such an audit, this is a very important first step in concretising and testing these principles,” Eric LeCompte, executive director of the anti-debt campaigner Jubilee USA, told IPS.

“The Norwegians clearly wanted to put out a test case that could be taken seriously, really moving the principles forward for the first time. Perhaps most interesting, while Norway is one of the world’s better lenders, Deloitte found that several of its past loans would not meet current standards of responsible lending.”

Jubilee USA is now calling on other countries, particularly those of the Group of 20 (G20) nations, to follow Norway’s example, conducting transparent debt audits to allow the public and civil society to see how decades’ worth of loans have been made. Given the new data, multiple groups are also calling on Norway to cancel certain debts.

“We hope the Norwegian government will take the next step of this critical audit and cancel illegitimate debt such as the debts of Egypt and Indonesia,” Gina Ekholt, director of the Norwegian Coalition for Debt Cancellation, said in a statement.

The audit report was explicitly written to act as a roadmap for future such exercises, noting pointedly, “The audit process has been conducted in such a manner that it may serve as a model for future debt audits.”

Interestingly, the Deloitte auditors also offer extensive feedback on the UNCTAD principles. In particular, they encourage the principles to become more explicit, and offer advice on ways in which they can become more operational.

They also offer some pointed specifics, including urging greater support for debt restructuring for developing countries. Jubilee USA’s LeCompte says this emphasis is “critical for getting us to the next place”.

“Fundamental cause of poverty”

In explaining his government’s decision to undertake the audit, Norway’s international development minister, Heikki Eidsvoll Holmas, said, “We are doing this to make sure that we are living up to our responsibility as a lender to developing countries.”

He added: “[T]he debt burden is hampering development in some poor countries. These countries are having difficulty servicing old debt agreements made on unfavourable terms. We now want to address this.”

The investigation covered 34 debt agreements with seven developing countries, according to the Norwegian government. While most of these are two to three decades old, their principals still add up to nearly 170 million dollars – and, once interest payments are included, approach four times that amount.

“Unmanageable debt burdens are one of the fundamental causes of poverty in developing countries,” the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

“While the international community gives 141 billion dollars in aid to developing countries annually, the developing countries pay back 464 billion dollars each year to their creditors. Many of the debt agreements were entered into when economic, political and social conditions were uncertain.”

Indeed, this issue goes to the heart of one of the central contradictions to plague international development aid over the past half-century.

In the 1980s, for instance, the foreign debts taken on by developing countries more than tripled, to almost 420 billion dollars. Yet during that same decade, gross national product for these countries expanded only marginally, from 0.9 trillion dollars to 1.3 trillion dollars.

A more recent move towards debt restructuring and some debt forgiving notwithstanding, many countries are continuing to labour under those same repayments today.

Wild West

Although UNCTAD was not able to comment for this story by deadline, a representative for the body did laud the Norwegian audit when it was announced a year ago.

“To apply the UNCTAD Principles in the Norwegian debt audit is a solid way of showing that the Norwegian government takes the Principles seriously and that they take their responsibility as a creditor seriously,” Jostein Hole Kobbeltvedt, a member of the UNCTAD expert group, stated.

The UNCTAD principles on responsible lending and borrowing specifically aim to bring clarity to the international development lending relationship, advocating both greater accountability and responsibility. Part of the goal is ensuring that lending countries know that their loans can be repaid while also ensuring that receiving countries are not surprised by hidden contract provisions.

“Historically, and certainly now, these principles have not been part of the regulation of the international financial system – it’s still kind of like the Wild West out there. These are pretty straightforward principles that advocate for relatively minor levels of regulation that we’re currently missing,” Jubilee USA’s LeCompte, who was part of the UNCTAD working group, says.

“They also advocate for transparency in loan contraction. In other words, if I am a citizen of Zimbabwe, I should know what loans my government is taking out in an open, sanctioned, accountable government process. The Norwegian audit represents the threat of a good example.”

To date, 13 countries, including the United States, have endorsed the UNCTAD principles, but only as voluntary guidelines. LeCompte says his office is currently pushing to reintroduce U.S. legislation that would further concretise the principles, potentially impacting not only on U.S. policy but also on the lending guidelines used by some of the largest multilateral development lenders.

“We need legislation to ensure more binding action on this and to move the Treasury to use its vote in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to put forward these practices there,” he says. “Although some multilateral financial institutions have gotten better, I don’t think a single institution can say they’re adhering to these principles yet.”

Developed countries must support more effective mitigation in all countries where emissions are either high or growing. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Smita Nakhooda
BONN, Germany, Jun 10 2013 (IPS)

Developed countries report that they delivered more than 33 billion dollars in Fast Start Finance (known as FSF), beyond the pledges they made at COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009. Recent analysis suggests that the funding delivered may have exceeded 38 billion dollars.  But that is not the whole story.

The story behind the headline lies in how this money has been allocated. What has it supported, and how much of it represents new funding to support the additional challenges that climate change poses for development?

My colleagues at ODI in the United Kingdom, the World Resources Institute (WRI) in the United States, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Japan, Germanwatch in Germany and Cicero in Norway have analysed our countries’ FSF contributions to try and answer these questions. These countries’ climate finance contributions are among the largest.

In Copenhagen, four years ago, these and other developed countries promised to deliver 30 billion dollars from 2010 to 2012 as Fast Start Finance. This would kick-start the delivery of 100 billion dollars per year by 2020. A substantial share of this finance may flow through the Green Climate Fund, a new mechanism to deliver money to developing countries so they can mitigate and adapt to climate change. Now, what does all this mean in reality?

Climate finance contributions have increased

Our first message is a positive one: finance for climate-related activities in developing countries has increased significantly during the FSF period, despite unprecedented economic difficulties and austerity measures in developed countries brought on by the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed, this trend applies to all of the countries we reviewed. The UK, for example, appears to have increased its climate finance four-fold relative to environment-related spending before the FSF period.

A challenge, however, is that countries counted very different forms of finance, resulting in major differences between the scale and objectives of different contributions.

A large share of Germany’s 1.6-billion-dollar FSF contribution is directed through its International Climate Initiative, which is indirectly financed through revenues from emission trading. With the exception of its 615-million-dollar contribution to the Climate Investment Fund, Germany counts only grants towards its FSF. By contrast, Japan and the United States include as FSF a large share of export credit and development finance for low-carbon infrastructure. In Japan’s case, some efficient fossil fuel options are also counted. Japan has also reported on leveraged private finance in its total.

Many countries also seek FSF “credit” for projects and programmes that they were already supporting prior to the FSF period.

For instance, the United States counts its contribution to the Montreal Protocol Fund, which it has been supporting since the early 1990s, as FSF. A significant share of Japanese FSF was pledged prior to 2010 through initiatives such as the Cool Earth Partnership. All five countries count contributions to the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) since 2010, although countries pledged to fund the CIFs at a cumulative level of at least 6.1 billion dollars in 2008.

These pledges were made in the context of efforts to scale up climate related finance in the lead up to Copenhagen. But while these are important programmes, for which sustained support is essential, the pledges are not technically “new” during the FSF period.

Of the five countries we studied, only Norway has met the international commitment to deliver 0.7 percent of its gross national income (GNI) as official development assistance (ODA) and can claim that its contribution was additional by this standard during the FSF period (although it has ramped up its domestic ODA commitment to one percent of GNI). Only Germany and Norway have clearly spelled out how they define “new and additional” in their self-reporting on climate finance.

Using climate finance effectively

There has been a strong focus on funding activities that can help developing countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This includes financing clean electricity from renewable energy, the use of more efficient technologies, and better public transport systems.

Such programmes can play a vital role in supporting countries to meet their basic infrastructure and energy needs without the emissions. Such finance is essential.

Emissions in many rapidly growing developing countries are rising fast. While they may bear less historical responsibility for climate change, today some of the largest emitters in the world are developing countries. There are abundant opportunities to take more climate compatible approaches to development – but they often pose additional costs or risks. International public finance can help countries seize such opportunities.

But the truth is that we are already feeling the impacts of climate change. These impacts will be particularly severe in poor countries. And global efforts to address climate change so far have been inadequate.

This reinforces the imperative to support more effective mitigation in all countries where emissions are either high or growing. But it also strengthens the case to scale up adaptation finance.

During the FSF period countries committed to scale up adaptation finance. Adaptation finance would focus on the developing countries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and African countries. About 12 percent of the total FSF contribution of the five countries we studied supported adaptation, with the share ranging from about seven percent in Norway to about 35 percent in the UK and Germany.

In practice, of course, adaptation and mitigation activities may be quite interlinked. Norway, for example, has prioritised efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation, particularly in tropical forests, which also have adaptation benefits.

Future public support for climate action, however, is highly uncertain. This is a substantial challenge. There is an urgent need for greater clarity on the level of public finance that developing countries can expect from the international community.

The FSF experience reinforces the importance of scaling up finance in order to meet the ever more urgent challenges of climate change. This will require political commitment and leadership at the national level, and enhanced global cooperation.

*This commentary is based on a joint analysis by Smita Nakhooda (ODI), and Taryn Fransen of the World Resources Institute (WRI), reflecting on the FSF experience on the occasion of the 38th sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, as well as the second part of the second session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, taking place from Jun. 3-14, 2013, in Bonn, Germany.

Excerpt:

People in the streets and squares of the Colombian capital are breathing easier. The air is fresh with hope, in contrast to the former leaden and fearful atmosphere of eternal violence and interminable conflict.

Ignacio Ramonet

The war in Colombia is one of the longest-running armed conflicts in the world. It began (or intensified) when Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, an immensely popular social leader who advocated social justice, including financial system reform and land reform, was murdered by the oligarchy on Apr. 9, 1948.

Since then the number of casualties has reached the hundreds of thousands. Today, in a continent that is overwhelmingly at peace, this conflict – Latin America’s last guerrilla war – is like a vestige of another era.

Travelling around the country and talking with diplomats, intellectuals, social workers, journalists, academics or local residents in low-income neighbourhoods, the conclusion that can be drawn is that this time, intentions are serious.

Things have apparently been on the move since President Juan Manuel Santos, in office since August 2010, publicly announced in early September that the government and the insurgents would be starting peace talks, first in Oslo and then in Havana, with the governments of Norway and Cuba as guarantors and of Venezuela and Chile as observers.

Colombians have confidence in the peace process; they feel that internal and external circumstances allow them – prudently – to dream. What if peace were, at last, possible? During the last 65 years of war, it is not the first time that the authorities and the rebels have sat down to negotiate.

Why has President Santos, who was an implacable opponent of the guerrillas as defence minister under former president Álvaro Uribe, chosen the path of negotiation? Because this time, he says, “the stars are aligned to end the conflict.” In other words, the national and international situations could not be more propitious.

In the first place, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are no longer what they used to be. They remain the most formidable guerrilla force in Latin America, with 20,000 combatants. And the FARC is the only guerrilla army that has not been defeated by force of arms in Latin America. But satellite tracking and massive use of drones (unmanned spy planes) now allow their communications and movements to be tracked.

Secondly, the killings of the FARC’s top commanders (by means of the Israeli technique of selective killings) have made it more difficult for the guerrillas to regroup. In addition, some odious combat methods used by the FARC, such as kidnapping, summary execution of prisoners and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, have provoked rejection by a significant part of civil society.

The FARC are far from defeated, and could probably continue the conflict for years. But they are certainly not able to win it; the opportunity for a military victory has vanished. Peace talks, if they lead to a dignified agreement, would let them leave the field walking tall, to join political life.

But when Santos decided, to widespread surprise, to embark on peace negotiations with the insurgents, it was not only because the FARC were weakened militarily. It was also because the landowning oligarchy opposed to land reform (Colombia is practically the only country in Latin America that, because of the landowners’ blinkered attitude, has not redistributed land) were no longer the dominant power.

In the last few decades, a new urban oligarchy has become established, with far more power than the rural elites.

During the worst years of the war, the large cities were cut off from the countryside. It was impossible to travel overland from one place to another, and the portion of Colombia that was usable was limited to a sort of archipelago of cities. To these large cities came the millions of people fleeing the conflict, and dynamic, growing local economies were developed, based on industry, services, finance, import-export and other sectors.

Today, this is the economy that predominates in the country, and is to a certain extent represented by Santos, just as Uribe represents the large landowners who are opposed to the peace process.

The urban oligarchy wants peace for economic reasons. First, the cost of peace – probably a modest land reform – will be borne by the big landowners. The urban elites are not interested in the soil, but in the subsoil: pacification would allow exploitation of Colombia’s immense mineral resources, for which China is an insatiable market.

The urban business community also perceives that, if peace is achieved, the present excessive military expenditure could be devoted to reducing inequality, which continues to be enormous in the country. The entrepreneurs know that Colombia is heading towards a population of 50 million, a significant critical mass in terms of consumption, if average purchasing power rises.

They are aware of the redistribution policies taking place in several Latin American countries (Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and others) that have reactivated domestic production and promoted the growth of local businesses.

Meanwhile, Latin America is experiencing a high point in terms of integration, with the recent creation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), in which Colombia plays an important role.

Given these dynamics, the war is an anachronism, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has often claimed. The FARC know that this is the case. The time has come for both sides to lay down their arms.

Current events in Latin America show that, in spite of the hurdles, gaining power by peaceful, political means is possible for a progressive organisation. This has been proved in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Uruguay and Brazil, among other countries.

Many perils must still be faced. Opponents of peace (Pentagon hawks, ultra-rightwing members of the military, landowners and paramilitaries) will try to sabotage the process. But everything seems to indicate, while negotiations continue in Havana, that the end of the conflict is approaching. At last.(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Ignacio Ramonet is the editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in Spanish.

Large rich nations are falling short in their commitments to global aid and its effectiveness. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Sarah McHaney
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 2012 (IPS)

The United States is lagging far behind other developed countries in its policies aimed at improving global prosperity, according to new research.

The tenth annual Commitment to Development Index (CDI) was released this week by the Washington-based think tank Centre for Global Development (CGD). The report ranked the efforts of 27 developed countries to support developing countries.

As in previous years, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands vied for the top spots. This year the United Kingdom, in ninth place, was the sole country from the wealthy Group of Seven (G7) bloc to make the top 10, while the United States ranked nineteenth.

Unlike most rankings of its kind, the CDI does not focus primarily on the quantity of foreign aid each country gives per year. Rather, it takes into account seven different components of development and averages a country’s score in each area. It also focuses on the scope of the integration of a country’s policies.

“All nations are linked in many ways, not just through aid – many policies in wealthy nations affect people all around the world,” David Roodman, a senior fellow at CGD and the chief architect of the CDI, explained in an interview last week.

Comprising each of the index’s seven components, such as quantity and quality of foreign aid, or migration and environmental policies, are multiple factors that contribute to a country’s overall score. In the category of foreign aid, for example, the index looks at what percentage of a country’s gross domestic product is given away, and whether the money is “tied” to certain conditions, goes to corrupt governments, or is given in the form of loans.

After scaling the scores to an average of 5.0, researchers found Denmark to have the highest score in 2012 (7.0), while South Korea had the lowest (2.7).

The United States scores above average on only two of the seven components, and with a score of 4.8 it ranks behind all major industrialised nations except Italy and Japan. Meanwhile, Nordic countries repeatedly stand at the top of the list, for several reasons.

“Superficially it’s about foreign aid; each of these countries gives a large amount of foreign aid for the size of their economy, about 1 percent of GDP,” Roodman said of the Nordic countries. “They are also pretty good with environmental policy, doing more than most countries to reduce the use of fossil fuels.”

Citizens of these countries, Roodman explained, tend to trust more in their government and in how taxes are spent, a sentiment that could potentially allow government officials to feel more comfortable making significant commitments to developing countries.

Owen Barder, a senior fellow at CGD and director for Europe, offered a broader explanation for Nordic countries’ top rankings. In an interview last week, Barder said, “These smaller nations are forced to have an international outlook because of their size. I think this results in a sense of national pride in the role these countries play in international peace and environment negotiations.”

Barder regarded the CDI as an opportunity to evaluate how Europe as a whole scored in individual components and to begin a continent-wide conversation on how improvements can be made.

Not all countries look favourably on the CDI’s metrics. Japan, which is consistently ranked at or near the index’s bottom, responded to the 2006 CDI by criticising its method.

“By using its own method to measure aid effectiveness of each donor and publishing its results…the [CDI] has various problems and has not evaluated fairly developed countries’ policies for international development,” Japan’s ministry of foreign affairs wrote.

Japan received a low score in trade partly because of its high import barriers, especially on rice. Yet the Japanese government has argued that only the negative impact of its trade tariffs were considered, not the positive agricultural subsidies it also provides.

“The CDI does not reflect the fact that major developed countries…take development challenges by making maximum use of their comparative advantages and by complementing one another through aid coordination,” the ministry stated. (Roodman’s response can be found here).

Indeed, the CDI does have some structural flaws. The countries currently listed on the index are all democracies, for instance. These countries “preach concern for human life and dignity within their own borders”, the index’s overseers have written, noting that the CDI “looks at whether rich countries’ actions match their words”.

Yet in the past decade a host of “middle income” countries – China, India, Brazil – have emerged as global economic leaders.

“I don’t think changes in the world mean that Japan or the U.S. are any less obliged to contribute to the prosperity of developing countries,” Roodman said. He added that he is considering broadening the index to a group of countries similar to the Group of 20 (G20) to include rich developing countries that still have a large amount of poverty within their borders.

Incorporating such countries would require the index to be built on a paradigm different from its current “rich world, poor world” model.

The CDI has seen slight improvements in industrialised countries over the past ten years. Nevertheless, as Roodman pointed out, “The richest largest nations are still falling short of their potential.”

The Norwegian government has announced it would assess the legitimacy of developing countries’ debt to Norway. In effect it will investigate whether its loans have been useful enough to warrant repayment.

That makes Norway the first nation ever to carry out a creditor’s debt audit. The United Kingdom appears to be following Norway’s example but campaigners are still facing some big hurdles.

Last Wednesday Norwegian Minister of Development Heikki Holmås announced an independent public audit of developing countries’ debt to Norway. The Norwegian government had promised to do so since being elected in 2009, and to work to establish binding guidelines for responsible lending.

“The Norwegian government is bold,” Gina Ekholt, director of SLUG, the Norwegian Coalition for Debt Cancellation, tells IPS. “Something like this has never been done before. It has the potential to change the global creditor society: other countries will start doing the same once everyone agrees this is an acceptable process and a moral obligation. We are proud of the Norwegian government to have made this historical political announcement.”

This is not the first time the Norwegian government has openly questioned its responsibility as a creditor. In 2006, Norway decided to cancel debt worth more than 70 million euros to Myanmar, Sudan, Egypt, Ecuador, Sierra Leone, Jamaica and Peru related to the Norwegian Ship Export Campaign.

During that campaign between 1976 and 1980, the Norwegian government tried to solve a crisis in the ship building industry by offering cheap loans to developing countries to buy Norwegian vessels. Ten years after the campaign the Norwegian Parliament concluded that the campaign had had very little developmental effect for the countries involved and therefore, the loans were illegitimate.

While announcing the debt audit, Holmås added that he does not expect to find any more cases of illegitimate debt. But there is reason to believe otherwise. In 2009, SLUG published a report focussing on Indonesia’s debt to Norway. According to the report, Indonesia is still repaying loans worth 160 million euros for a wave power plant that was never built, and failed technology for sea monitoring systems.

“These loans are clearly illegitimate,” Gina Ekholt tells IPS. “The projects for which the loans were given did not have the wanted effects. The technology did not work when tested in Norway, but it was still exported to Indonesia.”

The audit will apply the newly developed United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Principles to promote responsible borrowing and lending to evaluate the loans. “This is solid framework for the audit, but the challenge arises when they shall consider the legitimacy of the loans. Will they cancel debts from loans that breech with today’s guidelines, or just consider the criteria that were in place when the loans were given?” Ekholt says.

“We believe that we have to use today’s criteria and those are: a population should not owe debt for loans that have not benefitted the population. If the creditor knew that the loan would not benefit the population, there is a clear case of illegitimate debt.”

Ekholt does not believe the Norwegian government is willing to use today’s criteria. “That is where we will disagree. But we look forward to continuing this debate once the audit is finished. The Norwegian government has already taken several bold steps. We believe that they will deal with the consequences of this audit.”

Holmås has said the results of the audit will be available in a year.

Several months before the Norwegian initiative was launched, a group of British Members of Parliament started an investigation into the UK Export Credit Agency, the British institution which backs loans to foreign companies and countries to buy British exports. Unlike the Norwegian initiative, the British audit does not have an official or binding status.

“The government can ignore the results of this inquiry, or respond to its recommendations,” Tim Jones, policy officer at Jubilee Debt Campaign in the UK tells IPS. “Obviously we are pushing them to conduct their own official investigation. We hope the Norwegian example and this parliamentary investigation will help to make them act.”

Jubilee Debt Campaign is increasing its pressure on the UK government, especially since one of the parties in power took up the issue of illegitimacy of development loans before the 2010 general election. “The Liberal Democrats promised they would declare loans given to dictators and not used for development to be illegitimate,” Tim Jones tells IPS.

“There is evidence for development loans given to Indonesia during the time of General Suharto to buy tanks and airplanes. There is evidence for loans to buy arms given to Saddam Hussain, including a loan to build a chemical weapons factory.

“There is evidence for loans given to Egypt to buy equipment for the Egyptian army. The population clearly did not benefit but now has to repay these loans. We counted on the Liberal Democratic Party to denounce these loans, but it seems to be one of the policies they have forgotten about after assuming power.

While there is no doubt that global warming is primarily a consequence of human activities, it is also true that there are natural phenomena contributing to climate change as well.

These natural causes include terrestrial events such as volcanic activity, orogenesis, variations in ocean and air currents, and continental drift, which all play a part in raising average global temperatures.

A homeowner stands in the doorway of his house, flooded by a rise in sea level, on the coast of Surgidero de Batabano, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

There are also extraterrestrial factors, such as variations in the solar constant, which is the total radiation energy received from the sun per unit of time per unit of area.

These causes, particularly solar constant variations, are stressed by those who deny that climate change is an anthropogenic or “man-made” problem and insist that if global warming exists, it is due to natural causes, which means that any environmental policies aimed at mitigating it are doomed to failure.

But some of these phenomena, including solar constant variability, are cyclical, and their effects on the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere are marginal and cannot explain the changes that take place over long periods, according to Stefan Brönnimann, a professor of climatology at the University of Bern.

“Thanks to satellite observations, we know that the variability of the solar constant during the 11-year sunspot cycle is too small to account for the dimensions of terrestrial climate change,” Brönnimann told Tierramérica *.

The climatologist commented that another natural phenomenon, the circulation of the oceans, also contributes to the movement of heat in the earth’s climate system. “Unfortunately, scientific observation of this circulation is relatively recent, which means it is not possible to formulate reliable predictions of its future effects,” he said.

Correcting this shortage of data on the natural causes of climate change is one of the recommendations of an evaluation report commissioned by the Research Council of Norway, which appointed a committee of international experts to evaluate the climate research conducted to date by scientists in this northern European country.

The evaluation report, released in June in Oslo, observes that less effort has been devoted to studying and explaining the natural causes of climate change because these have been regarded as having a relatively minor impact on the earth’s climate system as compared to anthropogenic causes.

These anthropogenic causes include greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, industry, deforestation and agriculture.

But the report, “Norwegian Climate Research: An Evaluation”, stresses that a good understanding of the climate system cannot be reached without a dedicated effort to understand the contribution of natural processes to climate change.

Geological history very clearly documents a strong climate forcing associated with solar variability, although the exact mechanism has not been identified, the report notes.

These circumstances should have led to an international effort to study these natural processes, the report continues, “but surprisingly, the worldwide scientific effort to increase our understanding of the natural variations is very limited, and this is most probably related to the limited funding available for basic, not agenda-driven research.”

While the report’s authors do not specify the “agenda” to which they are referring, the wording chosen could be interpreted as an attempt to discredit scientific research on the human causes of climate change, as well as a denunciation of a supposed international refusal to study the natural causes of the phenomenon.

The European scientific sources consulted by Tierramérica did not wish to comment on the report, although they were clearly suprised by its tone and the reference to an alleged research “agenda”.

Norwegian climate researchers are well known and collaborate with their European peers on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The evaluation report recognized that Norwegian climate research has been in harmony with the mainstream of international climate science, but recommends “an increased effort” in research on the natural causes of climate change, in particular “the activity variations of the sun, the mechanism of cloud formation, and the multi-decadal variations in ocean current systems.”

Such criticisms appear to ignore the scientific evidence that the amount of solar energy received by the earth since 1750 has remained almost constant. Yet during this same period, and particularly since 1850, coinciding with the Industrial Revolution and the growing use of fossil fuels, there has been a continuous increase in global average temperatures and the concentration of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere.

Moreover, if global warming were caused by a higher solar constant, the average temperatures in all the layers of the atmosphere would be higher. However, while temperatures in the exosphere and ionosphere are lower today than in the last 150 years, the warming of the troposphere has been extensively documented.

This difference in temperature in the different layers of the atmosphere is a result of the greenhouse effect: gases like carbon dioxide trap the heat of the sun’s rays in the layer closest to the earth’s surface.

This is why, according to Brönnimann, “climate models based on the solar constant cannot reproduce the real increase in the earth’s temperature observed over the last 50 years if they do not take into account the greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans.”

* 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.