“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:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Dec 4 2014 (IPS)

The fact that in a referendum Switzerland has taken a path that goes in the opposite direction from that of Europe is an unusual fact which calls for reflection, especially because Switzerland has taken a much more progressive path, while we all were accustomed to see it as a very conservative country.

On Nov. 30, Swiss citizens were asked to vote on a proposal for reducing immigrants to a maximum of 17,000 per year, compared with 88.000 in 2013. This was rejected by 73 percent of the voters, after a unanimous campaign by the government, industrialists and trade unions that without immigrants there would be serious problems in keeping the economy expanding.

Roberto Savio

It is worth noting that foreigners account for 23.5 percent of the population in Switzerland, compared with an average of 4 percent in Europe as a whole.

Another proposal in the same referendum called for dedicating 10 percent of Swiss international cooperation to birth control in poor countries in order to reduce their birth rate. It was clearly a racist proposal, and was also defeated. Swiss citizens have no right to decide birth policies in other countries.

While the Swiss were voting, British Prime Minister David Cameron was making public his proposal to drastically restrict European immigration. Europeans would be expelled if they did not find a job within six months. They would have work continuously for four years before having access to the country’s social benefits of the country. They would also face restrictions to their right to bring their families with them, even after finding a job.“The real problem is that Europe has a dramatic lack of real statesmen or stateswomen who are ready to go against the polls for the good of their country”

The same debate is going on in Germany, where the government is also carrying out a media campaign to popularise its bill of law which also contemplates the expulsion of European immigrants who do not find a job within six months. It is obvious that this will have a cascade effect in several other European countries.

In both cases, this is an attempt to undercut anti-European parties – the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) which is on the rise in Britain and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany, although the AfD is not a threat like the UKIP and what Chancellor Angela Merkel is doing amounts to an act of populism.

There is a wave of xenophobia spreading throughout Europe. Marine Le Pen’s National Front is aiming to become the number one party in France. In Italy, the right-wing Northern League is growing by the day. Today there is a xenophobic and anti-European party in every country of Europe, with the notable exception of Spain, where the People’s Party has been able to make a right-wing party redundant.

What is striking is that all those parties are creating alliances and creating a pan-European rejection of the European Union. Marine Le Pen has just chaired a meeting in Lyon of seven extreme right-wing parties, like the Flemish Vlaame Belang in Belgium and the Dutch Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders.

What was even more striking was the presence of two leaders of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. Among Europe’s right-wing parties there is growing support for Putin, and a Russian bank, the First Czech-Russian Bank with headquarters in Moscow, has just given a loan of nine million dollars to the Le Pen’s National Front.

The reality is that Europe is in serious need of young immigrants to remain competitive internationally, and innumerable studies show that immigrants have a positive impact on the economy.

In England, immigrants account for 4.3 percent of the population, their rate of employment is 78.8 percent, slightly higher than the British average (73.6 percent), and just 15 percent of immigrants request some kind of subsidy. According to a study by University College London, European immigrants who arrived in the United Kingdom contributed more than 20 billion pounds to the country’s public finances between 2001 and 2011.

Similarly, all national and European studies on immigration show that immigrants request less subsidies than nationals, are net contributors in terms of taxation, and take jobs that nationals no longer want.

According to United Nations projections, Europe has a deficit of 20 million people if it wants to keep the pension system viable, but this is not simply “politically correct” at this moment. The very small minority of immigrants involved in crime is what everybody sees through strong media exposure, and the parties which are making their fortune are calling for a white and pure Europe again.

Pope Francis speaks about ethics and solidarity with immigrants, but if parties are able to ignore economics, just imagine ethics!

The Spanish National Institute of Statistics has just released its latest findings, and they are in line with similar studies everywhere in Europe. In 1976, 676,718 children were born in Spain – 18.7 babies for every 1,000 mothers. In 1995, there were 363,467 births – 9.2 babies for every 1,000 mothers.

For every 100 Spaniards of working age, 27.6 are over the age of 64 – by 2050, this figure will be closer to 73. An even more extreme figure comes from the Population Division of the United Nations. If the Spanish borders were to be closed and nobody could enter or leave, and with the growing reduction in the number of women of fertile age, by 2100 the Spanish population would stand at around 800,000 people!

We have just to look to the United States to see the opposite policy. Every year, young people bring constant expansion to the labour force and the economy. Not even the most rabid Republican speaks of abolishing immigration, just of keeping it at a lower rate.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is riding the issue of immigration due his shrinking popularity, but in the opposite direction. He wants to legalise as many illegal immigrants as possible … and there are already 52 million immigrants.

The real problem is that Europe has a dramatic lack of real statesmen or stateswomen who are ready to go against the polls for the good of their country. The best example is the powerful Angela Merkel, who has never taken any risk or any difficult decision (except on abolishing nuclear power, and that only because of the general aversion after the Japanese tsunami).

Merkel’s comment on the law on restricting European immigrants was: “Europe is not a social union”. In other words, the flow of capital is protected, the flow of workers is not.

In all this, the European Commission has been silent on immigration. And now, its President, Jean-Claude Juncker, unmoved by the revelations on how he helped hundreds of corporations to avoid taxes in Europe with deals in Luxembourg, is now presenting a development plan to which the Commission would contribute just 10 percent and the remaining 90 percent would be funded by the private sector… and that is his landmark!

Europe is clearly committing suicide and people will find out when it has already lost its position in world competition … only then, maybe, will the difference between a statesman and a politician become clear. (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:

A ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in relation to a Turkish national has kicked up a new row on anti-racism legislation.

The court ruled in December that Switzerland violated the right to freedom of speech of the Turkish national Doğu Perinçek by convicting him for calling the idea of an Armenian genocide an “international lie”.

In 2007, a court in the Swiss Canton of Vaud had found Perinçek guilty of racial discrimination as defined by Section 261 of the Swiss Criminal Code, ruling that the Armenian genocide was a proven historical fact. Already in 2003, the Swiss National Council had acknowledged the Armenian genocide.Until today, diverging interpretations of what happened in Armenia during and after the First World War strain bilateral relations.

Perinçek subsequently appealed in Switzerland’s Federal Court, which dismissed his claims. After that, Perinçek took his case to the ECHR in Strasbourg.

In its ruling, the ECHR found that Perinçek’s conviction by the Swiss court was wrong, as it violated Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights on freedom of expression. The court argued that Perinçek had never questioned the massacres and deportations perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, but had denied their characterisation as “genocide”. He didn’t mean to incite hatred against the Armenian people, the ECHR pointed out.

In fact, Perinçek’s view corresponds with Turkey’s official stance that is widely shared by the Turkish public, all main political parties as well as the state-run Historical Society. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called the ECHR decision “a victory for the rule of law.”

Schools and universities in Turkey teach that the killings of Armenians were neither deliberate, nor orchestrated by the Ottoman leadership in Istanbul. Further, Turkish historians doubt that up to 1.5 million Armenians had died, as many Western scholars claim.

However, Turkish estimates vary, starting around 10,000 Armenian casualties. Turkish historians argue that most of the death occurred due to illness and malnutrition.

Beyond Turkey’s eastern border, lobbying for worldwide genocide recognition is a fundamental part of Armenia’s foreign policy. Until today, diverging interpretations of what happened in Armenia during and after the First World War strain bilateral relations.

The ECHR highlighted that it wasn’t called upon to address either the veracity of the massacres and deportations perpetrated against the Armenian people or the appropriateness of legally characterising those acts as “genocide”. It doubted that there could be a consensus on the issue.

The Switzerland-Armenia Association (SAA) said it was “deeply disappointed and appalled by the ECHR verdict.”

Dominique de Buman, Swiss national councillor and co-president of the SAA told IPS: “The ECHR ruling isn’t just a setback for human dignity, but also contradicts a European Council Framework Decision that ordered member states to ensure that publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes were penalised.”

Such framework decisions do not pose a legal basis for the ECHR, however. De Buman also referred to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. “Don’t forget that the convention was adopted in reaction to the Holocaust as well as the Armenian genocide,” he told IPS.

The ECHR ruling has sparked a debate in Switzerland on whether or not the government should appeal the decision and if and how Swiss anti-racism legislation may be amended.

Councillor De Buman told IPS he was optimistic that an appeal could lead to a further examination of the case, as the ECHR ruling wasn’t unanimous: “Two of the seven judges had expressed a joint concurring opinion. They stated that there existed an international consensus regarding the characterisation of the massacres against the Armenian people.”

Judges András Sajó and Guido Raimondi would welcome a Swiss appeal to the Grand Chamber, as so far the court has never taken a view on the massacres and deportations of the Armenians. “It’s our symbolic and moral obligation to define and qualify these events,” they wrote. Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice hasn’t yet taken a decision in that regard.

The ECHR ruling plays into the hands of right-wing groups such as the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) who have repeatedly tried to knock down the country’s anti-racism legislation. Consequently, the party’s long-time leader Christoph Blocher demanded a change of the criminal code. Legally, the ECHR ruling doesn’t force Switzerland to amendments.

Silvia Bär, the SVP’s secretary general, told IPS that the party is preparing a parliamentary request to specify or even abolish Swiss anti-racism legislation. “We reject racism. However, the current application of the legislation is getting increasingly absurd and incorrectly limits the right to freedom of expression.”

According to Bär, the anti-racism legislation is being misused to discipline and sanction unwelcome opinions. In addition, the SVP demands that Switzerland resigns from the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and that it dissolves the Federal Commission against Racism (EKR).

Martine Brunschwig Graf, National Councillor for the Liberals and President of the EKR has doubts about these intentions. “The ECHR ruling is complex and doesn’t put the Swiss anti-racism paragraph in question,” she told IPS. From 1995 to 2012, Swiss courts have sentenced accused persons in 310 cases under that paragraph.

Brunschwig Graf calls the legislation an indispensable instrument: “The fight against racism requires prevention at all levels, but also repression if certain limits are surpassed.”

Among the other parties, the Swiss anti-racism legislation enjoys broad support. Hansjörg Fehr of the Social Democrats told the Swiss national radio that if the criminal code was to be changed, then “we need a passage that explicitly punishes the denial of the Armenian genocide.”

The debate is expected to ignite at the next parliamentary session in March.

Ziad Ali and his family in their ‘home’ in Switzerland. Credit: Ray Smith/IPS.

By Ray Smith
LUCERNE, Switzerland , Jan 25 2014 (IPS)

Switzerland facilitated family reunification for Syrians in September. So far, more than 1,100 Syrian refugees have benefited from the programme, while thousands are waiting at Swiss embassies in the region, hoping for a similar chance. Surprised by these numbers, Switzerland put an end to the programme.

Several European countries responded to an appeal by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees  (UNHCR) last summer to admit Syrian refugees. Switzerland announced it would accept 500 “especially vulnerable refugees” over three years.Either Swiss authorities were surprised by these numbers, or considered their humanitarian action short-lived.

Further, the country that hosts about 2,000 citizens of Syrian origin pledged to open its borders for their relatives. By the end of November, Swiss embassies in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan had granted 1,600 Syrians a three-month entry visa.

At least 1,100 of these have already travelled to Switzerland. A further 5,000 Syrians have applied for appointments at Swiss embassies to file similar visa requests.

Either Swiss authorities were surprised by these numbers, or considered their humanitarian action short-lived. Already in early November, they introduced bureaucratic hurdles: Swiss-based Syrians who had invited their relatives now needed to meet certain financial requirements.

“Looking at the size of an average Syrian family, these requirements constitute a killer criteria,” said Beat Meiner, secretary-general of the Swiss Refugee Council (SFH). “Few of the Swiss-based Syrians have enough money to clear these hurdles.”

Meiner’s warnings fell on deaf ears. Even worse, a month later Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga cancelled the family reunification programme entirely. “We assume that most of those Syrians who are entitled to apply for entry visas and face immediate distress have made use of our eased visa requirements,” she argued.

Ashti Amir, a Kurdish Syrian who fled to Switzerland for political reasons more than a decade ago and now runs the charity SyriAid, has a different perspective. Since September, he managed to get the families of one of his brothers and sisters to Switzerland. Amir told IPS that he still had two brothers and his parents back home in Aleppo and wanted to get them to Switzerland, too.

“Escaping from there and travelling to an embassy abroad is not only difficult, but very costly,” he said. Amir knows dozens of other compatriots who have relatives in danger in Syria whom they want to rescue.

Another sister of his as well as a sister-in-law are stranded in Istanbul with their families, waiting for an entry visa to Switzerland. They had applied for an appointment before Switzerland cancelled its reunification programme, and Amir is optimistic that they’ll finally be granted a visa.

“But if not: where should they go? Their long stay in Turkey has eaten up their savings.”

SFH’s Beat Meiner says that many Syrians have embarked on a dangerous trip to Swiss embassies in the Middle East, assuming they can successfully apply for an entry visa there. “Some of them are blocked now: they may neither come to Switzerland, nor return to Syria,” he says.

He’s convinced that Swiss humanitarian action could have been prolonged and that considerably more human lives could have been saved.

Besides that, Switzerland also hesitates to treat about 2,000 asylum requests by Syrians who had fled to the country individually rather than as families. Some of them have been waiting three to four years for a decision.

IPS met Ziad Ali and his family in central Switzerland. Originally from Malikiyah in the northeast of Syria, Ali moved to Damascus as a youth, where he earned his living as a taxi driver. “As a Kurd in Syria, you took any job you may get anywhere,” he says.

Before he fled the country, Ali worked in Idlib region as a gardener. He was arrested at a demonstration in Qamishli and then tortured in a prison in Deir az-Zour in Syria.

After his release, escaping the country appeared to him the only option. His wife and their two children reached Switzerland in June 2011, while Ali followed in January 2012.

Ali says the fate of his sister and his father, who were arrested by the Syrian regime in 2011, is constantly on his mind. He hasn’t heard from them since then.

His daughter Fatima and his son Mohamed go to school locally and already speak better German than Kurdish. A year ago, their youngest brother Azad was born. The family lives in a barracks established for asylum-seekers, occupying three rooms.

Their asylum request is still in limbo, leaving the family in constant insecurity about their destiny.

Moreno Casasola, secretary-general of the refugee rights organisation Solidarité sans Frontières, says that asylum requests of Syrians are mostly put aside by the Federal Office for Migration. Like any other European country, Switzerland fears that answering asylum requests positively would attract even more Syrian refugees.

Federal Office for Migration spokesperson Michael Glauser acknowledges that asylum requests of Syrians aren’t treated with priority. He denies, however, any decision moratorium. Glauser asserts that Syrian asylum-seekers enjoy Switzerland’s protection – and for the moment haven’t been sent back to Syria.

Ziad Ali and his family, along with other Syrian asylum-seekers, have protested in front of the Federal Office for Migration in Bern, demanding a speedy decision on their request. Getting at least temporary official admission would give them a perspective for the next few years and facilitate hunting for a job.

Despite his desperation, Ziad Ali hopes for a positive outcome. He says he wouldn’t mind returning to Syria once the war has ended, if Kurds were treated fairly. “But the longer my children live here, the more difficult it would be for them to return.”

A Swiss village has decided to reject tax money from the firm Glencore and to instead donate it to charities. Other towns may follow, sending a strong signal to the government to follow the U.S. and the EU and introduce transparency rules for the extractive industry.

It’s rush hour in the city of Zug in Central Switzerland as Mrs Sandra Räppli struggles to raise her voice over the traffic noise. About 35 people listen as she lectures about commodity extraction and trading companies based in the city and the neighbouring town of Baar.

Räppli talks about complex company structures and tax optimisation, finally asking the audience: “Could you follow my explanations? Did you understand?” Then she smiles: “You couldn’t? No problem, because that is what those companies intend.”“Even as a member of parliament I can't be sure that things are handled correctly if the government on any occasion hides behind the tax secret.”

Once a month, actress Maria Greco slips into the role of Sandra Räppli and guides groups of inhabitants and visitors through the streets of Zug. The canton counts 116,000 inhabitants and more than 30,000 companies, 105 of which belong to the commodity cluster formed by GlencoreXstrata, Northstream, Rusal and Gazprom, to name just a few.

Privileged taxation for holding, domicile and mixed companies brought these firms here. Holding companies are exempt from cantonal income tax, and pay almost no capital tax. Incomes of management companies generated abroad are hardly taxed, too.

Critics say Zug’s tax environment is an invitation to ‘transfer pricing’, a method to allocate a corporation’s net profit before taxation; in other words a means for tax evasion. Despite sales of 214.44 billion dollars in 2012, Glencore paid no tax on earnings at all in the canton of Zug last year.

The commodity cluster as a whole is estimated to have paid only 40 million dollars in cantonal and communal taxes.

Under official secrecy rules, exact taxes paid by Glencore and other companies are not available. Statistics on the number of companies or their employees is also lacking, even at the national level.

“That  lack of transparency is a major problem,” says Andreas Hürlimann, a parliamentarian with the Green-Alternative party in Zug. “Even as a member of parliament I can’t be sure that things are handled correctly if the government on any occasion hides behind the tax secret.”

Hürlimann finds Zug’s tax regulation deeply unfair. “It makes us rich, while people in extraction countries suffer, as the companies evade taxation there.” He says that Zug bears at least some moral responsibility.

At the end of her tour, Sandra Räppli stops in front of Zug’s town hall. “Our politicians are hand in glove with Glencore’s managers,” she tells her audience. “Only if people get active can something be done about these companies.”

Räppli has just ended her second season of city tours. She’s happy that the attendance has remained high – by Swiss standards. Media reports and a campaign run by the Swiss non-governmental organisation Berne Declaration have clearly increased popular interest in the commodity sector.

In the nearby canton of Zurich, these efforts have yielded fruits. Several villages are up in arms against Glencore. The corporation’s flotation on the stock market in 2011 had filled the pockets of CEO Ivan Glasenberg, leading to a huge one-time tax inflow for the canton. That money was redistributed to the communes.

But in several communes, residents were appalled by profiting indirectly from what they call “Glencore’s dubious business conduct abroad.” They collected signatures and demanded that at least 10 percent of the “Glencore money” be donated to charities who support affected communities in extraction regions.

In Hedingen, a village of 3,500, voters approved the donation of 120,000 dollars to charities. Samuel Schweizer, a member of the local citizens’ committee, explained that success to IPS: “Our proximity to Zug was crucial, people could relate to Glencore. Also, we’ve managed to build a broad committee.”

Schweizer explained that donating only 10 percent of the “Glencore money” instead of the whole amount further helped to find a majority.

At least five more communes will soon decide upon similar initiatives. In Affoltern for example, 180,000 dollars are at stake. In Hausen, it’s 80,000 dollars.

There, Franz Schüle of the local initiative committee is optimistic. “We live in a rural area. When I explain that in Colombia the surface of the land belongs to the farmers, while everything below can be owned by extraction companies, people can relate to the problem easily.”

“Direct democracy has hit Glencore,” says Oliver Classen, spokesperson of the Berne Declaration. He’s aware that these communal initiatives are only a drop in the ocean and a one-time effort. “However, Hedingen has a huge political signalling effect,” Classen tells IPS.

This summer, the European parliament introduced the Transparency and Accounting Directives that force mining, oil and gas companies to publish their payments to governments; country by country and project by project. The Swiss government has remained hesitant so far and will present its own measures next spring.

Oliver Classen demands transparency on payments and human rights obligations for commodities companies producing or trading abroad.

GlencoreXstrata neither commented on the tax initiatives nor responded to accusations ranging from tax avoidance to violating basic human rights in extraction countries. Its spokesperson Charles Watenpuhl sent IPS a statement.

“We believe that Glencore’s global presence and economic strength have a predominantly positive impact on the communities in which we operate. We seek out, undertake and contribute to activities and programmes designed to improve quality of life for the people in these communities.

“Glencore’s tax strategy and payments play a vital role in our intention to achieve long-term sustainable development. We are committed to full compliance with all statutory obligations, full disclosure to tax authorities and reporting transparently in the tax payments that we make to the governments of the countries in which we operate.”

One of several water dams on Grimsel Pass in the Swiss Alps. Hydropower used to be profitable, but now revenues have shrunk drastically. Credit: Ray Smith/IPS.

By Ray Smith
LUCERNE, Switzerland, Aug 28 2013 (IPS)

Water power is the backbone of Alpine countries’ energy supply. Despite its important role in Europe’s energy shift, further development of hydroelectric infrastructure in Austria and Switzerland is on hold.

On sunny, windy summer days in Germany, when millions of solar panels soak up the sun and wind turbines run at full speed, the German electricity network can’t cope with the overcapacity. Especially on Sundays, production often exceeds demand. The result is low prices, at times even negative ones; which means customers get paid for buying electricity.

Europe’s energy market is liberalised. What happens in Germany affects all its neighbours. Swiss hydropower stations are unable to compete under these conditions. The heyday of Swiss water power is over.

The energy source that covers 55 percent of the country’s energy supply faces drastically reduced profitability, as electricity prices have sunk 20 percent again compared to the preceding year.The heyday of Swiss water power is over.

In the light of this market environment, the biggest Swiss energy producers Alpiq, Axpo, BKW and Repower are less willing to invest in optimising and enlarging their infrastructure. Repower has announced a 35 percent cut in investments in the next 10 to 15 years.

Andreas Meyer, media person at Alpiq, told IPS that the massive subsidies for renewable energy have destabilised the market, putting in question the profitability of hydro and thermal power stations and blocking further investments. Currently, Alpiq runs a divestment programme. The company is worried that the price deterioration will continue.

Further development potential of Swiss water power is disputed. While the government estimated four to five terrawatt hours, the World Wildlife Fund assessed only 1.5 terrawatt hours. In any case, the potential is quite low.

Nevertheless, Switzerland subsidises small hydropower stations with a capacity of less than 10 megawatt massively, irrespective of their efficiency and the ecological damage they may cause.

Due to the subventions, small water power projects have become cash cows. The WWF demands that these subsidies be stopped. “Building new power stations at previously unspoilt waters is absolutely silly,” water expert at WWF Switzerland Christoph Bonzi tells IPS. Today, 95 percent of Swiss water is used for energy production.

For once, conservationists and the leading energy suppliers take a common stand on the Swiss subsidy model that favours small hydropower projects. “Isn’t it absurd that subsidising new renewable energy leads to a situation where even other systemic technologies need to be subsidised?” says Werner Steinmann, spokesperson for Repower.

The boom of solar and wind energy in Europe has lead to increased demand for electricity storage, as both energy sources are unsteady. Germany, Switzerland and Austria agreed last year to increase the capacities of pumped-storage hydropower plants in a concerted effort.

Several such plants are currently being constructed in the Swiss Alps. Whether these investments will finally pay off is more uncertain then ever.

Some Swiss energy companies don’t oppose all state subsidies for renewable energy. Repower’s biggest shareholder is the Canton of Grisons. Recently, the canton’s chief councillor Mario Cavigelli broke a taboo when he demanded subsidies even for electricity produced in big hydro power plants. Cavigelli asked for cutting money granted to small hydropower projects.

Within the energy sector, that demand is disputed however. Axpo’s media person Daniela Biedermann says that it can’t be a solution to solve the mistakes of the current subsidies regulation with additional subventions. “We need to discuss how to implement the new renewable energies into a market-oriented system instead,” she told IPS.

The Swiss Association for Water Management (SWV), which represents the industry, demands that subsidies for hydropower may no longer be limited to small projects and that instead the relevant criteria would have to be efficiency, an aspect that the current subsidy system completely ignores. The SWV wants promotion for those projects that produce the most electricity per subsidy-dollar.

Conservationists are less happy about the various further demands voiced by the water power industry though. In the name of “national interest”, water power companies have been trying to tap even nationally protected waters. Instead of using even the last drop of water for electricity production, the WWF prefers to increase energy efficiency.

Just across the border, the Austrian hydropower industry struggles with similar problems. Currently, about 60 percent of the country’s electricity supply is covered by domestic water power. The industry once intended to increase its capacity by seven terrawatt hours until 2020.

“We surely won’t be able to meet up with our expectations,” says Ernst Brandstetter, spokesperson of Oesterreichs Energie, which represents the interests of the Austrian electricity industry. According to Brandstetter, only an additional four terrawatt hours until 2025 are realistic. “Unfortunately, many projects are on hold. The industry is about five years behind its development plans.”

Brandstetter explains that regarding water power stations, the current market situation is characterised by acute insecurity. “Many planned projects are economically no longer justifiable.” Oesterreichs Energie doesn’t demand subsidies. It however wants a more investor-friendly environment.

“Most worrying is that even storage projects are about to become unprofitable,” Brandstetter adds. “Along with the electricity networks, pumped storage hydropower plants are the most important enablers of a renewable energy future.”

Ernst Brandstetter demands a stop to market distortions by introducing a European market design with rules granting all energy sources fair competitive conditions.

For Switzerland’s and Austria’s hydro power industry, much depends on developments at the European Union. On that level, a consultation on Environmental and Energy Aid Guidelines 2014-2020 is currently under way. Whether or not Alpine hydropower may profit from the new guidelines will be seen next spring.

Regula Bäbler: "Our basic objective is people’s welfare.” Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jul 23 2013 (IPS)

“The basic objective of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is people’s welfare, and I think that in this we have many affinities with what the Cuban government wants,” Regula Bäbler told IPS.

The SDC, which has been operating in Cuba for over a decade, provides cooperation in social and economic areas through development programmes in areas ranging from food security and climate change to housing, bioenergy and gender equality.

Globally, the SDC’s main focus in the 2013-2016 period will be on five programmes, in the areas of climate change, water, food security, health and migration.

“We work on these matters both globally and regionally, like for example adaptation to climate change in this region,” said Bäbler, who at the end of her mission in Havana summed up the SDC’s priorities, at the global and regional level, and in the case of Cuba in particular, in this interview with IPS.

Q: What is the result of the SDC’s cooperation with Cuba in the area of climate change, and what challenges will be faced over the next few years?

A: The framework for cooperation with Cuba for the 2011-2014 period is not explicit about this issue. However, in early 2011 the Swiss parliament approved extra financing for projects dedicated to climate change adaptation. That provided an important boost for Switzerland’s cooperation in all countries.

Thanks to counterparts who had already taken steps forward in this matter, we managed to support three projects. One was from the IPS (Inter Press Service) news agency, which approaches the problem from the media with a regional focus, called “Retos de la naturaleza: Cambio climático, mitigación y adaptación en el Gran Caribe” (Challenges of Nature: Climate Change, Mitigation and Adaptation in the Greater Caribbean).

In the concrete case of Cuba, another of these programmes made it possible for the city historian’s office to study climate change threats to the ‘malecón’ (seaside avenue), which stretches along several kilometres of the coastline in Havana.

And a third project involved a Habitat programme, to raise people’s awareness on climate change threats and how to adapt.

Q: The BASAL (Environmental Bases for Local Food Sustainability) project was the last one that the SDC financed in conjunction with the European Union. What aim does this programme have?

A: It’s a very ambitious project, and at the same time very simple, because it tries to get farmers to continue obtaining fruits from their labour despite climate change. Perhaps their yields will increase or improve, but the main objective is to maintain what farmers have now.

For now it covers three municipalities, although the idea is to extend it to 30. A central issue in this project is improving information on the changes underway and on how to adapt agricultural production to problems like the salinisation of soil, drought, or intense and unseasonal rainfall or more intense hurricanes.

Q: What sectors does the SDC’s cooperation target, in social matters?

A: In general, we think it’s necessary to uphold and ensure equality. It’s well-known that everyone has access to healthcare, education and the basics necessary for life (in Cuba). But we also observed – and we are not the only ones – that the changes proposed by the government itself could give rise to inequalities.

We feel a commitment to the people and groups who would be left at a disadvantage because they are not well-prepared to take advantage of the changes. In this sense, we support the municipalities in different projects so they will have the capacity to discover and open up possibilities for these sectors.

All of this without forgetting about gender equality, which for the SDC is an essential cross-cutting issue – in other words, every project must take into consideration how men and women will be affected, while working to ensure equal benefits.

This work also incorporates issues like the questions of masculinity and gender violence.

Q: What challenges has the process of updating the economic model, currently being carried out by the Cuban government, posed for international cooperation?

A: The work of cooperation is to support changes to improve people’s living conditions. For me it is clear that the Cuban government also wants that. In that sense, the process of updating the economy is welcome, and we want to support it.

We also know that these processes are complicated and require a great deal of adaptation and reorganisation by the institutions.

I understand that the country needs heavy financial investment, which doesn’t come from donors. But the bodies we work with think international cooperation brings ideas and impetus that are also important. Perhaps this would be a good foundation for dialogue with high-level government representatives.

Excerpt:

Switzerland has started to house asylum seekers in underground bunkers on remote mountains. Credit: Ray Smith/IPS.

By Ray Smith
LUCERNE, Switzerland, May 2 2013 (IPS)

Struggling to accommodate all its asylum seekers, Swiss authorities have turned to unused army quarters. Some of these lie on mountain passes, far away from inhabited areas.

Last year, 28,631 persons asked for asylum in Switzerland, nearly twice as many as 2010. Most applicants came from Eritrea, Nigeria and Tunisia. At the end of March 2013, 44,478 persons were registered at the Federal Office for Migration (FOM), which is responsible the asylum process.

Swiss authorities struggle to accommodate all the immigrants. It’s a home-made problem however, as former justice minister and prominent right-wing politician Christoph Blocher initiated a drastic reduction in the country’s asylum infrastructure in 2006.

Reacting to the shortage, the Swiss government in March 2012 ordered the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) to provide accommodation for 4,000 asylum seekers. The DDPS oversees the Swiss Armed Forces, which have plenty of unused infrastructure.

Nevertheless, the DDPS efforts were slowed by political adversities, building restrictions and non-conformance with communal spatial plans. The parliament therefore passed a resolution allowing bypass of communal and cantonal permission procedures.

Swiss army quarters often are located in very remote areas. However, many citizens are glad to see asylum seekers accommodated far away from populated areas. That atmosphere is the result of more than a decade of right-wing populist campaigns against foreigners and asylum seekers in special.

Before they are distributed to the cantons, the FOM hosts asylum seekers in its own collective centres. Due to the urgent need, remote accommodations seem right for the FOM, even if they pose logistical challenges.

One of these temporary accommodations was opened last October near the village Sufers in the Grison Alps 1,400 metres above sea level. “The asylum seekers live in an old, bleak bunker in a narrow valley,” says Denise Graf of Amnesty International, who recently was allowed to visit the place. “There are no houses nearby, just trees and heaps of snow.”

As in all FOM centres, asylum seekers may only stay outside between 9 am and 5 pm. An army barrack serves as a recreation room. For the weekend, they may leave the centre. “To compensate for their spatial isolation, they are given free tickets for public transportation on weekends. However, the next bus stop is several kilometres away from the bunker,” Graf tells IPS.

“Contact between Sufers’ 130 residents and the 80 asylum seekers is rare,” says the village’s mayor Thomas Lechner. “The centre is two-and-a-half kilometres away from the village.” Asked if he considered an underground bunker a suitable place for asylum seekers, the mayor says: “People are in there for a maximum of 35 days. For army troops, it was handled this way as well, so I guess it’s also reasonable for asylum seekers.”

As the centre in Sufers was closed in the end of April, IPS couldn’t speak to any of its inhabitants. However, former inhabitants of other remote asylum centres have spoken of extreme boredom, which sometimes raised the potential for conflicts.

“It is very difficult to live in bunkers, especially with limited freedom of movement,” says Moreno Casasola, secretary general of the refugee rights organisation ‘Solidarité sans Frontières’. “As you can also see from soldiers’ experiences, it negatively affects your mind quickly.”

The FOM was aware of that, so Sufers and other villages in the valley were asked to provide work opportunities. “It was a win-win situation for the asylum seekers as well as for our commune,” says mayor Thomas Lechner. “They prepared firewood, renovated hiking paths and cleaned wood pastures.

“Indeed, many asylum seekers have welcomed work opportunities. It has raised their acceptance and improved their reputation among locals,” says Amnesty’s Denise Graf. “However, it’s definitely no solution to place asylum seekers in such remote areas in the mountains.”

Because the centre in Sufers has closed, another temporary centre will be opened on the Lukmanier Pass, which connects the cantons of Grisons and Ticino. There, up to 100 asylum seekers will be accommodated once the snow has melted.

“We decided to lend a hand to the FOM,” Peter Binz says. He is the mayor of nearby Medel, the municipality to which the mountain pass belongs. Medel has 400 inhabitants, its main village Curaglia is 15 kilometres away from Lukmanier Pass.

“We approach the issue with a certain respect and openness,” Binz says. Currently, he collects ideas for work opportunities. “They’ll use the bus and our shop, but besides that there won’t be many contacts with the asylum seekers,” he estimates.

Quite soon, the FOM may announce the opening of yet another asylum centre at Lago della Sella 2,256 meters above sea level. The artificial lake is located near Gotthard Pass, which connects Switzerland’s North to the Italian-speaking South.

Lago della Sella belongs to the municipality of Airolo. Its mayor Franco Pedrini is worried: “Nobody lives up there. It’s a beautiful place just fine for a one-week holiday camp, however the climate is rough. It’s not suitable for asylum seekers.”

Even though the centre at Lago della Sella would only be used in summer, it isn’t unusual that snow falls even in July or August. “A little remote would be fine and please citizens who fear the asylum seekers’ presence,” Pedrini says, “but that’s just way too far from any civilized area.”

‘Solidarité sans Frontières’ radically opposes remote asylum centres. “These are human beings, not cows that are brought to the mountains in summer,” its secretary general Moreno Casasola says. He points at other options. “The FOM only relies on the DDPS to provide accommodations. They need to expand their range of partners and include for example clerical institutions, which own plenty of suitable real estate,” Casasola argues.

André Durrer, who works for the relief organisation Caritas, also shakes his head. He prefers asylum centres in urban agglomerations. “For 20 years, we have run asylum centres within populated areas without fences around them and private security standing guard. And it has worked,” he says.

“By providing good assistance and conditions for the asylum seekers, no increased security arrangements are needed like at FOM-centres,” Durrer argues.

The powerful Swiss commodity sector is under fire here, as citizens fed up with government inaction on charges of corporate corruption, tax evasion and lack of transparency gear up for major protests.

Switzerland is anything but a country rich in raw materials but it is, nevertheless, a major hub for international commodity trade, hosting some of the world’s biggest commodities companies such as Glencore (which specialises in power generation, steel production, oil and food processing); Xstrata (copper, zinc, aluminium, nickel and coal-fired electricity), Vitol (which ships oil products like gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and metals, as well as ethanol and chemicals) and Mercuria (dealing in oil and energy products).

Swiss-based companies are estimated to have a share of 15 to 25 percent of the global commodities trade.

Data provided by the industry reveals that 60 percent of the global metals and coffee trade is done in Switzerland. In sugar, the Swiss sector has a market share of 50 percent and in crude oil and grains it makes up 35 percent of global trade.

Against this backdrop, Swiss critics are preparing for a chance to voice their grievances with these massive commodities giants at the second annual Financial Times Global Commodities Summit to be held in the city of Lausanne, about 60 kilometres northeast of Geneva, on Apr. 15.

But protestors say the summit “is a symbol of exploitation and speculation”.

“While the companies’ profits increase, the local population in mining countries suffers from environmental damage, expulsion, tax avoidance and anti-trade union measures,” Yvonne Zimmermann of MultiWatch, a broad coalition of NGOs, trade unions and anti-globalisation organisations, tells IPS.

An alliance of two-dozen organisations is calling for a demonstration to coincide with the arrival of businessmen in Lausanne on Apr. 15. Speaking on behalf of the protest organisers, Alwin Egger tells IPS the march, which is expected to draw hundreds, will move towards the Hotel Beau-Rivage Palace, where the summit takes place.

A member of the anti-globalisation Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens (ATTAC), Egger says, “In our opinion, it’s the people who should have control over extraction and trade of raw materials, not profit-oriented companies.”

Over the last decade, the commodities business has grown exponentially in Switzerland. In 2011, its net receipts from trade added up to 20 billion Swiss francs (or 21 billion dollars), contributing 3.5 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). While some corporations are only involved in either commodity trade or extraction, most of them offer services throughout the entire supply chain.

For more than a century, commodity companies have flocked to Switzerland to avail themselves of the country’s low tax rates and the privileged corporate taxation system. Holding companies, for example, are exempt from corporate income tax on cantonal and communal levels as long as they own shares in foreign companies only. Besides, Switzerland offers strong banks, political stability and a high standard of living.

That the country wasn’t a member of the United Nations until 2002 was another factor behind its popularity, as it allowed Switzerland-based companies to avoid U.N. embargoes and sanctions.

The commodities business is known for its discreetness. But as of late, that peace has been disturbed by NGOs such as the Berne Declaration (BD), which published a groundbreaking book in 2011 to shed light on some of the dubious practices the sector constantly engages in.

Accusations range from human rights abuses, ecological destruction, exploitation, to corruption and tax avoidance in developing countries. In 2012, for instance, NGOs accused Glencore of buying copper from intermediaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo that was extracted partly using child labour and under precarious conditions.

Entitled “Commodities – Switzerland’s Most Dangerous Business”, the book found that “trade in oil, gas, coal, metals and agricultural products – particularly via deals made in Geneva and Zug – has grown by an incredible 1,500 percent since 1998…The result: Seven of the twelve corporations with the highest turnover in Switzerland trade in…or mine commodities.”

“As more information becomes available, attentiveness to the issue grows” — and so does criticism, observes Zimmermann, adding that a media spotlight on these practices has dealt a harsh blow to the industry’s public image.

But Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Amman opposes specific, national regulations for the commodities sector. “We don’t want to treat our companies any stricter than other, competing locations do,” he said at a press conference, echoing the standard argument issued every time the corporate tax system is in the line of fire: that Switzerland cannot afford to have companies relocate elsewhere.

For critical experts like Classen, this excuse is not valid since “there are no unregulated alternative business locations” anywhere else in the world.

The Swiss Federal Council has proposed a consultation draft for a transparency regulation similar to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act in the United States, section 1504 of which obliges companies to disclose their payments to governments for access to oil, gas and minerals. It is still unclear, though, whether payments of commodity trading companies will be included in the Swiss draft regulation.

Fearing new regulations, the Swiss commodities sector has ramped up its lobbying efforts. Associations representing the industry have popped up in the main commodity trading hubs of Geneva, Zug and Lugano.

Glencore recently invited Swiss parliamentarians to hear an explanation of its “engagement for sustainable business, for the health and safety of its employees and for the environment”. Media and NGOs were denied access to the closed-door meeting.

“The sector is concerned that it has become the subject of attentiveness and debates,” says MultiWatch’s Zimmermann, who protested against the recent lobby event.

“As a reaction to criticism, these companies have started to publish sustainability reports”, she said, which whitewash their practices and portray themselves as charities.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Mar 11 2013 (IPS)

For those who think that Occupy Wall Street, the Indignados in Spain, the World Social Forum and the numerous manifestations of protest worldwide are expressions without concrete outcomes, the result of the Swiss referendum on Mar. 3 on capping the salaries and bonuses of banks executives should make them think twice.

Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News. Credit: Courtesy Roberto Savio

Like it or not, two-thirds of the Swiss, who are not exactly a revolutionary people, have given the shareholders of financial institutions the right to decide salaries and bonuses of their executives.

Another referendum — on limiting the salaries and bonuses of company executives from all sectors to a figure that does not exceed 15 times that of the average salary of their employees — is due shortly.

At the same time the European Commission and the European Parliament have reached an agreement on capping bank executives’ bonuses at an amount equal to their annual salary. If the shareholders decide, it can be twice their annual salary, but no more.

The howling of the bankers, while expected, is very interesting in explaining the reasons for their rejection of the results. The first, basically from the United Kingdom, is that the gap between London and Europe is increasing. The financial sector accounts for ten percent of the British gross national product (GNP) and the Anglo-Saxon world has been riding the wave of bankers’ increasing bonuses and salaries much more than elsewhere. In a good year, a bonus can be ten times higher than a salary.

But it is a fact that the UK is moving, as the last local elections showed, toward an increasingly anti-European sentiment, and as long as London keeps applying the brakes, Europe will never become more integrated.

Second, the bankers say that the result will be higher fixed salaries, which would hurt shareholders even more, while high bonuses are more flexible. Thus good executives would move to Wall Street, or Hong Kong, Shanghai or Tokyo, and Europe would be left with second-class executives.

Now, it is widely known that high bonuses reward risk-taking, which is one of the causes of the dismal performance of the banking system. Furthermore, this argument ignores that there is a growing consensus on the need to go back to the pre-Bill Clinton era, when commercial and investment banks in the U.S. were separated, precisely to reduce the high-risk culture that has led to increased unemployment and poverty worldwide.

The third argument is the most interesting, and shows how much the world of banking has grown into its own delusion. Bonuses are mostly given in the form of a “clawback bonus”; they are deferred and often paid in the form of stocks, and they can be retracted. The big banks, like the Royal Bank of Scotland or Barclays, have used clawbacks, and bankers say that this threat has itself become a powerful deterrent to risky or unethical behaviour.

Now, no data are available on how much this clawback has been used anywhere. What is available, however, is information on the innumerable fines that have been applied to the big banks for fraud. Suffice to remember that the very lenient American regulators have slapped fines of more than three billions dollars on the big banks.

Let us just recall some specifics: 8.5 billion for fraudulent foreclosures on home loans to ten banks (including Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase), followed by a similar settlement of 557 million dollars to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The case of the fraudulent fixing of the Libor rate (the rate of exchange among banks) has cost UBS alone 1.5 billion dollars up to now. The director of Barclays has been obliged to resign.

Where is the effect of the clawback bonus as a wall against risky and unethical behaviour?

The world crisis, which was entirely engineered by speculative finance in the U.S. and erupted in 2008, coupled two years later with the crisis of sovereign debt, an entirely European affair. This has led to the unprecedented blackmail of governments by the markets and to the uniform medicine of austerity, with Greece as the clearest example of its impact on the people.

Viewed in this context, news that the 100 richest people in the world added 240 billion dollars to their wealth in 2012 is even more obscene. Clearly, they had no need of that money, in human terms.

The top two percent of the world’s population (60 million people) now possesses as much wealth as 2.5 billion people. The top 0.01 percent (600,000 persons) has as much wealth as two billion people.

There are now 1,200 billionaires in the world. Simultaneously, we are facing a serious food problem. Every day, there are 192,300 new mouths to feed, 70 million every year. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) the reserves of food have gone down by 2.6 percent, while the cost keeps going up (cereals by 10 to 35 percent, depending on the product).

Yet, according to the World Bank, we throw away 40 percent of food in the rich countries. So, with the 240 billion piled up in a year by the 100 richest people, we could eliminate many of the world’s problems.

Two billion more people are expected in a few decades (by 2050). The system is not able even to accommodate the current seven billion. How will it accommodate two billion more, coming from the poorest parts of the planet?

The answer is obvious: we have the wealth, but it is not distributed justly. As the saying goes, the rich become richer while the poor get poorer.

Consequently, people are getting fed up, as the Swiss referendum has clearly shown. Everywhere discontent is seeping into the polls, with protest parties flourishing everywhere.

We are in transition to a different system. This can be done through peaceful and cooperative means, or by a continuation of this growing social injustice. History has many lessons on this issue, and it is useless to recall them. We all read them at school, even the 100 billionaires. So, as the Swiss referendum shows, it is not awareness that is lacking: it is political will.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Aegis, a ‘private security and risk management company’ has moved quietly into Switzerland. Credit: Ray Smith/IPS.

By Ray Smith
BASEL, Feb 18 2013 (IPS)

The Swiss government has presented a draft law regulating the private military industry but critics argue the law is toothless.

On Mar. 24 2010, a newly founded holding company was registered in Basel’s commercial register. Its name was Aegis Group Holdings AG. A few months later, on Aug. 2, it was noted that the holding had taken control over the London-based Aegis Defence Services Ltd.

AEGIS describes itself as “a leading private security and risk management company.” As such, it has been providing its services worldwide, including in war-torn countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The company’s relocation caught the government as well as the public by surprise. More private military companies (PMCs) were expected to move to Switzerland, trying to profit from the country’s political stability, low business taxes and its peaceful and neutral image.

PMCs do not differ legally from any other security provider, and firms active in conflict zones are hard to identify in the commercial register. The Federal Department of Justice and Police estimates that the country is home to 20 such companies.

Switzerland has a long history of sending poor farmers as mercenaries to European battlefields. In the late Middle Ages, Swiss cantons took the role of the brokers. The decline of the mercenary business started in the 18th century and ended with the introduction of Switzerland’s federal constitution in 1848. From 1859 on, fighting on foreign battlefields was no longer permitted.

Thereafter, ‘neutrality’ became a fundamental element of Switzerland’s foreign policy and in a mythologised way a central piece of Swiss collective identity. The arrival of Aegis was seen by many as a threat to the country’s neutrality.

Swiss politicians pushed for establishment of a new legal frame for registration and licensing of private security companies. Josef Lang, then national councillor and a leading voice in the Group for Switzerland without an Army (GsoA) demanded a national ban of PMCs.

Swiss Justice Minster Simonetta Sommaruga announced a national “ban on mercenary companies” on Jan. 23. She said Switzerland would no longer serve as a base for activities that violate human rights. But what was announced as a ‘ban’ turned out to be an ineffectual regulation.

The draft law provides for notification and a ban on certain activities – but not of PMCs themselves. It forbids firms or holding companies based in Switzerland to “directly take part in hostilities within an armed conflict abroad.”

“In plain language, this means that the new law allows so-called security companies to act within armed conflicts abroad and to indirectly take part in hostilities,” says Josef Lang. “Anyone believing that in the heat of the battle anyone will differentiate between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ participation has no clue of today’s wars.”

Ulrich Petersohn, senior researcher at Zurich’s Centre for Security Studies (CSS) says that in international law the definition of ‘direct participation in hostilities’ is vague and subject to debate. “And where does self-defence end?” he asks. “Obviously, there’s a twilight zone.”

Petersohn points to a realistic dilemma: “What applies when a military compound guarded by PMC personnel is attacked?”

The new draft law also bans PMCs from “conducting any activities which encourage the commission of serious violations of human rights.” Josef Lang says: “Does that mean that encouraging light human rights violations is permitted?”

The Green Party politician believes the law cannot force Aegis to leave Switzerland. “They’ll simply promise to not directly take part in hostilities in conflict zones and to do nothing to encourage serious human rights violations.” It remains unclear how Swiss authorities could control mercenaries’ activities on the ground.

Albert A. Stahel, Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies based in the town of Wädenswil near Zurich believes that Switzerland’s attractiveness to foreign PMCs may get reduced, but that those already present will not be constrained. “The Federal Council should have proposed a clear a priori ban of PMCs, thereby clearly stating that we don’t tolerate any companies which take part in wars,” he tells IPS.

Petersohn also does not see significant legal constraints coming up for Aegis. “However, the sharpest weapon of the draft law is that on suspicion, lawsuits can be filed.” Companies are eager to avoid negative publicity, and that could put them under pressure, Petersohn says.

Lang holds up the strict regulation in Norway as example. “Instead of forbidding certain hardly definable activities, it would be more feasible to apply a more controllable criteria. Norwegian companies aren’t permitted to carry weapons in foreign countries.”

At the international level, Switzerland along with the International Committee of the Red Cross had launched a process leading to the ‘Montreux Document’ in 2008. This intergovernmental document signed by 44 states contains a compilation of good practices but is not legally binding.

Unexpectedly, the law proposed by the Swiss government does not stick to the suggested good practices. The Montreux Document advocates measures to guarantee transparency in authorisation such as oversight by parliamentary bodies. The Swiss draft law leaves out all transparency measures.

The law would, though, oblige Switzerland-based PMCs to sign the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers (ICOC-PSP), a self-regulatory framework that 592 PMCs have signed.

Stahel considers this approach useless, because there’s no sanctioning mechanism. Petersohn is hopeful that such codes may lead to development of norms that get some degree of compulsion.

ICOC-PSP primarily serves the image of its signature companies and keeps other service providers at a distance. Petersohn stresses that violations of the code nevertheless risk naming and shaming campaigns.

The Swiss parliament will debate the draft law, but isn’t expected to make it any harsher. “A step in the direction was taken,” says Stahel. “However, the glass is still only half full.”

Melting glaciers are the most visible effect of global warming in the Swiss Alps. Meanwhile, permafrost is invisible and melting too, often causing rockfall and massive debris flows, ultimately threatening mountain villages.

Guttannen, home to 310 residents, is a tiny village in the Bernese Alps, the last one that travellers drive through on the way up to Grimsel Pass. It’s spring and the snow is retreating from the steep slopes of the valley. As the pass is still closed, calm reigns in the picturesque village centre. Only cowbells and the rushing of the nearby Aar river break the silence.

For some residents though, living in Guttannen has become rather uneasy and, on the long term, even dangerous. The root cause of the peril lies further uphill, in the northeastern flank of the 3,282 metres high Ritzlihorn. In July 2009, a huge rockfall had occurred and since then, massive debris flows have roared downhill each summer.

“These mudslides as well as the volume of transported rubble have grown from year to year,” says Nils Hählen, hydraulic engineer at the cantonal public works service. “The debris partly ends up in the Aar, lifting and widening its channel.” Within three years, 630,000 cubic metres were transported into the river, increasingly endangering civil infrastructure.

In summer, after heavy rainfall, the only road leading through the narrow valley often has to be temporarily closed. A house near the river already had to be taken down, the local sewage treatment plant may be next. Since 2010, the debris flows reach as far as the hamlet Boden, threatening ten houses and 30 inhabitants.

“The next few mudslides won’t be a big problem,” says Guttannen council leader Hans Abplanalp. However, some houses would effectively be threatened in two to five, others in five to seven years, he adds.

One of these homes belongs to Martin Leuthold. “I’ve lived here for 60 years and my father was already a farmer here,” he says. Leuthold claims he has no fear, as he’s grown up with the moods of nature. Nevertheless, the farmer doesn’t ignore the peril: “Perhaps nothing will happen for the next 10 years, but maybe this summer it could all rumble down on us. Nobody knows.”

Nearby, Hans von Weissenfluh lives less than 20 metres away from the river. “The threat is real, we can see it,” he says. Von Weissenfluh remembers well how impressive amounts of water and debris came down the Aar last summer. “Only five years ago, the river channel was much more narrow,” he notices.

Engineers, geologists and glaciologists assume permafrost melt to be the underlying problem. Permafrost is underground material such as rock or rubble that permanently remains at or below zero degrees centigrade. Ice is a possible, but not a necessary ingredient. “The issue is, that permafrost occurrence is generally not known,” says Nils Hählen. There are maps designed on calculated probabilities, but as the hydraulic engineer explains, in any case things have to be evaluated locally.

In northeastern mountain slopes, permafrost may occur roughly above 2,600 meters altitude. Scientists estimate that about 5 percent of Switzerland’s area contains permafrost. It stabilises steep rocky or scree slopes in the high mountains and protects them from erosion by serving as a kind of natural putty. When permafrost melts, the result may be rockfalls and debris flows. “The lower permafrost zones are the most vulnerable,” explains Hählen.

He locates the cause of permafrost melt in rising air temperatures which have been measured over the past years in the European Alps. Jeannette Nötzli, glaciologist at the University of Zurich, mentions that atmosphere and underground permafrost are often not directly coupled. Ice content and changes in surface coverage can mask atmospheric signals. Nötzli heads the Coordination Office of the Swiss Permafrost Monitoring Network PERMOS.

“As PERMOS’ systematic monitoring commenced in 2000, most of our data cover around a decade, whereas for robust statements about trends in climate science typically a 30-year period is considered,” Nötzli points out. “However,” the researcher adds, “much of our data points to permafrost degradation. For example, in the past three years active layer depths in summer have increased with new record values at many of the observed sites.”

Reliable forecasting of permafrost changes isn’t possible. In the case of Guttannen, experts limit their predictions to the next year. Hählen expects that in the long term, debris flows from the Ritzlihorn will stop, as ultimately the catchment area in the flank is limited.

Removing the rubble from the valley floor and the Aar is no option. It’s too risky, but also too costly. Additionally, dumping places in the region are limited. Only to remove the current rubble from the river would cost more than 18 million Swiss Francs and accumulate to at least 50,000 lorry loads.

There’s not much hope for the residents of Boden. Ultimately, they’ll have to leave their homes and resettle somewhere else. Hans Abplanalp, the council president, has talked to all persons concerned. “Nearly all of them want to stay in Guttannen,” he says. “We can offer them land and homes to buy.”

Boden resident Hans von Weissenfluh plans to move up to Guttannen as soon as possible. Others such as Martin Leuthold are more hesitant. He wouldn’t mind living somewhere else in the village, but is reluctant to tear down his house and move all the belongings.

“That’s a lot of work,” he says. Leuthold fears he will not be fully compensated. He’d only be compensated for his stable if he built a new one in another place. “I wouldn’t know what to build a new stable for, as I’ll soon be retired.”